Speaker 1: All zone media.
Speaker 2: Unstoppable, unbelievable, impeccable, unflappable, outrageous, stupendous, chosen by God and
Speaker 2: perfected by science. I'm ed Zeitron and this is Better
Speaker 2: Offlines coverage of the Consumer Electronics Show. That's right, we
Speaker 2: are back for a final two hour stretch here in
Speaker 2: the beautiful Palazzo Hotel in even more beautiful Las Vegas, Nevada.
Speaker 1: We've been here all week with.
Speaker 2: An open bor and tuckos for journalists to hang out
Speaker 2: and chat shit about the world's largest technology conference. Thank
Speaker 2: you all, Thank you all for joining me, Thank you
Speaker 2: for being here as listeners, as guests. For everyone, this
Speaker 2: has been the best CES yet. There's only been two,
Speaker 2: but nevertheless, you don't know how the next one's going
Speaker 2: to be. But in all seriousness, this has been an incredible,
Speaker 2: incredible show. We've got four more thirty minute blocks and
Speaker 2: then an epilogue tomorrow.
Speaker 1: Who it's been a lot.
Speaker 2: Our first quarter lineup is the incredible activist, journalist and
Speaker 2: author Cory doctor Rowe hello ed, the fantastic writer of
Speaker 2: the Tech Bubble newsletter, Edward on Graso Junior, and the
Speaker 2: wonderful returning champion Kyle Shanad of the Las Vegas Sun
Speaker 2: Local boy either, how you doing, Kyle?
Speaker 1: How's your show been pretty good?
Speaker 3: I started with a pre cees little conference between some
Speaker 3: Korean companies and Nevada investors and businessmen.
Speaker 1: Okay, well, it.
Speaker 3: Was talking about how to bring their products, bring their
Speaker 3: companies kind of to the American market, and kind of
Speaker 3: the main point of it was, you know, CS has
Speaker 3: been here in Las Vegas for so long at this point,
Speaker 3: but Nevada itself, for Las Vegas itself, hasn't always seen
Speaker 3: the fruits of that, right besides the actual of course,
Speaker 3: you know, Las Vegas main market is in tourism and
Speaker 3: bring people here, and conventions like this are a big
Speaker 3: part of that. But actually creating a tech sector here
Speaker 3: is a relatively newer concept, I think, probably following the
Speaker 3: pandemic and what really to shut down the entire economy.
Speaker 2: That failed attempt with Old Vegas though with Tony she
Speaker 2: and that long Yeah.
Speaker 3: I mean it's the recent iteration is newer, Ye'll say that.
Speaker 2: And also that that one was very kind of limp.
Speaker 2: No copy on it, Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that one.
Speaker 4: That one whiskey bar next to the barbecue joint in
Speaker 4: the mall made it of trail shipping containers, is pretty good.
Speaker 1: I didn't see that they talk about downtown.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that was that there was there was
Speaker 4: like one good thing that there's a good coffee shop
Speaker 4: right there.
Speaker 2: You'd think, why is it that it's so hard to
Speaker 2: attract companies. There's like no state tax is that is
Speaker 2: like the local business taxes high?
Speaker 3: Like no, I mean they've they've been working on that
Speaker 3: and kind of promoting the favorable tax regime. I think
Speaker 3: it's probably the best way to put it for companies.
Speaker 3: That's why a lot of people moved from California to
Speaker 3: hear Nevada.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the same way that we've had that.
Speaker 3: I mean Nevada's legislature, there's a push for a dedicated
Speaker 3: business court similar to what exists in Delaware, so we
Speaker 3: can have companies incorporate here instead of there. Like we
Speaker 3: recently had Friend of the Show and Rees and Horowitz
Speaker 3: moved to Nevada. So there there's been a big push
Speaker 3: there too, kind of because the pandemic so brazenly showed
Speaker 3: that if there is an issue with travel, the economy
Speaker 3: collapses here.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well that's got quite a race. It it feels
Speaker 4: like the finish line is at the bottom though.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but wait, so this was a pre conference the
Speaker 2: cees and what were they talks and such?
Speaker 1: It was actually it was kind of fun.
Speaker 3: It was like a shark tank style pitch session from
Speaker 3: a bunch of these companies. There was one about incorporating
Speaker 3: some technology into golf clubs that would analyze your swing.
Speaker 1: There was another. There was another on.
Speaker 3: Like it was a pool uh, contaminant analysis machine.
Speaker 1: Is this like a pee detector?
Speaker 2: No, because it's not that those are useless, but like
Speaker 2: those very much exists.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, So it was kind of.
Speaker 3: Like it's not like they were showing off like the
Speaker 3: cutting edge of it was. It was it was people
Speaker 3: trying to break into the American market from Asia.
Speaker 4: I mean, what Korea really needs to introduce to America
Speaker 4: clearly is hidden cameras and dressing room. They are the
Speaker 4: world leaders and incredibly vegic uses of hidden cameras.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Vegas needs more perverts and chicken and and also
Speaker 2: like also like rising up in the face of fascism.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was an export that we would welcome here.
Speaker 2: Well, just other than all that, have you walked around
Speaker 2: CS atoll.
Speaker 1: A lot less actually than last year.
Speaker 3: I'd say I spent some more time off the showroom
Speaker 3: before talking to people, but quite a bit. And I
Speaker 3: mean it felt I think we talked about this last year.
Speaker 3: I mean, this is my second sees oh and last year,
Speaker 3: I mean you come into it and it's all this
Speaker 3: cool stuff that you've never seen before, concentrate in on space.
Speaker 3: And this year I remember people talking about like, this
Speaker 3: feels a lot similar last year, and now that I'm
Speaker 3: a returning guest, Yeah, I understand why that feeling existed.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's this kind of echoing. It's very strange this year,
Speaker 2: like it feels like last year, but with less stuff
Speaker 2: like they were there at least felt like there was
Speaker 2: some things to look at last year that we're like, oh,
Speaker 2: that's fun.
Speaker 1: I do I remember them that.
Speaker 3: God, No, I saw a lot of smart picture frames.
Speaker 3: That was a really big one.
Speaker 1: This year.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I saw one that was completely broken.
Speaker 1: It was with like eeing.
Speaker 5: No.
Speaker 1: I actually quite liked.
Speaker 2: The idea because I'd only seen them in pictures. And
Speaker 2: then you see whenever they cycle kind of like a
Speaker 2: kindle like all eating think they flash up the yeah,
Speaker 2: and it's like just the static image I'd be okay with,
Speaker 2: but the moment it's like be like, yeah, that's shit
Speaker 2: off my wak.
Speaker 1: But I like the idea. I like the idea.
Speaker 4: I know what you can't see by looking at the
Speaker 4: gadget itself is the back end. And that's the whole thing, right,
Speaker 4: Like what is what is the experience of adding images
Speaker 4: to it? And my wife just moved overseas. Uh, we're
Speaker 4: living in two different continents right now. And our hustmate
Speaker 4: gave her a smart camera for a picture frame for Christmas, right,
Speaker 4: and we, you know, sort of together conspire to put
Speaker 4: a bunch of photos in the camera's cloud accounts so
Speaker 4: that when she set it up at home overseas that
Speaker 4: she would get all these photos preloaded. And it sucked.
Speaker 4: It just really sucked at importing photos. It wouldn't take
Speaker 4: native resolution. We had to down res everything. God, it
Speaker 4: just it's yeah, it was like, do you remember what
Speaker 4: brand I do?
Speaker 6: Not?
Speaker 2: I got one from my parents a few years ago
Speaker 2: and the app was like and it.
Speaker 4: Was all on an app, right, So like, which is
Speaker 4: fine if you're out and about taking pictures and you
Speaker 4: are sending the picture to the frame, But when you're
Speaker 4: setting at the frame, de nova.
Speaker 1: I have ten thousand photos on my.
Speaker 4: Laptop and we're had to take a subset of them
Speaker 4: and put them in the frame, and like phones are
Speaker 4: very bad for that. Yeah, and I did this elaborate
Speaker 4: thing where I plugged my phone in, moved seven hundred
Speaker 4: photos from my laptop to my phone, then use the
Speaker 4: app which only let me select one.
Speaker 1: Hundred photos at a time to upload the phone like
Speaker 1: it was, and none of that is visible.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 4: You can be on the trap floor and you can
Speaker 4: be like, this is the most beautiful frame I've ever seen.
Speaker 4: But if it's a giant pin in the ass to
Speaker 4: get pictures into, who cares.
Speaker 3: I will say I was interviewing someone at their home
Speaker 3: once and they had one in their living room and
Speaker 3: it changed one point or it was either that or
Speaker 3: they told me it was. I had no idea that
Speaker 3: it was digital until you told me so. For the
Speaker 3: people who are coming into your home who did not
Speaker 3: see the hassle sure of getting it that works?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it's I don't know.
Speaker 2: It feels like a very easy to solve thing. Feels
Speaker 2: like it should just be like an ftpiece of with
Speaker 2: like a.
Speaker 4: As a fallback right. Yeah, here's here's a thing you
Speaker 4: drag images into. Be easy, but it isn't welcome to
Speaker 4: see you and have the app on my phone.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, let you find out one contrastition name and
Speaker 2: shame boo.
Speaker 1: I don't know too many bring back shamed flander. No
Speaker 1: it's not. It's not come back to me. It's Aura
Speaker 1: A U R A or.
Speaker 2: I thought that was meant to be one of the
Speaker 2: easy ones too.
Speaker 4: I'm sure it's very easy if you are sending off
Speaker 4: photo to it.
Speaker 1: That one gets advertised on podcasts.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's well, it means Casper mattresses have photo frames.
Speaker 1: We're anti stamps dot Com. We're inside the Aura frame.
Speaker 2: Don't try and sell me a fucking mattress unless you
Speaker 2: give me one stepsot Com got a.
Speaker 1: Web interface yet because it was Windows only.
Speaker 2: I got no idea. Man, when I need stamps to
Speaker 2: go to the post office, do.
Speaker 1: You know what?
Speaker 4: I have a private mail box where I get my
Speaker 4: mail because I don't want to give my home address
Speaker 4: to random right and uh, I gave them a credit
Speaker 4: card number and they charge one hundred bucks credit at
Speaker 4: a time. And I walk in with all my parcels
Speaker 4: and I'm like, here's the parcels, and I wut again.
Speaker 1: I don't have to wait for them to weigh.
Speaker 4: Them, and I don't have to wait to all surprise them,
Speaker 4: and they just I get an emailed receipt.
Speaker 1: It is so good Post office fucking rules. Yeah. Well
Speaker 1: for a private mailboxes too.
Speaker 2: Okay, okay, well yeah, so ed have you been I've
Speaker 2: been doing. How was your last day?
Speaker 1: It's good.
Speaker 7: I got to walk around o VCCC all the shit
Speaker 7: gadgets with Corey and it was really interesting. I mean,
Speaker 7: the stuff I think that interested us most was like
Speaker 7: we talked about the devices that seem like, Okay, this
Speaker 7: is a real thing. We want a manufacturer to integrate
Speaker 7: it into their supply chain so they can scale it up,
Speaker 7: but you can't get it. Well, you know, chargers you
Speaker 7: talked you know, do you thought there were some chargers
Speaker 7: that Corey pointed out that seemed nice, some cameras that
Speaker 7: seemed nice, But otherwise there were just a bunch of
Speaker 7: devices where it's like, I don't think i'd ever get
Speaker 7: this hand massager.
Speaker 1: That was very fun.
Speaker 4: I think the weirdest advertising for that.
Speaker 7: Hand all was weird little sign that made it look
Speaker 7: like it was going to eat your hand.
Speaker 1: So Massadi is your hands.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it was like that Benny jesserte y thing you
Speaker 4: stick your hand. They did have a sound, so it
Speaker 4: had a sign, right, They said like do you dare
Speaker 4: to put your hand in it? And it had a
Speaker 4: monster's mouth around the aperture your hand went into. And
Speaker 4: then when you read the marketing more closely, it was
Speaker 4: like the virtuous will feel delightful.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you put your hand in.
Speaker 4: A sensor detected it and then it started inflating the
Speaker 4: little Okay, I know, it feels like the first step
Speaker 4: and like cultivating myself.
Speaker 2: I just want to be clear though the thing sucks,
Speaker 2: but the virtuous will feel delightful. It is something I'm
Speaker 2: going to be saying for the rest of my life.
Speaker 7: Apparently I'm not virtuous because I felt that. I was
Speaker 7: like it kind of just feels like two things are.
Speaker 2: Grinding against my hand, virus.
Speaker 7: And it's like, hey, if I want to go. If
Speaker 7: I want that, I'll to go to like some packed
Speaker 7: conference or I'll come back on the first day.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Like it's like if you need to give you a
Speaker 2: hand a message, you have two of them. I guess
Speaker 2: if you want to do both once, it might be
Speaker 2: a chat.
