Speaker 1: Also media.
Speaker 2: On April twenty fifth, nineteen eighty six, a disaster happen.
Speaker 1: I was born.
Speaker 2: What Welcome to better Off Lying, I'm your host ed Zititron.
Speaker 2: We have an incredible block to begin this with. I'm
Speaker 2: joined by Divindra, Hardwareven Gadget.
Speaker 3: Hello.
Speaker 2: Hello, I'm gonna going fantastically now victorious song from the Verge.
Speaker 1: How you doing, I'm so tired we are.
Speaker 2: Now I'm manager, I'm just the power of Christ, not really.
Speaker 2: Edwin Graso Junior tomorrow. Hey doo ed doing pretty good?
Speaker 3: Pretty good.
Speaker 2: So you're fresh back from the convention floor, right, Yeah.
Speaker 4: After thinking I lost my passport there, which is so amazing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I found it. Well, then you'll be just trapped
Speaker 3: here forever. I just everyone's streaming.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I did not want to say this to you,
Speaker 2: but that is actually a Cees right of passage of
Speaker 2: the people that like I know, at least I think
Speaker 2: like five people I know of like I lost my
Speaker 2: entire wallet in the LVC.
Speaker 5: They didn't lose it in the LVCC, but one of
Speaker 5: the first Cees's I ever went to, I had a
Speaker 5: connecting flight back through Minnesota. There was a snowstorm I
Speaker 5: was stuck there for an extra day while begging every
Speaker 5: single airline counter to like put me on a flight out.
Speaker 5: I lost my wallet. Oh there, So like my company
Speaker 5: put me up with an extra hotel. I get to
Speaker 5: the hotel and they're like, you kind of need ID
Speaker 5: to check in. I was like, I don't know how
Speaker 5: to tell you. I just lost my wallet at the airport.
Speaker 5: And so they're very nice in Minnesota, so they just
Speaker 5: let me stay. The next morning, I get up early,
Speaker 5: and you can fly without ID. Domestically, you just have
Speaker 5: to like.
Speaker 1: Go really just do like a credit check.
Speaker 5: You have to do go really early though, because they
Speaker 5: do check everything you own with great companies.
Speaker 2: Oh no, I know, because the last time I did it,
Speaker 2: there was like what car do you have?
Speaker 5: Like the lady was going through my dirty underwear and
Speaker 5: that was my biggest nightmare. But you know, on the
Speaker 5: way to the airport, I had left a review unit
Speaker 5: laptop in the hotel rooms. I had to go back,
Speaker 5: and then on the way back from going back, the
Speaker 5: uber blew attire because it was so cool, Oh, oh
Speaker 5: my god, it was so stressful.
Speaker 1: And I was like, oh my god, this is the
Speaker 1: worst light of my life.
Speaker 5: I got home, it was like forty eight hours after
Speaker 5: I was supposed to you. And then two weeks later,
Speaker 5: the very nice people in Minnesota, the Lost and Found
Speaker 5: at the airport sent me back my wallet after I'd
Speaker 5: canceled every single card I owned.
Speaker 1: So that's such a lovely story.
Speaker 2: So, talking of finding things you don't want, what is
Speaker 2: your experience being as the pre eminent.
Speaker 1: Wearbrales report, Oh thank you?
Speaker 2: What have you seen that's crap or interesting or funny
Speaker 2: or good?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 5: You know, I wish I remembered all the crap that
Speaker 5: I saw, but I feel like I just jetted sent
Speaker 5: it front my head unless it's like super egregious. Oh wait, no,
Speaker 5: I remember now I'll call it. I wouldn't call it crap.
Speaker 5: I would just call it ridiculous, if that makes sense.
Speaker 2: Sick.
Speaker 5: It's ther human rare. The ultra human the name says
Speaker 5: the ultra Human Ring Air is actually a smart ring
Speaker 5: that I enjoy quite a bit. I did this thing
Speaker 5: over the summer where I wore six smart rings at
Speaker 5: wants to determine who is going to be the one
Speaker 5: ring to rule them all right? That one came in second,
Speaker 5: so I found it quite good and at cees. They're like,
Speaker 5: but what if late stage capitalism? Okay, Okay, So they
Speaker 5: made the rare, which is like there's it's a desert
Speaker 5: themed collection of luxury smart rings, and there's Desert Rose Cute,
Speaker 5: the Stink Song Dune, and.
Speaker 1: Then Desert Snow.
Speaker 5: Rose gold, gold and silver. Basically, the rose gold and
Speaker 5: gold are made out of eighteen carrot gold. The silver
Speaker 5: quote unquote is PT nine to fifty platinum. Guess how
Speaker 5: much they cost?
Speaker 1: How much?
Speaker 5: So the gold are nineteen hundred each, like converted from
Speaker 5: British pounds, the platinum is twenty two hundred.
Speaker 2: Great.
Speaker 5: I saw them on the floor and I was like,
Speaker 5: I have six thousand dollars worth of smart rings on
Speaker 5: my hand. I took a photo posted it online and
Speaker 5: everyone was like no, and everyone was just like, you
Speaker 5: know what though, your nails look better, and I was like,
Speaker 5: these are ten dollars press ons, so nice try. You know,
Speaker 5: it just goes to show you money isn't necessarily what
Speaker 5: catches there.
Speaker 2: So they were expensive because of the metals. They were
Speaker 2: expensive because of three hundred dollars worth of at.
Speaker 5: Most, So like the actual ring textpecs all the same,
Speaker 5: So the actual ring is three hundred and fifty dollars,
Speaker 5: so we're talking five to six times the price. And
Speaker 5: I'm like, you know, I was talking to the guy
Speaker 5: and I was I was saying, you know, tech becomes
Speaker 5: obsolete so quickly. The battery is gonna die in like
Speaker 5: three years.
Speaker 2: My rings already dying.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and you know rings that are actual gold, Like
Speaker 5: people don't blink spending that much money on real gold,
Speaker 5: high quality jewelry. But you get to keep those forever.
Speaker 5: Those are heirlooms. You can pass them down. So like,
Speaker 5: how do you reconcile that he And he was like, well,
Speaker 5: there will be an upgrade path that we're working on
Speaker 5: to guarantee the value of the metals.
Speaker 3: Like a skilled tree.
Speaker 5: And then also just like maybe we'll like I think
Speaker 5: they're working on a way to try and swap out
Speaker 5: the tech portion so that you can keep the metal.
Speaker 2: And I was like, I gotta work that one out first.
Speaker 1: Big if true, Big, if true?
Speaker 3: This is the only way to get people into smart
Speaker 3: rings is to just construct artificial scarcity. That's the only thing.
Speaker 3: And I know, Victoria, you've covered this stuff a lot.
Speaker 3: I firmly believe that that whole category is bullshit, Like
Speaker 3: just I say that wearing one, yeah, I mean I.
Speaker 5: Respectfully, it is very popular among women or as I'm
Speaker 5: sure demographic is now majority of women instead of men.
Speaker 5: And it's because they don't want to wear the swarm watches.
Speaker 2: This is the thing that story is not well told
Speaker 2: in the media. I'm not saying is it any failure,
Speaker 2: but this is and this is actually a failing of
Speaker 2: better off line. As you literally just heard are preconception
Speaker 2: that we had as guys, which is just and even
Speaker 2: my experience of using AURA, the question is what is
Speaker 2: it that attracts them? Is it? Is it the data
Speaker 2: is more useful for women are more connected with those problems.
Speaker 5: In some respects because they do have pregnancy. They have
Speaker 5: been putting so much effort into pregnancy research over the
Speaker 5: last few years. They found that they could actually they
Speaker 5: did a clinical study. So it's clinical, it's not it's
Speaker 5: not it's a real that's what I mean. It's a
Speaker 5: real clinical one. It's not a white paper, which is
Speaker 5: what I see a lot in my field.
Speaker 2: And one is the difference that just for this white.
Speaker 5: Paper is like a book report by a company saying
Speaker 5: we did our own internal research a clinical study or
Speaker 5: a clinical paper is something that they've done that they've
Speaker 5: published that they've paid the money to get published in
Speaker 5: an academic journal or peer review journal, and those can
Speaker 5: cost That cost can be sometimes up to twenty five
Speaker 5: thousand dollars for that review. I mean, there's so many
Speaker 5: of them. But yes, actually it was. And they're working
Speaker 5: with actual researchers from universities such kind of that sort
Speaker 5: of stuff, and they continuously do it. They have a
Speaker 5: long dedication to it. So like they found that they
Speaker 5: can find temperature predictions with pregnancy detection, and they haven't
Speaker 5: necessarily done anything with that, but they're saying it's possible.
Speaker 5: And they've also partnered with Natural Cycles. So for what
Speaker 5: Natural Cycles is, You're gonna enjoy this. It's an FBA
Speaker 5: cleared birth control app. Okay, Yeah, So I could go
Speaker 5: off about that forever. The controversy with that, there has
Speaker 5: been controversies that that.
Speaker 3: So there's a.
Speaker 5: Long story, but the point being is that a lot
Speaker 5: of people or a lot of women have fertility issues. Right,
Speaker 5: this is something that is discreet that they can wear
Speaker 5: that integrates with other stuff that has like clinical backing.
Speaker 5: Because a lot of people use basal body temperatures to
Speaker 5: try and track their fertility. But that's so difficult to
Speaker 5: do accurately because you have to do it first thing
Speaker 5: in the morning, when you wake up, you cannot drink
Speaker 5: and cannot get out of wat you can sleep with these,
Speaker 5: it's much more so for a lot of women. There
Speaker 5: is a benefit to that. It is, you know, a
Speaker 5: lot of women I know are just like, Okay, I
Speaker 5: have a bunch of rings on my hand. There are
Speaker 5: some that are thin and stylish, which I quite like,
Speaker 5: and then there's these honking smart rings. So you know,
Speaker 5: that's not for everyone necessarily, but it is discrete compared
Speaker 5: to I don't know, an Apple watch. A lot of
Speaker 5: women find Apple watches. Sleeping with those is difficult, and
Speaker 5: sleeping with them is difficult.
Speaker 3: You're totally difficult. I understand the like functional and useful
Speaker 3: aspect of a smart ring for women that like that
Speaker 3: totally makes sense. I think overall that market though, if
Speaker 3: you're not always looking for the temperature market, it's it's
Speaker 3: so niche.
Speaker 5: It's not like it's not like your first I always
Speaker 5: say that a smart ring is better with a smart watch,
Speaker 5: so it's kind.
Speaker 2: Of a problem as well. Like it is this and
Speaker 2: also they're very annoying. The very I wanted the next
Speaker 2: aura because I really like my sleep tracking, other than
Speaker 2: the fact that the charging cycle lost like a day
Speaker 2: and a half the best and then it screams at
Speaker 2: me like an angry cat.
Speaker 1: But it's three hundred dollars.
Speaker 2: And the next one I was like, oh, I might
Speaker 2: get it like a Christmas present for myself, and it's
Speaker 2: like no, no, no, ma, I don't just try and
Speaker 2: fucking buy this, man, You've got to remeasure your fingers.
Speaker 5: What I can actually tell you why, oh thank you.
Speaker 5: They changed the saint changed the sensor, right, so I
Speaker 5: have the four on me right now. If you look
Speaker 5: at yours and you take yours off, you have the
Speaker 5: bumps right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this says no bumps, bumpless.
Speaker 5: It's bumpless. They've changed the sensors and the arrays on that,
Speaker 5: so that has affected the sizing quite a bit.
Speaker 2: Still annoying.
Speaker 5: So I went from an eight to one nine that
Speaker 5: that is the case, but the battery lasts a lot longer.
Speaker 5: So with this PO two tracking those last like tracking
Speaker 5: blood oxygen, thank you, So like with that tracking that
Speaker 5: last maybe two three days, I found it really annoying.
Speaker 2: This is seven that's not bad. Yeah, this is still niche, though.
Speaker 5: It's still very niche. It's still very niche. But I
Speaker 5: will say at the live Verge Cask recording that we
Speaker 5: did last night, when we were meeting readers, I had
Speaker 5: so many come up to me and they're like, look
Speaker 5: at my order ring. I bought it because of you.
Speaker 5: And I was like, I never tell people to buy yeah,
Speaker 5: but they're.
Speaker 1: Like, look, look look I bought it.
Speaker 5: And I was like, oh, yeah, congratulations, you're.
Speaker 4: Someone so you know, like me, I've never I've never
Speaker 4: used these wearables. You know, what is the value proposition
Speaker 4: for someone who is not already in the Marketer ecosystem
Speaker 4: using it for one of the use cases you've kind
Speaker 4: of laid out, you know.
Speaker 5: Usually, so the killer quote unquote the killer app for
Speaker 5: wearables is health. For there are so many different kinds
Speaker 5: of wearables, but the one that people most resonate with
Speaker 5: now is health. And usually like they get into it
Speaker 5: because they want to change something or they've had like
Speaker 5: a health scare, so oh, like I don't sleep well
Speaker 5: and that my doctor says I have sleep appneyet oh,
Speaker 5: I should track this sort of thing, or oh, my
Speaker 5: parents just had like a cardio respiratory issue, I'm going
Speaker 5: to buy them an Apple Watch. Actually, the scenario I
Speaker 5: get asked most often is like, my parent had health scare,
Speaker 5: What Apple Watch do I buy? So it has a
Speaker 5: lot of different purposes, like.
Speaker 2: What health scares is actually help? Is it just folds?
Speaker 2: Do they do more falls?
Speaker 5: If you have abnormal heart rate? Like if you're at
Speaker 5: rest and your heart rate normally dips too low or
Speaker 5: too high, it'll alert you and be like this is
Speaker 5: kind of messed up. And there are many stories of
Speaker 5: people who have gone to the hospital have their live
Speaker 5: saved because.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and the idea of having Apple Watch with built
Speaker 3: in cellular two and then you're all on the Apple
Speaker 3: family plan and like your parent could call you and
Speaker 3: say hey, I fallen or something, or they get immediate
Speaker 3: emergency help, whereas their phone could be in another room. Right,
Speaker 3: all those uses seem pretty useful.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's just what ED is asking. Here is a
Speaker 2: question I think many people ask about wearables. And I know,
Speaker 2: basically we spent most of the show just being like
Speaker 2: crapping on everything, But I like my orr A ring
Speaker 2: when it fucking works and you know what is that
Speaker 2: not the tech industry right now, but what Ed's asking
Speaker 2: is like something they've kind of failed at Victoria. I
Speaker 2: know you might not like the idea that you've effectively
Speaker 2: sold an order ring by proxy, but someone probably read
Speaker 2: the thing and when, oh, this actually explains what it
Speaker 2: does in a way that doesn't make sense to me.
