Speaker 1: A media scorn by some, hated by all, welcomes a
Speaker 1: better offline. I'm your host ed Zichron. We are still
Speaker 1: at the Consumer Electronics Show. Due to events beyond my control.
Speaker 1: We are recording at like eight pm, which means we're
Speaker 1: all feeling great, but thankfully, thankfully, we're now joined by
Speaker 1: David Roth of DEFECTA.
Speaker 2: Hi, how's it going?
Speaker 3: Yeah, he's loving the show.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm sorry. Is this too much energy? I can
Speaker 2: take it down if this is if I'm like blowing
Speaker 2: the monitors a little much.
Speaker 3: If this is always a problem.
Speaker 2: So you all are feeling weird because you've been at
Speaker 2: CES for a long time, and I'm feeling weird because
Speaker 2: I've been at CS for like five hours and.
Speaker 3: That's all it takes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, maybe do you what is it that
Speaker 2: you acclimate? Right, Like, eventually at some point you're just
Speaker 2: kind of like, wow, Scottish, I'm glad you've got AI
Speaker 2: in that.
Speaker 4: So what what happens is that you get really sleep deprived, Right,
Speaker 4: You're on your feet all day and then you don't
Speaker 4: sleep and you don't eat properly, and so like your
Speaker 4: brain just kind of like slowly shuts down on the
Speaker 4: last like, yeah.
Speaker 2: Oh cool.
Speaker 5: So it's like it's like dying, but it kind of
Speaker 5: like awakens in a weird way.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, like.
Speaker 4: You it's actually like an undeath like I can.
Speaker 2: So when you go like in two thousand and one,
Speaker 2: like you go through the stargate, you encounter yourself in
Speaker 2: a weird yeom and it's like an old version.
Speaker 3: Of you or a baby.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And then but and then at the end, yeah,
Speaker 2: the child turns to regard you.
Speaker 6: So just just to introduce the other characters we've gone
Speaker 6: with us a product, give me a way too much
Speaker 6: in two thousand and one, there's a whole lot, there's
Speaker 6: like two and a half. Okay, let's just say who
Speaker 6: you are, though Namaya, wonderful auto journalist, you join me
Speaker 6: on a previous episode here in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Speaker 4: Good to see you again, Good to see you.
Speaker 3: Jared Neuman, Freelanca. Wonderful to be here, great to be here.
Speaker 3: Thank you. Correct.
Speaker 1: Now, the effect that David is describing is actually remarkable
Speaker 1: because it is true CES veterans generally experienced what I'm
Speaker 1: experiencing right now.
Speaker 3: I'm in like the cocoons stage.
Speaker 1: Which is you go through the Valley of the Shadow
Speaker 1: of Death and look at your life. Nope, I and
Speaker 1: you sit there and you go, I'm dying. And then
Speaker 1: you get tomorrow. Like halfway through, you just get a
Speaker 1: second and third win, win to even, and that's when
Speaker 1: you fully jokeiphi and everything becomes darkly funny, you know,
Speaker 1: oh aiys and everything.
Speaker 3: Wouldn't it be bad if that would happen?
Speaker 1: So I'm jokeafying the next three episodes, which is gonna
Speaker 1: be great. But David, it's great to have you here
Speaker 1: because not only are you at your first CS, you're
Speaker 1: not a tech journalist.
Speaker 3: You cover sports.
Speaker 7: No.
Speaker 2: I had to say that to somebody earlier today because
Speaker 2: I was playing around. I was down there with our
Speaker 2: friend Jesse Ferrara, who I was on I Believe with
Speaker 2: you this afternoon.
Speaker 3: No.
Speaker 2: Oh, did he just came in to say Hi? Well,
Speaker 2: do you not.
Speaker 3: Remember you haven't been on the microphone yet?
Speaker 2: Man, No, I don't know. I wasn't on with him.
Speaker 2: I don't know what you do back.
Speaker 3: No, he was on the show. Sorry, that's what I
Speaker 3: was suggesting. You forgot the No.
Speaker 2: No, So I saw Jesse and we walked around for
Speaker 2: a bit and we were playing with a device I
Speaker 2: guess was designed to give a pleasing jet of air
Speaker 2: to your pet. It was a pet massager. It was
Speaker 2: an air pet massage.
Speaker 3: Okay, I think I saw them as well. Was that
Speaker 3: the one with the spike at the bottom with the
Speaker 3: pet is allegedly meant.
Speaker 2: To rub against No, you're well, yes, it's the same company,
Speaker 2: but this was a different product. And I was messing
Speaker 2: around with this one and they were fine with it,
Speaker 2: and a lady was kind of trying to sell me
Speaker 2: on this, and even though I told her, I was like,
Speaker 2: I have a turtle like and I don't have a dog.
Speaker 2: I don't think the turtle would like it. I don't
Speaker 2: think the turtle really likes anything that I do. I
Speaker 2: hadn't eaten, so I did tell them about the turtle.
Speaker 2: That was unnecessary. It was wasting their time. And at
Speaker 2: some point she was like, well, I can see that
Speaker 2: you looked at my Okay, man, the totshit is my
Speaker 2: lanyard and it's a you know, defector, which nobody knows
Speaker 2: fuck that is. And if they did know, they'd be like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 2: the one with the where Ray Ratto makes fun of
Speaker 2: the raider. Yeah, like that website, and so she's like
Speaker 2: I could see that you're you know, it's just a
Speaker 2: work in design, and I was like, ma'am, I'm a
Speaker 2: sports writer. And that was more or less enough because
Speaker 2: you're basically saying like, first of all, I'm an idiot,
Speaker 2: which you've already observed. Second of all, like I'm not
Speaker 2: like rich either, and I already told you I don't
Speaker 2: have a dog, so like, we really don't have very
Speaker 2: much life to talk about.
Speaker 1: They tried to sell me a fifteen thousand dollars baseball simulator,
Speaker 1: which was very cool.
Speaker 2: Dude. I was ready to buy that.
Speaker 1: It was so cool, Like those are the only honest
Speaker 1: people in this Yeah.
Speaker 2: There was a guy in there with one of the
Speaker 2: best of the Like if you guys like played softball
Speaker 2: at all or do you, like, are you familiar with
Speaker 2: there's like an aesthetic of like a slow pitch softball
Speaker 2: body type, and it is like you can be a
Speaker 2: really good softball hitter with a body that would not
Speaker 2: seemingly be suited for any sport.
Speaker 3: Was he just crushing it.
Speaker 2: Crushing it a sweet left handed swing and it's like
Speaker 2: a similar it is like a golf simulat yeah. So
Speaker 2: it's like showing you where in Yankee Stadium the fucking
Speaker 2: tank shot that you just hit was. Oh, and he
Speaker 2: was just launching them into the batter's eye. But he
Speaker 2: was shaped like the grimace from McDonald land and I
Speaker 2: could have watched him do that all day. I mean
Speaker 2: maybe that's more of like a day four of to
Speaker 2: be clear.
Speaker 1: I was there earlier and they were like, oh, you
Speaker 1: should try it. I'm like, I'm really bad. I'm really
Speaker 1: I'm bad, and they're like, oh, come on, come on.
Speaker 1: I'm like, no, I'm really bad, and I stopped British.
Speaker 2: I am modest about how good he is a base,
Speaker 2: I'm the bridge.
Speaker 3: I'm a British Man who knows what kbo is. And
Speaker 3: then they're like no going.
Speaker 1: I'm like, I'm really bad, And then I was I
Speaker 1: fucking missed it. It is a stationary object and I
Speaker 1: like barely like grounded out to the well middlefield and
Speaker 1: I was like, I hold you and they're like, yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: we should.
Speaker 2: We should have believed you. I'm sorry.
Speaker 4: My version of this was a few years back. I
Speaker 4: stopped by the nine Bot booth when they had all this.
Speaker 4: It was like his proliferation of various like small electric
Speaker 4: like one wheel or like little skate roller skates and
Speaker 4: all kind of electric or whatever, and people kept product
Speaker 4: special is, kept being like, oh these are anyone can
Speaker 4: do these. And I would get all these various like
Speaker 4: you know things that we look one wheel the unicycle
Speaker 4: and then the one on each and like I every
Speaker 4: single I just kept falling down and falling out.
Speaker 3: I'm not doing that. That sounds like how I would die.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, if I told my parents, if they my
Speaker 1: parents found out I mean that I died getting on
Speaker 1: like a cheap unicycle at a consumer electronics show, my
Speaker 1: parents would not. They would just be like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: that sure, I fully believe that. Just where can we
Speaker 1: find the body is it's still on the floor, Like.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I could see that was my I mean the
Speaker 2: real trepidation with the swaying thing was that there were
Speaker 2: other people around. But the idea of me like going
Speaker 2: down with it, like six to eight weeks within obleikue
Speaker 2: strain within my first like I haven't showered here yet,
Speaker 2: do you know what I mean?
Speaker 3: Like I got gen Carlos stands in its whole like he's.
Speaker 2: Torso fenestrated we've never seen it.
Speaker 4: You need to train next year.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, like make sure that's that's a bit
Speaker 2: of advice that everybody's giving me about Sea. Yes, they're
Speaker 2: mostly people are like, here's where you can get drugs,
Speaker 2: and then they're also like you gotta stretch.
Speaker 1: It's from but Evans. He's just saying the gas station mushrooms. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I before did he offer you the mushrooms?
Speaker 2: I mean he offers you very gentlemanly various various things. Yes,
Speaker 2: he had just like a still have pulling stuff out
Speaker 2: of his bag. I imagine it's like what's seeing Carrot
Speaker 2: Top is like.
Speaker 4: Have you done an episode like that's like the guided
Speaker 4: tour of the Nevada gas station, like the one all
Speaker 4: the wonders because I hadn't know it, Like I have
Speaker 4: no idea that these things exist in stations. Yeah, so
Speaker 4: he got we do, but we don't have like baking mushrooms.
Speaker 2: You can't get mushrooms there.
Speaker 3: Well, I don't think the real Yeah that I mean
Speaker 3: mushrooms are real.
Speaker 2: These were they've had a lot of words on them
Speaker 2: and yeah, but the packaging looked like big league chww.
Speaker 3: It's that is.
Speaker 5: On the back. It said this is not an authorized product.
Speaker 2: Was like it was like looking for the Union label,
Speaker 2: like being like, all right, well this isn't this doesn't
Speaker 2: have anything.
Speaker 1: Well Robert, then he would say that like a point
Speaker 1: of pride. Though you'd be like, and this is not approved.
Speaker 4: Not for human consumption.
Speaker 2: That I enjoyed about that was your friend Garrison.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like call me.
Speaker 2: That was like you just get a stomach ache, Like
Speaker 2: it's not gonna like that.
Speaker 5: Yeah. It also had a had a list of other ingredients,
Speaker 5: but it didn't say like what the the main ingredients.
Speaker 3: Were ingredients just like miscellaneous.
Speaker 4: Yeah, natural flavors, they're not.
Speaker 2: They're not purporting to tell you that there are hallucinogenic
Speaker 2: mushrooms in there. But it has niosin and it was
Speaker 2: made in a facility that processes tree nuts.
Speaker 3: It's just all the we put somehow.
Speaker 1: Okay, So Ed you cover auto's in general and you
Speaker 1: follow Elon Musk around.
Speaker 3: Why what are you here for? Is there a big
Speaker 3: mobility section here?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I didn't mean dismiss it. No, you didn't
Speaker 3: ask me.
Speaker 2: He was just like I don't know you. Well, yeah
Speaker 2: you brought me here with me. Yeah that's true.
Speaker 4: But anyway, No, so, like a few years ago, quite
Speaker 4: a few years ago actually before I started coming. Basically
Speaker 4: like car shows are this antiquated thing, right, it's like
Speaker 4: a one hundred year old plus tradition. Uh, you know,
Speaker 4: as auto industry is sort of mature, the juice has
Speaker 4: gone out of it. Like once upon a time, like
Speaker 4: car shows were like like Detroit with Silicon Valley and
Speaker 4: car shows there the.
Speaker 1: Purpose of the having not been to any seen them
Speaker 1: kind of from the distance. What is the actual purpose
Speaker 1: of a carsh Is it to sell? Cause to consumers
Speaker 1: there's like is there.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so so well so now it's like all bifurcated, right,
Speaker 4: so so the ones that have survived are mostly like
Speaker 4: small regional ones and it's literally just like here are
Speaker 4: the cars that are for sale now and you can
Speaker 4: go and said it's actually like a useful thing. But
Speaker 4: facing yeah, but like so like originally it was it
Speaker 4: was like here's introducing new models, introducing new technologies. And
Speaker 4: then also like again like Detroit was the Silicon Value
Speaker 4: of the twentieth century and just like these whole futurist
Speaker 4: visions and like entertainment and like you know, celebrities, it
Speaker 4: was a show.
Speaker 2: My dad used to take me to the one at
Speaker 2: the Jacob Javitt Center in New York City. Yeah, and
Speaker 2: it was like as a you know whatever, ten twelve
Speaker 2: years old, Like that was the coolest shit I'd ever seen. Yeah,
Speaker 2: the concept cars like looked I mean if they just
Speaker 2: I mean, none of them as far as I can tell,
Speaker 2: like came to market. Like it wasn't the sort of
Speaker 2: thing where it was like, oh yeah I saw him
Speaker 2: playing rookie ball. It was like something where they were like, yeah,
Speaker 2: it's got a nuclear reactor in it, and I got
Speaker 2: to sit at it and be like sick. And that
Speaker 2: was it. But that was the last anyone saw of it. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So they'll show these concept cars to sort of
Speaker 4: like sort of signal like the future direction that the
Speaker 4: styling's going to take, and judge the sort of response
Speaker 4: to it and whatever. And again like that, there's a
Speaker 4: long tradition of like pageantry that sort of has like
Speaker 4: faded out over the years, right, like come one of
Speaker 4: the things that almost does not to throw that in there,
Speaker 4: but he's bring that back. He's like kind of a
Speaker 4: throwback to this old school showbiz version of it.
Speaker 3: But it also sucks well.