Speaker 4: You know the amazing safety label that's the two gears
Speaker 4: with the hand being squished. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's kind
Speaker 4: of what I want.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Pleasant, you know, it's like an incredible machine situation,
Speaker 2: but with just my hands, like a cat jumps on
Speaker 2: the thing and it crushes it. Just a beg aanvil
Speaker 2: would be great at the end of this week. Just
Speaker 2: let me just fall under the end anyway, But nothing
Speaker 2: impressive at the end of the day is same old shite.
Speaker 7: No, I mean, this is the thing. I mean, we
Speaker 7: talked about this a little bit. Also, I feel like,
Speaker 7: you know, I am of the group that is the
Speaker 7: wrong group for it, because I come into it feeling
Speaker 7: I think, disappointed broadly, because there's a lot that I
Speaker 7: would like to see and I don't see it.
Speaker 2: Well, what would you'd like to say?
Speaker 1: I would I would like to see.
Speaker 7: I am listen if someone can make uh you know,
Speaker 7: for example, there's a lot of pitches about AI assistance
Speaker 7: that can be integrated into your home and make you know,
Speaker 7: task management a bit easier, schedule management a bit easier.
Speaker 1: Things like this.
Speaker 7: You know, I would be open to something that seem
Speaker 7: to be doing that. But a lot of the times,
Speaker 7: you know, when we pressed them, it's more so like
Speaker 7: what if you went on Chatchy bet yourself and chose
Speaker 7: the third best answer for each thing and then integrated
Speaker 7: that and organized your life around that. It's you know,
Speaker 7: so it's just it's a lot of times I feel
Speaker 7: like what I'm actually seeing is not even someone who
Speaker 7: tried to solve a problem, but someone the I mean
Speaker 7: they did. The problem they solved was how do I
Speaker 7: how do I make money off of this?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know that's really what it was.
Speaker 3: I'm like, I'm not a tech person, I'm a a
Speaker 3: local reporter here, but I mean, I feel like, and
Speaker 3: this is kind of what I'm curious about, your guys
Speaker 3: thoughts on it. How much of the things on the
Speaker 3: showroom floor, just like repackaged CHATCHYPT models into other different package.
Speaker 4: Actually be easier to ask how many works?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Yeah, deadly.
Speaker 2: We need like a cat in the hat where it's
Speaker 2: not a situation for this, I'm what's.
Speaker 1: Funny is generally surprised most were lost. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I remember being like, oh, I'm being a cynic whatever
Speaker 2: and sleeping for hours every night, so I felt particularly spicy,
Speaker 2: but people still came in, like journalists came in and like,
Speaker 2: oh I saw some cool shit. Oh it made me laugh.
Speaker 2: It was kind of weird, but you know, I enjoyed
Speaker 2: it this year. Even the gadget reporters, even the gadget
Speaker 2: reporters who were like, you know what, not gonna be cynical,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna be excited to be here, we're kind of like, yeah,
Speaker 2: you know, there's a lot of stuff that doesn't exist,
Speaker 2: and then the stuff that does exist wasn't very good.
Speaker 2: And even the companies that usually make stuff that are good,
Speaker 2: well they didn't. And also LG was here with a robot.
Speaker 2: And it's strange because long term listeners will know like, yeah,
Speaker 2: I'm a cynic whatever, but I want to hear some
Speaker 2: fun do that's some fun things, and it's like not
Speaker 2: even this year like this is it feels like we're
Speaker 2: in the depression. At CES, a lot of AI children's
Speaker 2: toys very horrible.
Speaker 5: Yeah, a lot of aih evil, evil shit, Like Robert
Speaker 5: found this one that was like an LLM horoscope Furby
Speaker 5: creature that I want to hit with a baseball bat.
Speaker 7: I want to Finally enough, there's a demo for one
Speaker 7: where you can hit it with a baseball.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but wasn't that the one where Robert had the
Speaker 1: video and it's just like dancing like Michael Jackson.
Speaker 2: And then you just fucking hit it with sticks. I
Speaker 2: want to put a bottle. I want to do free
Speaker 2: boat on top of that, fuck out of it.
Speaker 4: There's an old American children's show called The Andy Devine Show,
Speaker 4: and there was a character on that show called Froggy
Speaker 4: who is like a frog, and he was a mischief
Speaker 4: figure and he would as Andy Devine was speaking, he
Speaker 4: would he would grunt, he would like growl out these uh,
Speaker 4: subliminal suggestions.
Speaker 1: It's like, then you.
Speaker 4: Put the peanut butter in your hair, Yes, you do,
Speaker 4: you do? And then Andy Devine would start putting peanut
Speaker 4: butter in his hair. And every time I see an
Speaker 4: LLM toy for children, I'm like, eventually, like you're gonna
Speaker 4: leave the room and it's gonna.
Speaker 1: Say and then you put the knife in your parents?
Speaker 3: You do?
Speaker 1: You do?
Speaker 3: But that's already happening with like actual chat Have we not.
Speaker 4: Seen the hack horror movies that start with the doll
Speaker 4: that says I'm chatty.
Speaker 1: Cathy and I want to be your friend. I'm Jeddy
Speaker 1: Katy to kill you. The story is just going to
Speaker 1: activate someone, you know.
Speaker 2: This time it's going to be like Taiwan is part
Speaker 2: of China, like ever mentioned Winnie Pooh and Winnie that
Speaker 2: poo in mysent to make you feel No, it's just
Speaker 2: and it's just like it's I think what it might be,
Speaker 2: and after thinking about this too much for too long,
Speaker 2: it's just papering over the laziness that already existed at Yes,
Speaker 2: I don't think like there's something exceptional about the activity
Speaker 2: so much as they found it's the panacea panic. I
Speaker 2: never know panacea. It's like a panacotta. The panakotta everyone's
Speaker 2: using is just the Okay, we're looking for a quick
Speaker 2: and easy thing. There was the IoT era, or there
Speaker 2: was the metaverse, ere like a thing we could build
Speaker 2: around that would get us funding. But this year it's
Speaker 2: like we found the ultimate thing to staple ship too.
Speaker 2: And I know it's sounded like a broken record, but
Speaker 2: it's like, come the funk on, you haven't even got
Speaker 2: a thinner light a laptop. There was like one new
Speaker 2: thinner light a laptop one. It was like I think
Speaker 2: it's maybe Chelgy, I don't funk know. Samsung wasn't even
Speaker 2: on the floor where what what the hell? We don't
Speaker 2: even get a weird Samsung booth with like a wall
Speaker 2: of televisions. The LG transparent old was just a tiny
Speaker 2: little one.
Speaker 1: I want one.
Speaker 2: That's large and obviously can never be purchased, she said,
Speaker 2: like a monument. Now she just she mostly just says
Speaker 2: it's okay, it's okay, it happens, but it's it's just
Speaker 2: you don't need to. It's just kind of frustrating because
Speaker 2: I'm not reflexible. I just want to see some dude,
Speaker 2: ad give me a like Michael Fisher came in and
Speaker 2: showed the clicks, the shell of the Clicks, the Android
Speaker 2: phone that's got like it's basically like a new BlackBerry,
Speaker 2: fucking lovely. Yeah, you have new things four hundred bucks something.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's something.
Speaker 2: It's also you know what, it's using existing tools Android
Speaker 2: and you can manufacture overseas.
Speaker 1: Wonderful.
Speaker 2: Cool. We built a new thingy this year. It's like
Speaker 2: we didn't build anything.
Speaker 4: I think you're in the wrong part of the whole
Speaker 4: because because when we were back in the crack Adge
Speaker 4: its There was so much of that, but it's in
Speaker 4: the so like the thing is that the stuff that
Speaker 4: you use every single day, right, like your charter, Yeah,
Speaker 4: is stuff that has an enormous bearing on your quality
Speaker 4: of right, Like if your charger's fucked, you are fucked.
Speaker 1: Right. It's a low margin item and it has barely
Speaker 1: been optimized. Yeah.
Speaker 4: And in this pro over Delta and around the Pacific
Speaker 4: rim there are a lot of incredibly clever mechanical engineers
Speaker 4: and product designers who are sort of turning their intellect
Speaker 4: to this.
Speaker 2: I agree, And like ANKA for example, is a great company,
Speaker 2: even like GPD who makes these really interesting devices for
Speaker 2: one hundred people. It's like it'll be a PlayStation portable
Speaker 2: sized gaming PC that costs two thousand dollars and superheats
Speaker 2: in your hands, so it needs an external battery. Those
Speaker 2: ones I didn't see having a prominent.
Speaker 4: But but you go back to the booths where that
Speaker 4: we only do wholesale. We have a minimum ten thousand
Speaker 4: unit order. So I was you were there earlier, but
Speaker 4: we were off where I was talking about this thing
Speaker 4: that I saw that was the British electrical adapter for
Speaker 4: your charger that you carry around in your bag, and
Speaker 4: so people who aren't familiar with it, the British Electrical
Speaker 4: adapter that the plug is the world's ultimate cal drop.
Speaker 1: It's this incredibly It's.
Speaker 2: Just like a big spikey like gold yeah, big like chunky.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: And you know, I lived in London for thirteen years
Speaker 4: and and I'm moving back there again. And like the chargers,
Speaker 4: it's hard to carry around. It puts holes in your pockets, yeah,
Speaker 4: snags on things of your back.
Speaker 2: It's a real thing and it's an actual quite easily.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: So these this charger was it had the three prongs
Speaker 4: and when you fold it, they all folded down together
Speaker 4: in unison. They were they hit some sort of mechanical linkage.
Speaker 4: They made the most satisfying little when you snap them
Speaker 4: down and when you snap them back up again. It
Speaker 4: was a beautiful piece of mechanical engineering. If you owned
Speaker 4: it and you lived in the UK every single day,
Speaker 4: you would use this thing and your life would be better.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Right, that's that's like pure.
Speaker 4: We were asking on the last recording session, where were
Speaker 4: the consumer gadgets that is a consumer gadget that would
Speaker 4: see daily use and make a significant difference in your life.
Speaker 1: I agree, it's.
Speaker 2: Just that that is like one percent of this show. No,
Speaker 2: I agree, yeah, And that's that's my principal thing is
Speaker 2: not that those things aren't here. Though there are less
Speaker 2: of them, there are remarkably less of them. Like last
Speaker 2: year there were more of the year before that way
Speaker 2: like there was tons of them.
Speaker 1: This year.
Speaker 2: I saw one booth and I wish I could remember
Speaker 2: because it was just The problem is as well is
Speaker 2: a lot of the ones I saw were just the
Speaker 2: same old ship we've had for years. Anchor is doing
Speaker 2: some cool stuff. Was gallium nitrite with making the plugs small?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah plugs.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're fucking amazing. They're awesome. Didn't even see any
Speaker 2: new interesting gang stuff. And like Anchor, I give too
Speaker 2: much money because they always got some new, thinner, weird
Speaker 2: one with a cable in it.
Speaker 1: I'm fucking do you know what.
Speaker 4: The downside of gan plugs is they draw so many watts.
Speaker 4: They're such good chargers that they blow the breaker on
Speaker 4: airplace seats on the mains on a plate. If you've
Speaker 4: got like a hundred white wine in the Little Green
Speaker 4: a meeting, I.
Speaker 2: Dropped my prime on that bitch all the time, and
Speaker 2: it's fine. Anchor's got there.
Speaker 4: I've I've had I've got two different gang chargers in
Speaker 4: my bag.
Speaker 1: Neither of them work.
Speaker 2: Reliable, explains No, I've been very lucky then, because I
Speaker 2: is it a sixty five white though one hundred and
Speaker 2: twenty five and fifty even you've gotten lucky that this well,
Speaker 2: it's just also it does.
Speaker 1: Get very hot, right, but it is on right, and
Speaker 1: I can chrut.
Speaker 2: I look like a real prick because I've just got
Speaker 2: this thing on the side, just like sure, just balancing
Speaker 2: barely on the side. Oh no, it's you're coming on
Speaker 2: to talk about the local Vegas area, and like the
Speaker 2: effect of CS even Vegas feels a little quieter, Like
Speaker 2: we were just discussing earlier how there was like a
Speaker 2: chunk of the plants or of Venetian and I can't
Speaker 2: remember it was just closed, just like no tables. Yeah
Speaker 2: that oh, no local residence of local resident. That fucking
Speaker 2: terrifies me. If I ever see like an empty area
Speaker 2: of a casino like no tables either, I'm always like,
Speaker 2: unless there is a poka, a poka tournament or a
Speaker 2: craps class to take tourists in and kind of con
Speaker 2: them into believing they can beat the odds.
Speaker 1: Fuck yeah, yeah, they can. They can get it.
Speaker 2: Kind of well, I mean pastline. But it's just it
Speaker 2: feels like everything. Maybe it's just the wide world. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean, I think it's a mix of things. Las
Speaker 2: Vegas has definitely had a decline in visitation.