Speaker 3: Can I want to use it for that? Yes?
Speaker 2: Yeah, this has a use case of.
Speaker 3: So very specific use case. I may be an unpopular thing.
Speaker 3: Does anybody remember the job own up I was carrying
Speaker 3: back that forum of fact was just you were you
Speaker 3: were definitely you were in pr at that point.
Speaker 5: But that was on the screenless fitness track and I
Speaker 5: hear that, yeah, yeah, I hear that quite a lot
Speaker 5: from different people who were just like.
Speaker 1: I don't like the smart watch.
Speaker 3: It was thin, it was really light, but they couldn't
Speaker 3: get the h the engineering right.
Speaker 2: Because kind of crap a building stuff sometimes.
Speaker 3: Well their speakers were great, yeah, but they up destroyed
Speaker 3: them because the because it was a flexible bracelet.
Speaker 2: It feels like a more challenging product.
Speaker 3: It was really hard to build them. They kind of
Speaker 3: bet the whole company on it all fell apart. So
Speaker 3: you do you have any wearables, Divendra. I have an
Speaker 3: Apple Watch, and I always forget to wear it, so
Speaker 3: that's the thing. But I love the idea of an
Speaker 3: Apple watch. And certainly I'm thinking about my parents. I'm
Speaker 3: thinking about my daughter to who's six years old now,
Speaker 3: and parents have to think that devices for your kids.
Speaker 3: I don't I don't want to put a tracker on her.
Speaker 5: But you don't want to give her a phone want
Speaker 5: to lose.
Speaker 3: And also like if she's off somewhere doing activity, she
Speaker 3: misses the bus or something. I would love an emergency
Speaker 3: way for me to when in a couple of years,
Speaker 3: not at six, but at eight to ten. Yeah, be
Speaker 3: able to call me, be able to call for help
Speaker 3: something even just hit a button, or to see where
Speaker 3: they are on GPS if they're on like a school
Speaker 3: trip or something, because there are trips where kids get
Speaker 3: left behind. So you know, not surely not like the
Speaker 3: most important thing in the world, but it is something
Speaker 3: I think about, and certainly apparently it's two. Yeah, a
Speaker 3: connected device that can instantly help them or get them
Speaker 3: to emergency help like that seems super valuable.
Speaker 2: I kind of want to put one on my mom.
Speaker 2: There you go, No, she's totally fine. She's doing well.
Speaker 2: She just forever does not pick up her phone. So
Speaker 2: it'd just be nice to know that too. My mom
Speaker 2: would probably not hear this, but I'm sorry mom in
Speaker 2: advance if you do so.
Speaker 1: Devandra changing gears slightly?
Speaker 3: Sure?
Speaker 2: Have you seen anything exciting on the show for anything?
Speaker 2: Really been reving your engine?
Speaker 3: Revving my engine. I spend a lot of time within
Speaker 3: the video, and I know you guys have been talking
Speaker 3: about in the video by all means, yah, I do
Speaker 3: think it is interesting watching in videous transformation to this
Speaker 3: sort of like AI Superpower Company. But I also feel
Speaker 3: like you know, I've been covering in video for a while.
Speaker 3: I've covering Jensen Wong for a while. Did you guys
Speaker 3: see that CES keynote?
Speaker 2: I didn't see the keynote and just not it was
Speaker 2: not good for him. When you say you've been covering
Speaker 2: them for a while, yeah, how long?
Speaker 3: I don't know, twenty ten, like pretty much since I
Speaker 3: started doing tech stuff.
Speaker 2: Thank you. I knew that was the case. But for
Speaker 2: listeners this is important. A lot of the people not
Speaker 2: Max Journey, he's a dog, but a lot of people
Speaker 2: talking about Nvidia now have recently started, yeah, writing, and they.
Speaker 3: Say the video And when you say that, I know
Speaker 3: you're opposed.
Speaker 1: People say the video.
Speaker 3: People say Gary Shapiro said the video on stage, Jensen Hoong, so.
Speaker 2: Didn't he yell as well?
Speaker 3: That was there for that too the way I think,
Speaker 3: I think Jensen's going through some stuff.
Speaker 2: So why was it bad for Jensen?
Speaker 3: Bad for Jensen? Because that was like a two hour
Speaker 3: long keynote where the thing everybody was there filling that auditorium.
Speaker 3: They just want to hear about the video cards, give
Speaker 3: me the new RTX fifty ninety or some shit, and
Speaker 3: he's been maybe five or ten minutes talking about those things.
Speaker 3: The rest of it was on their robotics AI virtualized
Speaker 3: training operations, and nobody gave a ship. Like every It
Speaker 3: was like a comedian watching every single joke fall flat,
Speaker 3: and you could tell on stage that it was kind
Speaker 3: of affecting.
Speaker 1: He's trying.
Speaker 4: Also what they're they're real, they're real or industrial metavers
Speaker 4: that they're trying to construct this world which everything versus
Speaker 4: the omniverse. Plus in video Cosmos, it's a whole Cosmo Cosmo.
Speaker 4: So omniverse is this sort of like simplistic view of
Speaker 4: a three D environment that you could use to train
Speaker 4: a robot or something. Cosmos is a real almost looks
Speaker 4: like a real world version of that environment, so like
Speaker 4: a photorealistic environment, and the idea these are interesting. How
Speaker 4: would you train a robot with a decent amount of
Speaker 4: artificial intelligence to perform certain tasks in a black mirrorst way?
Speaker 1: This is actually describing saying it for many reasons.
Speaker 3: So it's black mirror. You have them through that simulation
Speaker 3: over and over, get better at it, and that's the
Speaker 3: whole thing. Really interesting pitch, maybe not for the CS audience,
Speaker 3: and that's kind of that kind of affected him. And
Speaker 3: then yeah, the next morning there was a press Q
Speaker 3: and A where people were asking questions, but he also
Speaker 3: seemed really uncomfortable and also like, yeah, he was really
Speaker 3: picking on the sound guy that poor Q and A
Speaker 3: because he was like, the speakers are pointing at me
Speaker 3: and making it hard for me to hear. We're all like, no, Jensen,
Speaker 3: you're hearing reflections with the speakers on the wall that
Speaker 3: are coming to the audience. He was like, no, I know,
Speaker 3: it was a weird.
Speaker 2: Thing, man, It is such a penis.
Speaker 3: But I think he's just like he admitted in that
Speaker 3: Q and A that he did a bad job at
Speaker 3: the keynote.
Speaker 1: He was like, I failed to stors love to hear.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's what you want to hear.
Speaker 2: That's what you wake up thinking about.
Speaker 3: I don't feel I mean, dude due to a multi billionaire.
Speaker 2: Now yeah, oh I feel I'm laughing at his pain.
Speaker 3: He's dealing situation stuff. But yeah, the in video stuff
Speaker 3: is interesting. The video cards are interesting because they're leaning
Speaker 3: more in AI.
Speaker 2: So tell me about with the video cards. So the
Speaker 2: lower end one is meant to be the equivalent of
Speaker 2: the forty ninety.
Speaker 1: I want to say.
Speaker 2: This is where it gets confusing because they using DLSS.
Speaker 2: They're using DLSS, so you explain that for US AI upscaling.
Speaker 2: So these new cards have DSS four, which have AI
Speaker 2: upscaling to basically smooth out frame rates so they can
Speaker 2: generate for every single real frame that video card renders,
Speaker 2: it can generate three artificial frames, which kind of smooth
Speaker 2: out gameplay. So if you have a really fast monitor,
Speaker 2: it'll look a little better. They can say the FPS
Speaker 2: is higher because this DLSS will autogenerately generate free ones.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and then you can go back to the last car,
Speaker 3: the forty ninety, and be like, well, this is not
Speaker 3: generating as many frames that one could generate one frame
Speaker 3: per every real frame. So the number they can they
Speaker 3: can say the number is right. But if you turned
Speaker 3: off the LSS and you just looked at pure gaming
Speaker 3: performance without any of the AI stuff, certainly like the forty,
Speaker 3: the fifty seventy would not be as fast as the
Speaker 3: forty ninety. So they're picking and choosing more marketing for
Speaker 3: the gens. They've always done this, but yeah, you're choosing
Speaker 3: which benchmarks they're talking about.
Speaker 2: So, and just before we get off the subject, so
Speaker 2: in Vidio you've been covering since twenty ten, pulling these
Speaker 2: games for a while, but they always have dumb, puffed.
Speaker 3: Up marketing they have. But also the thing is like,
Speaker 3: what's change? Then they do succeed, like some things do
Speaker 3: work the LSS. When they first talked about it, even
Speaker 3: Jensen admitted he said nobody believed him that this idea
Speaker 3: of using AI to upscale a lower resolution to a
Speaker 3: higher resolution on a monitor gives you less like processing
Speaker 3: power on the cards, so it gets you higher frame rates.
Speaker 3: Nobody believed that would work, but it turned out it
Speaker 3: worked pretty well. There were some issues, and they got
Speaker 3: better and better and better at it, and he said, basically,
Speaker 3: for the past six years, there's like a supercomputer at
Speaker 3: in video servers that's just been crunching the LSS algorithms
Speaker 3: to like sort of make that thing better. So that
Speaker 3: is a real thing. But I think he tends to
Speaker 3: overstate how good it is at times. It's a weird
Speaker 3: thing because I think he's full of a lot of bluster,
Speaker 3: you know, But the actual the results, the products are good,
Speaker 3: certainly compared to AMD's video cards and all that stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so Victoria returning to you, anything good, I know,
Speaker 2: good stuff, like, Okay, what's actually been exciting? What's this
Speaker 2: question with some alum because most people have had nothing?
Speaker 5: So I actually so my favorite thing on the show.
Speaker 5: It's it's kind of girly, but it's Laorel sell bioprint.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 5: It is a it's meant for something like a dermatologist
Speaker 5: or an esthetician's office, and it is a machine. Basically,
Speaker 5: you take these skin strips and you take a sample
Speaker 5: from your skin, you put it in a chemical buffer solution,
Speaker 5: you stick that on a cartridge, and then that cartridge
Speaker 5: is stuck into this machine. It goes beat up, boop uh,
Speaker 5: and then it tells you if your skin's chronological age
Speaker 5: and biological age match, or if you know your skin's
Speaker 5: your skinny doing so good. It can analyze like different
Speaker 5: criteria like wrinkles, skin barrier function, poor size, uh, you know,
Speaker 5: even skin skin tone, like a bunch of different things.
Speaker 5: And then based on the proteins that it had detected
Speaker 5: from the from your skin and then the solution, it
Speaker 5: can tell you whether you're pro to have those problems
Speaker 5: in the future if you don't take care.
Speaker 2: Of things, and so what is the thing you meant
Speaker 2: to do with this information?
Speaker 5: It is meant to help you wade through the cesspool
Speaker 5: of skin fluencers hawking different products to you. So like
Speaker 5: if you are you know, if you're a woman, probably
Speaker 5: you're on TikTok and they're like, oh my god, you
Speaker 5: need to buy a retinal. You need to have retinol
Speaker 5: every day. I'll like, as soon as you start thirty
Speaker 5: or you will shrivel up like an old crone. And
Speaker 5: that retinyl is vitamin A and it is the most
Speaker 5: clinically studied skincare ingredient. It is like basically what dermerenttologists
Speaker 5: will give you if nothing's freaking working. But it is
Speaker 5: a tough ingredient because a lot of people are like
Speaker 5: sensitive to it. So there's something called purging, So if
Speaker 5: you use it, you could end up, instead of having
Speaker 5: clear skin, have a bunch of breakouts. And it's because
Speaker 5: it's increasing cell turnover and it's just getting all the
Speaker 5: impurities out of your face and you know it'll be
Speaker 5: fine after that. The problem is it looks like it
Speaker 5: looks the same as an intolerance or insensitivity to rentin all,
Speaker 5: meaning it doesn't work for everyone, and those people are
Speaker 5: just getting skin. So it can tell you if you're
Speaker 5: responsive to it and whether it's worth that's really cool.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's what she really has.
Speaker 5: Very cool and so like from different things that you notice.
Speaker 5: So like for me, it said, you have some issues
Speaker 5: with skin tone evenness, and yeah, I know that. I
Speaker 5: can see it and it pisses me off and I'm
Speaker 5: trying all these different things.
Speaker 1: How do you deal with something like that?
Speaker 5: So it's called hyperpigmentation, and there are different ingredients that
Speaker 5: are said to fight that. So vitamin C is one.
Speaker 5: Another one is nice cinemid. There's just like tranexamic acid
Speaker 5: and all of those. So you know, like the girlies,
Speaker 5: we're on TikTok and we are learning about all these
Speaker 5: ingredients that we are supposed to use.
Speaker 3: In different serium.
Speaker 2: It will give you more direction.
Speaker 5: It'll give you more direction. And like when I was
Speaker 5: talking to them, they're like, it's going to help you
Speaker 5: know what not to buy. That's because like when you
Speaker 5: have all these marketers and these influencers, they're just telling
Speaker 5: you all these things that Like I was on there,
Speaker 5: I was like, do you know what the Creans use?
Speaker 5: The Koreans use beffita? And I'm like, what the fuck
Speaker 5: is buffita?
Speaker 3: On social media? So like the other thing is you
Speaker 3: go into Sephora or something and be like, help me out,
Speaker 3: and I have bad skin, so I have to look
Speaker 3: at this stuff too. And they will either you will
Speaker 3: get a good salesperson who's like I got you, I
Speaker 3: will take care, or you get somebody who wants to
Speaker 3: make a lot of money and they will lead you to,
Speaker 3: oh you need nice in am, I do you need
Speaker 3: hyaluronic acid? All the fun stuff and plus retinol, and
Speaker 3: then your your face is a mess.
Speaker 5: And then you end up with a ten step skincare routine,
Speaker 5: which was popular like ten years ago in Korea. Is
Speaker 5: like super nuts. Like my cousin's kid is like eleven
Speaker 5: years old and she came to She's like, let me
Speaker 5: show you my skincare routine. I'm like, you're eleven. The
Speaker 5: only thing you should be using is moisturizer and sunscreen, like.
Speaker 2: A Dexta styles set up.
Speaker 5: Yeah. No, And she was breaking out and I was like,
Speaker 5: you know why you're breaking out. You're overloading your skin
Speaker 5: and you're too young. You don't need any of this.
Speaker 5: It is a moisturizer and a sunscreen.
Speaker 2: So does this thing give direction or is it just
Speaker 2: like it does.
Speaker 5: Give you direction? Because for me it's so for me,
Speaker 5: it was telling me like, oh, you have hyper pigmentation,
Speaker 5: but technically the proteins you're not prone to it, so
Speaker 5: there's something.