Speaker 4: And so so these car shows were losing their steam
Speaker 4: as cars were becoming these like anonymous entertainable applients, right,
Speaker 4: these were this is a connected trend. And then tech
Speaker 4: started happening and cars they had someone had the great
Speaker 4: idea that cars could be or really should be devices,
Speaker 4: and with that CS became actually the most important. Like
Speaker 4: twenty I'm gonna get called out for not knowing the
Speaker 4: exact day, but it's like twenty fourteen, like mid twin cards.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like you don't have to know stuff on the
Speaker 3: show don't work.
Speaker 4: Actually it was littler than that, I think.
Speaker 3: Cool.
Speaker 2: But so what's the distinction with devices? Is it basically
Speaker 2: is it like teslification of the like where it's like
Speaker 2: touchscreens and applications.
Speaker 3: And is it the designs to standardized as well.
Speaker 4: So yeah, so it's a lot of things. So it's
Speaker 4: it's it's so really what it comes down to is
Speaker 4: tech sort of thinks that everything should be like it,
Speaker 4: and it looks at cars and it sees a platform
Speaker 4: and it says, we need to take this platform and
Speaker 4: make it, make it like us. And you know, some
Speaker 4: good things that have actually come along with that, like electrification, right,
Speaker 4: Like electrification is good for completely other reasons. Tech and
Speaker 4: tech money likes it because, you know, the idea of
Speaker 4: replacing what'sever replacing electron or atoms with electrons is like
Speaker 4: this sort of core ideological thing that everyone texts like,
Speaker 4: oh yeah, Like anytime you make something more digital, more controllable,
Speaker 4: more computerized, that's just like this intrinsically good thing. Electrification
Speaker 4: fits in with that. It makes cars literally more like
Speaker 4: computers and more like and more like smartphones to the extent,
Speaker 4: and like Tesla is. The interesting thing about Tesla is
Speaker 4: is that it really just exemplifies this in this visual way,
Speaker 4: like I talked about in my book the touch screen, right,
Speaker 4: and like it's it's like tail fins on a in
Speaker 4: the nineteen fifties. In the nineteen fifties, the other big
Speaker 4: technology was airplanes and rockets. Like that was the hot
Speaker 4: that was the pinnacle of high technology, right, and cars
Speaker 4: were already sort of starting to lose. And there were
Speaker 4: sort of two ways you could go with that. One
Speaker 4: was you could put a rocket engine into a car,
Speaker 4: which the right companies absolutely did, including with like taxpayer
Speaker 4: to dollars and like all kinds. But it was a
Speaker 4: dumb idea and it never went anywhere. What the smart
Speaker 4: approach was put tail fins on, make the cars look
Speaker 4: like airplanes, appropriate the aesthetics and associate with this other
Speaker 4: technology and so like, that's what Tesla has really done
Speaker 4: in a lot of ways. They caught the iPhone of cars.
Speaker 4: It's a purely aesthetic thing. The screen and the UI
Speaker 4: are more like a smartphone than anything else. Whether or
Speaker 4: not that is a good thing for how you operate
Speaker 4: a car never gets questioned.
Speaker 1: They also took advantage of the fact that when the
Speaker 1: first test thats were coming out, most cars had yet
Speaker 1: to really modernize in that level.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, no, they were, they were. It was good.
Speaker 1: It was good in comparison to most car UIs uh, I.
Speaker 2: Think that's like it's a pill an open question.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: No, I had a Fall of Ours sixty and twenty twelve.
Speaker 1: That was my last car for I had a Tesla
Speaker 1: for a few years. Yeah, it was a big jump.
Speaker 1: It was more like I could do the things I
Speaker 1: wanted to do in a way that made sense because
Speaker 1: the way they had buttons work was kind.
Speaker 3: Of like the devil made them.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: The problem is now Volvo is the best electric because
Speaker 1: it just works normal. I realize I've basically taught myself
Speaker 1: into a corner here, soue.
Speaker 4: No, No, I mean, well, I you know, I think for me,
Speaker 4: the open and unresolved question is like what makes a
Speaker 4: car good? And I think as time goes on, right,
Speaker 4: like when I look at this stuff, people like it
Speaker 4: because they think that the iPhone is the best product
Speaker 4: that we've seen in our lifetime. Like ever, if you
Speaker 4: pick one good product, the iPhone is like one that
Speaker 4: changed everything and associating with it like this looks and
Speaker 4: feels like a knife, it must be it must be good.
Speaker 4: But again, like when you're driving a car, you know,
Speaker 4: being able to reach over and there's knob there that's
Speaker 4: always there and you can just change the volume. And
Speaker 4: you know, for me, like I enjoy driving and like
Speaker 4: I take I kind of get engaged with it, choose
Speaker 4: to engage with it, and so less distraction like more
Speaker 4: just sort of direct engagement with the mechanical car's mechanical
Speaker 4: device for me is good. And then and the big
Speaker 4: thing is robustness because when you add these screens, right,
Speaker 4: so like the screen the model s that changed everything,
Speaker 4: It was like this is what the future is gonna
Speaker 4: be the reason they were able to put a bigger
Speaker 4: screen in that car than anyone else. And in fact,
Speaker 4: I don't know, I'm sure there's bigger screens now, but
Speaker 4: it took a really long time for there to be
Speaker 4: a screen as big as the one in the Model
Speaker 4: Esque and it was because Tesla simply didn't use an
Speaker 4: automotive grade screen, so to put. Yeah, so there's a
Speaker 4: whole thing. There's consumer grade, there's like industrial grade, and
Speaker 4: really what these are is you take the device and
Speaker 4: you put it through a series of like mostly thermal testing,
Speaker 4: and automotive grade is like the highest one. And like,
Speaker 4: this is what the auto industry does well, is they
Speaker 4: make things that are robust so that every time you
Speaker 4: go out in the car, whether it's in freezing weather
Speaker 4: or hot weather or rain or it just always works.
Speaker 3: All things I associate with Tesla.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's what I was gonna say. There's like a
Speaker 2: kind of an ominous bit of foreshadowing. Yeah, where they
Speaker 2: were just like, well, well we'll just put it in.
Speaker 1: To be clear, I had to test her in like
Speaker 1: twenty fourteen to twenty sixteen. Yeah, listeners are gonna absolutely
Speaker 1: beat my ass in the comments.
Speaker 3: So I don't have on the podcast.
Speaker 4: But so just to get past the good bad thing,
Speaker 4: let's just say everything's a trade off, right, And so
Speaker 4: what we're doing as cars we come more like devices
Speaker 4: is yeah, we're getting they're connected, they're interactive. Now, they're
Speaker 4: software defined. You can change how your car looks with
Speaker 4: over their updates and all. You know, all these things
Speaker 4: have opened up, but you've lost the robustness of the
Speaker 4: core you know, function of the car, which is driving
Speaker 4: around and getting you from from pointed.
Speaker 3: And is this something that's affecting more than just Tesla.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, So what Tesla has done in this right,
Speaker 4: it is its legitimized what the car companies have always
Speaker 4: wanted to do but we're afraid to do because they
Speaker 4: thought consumers would there be backlash to it, which is
Speaker 4: cut quality, right, And what Tesla it's not just we're
Speaker 4: but like by putting everything on the screen, then you
Speaker 4: don't have to have switches, you have to have buttons.
Speaker 4: Those are the things that the car companies are copying
Speaker 4: because it saves them money.
Speaker 2: It feels like.
Speaker 1: We're gonna take the piss era of society. Just like
Speaker 1: it's like every company's like testing boundaries.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Tesla's not here at CS right, Tesla has never
Speaker 4: done Yeah, that's actually one of the things that that
Speaker 4: I think was good with the sort of how they've
Speaker 4: done the brand building stuff is they don't do they
Speaker 4: they don't show concepts, right if they show you a car.
Speaker 4: This has changed Okay, yeah, this has changed more recently,
Speaker 4: but like historically when they were building the brand, it
Speaker 4: was like they would show you a car. It would
Speaker 4: change maybe a little bit to production, but basically they
Speaker 4: were showing you the car that you were going to
Speaker 4: be able to buy. You wouldn't be able to get
Speaker 4: it at the price, you know, there would be all
Speaker 4: kinds of other things that would happen by the time
Speaker 4: you got it, but but visually that was really important.
Speaker 4: They didn't show you something that they had no intention
Speaker 4: of making, which every other car does.
Speaker 3: Come on again, this is this has changed.
Speaker 4: Okay, So like the roads during the semi Yeah, this,
Speaker 4: I mean the road the classic Progesla during the period
Speaker 4: where they're when you like, I'm so sorry, no, no, no,
Speaker 4: I mean it's a good point.
Speaker 1: It's actually an interesting gradual thing with them. There was
Speaker 1: a point when they said stuff and then it happened.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah, well and they were doing new things. As
Speaker 4: you said, they were doing things that to you were
Speaker 4: really you were like, this is this is good, this
Speaker 4: is I feel like also, Tesla's just didn't change after
Speaker 4: a certain point.
Speaker 3: They just got worse in different ways.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well that's what I gather that. That's what you
Speaker 2: meant by the sort of like the taking the pissy. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that it's like you develop a product that like people like,
Speaker 2: and then the game becomes trying to see how much
Speaker 2: worse you can make it and they'll describing right, but like, yeah,
Speaker 2: basically everything, it's just every day that's like the toilet
Speaker 2: based private equity buying newspapers. It's also like you know
Speaker 2: all the.
Speaker 1: Other I need to find like some rich people to
Speaker 1: help me buy the Washington Post, Like that would just
Speaker 1: be the best thing I will run it.
Speaker 2: You're going to become the first tech journalist to try
Speaker 2: to buy the Washington Post.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, the first one where aviate is by the
Speaker 1: Washington Post. Yes, no, that would That's one of those
Speaker 1: ideas that I'm going to start saying. And I think
Speaker 1: what's great about it is it could never happen. But
Speaker 1: saying it enough, people will be like maybe this could
Speaker 1: and that really upset them, which is really most of
Speaker 1: my bag.
Speaker 2: Moving the Overton window.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm moving the oval.
Speaker 2: Yeah you got to move that window to move open
Speaker 2: it a little bit.
Speaker 3: So Jared, this is how many? Yeah, just getting you.
Speaker 3: How many cees is for you? How many of you thinks.
Speaker 5: This is thirteen or four?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 2: My god Christ? How many of them?
Speaker 5: Guess? Uh? The history goes back to before it was
Speaker 5: called c Yes, it was like Condex or.
Speaker 3: Something compy text. Now that it's not the one in time.
Speaker 5: I think it was Condex. Sad that I don't know
Speaker 5: the history.
Speaker 3: I would if anyone gets mad at you, I will
Speaker 3: set my pigs on them.
Speaker 2: Before we were recording people, you were part of this
Speaker 2: conversation about like legendary cees, fuck shit moments. The Yo
Speaker 2: party was the one that people were talking about.
Speaker 1: But like, I wasn't cool in that my friends went
Speaker 1: given it.
Speaker 2: Everybody here was just talking about being like I've been
Speaker 2: here since Monday and I've seen things you people wouldn't
Speaker 2: believe thirteen years.
Speaker 5: The funny thing is that I don't end up going
Speaker 5: to a ton of parties, but I do I was
Speaker 5: talking about earlier a few years ago. It was like
Speaker 5: five six years ago. I had been here for a
Speaker 5: long time, maybe four or five six days or something.
Speaker 5: It was my last day, and I knew there was
Speaker 5: like there were a few things that I like still
Speaker 5: wanted to see, and I was gonna leave later in
Speaker 5: the day, and so I I got on the monorail
Speaker 5: and I went to the convention center. And I got
Speaker 5: off the monorail and I started walking into the convention
Speaker 5: center and I kind of just had like a physical reaction,
Speaker 5: like the closer I got. Yeah, and I describe it.
Speaker 5: So I just turned around and left.
Speaker 4: That's yeah, way to practice self care.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was basically your body telling you that you've
Speaker 2: had enough.
Speaker 5: I think I think I just rejected Vegas.
Speaker 1: If I worked, if I walked away every time I
Speaker 1: felt like that, I wouldn't move.
Speaker 4: Yeah. The thing is like so Vegas itself is one
Speaker 4: of those places where it's like, way if you hit
Speaker 4: three days, like even if you're trying to have fun
Speaker 4: the whole, like you just cannot do more than about
Speaker 4: three days. Yep. And then with Cees you add all
Speaker 4: of the everything else on top of it. The absurdity,
Speaker 4: like the and the walking.
Speaker 3: I mean, yeah, that's the other thing.
Speaker 2: So I think a lot of people when they're doing
Speaker 2: like excess in Vegas, they're not taking like fifteen thousand steps.
Speaker 3: That is extill so to come actually not true.
Speaker 1: Really, Oh you get enough dipshit bachelor party ones and
Speaker 1: then you get lost, you will walk in three miles.
Speaker 2: But that makes some sense. I did get lost a
Speaker 2: good amount today. But I also, like, I mean whatever,
Speaker 2: I haven't done hardly done Vegas as an adult at all.
Speaker 2: And so the idea of like the bit of today
Speaker 2: that I liked was that, like, my legs feel a
Speaker 2: little bit sore now, well, like twenty five degrees in
Speaker 2: New York City right now, Like I legit did not
Speaker 2: leave my apartment on Monday.
Speaker 3: I got I'm working. Yeah, Like it.
Speaker 5: Feets into that like tapping, tapping a weal of energy
Speaker 5: that you.
Speaker 1: So we have a small announcement, David, do you mind
Speaker 1: turning your microphone to Phil? So it has been eight
Speaker 1: cs is Phil.
Speaker 8: Yep, I've been here. This is my eighth ses to
Speaker 8: join you.
Speaker 9: Hi.
Speaker 8: I'm Phil Broughton again.
Speaker 3: The Baltender health physicist.
Speaker 8: So every time I come here a charge for getting
Speaker 8: one of my drinks. As a journalist is an attendee
Speaker 8: of cs IS, you need to tell me if you've
Speaker 8: seen something dangerous, something that scared you, something that left
Speaker 8: you with discomfort such that you think an illegality might
Speaker 8: be happening. I'm I'm not going to say proud, but
Speaker 8: I'm shocked to say nothing on the floor of CEES
Speaker 8: is concerned someone enough to tell me such that I
Speaker 8: needed to call the fire marshal to get an exhibitor
Speaker 8: removed or at least their exhibit shut down. So I
Speaker 8: don't angratulations, congratulations, CEA.