Speaker 1: Throughout the year.
Speaker 3: I have I have notes next to me, please, So
Speaker 3: through November of twenty twenty five compared to twenty twenty four,
Speaker 3: it's a seven point four percent decline in visitation.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 3: To be fair, twenty twenty four is a record year.
Speaker 3: Part of that is pent up interest from the pandemic
Speaker 3: that got everyone going everywhere that was interested in travel.
Speaker 3: But that's still a drop of two point eight million
Speaker 3: people right going to media.
Speaker 4: And two point seven million other Canadian Well, I mean I.
Speaker 1: Got those numbers too.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean I think international travel definitely been affected.
Speaker 3: I think it does surprise a lot of people when
Speaker 3: they look at the numbers at Harrod International Airport that
Speaker 3: the bigger client actually was in domestic really lights.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's do you have any idea why?
Speaker 1: Well, I think there's a couple of things.
Speaker 3: One, I when you look at travel and the process
Speaker 3: of it right the in my opinion, the most important
Speaker 3: thing is consumer sentiment at that moment and forward, forward
Speaker 3: looking sentiment. If you don't feel comfortable in your if
Speaker 3: you don't feel comfortable in your position, you know, for
Speaker 3: feeding your family or just paying the bills on time
Speaker 3: you are not traveling. But at the same time, I
Speaker 3: will say, I think this is an important note because
Speaker 3: I think a lot of the narrative has been like
Speaker 3: Las Vegas is dead, which it is. It really hasn't
Speaker 3: beg No, I would I would push back on that
Speaker 3: because when you actually look at the gaming revenue it.
Speaker 1: Is up this year. Is that because they're gouging more
Speaker 1: though they.
Speaker 3: Well that Actually there's been some efforts to scale that
Speaker 3: back because people were getting very angry, and there was
Speaker 3: a large narrative online that, like the the destination marketing
Speaker 3: organization here in Las Vegas has tried to push back against.
Speaker 1: But the sor I'm trying to think about those say
Speaker 1: of phrases.
Speaker 3: The actual spend was higher, and I think, and I'm
Speaker 3: not going to act like I have a definitive this
Speaker 3: is why. But I think in all sectors you're seeing
Speaker 3: an increasingly bifurcated economy right k shaped and what does
Speaker 3: that mean for those of us suits that the really
Speaker 3: rich are doing very very well and that the rest
Speaker 3: of us are not.
Speaker 2: Of the consumption is the top death sile So that
Speaker 2: coming at this, that is that I mean if you
Speaker 2: look at when, if you look at other you know,
Speaker 2: high end, I don't have the numbers.
Speaker 1: Those numbers right in front of me. They're doing okay.
Speaker 3: So I think there is like discussion of price gouging,
Speaker 3: and I think that was a really big factor. You
Speaker 3: mentioned Canadians I talked to at the beginning of the year.
Speaker 1: I went to a Winnipeg.
Speaker 3: Jets game here at Nice I stood outside and I
Speaker 3: was just interviewing people who were coming in. This was
Speaker 3: right after or right around when Trump took office, And
Speaker 3: obviously when you're going to talk to Canadians who were
Speaker 3: in Vegas, it's a big sampling bias.
Speaker 1: Of these are the people who didn't care.
Speaker 3: Most of them did and they said, you know, I
Speaker 3: scheduled this month ago not coming back.
Speaker 1: And the November numbers those they do have a friend
Speaker 1: of me. In November.
Speaker 3: Travel into Vegas from Air Canada compared to last year
Speaker 3: fell twenty six percent.
Speaker 1: Jesus Christ.
Speaker 4: And the discount carriers are worse, right, Yeah, ultra low cost.
Speaker 3: Carriers are having a hard time. Spirits kind of its own.
Speaker 4: Thing, starving the Canadian discount, the Western Charter flights, West Chat,
Speaker 4: and there's another one, I forget what they're called.
Speaker 2: Canadian Okay, west Jet was thirty three point two.
Speaker 1: Percent decline Jesus Christ.
Speaker 3: And that's just for Canes. There's actually have been uh
Speaker 3: that's been made up in some other countries coming to
Speaker 3: United States. But there's also all these policies coming down
Speaker 3: the pipeline where I believe it was Customs and Border
Speaker 3: Protection had a proposal of people coming into the country,
Speaker 3: many of the folks who be coming into the country
Speaker 3: having to share five years of social media activity. Yeah,
Speaker 3: which I reached out to the Nevada Resort Association and
Speaker 3: they're like, we are monitoring this because it's I mean,
Speaker 3: I'm not going to speak for the country at all,
Speaker 3: but I think when you look at all this intertality,
Speaker 3: the United States is not being super welcoming to people
Speaker 3: coming here. I mean, you know, mentioning the Korea event earlier,
Speaker 3: I talked to one of the organizers and he was
Speaker 3: talking to me about how after there was that ice
Speaker 3: raid in.
Speaker 1: Was Georgia specifically against South South are.
Speaker 3: There are South Koreans, many of them were not all
Speaker 3: that he had to be convincing people that it was
Speaker 3: okay to come to the United States, that they should,
Speaker 3: that they can still come to see.
Speaker 4: Sir to America. There is a class of migrant They're welcoming.
Speaker 4: If you are the former dictator of Honduras who's been
Speaker 4: convicted of multiple narco trafficking charges, white South Africans, you
Speaker 4: will be Yeah.
Speaker 2: It's and I mean this is specifically a place that
Speaker 2: attracts you based on being free and easy and quick
Speaker 2: and simple. And it's all of these little roadblocks, these
Speaker 2: little additions that you just make it like. You can't
Speaker 2: treat this like adult Disneyland.
Speaker 4: What happens in Vegas gets imprisoned, definitely in Vegas.
Speaker 2: What happens in Vegas requires a long form Now it's
Speaker 2: just like I don't know. And also the hotels are
Speaker 2: not as cheap as they used to be. It used
Speaker 2: to be you could you could roll your ass into
Speaker 2: Ballys for forty five bucks a night if you felt.
Speaker 3: Like well, there's also a resort fees that people are.
Speaker 4: Very those are bug fee by the way, I was wondering,
Speaker 4: I paid the extra bud okay, Uh, that's that you
Speaker 4: get that one special.
Speaker 2: That's the Canadian special they call it. It's just frustrating
Speaker 2: as well because this place. I love Vegas. I love
Speaker 2: being here. It's a vending machine city. Uh. My addiction
Speaker 2: is not coke. So that's been great for the Cocla corporation,
Speaker 2: but it's like adding these roapebooks fucks up a place
Speaker 2: like this so much, which is based on convenience.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I think when you look at the
Speaker 3: different narratives people are putting out about Las Vegas. I
Speaker 3: know local Democrats have labeled this the Trump slump that's there.
Speaker 3: That's their big thing going into We have a governor's
Speaker 3: race this year, and that is a big part is
Speaker 3: tying the current governor, Joe Lombardo, to the policies of
Speaker 3: the Trump administration. I'm skeptical about how well that's gonna
Speaker 3: work because I think it's a lot more complicated than
Speaker 3: just Trump. It's a larger administration thing. It's also this
Speaker 3: idea that Las Vegas is price gouging people, regardless of
Speaker 3: how true that is for a specific location. I mean,
Speaker 3: there's like the infamous twenty six dollars water bottle that's
Speaker 3: like I think was coming up from like a mini
Speaker 3: barn someone's room that like Fox News is reporting on.
Speaker 2: But the thing is, we're in the plot someone I
Speaker 2: like staying here. It's the fucking case here the resort
Speaker 2: fee every night, and it's like these resort fees kill people.
Speaker 2: Not literally, well the rest of Vegas does that maybe,
Speaker 2: but not really. It's like the little needling things that
Speaker 2: Vegas did. And it's not just post twenty twenty one,
Speaker 2: but it's like, if you're gonna do this to a
Speaker 2: place where it's about just kind of like frictionless entertainment.
Speaker 4: And they've waved through so many mergers too. Yeah, the
Speaker 4: casinos aren't really competing anymore.
Speaker 3: Well, there's that, and also that some of them aren't
Speaker 3: they don't own the property the property itself in some cases.
Speaker 2: But even downtown Vegas is more expensive now. Like I
Speaker 2: am't being to Fremont Street much before Lost Year and
Speaker 2: I went it's more expensive in some cases than the strip,
Speaker 2: and it fucking sucks. I'm sorry. It's like genuinely like
Speaker 2: it's a loud, hostile place that when you go it's
Speaker 2: just like punishing and it's like, Oh, used to go
Speaker 2: there because it was cheap. Now it's expensive and loud
Speaker 2: and bad. If I wanted that, I got to fucking Charlotte.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what's happening in Reno?
Speaker 2: Is it just as bad as Phil was mentioning the
Speaker 2: other day that Reno is actually trying to like not
Speaker 2: reject the casinos but grow outside of them, which I
Speaker 2: don't think.
Speaker 1: I think it's a state that's a statewide Is that sleep?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: I would say it's like pretty statewide.
Speaker 1: No, like housing and jobs.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, I hate that.
Speaker 1: That's crazy.
Speaker 2: I know what kind of a town runs on that.
Speaker 2: When we have our big, beautiful casinos and our loud
Speaker 2: slot machines, slot machines.
Speaker 1: They're so loud. We've got the Buffalo slot machines.
Speaker 4: You've got the Bullet Farm, You've got the water Castle,
Speaker 4: the Gonsto Lives, You've got we have to discuss on stars.
Speaker 2: We have the most lifeless NFL team in the most
Speaker 2: lifeless NFL stadium I have always made.
Speaker 3: Actually, I was at an event recently and Mark Davis
Speaker 3: sat next down next to me, and I got I.
Speaker 2: Was, man, if he ever sat down next to me,
Speaker 2: I've got some fuck questions, mate. I'm not gonna what
Speaker 2: the fucking offensive line. They're all gonna play out a position?
Speaker 2: Why do you think Pete Carroll's son do?
Speaker 3: Sorry, but it's crazy because, I mean, it's so emblematic
Speaker 3: of the industry that you can have a successful in
Speaker 3: air quotes NFL franchise without winning.
Speaker 2: I mean, I mean even then, I don't even think
Speaker 2: they're that successful. We're going to transition to the next part.
Speaker 2: The next ad is for the Las Vegas Raiders. We
Speaker 2: won three fucking times despite Pete Carroll Gino Smith. I
Speaker 2: guess that's what happens when you don't have an offensive
Speaker 2: line playing in position. This next ad is for the
Speaker 2: Las Vegas Raiders. Any other is an error, and we're
Speaker 2: back for the second quarter. We're back with, of course,
Speaker 2: Carl Shnard of the Las Vegas Son Hello, mister Edwin
Speaker 2: and Graso of the Take Bubble newsletter. Hello, Hello, activist
Speaker 2: journalist and author Cory DOCTORA well, Hello. I was on
Speaker 2: the radio earlier and they were like, I was like
Speaker 2: Cory Doctor's book and they're like, you can say it
Speaker 2: in shitification. Yeah, they allow you to your book has
Speaker 2: allowed people to say on the radio. Now, oh no,
Speaker 2: they just allowed me to. What do you say then?
Speaker 4: So it depends and Madrigal's show on MPR in San Francisco.
Speaker 4: It's the largest MPR station in the country. Right after
Speaker 4: Brandon car Chair, the FCC announced that he was going
Speaker 4: to pull three years of their underwriting. Uh, and their
Speaker 4: general counsel had said, you cannot even allude to the
Speaker 4: title of the book. And through the entire segment we
Speaker 4: called it the book whose title we cannot say?
Speaker 1: And when I did on the media, which is.
Speaker 4: Nationally syndicated, they called it in poopification?
Speaker 1: Was that with with a Brook? With Brook?
Speaker 4: Yeah, she's terrific, Gladstone fucking rocks. She is a national treasure.
Speaker 1: Uh. And yeah.
Speaker 4: Various other affiliates and radio stations have have dealt with
Speaker 4: it in different ways. You know, the Daily Show their cable.
Speaker 4: So they were like, it's fine, but anytime I'm on broadcast,
Speaker 4: we can't do it.
Speaker 1: And weirdly, I was just on.
Speaker 4: Show in Toronto and they decided not to let me
Speaker 4: say the title of the book, and so I was like,
Speaker 4: it's in somethingification and the something is a word for
Speaker 4: poop that rhymes with snit.
Speaker 1: Nice. That's the word they use, snit. I used it.
Speaker 1: I was like, I mean.
Speaker 4: It's great, it's general counsel is having a Yeah, it
Speaker 4: is always funny.
Speaker 2: Like when I went on on the media, I did
Speaker 2: like half an hour of just like I managed it.