Speaker 2: Well the consequence is there?
Speaker 5: So that means that means like I should probably be
Speaker 5: using a vitamin C. I don't currently, so I'm like, oh,
Speaker 5: I was trying a different ingredient obviously working, so like
Speaker 5: I can look for a vitamin C. It told me
Speaker 5: I was responsive, like highly responsive to retinol, which means
Speaker 5: it will likely work better for me than someone who's
Speaker 5: intolerant of it, and so that means I should probably
Speaker 5: use a retinal.
Speaker 2: So this and the actual consequence is here is saving
Speaker 2: hundreds of dollars.
Speaker 5: Hundreds of dollars because these things are not cheap to buy. Like, yeah,
Speaker 5: if you know what drunk Elephant is, I do not.
Speaker 5: It's a very premium brand. And Sphara you walk in,
Speaker 5: one bottle like seventy million liters is like one hundred
Speaker 5: and fifty dollars. Like these things can.
Speaker 1: Cost a lot of them.
Speaker 2: All this pressure on social media to buy Bye Bye,
Speaker 2: to fix every problem, make every part.
Speaker 5: Like during the pandemic, skincare just blew up and then
Speaker 5: like Korean skincare is like super popular now because you
Speaker 5: look at you look at the stars of Squid Game,
Speaker 5: how do you think they are? They're like fifty five
Speaker 5: and their skin looks incredible. They do not look whatever.
Speaker 5: And it's because they take skin gear so much more seriously.
Speaker 5: They the tech that Loriol did, it was actually paired
Speaker 5: with the Korean startup and then micropluitics, So they're taking
Speaker 5: like protein ten this product of them ten years to
Speaker 5: build because of the science and all.
Speaker 3: Right, there was a booth I stopped by.
Speaker 4: It was a Korean skincare company with some tech, and
Speaker 4: they had like four pamphlets that had nothing to do
Speaker 4: with the tech and just talked about why skincare was
Speaker 4: so big as an industry Korea huge, which was which
Speaker 4: I thought was really interesting because I feel like almost
Speaker 4: every single pamphlet I've read besides those ones, has been
Speaker 4: trying to trying to pitch me or sell me on
Speaker 4: the tech, which I suppose that probably wasn't a way.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's.
Speaker 3: Interesting because there's there's an obsession with the lighter skin too,
Speaker 3: Like whenever I go to computechs, the stuff you see
Speaker 3: on billboards and everything is like, oh yeah, I want
Speaker 3: to light complexion, you want a fair complexion, and it
Speaker 3: all feels like this is all kind of I was like,
Speaker 3: I see what you're up to, eyes, Like there is
Speaker 3: very clear colorism going on there. So you're like literally
Speaker 3: just you know, scrubbing your face off, scrubbing skin off
Speaker 3: your face just to get a shade lighter, which is
Speaker 3: part of a marketing too, which is a shame.
Speaker 2: I mean, I'm really glad you brought that up though,
Speaker 2: because The thing is with CS is it is very easy,
Speaker 2: as I will know, to be a bit cynical, definitely pessimistic.
Speaker 2: When you look around, it's just everything has AI on it.
Speaker 1: It is nice to.
Speaker 2: Hear, especially for the tech industry, something for a woman
Speaker 2: that is like very like this seems extremely helpful.
Speaker 3: It seems like it comes outside the tech industry too, right,
Speaker 3: it's more of a look.
Speaker 2: It's like using technology to solve a problem, which is
Speaker 2: usually not the tech industry's idea.
Speaker 5: And the funny thing is that people hear Lorial and
Speaker 5: they don't think they do tech. They have been a
Speaker 5: huge presence at this show for six, seven, eight years
Speaker 5: now and they are doing interesting things with tech. And
Speaker 5: you know, I hate the term fem tech because they
Speaker 5: usually talk about it in a certain way. Usually has
Speaker 5: to do like reproductive health tracking, YadA, YadA, YadA. But like,
Speaker 5: they have a really high tech hair dryer that uses
Speaker 5: infrared light to help you your hair.
Speaker 2: Why is that good?
Speaker 5: Because if you use so most hair dryers and hair
Speaker 5: dryers are gadgets. Okay, they are the they're the second
Speaker 5: most power intensive thing in your house besides the my like,
Speaker 5: I think they use more power than a microwave really yeah,
Speaker 5: and you use them for a long period of time.
Speaker 5: They use heating coils, and that heating coil like you
Speaker 5: want your hair to drive fast, you put it really
Speaker 5: close to your head.
Speaker 2: It damages your hair, of course, because there's a giant heat.
Speaker 5: Right, heat, so you can hold it from further away,
Speaker 5: use less heat, use less damage, and save a lot
Speaker 5: of energy. So it's like good and it's like not
Speaker 5: the sexiest thing in the world per se. It's not
Speaker 5: things like, oh my god, we're going to revolutionize the world.
Speaker 3: That is different than the Dcon because they did try
Speaker 3: to revolutionize.
Speaker 5: So the Dyson still is using airflow, right, it is
Speaker 5: like airflow versus They did a lot of cool things
Speaker 5: with airflow and engineering with the motor.
Speaker 1: This is cool.
Speaker 2: This is not actually applying heat to it.
Speaker 5: No, it is applying heat, but it's applying heat from
Speaker 5: the light.
Speaker 1: It's light.
Speaker 5: So it's like the way to describe it is like
Speaker 5: when you have something rain right and there's no sun.
Speaker 5: The next day, the water will dry, but not quite
Speaker 5: as well because it's like the wind and whatever will
Speaker 5: evaporate the water. But if it's you have rain and
Speaker 5: the next day there is sun and wind.
Speaker 1: It dries much faster.
Speaker 5: It's the same concept but applied to your hair.
Speaker 2: And I will respond to one thing you said, No,
Speaker 2: I actually think things for woman's skin and hair dryers
Speaker 2: that are less damaging to hair are actually the real revolutions.
Speaker 2: If CS was old shit like this, it would actually
Speaker 2: be a really cool show. If it was like ways
Speaker 2: to use less water in a tap, let's still get
Speaker 2: you as wet as you need to.
Speaker 1: Like it's people.
Speaker 5: I think it's because like the industry is like full
Speaker 5: what the press industry for tech is like full of men.
Speaker 2: I mean we kind of proved that the beginning, like
Speaker 2: I'm actively.
Speaker 5: Apolo, I'm actively the only woman in this room. But
Speaker 5: it's like no. But it's like they have a lipstick printer.
Speaker 5: That's pretty cool. You can take a you can app
Speaker 5: you look at yourself, you can try out different colors
Speaker 5: and then custom print to the actual thing. If you
Speaker 5: have a celebrity that whose makeup look you like, you
Speaker 5: can take a photo, you can color pick their exact
Speaker 5: shade of lipstick and print it for yourself and then
Speaker 5: take it on the go.
Speaker 1: It's very thoughtful.
Speaker 5: They have like a hair dye wand that like precisely
Speaker 5: applies dye so you don't like destroy your bathroom. Hair
Speaker 5: dyeing is like a ritual where it's like your bathroom
Speaker 5: will never be the same. It takes forever to clean
Speaker 5: up this. You can just brush your hair and you've
Speaker 5: dyed it. That's it super cool, so.
Speaker 2: Real future, I wish we'll see us was this Sadly
Speaker 2: we're wrapping this book, d vingdro hottawall were came people
Speaker 2: find you.
Speaker 3: Find me at Engadget. I do the Engadget podcast there
Speaker 3: and a podcast about movies and TV at the Filmcast
Speaker 3: at the filmcast dot com.
Speaker 2: Lovely Victoria, we can people find you.
Speaker 5: I am at Vicm's song on all social handles, but god,
Speaker 5: we got to find an alternative to Twitter. But then
Speaker 5: I'm also at the Verge, so you can find.
Speaker 6: Me there Wonderful and mister Newsletters, Detect, Bubble dot Substack
Speaker 6: dot com podcast This Machine Kills, and Big Black Jacobin
Speaker 6: on Twitter and blue Sky.
Speaker 2: You can find me hanging from various banisters as I
Speaker 2: crawl into your room to make you listen to the
Speaker 2: podcast the second time. I need these downloads. Everyone. We'll
Speaker 2: be right back after these insane advertisements that will blow
Speaker 2: your mind. And we're back by the Thing, Download the
Speaker 2: Thing or else. We have now been joined by mister
Speaker 2: David Roth of Defecta.
Speaker 1: Hello.
Speaker 2: He is fresh from the hyper Loop, which he described
Speaker 2: as thrilling.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was amazing. I had no idea that you
Speaker 1: could take a car through a tunnel like that was
Speaker 1: something that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, how was the car right?
Speaker 1: I did it too? Did you actually?
Speaker 3: Oh my god?
Speaker 4: You know there's all this talking dune about ancestral memory,
Speaker 4: but nobody ever remembers what it's like to be that
Speaker 4: that sperm swimming through the fromordio ooze. And you know what,
Speaker 4: if you want to know what that is, get in
Speaker 4: one of these uh tesla's and travel through these patchy
Speaker 4: white ooz looking walls and the fake rocks and the.
Speaker 3: Very short list. It's like a very useless distance.
Speaker 1: Yes, and I cannot emphasize enough how walkable some of
Speaker 1: the like basically a football field. You're in the thing
Speaker 1: for like less than two minutes, but.
Speaker 3: They spent years digging into the ground to do this.
Speaker 3: I spend minutes thinking about why this is amazing.
Speaker 2: I am the first time I went in it, and
Speaker 2: the only time I went in it the cut, we
Speaker 2: had a traffic jam and I just started to panic.
Speaker 2: I'm going to be honest, Yeah, because I'm very sure
Speaker 2: I was very closetrophobic. I was like, uh, I was
Speaker 2: doing not the Tina from Bobsburg.
Speaker 3: Whenever you're going to the underground tunnel, like into Manhattan
Speaker 3: or something, you're like, it's could be bad.
Speaker 1: Nowhere else to go. You're just in the tube. And
Speaker 1: so yeah, that's the thing I never loved. I'm not
Speaker 1: like a big height scot. I'm not a big confined space.
Speaker 1: I'm just a real cowardly guy. I'm always afraid every
Speaker 1: moment in my life. But in those tunnels, it's like
Speaker 1: it's a big there's other cars in there. It feels
Speaker 1: like it should in it together right where there's a whole.
Speaker 3: Daylight.
Speaker 2: Or if you get an ounce of the car in
Speaker 2: a tunnel, theoretically walk around the cause in this one,
Speaker 2: I don't know what you'd get out to me.
Speaker 1: The tunnel is the size of the car, which I
Speaker 1: didn't care for. Also, very steep getting in and out,
Speaker 1: even by the sort of degraded standards of what we're
Speaker 1: talking about here, which is basically like getting in a
Speaker 1: car with one or two other people you don't know,
Speaker 1: and then traveling the distance of two football fields, Like
Speaker 1: it's still like it shouldn't be as unsafe feelings.
Speaker 3: I feel like we gotta clown the hyperloop more. Yeah,
Speaker 3: just how dumb and useless it existed to stop the all.
Speaker 1: There's some journalism I will say, defector has we have
Speaker 1: taken that torch and run with it. But there's also
Speaker 1: only so many things you can say.
Speaker 2: It's only so far it goes right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I kind of remind people like this was the
Speaker 3: thing Elon Muski's to like kill the high speed rail.
Speaker 1: Yes, correct, you got car in tunnel. This traces all
Speaker 1: it took.
Speaker 4: It also cost fifty three million dollars yeap, and it
Speaker 4: costs oh wow, yeah, fifty three million to build, and
Speaker 4: then forty seven million for the two tunnels and three stations.
Speaker 1: That's awesome, great, all every fucking penny. Yeah, especially as
Speaker 1: somebody who frequently rides the subway where one car can
Speaker 1: hold like a train can hold like twelve hundred people, right,
Speaker 1: Like in this case, it's like a car where there's
Speaker 1: a guy that helps you get into it, and then
Speaker 1: there's a guy that drives it. So the ratio of
Speaker 1: people helping to people riding is either one to one
Speaker 1: or very nearly one to one. And also it doesn't
Speaker 1: work like every time people get out there just like
Speaker 1: please exit, like ahead of the car. And I would
Speaker 1: say that in the times that I was watching that
Speaker 1: worked like maybe thirty.
Speaker 3: Percent of that. Amazing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the super stuff great is the modern day Tony Stock. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's amazing.
Speaker 2: He's so good. So what did you see on the
Speaker 2: floor exactly?
Speaker 1: So I tried to see as much as I could
Speaker 1: in terms of like I wanted to see the sort
Speaker 1: of the high and low of it, because I know
Speaker 1: that when we were talking about it yesterday, I had
Speaker 1: only been to the uh sort of the space here
Speaker 1: in the Venetian and a lot of that was like,
Speaker 1: you know, sort of their products, like they're identifiably like
Speaker 1: things that you know. In many cases they're like you
Speaker 1: know you're making it, so you buy it. And like
Speaker 1: in some cases it's like it's a vibrator or it's
Speaker 1: like a dog door or whatever, but it's like it
Speaker 1: has a practice pose, right, which is incredible. Yes, there
Speaker 1: was one that we talked about this with the air purifier,
Speaker 1: which we should probably go back to fill some confusion.
Speaker 1: But in this case, it's like, so the convention center,
Speaker 1: and I know you all have been over this a
Speaker 1: million times on the podcast, but I'm just.
Speaker 2: Can say it again, all right, Cool.
Speaker 1: It is like the biggest of the big brands have
Speaker 1: their sort of like LG experience stuff and this is
Speaker 1: like a huge, like thousand square foots yeah, big awesome,
Speaker 1: deep pile carpet, Like it's like a pleasure to experience.