Speaker 3: We did it, We did it.
Speaker 1: Finally we've perched through and actually there is something in
Speaker 1: line with this.
Speaker 3: I want to say.
Speaker 1: It did feel like going down to Eureka Park, which
Speaker 1: is the the nether Regions.
Speaker 8: They put dangerous things.
Speaker 5: It wasn't as bad this year, but there have been
Speaker 5: years where it just smelled like feet.
Speaker 1: Yes, crazy and no games. Journalists listening, all twelve of
Speaker 1: you think of kenty A Hall during E three.
Speaker 5: I get that reference.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like a place where you'd go and if
Speaker 1: you had a journalist badge on, you'd have to run.
Speaker 8: I can smell this comment.
Speaker 3: Yeah, ky Kenty is fucked up, but yeah, so I
Speaker 3: really just felt like Eureka Park is usually like the
Speaker 3: place where you go to see the people working on
Speaker 3: multiple stages of fraud.
Speaker 8: Most of that's where the MRI was that year that
Speaker 8: shouldn't have been on the floor. Yeah, that's it been.
Speaker 3: Now it's all people like at the earliest stages of
Speaker 3: fraud where it's not as fun.
Speaker 8: Materials that anyone told me about ship.
Speaker 1: They barely brought anything that existed. Yes, turn the microrae.
Speaker 8: Okay, I'm gonna google big more drinks now have fun.
Speaker 5: Thank you fail before you go, I'm just gonna say
Speaker 5: that I mostly came here to see you, So.
Speaker 4: I will say the Eurka Park two. You do sometimes
Speaker 4: go and meet like two guys in a folding table,
Speaker 4: and then like next year, all of a sudden they
Speaker 4: have some massive thing, and then the next year like
Speaker 4: they've like taken over like the biggest company in their space,
Speaker 4: Like the year that you you discovered them as two
Speaker 4: guys in a folding and that there's something interesting about that.
Speaker 2: That was the bit that so I it's funny that
Speaker 2: you mentioned dankness. Fun Well, everything that I had been
Speaker 2: sort of like not just ed either. Like I go
Speaker 2: on Tuesdays, I do like a little standing bit with
Speaker 2: a ESPN radio station in Las Vegas, and I mentioned
Speaker 2: that I was going to be at the Consumer Electronic Show,
Speaker 2: and they mentioned that it was going to be like
Speaker 2: sweaty and wet. Everybody is always using words having to
Speaker 2: do a dampness.
Speaker 3: To describe this shit a very dry place.
Speaker 5: It's a very and in a very dry place, indeed,
Speaker 5: And so the idea that there's like a sub basement,
Speaker 5: that's basically just it's a part of it's a part
Speaker 5: of the expo where the ceilings are too low.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like basically like most of the action in the
Speaker 2: movie Aliens is what I'm imagining. I'm like, you're kind
Speaker 2: of walking around line something comes up out of the
Speaker 2: floor or and spits acid in your face or whatever.
Speaker 3: But see that's the thing.
Speaker 1: Though it's better than it used to be. Though you
Speaker 1: weren't here during the indieg go.
Speaker 4: Well, I was expecting that when it was in the
Speaker 4: Eurica Parker was in the sands, because it used to.
Speaker 3: I have to.
Speaker 1: It's in the same place, but it was basically every
Speaker 1: company was crowdfunded and the ship.
Speaker 3: People would say, so.
Speaker 2: Is Eureka Park like the key ball.
Speaker 4: It's just unfiltered stuff.
Speaker 2: All right.
Speaker 5: I've had demos with companies that later like graduated to
Speaker 5: to Eureka Park. So I don't know what that.
Speaker 3: Made more money?
Speaker 2: Where were you before?
Speaker 3: Also outside ye, like we're outside the cromwell, like outside
Speaker 3: of the scrap.
Speaker 4: I mean, like there's a lot of big fraud, Like
Speaker 4: a lot of fraud, right, Like getting a lot of
Speaker 4: money to do fraud is actually not that hard?
Speaker 6: Is so?
Speaker 4: Actually in the big like you know Northall and stuff too.
Speaker 4: I mean there's been plenty of companies these In fact,
Speaker 4: a lot of times during certain periods of like you know,
Speaker 4: big h trends and investing in you know, whether it's
Speaker 4: like light ar or this or you know, some of
Speaker 4: these other specific technologies, you would see sort of certain
Speaker 4: names in the space would have these huge things and
Speaker 4: you know, right the point of this is to market
Speaker 4: We're here, we're this big deal. But like if you
Speaker 4: follow the space, you know, like the companies that invest
Speaker 4: in that stuff are the ones that don't have the
Speaker 4: good right, Like a lot of times, not not exclusively,
Speaker 4: but a lot of times the biggest splashiest booth in
Speaker 4: the biggest in the big thing is is where the
Speaker 4: fraud is, and sometimes the smaller thing in the in
Speaker 4: the kind of jumble of startups is actually they.
Speaker 2: Totally Because that's like, again from my sort of understanding
Speaker 2: of this as somebody who's interested in the space but
Speaker 2: not covering it or not like he doesn't have a
Speaker 2: professional interest. I'm just kind of like fascinated by everything
Speaker 2: that's kind of scammy scusy in our culture.
Speaker 1: But this is the thing, it's so emblematic of this
Speaker 1: industry that which like, yeah, no, the big frauds are
Speaker 1: the ones.
Speaker 3: With the right the big scam, but it's like that
Speaker 3: there have so many lies here, and that's what I
Speaker 3: think what it is.
Speaker 1: I think this is why by Saturday, I'm going to
Speaker 1: be like I'm just gonna wake up in the joke
Speaker 1: and make up.
Speaker 3: Is because I've never talked.
Speaker 1: About CEES this much, and I realized that I say
Speaker 1: this putting on an actual like pop up radio show
Speaker 1: during ces that that would be inevitable talking about it.
Speaker 3: I'm like joke offying again.
Speaker 1: Jared and I talk about the joker love for many reasons,
Speaker 1: but like I thought, I had fully become the joker.
Speaker 3: But now just like as I.
Speaker 1: Fresh new CS people, they have the exact same and
Speaker 1: it's just like this place is just very strange.
Speaker 2: Well but it's strange. But what I was saying is
Speaker 2: I expected because I've only been to the we're recording
Speaker 2: in the Venetian, like the big open exhibition space in
Speaker 2: the Venetian, right, but I haven't been to the Convention
Speaker 2: Center yet. I got in here today at like three pm.
Speaker 2: So what I saw I expected to go down there
Speaker 2: and it was just gonna be carnage. It was just
Speaker 2: going to be like a suit soaker that yells at
Speaker 2: you in the voice of Sir Peter O'Toole has an
Speaker 2: ai aspects for some reason, you know. And what it
Speaker 2: was instead was like there were like you were saying
Speaker 2: it that there's like people down there there, there's like
Speaker 2: a dog door that like, yeah, Jesse and I were
Speaker 2: very taken by, and the people were like, yeah, we
Speaker 2: were here last year, and like we'd been you know,
Speaker 2: we'd set up this thing and if you hit it
Speaker 2: with a sledgehammer once it got all screwed up. So
Speaker 2: like we went back and we changed the metal and
Speaker 2: now we've had. You know, it's like six hundred and
Speaker 2: fifty blows from this, Like you pull a rope and
Speaker 2: a sledgehammer swings into the dorm. We haven't even dented it.
Speaker 2: It's like a good product if I had a dog
Speaker 2: and a house, and I have neither of those things,
Speaker 2: but if I had both, I'd be like, well, you
Speaker 2: know what, like this might be worth three hundred and
Speaker 2: ninety nine dollars, And I didn't expect to see a
Speaker 2: single thing like that.
Speaker 5: But the great paradox of CS is that it's kind
Speaker 5: of it's like a place to get cynical, but yeah jokerfried, Yeah,
Speaker 5: but also like d jokerfried at the same time. Yeah,
Speaker 5: it like pulls your brain in these two opposing directions
Speaker 5: because there is a lot of that, and then there's
Speaker 5: also like the stuff that like reminds you why you
Speaker 5: like technology in the first place, and it's hard to balance.
Speaker 2: Yes, that was like pulling for a lot of the people,
Speaker 2: not all of them, the ones that when we were
Speaker 2: talking about, like the things that you saw that like
Speaker 2: fucked you up or made you want to like ask
Speaker 2: Phil to call the you know, yeah, there is one
Speaker 2: that Edward flagged. I just saw he had posted it earlier.
Speaker 2: That was like a germ detection thing with very strange vibes.
Speaker 3: Was this the pass?
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, so chosen by God, perfected by science or
Speaker 2: something like that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's that's me.
Speaker 2: So, yeah, that's all. Hey, you know what, Yeah, it's
Speaker 2: all of us.
Speaker 1: But before we go any further, we're now going to
Speaker 1: do an ad break. So, David, where can people find you?
Speaker 8: Uh?
Speaker 2: Defector dot COM's the website. The distraction is the podcast
Speaker 2: I do with Defector, and then I do a podcast
Speaker 2: about a Hallmark movies that's Christmas Town that is not
Speaker 2: affiliated with any other website because it's about Hallmark movies. Okay,
Speaker 2: is there are linked they could go for those, I'll
Speaker 2: put them in there. Well, yeah, Defector dot com is
Speaker 2: the thing. It's Christmas Town. It's like, I don't know,
Speaker 2: like do that look it up podcast or something. Yeah,
Speaker 2: mister need By, where can people find you?
Speaker 4: Neederm dot io on the World Wide Web and blue
Speaker 4: Sky and uh autonoast dot com. The autonoast is my podcast.
Speaker 5: Mister Newman, I write for a bunch of websites, but
Speaker 5: you should sign up for my newsletters at Jarednewman dot com.
Speaker 5: Slash newsletters and now if you need to sign up
Speaker 5: for something else and you wish to help this show continue,
Speaker 5: if you, and I know many of you, pray for
Speaker 5: my me to fall victim to falling pianos in various
Speaker 5: carnage situations in which I suffer greatly, which you would love.
Speaker 5: Of course, if you don't, and if you love me dearly,
Speaker 5: you'll follow this by listening to the ad more intently
Speaker 5: than you evident anything in your life.
Speaker 1: And we're back, So I want to get back to
Speaker 1: something we were talking about earlier. Which is the reason
Speaker 1: that CS grinds you down and then you have a
Speaker 1: new joivocation and get your powers back. Is because if
Speaker 1: you're only here, the ideal amount to be here is
Speaker 1: like three or four days. And I don't mean this
Speaker 1: for general Vegas. I mean specifically for CES, because you
Speaker 1: get to see the show thought enough that you're like,
Speaker 1: I have a full concept of this, I couldn't have
Speaker 1: missed anything. You can then come to an opinion, and
Speaker 1: then you meet the other people who are there too long,
Speaker 1: the other people who didn't live in two days, and
Speaker 1: you get a kind of like a trauma bonding experience,
Speaker 1: which is what this podcast is going to be for
Speaker 1: the next few days.
Speaker 3: By the way, everyone who's left is just like, I
Speaker 3: just want to see my family again.
Speaker 1: And David, you're going to get you're arriving at CS
Speaker 1: during this period.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So this is what I want to ask, just
Speaker 2: again from the perspective to bring, to bring an idiot's
Speaker 2: perspective to bear. Well, I'm here, Well I know, but
Speaker 2: I mean this is a different it's more of an
Speaker 2: East Coast flavor. Uh, Like, who are these people that
Speaker 2: you're talking about? Who's staying here?
Speaker 3: So what it is?
Speaker 2: And tomorrow it's like the general public income in right.
Speaker 5: I Actually I don't know either. It's probably worth clarifying that.
Speaker 5: Like we're at the point of the show because it
Speaker 5: open on Tuesday. Today's Wednesday.
Speaker 3: But people will hear it.
Speaker 5: So when you go to Booth's tomorrow and talk to people,
Speaker 5: they're all gonna hate you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because they've been here.
Speaker 5: They've been here, they don't want to be here anymore,
Speaker 5: and you're gonna be asking them like a lot of
Speaker 5: questions about their products and stuff and they're not gonna
Speaker 5: like that.
Speaker 1: No, you get like the unvarnished booth experience. You get
Speaker 1: it big from Samsung coach like I don't care.
Speaker 4: Also, I think tomorrow you do get the general public.
Speaker 3: Is it really they allowed that?
Speaker 4: Yeah, so it's two days. I think of sort of
Speaker 4: media and sort of controlled access and then and then
Speaker 4: it opens up to the public and then you get
Speaker 4: to see the technology fans.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the people who want to be.
Speaker 4: Is fans of technology and a lot of.
Speaker 2: Just technology as a concept, like anything.
Speaker 5: Exactly.
Speaker 2: That's what I'm gonna say. Just like I love robots,
Speaker 2: all kinds of.
Speaker 1: Robots' cool if only that was what's the Yeah, well
Speaker 1: they're like the version of robots here is just being
Speaker 1: like it's the thing that it mows your lawn and
Speaker 1: it also cleans.
Speaker 2: Your seven thousand dollars, right, Yes, But so this is
Speaker 2: the bit that I'm kind of because this felt like
Speaker 2: everyone I saw today and then also everyone I saw
Speaker 2: on the street when I was walking around, like they
Speaker 2: just leave the lanyard on. Yeah, Like it's not a
Speaker 2: thing where I mean, it's like no one wants to
Speaker 2: be I guess maybe they don't want to send the
Speaker 2: message like I'm here to party. They're like, no, I'm
Speaker 2: here to.
Speaker 3: Yes, so they want to send the message to the
Speaker 3: actual conference, right.
Speaker 2: I'm here, no fun please.
Speaker 3: I do like that with the.