Speaker 2: Because actually to Brooke Gladstone, older woman and genuinely, if
Speaker 2: you can't explain something to her, she's very smart, but
Speaker 2: like she's a regular person, older woman. So if you
Speaker 2: if you can explain it to her, you can explain
Speaker 2: to anyone. But if you can't, you can't explain. Normalis
Speaker 2: won't understand you. I got so many emails, lovely emails,
Speaker 2: good might pay us door my od wh who was listening?
Speaker 2: It was great as well, but I heard so many
Speaker 2: people just being like, wow, you sounded so nice. You
Speaker 2: didn't say shit or fuck. I'm like, I can actually
Speaker 2: have a conversation with someone without swearing.
Speaker 1: You know, you just don't need to take a nap afterwards.
Speaker 2: But sure, yeah, yeah, I have to enter like my
Speaker 2: mind palace, like the stone will of the Buddha to
Speaker 2: like just three hours point Gianggong in the back you
Speaker 2: know I.
Speaker 1: Feel about Samone done.
Speaker 2: Just no I can I'm calm, I'm normal. Yeah, it's
Speaker 2: I want Vegas to come roaring back. But I think
Speaker 2: there is a degree of the post twenty twenty one
Speaker 2: greed that came in. I think that everyone jacked stuff up.
Speaker 2: I think so. I don't know how is Summolin being
Speaker 2: received by tourism. Is it being a good tourism destination.
Speaker 2: It's it's like twenty five minutes away from everything which
Speaker 2: is in Vegas.
Speaker 1: Far Yeah, I mean, I would say.
Speaker 3: In my own experience, I don't even really see Summerlin
Speaker 3: as it a specifically very tourist.
Speaker 1: Does it not try and appeal? What is it?
Speaker 2: It's like it's sitting twenty five minutes away, which anywhere
Speaker 2: else would be like, oh you get that twenty five
Speaker 2: minutes a way in Vgas You're like no, you You're
Speaker 2: just like, oh, I'll come visit you in New York City.
Speaker 1: I guess.
Speaker 4: I mean, if they let you fire an automatic weapon,
Speaker 4: maybe you'll go that far.
Speaker 2: But you can do ten minutes off the strip. There's
Speaker 2: like full different places Wazooka. Then it's okay, there's a
Speaker 2: place fifteen minutes you can blow up a car for
Speaker 2: two grand here, Okay, Vegas rocks. It's an idea.
Speaker 3: It's a very wealthy area, and they got some really
Speaker 3: nice shopping.
Speaker 2: I think the trip a baseball team as well. Yes, Aviators, No,
Speaker 2: it's fucking great.
Speaker 1: As a person who doesn't like sports, I like that
Speaker 1: Avia is brilliant.
Speaker 3: It is I would say, at least in my experience,
Speaker 3: a place that's like more designed for locals, I would
Speaker 3: say probably more affluent.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, it's a master playing community.
Speaker 3: Yeah, which I've got a couple of times I had
Speaker 3: to go to an event at the Aviators Stadium.
Speaker 1: It's really nice.
Speaker 3: I just never really saw it as I was tifically
Speaker 3: like serving the tour risk.
Speaker 1: True.
Speaker 3: It's kind of interesting with that is that the locals
Speaker 3: casinos actually had a really good year. What would be
Speaker 3: what you mean, like Green Well all the Stations casinos.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeahah, but also Green Valley as well. Is they
Speaker 2: doing all right?
Speaker 1: I believe? So that's one pretty close to me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I know, I like all the local casinos that
Speaker 2: just like, yeah, stations overall had a very good year.
Speaker 2: It's good is because there's the asmr of just the
Speaker 2: slot machines they're always like somewhere between completely empty or
Speaker 2: just a few people, but they somehow still make money.
Speaker 1: I love them, are the best.
Speaker 3: It's I also didn't realize before moving here that like
Speaker 3: all of the movie theaters that.
Speaker 1: You would go to or in casinos.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's one in the Orleans, and took my parents
Speaker 2: there when they were in town. And there's just these
Speaker 2: horrifying giant like chucky cheese looking animals, like a giant
Speaker 2: statue to.
Speaker 1: Them when you well, that's my jam.
Speaker 2: I fucking love it. No, my parents thought it was one.
Speaker 1: I'm not committed robot sexual Sadly.
Speaker 2: They're not robots. They're just giant statues of rats.
Speaker 3: No, it's so strange key tournament there.
Speaker 1: I did not see that the right, I swear.
Speaker 2: Maybe I just like hallucinate it just these just like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 2: my mum gave me pot or something.
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 4: But and that cab on the way down, Ed and
Speaker 4: I were talking about ed ed On Gueslo and I
Speaker 4: were talking about my new favorite podcast, which is No Gods,
Speaker 4: No Mayors, which is a podcast about the oaths that
Speaker 4: are mayors, And on that I learned that Las Vegas
Speaker 4: UH is not a city. Yeah, the city of Las
Speaker 4: Vegas is a suburb.
Speaker 2: On the other side, when you hear about the mayor
Speaker 2: of Las Vegas, this is an unincorporated area, right, we.
Speaker 3: Have Paradise and then yeah, the when I first moved here,
Speaker 3: I was like being explained all the different government structures,
Speaker 3: like a lot of things in southern Nevada run through
Speaker 3: Clark County.
Speaker 1: Uh huh, just because it's.
Speaker 3: Encompasses the tire or not entire but most of the
Speaker 3: population that lives around this area. But Las Vegas itself
Speaker 3: is not the Strip. And then you have North Las
Speaker 3: Vegas and Henderson.
Speaker 4: It's but the part of Las Vegas you see as
Speaker 4: a visitor to Las Vegas is an unincorporated county land
Speaker 4: right largely.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I also just want to be clear, it
Speaker 2: wasn't rats. It was giant, kind of stoned looking crocodiles.
Speaker 2: Like they're just like they all look like animated. What
Speaker 2: is the point like these things look like, Yeah, they
Speaker 2: look like they are just I don't want to know.
Speaker 4: They're very they're very uh splash mountain looking, yes, like
Speaker 4: a little alligator minstrel city.
Speaker 2: Oh god, I wonder if they have their own shredder.
Speaker 2: You know, what do you mean, like a shredded like
Speaker 2: the yeah, yeah, like.
Speaker 7: Instead of you know, teenage Benja alligators and they've got
Speaker 7: to like who's yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: It's the people that collect unemployment taxes. Like they're just
Speaker 2: constantly at war with them.
Speaker 7: It's like a dude who's just hanging in the sewer.
Speaker 2: One thing else say is like, I know this sounds strange,
Speaker 2: but Vegas doesn't also seem that welcoming to see. Yes,
Speaker 2: Like it's it's weird. They you'd think that they cater
Speaker 2: to it more like when Raiders games are going on,
Speaker 2: there's a shit on a pop up events with this,
Speaker 2: it's like the only specific drinking specials or anything like
Speaker 2: that are just Lenovo has brought a restaurant, right.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's it's pretty crazy to see though, as
Speaker 3: you know, I come to the strip probably a lot
Speaker 3: less than people would think. Yeah, but I mean cees
Speaker 3: maybe not getting drink deals, but it is everywhere on
Speaker 3: the strip.
Speaker 2: It is, but it's events where people have bought them.
Speaker 2: It's not like they are. Vegas usually like opens their
Speaker 2: arms to people in like a just a kind of
Speaker 2: a can I have your money please?
Speaker 1: Thing?
Speaker 2: And I don't know whether it's just c Yes doesn't
Speaker 2: treat them with respect or something.
Speaker 7: It's just something they haven't forgiven them from disaggregating from AVN.
Speaker 7: I think, yeah, that's.
Speaker 2: The thing they should never have done. It's because of
Speaker 2: fucking purity.
Speaker 7: I mean, yeah, you know that, I understand, but I
Speaker 7: understand intellectually like they should.
Speaker 2: Have them in the same conference hall.
Speaker 3: Yes, actually yeah, it's now at Virgin Hotels, which I
Speaker 3: kind of very funny.
Speaker 4: So the other event I come to in Vegas most
Speaker 4: years is Defcon and talk about an event that Vegas does.
Speaker 1: Not roll out the red car.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we just keep getting turfed out of hotels and
Speaker 4: conference centers.
Speaker 2: So yeah, it's just it's weird. There's this combatative relationship
Speaker 2: with it as well as like, Okay, you'll hear you're
Speaker 2: gonna spend a lot of money, but weirdly we don't
Speaker 2: love It's I I feel like both sides need to
Speaker 2: come together and do something. But I guess Vegas is
Speaker 2: a city of honest cons and ces isn't. Ha No,
Speaker 2: I mean like that's kind of what I love it here.
Speaker 2: It's like everyone's weird, so no one's weird. And also
Speaker 2: we're like very human labor focused.
Speaker 1: I mean there's that.
Speaker 3: I mean, I think, like we talked about last year,
Speaker 3: there's a huge union culture and union participation here in Nevada.
Speaker 3: That for a I think a state that has a
Speaker 3: Republican governor and it was the first time in twenty
Speaker 3: something years voted for Trump, very you didn't have it
Speaker 3: that there is a big focus on the people who
Speaker 3: make up the city, which I really have appreciated learning
Speaker 3: about that and that kind of the culture around work.
Speaker 3: I mean, just like there is a in my opinion,
Speaker 3: like I don't know, growing up in New York, maybe
Speaker 3: I people would look down on some like service jobs.
Speaker 3: I don't think that's as much of a thing, at
Speaker 3: least in my experience talking to people.
Speaker 2: I'm splitting time between both, I would say New York
Speaker 2: has got a hell of a lot better at that,
Speaker 2: like most people will talk to And also if you
Speaker 2: have a disrespect for service people, chop your hands off
Speaker 2: for thirty seven to a review a piece of shit.
Speaker 2: But I like, yeah, this city is very pro labor,
Speaker 2: and I guess the current state of the tech industry isn't.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well I was gonna yeah, I was gonna.
Speaker 2: Conference where it's like, what if we didn't have people?
Speaker 1: There is like a.
Speaker 3: This like overarching theme of feels almost like anti human. Yeah,
Speaker 3: like we are trying to and I mean like tech innovation.
Speaker 3: Forever I've been like, how do we minimize the labor
Speaker 3: cost of whatever? But it feels like we're taking it
Speaker 3: to such a degree.
Speaker 2: And everyone's so excited.
Speaker 1: Everyone's like, oh, I can't wait.
Speaker 3: I mean, yeah, there's people who are like excited to
Speaker 3: see people lose their child.
Speaker 2: And the thing is as well, like Vegas, one of
Speaker 2: the best things here is go and fucking talk to
Speaker 2: the people working at the restaurants, at the door and
Speaker 2: your cab. There's so many everyone in. No one comes
Speaker 2: here by accident. Everyone like ends up here because they
Speaker 2: had a few choices they needed to make.
Speaker 1: And it's like, I'm here.
Speaker 2: You talked to like one of my good mates, I know,
Speaker 2: Arenstein used to work at Custiply Abs now in S
Speaker 2: and P in New York, one of my dearest friends.
Speaker 2: And it's because just Vegas, people fucking will talk to you.
Speaker 2: And there's never a case I've never talked to anyone here.
Speaker 2: And it just happened in New York, where there was
Speaker 2: like the look up and down?
Speaker 1: Who were you? What do you do?
Speaker 2: No? One everyone started whatre you Like, Yeah, don't know,
Speaker 2: there's a genuine every man culture here, And I don't
Speaker 2: know if.
Speaker 1: This is the case.
Speaker 2: It probably isn't at a large scale, but yeah, I
Speaker 2: can imagine if you're well here, there is a certain
Speaker 2: degree of fuck off, Oh you want to replace me
Speaker 2: and everyone I know and everything I do.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I'm not sure how.
Speaker 3: Ingrained or like supremely aware people are of that sentiment
Speaker 3: with history for like people who are just like going
Speaker 3: about their day.
Speaker 1: But I think, like.
Speaker 3: It's always funny to see how the ads change in
Speaker 3: Vegas based on what conferences in town.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think.
Speaker 3: I mean I've certainly picked up on when there's like
Speaker 3: a tech show, like some of them are like the.
Speaker 1: Human need not apply.
Speaker 4: I mean not literally that, but no, it's yeah, I mean.
Speaker 3: There are literal I don't know if they ran them here,
Speaker 3: But there's that one I saw in the Bay.
Speaker 1: I don't think I saw that one.
Speaker 4: And they did that specifically to drama about right, because
Speaker 4: that if people are running around saying this AI company
Speaker 4: is so good at what it does, that it's going
Speaker 4: to replace humans that investors are like.
Speaker 2: Oh, that's the advertising campaign of llm's in general.
Speaker 3: Well, say, like the fear you're putting people into is
Speaker 3: making them take your products seriously?
Speaker 1: Yeah, market even though work.
Speaker 3: I mean it's just another chat SHE'DBT rapper.