Speaker 1: But then if you go upstairs, it's like all the
Speaker 1: white label Chinese electronic brands like sell on Amazon, And
Speaker 1: so I got to see I wanted to see both
Speaker 1: of those, and like the there's also this sort of
Speaker 1: area where the first is like bleeding into the second,
Speaker 1: where there's like brands that are doing ambitious stuff, you know,
Speaker 1: wherey're like they make a robot or whatever the kid
Speaker 1: is supposed to play with or something, but it like
Speaker 1: also kind of sucks, Like it's not like the LG
Speaker 1: shit was interesting to me because like as much as
Speaker 1: I sort of as we discussed yesterday that like some
Speaker 1: of the AI elements are like so misbegotten as to
Speaker 1: like almost be poignant, right, But then you give an
Speaker 1: example of one, like just the stupid one. The smart
Speaker 1: home stuff really like kind of was weird to me
Speaker 1: because that was so I ran into a coworker of yours,
Speaker 1: an engadget guy up on the Chinese Electronics flirt, Dan
Speaker 1: Dan Cooper, great dude, very happy to talk to him,
Speaker 1: and he uh was sort of telling me about an
Speaker 1: ad So I was struck by the smart home stuff
Speaker 1: in the LG space. Like all the products themselves, like
Speaker 1: as a product are cool. The O L D O
Speaker 1: L ED screens blew my mind. They were incredible. There
Speaker 1: was stuff where you could like basically have a sort
Speaker 1: of more or less dirt free home garden thing and
Speaker 1: like it looks sick, dude, Like it looked like something
Speaker 1: from the Jetsons. Like I was legitimately thinking that it
Speaker 1: would be a nice thing to have free home. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was like and it looked it was just like
Speaker 1: they do like a boombox basically, like there were these
Speaker 1: little slots with plants growing up through it, and they
Speaker 1: said you could grow vegetables in it. I don't think
Speaker 1: I would do that, but.
Speaker 3: It's like like those those like self contained but.
Speaker 2: One can eat vegetables.
Speaker 1: Certainly that's a practical that's a thing that something does. Yes,
Speaker 1: and so so all of those items were neat to me.
Speaker 1: But then the smart home thing was basically like the
Speaker 1: most degrading, paying imaginable where they're like, is this what
Speaker 1: you hogs want? You want a robot to pick your
Speaker 1: clothes for you and then map your commute? I bet
Speaker 1: you want that, right?
Speaker 2: Do you think that?
Speaker 1: What if we told you that the robot cared for you?
Speaker 3: There was a lot of best friends.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's so that language, especially LG had it.
Speaker 2: Where is this affectionate intelligence intelligence Jesus Christ, empathetic AI?
Speaker 3: Two years later it dies because the cloud service, right.
Speaker 4: And it's going to make you feel like premium plan.
Speaker 1: You killed him. You killed the guy that picks your
Speaker 1: pants every day, but.
Speaker 3: You can bring them back to life for nine extra
Speaker 3: dollars a month. Did you guys hear about the robot
Speaker 3: for kids Moxie, Yeah, the one that tell us the story.
Speaker 3: I mean that the Moxie was just like very expensive
Speaker 3: robot for kids developed by the I Robot CTO. So
Speaker 3: somebody who like really wanted to build a companion, especially
Speaker 3: for kids who are maybe special needs or autistic kids
Speaker 3: and just something for them to interact with learn language.
Speaker 3: You're later that thing dies. Now you have to tell
Speaker 3: your child that their robot best friend is dead. Yeah,
Speaker 3: because this company couldn't get funding in time, and the
Speaker 3: cloud surface is dead. So now you just have a
Speaker 3: really expensive I think it was like fifteen hundred dollars
Speaker 3: in the beginning. We're like a fifty dollars monthly price.
Speaker 4: It has been realizing I'm the guy in like these
Speaker 4: sci fi movies. You'd be like, I better not fucking
Speaker 4: see you with a cyborg.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they had there's like a new version of what
Speaker 1: you're describing Amy Ai and what was this similar thing
Speaker 1: looked like a ferbie. It blinked and it talked in
Speaker 1: a childlike voice, and it was a companion. So this
Speaker 1: is again one of those things where like you kind
Speaker 1: of do got to hand it to him in the
Speaker 1: sense that it's cute. People were lining up to get
Speaker 1: their picture taken with it, Like there is a lot
Speaker 1: of just I watched like three different guys just walk
Speaker 1: up get handed the thing like whatever, the Stanley cup
Speaker 1: or whatever just hit the soy face while someone took
Speaker 1: a picture of them and then passed it to the
Speaker 1: next day they did the same thing.
Speaker 3: Cute robots, Like yeah, a lot of those categories, Like
Speaker 3: there was one that just stares at you. It just
Speaker 3: like looks up at you, and it's like, Hi, that.
Speaker 2: Was I don't need like an aggrod NPC from Morrow
Speaker 2: Wind just walk.
Speaker 4: On some level, it's like it is technically impressive to
Speaker 4: be able to figure out a way to hack into
Speaker 4: what we view as cute, figure out a way to
Speaker 4: get something that you're gonna let into your home like that,
Speaker 4: But then it immediately brings you the next question, you need.
Speaker 2: It, righteah?
Speaker 1: And that's exactly that's where I was going with it too,
Speaker 1: that it's like as a design thing, it's like it's
Speaker 1: a try idea like I thought it was. I wanted
Speaker 1: to pet it, you know, holding that thing, and yet
Speaker 1: like the idea of it like talking to my child,
Speaker 1: like no, fucking like, that's just not a thing where
Speaker 1: I mean I again, this is the other aspect of
Speaker 1: what you're saying, Like there are other needs and applications
Speaker 1: for this stuff, And so when I look at something
Speaker 1: and I'm like, well, I wouldn't use that, Like I
Speaker 1: don wouldn't want to be in a robot that exercises
Speaker 1: for me like, well, I don't have like unilateral I
Speaker 1: don't my issues.
Speaker 2: I am a child and a lot of experience with
Speaker 2: special aids kids as well. And guess what, this stuff's
Speaker 2: fucking repugnant to me. It is disgusting to me the
Speaker 2: idea that and I understand it's like, yeah, companionship, what
Speaker 2: have you. But it's like any time I don't mean
Speaker 2: you to bendra any of these companies that try and suggest, oh,
Speaker 2: this is the we're going to use the computer to
Speaker 2: fix your sons, because that's what the actual suggestion is.
Speaker 2: It's not the it's not that they're like this is
Speaker 2: really going to help you. And there are examples of
Speaker 2: things that can they're even for like older people with dementia.
Speaker 2: For example, they had these kind of companions that were
Speaker 2: literally just like effectively like fluffy toys that kind of
Speaker 2: purd like a cat and it just made them feel
Speaker 2: like a robot, the headless cat, and it was just
Speaker 2: very but that had a very specific thing. But these
Speaker 2: robots is this kind of catch all if something's wrong
Speaker 2: with your child, because that really is what they're saying,
Speaker 2: and it's just but I'm also not buying your head off,
Speaker 2: because it's like, theoretically, the idea of one of these
Speaker 2: things is sensible, like I'm a loser and I'm lonely,
Speaker 2: and I could use some or like a like a
Speaker 2: child would like a teddy bear that could talk to
Speaker 2: it theoretically, but it feels like none of these people
Speaker 2: have got beyond that stage ever, right, They're not like
Speaker 2: and how would this operate with a person?
Speaker 1: That was the bit that So the thing that like
Speaker 1: kind of left me feeling sad ish leaving the convention
Speaker 1: center was that aspect of it, right, that all of
Speaker 1: it is sort of not just so the smart home
Speaker 1: was bizarre to me because it was infantalizing. But there's
Speaker 1: also and this was the bit that you're that Dan
Speaker 1: told me about, was it? He was like, this is
Speaker 1: also great to talk to more people with that, Like
Speaker 1: thousand yards stare, they've been to thirteen ces is.
Speaker 2: Like the dad nothing God.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so he was like, oh, there's probably six ces
Speaker 1: as ago.
Speaker 2: Drag on a cigarette pre pandemic time.
Speaker 1: Yes, you have to imagine this is actually just like
Speaker 1: a perfectly cheerful man the British accident.
Speaker 2: Yeah British, right, he does.
Speaker 1: But he was talking about an lg AD that they
Speaker 1: had then it like clearly had stayed with him. Do
Speaker 1: you know the video that I'm talking about on it?
Speaker 1: So this is it's like, uh it was. This was
Speaker 1: their like sort of smart home thing that they were
Speaker 1: working with then. And it seems like an important distinction
Speaker 1: that this is like a pre pandemic thing because so
Speaker 1: much of this stuff feels like it's designed to be
Speaker 1: like are you so lonely? And you never see anybody? Right,
Speaker 1: which I think is an experience that's now like more
Speaker 1: current than or like at least more you can kind
Speaker 1: of like put your finger on the top of the yes,
Speaker 1: whereas like I feel like six years ago there's a partment.
Speaker 1: It's like no, man, I just go to the store,
Speaker 1: Like I don't have to like if I want to
Speaker 1: see another person, I had to do it. But in
Speaker 1: this case, so the video he was describing was like
Speaker 1: it's the life of a guy who's got like an
Speaker 1: lg AI support that is sort of taking care of everything.
Speaker 2: Is this the way, kid?
Speaker 1: No? This is so here he wakes up, the thing
Speaker 1: is like hey, good morning, Like you know it's seventy
Speaker 1: one degrees outside. Would you like me to pick your
Speaker 1: outfit out for you and you just say thank you,
Speaker 1: and then it does. And then it comes out of
Speaker 1: like a steamer that's like built that's in your home,
Speaker 1: you know. So everything's just your fresh and flies. You
Speaker 1: leave the home, you get in a car, the same
Speaker 1: robot drives you to work. Then it turns out that
Speaker 1: it's arranged a blind date for you based on right,
Speaker 1: this is where it starts getting darker, based on like
Speaker 1: your preferences, presumably based on the same sort of algorithms
Speaker 1: to tell you, you know that, like today is not a
Speaker 1: day to where linen pants, Today's a day to wear
Speaker 1: cotton pants. The so then the video follows the guy
Speaker 1: he's on this blind day with this woman. It's it's working.
Speaker 1: And then the AI takes because it can control the
Speaker 1: projection on the light of the windows of building across
Speaker 1: the street, changes to like show that it's it's a
Speaker 1: heart and so that shows.
Speaker 3: That's that's just in that robot is just an Indian mother. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it is just wake up, my son, here's your outfit,
Speaker 3: here's your clothes. I found a date for you. That's
Speaker 3: all it is.
Speaker 1: But this is the bit that was like striking me
Speaker 1: about like there's no agency day of this. He was
Speaker 1: like the Dan's words on it. He was like, this
Speaker 1: guy just gets bullied all day AI, he doesn't make
Speaker 1: a single choice all day long.
Speaker 2: Actually sounds great, though, Yeah, I'd love to wake up
Speaker 2: with that.
Speaker 3: I think a lot of people would want they would
Speaker 3: find some sauce in reducing choices.
Speaker 2: I am mostly kidding, by the way, the idea of
Speaker 2: waking up and the well, yes, yes, I am nothing
Speaker 2: like this. I just wake up and read three different
Speaker 2: apps that tell me how to fail every day. Like
Speaker 2: I just go and read pages of stuff that twangs
Speaker 2: my emotions. And then I go and like use the
Speaker 2: text step to text my therapist. I read a post again. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's totally different.
Speaker 1: That's the bit that's weird about this too, though, is that, like,
Speaker 1: so there's something that's what made me sad about it
Speaker 1: was the idea of just being like a flag raw
Speaker 1: goose and like your whole life is just piped down
Speaker 1: your throat like fun and you're just like, oh, thank you.
Speaker 1: I feel this really is the hogs, It's the whole,
Speaker 1: the whole. This is what you guys like like just
Speaker 1: eat out this trough, like we've taken care of it
Speaker 1: all you need.
Speaker 3: To doing towards Wally predicted different.
Speaker 2: That's a ship one's it doesn't even work this way,
Speaker 2: but I do feel like it, So it doesn't.
Speaker 1: The fact that it doesn't work is like funny to me,
Speaker 1: But it is also like the fact that they're promising
Speaker 1: this is that was the part that was like uncanny
Speaker 1: about it, Like the idea of you want to take
Speaker 1: all of this mastery that you have that's made your
Speaker 1: products so unfathomably cool and like project it across every
Speaker 1: spectrum of somebody's life, like to a certain extent, like
Speaker 1: I would want to be asked to my consent. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but also you know, you see how good those OLED
Speaker 1: screens are, and there's a part of me that's like,
Speaker 1: I don't know, man, that's because like you guys.
Speaker 3: Do cars, you know, like we're moving beyond old, we're
Speaker 3: in micro led now and that stuff is it's it's wild.
Speaker 2: From are going.
Speaker 1: Yeah, But that's that's the idea though, is the sort
Speaker 1: of like I don't want to be protected from every
Speaker 1: aspect of like being a lot fel like.
Speaker 2: There's another thing that pisses me off about this. First
Speaker 2: of all, they're lying just right, like the first.
Speaker 3: Of all the line.
Speaker 2: But two, if you look at how the tech industry
Speaker 2: actually treats customers, do you think that any of this would,
Speaker 2: even if it did work, be good. It's like I'm
Speaker 2: going to meet with a woman who is actually a
Speaker 2: pig butchering scam waiting to happen, and my car ends
Speaker 2: up pulling over to the side of the road because
Speaker 2: there was a traffic cone in the in the road
Speaker 2: and I'm late for the day and the other woman's
Speaker 2: threatening to kill me. But don't worry. The trousers I
Speaker 2: have on have a giant stain on them from the
Speaker 2: LG cabinet, which and I also will admit I have
Speaker 2: the LG steam cabinet exactly. I actually use it like
Speaker 2: a genuine like I done meetings. I use suits a
Speaker 2: lots of them like this.
Speaker 1: As an audio medium. But it looks amazing, thank you,
Speaker 1: thank you.
Speaker 2: David's steaming right now. I am just steaming here. But
Speaker 2: even then that thing works mostly, but it just doesn't
Speaker 2: get all the wrinkles.
Speaker 1: It's like they can't even get the fucking steamer right.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: The problem is these companies think all we want is
Speaker 3: no friction. They think we want to glide through life
Speaker 3: like we're fully lubricated. You know, it's just like, oh,
Speaker 3: no problems. I don't want to think. I want to
Speaker 3: think about something to remove the friction.
Speaker 4: This is my one regret for CS. I didn't get
Speaker 4: to visit the fintech section because the section, and that's
Speaker 4: where they believe in removing friction and they do. Whether
Speaker 4: or not they do so is whether or not doing
Speaker 4: so is good or bad. You know, let's see, it's
Speaker 4: almost always and not almost always, it is always bad,
Speaker 4: you know, when one of these fintech firms removes friction
Speaker 4: in making a transaction or a trade. But that's like
Speaker 4: one place I think of when I when I when
Speaker 4: we're talking about removing friction, making your life more of
Speaker 4: some coherent engine towards some end, and that's where they've
Speaker 4: done it, and it's been disastrous.
Speaker 1: But also these companies don't remove that I would love.
Speaker 2: Look, perhaps I don't need to be fully loved or
Speaker 2: partially loved like I would like less friction instead as
Speaker 2: I as you heard in one of the previous episodes,
Speaker 2: it's like there's more friction than ever. And even with
Speaker 2: these companies they sell this dream, and LG, I think
Speaker 2: is one of the more guilty ones. They have all
Speaker 2: the apps in the world I think I have. I
Speaker 2: forget which washer I have, but I think I have
Speaker 2: an LG washer, And it's like there's an.