Speaker 4: Lanyard and then the people with the big plastic cups. Yeah,
Speaker 4: sort of like that contrast is beautiful thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And so the idea of those people being together,
Speaker 2: that there's going to be like someone that's got like
Speaker 2: a thing on that's just like you know, like Shensen
Speaker 2: Robotic corps. And then there's also just another guy that's
Speaker 2: wearing like a t bow Broncos jersey.
Speaker 1: But what's great is you are right describing what happens tomorrow,
Speaker 1: which isick. Thursday is the day when Vegas and CS
Speaker 1: truly can buy because it's the general public, but it's
Speaker 1: also the people that come to Vegas on Thursdays, and
Speaker 1: they are a rich tapestry of people. They are beautiful creation.
Speaker 1: Sadly the football season is over because had this happened,
Speaker 1: have we had like the Chargers Raiders game.
Speaker 3: You've got like a team and I said, this is
Speaker 3: a Raiders fan.
Speaker 1: I don't know if there are Raiders fans who listen
Speaker 1: to this podcast, but it gets better for other teams now.
Speaker 1: I wish the Raiders fans and the various transient fan
Speaker 1: bases that come in greater number than Raiders fans here.
Speaker 1: I wish they'd have met, but really just people coming
Speaker 1: to Vegas in like the first working week of January,
Speaker 1: meeting with the people made to come here due to
Speaker 1: job is. It's going to be great. You're going to
Speaker 1: see a very special kind of Vegas. I can't wait
Speaker 1: to hear.
Speaker 2: I had a nice experience of just kind of like
Speaker 2: drifting by the sports book earlier today and it's still yeah,
Speaker 2: just the one because I was, you know, wandering around
Speaker 2: the floor. There's a lot of you know, this is
Speaker 2: a again hadn't eaten very much. There's like a bunch
Speaker 2: of really name brand Italian restaurants in this hotel. Unfortunately,
Speaker 2: there's also eighty thousand people attending this conference, so it
Speaker 2: wasn't like you can't walk into Jelina and be like,
Speaker 2: I'd love to eat at the bar. Like you can
Speaker 2: tell them that and they'll be like, that's great. A
Speaker 2: lot of people would love to eat it. So yeah,
Speaker 2: but the uh, the sports book area was like that
Speaker 2: felt like a Cees free zone because the only things
Speaker 2: that you can watch right now are like it's Big
Speaker 2: Ten Conference play basketball. It's like the USC and Maryland. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I also there's not a single person going to the
Speaker 1: Consumer Electronics show who can do anything to any of
Speaker 1: the guys in the sports book who are there.
Speaker 3: Specific like the day Traders. The ones were like okay
Speaker 3: and say Men's spot volleyball, I've got my my mortgage
Speaker 3: payment for this month. This one. You come and talk
Speaker 3: to him about the computer, he will punch through. He'll
Speaker 3: do a fist in the North Star thing.
Speaker 2: Actually, a robot that cleans your pool, doesn't that beat all? Unfortunately,
Speaker 2: if Bowling Green doesn't score seventy one points in this
Speaker 2: Ohio Valley Conference.
Speaker 4: Game, is it really possible for a person to really
Speaker 4: fully be both a sportsman and a technology fan. I
Speaker 4: feel like yes, at the end of the day, I
Speaker 4: am that. Yeah, I love basic you identify as the
Speaker 4: time Baseball.
Speaker 1: I'm doing a baseball prospectives column about the Mets. You
Speaker 1: don't know really, Yeah, yeah, I probably should have told
Speaker 1: you getting placed in New York.
Speaker 3: Anyway, we need to talk.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know that's okay, cooler, but no, it is
Speaker 1: possible because they actually both have some similarities. Obsession with
Speaker 1: weird numbers, obsession with weird guys, and in general, a
Speaker 1: complete lack of progress, despite it seeming like there should
Speaker 1: be one, right, the.
Speaker 2: More sophisticated it gets. Somehow, also the dumber and worse
Speaker 2: it gets. Yeah, yeah, that makes sense.
Speaker 1: But also the problem is they start in very different neighborhoods.
Speaker 1: It's very rare that someone who's a big tech person
Speaker 1: and you start that usually because you haven't got any
Speaker 1: other options. And then there's the sports people who usually
Speaker 1: get into that because they can move at speed or
Speaker 1: do things with their hands. Those those are two different points.
Speaker 1: I only came there because I'm magnificent, but is a
Speaker 1: very different thing. Nevertheless, one of the reasons I brought
Speaker 1: David Hay was I believe it's a similars. I think
Speaker 1: the skill set for sports jeneraism applies very well to
Speaker 1: tech for that reason.
Speaker 2: Well, certainly it depends on what kind of version, because
Speaker 2: I think that's an interesting question of like can you
Speaker 2: be a fan of both? And I think that it's
Speaker 2: I am a sports fan, you know, I don't know
Speaker 2: that I would say that I'm like a technology fan,
Speaker 2: but I am. I find both of them interesting in
Speaker 2: the same sort of ways because they all sort of
Speaker 2: like point back to the same human aspirations and then
Speaker 2: also like frailties, bloopers, yeah, so on and so forth.
Speaker 4: But being interested in something and being a fan to
Speaker 4: the extent that that is the defining characteristic of your personality.
Speaker 3: Oh okay, these are different.
Speaker 2: And I think that's the bit that I wanted to
Speaker 2: kind of like try to figure out, because I think
Speaker 2: there's people that are fans of technology.
Speaker 4: Yeah, to the show tomorrow and people you will see them,
Speaker 4: That's what you will hear the things that they say,
Speaker 4: and they're not the things that normal people say.
Speaker 2: That's something that I've been kind of like struggling with
Speaker 2: again from my like you know, everybody that is online
Speaker 2: or that reads too much or you know, cares too
Speaker 2: much about too many stupid things or whatever, Like, I
Speaker 2: have had to think about technology a lot like everybody else.
Speaker 2: And yet like, the thing that was interesting to me
Speaker 2: about the like the Adrian Dittman saga for instance, is
Speaker 2: that there I know that there are people that are
Speaker 2: like not just you know that they think that Elon
Speaker 2: Musk is a cool guy, or they like that he's
Speaker 2: you know, dedicated to finally telling the truth about minorities.
Speaker 2: But I think that there's also something to do it
Speaker 2: where there's people that like are fans of him the
Speaker 2: way that like people yelling like it's in the hole
Speaker 2: when like Tiger Woods hits the ball, like people that
Speaker 2: are fans at that level just but they basically are
Speaker 2: like they've removed a lot of the higher level stuff
Speaker 2: from their brain and their just cavemen.
Speaker 3: Just explain the Adrian Dittman thing. If you don't know,
Speaker 3: don't do it.
Speaker 5: There is.
Speaker 1: There is a guy who sounds just like Elon Musk
Speaker 1: and appears to have all his beliefs and talk exactly
Speaker 1: like and then occasionally say he is Elon Musk, who
Speaker 1: is not Elon Musk. He is potentially a weird, strangely
Speaker 1: jacked German Man. And this account is called Adrian Ditman.
Speaker 1: And I don't even know what to believe anymore, But
Speaker 1: nevertheless it appears that it's just a strange man. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's still like a Wallowigi situation. Apparently Walluigi is not
Speaker 1: actually like related to Warrio, Like he's just a weird
Speaker 1: guy that met Warrio.
Speaker 3: Again, I'm not saying Warrio correctly. Someone's gonna fucking say that.
Speaker 3: And I have to deal with is.
Speaker 4: A related thing though, what you're talking about about Tesla fan, right,
Speaker 4: So I feel like a lot of people who are
Speaker 4: recently coming to this Elon Musk is a bad guy
Speaker 4: kind of coming in with the sort of political, you know,
Speaker 4: approach to it. What you've missed was many many, many
Speaker 4: years of this incredible online movement and like, I follow
Speaker 4: it very close to because I had never seen anything
Speaker 4: like it in cars, Like, it's just people are passionate
Speaker 4: about cars. People like when the bailout was happening, I
Speaker 4: was sort of my first story, and people would be like,
Speaker 4: you hate General Motors, and you know, we're General Motors family,
Speaker 4: and like there was some of that stuff, but this
Speaker 4: was totally different because you know, it was the seed
Speaker 4: of the personal cult of Elon Musk. But then there
Speaker 4: were all of these sorts of like techno ideological, sort
Speaker 4: of neo modernist, you know, kind of ideology that was
Speaker 4: just sort of all wrapped into it. And what was
Speaker 4: interesting is is that it really pulled together people from
Speaker 4: from both sides of that was resually interesting to me,
Speaker 4: both sides of the of the sort of cultural war
Speaker 4: and sort of partisan divide in the country could find
Speaker 4: things about that that they liked. And it wasn't until
Speaker 4: Elon Musk decided I need to pick one side or
Speaker 4: the other that all of a sudden, people were like,
Speaker 4: holy shit and so like. So if you got to
Speaker 4: like Tesla subreddits for example, now like yeah, no, I
Speaker 4: know what normal person would, but you don't. You don't
Speaker 4: see you don't see this whole time religion anymore. The
Speaker 4: only place to really see it online is the SpaceX ones.
Speaker 4: The space people are kind of like insular and they
Speaker 4: they don't like politics, don't touch them, like, they just ignore.
Speaker 4: It doesn't matter to them. But with the Tesla one,
Speaker 4: we've just exited this really fascinating period where you know,
Speaker 4: this cult and again it's not just a cult. It
Speaker 4: was a stock pumping thing and there's all the damage.
Speaker 4: I won't get into all the details of it, but
Speaker 4: but the important thing was, like there was this moment
Speaker 4: where people woke up and realized, wait, holy holy shit,
Speaker 4: Like I have a trans kid, and I just supported
Speaker 4: like one of the biggest trans people, like not just
Speaker 4: supported went online every single day, found anybody making any
Speaker 4: criticisms of Tesla and and spending all day attacking them,
Speaker 4: Like I endured like years and years and years of justice,
Speaker 4: like relentless, and like they would take shifts come in waves,
Speaker 4: and a new guy would decide this was gonna be
Speaker 4: his thing, and he'd build his little crew and and
Speaker 4: go out wrecking. Like a whole lot of stuff happened online,
Speaker 4: and you know, people shouldn't have paid attention to it,
Speaker 4: but it's really important context because it shows that like
Speaker 4: the dynamics that people can point to as being bad
Speaker 4: in a partisan sense, they they fall prey to them
Speaker 4: when you strip away that partisan framework that allows you,
Speaker 4: that gives you that sort of like moral you know, compass.
Speaker 1: But the thing I've noticed about these kind of techno
Speaker 1: enthusiasts is they don't seem to enjoy the computer.
Speaker 3: They don't like the computer.
Speaker 1: So they don't have any joy of even a faster
Speaker 1: phone or a new graphics card.
Speaker 2: These This is actually a problem I have with sech
Speaker 2: what's the the appeal? Then?
Speaker 5: Is it a stock price thing?
Speaker 3: It is? I think what it is is it's like thing,
Speaker 3: it's like the game.
Speaker 2: That's another type of sports fandom too, is basically GM
Speaker 2: stand stuff. I think it's where you're like excited when
Speaker 2: your team gets under the salary cap.
Speaker 3: Wait, but is there a no No.
Speaker 1: I think I think what it is is the it's
Speaker 1: an identity thing. It's when gamergain and things of that
Speaker 1: nature happened. What I know, and I've been a gamer since.
Speaker 1: I'm like way too yet, like ten, and I love gaming.
Speaker 1: I fucking I in my darkest times, I play like
Speaker 1: Hades or something. I just put a few hours and
Speaker 1: I genuinely feel better, like engaging in my mind. It
Speaker 1: makes me feel some industry. I think a lot of
Speaker 1: people listening to this feel the same way about games.
Speaker 1: And then there are people who were just like, well,
Speaker 1: gaming was my fucking thing, and now the womans are
Speaker 1: in it, and now the wokeness is in it because
Speaker 1: they don't really give a shit about the actual gaming.
Speaker 1: It's just an identity thing for them. It's just this
Speaker 1: is a thing that made me special, and now someone else.
Speaker 3: Is weighing in.
Speaker 1: I don't really believe in anything, ye, And so there
Speaker 1: are people who are test the stands who I just
Speaker 1: think are just like, wow, it's my it's a sports team.
Speaker 1: It's I don't even watch the games. I go on
Speaker 1: ESPN and I click on the box score, and then
Speaker 1: I actually there's a great tweet about this where it's
Speaker 1: just like going on ESPN and looking at the box
Speaker 1: score and arguing with people, which is funny. But I
Speaker 1: think these people are like, well, Elon Musk is the
Speaker 1: kind of guy I want to feel. I want to
Speaker 1: be like that guy. I want to stand form like
Speaker 1: nothing but be very angry and rich all the time
Speaker 1: and believe in nothing. Because Elon Musk seems completely fucking joyless.
Speaker 5: This is a half formed thought and it may be bad,
Speaker 5: but this.
Speaker 3: Never stunt may make.
Speaker 5: So I guess you know, you would think like fandom
Speaker 5: of a a tech company. You're an Apple fan boy
Speaker 5: or Tesla fan boy, right h while yeah, analogous to
Speaker 5: UH sports team and fanboyism. But then there's Elon Musk
Speaker 5: fanboyism or Steve jobs fist. That's a person. Is there
Speaker 5: an equivalent to that in sports?
Speaker 2: Like?
Speaker 5: Are people fanboying out over a person?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I mean to a certain extent, although I think
Speaker 2: that it depends. I mean I think that like there's
Speaker 2: individual sports, Yes, there are people that like I mean,
Speaker 2: one of the things that I remember being struck by
Speaker 2: when we go to the US Open most summers, when
Speaker 2: we can figure out how to do it when Roger
Speaker 2: Federer was still playing that there's like a hat that
Speaker 2: you can wear that just has r F on it,
Speaker 2: like in an inner line fucking like the Dodgers logo.
Speaker 2: And they're just like people that they're basically wearing like
Speaker 2: a Roger Federer, like just Roger Federer pajamas to the
Speaker 2: Roger Federer match, or he's not even playing, but they're
Speaker 2: wearing their Roger Federer hat because they just that's when
Speaker 2: they think of tennis, they think of Roger Federer.