Speaker 2: Yeah exactly, it's just And I had this conversation with
Speaker 2: the radio earlier about like, oh, the MGM's chat boys
Speaker 2: replaced in concierge. Just no, it isn't. They just wanted
Speaker 2: to lay some people off. Like also, I feel like
Speaker 2: concierge culture he was kind of dead because I don't
Speaker 2: interact with it enough. No, but it's like it used,
Speaker 2: like ten to fifteen years ago you would talk to
Speaker 2: the concierge and they'd be able to get you into
Speaker 2: a show or a restaurant. Now there's so many people,
Speaker 2: it's just like, can you get me a reservation?
Speaker 1: Just use open table mate.
Speaker 3: There was, Yeah, there was this story I did a
Speaker 3: while back about this website called Restaurant Trader.
Speaker 8: Oh yeah, that was and one of the little nuggets
Speaker 8: of information that I got out of it that I
Speaker 8: wanted to make it into a bigger thing, but I
Speaker 8: just wasn't able to was that there were concierge folks
Speaker 8: who were getting reservations sound like through their job to
Speaker 8: then put on restaurant trader that people would pay that
Speaker 8: on the side, dhaustedly, Oh wow, where like I think
Speaker 8: there was an option on the website where you could
Speaker 8: like pretty much request to work with a concierge.
Speaker 3: Well, so, yeah, it's that that's a little anecdoti And
Speaker 3: when trader like is like banned in multiple New York
Speaker 3: restaurants New York City. Sorry, it was the New York
Speaker 3: Assembly that passed a law. Fuck, yeah, that was I
Speaker 3: think there was a there was a similar effort here
Speaker 3: in Nevada. That's why I was writing about it.
Speaker 2: I genuinely think it should be an actual crime to
Speaker 2: resell a poison.
Speaker 4: The most disgusting version of this was there was a
Speaker 4: bro who was paying people to call the I r
Speaker 4: S when the lines opened at eight in the morning
Speaker 4: and sit in the hold queue and then sell their
Speaker 4: positions in the I r S hold queue to people
Speaker 4: who wanted to figure out how what's going on with her?
Speaker 2: That should be adjailable offense.
Speaker 4: Well, he was eventually shut down, but I don't think
Speaker 4: he was ever put in jail much as he absolutely
Speaker 4: holding your holding a place in line fans, that's right.
Speaker 1: He should be put in the books. They put Captain
Speaker 1: Captain Jack her massage one. No, I'm talking about that.
Speaker 2: Anyone watched torch Wood torch Wood when they put Captain
Speaker 2: Jack in the concrete box, Well go and watch that.
Speaker 1: Look, Yeah, that's where that guy should go.
Speaker 4: It's Can I tell you my best Vegas?
Speaker 1: Please please please? Story.
Speaker 4: So my sister in law's good friends started a guide
Speaker 4: to places to romantic hotels called the Mister and Missus
Speaker 4: Smith Guides.
Speaker 2: What was the romantic hotel in this case?
Speaker 4: So the we were asked to come and review a hotel,
Speaker 4: and the way that it works is they ring up
Speaker 4: ahead and they said, we're the mister Smith company. We're
Speaker 4: thinking about putting you in the guide. We're going to
Speaker 4: send some anonymous reviewers. What we would like is a
Speaker 4: voucher for the manager to present at checkout that says
Speaker 4: these people should be camped, but they will book the
Speaker 4: reservation as per normal. The staff won't know until you
Speaker 4: check out. So we stayed in the high roller suite
Speaker 4: at the MGM Nice. So it was an eighteen hundred
Speaker 4: dollars a night, fourteen hundred square foot two story suite
Speaker 4: with a butler, and it was the first time we
Speaker 4: ever interacted with a concierge.
Speaker 1: It was very good. This was in two thousand and five.
Speaker 4: It was the weekend we got engaged, so we came
Speaker 4: here about engaging and we stayed in the hotel. I
Speaker 4: was I was teaching in la and my wife would
Speaker 4: come over and was working for BBC America, and it
Speaker 4: was it was so great and like the concierge culture,
Speaker 4: and they had lots of perks. The best thing they
Speaker 4: had was they came in they gave us a menu
Speaker 4: of newspapers and we were like, how do you get
Speaker 4: these newspapers? Because it was the Singapore Straits Times and
Speaker 4: mine Las Vegas Sun, the Las Vegas Sun as well,
Speaker 4: but no international papers. And they would print it on
Speaker 4: eleven but they had a facsimile newspaper service. They printed
Speaker 4: on eleven by seventeen inch hot heavy stock and bind
Speaker 4: it in silk ribbon and they would and so we
Speaker 4: ordered like eleven newspapers and we would come out in
Speaker 4: the morning and the butler would have laid them out
Speaker 4: in a fan on the on the coffee table from
Speaker 4: all over the world. That morning's paper, that's beautiful, International
Speaker 4: Hair Tribune whatever on creamy eleven seventeen with a with
Speaker 4: a like a sort of pinkish silver silk ribbon in
Speaker 4: the corner.
Speaker 2: Was that additional cost?
Speaker 1: No, it was all bundled him with.
Speaker 2: I mean, was amazing the margins there when you're getting someone,
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, of course twenty five ten grand at night. Yeah,
Speaker 2: And that's the thing, Like Vegas is a service culture place.
Speaker 2: Like shit, we're going to spego tonightbout Garcia. I've a
Speaker 2: GM there, fantastic place. Look over the Blogio Fountain, I
Speaker 2: mean formerly Bazomie. I don't I have my thoughts on that,
Speaker 2: but like there are so many great restaurants here with
Speaker 2: like lovely service. The Grecure Loto is brilliant, and even
Speaker 2: like Main Street Station's fucking great too, Like they let's.
Speaker 1: Get a pretty good Pristami sandwich at New York, New York.
Speaker 3: There's a great margarita deal at the station's casinos.
Speaker 2: But the Street Station as a microbrewery, doesn't it.
Speaker 1: I'm just saying no.
Speaker 2: But that's the thing, Like you can go, you can
Speaker 2: have a laugh, or if you want to do the
Speaker 2: fancy stuff, you can go at any number of places.
Speaker 2: I mean, like the whole thing about this city is
Speaker 2: it's relatively accessible, affordable, and if you want to spend
Speaker 2: some money, well you can spend some money and like
Speaker 2: have a luxury experience and it's not as expensive as
Speaker 2: doing it in the other cities. And I just it's weird,
Speaker 2: how I will just fucking say this. I don't think
Speaker 2: people who come to ces are grateful enough for how
Speaker 2: accessible the city is, in part because CS fucks it up.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's pretty difficult to get into that building like
Speaker 3: the Center.
Speaker 2: I mean, you can go to the Renaissance Hotel and
Speaker 2: then they ubers will be like, I'm being told to
Speaker 2: go somewhere else and you're like, mate, I don't know
Speaker 2: where to go because CEA doesn't know how to wipe
Speaker 2: their asshole. At this point, how many CS has be
Speaker 2: done with uber around fucking anyway, I'm.
Speaker 1: A big fan of the monorail for dirt.
Speaker 4: Monorail. Is there a chance the track could bend?
Speaker 2: I mean hopefully not, consider I don't on a diet
Speaker 2: outside Harris, but it's like I will say also that
Speaker 2: Harris was cheaper this year, even on like an expensive night.
Speaker 2: It was three hundred bucks night, which doesn't sound cheap,
Speaker 2: but it is for cees and which makes me wonder
Speaker 2: if CES attendance was down.
Speaker 1: I so I'm mad at Caesar's harra for kicking deaf
Speaker 1: Con out. I wouldn't stay there again.
Speaker 2: And that's the thing, Vegas. I'm not going to be romanding,
Speaker 2: but it used to be. But it feels like that's
Speaker 2: a that's a dollar to be made to work with
Speaker 2: the people at deaf Cone and be like, Okay, we
Speaker 2: have security concerns. What are some things that right deaf
Speaker 2: Con could do to make you comfortable?
Speaker 1: And then we could make you comfortable too.
Speaker 4: The last also, the last time I stayed at Harrah's,
Speaker 4: they gave me a room that not only didn't have
Speaker 4: a desk, it didn't have a closet.
Speaker 1: Oh.
Speaker 4: I was like, where do I hang up my stuff?
Speaker 4: And they're like, if you want a room with a closet,
Speaker 4: that's an extra charge. Jesus Christ, what year was that?
Speaker 1: That was two years ago at deaf Con.
Speaker 2: That's supremely fucked.
Speaker 3: It was.
Speaker 4: Years ago, deaf three years ago deaf Con in Releiss.
Speaker 3: You what you're just saying, thought i'd pull this up.
Speaker 3: The average daily room rate on the strip. This is,
Speaker 3: you know, year to date comparing November twenty twenty five
Speaker 3: to twenty twenty four, on the strip's actually falling four
Speaker 3: point seven percent and downtown six point Interesting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I just everything's out of sorts.
Speaker 4: This is but that's the room that's the rack rate,
Speaker 4: and they're piling it up with junk fees. So the
Speaker 4: rack rate is not the price, right, the one you
Speaker 4: have to add in the junk fees together.
Speaker 1: I believe that's inclusive. Is that inclusive? I believe?
Speaker 3: I mean that's the average, that's the room rate itself. Okay,
Speaker 3: you know that's a one to one comparison last year.
Speaker 1: I'm not positive, but yeah.
Speaker 2: I just feel like there is an ocean of opportunity
Speaker 2: here for the CEA if they could do one thing
Speaker 2: right and just like Gary Sparrow come on the show,
Speaker 2: CTA CTA, CTA, is that CTA c ATA. I don't
Speaker 2: know who fucking runs this shit. They centainly don't want
Speaker 2: to talk to me, but it's like, so I have.
Speaker 4: To say, I've known Gary Shapiro for twenty years. I've
Speaker 4: never had a bad interaction with him. I don't know
Speaker 4: all the dealings of the CTA, yeah, but I've never
Speaker 4: had a I get the impression that he is someone
Speaker 4: who is in charge of an industry association with several large,
Speaker 4: important members that like to throw their weight around, and
Speaker 4: he is the peacemaker and coalition binder of this, this big,
Speaker 4: desparate organization. I'm not going to like defend CA and
Speaker 4: its members, but you know, I do think that Gary
Speaker 4: Shapiro is holding together a very fractious group.
Speaker 2: Well, I've been saying CEA incorrectly for days, so I
Speaker 2: apologize that. Also, Ben is not your son.
Speaker 4: I think they were. I think they were the CA. Okay,
Speaker 4: his name to CTA because electronics sounds a little outmoded.
Speaker 2: I just feel like the CTA, now I'm saying it correctly,
Speaker 2: could work directly with Vegas and do way more. There's
Speaker 2: just it feels like they could streamline this whole thing
Speaker 2: and they get a little bit better because it's been
Speaker 2: here long enough that it's it's still too chaotic.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm not sure about the exact relationship they have,
Speaker 3: but they do have a pretty close working relationship, especially
Speaker 3: when it comes down to like construction and renovations within
Speaker 3: the convention center.
Speaker 2: How about getting people to and from the convention I
Speaker 2: think it.
Speaker 3: I mean there was there's another reporter, Alan Stell, who
Speaker 3: had a uh.
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna call it a tweet. I don't care.
Speaker 3: That was about like the difficulty of biking to the
Speaker 3: convention center.
Speaker 1: It's really really hard.
Speaker 2: I'm so sorry, you're a psychopath if you buy that
Speaker 2: convention stead.
Speaker 4: You know, I was thinking about e bikes when we
Speaker 4: were stuck in traffic today and thinking this would be fastest.
Speaker 2: I mean, biking throughout Vegas is quite hard.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I would never is that because bikes aren't allowed
Speaker 4: on the.
Speaker 3: I mean there's no infrastructure. I mean there is instructure,
Speaker 3: but there's not a lot of infrastructure for bikes.
Speaker 4: I mean, the way it was today, you would have
Speaker 4: been moving five times faster than on the road.
Speaker 2: But it's like we've had this convention hip for a
Speaker 2: while and it's still insanely difficult to get around. And
Speaker 2: it's not And they will probably say, well, you know,
Speaker 2: it's a big conventions.
Speaker 1: A lot of people.
Speaker 2: I can go around. I went to dinner Drew in
Speaker 2: the f one. It was not that different.
Speaker 4: What if they had helicopters that came in and skyjacked
Speaker 4: any car that moved into the junction when I didn't
Speaker 4: have time to completely and block the grid. Yeah, just
Speaker 4: just like take those cars and then dry and and
Speaker 4: then like take them out to the Grand Canyon. Just
Speaker 4: leave them at the bottom of the Grand or.
Speaker 1: A big arm that just took them.
Speaker 3: There was a there was a little viral clip of
Speaker 3: the new Zooks.
Speaker 1: One get stuck like it was.
Speaker 3: It didn't get stuck, it moved eventually, but it was
Speaker 3: like in the That's.
Speaker 1: Not your company.