Speaker 3: A the best appliances. Yeah, butce is are good.
Speaker 2: But notice that there's never like they like those things,
Speaker 2: don't like the ways they change are just like clothes
Speaker 2: are more reliably clean.
Speaker 3: Yeap.
Speaker 2: The extensions from there have never worked because I feel
Speaker 2: like I've been to multiple ces is where there's been
Speaker 2: some form of demo where someone goes like, Elgae Intelligence,
Speaker 2: please please warm up my bagel I've already put it
Speaker 2: in the toaster of Michael. Yeah, it's already in there,
Speaker 2: and don't worry. I already emailed your wife. And it's
Speaker 2: like these things are meant like they've been promising this,
Speaker 2: but they don't fucking work.
Speaker 3: It's just it's just make believe. It's pure fantasy. But
Speaker 3: the thing about the friction thing which I've noticed since
Speaker 3: I've been I've been see us since twenty ten, and
Speaker 3: I've just had a four year gap because pandemic stuff
Speaker 3: and I had kids. I didn't want to leave my
Speaker 3: wife along with young kids.
Speaker 1: You mighttter have to explain why you didn't come.
Speaker 3: I got it. This is my duty.
Speaker 4: I should have to explain what you're twenty eight years Yeah,
Speaker 4: but the whole the rise will startup, the rise of startups.
Speaker 3: Of what Consumer Electronics has been trying to do for
Speaker 3: the past fifteen years is just to remove that friction.
Speaker 3: And I think we've only really started to realize you
Speaker 3: remove friction, you remove humanity. Yeah, and to a certain extent,
Speaker 3: we need we need, we need a little friction in
Speaker 3: our life with challenges, we growth challenges. But maybe it's
Speaker 3: better for you to like not have an automatically prepared
Speaker 3: cup of coffee when you walk into the kitchen. Maybe
Speaker 3: you should just go outside and like go to the neighborhood,
Speaker 3: catholicy and there are other things you can need.
Speaker 4: A consumer is not a person, right, and this is
Speaker 4: this is a key part of I think the quest
Speaker 4: to remove friction. A consumer is someone who is is
Speaker 4: anxious or eager to move from one transaction to the next,
Speaker 4: and any time in between those transactions, any time between
Speaker 4: transforming labor into some sort of productive and is wasted.
Speaker 1: And I think what it is.
Speaker 2: Is they all moving friction, just not for us, it's
Speaker 2: just between us and the purchase.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And that's again like sort of this brings us
Speaker 1: back to like the sort of the uncanny aspect of
Speaker 1: it in terms of being like, it's not necessarily making
Speaker 1: my life any easier. It is simply making it easier
Speaker 1: for me to like it's more transactive, right, Yeah, to
Speaker 1: like be productive and to consume more effectively or whatever.
Speaker 1: But it's not adding value in any way.
Speaker 4: Like I think about with these chatbots that are coming
Speaker 4: in for therapy, it's like, is the therapy that they're
Speaker 4: offering going to actually help?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 3: But now it's.
Speaker 4: Actually a more it's it's a more transparent and quantifiable market,
Speaker 4: so you can search out for whatever product you think
Speaker 4: is going to be a fit for your specific issue.
Speaker 4: Whether or not it's going to help you is another question,
Speaker 4: but you can find it and identify.
Speaker 3: It's one less human you have to deal with, yes,
Speaker 3: which is also the less humans. Like it's part of
Speaker 3: using apps instead of calling a restaurant or something.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I will fully admit like a mental health thing
Speaker 2: with me. I've loved that for years, and I found
Speaker 2: it because I got my various issues with anxiety, and
Speaker 2: we're not wanting to go outside and being scared of
Speaker 2: talking to people. Long story short, I got over that.
Speaker 2: But also there was a certain level of like, yeah,
Speaker 2: the Internet is really intense, just really good at selling
Speaker 2: you those abstractions between people so you can live a
Speaker 2: weird hermit life. And I absolutely didn't.
Speaker 3: And then you think society is you, and these technicals.
Speaker 2: Exactly become more exactly less experiences you don't grow like.
Speaker 3: And this is this is why I hate the stupid
Speaker 3: the Google thing where it'll call a restaurant and make
Speaker 3: a reservation.
Speaker 1: For I do like that for my accent.
Speaker 3: I hate it so much because it's like, what burden
Speaker 3: are you putting on this restaurant. It's like, oh, I'm busy,
Speaker 3: Like I'm dealing with real customers, real reservations, this fucking robot.
Speaker 2: I will argue my accent and when I call and
Speaker 2: I have to spell xron or even just like my numbers.
Speaker 2: So many people don't understand it. I've had to like.
Speaker 1: Because you're like, Z I T I sound exactly.
Speaker 2: I have to americanize my accent to a certain extent.
Speaker 3: That yeah, But also in that case, an app way too,
Speaker 3: like a thing that actually makes life better for a restaurant,
Speaker 3: Hey just log this reservation please, yeah, rather than that's
Speaker 3: a case where you don't need to call the manager
Speaker 3: of the restaurant to like do all this stuff. And
Speaker 3: that's a case where an app based thing could be better.
Speaker 3: But now we're abstracting to the point where a robot
Speaker 3: is calling a number and talking to this human. The
Speaker 3: human does not know it's a robot talking to them.
Speaker 3: Then they're expecting conversations confusing for them. I hate that
Speaker 3: whole thing because as a.
Speaker 1: User, and this is something that's been like a recurring
Speaker 1: theme in the conversations that that I've been a part
Speaker 1: of for this where it's like they invented a solution
Speaker 1: to like a pretty minor problem and now are sort
Speaker 1: of like, I mean not to.
Speaker 3: No, no, no, living experience whatever.
Speaker 2: Also mine is like minor in comparison to like.
Speaker 1: But yes, and so in this case, it's like there's
Speaker 1: a you know something like that. It can't be easy, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, like that's there's a lot of moving parts. Mean,
Speaker 1: I don't understand any of them, but it does feel
Speaker 1: like the sort of thing where that is a in
Speaker 1: its way, you know, like an impressive achievement, and yet
Speaker 1: at the same time, and this is the real recurring part,
Speaker 1: like it's a very labor intensive, presumably very expensive solution
Speaker 1: to a problem that like probably is more urgent for
Speaker 1: like a like somebody who doesn't have anything else to
Speaker 1: worry about, but making restaurant reserations, yeah, you know, and
Speaker 1: ditto for the idea of being like a robot makes
Speaker 1: your coffee for you, a robot picks here or whatever,
Speaker 1: like some speaking, the computer intelligence it takes your clothes,
Speaker 1: makes your food.
Speaker 2: Because Cory doctor I made this point last year on
Speaker 2: the podcast. He said that algorithms are inherently conservative. They
Speaker 2: move people towards the norm that is actually culturally dangerous.
Speaker 2: I think it will eradicate people of Calais, or eradicate
Speaker 2: culture that made America and made many countries the way
Speaker 2: they are. And something that you're seeing on a much
Speaker 2: well not necessarily a small scale, with social media, with
Speaker 2: what's popular, what's popular on TikTok, the infant int of
Speaker 2: that when you add in the algorithmic side. Not that
Speaker 2: I think that any of these bullshit's part. I don't
Speaker 2: think they'll ever have a thing that picks your outfit
Speaker 2: for you. But if they ever do that is slightly
Speaker 2: like there is something kind of darker about.
Speaker 1: Right, because every I mean like everybody's gonna wind up
Speaker 1: dressing the same.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like that's exactly and that's presumably I guess on
Speaker 2: the training data that it's given, which will probably lean
Speaker 2: more white. Right.
Speaker 1: But this is also like one of those things where
Speaker 1: there's like this is again like a very labor intensive solution. Yeah. Problem,
Speaker 1: they're really breaking the back of it. Like if you're
Speaker 1: somebody that just has like sometimes you got stripes and
Speaker 1: plaids on, like you can fix that, Like someone could
Speaker 1: just tell you that that doesn't work.
Speaker 3: You can learn that lesson once in your life and
Speaker 3: apply it moving forward. Yes, yes, I'm still waiting for
Speaker 3: them to like, hey, there are homes. I think most
Speaker 3: home tech is like kind of garbage even No, yes,
Speaker 3: I also there's a sale in the LG fridges with
Speaker 3: the little windows, and I got an LG fridge with
Speaker 3: the window because it looks cool. Yeah you know, you
Speaker 3: knock on it. You have like double doors whatever, great
Speaker 3: for kids snacks, but I spend an hour every night
Speaker 3: cleaning my kitchen and I hate it, Like every single night.
Speaker 3: It's like, Okay, give me yes, Rosie of the robot,
Speaker 3: forget these companion robots. Yes, give me a robots to
Speaker 3: do the things that really suck in our lives. And
Speaker 3: I think open gives you more time to be with your.
Speaker 1: Family and a few other things.
Speaker 3: That possibility is still there, but nobody. Nobody's doing that
Speaker 3: because alg is just like, hey, I wanna yeah, I
Speaker 3: want to control your life rather than do the simple
Speaker 3: task that nobody likes.
Speaker 2: Also, there's something quite joyful about when you're like, it
Speaker 2: took me into like the last end of last year
Speaker 2: to really enjoy dressing myself, and there's something fun about it.
Speaker 2: It's a quote Derek Guya, clothing is like social language.
Speaker 2: Forgive me, I have a misquote you, Derek. It's like
Speaker 2: there's something about it and it takes a while before
Speaker 2: you work it out. You feel very self conscious. I
Speaker 2: don't think an AI telling you what to wear fixes
Speaker 2: that problem. It's just hey, do this, so we have
Speaker 2: decided what looks good.
Speaker 3: There's always in between, right, you don't have to be
Speaker 3: like that. Maybe we don't need any dictator, but hey,
Speaker 3: you have these clothes, just try try this, try this,
Speaker 3: And actually I think you be look at like having
Speaker 3: a friend who's supportive to be like, hey, try this.
Speaker 3: I know you don't know how to wear it, but
Speaker 3: maybe it would look good.
Speaker 1: That's that's an important distinction, I think because.
Speaker 2: To mac Levine, by the way, he does that for
Speaker 2: me on text, very nice. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I was talking to Philip before when you guys were
Speaker 1: recording black A about his experience with Pandora, which I
Speaker 1: didn't use, but was always the one that like my friends,
Speaker 1: and he was sort of explaining what it was like
Speaker 1: as it got worse, like how did I'm talking about you, dude,
Speaker 1: Philip walking there the like? Basically that was a sort
Speaker 1: of like of all the sort of algorithmic musical recommendation
Speaker 1: applications that have existed, that's the one that I think
Speaker 1: anybody ever had good feelings about. Like Spotify is easy
Speaker 1: to use, but I don't think anybody but is it good? No? Right,
Speaker 1: And I don't think anybody's like I love Spotify.
Speaker 3: It's like I think of it as the early on
Speaker 3: when Spotify, when the Europeans only had Spotify, they lorded
Speaker 3: that Americans can't stream music.
Speaker 1: And it was just yea, all right, so that makes sense,
Speaker 1: like the convenience aspect of it. So what Pandora did
Speaker 1: was like basically like you would and maybe you can
Speaker 1: even just grab the mic and talk about it because
Speaker 1: actually understands how this stuff works. But I thought this
Speaker 1: was interesting in terms of how it got worse, is
Speaker 1: what I was saying on.
Speaker 3: Us, all right.
Speaker 7: So the exciting thing for Pandora for me was the
Speaker 7: seating where it was actually looking for a flavor of
Speaker 7: what you were interested, looking for the sound you're after,
Speaker 7: not oh, you like rockabilly, let me give you an
Speaker 7: entire catalog of rockabilly. It would ask you for what
Speaker 7: is your inspiration point? And the best inspiration point I
Speaker 7: gave it was Tom Waite's black Hole Sun Pink Floyd's Echoes. Okay,
Speaker 7: so to deeply confuse the algorithm forever.
Speaker 2: For go ahead, doctor Jones, try to.
Speaker 3: Figure out what to give me for that. And it did.
Speaker 7: But my goal behind that was and what Pandora did
Speaker 7: a great job doing was fine things I'd never heard
Speaker 7: of that I might like that fit in that gap. Yeah,
Speaker 7: I found so many bands I'd never knew.
Speaker 2: I have found and something that will both age me
Speaker 2: and piss some people off. My favorite comment, I remember
Speaker 2: my Pandora experience. In was out in Penn State, and
Speaker 2: I put in like a bunch of bands, and I
Speaker 2: got Caven Bank called cave In. They did some called
Speaker 2: an Anchor I think it was off a bank of
Speaker 2: an album called Antenna. Just fucking up every word in
Speaker 2: that sentence, and I remember being like, this is so good.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 2: The funny thing is that this is Caven's one alt
Speaker 2: rock album surrounded by hardcore music that was just impossible
Speaker 2: to listen to for me, And so I stopped using
Speaker 2: Pandora because every other cave In album and I listened
Speaker 2: to was completely insane for me, and I assumed that
Speaker 2: there were two cave Ins for years. Anyway, The point is,
Speaker 2: after this point, I have never had a recommended band
Speaker 2: on any system ever, not Spotify, Apple Music, anything that
Speaker 2: has ever made me feel anything.
Speaker 1: It's always been shit.
Speaker 2: Apple Music wants me to listen to in my hand
Speaker 2: by Sound good, whatever song I'm listening to. It's like
Speaker 2: you remember a pretty Noose by Sound, you have a
Speaker 2: black Hole sun by Sound.
Speaker 1: This shit, it's just so frustrating that you should say
Speaker 1: that was your experience, Like how it broke down.
Speaker 7: So where it broke down and Pandora itself fall apart
Speaker 7: is the seeds started bleeding into each other and it
Speaker 7: basically learned me better and better and stopped recommending anything new.
Speaker 7: I mean after after I had found the Dreadnoughts, which
Speaker 7: was a really great band, which then led me to
Speaker 7: a handful of other bands I'd never heard before. That
Speaker 7: was pretty much the last thing Pandora found free that
Speaker 7: was new and exciting. Since then, the closest I've come
Speaker 7: is SoundCloud. But SoundCloud does not work well for discovery
Speaker 7: for the findings for you.
Speaker 2: So as we wrap up the episode, Devendra, I know
Speaker 2: you have to go in a minute. I would like
Speaker 2: to know, is that anything that really like made smile
Speaker 2: shows anything?