Speaker 1: It's like I saw a guy on a Cowboys jersey
Speaker 1: at a ratous game. Yeah, Cowboys were not playing.
Speaker 2: Yes, And that is I mean, that's a classic Cowboys
Speaker 2: fan move too, where it's just sort of well, I
Speaker 2: mean not in the sense they just yeah, you're correct
Speaker 2: in assessing that as being like a fucked up thing
Speaker 2: to do, but it is also yeah, but it is
Speaker 2: also it's Cowboys fan stuff. But I think that that's
Speaker 2: an interesting distinction because the idea of being like, there's
Speaker 2: all these different ways to be stupid about sports, right
Speaker 2: that there's like and a lot of it does sort
Speaker 2: of have its own political valence, even if it doesn't
Speaker 2: fully land like you know that. One of the things
Speaker 2: I've been thinking about this because the college football playoffs
Speaker 2: are going on that uh, the SEC Conference, which you
Speaker 2: don't know, like is in the southeast of the United States,
Speaker 2: so it's like kind of these like super red states
Speaker 2: with a college football is a big part of their identity.
Speaker 2: Oftentimes these are states that don't have professional teams in them,
Speaker 2: and it was a thing for a while. Less the
Speaker 2: case this year because the SEC weirdly had a super
Speaker 2: shit year and is basically like done for the college
Speaker 2: football season, where if like if Alabama was beating Illinois,
Speaker 2: fans would not and Alabama fans were there, they would
Speaker 2: not necessarily do a Bama related chant, they would chant SEC,
Speaker 2: which is basically like their way of being like, you're
Speaker 2: getting your asses kicked right now by a state that
Speaker 2: is like, you know, Republican trifecta in the legislature, like
Speaker 2: Tommy Tarberville is our senator. Like that's the bit that
Speaker 2: I feel like there is like an identity politics aspect
Speaker 2: of it where they're lording it over it like and
Speaker 2: it is a regional thing.
Speaker 5: Like red versus blue, like tech company.
Speaker 1: Oh that's a good one. Now it's red versus daka red.
Speaker 1: I think no, that was a point when I think
Speaker 1: people thought Apple was the nice one, and they are
Speaker 1: by comparison now, which is not a good thing. I
Speaker 1: think Facebook is the one that weirdly people thought was
Speaker 1: blue but was redder than all of them combined.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I think it's just a question.
Speaker 1: Google Google, Google was the nice one for a while.
Speaker 1: They did the it gets better thing, and now they
Speaker 1: do it gets worse.
Speaker 2: And I gather they were also like all in their way,
Speaker 2: like culturally like it was like they were good employers,
Speaker 2: they were inclusive.
Speaker 3: And whatever, and it really is were ye think pretending?
Speaker 4: I mean I think so. So fandom it gives you
Speaker 4: a sort of like personality prosthetic right then sense of
Speaker 4: a sense of community, and I think I think those
Speaker 4: are like universal across most fandoms. I think what tech
Speaker 4: offered so and I just use Tesla as the example
Speaker 4: of that, and it may not be as broadly, you know,
Speaker 4: but what it gave, what it added to that that
Speaker 4: basic fandom package was two things. There is, there was
Speaker 4: a growing social capital to be gained from being someone
Speaker 4: who could speak confidently about like this is what the
Speaker 4: future is going to be and like Elon Musk gives
Speaker 4: the patron saint of that right, He's shown how much
Speaker 4: power just doing that even yeah, and people realized all
Speaker 4: they had to do was copy, just repeat what he
Speaker 4: said and say it with the same confidence. And people
Speaker 4: be like, whoa, this guy knows what he's talking about.
Speaker 4: And and you know, Elon must says so, and and
Speaker 4: you get a couple of other little fastil arguments to
Speaker 4: go a wrong with that. The third thing and this
Speaker 4: I'm curious if this is maybe where these things are
Speaker 4: converging that The other thing is is the stock thing
Speaker 4: right where you could buy the stock and then now
Speaker 4: you have financial incentive to go out and proselytize and
Speaker 4: attack people critics, pump the thing, you know, repeat the narrative.
Speaker 4: And I wonder if gambling and like the rise of
Speaker 4: gambling is is maybe starting to add that into the sports.
Speaker 2: I think there's an aspect of that. I think the
Speaker 2: bit that is interesting to me about when you were
Speaker 2: talking about how like once you are a tesla like stockholder,
Speaker 2: that like the idea that that is functionally now like
Speaker 2: a meme stock with Elon as the load bearing meme
Speaker 2: at the center of it. And the fact that the
Speaker 2: cars are you know, decreasing in quality and maybe also
Speaker 2: decreasing in popularity and sales. Yeah, kind of doesn't matter
Speaker 2: that Like if the stock stays high, you're doing all right.
Speaker 2: But in that case, it's like you're actually in some ways,
Speaker 2: like when you're going out there and you know, spending
Speaker 2: your leisure time being a fucking online shooter for Elon Musk,
Speaker 2: you're also advocating for yourself in some ways, like that's
Speaker 2: your portfolios.
Speaker 4: In the In the really early days of what we
Speaker 4: were talking about this Tesla online sort of phenomenon, there
Speaker 4: was really one website, the forum, an old school you
Speaker 4: know forum that we all know and love that was
Speaker 4: really so it was the main time Tesla Motor Club
Speaker 4: and it was like kind of the main one. There
Speaker 4: was a subreddit, but started out really small. This was
Speaker 4: the place, and a lot of the website, you know,
Speaker 4: they were like talk about the company, you talk about Elon,
Speaker 4: you know, and then as cars came out, you know,
Speaker 4: so you know, and and and the ownership was sort
Speaker 4: of the main part of the thing of the site.
Speaker 4: At least if you look at, you know, the list
Speaker 4: of all the sub forums and so people were on
Speaker 4: there and they wanted an open exchange of information because
Speaker 4: they had problems with their cars and they want to
Speaker 4: understand them and what the fix was and what Tesla
Speaker 4: was doing about them. And that was the main activity
Speaker 4: of this community. It was helping each other out and
Speaker 4: as consumers.
Speaker 3: Ye.
Speaker 4: Now there was another a sub form of this that
Speaker 4: was the Tesla Investors sub forum, and that was it
Speaker 4: looked small, it looked like one little thing, but you
Speaker 4: went there and it was so so so active and
Speaker 4: it had its own radicalizing internally like radicalizing culture. And
Speaker 4: then there was this key point where I and others
Speaker 4: started to write stories based on the the other part
Speaker 4: of the where it's owners wanting this free exchange of
Speaker 4: information and saying, we have this problem, Tesla's not really
Speaker 4: dealing with it.
Speaker 2: And did that bring them into conflict with the investors
Speaker 2: where they were like, can you just keep that in house?
Speaker 4: Exactly what happened there? And it's this fascinating thing because
Speaker 4: Tesla became this fandom that bridged not just like sort
Speaker 4: of political partisan, but like on a fundamental level, the
Speaker 4: divide between capital, like between between management and consumer. Right,
Speaker 4: as a consumer, you want certain things like if you're
Speaker 4: a fan of you want the product to be good.
Speaker 4: You want certain things. As an investor, you want other things. Right,
Speaker 4: you want the quality be as low as possible and
Speaker 4: the marg high, and that comes at the expense of.
Speaker 2: The keep scessarily. Mind if the product is good, but
Speaker 2: it's not as important to you as the others.
Speaker 4: So these two parts of the relationship of any company
Speaker 4: came into came to conflict because it had to be
Speaker 4: one community like the the and capital one. I think
Speaker 4: it's a really interesting thing and this is why Tesla became.
Speaker 4: It went from a company. Is one of the reasons
Speaker 4: that it went from being a company that was sort
Speaker 4: of rooted in really trying to surprise and delight customer,
Speaker 4: Like that was a really fundamental thing. Over time, you've
Speaker 4: seen the cynical stock being part of it has just
Speaker 4: completely consumed and like people who are like who were
Speaker 4: fans of the company are like, wait, where is the
Speaker 4: stuff that I was a fan of? And it's because
Speaker 4: that relationship was they want in capital one and the
Speaker 4: and the consumer lot.
Speaker 5: So this is why sorry, so this is so, this
Speaker 5: is why you have people who's like cars have blown
Speaker 5: up and then they do the interview and they're like,
Speaker 5: I still love Elon Mustok.
Speaker 3: That's exactly right.
Speaker 1: That all goes back to that, and that's where they
Speaker 1: diverge from sports fans.
Speaker 2: Well to a certain extent though, because I think that
Speaker 2: that still is the kind of thing where there's like
Speaker 2: an element of that where like there's different ways to
Speaker 2: be a fan of a team, right, but that I
Speaker 2: think that there is this aspect of it. It's like
Speaker 2: Auburn loses by five touchdowns to Florida Ryan and it's
Speaker 2: like you want to fire the coach, but at the
Speaker 2: same time, you're not like I'm giving up like war Eagle,
Speaker 2: no more like no. It's the sort of thing where
Speaker 2: like that's when you do the like the super psychotic
Speaker 2: fan stuff where it's like, well, now I'm going to
Speaker 2: poison some plants something.
Speaker 5: Or like the Kobe Bryant like I'm willing to overlook
Speaker 5: some stuff.
Speaker 2: Yes, exactly. Can I say one bit so too, because
Speaker 2: you made an interesting point about the gambling aspect of
Speaker 2: it that I wanted to speak on because I think
Speaker 2: that that has but both of you were talking about it,
Speaker 2: I guess, but the the idea of like gambling as
Speaker 2: a type of fandom, I think is like way more.
Speaker 2: There's like a way for if you're a fan of
Speaker 2: a team, right, Like you're giving some bit of your
Speaker 2: leisure time as a person to this thing that you
Speaker 2: can control. It's not a smart decision. Nobody does it
Speaker 2: because it's smart. You know, you do it because it's
Speaker 2: fun and because it's like kind of like a way
Speaker 2: to fill other spots in your life that might otherwise
Speaker 2: be quiet with noise, which is reasonable, like what are
Speaker 2: what are any of us doing? Who is listening to this?
Speaker 2: That is not doing that? But there is also this
Speaker 2: other part of it where it's like it's an emotional commitment.
Speaker 2: It's like it's a thing about caring. And I think
Speaker 2: that gambling to me feels more like for one thing,
Speaker 2: you are the people that are doing that. I think
Speaker 2: it is more of like what you were talking about
Speaker 2: in terms of the like the Tesla Investors part of
Speaker 2: the forum where it is basically like it and everyone
Speaker 2: that gambles on sports pretty much everybody loses. The people
Speaker 2: that are professionals, the people that are down in the
Speaker 2: sports book, like if they're really, really, really good, they
Speaker 2: still lose forty six percent of the time. Or whatever,
Speaker 2: you know, and the people that are just flushing three
Speaker 2: hundred dollars down the draft kings app every Sunday are
Speaker 2: not good at it, but they're like that aspect of
Speaker 2: it is not It's the opposite of fandom to me.
Speaker 2: Of course, if you're ESPN or the or your NFL,
Speaker 2: you know, executives, their money spends the same. It doesn't
Speaker 2: really matter if they're watching. They're watching. If they care,
Speaker 2: they care, like and you know, the money that you're
Speaker 2: getting from your partnerships with draft kings and stuff that
Speaker 2: also spends the same. But I think it's the opposite
Speaker 2: of fandom in like in an emotional sense that it
Speaker 2: is like it's not just transactional, but that it is
Speaker 2: sort of taking all of the stuff that you would
Speaker 2: have cared about in this sort of more communal way
Speaker 2: and making it about yourself, your experience of it, and
Speaker 2: that like and that like goes and that you know,
Speaker 2: I think there's a whole sort of like newish thread
Speaker 2: of that in the culture that has been enabled by technology,
Speaker 2: not just in terms of being able to gamble on
Speaker 2: your phone, but that's to me, that's cryptocurrency speculation. It's
Speaker 2: the same adset.
Speaker 1: I think they all come back to a fundamental point,
Speaker 1: which is a lack of control that we all feel
Speaker 1: over our lives. The idea that we can now gamble
Speaker 1: like anywhere and we're gonna have a refa some from
Speaker 1: a sixty minute drill my podcast on football, which I've
Speaker 1: never talked about.
Speaker 3: They love this.
Speaker 1: So it's this thing of like, oh, I can have
Speaker 1: some control over my destiny. I can now gamble like
Speaker 1: the gamblers in the same way that people use the
Speaker 1: trade and then lost the shit ton of money.
Speaker 3: So we've got to sports books.
Speaker 1: The idea of opening sports books up at this scale.
Speaker 1: The only thing worse than it is the thing that
Speaker 1: Robin Hood did, which was opening up the idea of
Speaker 1: options trading to everyone. But I think it activates the
Speaker 1: same thing, where it's this desperation for control in least
Speaker 1: control in a way in a situation where you're being
Speaker 1: obviously controlled, and the same way those odds are so
Speaker 1: precisely calculated, in the same way that like whatever pricing
Speaker 1: you're getting an options is going to be calculated by
Speaker 1: the hedge funds that are extra millimeters closer to the
Speaker 1: stock exchange, so they can activate that trade and it
Speaker 1: is like it's the but it's a fandom. You don't
Speaker 1: give a shit about these companies. You give a shit
Speaker 1: about money and go up and you feel like you
Speaker 1: have control because you're smart, but the right side.
Speaker 4: But they're not selling it as gamble because you like money,
Speaker 4: and this is like a pretty critical thing they're they're
Speaker 4: they're presenting it as a way. It's like I've been
Speaker 4: looking at ads actually around there's a lot so many
Speaker 4: sports going to say, and they're all sort of like
Speaker 4: you're watching sports anyway, you enjoy it anyway.
Speaker 2: Just to get in the game.
Speaker 4: It's a little enhancement and and yeah, it's an enhancement
Speaker 4: to the core fan experience. And what I think is
Speaker 4: in common here with the Tesla thing is that Tesla's
Speaker 4: whole pitch was these contradictions can all work together, right,
Speaker 4: not just the the You know, consumers and investors are
Speaker 4: both going to benefit at no cost to each other, right,
Speaker 4: there's no trade off there. But then also like you know,
Speaker 4: venture capital can fund environmental transformation and there's no trade
Speaker 4: offs there. You know, government doesn't have to get involved.