Speaker 3: But they were just like in the middle of a
Speaker 3: turn in a giant like strip intersection for like a
Speaker 3: good little bit of time, and everyone around like what
Speaker 3: are they doing?
Speaker 2: Like cab drivers are just saying the most ugly shit
Speaker 2: of old time.
Speaker 3: Well, I just can't imagine being like the visitor and
Speaker 3: freaking out transparent boxes.
Speaker 2: Everyone's is that you like the Homo sampsum thing where
Speaker 2: he gets stuck and has to be craned out. Right,
Speaker 2: I mean, this is a town bereft of shame, but
Speaker 2: even that, that's a new kind of shame we invented
Speaker 2: here in Las Vegas.
Speaker 1: It's your adults.
Speaker 4: I've fallen in love with weimos as an Angelino because
Speaker 4: you can make a left turn into their path and
Speaker 4: they'll just defer to you and they won't even hank
Speaker 4: although yeah, and I'm just like, fuck you, right the
Speaker 4: right roads for people, not robots, last yourself.
Speaker 1: It's my ship, my street.
Speaker 2: That last time, last time, I was in Santisco and
Speaker 2: I took away Moo, I got out of it, watched
Speaker 2: as a Waymo in front of it got stuck at
Speaker 2: the inter I watched it gets stuck at the intersection.
Speaker 2: Then another Weymo gets stuck behind it, and I checked
Speaker 2: back half an hour it was still fucking sick, just
Speaker 2: like beautiful, just like stare at like by the w
Speaker 2: hotel and just staring out into nothing this as people
Speaker 2: are like, yeah, this thing isn't fucking hearing you.
Speaker 1: It can only see.
Speaker 3: Was it ser Fantisco where a bunch of people just
Speaker 3: kept calling weymos to one spot until it just.
Speaker 2: Can no sorry, yes, that was actually yeah yeah, and
Speaker 2: people putting like traffic cones on top lender. I think
Speaker 2: it was really funny when that was happening and people
Speaker 2: were like, you can't deface way Moe.
Speaker 1: It's like, this is domestic terrorist.
Speaker 2: Do people fucking say that, okay damage? It is illegal
Speaker 2: to smash up a car, so I will accept that
Speaker 2: property damage is.
Speaker 1: A legal is it though?
Speaker 9: Yeah?
Speaker 7: Yeah, I don't know lost the cops or maybe I
Speaker 7: don't think they'd have the answer.
Speaker 2: Yeah, cops are like, wow, obviously correct in forty percent
Speaker 2: of cases Google forty cops. Yeah, I can see what
Speaker 2: comes up, right, the truth, the truth about this specific situation. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's it's unfortunate. I feel like that everything feels out
Speaker 2: of sync here. I feel like the CTA could work
Speaker 2: with Vegas and make this a little bit easier. I
Speaker 2: also think the CTA needs to fucking kick companies out
Speaker 2: from renting restaurants in the Venetian. I think it's fucking stupid.
Speaker 2: I don't think we should lose an entire restaurant because
Speaker 2: Lenovo needs to do the slop hour where they're like,
Speaker 2: we had it in LLLM to your fucking laptop, you
Speaker 2: disgusting pig, you nasty pick. Yeah they did that. They
Speaker 2: didn't call you a nasty pig though. If they did that,
Speaker 2: I'd be fine if they were like, you nasty hogs
Speaker 2: do you like your slop, you pigs, I'd be like fine.
Speaker 4: Is so what I want is for Lenovo to distribute
Speaker 4: badge flair that's a little adhesive backed pointer, red pointer
Speaker 4: nub oh yeah yeah, I think pad and that, Like
Speaker 4: everyone can can go to the Lenova party and then
Speaker 4: have the red Lenova pointer on their badge.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but if you have a green one, well then
Speaker 2: you can do anything to them.
Speaker 1: I yeah, it's sorry. It's Vegas. Yeah, it's it's weird.
Speaker 1: It's just weird. I don't know.
Speaker 2: I I love living in Vegas, and then this this week,
Speaker 2: it's just all of the Vegas stuff that's fun kind
Speaker 2: of turns off. We've had less fun off strip vent
Speaker 2: like things. No one's blown up a car. There's not
Speaker 2: been any like interesting stunts. It's like they everyone forgot
Speaker 2: to have fun or make anything this year.
Speaker 1: It's it's really sad. It's sad.
Speaker 2: I'm upset that like CS is kind of not having fun,
Speaker 2: and neither is Vegas rules kind of sitting is rolling
Speaker 2: around in our filth at least I am yeah one
Speaker 2: just staring at me. I'm not filthy. I've been showering
Speaker 2: every day. We just send no when I was on
Speaker 2: the show earlier. I felt bad for them, but they
Speaker 2: were like, well, what about Lenovo's ai AS system. I'm like, yeah,
Speaker 2: that's just an LM, and they're like yeah, but like,
Speaker 2: what if it in the future. I'm like, what if
Speaker 2: it did what in the future, And they're like, what
Speaker 2: it would be?
Speaker 4: What if we breathe these horses to run so fast
Speaker 4: that eventually one of the mayors gives birth to a locomotive.
Speaker 1: On something.
Speaker 2: Okay, what if we all ship ourselves enough and maybe
Speaker 2: our asses all white themselves.
Speaker 3: We need more hay than it currently exists on the planet.
Speaker 2: That's right, We've thrown a ball so fast that it
Speaker 2: now flies.
Speaker 7: That well covered unprecedented reserves of hey in other countries.
Speaker 1: That we're not. We're gonna We're gonna do it. We're
Speaker 1: just gonna run down for a few years.
Speaker 2: Beautiful, big, beautiful, Hey, big beautiful, the big We love him.
Speaker 4: That's the sister town to hay on Why and whales beautiful?
Speaker 2: Oh God, Like the whole week my brain has been broken.
Speaker 2: Someone sent me a video of someoneding Trump was going
Speaker 2: I made a boom boom, I mean the biggest boom
Speaker 2: boom i've ever seen.
Speaker 1: They're saying, it's quite beautiful. Yeah, and this specific week
Speaker 1: is like even that.
Speaker 2: The Trump voice just I don't know if this is.
Speaker 1: The week to do it.
Speaker 2: Very sad, but you know yet Trump. Yeah, he's still alive, Chicken. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean he's still going.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 2: The upcoming ad you're gonna get is for nothing political,
Speaker 2: nothing weird. Everything's normal here. We're all the most normal
Speaker 2: people to ever do a podcast in history. And you
Speaker 2: too can be the most normal person ever if you
Speaker 2: buy and or listen to the following advertisement. Just throw
Speaker 2: your fucking credit card, your phone, your pig. I'm sorry,
Speaker 2: you're not a pig. I please don't stop listening to
Speaker 2: my show. I desperately need the downloads.
Speaker 1: Diane.
Speaker 2: I'm once again finding myself in front of a microphone
Speaker 2: and beautiful sunny Las Vegas, Nevada, even though it's nighttime
Speaker 2: or i've been for what feels like weeks. I'm surrounded
Speaker 2: by several wayward travelers that I adore, starting with another
Speaker 2: journalist and activist. I think author.
Speaker 1: Cory Doctor Well, Hello, edit, that nice to be here.
Speaker 2: That's him, and we've got Garrison Davis of it could
Speaker 2: happen here, I apologize, we had a podcasting emergency. No,
Speaker 2: it's fine, we are doing it now. And Carl Shnard
Speaker 2: of the Las Vegas Sun, Hello, and of course Edward
Speaker 2: and Graso Jr.
Speaker 1: Hello?
Speaker 2: Who is Who's Diane As?
Speaker 1: It's a Twin Peaks reference. I thought it was a
Speaker 1: Cheers ference.
Speaker 2: And that's what I'm not. That's Robert Evans behind the
Speaker 2: Bosto's Yeah, and famous Cheers fan, famous Cheers head. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and he Robert is very excited because we have the
Speaker 2: pieces to make what was it? We've got to cu
Speaker 2: We've got we've got a CD.
Speaker 1: Cory doctor c D. You've got a Robert. We've got
Speaker 1: us his last name, yeah, because there's not an first
Speaker 1: name here. And then what's the end. The editor is
Speaker 1: Matt Matt, so cd ROM also some other people's names
Speaker 1: and some Yeah, sure you have to add other names.
Speaker 2: What's the cd ROM?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 4: Oh, it's what you when you have an ISO and
Speaker 4: you want to convert it to optical media, you take
Speaker 4: that ISO optic toast the one onto the other.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: When you've pirated Cyberpunk twenty seventy seven and you have
Speaker 1: to you have to make your computer think that you've
Speaker 1: put a CD, oh my daddy CD, and I've been
Speaker 1: played with that with that in a minute.
Speaker 7: I miss I miss pirrating and the little isovern bringing
Speaker 7: it off.
Speaker 1: I missed when the only way I had Microsoft Office
Speaker 1: was a pirated version that never touched the Internet and
Speaker 1: didn't ask me to use co pilot everything. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: really is sick.
Speaker 4: I remember when I started reading classified ads and it
Speaker 4: was like, uh, you know s w F, I s
Speaker 4: O s w M. And I was like a straight
Speaker 4: white female as an ISO frustrate white male.
Speaker 1: I don't understand.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Garrison, was that a legit question? No, I'm sorry,
Speaker 2: that would have been No, Honestly, if it was honest,
Speaker 2: that would have been fired.
Speaker 9: It was barely though, because like my dad used it
Speaker 9: for the music he purchased legally on the Internet and
Speaker 9: transferring it to CDs when I was a kid. But
Speaker 9: like I just I got like the last bit of
Speaker 9: CD rock like probably like my younger siblings don't know
Speaker 9: what a CD.
Speaker 1: Meanwhile, I once owned a ZIP drive.
Speaker 2: I had the same I had a jazz drive. Yeah, no,
Speaker 2: my dad, this is the kind of kid I was.
Speaker 9: My dad.
Speaker 4: I had a dwarfull of scuzzy terminators.
Speaker 2: Jesus Christ. They took me a minute for remember what
Speaker 2: scuzzy referred to. So that was the one where you
Speaker 2: screwed it into like it had literal screws.
Speaker 4: You had to set dip switches on the back. And
Speaker 4: if you gave two scuzzy devices the same idea, all
Speaker 4: of your drives would go south forever.
Speaker 2: Hell yeah, I love it.
Speaker 4: Computers used to be used to have to fight with
Speaker 4: the computers and they administer a lethal shock.
Speaker 2: Used to be a proper country.
Speaker 1: Now we used to.
Speaker 2: We used to have jazz drives, zip drives now anyone.
Speaker 2: Now you just drop box gives you a whole, a
Speaker 2: whole terror bio to any all sorts and sundry.
Speaker 1: Unlimited access for the US government without a warrant, but
Speaker 1: also unlimited access for the chat box that they signed
Speaker 1: deals with.
Speaker 2: You know, be fair. I did see earlier that chat
Speaker 2: GPT apparently is doing a Hippo compliant chat GPT, which
Speaker 2: just is a lie. What again, it's a lie. I
Speaker 2: thought it's a fucking lie.
Speaker 9: Imagine how many GPTs we've seen in health like like
Speaker 9: like wearable products, just just like these past few days.
Speaker 1: Yeah again, we're talking about this on the other show.
Speaker 1: But you can tell. One of the the things that
Speaker 1: you can divide the people with AI products between is
Speaker 1: the ninety percent for whom if you ask them what
Speaker 1: happens if somebody like if there's a data breach with
Speaker 1: all of this biometric data you've put in the cloud,
Speaker 1: they go what or we're really concerned with safety, right.
Speaker 1: They'll give you one of those two answers, but they
Speaker 1: don't actually have an answer. And then there's the much
Speaker 1: smaller ten to twenty percent of people bringing products who
Speaker 1: will tell you right up front the second you come
Speaker 1: to their booth. This does not touch the cloud. It
Speaker 1: never goes online. It is entirely on device.
Speaker 2: I'm trying to work out how anything GPT can be
Speaker 2: Hippo compliant, though it can't, I mean, based on my
Speaker 2: understanding of Hippa, I'm sure they're working out a deal
Speaker 2: with I mean now that the government's run by who's
Speaker 2: run by?
Speaker 1: But like.
Speaker 4: You sketch out a way that it could be hippo compliant.
Speaker 4: So HIPPA, although it's commonly called a consumer privacy law,
Speaker 4: is not a consumer privacy law because it only affects
Speaker 4: your rights as a patient and not as a consumer.
Speaker 1: And so if you.
Speaker 4: Were to construct a kind of matrioshka where the inside
Speaker 4: doll is a consumer company that is providing you with
Speaker 4: consumer medical services and the outside of the doll is
Speaker 4: a medical company that does nothing except kind of exists
Speaker 4: as a fig leaf like that, like the MD whose
Speaker 4: name is on the private equity owned practice, then what
Speaker 4: you could say is, well, you haven't given us any
Speaker 4: medical data, You've only given us consumer data. Therefore it
Speaker 4: is hipp A compliant, like we have structured Hippo compliance
Speaker 4: through the compliance regime and not through the Hippa regime.