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, I'll show it up that I like a computer,
Speaker 3: A simple a simple computer in the aces Zen book
Speaker 3: A fourteen. This thing it weighs under two point two pounds,
Speaker 3: and I hold this thing in.
Speaker 1: That it's a real computer.
Speaker 3: That's a real computer.
Speaker 1: It's less than a hardback book where we go.
Speaker 3: Half a pound less than a MacBook Air. And I'm like, ass,
Speaker 3: how did you do this? Because ASS is normally the
Speaker 3: company that's out there copying Apple basically, and I think
Speaker 3: they've gotten to the point where they've innovated. They do
Speaker 3: stuff like dual screen computers. I don't think those are
Speaker 3: as useful. This is just a simple, really really like
Speaker 3: computer has an old ed screen. Macbok Air doesn't have
Speaker 3: old it has ports. It has all got dam ports.
Speaker 3: You want USB, a USB, C HDMI in a thing
Speaker 3: smaller than the MacBook Air. It's like Apple, what is
Speaker 3: your excuse?
Speaker 2: What was the keyboard on it?
Speaker 3: It's not bad, It's not bad. Aces makes okay keyboards.
Speaker 3: That TAD is pretty good. Subscription model. Uh yeah, I
Speaker 3: think it's gonna be like twelve hundred like they don't
Speaker 3: it's Aces. They don't go too hard. But this is
Speaker 3: a snap Dragon CPU, so it has that thing where.
Speaker 2: It's what's the limitation.
Speaker 3: It's going to be emulating some older Windows apps we
Speaker 3: last year from what we saw on the surfaces, like,
Speaker 3: it's actually gotten better than it has been years. I
Speaker 3: think for most people it'd be fine. But man, a
Speaker 3: two point two pound computer just like a little laptop
Speaker 3: that is like basically feels like a tablet and can.
Speaker 2: Do everything you would. Did you write this up. I
Speaker 2: wrote it up. It's up there right. Actually it's one
Speaker 2: of our Best of CS Awards. Oh yeah, okay, wellcome
Speaker 2: people find you to Vendra.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm at Devendra on you know, Blue Sky and
Speaker 3: all the fun places at the Filmcast at the filmcast
Speaker 3: dot com or a podcast about movies and TV and
Speaker 3: Gadget and the Gadget Podcast.
Speaker 2: Check me out there, lovely. David.
Speaker 1: Defector dot Com is the website. The Distraction is the
Speaker 1: Defector podcast. There's a Hallmark movie podcast. I'm mentioning it
Speaker 1: every other time. So this is called It's Christmas Town.
Speaker 1: Thank you. And uh yeah, I'm David j Roth on.
Speaker 3: This Machine Kills is my podcast.
Speaker 4: The tech Bubble dot Substack dot com is my newsletter,
Speaker 4: Big black Jack to beIN on x the Everything site,
Speaker 4: and Blue Sky is where I live online.
Speaker 2: You can find me on Google type in what happened
Speaker 2: to Google search? Or who is Prabagar Ragavan? And I
Speaker 2: should pop up now after I stopped speaking, you must
Speaker 2: start purchasing. You are a consumer, As Ed said, follow
Speaker 2: this by consuming what's next, don't think, especially if it's
Speaker 2: one of the ones that embarrasses me. And we're back
Speaker 2: and now we are joined by mister Phillip Broughton, the
Speaker 2: health physicists that we know and love that has been
Speaker 2: giving us drinks all the time.
Speaker 1: Hating film.
Speaker 2: I think it's funny though, that story about Pandora and
Speaker 2: this recommendation system that used to work but doesn't yet
Speaker 2: the company seems to still. It feels symbolic of everything.
Speaker 2: It feels like everything's just kind of slowed down, and
Speaker 2: even CS doesn't even seem that willing to convinces anymore
Speaker 2: that based on everything you guys at David have seen,
Speaker 2: it feels like there's a lot of just this is
Speaker 2: what you want, rather than hey, we're fucking selling you something, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's interesting, right? Does that sound about right to you?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: You know I and if I'm wrong, please correct me.
Speaker 4: And I also think i've you know, today, I tried
Speaker 4: to shift gears and instead be like, okay, let's pretend
Speaker 4: the things I'm coming into.
Speaker 3: Are like for a real person.
Speaker 4: Right sent and kind of falling into like a drain
Speaker 4: around the smart home stuff and being like I'm not
Speaker 4: and most human beings are not the target audience for
Speaker 4: this in a way that feels like a like a
Speaker 4: snake eating its own tail. I mean, like, you know,
Speaker 4: I went to a lot of the uh there's a
Speaker 4: section that's pretty much just like how to build your
Speaker 4: own power grid, you know, for your own home or
Speaker 4: if you're going camping and you can't be offline.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, the anchor is yes, anchor slow to me,
Speaker 1: but yeah, going on.
Speaker 4: No, I mean it's like it's like it is fascinating
Speaker 4: that you're able to literally power the equivalent of like
Speaker 4: a home out in the woods. But then it raises
Speaker 4: the question, especially with their marketing, where they're like, this
Speaker 4: is the sustainable way to be technologically progressive, and it's
Speaker 4: like what in the sustainable way to be like maybe
Speaker 4: we don't consume even more in some spaces and so
Speaker 4: stuff like that is really interesting to me paying attention
Speaker 4: to advertising being like oh okay, like they're they're for
Speaker 4: like homes that are built like crips and mausoleums, like
Speaker 4: just massive empty spaces filled with nothing other than consumer electronics.
Speaker 4: And you know, yeah, I mean, you know, for a
Speaker 4: lot of people at this conference, it is and I
Speaker 4: think that's been like important in constructing a better sense
Speaker 4: of like who a lot of these things are for
Speaker 4: beyond investors. Seeing like, Okay, there are things that consumers
Speaker 4: who might not normally have something like this be interested in.
Speaker 4: But they're also I think the other day we're talking
Speaker 4: about status symbols, and it's like, one, what other way
Speaker 4: to kind of also signal that flag and to be
Speaker 4: able to go out in an RV in the middle
Speaker 4: of the woods and still have the equivalent.
Speaker 3: Of a house.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and there's some of these people who just to
Speaker 2: be clear, there are plenty of people who go camping
Speaker 2: and do that, and it's like, I want to power
Speaker 2: a grill. I want to I want to power this,
Speaker 2: but it's not like you don't need six watts.
Speaker 7: Yeah, reactor, that's what I'm surprised no one's trying to sell.
Speaker 1: That was the thought that I had looking into that
Speaker 1: stuff too, because there's a part of me that's like, oh,
Speaker 1: that's cool. You couldn't do that, you know, like whatever,
Speaker 1: five ten years ago, and then to see like, I
Speaker 1: guess this is the sort of thing where it's like
Speaker 1: you find this solution to I mean, it's not a
Speaker 1: super pressing problem, but it's a it's a solution, like
Speaker 1: you went from a thing that didn't work to a
Speaker 1: thing that does work. But then all you can do
Speaker 1: is like make it bigger. Yeah, like that's the only
Speaker 1: solution is just sort of like yeah, now it's like
Speaker 1: six thousand watts. Now you could like have like basically
Speaker 1: like a Red Rocks performance.
Speaker 2: I have an anchor charger on. Make sure because like
Speaker 2: all of the dense charges are really cool. Because the
Speaker 2: gallium nitrate stuff, which Phil I will have you explain
Speaker 2: in the moment.
Speaker 7: I know you want what that means. Either it batteries,
Speaker 7: it has a battery at.
Speaker 2: You, I will explain Gallium nitre is a thing where
Speaker 2: I don't know the science stuff, and I assume the
Speaker 2: flipping science guy might.
Speaker 1: Now I'm f it's really more of a mortimer. If
Speaker 1: you think about it.
Speaker 3: You should. You should riff tell us what you think.
Speaker 2: I can actually tell you what it does more than
Speaker 2: what I'm doing with the subject of this podcast. No,
Speaker 2: it's it basically allows them to make more powerful charges
Speaker 2: in the much smaller form, which has led to battery
Speaker 2: charges that can charge more powerfully and that much smaller,
Speaker 2: And it's really cool. But then you get to this
Speaker 2: stuff where it's like what if you had six hundred
Speaker 2: thousand m a h and you could power a house,
Speaker 2: and you could power your friend's house, you could live.
Speaker 2: Who is the what is the customer base there? Because
Speaker 2: it feels like at a.
Speaker 1: Certain point you don't you just don't need more. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the base thing. To Edward's point, I thought was
Speaker 1: really this was the thing that was very much on
Speaker 1: my mind looking at a lot of the smart home
Speaker 1: stuff was like, I think a lot of people. Let
Speaker 1: me not to say that this is like, you know,
Speaker 1: it's obviously it's elite stuff. This is like concept car shit.
Speaker 1: I don't think that. I don't know how many LG
Speaker 1: smart homes exist in the wild, but is it like
Speaker 1: is it a thousand, is it a hundred? You know,
Speaker 1: like but whatever, I think most people and maybe I can't,
Speaker 1: I don't actually know what most people's experiences don't have
Speaker 1: especially reliable wireless internet service. It's expensive, it's not very good.
Speaker 1: You know, the amount of like connectivity that would be
Speaker 1: required to make this like sort of all seeing robot
Speaker 1: that you know, helps you with every aspect of your life,
Speaker 1: like that would have to be reliable. Electricity isn't reliable.
Speaker 1: I mean it's like the thing where you know, obviously
Speaker 1: be like a bummer about this stuff, like if southern
Speaker 1: California is fucking on fire, like that's where I see
Speaker 1: a lot of these Mansas in my mind, you know,
Speaker 1: like these sort of like technologically like you were describing,
Speaker 1: like just basically like a vast stylish spare space with
Speaker 1: like perfect connectivity and yeah, technological things, yeah, basically right.
Speaker 3: But oh no, I was just gonna say, we live
Speaker 3: in New York.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 4: It's like in New York, you know, we've had all
Speaker 4: these private public partnerships to expand connectivity, and have they
Speaker 4: done jack shit? I mean to the extent that, like you,
Speaker 4: you know, you to not until something else happens you
Speaker 4: realize how bad you have it and how much at
Speaker 4: the mercy of the firms you are to get any
Speaker 4: sort of fix going on.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 7: So, the thing that comes to mind immediately as you're
Speaker 7: telling me about these ridiculous generators battery packs, there's generators
Speaker 7: substitutes is the experience of the most recent fires that
Speaker 7: happened in Santa Cruz. Now, since Los Angeles is in mind,
Speaker 7: has left PG and E service in the Santa Cruz
Speaker 7: Mountains deeply fractured and fragile. Right, So they offered to
Speaker 7: do power walls for a whole bunch of people because
Speaker 7: they said we can't promise you. We're not we're going
Speaker 7: to give you power, and that the power will be
Speaker 7: reliable and will be shutting you off regularly anytime the
Speaker 7: breeze so much as blows. So what these battery packs
Speaker 7: telled me is an admission of fragility. Yeah, we're I mean,
Speaker 7: that's kind of where we're approaching. Ye, but they're not
Speaker 7: selling it for that though. It seems like the marketing
Speaker 7: is still recreational.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I understand. I wonder next to because it's like
Speaker 1: a bummer to think about that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, this is CEO, but they're also selling it to
Speaker 4: an audience that is.
Speaker 3: Thinking about it.
Speaker 2: Sure, but I'm saying, though we're one year away.
Speaker 7: From Prepper has also come to mind. Yes, for off
Speaker 7: grid living.
Speaker 2: But I think there's gonna this is my one CES
Speaker 2: prediction for twenty twenty six Preppers. I think there's going
Speaker 2: to be more Prepper sales. The idea of being able
Speaker 2: to live off of grid, the idea of being able
Speaker 2: to not rely on the power grid, which.
Speaker 4: Some of the some of the marketing felt like a probe.
Speaker 4: There it was like explicitly on grid but also off grid. Yeah,
Speaker 4: and not just like RV living, but just if you
Speaker 4: for some reason happened to have a home that was
Speaker 4: off the grid needed to be powered, like it was
Speaker 4: a four bedroom apartment in the city, you know then.
Speaker 1: But that's definitely that is interesting too, because I could
Speaker 1: definitely see that sort of because I got that sense
Speaker 1: of it that there was this sort of like it's
Speaker 1: a non political version of the idea of being like
Speaker 1: fully self reliant, you know, like you could do whatever
Speaker 1: you want to do. You'll never be inconvenience because of
Speaker 1: this technology that you have. And yet like the next
Speaker 1: step from that, like the political version of that is
Speaker 1: like you will never be inconvenienced by whatever agents of
Speaker 1: the state, by the right heads, by the if the
Speaker 1: ATF is laying siege to your homestead or whatever, you
Speaker 1: know that Like, yeah, we'll have.
Speaker 2: Like classic in voter activity.
Speaker 3: Yeah, loud speakers will continue to warm them.
Speaker 1: Yes, get off your property, you are trespassing. I am
Speaker 1: a sovereign citizen. My name is LG. Sovereign citizen.
Speaker 2: But also it's gonna bronche off from that, I think
Speaker 2: in a year and be like disaster relief. It's going
Speaker 2: to be like, hey, when shit starts breaking. And this
Speaker 2: is both the political and andym like, this is something
Speaker 2: the American power grid, the AI think has been pushing,
Speaker 2: the AI Generative AI and the data centers associated have
Speaker 2: been pushing the grid to its spring right, it was
Speaker 2: already old as shit, and so we're in this weird
Speaker 2: thing where I'm just predicting this for next year. I
Speaker 2: bet they start marketing on that, and it's so dark
Speaker 2: like you can also that will definitely be the insane
Speaker 2: people sales as well.
Speaker 7: Like the it appears that every single one of the
Speaker 7: modular nuclear power startups that have cut popped up in
Speaker 7: the last decade, and you just fucking modular nuclear startups
Speaker 7: or care for that at all?
Speaker 3: Pocket sized reactors in.
Speaker 2: A seriousness, please spell out what those mean though.
Speaker 7: Okay, people are looking for sub gigawatt reactors that they
Speaker 7: can treat effectively as nuclear batteries. This is for to
Speaker 7: what end, so that you can go ahead and power
Speaker 7: just a neighborhood with your private nuclear reactor. Oh good,
Speaker 7: that belongs to you and the co op and you
Speaker 7: have nuclear power as a service. So nas where they
Speaker 7: will regularly come in and swap fuel out for you
Speaker 7: to keep your enclave perfectly powered, not on clay from fallout.
Speaker 7: That's a totally different thing.
Speaker 2: And I'm going to talk about something more evil hoas.