Speaker 3: We can do this all getting too complex, and I
Speaker 3: think it's just invest in the future.
Speaker 4: That's what I'm saying for. The lesson out of all
Speaker 4: of it is that people desperately want to believe that
Speaker 4: you can you can have your cake. Needed to that
Speaker 4: fundamental trade offs, And in both of these cases, the
Speaker 4: trade off that always wins is the money. Whatever it
Speaker 4: is that you think you can reconcile with some kind
Speaker 4: of financial incentive over time it's like drugs or something else,
Speaker 4: like overtime, the financial incentive not with everybody, but like
Speaker 4: over the aggregate, it wins. And that's what we're seen
Speaker 4: with time.
Speaker 1: It's being framed as freedom though it's like you can
Speaker 1: do this. You're already doing sports watching, why not make sports?
Speaker 4: Just make it a little better as a hustle and
Speaker 4: you won't use anything, and that's what you identify. I
Speaker 4: think you do something.
Speaker 1: But I think the overarching theme of both is it
Speaker 1: is selling you the idea of a con that you
Speaker 1: will have industry over something that you have that you
Speaker 1: are actively being controlled, and you you are being fucked with,
Speaker 1: and you're like, I'm fucking back and you're not. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you use the draft Kings code. There is not a
Speaker 1: better offline one I'm terrified of gambling.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well the aspect of it too, that is like
Speaker 2: the other bit of it that it seems like inimical
Speaker 2: to Like the fun part of being a fan is that,
Speaker 2: like when you see people talk about it like that,
Speaker 2: the or generally, like the discourse surrounding like gambling is
Speaker 2: that it makes you like sports less because you're liking
Speaker 2: them in this different way. Yeah, because you're participating it
Speaker 2: in this and this is something that you know, we
Speaker 2: have a couple of stories out at the factor that
Speaker 2: being written not written yet, that are basically about like
Speaker 2: the way that athletes absorb this new sort of obsession
Speaker 2: with gambling, opening that up has, you know, and by
Speaker 2: making it possible for people to you know, whatever, put
Speaker 2: money on whatever, like somebody getting more or less than
Speaker 2: one and a half assists in an NBA game, like
Speaker 2: just a building a parlay around the performances of bench
Speaker 2: players in some ways, like you know, like obviously technologically,
Speaker 2: I suppose it's a feat to make this possible because
Speaker 2: you used to have to literally come to Las Vegas
Speaker 2: to do that sort of thing traditionally. Boundaries, yes, and then,
Speaker 2: but what's weird about it now is that like by
Speaker 2: sort of putting in play everybody in every game in
Speaker 2: all of these different ways. There's a lot of people
Speaker 2: that you know, like you're a professional athlete, like you're
Speaker 2: a public figure anyway, Like people are gonna recognize you
Speaker 2: just because you're like taller and more buff than anybody
Speaker 2: else in the you know, restaurant that you're in. But
Speaker 2: there's a lot of these dudes that like otherwise would
Speaker 2: be more or less getting left alone, that are just
Speaker 2: sort of like when you miss that free throw, you
Speaker 2: fuck me out of twenty five hundred dollars, and I'm
Speaker 2: coming to your house and I'm going to push your
Speaker 2: kids around, and like that's happening to like people in
Speaker 2: like minor leaguers. Tom Hakimer, you are on the staff,
Speaker 2: recently told me he had friends I had that experience
Speaker 2: happened to him in spring in spring training games in baseball,
Speaker 2: because you get like the real degenerates can bet on
Speaker 2: stuff like that and so.
Speaker 5: And there's probably like a shame barrier when you had
Speaker 5: to even if you could come to the casino, like
Speaker 5: you wouldn't roll up and be like, yeah, put this
Speaker 5: parlay with Blake Korm and samaj p Ryans.
Speaker 2: Exactly what are you doing when you're like yeah, but
Speaker 2: then you're like googling, like where does Sama GP Ryan live?
Speaker 2: Like how fine? You know, like that's not like at
Speaker 2: this point you can find him online. You place the
Speaker 2: bet online, like you can do all you do like
Speaker 2: three or four totally sociopathic things from your couch.
Speaker 1: And if you are looking to do one of those,
Speaker 1: we will have some advertisers off to this. But David,
Speaker 1: where can people find you?
Speaker 2: Defector dot com, the website, the Distraction podcast also affiliated
Speaker 2: with Defector.
Speaker 1: You're gonna be saying that a lot on this camp. Wait,
Speaker 1: I would not get exhausted. You are just at the beginning.
Speaker 1: Ed needam iwackon they find.
Speaker 4: You, Niedermeyer dot io and theonics dot com.
Speaker 5: Mister Newman go to Jared Newman dot com and sign
Speaker 5: up fort.
Speaker 3: Go to Google.
Speaker 1: Type in ways to give ed zetra on money and
Speaker 1: then click every link There isn't.
Speaker 2: Actually, heypen Blake Koorham house photos.
Speaker 4: I want to see the AI summary of that one.
Speaker 1: Okay, So just just to be clear, playing Madden, I've
Speaker 1: been feeding the draft classes in I always take Blake Koram,
Speaker 1: but also Trey Benson was way better and anyway, I
Speaker 1: need to stop this right now. If you want to
Speaker 1: spend some money or some shit, listen to a podcast.
Speaker 1: I guess follow the following end, click it listen. I
Speaker 1: don't know how you listen to these things. I don't
Speaker 1: listen to podcasts. I'm at Zitra and you can find
Speaker 1: me on the internet. Okay, so we've now returned to
Speaker 1: the third section of this part of the podcast, and
Speaker 1: it's important to add I have started to experience yes
Speaker 1: brain myself, which means that I'm just thinking because Jared
Speaker 1: said it the phrase google juice, So just think and
Speaker 1: say that for a while.
Speaker 3: We're, of course enjoyed.
Speaker 1: Jesus Christ, we aren't getting joined. Were joined. Just keep it, Matt,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry. By Edward and Graso Junior. We now have
Speaker 1: three ads on one podcast, not good.
Speaker 9: Growing, more powerful any other as any other ads that
Speaker 9: c s want.
Speaker 3: Just join us Ultron. Let's ed Vultron. Jesus you should
Speaker 3: do a.
Speaker 2: Segment.
Speaker 3: Is that a reference to something that you know, like
Speaker 3: in the you know, crunchberries.
Speaker 5: I know what you're talking about.
Speaker 3: Yeah, okay, well yeah, somebody someone's gonna email this to me.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna look bad.
Speaker 1: David Rath of Defector is joining us, and of course Ednimyer,
Speaker 1: the car expert.
Speaker 3: Hello, my man loves wheels. Jared Newman, freelance journalist, tech journalist, advisorator.
Speaker 5: Oh thank you for calling that out.
Speaker 3: Yeah you could have also when I asked you what
Speaker 3: you do now? Sorry, I mean, I'm sorry for you.
Speaker 3: Let's be honest.
Speaker 1: But the reason I bring up ces brain is because
Speaker 1: there is something very concussive about the Consumer Electronics Show.
Speaker 1: And part of the reasons I did this, other than
Speaker 1: the fact that I love podcasting, is because there is
Speaker 1: a defined effect of this show. And it doesn't matter
Speaker 1: whether you've been here a hundred times or two times
Speaker 1: or no times, you experience the same thing because there
Speaker 1: is just something about this place where you come in
Speaker 1: and you're there ostensibly for something real, and then you
Speaker 1: go on to a show floor where most of it
Speaker 1: isn't or might be, and you think, wow, all that
Speaker 1: latent potential. But if you've been here enough times, you
Speaker 1: know that isn't potential. It's just lies.
Speaker 5: This may not be what you're talking about at all,
Speaker 5: but it's fine. But like you know, in swimming, there's
Speaker 5: like the thing where you like, you know, you train
Speaker 5: with like heavy stuff on right, and then you like
Speaker 5: you like shear all that and like shave all your
Speaker 5: Don't ask me how I know this, you know, and
Speaker 5: you feel like you're like in the in the in
Speaker 5: the clear. Okay. But when I on this podcast and
Speaker 5: when we've hung out after, you know, later in CS
Speaker 5: and previous year, right, you know, I'm not really a
Speaker 5: big partier or I don't even drink caffeine during the show,
Speaker 5: and then I come here and I have a drink
Speaker 5: that fills made with black blood of the earth, and it's.
Speaker 1: Like the I guess it's like the opposite, the opposite of.
Speaker 5: Like of like preparing for a meat and like tapering
Speaker 5: down and being ready to Yeah, it's like making yourself feel.
Speaker 3: No, no, okay, this actually does make sense. I don't
Speaker 3: know it does.
Speaker 1: There is also something very like self hommy about CS,
Speaker 1: in the sense that like last g last times at
Speaker 1: c S, I always find a play is to like
Speaker 1: drive myself insane. Now, this year was just like trapped Headstrong.
Speaker 1: But there was one year where I went and all
Speaker 1: I listened to for hours on the LVCC floor was
Speaker 1: party rock Anthem by LMFAO and Other World from the
Speaker 1: Final Fantasy ten soundtrack. That's when you fight Jecked. Any
Speaker 1: listeners you love Final Fantasy tex.
Speaker 2: You are trying to dissociate, Yeah, I don't.
Speaker 1: Really tend to associate when I get here, so just
Speaker 1: like it's just the pain begins. But I think that
Speaker 1: there's just something weird about the show. And I realize
Speaker 1: I've now described at length just the way I terrorized myself.
Speaker 3: We're just coming here. You're not like you're there for
Speaker 3: a job, but you're surrounded by shit where like people
Speaker 3: are like, my job is kind of lying, My job
Speaker 3: is kind of suggesting I might do something.
Speaker 4: But eh, so I actually what I like about saying
Speaker 4: I'll put the positives me in on this. What I
Speaker 4: like about ces the value I get out of it
Speaker 4: is that like when you do if what you're trying
Speaker 4: to do is discern between what might be real and
Speaker 4: what might might not be In technology, right in an
Speaker 4: emerging tech you don't have a lot to go on.
Speaker 4: You're dealing with companies that control information like crazy, Yeah,
Speaker 4: and that's what that's what you need to go on. Uh,
Speaker 4: on the Internet, they have so much control over that
Speaker 4: it's what you know. Uh, when you come here, you
Speaker 4: have an opportunity to exercise like your human faculties of
Speaker 4: like in person, right, you get the vibe of like
Speaker 4: companies and people and things and to me, because a
Speaker 4: lot of times that's all you have to go on,
Speaker 4: Like that's a journey secret. Yeah, and you have to
Speaker 4: like develop this skill of just like does this do
Speaker 4: these people? How they talk about the product, how they
Speaker 4: talk about the company, how they talk about their plans?
Speaker 4: Is this feel like something that's like real smart people?
Speaker 4: And like the more you talk to people, the more
Speaker 4: you engage with stuff, the more you talk to again,
Speaker 4: both the smart people and the frauds. You have to
Speaker 4: talk to the frauds. You have to engage with them,
Speaker 4: you have to look at them and you and in
Speaker 4: a lot of ways, coming here for me is the
Speaker 4: only way to actually exercise and develop this disability to
Speaker 4: like kind of intuitively discern. And again it's horrifying that
Speaker 4: journalism kind of depends on that in a fundamental way.
Speaker 3: In this don't feel like CS covers this in that
Speaker 3: way though the coverage so rarely reflects that that kind
Speaker 3: of situation. There's just like here's the ten fucking things
Speaker 3: I saw at CS There's the AI fridge and the
Speaker 3: other AI fridge, and the Bachelor of Dishwasher.
Speaker 4: But it's basically what I'm saying is it's basically impossible
Speaker 4: to just show up look this thing and say yet,
Speaker 4: like you have to really develop the skills over time, right,
Speaker 4: It's it's training data. Well, you're just collecting training data.
Speaker 4: It doesn't mean you can immediately say this is real,
Speaker 4: this isn't. You have to build it up over time.
Speaker 5: There's a weird thing where, you know, especially if you're
Speaker 5: a press and you're you're going to see, you know,
Speaker 5: an exhibit or something, and somebody will will talk to
Speaker 5: you about the product, and there's always this like moment
Speaker 5: where you're trying to figure out like, Okay, was this
Speaker 5: a person that was paid to be at the booth
Speaker 5: and was told a bunch of stuff or is it
Speaker 5: a marketing person or is it a product person? And
Speaker 5: you're on the spectrum of like how much does this
Speaker 5: person actually know about the product and can we have
Speaker 5: a real conversation versus like you're feeding me bullshit for
Speaker 5: fifteen minutes.
Speaker 9: I'm also curious you guys who have been here times before,
Speaker 9: do you feel like there's any correlation between the boundaries
Speaker 9: of hype and technical capabilities? Like do you think that
Speaker 9: you know, if you're coming in here expecting and seeing
Speaker 9: a lot of it is hype, A lot of it
Speaker 9: is bullshit that a lot of that is inspired by
Speaker 9: people looking at tech that we have now and hoping
Speaker 9: that they can have some sort of application later, and
Speaker 9: then the boundaries of that grow as the technical capacity
Speaker 9: you could conceivably fib grows or are these like delusions
Speaker 9: or hyper narratives that persist independent of what actually is developing.
Speaker 5: Yeah, Oh boy, I think it's kind of gets to
Speaker 5: like what I was saying earlier about like being pulled
Speaker 5: in both directions, right, because it's like my job being
Speaker 5: here is to like try to ignore that stuff, which
Speaker 5: there's a ton of. We didn't really talk about this,
Speaker 5: but like I feel like I feel like it's like
Speaker 5: AI gaslighting here. Yeah, because like everybody is like saying AI.
Speaker 5: But then you go and like look at the demonstrations
Speaker 5: and it's nothing Like it's just it's stuff that hasn't
Speaker 5: been delivered. Like, Okay, I'll give a specific example, like Intel, right,
Speaker 5: they had a big thing last year about AIPC. AIPC,
Speaker 5: we're putting natural language cross or natural processing units in PCs.
Speaker 5: We're gonna have all these like local on device AI.