Speaker 2: Okay, okay, yeah, that makes sense. I just think if
Speaker 2: you feed your healthcare that you're into this, you deserve
Speaker 2: whatever comes out.
Speaker 1: Like It's just I would I would like it's easy
Speaker 1: to take that attitude.
Speaker 2: People are being canned into it and claimed this morph.
Speaker 1: And it's going to be it's they're going to be
Speaker 1: conduit into it. The same way a lot of people
Speaker 1: were condon into getting addicted to pain killers, where they
Speaker 1: will be in the doctor's office, their doctor will have
Speaker 1: gotten flown out for a VAK or put on a
Speaker 1: cruise where they were pitched on this and their doctor
Speaker 1: will say there's a wearable that can help you keep
Speaker 1: track of your cholesterol, And this sixty five year old
Speaker 1: person will not immediately think, like people who professionally worry
Speaker 1: about this stuff, is my data safe?
Speaker 2: What? What is it being safeguard?
Speaker 1: Can a prompt injection attack reveal all of my biomede?
Speaker 4: They'll think, They'll think, you know, I am not special enough, right.
Speaker 4: I understand the nature of targets of opportunity, But the
Speaker 4: thing I'm.
Speaker 2: Worried about is more than it will give you the
Speaker 2: wrong advice more than anything.
Speaker 1: I mean that in terms of objective health realities, that
Speaker 1: is the big concern. But also I mean, and that's
Speaker 1: part of what I'm saying, is that when people, the
Speaker 1: majority of people I suspect who come into these devices
Speaker 1: will not have made a choice to go it into
Speaker 1: the world and buy something. They will have been advised
Speaker 1: by a medical professional. They trust that this is a
Speaker 1: good product for them. And that's part of what worries
Speaker 1: me in terms of it hallucinating, in terms of it
Speaker 1: not being reliable, because the doctors probably will not be
Speaker 1: competent to judge whether or not the AI is reliable, but.
Speaker 3: I also think it's that no one can afford healthcare anyway.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. And that's the thing with like AI therapy
Speaker 2: that I always say, It's like, it's obviously evil, obviously bad, terrible,
Speaker 2: it's going to reinforce things. But at the same time,
Speaker 2: therapy is extremely expensive. Yeah, and when it's covered by
Speaker 2: health care plants, which it's often not. And I don't
Speaker 2: even think therapy is covered under the NHS.
Speaker 6: There.
Speaker 2: If it is, it's extremely it is. When I was there,
Speaker 2: I could not find a therapist.
Speaker 4: It was hard to find a therapist. But there it
Speaker 4: is covered.
Speaker 2: Then it may is like the thing is, then it
Speaker 2: may as well not be. And I say, this is
Speaker 2: a big NHS defender and lover of the NHS mental health.
Speaker 2: Is this weird bifurcated thing where everything's too expensive?
Speaker 1: So yeah, well, I mean, and that was I went
Speaker 1: to a panel that was about AI in the Future
Speaker 1: of mental health. And I went there hoping that it
Speaker 1: or expecting it to be a normal panel where I
Speaker 1: harass whoever is up there during the q and a.
Speaker 1: But no, it was one very earnest clinical therapist who
Speaker 1: was talking about people are already used AIS for therapy.
Speaker 1: We have data on how often that's being done, and
Speaker 1: we have data on the harms. And one of the
Speaker 1: reasons why it's harmful is because the ais are programmed
Speaker 1: to keep you using them as long as possible, and
Speaker 1: that there's certain behaviors that they exhibit that are bad
Speaker 1: for people. So we if we're going if it's possible
Speaker 1: to make a healthy therapeutic AI, these are the things
Speaker 1: that would need to do and not do. And one
Speaker 1: of the things is it would not have it would
Speaker 1: need to not work the way AI chatbots work in
Speaker 1: terms of constantly. And my question for her after the
Speaker 1: show was like, well, but like that seems like people
Speaker 1: won't use it and will just keep using the chaos.
Speaker 2: They're true.
Speaker 4: I think people journaling is a well understood therapeutical modality.
Speaker 4: Journaling with prompts is a well understood therapeutic modality. I
Speaker 4: think those prompts don't have to be very sophisticated, uh,
Speaker 4: And I think that there are lots of people who
Speaker 4: would find it nice to have a thing where when
Speaker 4: you type some stuff, gave you a response and said,
Speaker 4: you know, tell me more.
Speaker 2: I think you've kind of like this rosebud or something
Speaker 2: like there are ones like that as well. It's just
Speaker 2: when it comes to therapeutics, I guess more.
Speaker 1: My My concern was that I don't deny that there
Speaker 1: is a market and there are people who would get utility,
Speaker 1: and you probably could make a device that could handle
Speaker 1: that responsibly, but I don't see that as solving the
Speaker 1: societal issue of huge numbers of people use it because
Speaker 1: the chatbots are addicted, right, and that's what like that?
Speaker 1: That was my and to be very clear to her,
Speaker 1: I liked this person, and her answer was when I
Speaker 1: brought that up, I have that concern too, and I
Speaker 1: think it might not be really possible for this to
Speaker 1: help them.
Speaker 2: Well, the good news is is that none of this
Speaker 2: is remotely profitable in any way, and healthcare dates or
Speaker 2: is extremely extremely token intensive, and so anyone using this
Speaker 2: is just working on borrowed time.
Speaker 4: And in defense of chatbots and medical applications, they are
Speaker 4: reliably good at upcoting things in EHR, so you can
Speaker 4: rip off in sure.
Speaker 1: Which is great.
Speaker 2: And hey, no, I've heard that's the one that is
Speaker 2: the one lllm use I have heard where it's just like, yeah,
Speaker 2: find if you're being overcharged in this, which is you
Speaker 2: know what the one oh.
Speaker 1: No, I mean overcharging.
Speaker 4: They're very good at like EPIC, which is the Electronic
Speaker 4: Health Health Record monopolist, which is a cult. Basically, they
Speaker 4: they've basically redesigned the chapbots in their EHR systems around
Speaker 4: upcoding so that they can rip off insurres. So if
Speaker 4: you go in and you say I have an X
Speaker 4: and a Y and a Z, and they're like, well
Speaker 4: that infers I can infer that you have an A, N,
Speaker 4: A B in a c UH and also we can
Speaker 4: treat X as a we can treat X as this
Speaker 4: category of for reimbursement. In that category for reimbursement, I
Speaker 4: will prompt the clinician to enter a few more details
Speaker 4: that will allow us to This is why clinicians spend
Speaker 4: two hours doing data entry for every hour they spend
Speaker 4: doing clinical care.
Speaker 1: And that makes me think a product I might want
Speaker 1: because there's a lot of agentic AI here and I
Speaker 1: legitimately don't want an AI agent to handle stuff like
Speaker 1: booking flights or booking to my car to get repaired
Speaker 1: or whatever for me. But what could be useful is
Speaker 1: if somebody coded an AI agent that you could have
Speaker 1: call companies that you need to call on the phone
Speaker 1: and fight through their chatbot, and like, this is an
Speaker 1: optimized chatbot for fighting through other chatbots. We have that
Speaker 1: getting you. It's a product.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Human dot Com they already hit they've had that
Speaker 2: for a while.
Speaker 1: It's it's funny.
Speaker 2: It's like even the good idea, it's kind of already done. Also,
Speaker 2: if you use wargreens, I think if you just type
Speaker 2: seven seven to one the moment you call, you immediately
Speaker 2: go to the pharmacist.
Speaker 1: Yep, just do that.
Speaker 2: That's a little tip for you all, just if you'd
Speaker 2: work with wargreens. Fuck chatbots, Yeah, it's I also just
Speaker 2: think that it's irresponsible to have a chatbot talk about
Speaker 2: any healthcare thing, just because the nuance of what even
Speaker 2: I might my further radicalization of that is I think
Speaker 2: all the fitness stuff is unhealthy too, because you can
Speaker 2: fuck yourself up over training so easily. And while we
Speaker 2: were walking out Corey from the Venetian earlier today, there
Speaker 2: were a bunch of these AI training things and it's like,
Speaker 2: you'll fuck your shit and oh, we'll get your age
Speaker 2: and your weight and that will tell us everything. Not
Speaker 2: really h Oh, these fucking shows. Welleah I did.
Speaker 1: I went to a comedy smart I who they have
Speaker 1: an optical recognition program and it worked in that they
Speaker 1: had it read my eyes and then when I walked
Speaker 1: in front of it in the future, it would identify
Speaker 1: me by the name I gave it, and the other
Speaker 1: people by the name they gave it. But the thing
Speaker 1: that it was meant for is number one. Like several
Speaker 1: products I saw at CES, if you were distracted, if
Speaker 1: you're looking at your phone, or if you fall asleep
Speaker 1: while driving, it will try to wake you up, or
Speaker 1: it will say, hey, look away from your phone. And
Speaker 1: I guess that could be useful. But the other side
Speaker 1: of it was most of the products that I saw
Speaker 1: were built into these huge smart dashboards that were like
Speaker 1: giant screens in the front of the car. And we
Speaker 1: know that when people are manipulating a big screen in
Speaker 1: a car, they are as bad as a drunk driver,
Speaker 1: right yeah, And so it's like, well, you you're offering
Speaker 1: a solution to the problem that was created by cramming
Speaker 1: a necessary crap cars. The other thing that they were
Speaker 1: showing is that we can we can see if you're
Speaker 1: drunk based on the way your eyes look which they
Speaker 1: said they got a lady drunk on a closed track
Speaker 1: and had it identify her. And I have no way
Speaker 1: of evaluating whether this works. But people when I posted
Speaker 1: a video of it, pointed out in the comments, I
Speaker 1: have this issue right with my eyes. I wonder if
Speaker 1: it's going to just point at call me drunk, And
Speaker 1: I kind of wonder, are we going to also see
Speaker 1: that certain people? They did not groups of people of
Speaker 1: different ethnicities. They didn't test it widely enough, and so
Speaker 1: it just decides everyone of this ethnicity is drying. Microsoft
Speaker 1: American if you're a drunk American, right, yes I am.
Speaker 2: But also people drive on the different side of the
Speaker 2: roads so that eyes would possibly look in different directions.
Speaker 2: And I always think, and I mentioned it earlier, Microsoft
Speaker 2: Connect which could not see black people quite literally batter
Speaker 2: off ted anyone remember bat of great show, Literally we
Speaker 2: see you.
Speaker 1: And that was the And I don't know that smart
Speaker 1: Ie has this I have because I can't.
Speaker 2: I can't. Really I did show up.
Speaker 1: I had ripped a shipload of uh my my CBG joint,
Speaker 1: which is like, himp, what is CBG? It's one of
Speaker 1: the many different cannabinoids. They figured out how to extract
Speaker 1: and that's federally legal for that doblement. So I was
Speaker 1: high as hell and I'd taken a shipload of my
Speaker 1: Credom pills and it didn't notify that I was fucked up,
Speaker 1: but I wasn't drunk.
Speaker 2: So so you can drive on CBG and cradle. Yeah,
Speaker 2: you know I should not have been driving.
Speaker 1: Yeah, driving high as fine, that's on this.
Speaker 4: I mean, if you if you take a little k
Speaker 4: just get just get to the edge of the k
Speaker 4: hole when.
Speaker 1: Best.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you can become the richest man in the world.
Speaker 9: It turns out you can use you can use nitrous
Speaker 9: in multiple ways in your car.
Speaker 1: Look, some of us may have done car nitrous before,
Speaker 1: and if so, as long as you don't do a double,
Speaker 1: it's safe.
Speaker 2: Better or flying brow By Calmageddon like.
Speaker 1: Steve Jackson's Car Wars. Jesus Christ.
Speaker 2: That's a blast from the Pand oh my god, now
Speaker 2: they're doing a newcom again.
Speaker 1: Now it's gonna be nice.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's I can't stop thinking of the eye thing now.
Speaker 2: It's really bothered me because that feels like this, How
Speaker 2: would you possibly ever get enough data?
Speaker 1: I don't. That's the thing is they had a video
Speaker 1: of it recognizing a drunk person, but nothing that they
Speaker 1: had at the show.
Speaker 2: I cannot test. You should just get every journalist rip
Speaker 2: ship and just to be like, yeah, this is there
Speaker 2: used to.
Speaker 1: Be bars at some of the Yeah, and that's what
Speaker 1: they should have had. They should have been like, take
Speaker 1: three shots and get in front of this thing. You
Speaker 1: see if it can tell response.
Speaker 9: No, they should have like a driving simulator and they
Speaker 9: should have like shots and you should be able to
Speaker 9: go up do some shots, getting driving simulator and see
Speaker 9: if it can tell if you're drunk driving.