Speaker 7: That actually is the overwriting people who would be paying
Speaker 7: for it and administering it. So somehow with a license
Speaker 7: with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in less and this hasn't
Speaker 7: happened yet, the Nuclear Regulator Commission wanted to generally license
Speaker 7: one of these pocket nuclear reactors, except all of them
Speaker 7: have pivoted off this idea to We're going to make
Speaker 7: the power that supplies to make crypto happen, or make
Speaker 7: your AI happen because the grid is not stable enough.
Speaker 2: All these react is real? Are there any of these
Speaker 2: actually out in or is this just marketing marketing?
Speaker 3: They do exist.
Speaker 7: We have built them before at experimental levels at the
Speaker 7: national labs and have never licensed them to be real.
Speaker 1: Can you imagine these dipships?
Speaker 2: You would actually buy one for an no enclave actually
Speaker 2: having a nuclear that that's actually in real districtive.
Speaker 1: Microsoft nuclearner is sending me so fucking just an unbelievably
Speaker 1: reverse concept.
Speaker 2: I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about No. Sorry,
Speaker 2: it is a perverse concept, you speacause I'm talking about
Speaker 2: like an HOA having one of these, and like judging
Speaker 2: by every hay I've ever seen, they would blow this
Speaker 2: thing up immediate.
Speaker 7: This is one of the hopes to get them to
Speaker 7: generally license so you can't touch it. It goes in
Speaker 7: the ground. Your nice service people from Microsoft Nuclear will
Speaker 7: show up and that that is a subscription I told
Speaker 7: you as that's that's how you get them find they
Speaker 7: will go ahead and do the spot for it. All
Speaker 7: you can do as part of your neighborhood is just
Speaker 7: hook into your local grid and that's.
Speaker 3: All you should do as a consumer. That is correct.
Speaker 1: Honestly, that's still like that again, hate it, want to
Speaker 1: be clear getting it on the record, don't approve that
Speaker 1: as a business. That said, it's still better than giving
Speaker 1: it to like the single most disagreeable and ambitious person
Speaker 1: in your neighborhood. Like just the idea of like whoever
Speaker 1: your h o A president is like I trust Microsoft
Speaker 1: Nuclear over like Stacey.
Speaker 7: Oh, you just made my asshole clench, But I don't
Speaker 7: like aout. The idea of being a health physicist, beholden
Speaker 7: to the head of the h oh.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, just getting some super officious email and that's why.
Speaker 3: It sounds like fallout DLC.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this sounds like, yeah, this could be a really
Speaker 2: banging movie.
Speaker 1: But those are like isn't that like Mission Impossible three?
Speaker 1: Like suitcase nuke like that?
Speaker 2: Thinking just like a like a country wide blackout or
Speaker 2: something just to you like do a day.
Speaker 4: Uh uh, pitch the family that runs the Bond thing
Speaker 4: because they don't want to touch it with Amazon.
Speaker 2: This James Bond idiots. You ever had a James Bond
Speaker 2: occasionally smokes weed? Yeah, I'm kind.
Speaker 1: Of lazy because Bond. What if?
Speaker 2: What if? James Bond smoked weed is probably the first
Speaker 2: real podcast idea show.
Speaker 1: Just like I need.
Speaker 3: Another good Indiegogo project.
Speaker 4: You're back two of the movie Candy Flips and it's
Speaker 4: to his detriment.
Speaker 3: They use it to kidnap his love and money.
Speaker 1: Patty, this is a sativa.
Speaker 3: Anyway.
Speaker 2: Please let's talk about tech again.
Speaker 3: That is weed is.
Speaker 2: Not tech, but.
Speaker 1: Together that's innovative.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there is the weed innovation here. If you hear
Speaker 2: about this email me at easy at that offline dot com.
Speaker 2: I want to hear about that experience today.
Speaker 1: I know you all talked about it yesterday, But when
Speaker 1: I was getting off the bus from the convention center,
Speaker 1: I discovered a whole other floor under the floor at
Speaker 1: the Venetian that the people the Eureka Zone whatever yesterday,
Speaker 1: which is basically just somebody.
Speaker 7: Where you want tech tech.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but it's also apparently that is the one where
Speaker 1: it's just like if you can fit in the room,
Speaker 1: they'll let you hang out. Yeah. I guess it's like whatever,
Speaker 1: So I'm gonna go down there and check that shit
Speaker 1: out either tomorrow.
Speaker 7: I expect there will be a laser bong for you
Speaker 7: to see.
Speaker 1: Yes, that's where the like the weed tech is being
Speaker 1: you know.
Speaker 2: The funny thing is is with weed tech, not saying
Speaker 2: I smoke it or not, but like they have not
Speaker 2: really fixed grinders yet. Like that is just a weird
Speaker 2: industry where's like one that only kind of works. It's
Speaker 2: very strange, but I guess and like some of them
Speaker 2: not saying from personal experience, when you put the cone on,
Speaker 2: it's actually quite fiddly, and when you're using not quoting
Speaker 2: my specific experience or anything, because I'm being very clear
Speaker 2: about who uses this, not how the fuck the stoners
Speaker 2: use these like very like fiddly little tools? Is it
Speaker 2: just like stoners enter like hit Man level focus? They
Speaker 2: go into bullet time when making one, because I wouldn't
Speaker 2: if I used one which I had.
Speaker 3: If you, if you did smoke weed, would you be
Speaker 3: a roller? Would you pearl your joints?
Speaker 2: In this hypothetical scenario. I found one where you can
Speaker 2: just put the cone and then the grinder is on
Speaker 2: top of it. It's like fifty bucks. It changed my
Speaker 2: theoretical life.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it would have.
Speaker 1: It would have in this fan fiction.
Speaker 2: In this fan fiction, we're talking in this simulation. I
Speaker 2: think I've even said it in another episode.
Speaker 1: I don't know what I'm doing.
Speaker 3: Two.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is Earth to Ed, But is it?
Speaker 2: You would think that there would be more of that though,
Speaker 2: there would be more like maybe you'll see it when
Speaker 2: you go and look. Maybe I would love to hear
Speaker 2: the weed stuff for someone else. But also that's also
Speaker 2: one that feels solved as well, like at some point to.
Speaker 1: A certain extent. Though again it's like that's the type
Speaker 1: of ship that I liked that I saw here, especially
Speaker 1: in the Venetian Yesterday is the attempt where it's just
Speaker 1: like it's inventor stuff. It's like taking a practical problem
Speaker 1: and then like working out some way to you know,
Speaker 1: fix it or make it. You know, it's not always
Speaker 1: affordable or whatever. But if the practical problem in question
Speaker 1: is like no soft serve in my house, yeah, like
Speaker 1: machine that fixed it. You know, like it's twenty five
Speaker 1: hundred dollars after the discount here, but it's still like
Speaker 1: I had the soft serve. It was pretty good soft serve.
Speaker 1: Like these things can be fixed.
Speaker 4: I went to a coffee station and they were like, oh,
Speaker 4: it's AI powered.
Speaker 3: And so I went.
Speaker 4: So I got the coffee and I'm like, how's it
Speaker 4: AI powered? They're like, oh, well, this is a generator.
Speaker 4: I was like what, Yeah, what do you mean this
Speaker 4: is a generator? And so then I'm actually gave the
Speaker 4: coffee station a real look and I was like, oh, okay,
Speaker 4: you have the coffee thing here that's very small, and
Speaker 4: then right next to it is a massive generator you've
Speaker 4: stacked on here that kind of looks like it's the
Speaker 4: coffee machine, but it isn't.
Speaker 3: What is it's It's called Ecoflow.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 4: It's one of the ones I was talking to you about,
Speaker 4: which is like for your home thousands and thousands and
Speaker 4: thousands of watts. But they were they were just using
Speaker 4: it as an example to be like, oh, you like
Speaker 4: the coffee, Well, the coffee is plugged into a system
Speaker 4: that would be able to figure out whether it should
Speaker 4: draw from the grid.
Speaker 1: Hey, which are the solar collar?
Speaker 7: Is it waste heat from AI explation to make coffee?
Speaker 4: No, the AI has nothing to do with coffee, but
Speaker 4: they say it has to do with coffee all. What
Speaker 4: it has to do is it's supposed to plug into
Speaker 4: your home to figure out energy efficiency, and if you
Speaker 4: got one of their coffee things, you'd happen to be
Speaker 4: able to take advantage of that so that you wouldn't
Speaker 4: be using.
Speaker 3: More expensive qu on another subscription surface.
Speaker 1: Yeah good, Yeah, once again one of those things that
Speaker 1: like everything that you describe there sounds okay enough to me.
Speaker 1: I just don't know why you have to say AI.
Speaker 3: When you see yeah all the rest in me either.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's just confusing.
Speaker 4: It's actually fun because I he's he had. I asked
Speaker 4: him a bunch about the AI. I couldn't really find it.
Speaker 4: Then we spent like ten fifteen minutes talking about my
Speaker 4: locks because he was like, oh, my god, What are
Speaker 4: are these these dreadlocks? How do you grow them? I
Speaker 4: heard that they're so com person's just he had so
Speaker 4: many questions.
Speaker 3: It was fun.
Speaker 2: It was actually white guy.
Speaker 3: No, he's from China. Yeah, okay, that's so good.
Speaker 1: I was not a great question, but you know I was.
Speaker 4: I was being empathetic because I'm like, these are probably
Speaker 4: great first ones.
Speaker 3: I've seen six other black people on the floor off
Speaker 3: the four days. You know, have you learned other names already?
Speaker 3: We not do each other every time we see each other.
Speaker 1: How was the coffee?
Speaker 2: It was?
Speaker 3: It was regular, regular black coffee.
Speaker 2: Okay, so it's so funny.
Speaker 3: We've had better. Yeah, yeah, coffee, I've made better. And
Speaker 3: I don't drink coffee like that. By the way, I'm
Speaker 3: still mad just sitting here.
Speaker 7: I thought of a better use case for AI to
Speaker 7: actually heat water to make coffee within their actual problems.
Speaker 2: It went on the business of fixing problems.
Speaker 3: Ship that's what I did.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's not why we come here. A consumer.
Speaker 7: You must consume now if I can help, May I
Speaker 7: offer you something you can go troll people with if
Speaker 7: you happen to find the laser bone.
Speaker 1: I don't like to do that kind of thing.
Speaker 7: This family, so you can go ahead and ask them,
Speaker 7: So when you're you using the laser on the weed,
Speaker 7: does it how's it burning?
Speaker 3: Does it burn it enough? How? Because uh, that's a problem.
Speaker 1: I feel like there would be people. That's one of
Speaker 1: those spaces where sometimes you'll go someplace and the person
Speaker 1: that's selling it is just like they're doing their best.
Speaker 2: Yeah, not that they're not like in love with it.
Speaker 1: That just I'm just fucking him.
Speaker 3: It is kind of amazing.
Speaker 4: Though I've seen less weed tech than crypto, Like I've
Speaker 4: seen crypto three or four times now, but we zero.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because I feel like if you had to pick
Speaker 1: one of those things to still exist in five years, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean they probably both going.
Speaker 7: To exist from previous Yes there was weed.
Speaker 8: Tech, Yeah, maybe it's dying where maybe they forgot crypt
Speaker 8: So one was this this healthcare management devices on the blockchain,
Speaker 8: and the other was an AI trader that would make
Speaker 8: that was not financial advice, but it would make decisions.
Speaker 4: For you every time there's any financial thing doing financial advice.
Speaker 2: But I love the AI trade one because back to
Speaker 2: a conversation with my make Casey, It's like if the
Speaker 2: AI trade it was so good, why would you fucking
Speaker 2: sell it?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I wouldn't to be so good.
Speaker 2: You just turn this ship on and off you you're
Speaker 2: on your yaw Yeah, got me that. Fuck.
Speaker 1: It also feels like again one of those things where
Speaker 1: it's like, for all the promise of of AI ostensibly,
Speaker 1: you know, all the promise of it, like everybody that
Speaker 1: uses it knows it doesn't work very well. And so
Speaker 1: the idea of being like, well, I'm not gonna like
Speaker 1: as part of my participation in the work of building
Speaker 1: an AI that works, I'm going to let it control
Speaker 1: my money while I do this is the all the others.
Speaker 1: This goes back to like some of the stuff about
Speaker 1: the smart house. It's like all of these things that
Speaker 1: like give you extra time to do what like none
Speaker 1: of these like more trading. Yeah, and it basically doesn't
Speaker 1: like all the time in your house that you'd be
Speaker 1: spending like preparing food or like showering room, which is
Speaker 1: like basically the part of my life that I like
Speaker 1: because the part like when I'm not working, you know,
Speaker 1: like I like.
Speaker 3: When you bathe too.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I appreciate that, but that is a good point, right,
Speaker 4: Like all of these a lot of AI is structured
Speaker 4: to be anti bureaucratic, cutting through the supposed layers of
Speaker 4: filth that prevent you.
Speaker 3: From living your life.
Speaker 4: Yep, right, But then when you get down to it,
Speaker 4: what's left a more space for them to commodify.
Speaker 2: Well, now you don't have to write or create anything.
Speaker 7: Yeah, you can affect it part of that filth.
Speaker 1: But that's like there's this observation. I don't remember who
Speaker 1: who said it. There was basically like the idea that
Speaker 1: like because of it, maybe because of the people that
Speaker 1: invented it, or just maybe this is what it is
Speaker 1: most practically applied to that It's like it's doing all
Speaker 1: of the stuff that like is your life to give
Speaker 1: you more time to work.
Speaker 2: When I think.
Speaker 1: Realistic, like most people would be if you ask them,
Speaker 1: they'd be like, well, can it do my work for me?
Speaker 1: Like I want to learn how to paint or whatever
Speaker 1: you know, and that you don't have to pain.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you can just ask for it to do.
Speaker 1: This'll draw you whatever I want to do that you can't.
Speaker 3: You can't imitate the cause, so why would you want to?
Speaker 3: Like you, but it can make it the best stick butts.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I like when people tell me I will write
Speaker 2: my blogs for me. I don't know what I'm writing
Speaker 2: when I sit down, too, that's the muse. I don't know.
Speaker 2: I let the power of Christ consume me, and I
Speaker 2: write five and a half thousand words in two hours,
Speaker 2: and I research awhile as I go. I send it
Speaker 2: to my editor all caps.
Speaker 1: Is this good?
Speaker 2: And Matt Hughes then doesn't respond immediately because it's two
Speaker 2: in the morning there, and then I send him three
Speaker 2: more messages saying I changed a bit, I changed a bit,
Speaker 2: it's not I don't love it. And he has to
Speaker 2: explain to me why it's good.
Speaker 1: That is the create What if an algorithm did that
Speaker 1: for you and you sat perfectly still for those three
Speaker 1: hours having no thoughts of any kind would.