Speaker 5: It's gonna enable all these like low latency, amazing private
Speaker 5: applications that you couldn't do with AI and the cloud.
Speaker 5: It's gonna be amazing. That was last year, and now
Speaker 5: I come back this year and they're like still talking
Speaker 5: about AIPC, but nothing has changed. It's all the same,
Speaker 5: like there's no applications yet, and I was like, what,
Speaker 5: what what have you been doing? And it's like that
Speaker 5: when you go everywhere, like you go to Samsung's booth
Speaker 5: and they're talking about AI and TVs and AI this
Speaker 5: and that, and it's like not really anything. And it's
Speaker 5: definitely not like half of it is not like LLLM
Speaker 5: generative AI, which is supposed to be the big thing.
Speaker 5: It's just AI slapped onto algorithms that they've been using,
Speaker 5: and so it's just like very disorienting to try to
Speaker 5: figure out what is what is real AI, and there's
Speaker 5: just really hasn't been that much of it when you
Speaker 5: get down to it.
Speaker 2: That's been my experience of AI in general from the
Speaker 2: outside of it where there's like it just because you
Speaker 2: do hear it a lot like AI gaslighting, I think
Speaker 2: is like the condition of the American consumer in this
Speaker 2: particular moment. And yet at the same time, there's something
Speaker 2: about like when you see it in uh like in
Speaker 2: an ad you know, where they're telling you that it's
Speaker 2: like also it has AI or it's like you know,
Speaker 2: common walking around like telling you about like you know,
Speaker 2: it's like not our fingertips now AI is, So that's great,
Speaker 2: we got that going for it's whatever, any of that shit, Like,
Speaker 2: I discount it because I don't think that I've seen
Speaker 2: an application of it that works or does anything cool.
Speaker 2: But then I've also never been in a position where
Speaker 2: someone has to like another person is like in a
Speaker 2: human body that's in the same space as me, has
Speaker 2: to like look me in the face and be like
Speaker 2: and it has AI in it and that makes it better,
Speaker 2: like and so that part of it is like I'm
Speaker 2: kind of looking forward to that aspect of it tomorrow
Speaker 2: to everyone. Much of what I saw on the floor
Speaker 2: here was like inventions, you know, or it was somebody
Speaker 2: just being like, it's a COVID test but it only
Speaker 2: takes ten minutes to tell you the results instead of
Speaker 2: fifteen or whatever, you know, all, which is like to me,
Speaker 2: that shit's cool, Like I think it's great to invent.
Speaker 2: It's not exciting, but I mean it's exciting to me
Speaker 2: in this sense. But it's like just in you know,
Speaker 2: like again like I'm far enough outside of it that
Speaker 2: it's like it feels less like tech and more like
Speaker 2: you made a thing and you try to sell it,
Speaker 2: which you know that's neat. But then the but I
Speaker 2: haven't been to like the Intel room or like the
Speaker 2: big like Amazon Hall Amazone.
Speaker 5: Like I'll give you another example.
Speaker 1: Well, one thing I must say something that happened to me.
Speaker 1: So regular listeners might know about something called the Smiling Man.
Speaker 1: If you look up Google, it's not real, please look
Speaker 1: at it. So I when I got my ce S
Speaker 1: patch done, I put the Smiling Man on it because
Speaker 1: they'll let you put anything on it.
Speaker 3: And while walking into the Amazon room, the woman woman
Speaker 3: who's doing the security goes, wow, so hot, which, if
Speaker 3: you look up this image is not an appropriate reaction.
Speaker 4: Was that not what you were going for?
Speaker 3: I don't know what the hell I was going for
Speaker 3: that image?
Speaker 6: Mate?
Speaker 3: Anyway, that happened to me.
Speaker 5: Jared had a PR person tell me I was extremely fancy.
Speaker 5: I don't I don't even understand, like how to parse
Speaker 5: that you were in your giant I'm wearing Like what
Speaker 5: I'm wearing now is a bunch of questions.
Speaker 4: You fancy.
Speaker 2: I didn't know I was talking to a fancy guy, like.
Speaker 5: Weird other worldly reactions, you know, interactions. It's hard to.
Speaker 1: Jared, you look great, but you're also in like a
Speaker 1: light blue button down and like blue jeans.
Speaker 2: Were like the blogger uniform. That's how I dress.
Speaker 5: That's what it was, the blogger And I don't think
Speaker 5: it was even like a remark on my clothes. I
Speaker 5: think it was I don't even know whats.
Speaker 2: What was the example you were gonna give them that?
Speaker 2: Y sorry because oh.
Speaker 5: Yeah, okay. So like like Lenovo, right, like they like
Speaker 5: every other PC vendor, like all their stuff is like
Speaker 5: AI and you go to their booth and like that
Speaker 5: they're showing you their new computers. But on the new
Speaker 5: computers is like these half baked like on device AI
Speaker 5: applications cool that are right, not cool, no, no, no,
Speaker 5: but the computers are cool as hell, Like they have
Speaker 5: a they have a laptop where the screen like rolls out,
Speaker 5: which that's cool, Like why and then you're talking about
Speaker 5: AI but like talk about how cool your screen is,
Speaker 5: Like that should be the focus.
Speaker 2: That's totally reasonable conflict for me. I mean, obviously you're
Speaker 2: much more expert in the stuff than me. But to me,
Speaker 2: it's like you made a thing that is cool that
Speaker 2: didn't exist before. Like why do you feel compelled also
Speaker 2: or even to lead with this thing that is like
Speaker 2: it's not vapor where because it like is you know,
Speaker 2: you burn an acre of old growth forest every time
Speaker 2: you generate an image of like warriors pussy, like it's
Speaker 2: like that's real, you know.
Speaker 5: Like, but wos pussy is?
Speaker 2: Really it's very real. It can hurt you.
Speaker 5: I didn't I didn't try it at the booth, so
Speaker 5: I don't know if that's what they're like.
Speaker 3: I just to me though, it's like that.
Speaker 2: We're moving on. We're moving on from bussy. No one's
Speaker 2: saying whissy. It's a serious podcast. I have a serious question.
Speaker 2: You want to have any.
Speaker 5: But that the problem.
Speaker 4: So so what we've been talking about ces brain uh
Speaker 4: And I think one of the things that we have
Speaker 4: to make sure that we let people know my case
Speaker 4: because clearly, like it's some symptoms, yes, it's.
Speaker 3: Life never broken like this before.
Speaker 4: But eventually, the thing that's important for people to understand
Speaker 4: it's not just we've been talking about the absurdity and
Speaker 4: the weirdness and and like trying to figure out what real.
Speaker 4: It's not like a fundamental part that colors all of
Speaker 4: that is just the physical exhaustion bit. That's what makes
Speaker 4: out all time. Yeah, And I'll tell you you get
Speaker 4: a unique perspective on this, and I think it's really
Speaker 4: like an interesting way to think about the whole show
Speaker 4: if you cover mobility, because you come here every year
Speaker 4: and you hear all these brand new things about how
Speaker 4: the way we get around is all going to fundamentally change,
Speaker 4: and like those things are different all the time. Sometimes
Speaker 4: you know, micro little electric bikes are the thing, and
Speaker 4: sometimes autonomous cars and some of these driver's sistants, and
Speaker 4: you know, it's always different. It's all these different things.
Speaker 4: Everyone is promising that this technology is going to fundamentally
Speaker 4: change how you get around, and every time you come here,
Speaker 4: it's getting around getting around Vegas periods. On the Vegas Strip,
Speaker 4: there are three separate rail lines. None of which are connected. Yeah,
Speaker 4: just on the Vegas just on a few blocks of
Speaker 4: the Vegas Strip. And really, for me, like the lesson
Speaker 4: and it's a really important one I think for Cees
Speaker 4: is that like this whole thing is this festival of
Speaker 4: stuff that's promising to fix things, and yet the structural
Speaker 4: issues are what Matt, this is all stuff that doesn't
Speaker 4: address the structural issue. The only way to make getting
Speaker 4: around Las Vegas easier is to fix how it is
Speaker 4: on a structural level. Is a car place. You go
Speaker 4: to the city center. I love the city center on
Speaker 4: the Vegas Strip. They built this thing that's supposed to
Speaker 4: look like a little downtown and there is no way
Speaker 4: as a pedestrian to engage with it. Go check it out.
Speaker 4: It's like the Aria and the Cosmopolitan are It's this
Speaker 4: amazing like American symbol of a city where visually it's
Speaker 4: there and it looks cool, but it's all these like things.
Speaker 4: So cars can go down to the parking lot. It's
Speaker 4: a city for cars. And again, like we're talking about
Speaker 4: what's real and what's bullshit, and and that's all fascinating
Speaker 4: at the end of the day, Like it's kind of
Speaker 4: all bullshit compared to like, like how how we really
Speaker 4: experience things comes down to structural things that tech a
Speaker 4: lot of times, sometimes it can change it in front
Speaker 4: oft of ways, but ninety nine point nine percent of
Speaker 4: the time it's just some little layer on top of these.
Speaker 2: So it can't feel like enough individual product experiences and
Speaker 2: engagements that suddenly makes it city you know, like pedestrian
Speaker 2: friendly or capable of, or it makes it, you know,
Speaker 2: possible for you to get around the city without a
Speaker 2: car or whatever. Like that's a state level intervention. That's
Speaker 2: not the sort of thing where like if you give
Speaker 2: everybody an e bike, suddenly Las Vegas makes sense a car.
Speaker 1: It's also this none of this matts is because Vegas
Speaker 1: is functioning exactly as as it needs to, which is
Speaker 1: much like the tech industry.
Speaker 3: You're trapped within the product and you'll follow its fucking rules.
Speaker 4: Which is why this is the place where we've pioneered
Speaker 4: the you know, most innovative and transformative form of public
Speaker 4: mass transit, which is human driven. Tesla's in a tunnel
Speaker 4: where you need to have like three people at the
Speaker 4: station to make sure that when the drivers pull up,
Speaker 4: they're not running my car. When I was in that
Speaker 4: have you guys, if you haven't experienced that, go oh
Speaker 4: oh no, no, no, do.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, yeah yeah, how can you do it from here?
Speaker 4: It's for free? Yeah no, it's like results Resorts World
Speaker 4: or like around the but look for the stations and
Speaker 4: go in anyway, go anywhere and then come back. But
Speaker 4: just experience. It is so stupid, and it's it's such
Speaker 4: a classic example of like of technology for you.
Speaker 5: Know, and and and just I think what you're kind
Speaker 5: of like hitting on is in technology, like this fundamental
Speaker 5: frustration that I have and probably other people knows as well,
Speaker 5: is like you know, everybody's going after like the flashy
Speaker 5: like AI for example, like the thing that attracts shareholder
Speaker 5: excitement or whatever. But there's all these like structural things
Speaker 5: like I want to pay less for cloud storage, Like
Speaker 5: I don't want every photo I take to hold me hostage.
Speaker 5: Somebody should figure out how to like compete.
Speaker 3: With Google Photos or or like Handwest storage.
Speaker 5: Like yeah, like nobody's nobody's doing the unglamorous shit that
Speaker 5: needs to be fixed because there's this other shiny thing.
Speaker 3: And what's the rock com bubble. It's the fact that
Speaker 3: they need everything to grow it at oh costs and
Speaker 3: they're running out of them, so they're getting crazy.
Speaker 4: Well, and for many years you would come here and
Speaker 4: people the pitch from a lot of these mobility technology
Speaker 4: kind of companies would be, we are going to move
Speaker 4: past the car. We're gonna we're gonna unlock. It was
Speaker 4: it's weird, you know, it's this weird moment where tech
Speaker 4: and sort of progressive urbanist aspiration there there seems to
Speaker 4: be some alignment around it. And the reality is is
Speaker 4: cars are a structural thing. Yea. And that again, like
Speaker 4: when the more tech solutionism right tries to tackle structural things,
Speaker 4: the more it's sort of revealed to the lack of power.
Speaker 4: Like we're surrounded by so much technological power, but you
Speaker 4: see sometimes the limits of that.
Speaker 1: But this is actually the principal dichotomy of Better Offline itself,
Speaker 1: which is that you have companies that ostensibly sell the
Speaker 1: idea that they're fixing problems, but fixing actual problems might
Speaker 1: make them less profitable, and they certainly won't if they
Speaker 1: start fixing those problems grow forever.
Speaker 3: So CS, Yeah, CS is selling the hype.
Speaker 1: And I think for and I said this first CS
Speaker 1: was twenty eleven, so back then you could kind of
Speaker 1: with a straight face believe it.
Speaker 3: You could think the tech industry was going to fix
Speaker 3: some shit, right you.
Speaker 1: Maybe there were more cynical people back then, But back then,
Speaker 1: at least in the media, I was a bit of
Speaker 1: pr baby at the time. You just were like, oh, no,
Speaker 1: the tech industry will work it. I was the early
Speaker 1: days of Facebook. You're like, they're not completely evil. You
Speaker 1: just didn't know at that point. And I think that
Speaker 1: CES has never really graduated from it hasn't really tried
Speaker 1: to adjust to the fact that I think more people
Speaker 1: are like, I don't know about the tech people, and
Speaker 1: I have to wonder how CES changes as the result.
Speaker 5: Yeah, there's a there's a a weird disconnect between like
Speaker 5: the image that CS puts forth in like what you
Speaker 5: have to then go and try to find as a
Speaker 5: journalist covering it.
Speaker 2: So what it's putting forth is basically like, here's the future,
Speaker 2: this is what it's going to look like. Is that
Speaker 2: the idea?
Speaker 3: Ideally?
Speaker 5: Do you remember, well, if you're list, they're the CEES
Speaker 5: slogan was all all on and I remember that. Okay,
Speaker 5: so the CS slogan last year was all on, which
Speaker 5: I guess is a play on all in and like
Speaker 5: all the imagery that they had was like extremely obvious
Speaker 5: AI faces.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, that's some of the things now I am.
Speaker 5: And so like that set the tone right, like there's
Speaker 5: this obviously like unhinged thing that they're putting forth and
Speaker 5: then you have to go and find things to actually
Speaker 5: be maybe excited about, but that are not that I
Speaker 5: don't know.
Speaker 3: It's over the years just dodging just the made up
Speaker 3: shit and before you would just accept.
Speaker 10: More of it.
Speaker 2: Well that's what I'm trying to sort of figure out.
Speaker 2: How I haven't been to Edward. You went to the
Speaker 2: convention center today, right, Yeah, so you saw like the
Speaker 2: weird stuff. I mean, yeah, it was it was is
Speaker 2: this your first go round to?
Speaker 3: This is my first one too?
Speaker 9: And the convention center was filled with a lot of
Speaker 9: things that exist already without AI. But you had people
Speaker 9: assuring you that they've reached a new level because of
Speaker 9: the Aire.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you've unlocked its potential.
Speaker 9: And I think, like you were saying, I was actually
Speaker 9: kind of struck by that because when I was in
Speaker 9: the expo, like you said, there were a lot of
Speaker 9: gazemos and they were talking about a but they wouldn't
Speaker 9: actually focus on the AI like.
Speaker 5: They were in the convention center.
Speaker 9: They would actually be like, you know, here's a problem.
Speaker 9: Like even that CGM thing which you know, which we
Speaker 9: talked about, which it doesn't work if you're which was
Speaker 9: that one.
Speaker 5: This was the.
Speaker 9: Well they said it was not a CGM, it was
Speaker 9: a healthcare.
Speaker 3: Management continuous glucose mode.
Speaker 9: Yeah, yeah, continuous say it would great stuff it uh
Speaker 9: so it monitors glucose. It's also supposed to monitor other
Speaker 9: metabolic indexes for you to based off shining uh infrared
Speaker 9: on your skin.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 9: And here that's an interesting development because it's not invasive
Speaker 9: and you can use it obstensively to monitor things that
Speaker 9: might you know, you might actually have to get a
Speaker 9: medical device. You might have to get something more invasive
Speaker 9: to monitor. But then you you know, you you dig
Speaker 9: a little bit and then you get the other problematic features. Oh,
Speaker 9: we're gonna you know, we're gonna we're privacy oriented and
Speaker 9: we're wards oriented, so we're gonna put it on the
Speaker 9: blockchain and we're gonna tell your insurance company everything.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: It's that differently from the main show, the main LVCC so.
Speaker 4: At the l v C C.
Speaker 9: It just it felt like it was less like here
Speaker 9: is a bit of an improvement or like an issue
Speaker 9: that we want to offer an innovative fix for, whether
Speaker 9: or not you agree with the fix, and here is
Speaker 9: uh this thing that you have that probably works, but
Speaker 9: with AI you can access substantibly more potential.
Speaker 3: The more craving.
Speaker 5: That's that's a function of you know, l v C C,
Speaker 5: especially Central Hall being like that's where the big companies are, LG, Samsung, whatever,
Speaker 5: whereas uh, you know, Venetian is kind of these smaller
Speaker 5: companies and so uh in South Hall even to some
Speaker 5: this is very c S.
Speaker 3: I'm sorry, I should be writing and I should explain this.
Speaker 3: I was into the ce S coverage. So there are
Speaker 3: two areas.
Speaker 1: There's the venetianicks Poet which is connected to the Venetian
Speaker 1: and the Las Vegas Convention Hole, and there is the Central,
Speaker 1: North and South Hole.
Speaker 3: Excellent time to explain that at the end of like
Speaker 3: the fourth hour.
Speaker 5: Yeah, So you know, you have big companies like Samsung
Speaker 5: LG that are trying to show that they are doing
Speaker 5: doing something big and flashy because what they really have
Speaker 5: is like our O LED display is like a bit
Speaker 5: brighter than it was last year, which again I think
Speaker 5: is cool Like that that makes that makes more difference
Speaker 5: to me than than this like AI stuff that they're
Speaker 5: throwing on top. But that's the stuff that they have
Speaker 5: to you know, focus on to get what is that?
Speaker 2: I guess like this is maybe that's a naive question,
Speaker 2: but it's not like basically because I feel like if
Speaker 2: you are pointing this at consumers and you're basically like,
Speaker 2: we solve the dog door, it's better now. It's never
Speaker 2: gonna let in like, you know, a raccoon or like whatever.
Speaker 2: Like you how you keep having like beavers from the
Speaker 2: neighborhood let themselves in your kitchety?
Speaker 4: It just shows up in your house.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's it's it's worth clarifying, like this show, despite
Speaker 5: being called like consumer electronics show, it's not for consumers, right,
Speaker 5: That's what I was going to say. The primary purpose
Speaker 5: of the show historically that's probably true. Now it's still
Speaker 5: is for buyers of technology, for retailers to go around
Speaker 5: and see what they want to put, you know, how
Speaker 5: much they want to buy of a TV or a whatever,
Speaker 5: to figure out what they're going to stock this year
Speaker 5: and so.
Speaker 2: But even in that case, wouldn't if it's for those people,
Speaker 2: wouldn't the selling point be the oiled screen is a
Speaker 2: little bit bright.
Speaker 1: He's left one important detail out, which is it's also
Speaker 1: for Conning jennalists.
Speaker 4: Yes.
Speaker 3: No, I was going to get to that continue them.
Speaker 4: No.
Speaker 5: Yeah, So I mean I think in both cases it's
Speaker 5: kind of like, that's that's a that's a more attractive
Speaker 5: story to tell, especially if you're not you know, it's
Speaker 5: hard at see yes, and a lot of people aren't
Speaker 5: looking at stuff super deep, right, and so they want
Speaker 5: just the easy story. And so easy story is like
Speaker 5: look at the AI we're putting into our TV versus
Speaker 5: like we made our TV a little brighter. It's just
Speaker 5: not as attractive if you're not really like paying super But.
Speaker 1: Also it's very hard to write an exciting story about
Speaker 1: something getting slightly better that really.
Speaker 2: I guess that makes sense because if it's the idea
Speaker 2: is that you're trying to generate some sort of heat
Speaker 2: around a product, the idea of like, there's just something
Speaker 2: strange about that. I mean, I guess we're probably gonna
Speaker 2: wind up returning to this often. We were the next
Speaker 2: few days that like, because AI is not real, Yeah.
Speaker 3: Like in a meaningful except anyway.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that like the idea that you have to in
Speaker 2: order to make this an interesting story. You have to
Speaker 2: be like, not only is it a better screen than
Speaker 2: it was last year, something that we had like actual
Speaker 2: something that helps you, Yes, something that like in rooves
Speaker 2: your experience. Not only is that, but also we added it's.
Speaker 5: A whole new way to consume television. Yes, when it's not,
Speaker 5: you get it in your home and you're like, I'm
Speaker 5: glad it's brighter.
Speaker 4: So there's two things your intuition that like, this stuff
Speaker 4: is not that stuff that consumers are screaming for it.
Speaker 4: So there's two factors. One is that you know postive jobs.
Speaker 4: Everyone is obsessed with this idea of like people don't
Speaker 4: know what they want until you show it to them
Speaker 4: as a huge factor in a lot of these things.
Speaker 4: The other thing, though, you're right, like a lot of
Speaker 4: this stuff isn't for consumers in a fundamental way in
Speaker 4: that a lot of this is performance for investors.
Speaker 2: That's the bit that I was curious about. AI is
Speaker 2: for like you're shown out for like the quarter zip
Speaker 2: the v like because they're the ones they care about that.
Speaker 4: You're showing you're on trend, you're showing like there's this
Speaker 4: almost like theater often of like how you position yourself
Speaker 4: relative to your competitors. They have a little boots, you
Speaker 4: have a big but like there's there's all of these
Speaker 4: sorts of things and a lot of them are about
Speaker 4: especially for the kind of earlier stay companies and like
Speaker 4: which happened more in the in the the hype cycles. Right,
Speaker 4: so you tell this a lot, and like you know
Speaker 4: evs and avs and stuff like these title companies had
Speaker 4: no revenue, no business, but they had these massive, massive things.
Speaker 4: It wasn't for consumers because they didn't have anything to
Speaker 4: sell consumers, but they're there and there were years away
Speaker 4: from having something. It's for investors.
Speaker 2: I think all sense with evs, it's like it's hard
Speaker 2: to make a car.
Speaker 4: It's also about about attracting partners from the ecosystem.
Speaker 5: I think also like just to put a finer maybe
Speaker 5: a little more specificity with AI, like AI tends to demo. Well,
Speaker 5: so if you're a buyer or investor or a journalist,
Speaker 5: like you look at these things and they show you
Speaker 5: for two minutes the canned demos that they have and
Speaker 5: you're like Oh wow, this is really this is interesting.
Speaker 2: I mean it's only when that Elon's robot can like
Speaker 2: pop and lock.
Speaker 3: Podcasts.
Speaker 5: Really, it's only when you try to use it like
Speaker 5: in a regular way that you're like, oh, this doesn't
Speaker 5: actually work.
Speaker 1: So I feel like we're entering this like nexus of
Speaker 1: what happens when you spend ten fucking years in the
Speaker 1: tech industry building it for people who won't use it,
Speaker 1: by people who don't care, and so you're at this
Speaker 1: point where it's just like selling nothing to nothing.
Speaker 5: I always had this thing with with Google Home, Google Nests,
Speaker 5: where I felt like like like nobody at Google was
Speaker 5: using No, the.
Speaker 1: Google Home app is like an Escher painting. It's like,
Speaker 1: oh I need like soon. Durpeachi doesn't use those, No,
Speaker 1: he does.
Speaker 3: None of these people do. I just and it's funny.
Speaker 1: We keep done hours of this now and it really
Speaker 1: keeps coming back to this theme of just everyone going
Speaker 1: what is this shit?
Speaker 3: You don't know what it is as somebody.
Speaker 2: Who's like really just like I read about it, but
Speaker 2: I don't consume a lot of this stuff. Our apartment
Speaker 2: is effectively in two thousand and five and probably always
Speaker 2: will be. But there's a lot of the I remember this,
Speaker 2: especially with a lot of the like the metaverse stuff
Speaker 2: on Facebook, uh huh, where there's a part of it where,
Speaker 2: you know, like Zuck coming on with this fucking perm
Speaker 2: being like if you ever wanted to do it, attend
Speaker 2: a meeting on your computer, and it's like I do
Speaker 2: it all the time, dude. It sucks ass, but also like, yeah,
Speaker 2: it's like totally possible, Like I don't need to be
Speaker 2: like a plush bear when I do it, you know,
Speaker 2: like a legless bad but there is a legless kind
Speaker 2: of like weirdly sad looking sorrowful eyes thirty minutes at Freddy's. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but like to me with that, it's like, so where
Speaker 2: did you get this idea? Because like, I don't know what,
Speaker 2: Like Mark Zuckerberg's life is very different from mine, obviously.
Speaker 1: No, No, it's someone making up what they think happens.
Speaker 1: It really is that simple. They're just like, what the
Speaker 1: fucking people do?
Speaker 3: People have jobs, right, they got cats, So that means
Speaker 3: meetings when you have a job.
Speaker 1: What happens at job if you're a CEO of a
Speaker 1: multi trillion dollar company, meetings if you don't do any
Speaker 1: real work, that's what you think work is.
Speaker 5: But so your younger eyes on meetings as a CEO
Speaker 5: and then you're like, what if I just became a bear?
Speaker 4: Yeah, this is it's also important. This is why it's
Speaker 4: important to pay. Like the attendees are as much a
Speaker 4: part of the shows as exhibitors, and and it's because
Speaker 4: they like listen to what people say, listen to. It's
Speaker 4: really fascinating because there is this core around you know
Speaker 4: of people who are on this tech business who are
Speaker 4: like conditioned, and part of their identity is to assume
Speaker 4: that anything new that they see at sees is good
Speaker 4: and better and something that they can buy and then
Speaker 4: get social capital out of saying, you know, I have
Speaker 4: this and you don't. I'm on the cutting edge and
Speaker 4: more on the cutting edge than you are. Like this
Speaker 4: is a really important part of our culture now is technology.
Speaker 4: And and what's fascinating here is you know, we were
Speaker 4: talking earlier about how the vibe is changing around tech
Speaker 4: right like like ten years ago, fifteen years ago, like
Speaker 4: attitudes towards this were very different. There still are these
Speaker 4: people who are stuck in that old like sort of
Speaker 4: tech is all unconditionally good, it's all progress it's all
Speaker 4: making things better.
Speaker 2: And you're there tomorrow they're going to see.
Speaker 4: Wow, these people a lot of cyber trucks in the
Speaker 4: parking line.
Speaker 3: So we sadly at the end now then we're letting
Speaker 3: you go listeners. Jared Human, Where where can people find you?
Speaker 5: Go to Jared Newman dot com, Slash Newsletters and I
Speaker 5: will give you some great tech advice all the time.
Speaker 3: Miss the need of mile. Where can people find you?
Speaker 4: Needermeyer do Io and the Atonic Cast, Misterrongreso, jr.
Speaker 9: Uh tech Tech, Bubble dot Substack dot com, and then
Speaker 9: Big black Jack have been on Instagram, I mean on Instagram,
Speaker 9: on Blue Sky and Twitter.
Speaker 2: Mister defector dot com is the website. Distraction is the
Speaker 2: podcast I do with that? It's Christmas Town is the
Speaker 2: Hallmark podcast. And I'm also David Jroth Blue Sky. I
Speaker 2: should actually check how that's punctuated. It's hang on. Everybody's
Speaker 2: gonna learn this. Hold on just a moment. I have
Speaker 2: to get my phone out.
Speaker 3: I have to think of like a slightly sardonic way
Speaker 3: to refer to myself.
Speaker 2: So yeah, David Jroth dot bsky dot Social.
Speaker 1: Go into Google, take the biggest idiot in tech and
Speaker 1: I pop up. Not really, I'm the smartest man in
Speaker 1: tech exitron. I'm the first person to wear aviators and
Speaker 1: cover technology. You've been listening to a podcast. He will
Speaker 1: be apologizing for for a while, but you'll be thanking me.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening, everyone, Thank you for listening to Better Offline.
Speaker 1: The editor and composer of the Better Offline theme song
Speaker 1: is Matasowski. You can check out more of his music
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