Speaker 2: Be nice having ADHD and tonightus That sounds great. Yeah,
Speaker 2: just And that's the thing. None of these things seem
Speaker 2: to take away suffering.
Speaker 1: Well no, like it doesn't seem like they're reducing, like
Speaker 1: like they.
Speaker 4: Get a little bit of what it means to be
Speaker 4: a person, but not the whole.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm so I've been saying this again. It's only
Speaker 1: suggests like that the people involved that like these things
Speaker 1: that are like minor inconveniences for most people, Like, are
Speaker 1: you know the idea of like having to do the dishes,
Speaker 1: Like that's the worst thing in the life the person
Speaker 1: trying to sell you this.
Speaker 2: No, no, no, those people don't do the dishes.
Speaker 1: What they've done is they've gone ship. What do people do? Yeah?
Speaker 7: Fuck?
Speaker 3: What what are regular people?
Speaker 2: Food? They eat?
Speaker 3: They love that stuff.
Speaker 1: They can't they can't dress themselves.
Speaker 2: They're idiots. They can't date. And what they do dish dishes?
Speaker 2: My cleaner does those?
Speaker 3: They charge their devices? Yeah, they need to.
Speaker 1: Love their device most definitely.
Speaker 4: They don't have time to spend with their stupid little kids,
Speaker 4: their wife.
Speaker 2: And their stupid child, the moron child. But oh they
Speaker 2: haven't even got one of those because they're inferior.
Speaker 3: Don't worry.
Speaker 2: L G will get you there and you will now
Speaker 2: meet a woman thanks to Lucky gold Star Corporation. That's
Speaker 2: what the few And I keep going back to this point,
Speaker 2: it's like, what are the problems you sol stands for
Speaker 2: a Yeah, yes it does.
Speaker 1: Wow, cool, I didn't I learned something? Yeah, they have
Speaker 1: it on the side blue garret life and life's good.
Speaker 1: And I was like you again, that's one of those
Speaker 1: things where it like, I don't think that's the real
Speaker 1: name of that. Lucky gold Star makes more sense because
Speaker 1: that has a certain where it just feels like they
Speaker 1: used to be like a ready mixed concrete company or
Speaker 1: like an international shipping line, you know, and then at
Speaker 1: some point they've like discovered I actually think they might
Speaker 1: have made concrete. You know, color Color started, Color started,
Speaker 1: the LG Concrete Inc. Super good. Well that's where it begins.
Speaker 1: You start with that and then.
Speaker 2: And steal where we learned. We learned a lot today. No,
Speaker 2: it's it's just frustrating because I'm not asking. I just
Speaker 2: want to be clear for the listeners. I'm not asking,
Speaker 2: did you see anything good? To be facetious, I genuinely like,
Speaker 2: I was so happy that Theveingra had founded laptop.
Speaker 1: He liked it sounded cool.
Speaker 3: I'm so excited about that.
Speaker 2: And the skin products that Victoria is talking about the
Speaker 2: fact that you can actually make these, and that's what
Speaker 2: Teke should do. It should like be like, hey, here's
Speaker 2: an actual friction point. You spend hundreds of dollars on skincare.
Speaker 2: Now you don't have to do that because you can
Speaker 2: spend theoretically hundreds on the stuff that actually works so
Speaker 2: you don't have to spend more in the future. And
Speaker 2: then it's like, Okay, that's one company who knows one thing,
Speaker 2: but the overwatching thing is the CEO saying, fuck, what.
Speaker 1: Do people do jobs?
Speaker 2: Yeah? What do people do doing during the job that
Speaker 2: they do? They wash dishes and they on set emails
Speaker 2: and they read them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that I don't like a little bit of disconnection
Speaker 1: to me seems like I see it's like at the
Speaker 1: root of like so much of what is like not
Speaker 1: working about a lot of this that there's because the
Speaker 1: ones that it seems to me and maybe this is
Speaker 1: just my own bias for like small or large or whatever.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm like gonna own my my preferences here.
Speaker 1: The stuff that is like clearly designed to like fix
Speaker 1: a specific thing or improve a specific thing is better
Speaker 1: to me than and like much more easy for me
Speaker 1: to sort of like understand, as you know, just an
Speaker 1: idiot standing in front of a demo or whatever.
Speaker 2: I need you just to stop saying that.
Speaker 1: Well it's regulars whole term that I like to use
Speaker 1: to describe myself, but the like so that but anyway,
Speaker 1: but I get it in that way, whereas the idea
Speaker 1: of like a thing that fixes or improves everything or
Speaker 1: that is like that like sort of global idea of it.
Speaker 1: I understand why these companies which are you know, their
Speaker 1: job is to grow into like sort.
Speaker 2: Of a bigger thing that will then grow right.
Speaker 1: And yet like not only does it become like sort
Speaker 1: of hard to see like what the actual vision is,
Speaker 1: it gets not just like more abstracted, but it like
Speaker 1: it gets weirder. This is the thing that we keep
Speaker 1: sort of coming back to that like you're not fixing
Speaker 1: the problem like by like devising a house that does
Speaker 1: all my decisions for me. It does not in any
Speaker 1: way diminish the fact that I'm still paying too much
Speaker 1: money for skincare products.
Speaker 2: Right, you know.
Speaker 1: And I guess like this is something that uh, your
Speaker 1: Mia was saying last night about the idea of like
Speaker 1: all of these sort of like individual solutions to broader
Speaker 1: structural problems, and that like the idea of just like
Speaker 1: continuing to throw the idea of being like, well, this
Speaker 1: is like a better way of getting around, and it's
Speaker 1: like it might even be a better way of getting around.
Speaker 1: And yet like when the systems themselves are sort of
Speaker 1: not working in your favor. It doesn't matter that much
Speaker 1: how like down to the last decimal point efficient your
Speaker 1: experience of it is because you're still gonna be stuck
Speaker 1: on the road with everybody else.
Speaker 2: It kind of reminds me of what I was saying
Speaker 2: about fintech and removing friction. Oh, you'll be able to
Speaker 2: trade better and do this. The real structural problem there
Speaker 2: is it's very, very hard to accumulate wealth as a
Speaker 2: regular person. The actual that is more of a symptom
Speaker 2: of a problem than it is.
Speaker 1: And also as I understand that all of these things,
Speaker 1: like the one there's one that was either entry centered
Speaker 1: teel or one of the fucking super friends, but a
Speaker 1: thing that was like basically like not FDIC backed, like
Speaker 1: that was the whole They were like finally like you
Speaker 1: can bank without big government being involved. And then it's
Speaker 1: like and it collapsed right away.
Speaker 3: Goodness, there's no insurance to Yeah, but.
Speaker 1: That's like one of those things where like understanding the
Speaker 1: idea that like this is a part of a bigger
Speaker 1: system is like it's just not something that computes for them,
Speaker 1: and so what you wind up with instead is like
Speaker 1: the worst invention of halt time, Yes, like a bank
Speaker 1: that ruins you.
Speaker 4: Yeah, something that might have been invented by like a
Speaker 4: rich diletunt in the eighteen thirties.
Speaker 1: Yes, like at a time when there wasn't really a system,
Speaker 1: and so they're sort of yeah, like just the rude golder.
Speaker 2: I guess there's so many of the crypto things that
Speaker 2: do feel like an insane thing that a guy would
Speaker 2: do in a cult. Yeah. Yeah, it's a coin about
Speaker 2: this woman who talked about what she used to do
Speaker 2: with a Willie mm hmm. And you should invest in
Speaker 2: the hawk to a coin who has a podcast for
Speaker 2: some reason, this is your god. Now.
Speaker 4: I have a few friends who have made a lot
Speaker 4: of any friend crypto, and they're the way that they
Speaker 4: approach it is like they're like, I am deeply cynical
Speaker 4: about it, but everyone here is an idiot. And if
Speaker 4: you make enough money to begin with, then you get
Speaker 4: plugged into the networks of people who are actively manipulating people.
Speaker 2: So what you mean is that they believe they believe
Speaker 2: it's it's every every grift ever, which is I'm being scammed.
Speaker 2: But what they don't know is I'm scamming them better.
Speaker 1: Well, yes, that's the bit that I always am curious
Speaker 1: about with like because this is I think it's been
Speaker 1: like demonstrated that like absent any other of the like
Speaker 1: sort of many factors that could make somebody become like
Speaker 1: that that like made people vote for Trump, or that
Speaker 1: like push people to the right, that like crypto is
Speaker 1: the single most powerful indicator there that it is like
Speaker 1: the thing that like owning crypto is associated with voting
Speaker 1: like often to the very hard to the right in
Speaker 1: a way that nothing else is. And I think that
Speaker 1: there's an aspect of that where like the idea of
Speaker 1: being like, all right, it's a scam, I'm scamming somebody.
Speaker 1: I'm probably being scammed, but I know enough to get
Speaker 1: out that seems to be true. Not just that the
Speaker 1: people like you were saying, like your buddies who are
Speaker 1: like plugged into the people that are actually you know,
Speaker 1: like in the whale community and like know when it's
Speaker 1: time to bail on Hawk two coin or whatever.
Speaker 3: Yeah, if it's fast, you know whatever the fuck right, Yeah.
Speaker 1: It's like all of these things that basically are like
Speaker 1: the most obvious like do not buy this. This is
Speaker 1: a gag sort of thing. And yet like I think
Speaker 1: everybody that is involved with that at every level, right
Speaker 1: down to like just some like manosphere shut in nineteen
Speaker 1: year old on a gaming computer right doing all the stuff.
Speaker 1: All of those guys somehow still believe that. They're like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I know it's bullshit, but like, I'll know when it's
Speaker 1: time to get out.
Speaker 2: But now it's the ultimate con which is to pretend
Speaker 2: to give people industry, to give people hope, to give
Speaker 2: people more a feeling of more control while controlling them
Speaker 2: and probably being controlled by someone out it's yeah, deeply.
Speaker 4: So I've tried to talk with them about this because
Speaker 4: I'm like, I really do think for y'all, it comes
Speaker 4: down to luck. You know, it's like like you said,
Speaker 4: it's literally everyone believes that, and everyone believes.
Speaker 3: That in so many industries, right.
Speaker 4: The difference between you and some other bloke is like
Speaker 4: maybe you heard about it an hour earlier, or you
Speaker 4: just like there's like something that you got for no
Speaker 4: other reason other than.
Speaker 7: It's important to note that we're saying this inside of
Speaker 7: a casino.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, right now, And honest, every.
Speaker 7: Everyone thinks they have a system to play, and the
Speaker 7: true beauty of sitting casino is sit there cross your arms,
Speaker 7: watch and try to figure out what system they think
Speaker 7: they're using and watch it fail.
Speaker 3: So we gamble in tonight, right boys.
Speaker 2: Yeah, not for me.
Speaker 1: I'm trying to lose five hundred dollars in twenty minutes.
Speaker 2: So we're wrapping this episode up, but I will say
Speaker 2: the Friday episode. The show floor closes today, by the way, guys,
Speaker 2: So there's nothing tomorrow, No just podcasting. Oh owly zool.
Speaker 1: So we're gonna wrap this one up, but tomorrow we
Speaker 1: can talk about get into the Eureka Vault. You're going
Speaker 1: to the Eureka Volte immediately following this will that's the
Speaker 1: one you'll save art.
Speaker 2: I am sending you to the rat nest.
Speaker 3: Oh my god.
Speaker 2: We'll talk gambling tomorrow though, of course, how dare you
Speaker 2: how dare you ever think to compare the dishonest crooks
Speaker 2: of cryptocurrency.
Speaker 7: I'm sorry, let's do very sorry, the Las Vegas said, sorry,
Speaker 7: the Nevada Gaming Commission.
Speaker 3: I'm very sorry for anything.
Speaker 2: I have swindlers in the sports book, but you know
Speaker 2: that we love our odds there. But you know the
Speaker 2: truth is our beautiful slot machines and our honest tables
Speaker 2: that have the odds on the table. How dare you
Speaker 2: comp its cryptocurrency? But we have to wrap up. I apologize,
Speaker 2: No six waists.
Speaker 1: You make big money.
Speaker 3: Table.
Speaker 1: Phil. Where can people find you? Sorry?
Speaker 3: Phil Brighton?
Speaker 7: You can find me on Blue Sky at at Fundranium,
Speaker 7: and you can find me at my blog Funderanium Labs dot.
Speaker 1: Com, David Defector dot com. UH is the website, Distraction
Speaker 1: is the pot cast, and it's Christmas Down is the
Speaker 1: Hallmark podcast. You messed up.
Speaker 2: You said you can do it every other time, so
Speaker 2: you have to do it every time.
Speaker 4: Corblamo and ED Newsletter, the Tech Bubble dot subsac dot com,
Speaker 4: UH podcast, this Machine Kills UH and UH ext to
Speaker 4: everything site in Blue Sky, Big Black Jacobin.
Speaker 2: You can find me on the new social network hawk
Speaker 2: to a Social and everywhere else THEA. And you're gonna
Speaker 2: complain after this, you can say, Ed, it's the thing
Speaker 2: that you were meant to rerecord. And Mattasowski told you
Speaker 2: a month ago and then actually two months and Ian
Speaker 2: Johnson also told you. And you need to be sorry
Speaker 2: for those people anyway, And I'm gonna re record the
Speaker 2: bit at the end. You've got one more episode today
Speaker 2: and then tomorrow another two episodes, and then Saturday there's
Speaker 2: just one. These are gonna be the real magic ones.
Speaker 2: These are gonna be where people are really deteriorating mentally.
Speaker 7: Is this where I get to be mad about regulators?
Speaker 1: I'm gonna make you mad somehow, I believe in it.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna be I'm just going to be googling annoying things,
Speaker 2: not even about the show.
Speaker 3: You don't need to google, you just do it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a natural thing. I'm generative. Anyway, Thanks for
Speaker 2: listening to this episode. More to come from the Consumer
Speaker 2: Electronics Show. Thank you for listening to Better Offline. The
Speaker 2: editor and composer of the Better Offline theme song is Matasowski.
Speaker 2: You can check out more of his music and audio
Speaker 2: projects at Matasowski dot com, M A T T O.
Speaker 2: S O w Ski dot com. You can email me
Speaker 2: at easy at Better Offline dot com, or visit Better
Speaker 2: Offline dot com to find more podcast links and of course,
Speaker 2: my newsletter. I also really recommend you go to chat
Speaker 2: dot Where's youreed dot at to visit the discord, and
Speaker 2: go to our slash Better Offline to check out our reddit.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for listening.
Speaker 1: Better Offline is a production of cool Zone Media. For
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