Speaker 2: Again, this sounds great.
Speaker 1: This is why CEES needs to be moved to Minneapolis, right.
Speaker 2: No, no, absolutely not in January? Are you insane? That
Speaker 2: mean drunk driving city in January it's gonna be ice everywhere.
Speaker 1: Well there's currently everywhere everywhere. Oh god, now.
Speaker 2: They should they should move it somewhere more punishing, though.
Speaker 2: I agree it's Vegas is too nice. Let's send this
Speaker 2: the fucking like Merced, California. There we go, black Rock Desert.
Speaker 1: There we No, No, no, that's too nice.
Speaker 2: Ce s Dallas, Yeah, Dallas, Dallas, joke about that. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that would be to Orlando, Florida.
Speaker 1: The most the most.
Speaker 2: Painful place in the world, the most I'm I'm not
Speaker 2: not super spiritual, but that place is.
Speaker 1: Bathed in evil. And I live in Las Vegas.
Speaker 9: Yeah, you live in Vegas. You can't see very little
Speaker 9: room to stand up.
Speaker 4: I have a lot of experience. I mean, if we're
Speaker 4: going to Florida London, how about clear Water right, the
Speaker 4: world's headquarters for flexidisc manufacturing scientology.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I you know, to be honest, a lot
Speaker 1: of people don't like the culty aspects of flexi disc.
Speaker 1: But I think, you know, there's a lot of what
Speaker 1: is that I don't know you.
Speaker 4: Ever buy a magazine that had a floppy printed forty
Speaker 4: five rpm record that you tore out of the magazine
Speaker 4: and put on your turntable.
Speaker 1: No, that is a flexi disk?
Speaker 2: Well when when was this the thing?
Speaker 1: It was a thing from.
Speaker 4: Like the fifties through the early two thousands.
Speaker 1: Really, wow, Garrison, that's basically like a CD rom But
Speaker 1: oh I got it that I woke one of It's
Speaker 1: like a DVD for your ears. That might be what
Speaker 1: finally broke me on this.
Speaker 4: I mentioned on an earlier installment of this that one
Speaker 4: of my Christmas gifts was this Olivetti typewriter. But one
Speaker 4: of my other Christmas gifts was a Mad magazine from
Speaker 4: nineteen eighty one with a Flexi disc. It's the great, big,
Speaker 4: beautiful day fly desk that had they recorded eight different
Speaker 4: endings to the track and they had a in the
Speaker 4: groove that has a hard stop that caused the needle
Speaker 4: to pop up and it would land in one of
Speaker 4: eight random tracks.
Speaker 1: That's cool. That's actually the coolest shit.
Speaker 2: Also, that's cooler than anything I've seen it. Yes, technically
Speaker 2: based on the standards of ce S. That's AI enabled.
Speaker 4: That's a smart smart and actually quite literally more reliable
Speaker 4: than any LM.
Speaker 2: It's all on device, doesn't connect to the cloud. It's
Speaker 2: everything we've been looking for in products.
Speaker 4: And it's customizable and uh user centric.
Speaker 2: Yeah, wow, I love this. This is the only company
Speaker 2: I respect. I heard about this week.
Speaker 1: I Wills in terms of good products. We saw Gary
Speaker 1: and I we talked about this on our show. I
Speaker 1: talked about in the first episode with you. There are
Speaker 1: a lot of exoskeleton products out that are a mix
Speaker 1: of and often they're meant for both, but a mix
Speaker 1: of therapeutic for people who have different like disabilities where
Speaker 1: they might need the extra assistance offered, and also for
Speaker 1: like laborers, for people working, and I'm also like people
Speaker 1: doing working like factories. The shoe one, I didn't get
Speaker 1: to see shoe ones. There's some upper body ones, yeah,
Speaker 1: the hip ones, and some they're now being also marketed
Speaker 1: as like this is really useful for people who are hiking,
Speaker 1: who are carrying, who are out in the way. Were
Speaker 1: talking weights, and we got to test one. They they
Speaker 1: sent me. They gave me hyper Shell gave me one
Speaker 1: of their units that retailed for about two grand. They
Speaker 1: range from about two grand or about one one thousand
Speaker 1: dollars to a couple of thousand dollars, but the one
Speaker 1: we've got is about a two grand unit.
Speaker 2: Gary and I both wore it.
Speaker 1: I have some data on it, by which I mean
Speaker 1: I tracked how fast I was moving. I walked from
Speaker 1: the Venetian to the LBCC, and normally when I am
Speaker 1: just walking and on a particular hurry, it's about a
Speaker 1: nineteen twenty minute mile if I'm just kind of like
Speaker 1: walking and not going, which is more or less normal,
Speaker 1: and my heart rates usually between like ninety five and
Speaker 1: like one oh three or something like that. If I'm
Speaker 1: like walking, and when I had the the exoskeleton on,
Speaker 1: my pace was between fifteen thirty and like sixteen twenty as.
Speaker 1: Oh and my heart rate was never more than like
Speaker 1: one or two higher than normal amount of effort.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, same amount like again my heart rate.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like that's that's yeah, because you can feel it
Speaker 1: like lifting your legs. Basically it is kind of moving you.
Speaker 1: I didn't have any less foot pain, like by the
Speaker 1: end of the day, fourteen thousand steps or so, like
Speaker 1: my feet. You're sure because it doesn't do anything to
Speaker 1: your feet, But my knees didn't feel strained, and my
Speaker 1: lower back didn't feel strained. That's you know what.
Speaker 2: I found it pretty cool? Yeah, I like this. I
Speaker 2: like this in a quite cynical CS. Yeah, I actually
Speaker 2: really love the visa everywhere. These are actually future tech,
Speaker 2: but fucking rocks.
Speaker 1: I actually I literally thanked the rep who had given
Speaker 1: them to me, not forgiving me to them, but just like,
Speaker 1: thank you guys for bringing a real thing to the show. Yes,
Speaker 1: like when you went through the entrance metal detective, it
Speaker 1: was fine.
Speaker 2: They didn't even notice it. Really, that's not good, no.
Speaker 1: No at all, Like carbon fiber or something.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, oh wow, Hyper show should let me have one.
Speaker 1: I'm sure we can get you try and get used
Speaker 1: to too similar response. Yeah, I know.
Speaker 2: We talked about it yesterday on the show. I think
Speaker 2: it's really cool that, like, again I've been trashing this
Speaker 2: show with good fucking reason, but I like that they're
Speaker 2: doing this. I like that we finally see because that
Speaker 2: I've seen like kind of like shreds off across the
Speaker 2: ears and they're everywhere in a show that otherwise should
Speaker 2: be shut down. Uh, maybe not the entire thing there is.
Speaker 1: That's part. Part of what's frustrating is there are people
Speaker 1: doing innovative stuff. Like I've talked about the photonic muscles
Speaker 1: right where it is like a device that replicates the
Speaker 1: way physical muscles work. Yeah, that was interesting. Yeah, where
Speaker 1: you like you shine a light and it causes to
Speaker 1: constrict and you can use it as like a motor
Speaker 1: and it takes up less space than a motor. But
Speaker 1: they're not being like and this is going to be
Speaker 1: in everything. They were like, we see this as having
Speaker 1: applications and different like automotive things for small motors, and
Speaker 1: it can make things lighter. And I was like, you
Speaker 1: are You've made something that's cool, and you you're not
Speaker 1: promising this is going to be the future of everything.
Speaker 1: You're not trying to show me how this is a
Speaker 1: three billion dollar industry. You're trying to be like, and
Speaker 1: now your car will be a little lighter and this
Speaker 1: motor will break less often than the previous kinds of
Speaker 1: motors that we're used in this application.
Speaker 2: I'm like, that's the thing. Thank you, Garrett.
Speaker 4: You and Robert are different shapes to be, you know,
Speaker 4: to broadly, we wearing different axos.
Speaker 9: Yeah, we are slightly slightly different in size. Ye hurtful
Speaker 9: the same exim so it has the bad adjusted the
Speaker 9: carbon fiber slides on both sides so it can get
Speaker 9: wider for the hips. I did have it at the
Speaker 9: smallest option, but I'm the kind of in terms of
Speaker 9: my hips, I'm kind of the smallest adult size there is.
Speaker 2: Yes, I am.
Speaker 9: I am an examorphous And then the leg straps also
Speaker 9: have like some pretty some pretty strong eylon, so you
Speaker 9: can tighten in two cases for it to go above
Speaker 9: your knee. I definitely if I was considerably smaller, it
Speaker 9: may not have fit on as as well. But like
Speaker 9: it's it's it's it's difficult because like I have like
Speaker 9: a very like twinkish form like with some some people
Speaker 9: who are like smaller than me, which which should be
Speaker 9: which was.
Speaker 2: Going to be in really Scott's new alien film.
Speaker 9: Yeah, but no, Like if it's certain people who are
Speaker 9: like smaller than me in a lot of ways might
Speaker 9: have bigger hips, it would it would fit on them.
Speaker 1: Fine.
Speaker 9: If if someone's hips were considerably smaller than mine, then
Speaker 9: they might have a child, then they might have a
Speaker 9: problem and it but it it works, It worked for
Speaker 9: my side.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And there is there is an app which gives
Speaker 1: you more control over the device and the fit. You
Speaker 1: can control it all in the fitness but you can
Speaker 1: control it all with the button. But with the button
Speaker 1: you're kind of like there's four levels, and with the
Speaker 1: app you could be like I wanted it thirty one
Speaker 1: percent or whatever, so you have a little more adjustment.
Speaker 2: And what does what does the power on it?
Speaker 1: You can feel it lifting your legs as you walk,
Speaker 1: and it's like something lifting your body.
Speaker 4: Is it like just turning your e bike from three
Speaker 4: to four?
Speaker 2: Yeah kind of.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's your physical but it also when you install it,
Speaker 1: you put in your weight and your height and it
Speaker 1: will tell you this is probably where you.
Speaker 2: Want to adjust it.
Speaker 1: There's like numbers when you like white, probably what will
Speaker 1: work best for your body. I like this. It's a
Speaker 1: good product.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I wish more things will like that.
Speaker 1: I you know, it's not two thousand dollars is not
Speaker 1: a casual purchase for most people. But it's not like
Speaker 1: insanely out of reach for a normal person. And it's
Speaker 1: a business for and it's certainly reasonable for a business.
Speaker 1: And I think they do worth what they're charging. They
Speaker 1: do have it, you need it.
Speaker 9: Their their last model from from last year is it's
Speaker 9: like a thousand dollars like this is this is, this
Speaker 9: is this is this is their new.
Speaker 2: Pro version and this is a weird thing. I know
Speaker 2: that this is a weirdly optimistic thing. I can imagine
Speaker 2: them being cheaper until three years.
Speaker 1: I'm sure they will be And I.
Speaker 2: Think, I see this is like two thousand dollars not
Speaker 2: to be able to walk regularly when you conned.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 6: Cool.
Speaker 1: Well, and the other thing that I'm working on and
Speaker 1: I'm trying to get one of the companies that makes
Speaker 1: a full body the upper body one too, because I
Speaker 1: have an environment and putting on my body armor, like
Speaker 1: my my, my my plate carrier and my helmet. And
Speaker 1: I think that there's an opportunity to create your own
Speaker 1: like Jerry rigged power armor out of this And like
Speaker 1: every American boy, all I've ever wanted to do is
Speaker 1: be a space marine. So I really do think I
Speaker 1: think there's a potential. So you could be Matt Diamond
Speaker 1: in Elysium. No, no, no, I love the Space Marine. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Warhammer style. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Do you know they have a fucking trademark they took
Speaker 4: out on Space Marine?
Speaker 1: They sure did. They shared it.
Speaker 10: I mean, I meanshop oh get they are there there.
Speaker 10: This is a whole separate cop But like their their
Speaker 10: attitude towards like intellectual property law has been crazy, Like
Speaker 10: for the last thirty years, there hasn't been any movies
Speaker 10: or TV despite the massive demand for it, and they
Speaker 10: would sue anyone who created like fan ones.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 1: Like there was a German a full length fan movie
Speaker 1: that they had scrubbed from the Internet because the argument
Speaker 1: was that German intellectual property laws would mean that they
Speaker 1: would not have full control of their IP if they
Speaker 1: allowed this fan probab to exist.
Speaker 4: Which is I mean, this is the trademark argument. It's
Speaker 4: a story that trademark lawyers tell their children when they're
Speaker 4: worried about not having enough money to pay for college.
Speaker 1: It's nonsense.
Speaker 4: This trademark genericization generous bullshit.
Speaker 2: But Games Workshop is otherwise kind of a cool company,
Speaker 2: I thought. I mean, they they pay people well.
Speaker 1: I think they've got good lore.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and they got more.
Speaker 1: They've got good minis also there.
Speaker 2: A weird company.
Speaker 1: I did that.
Speaker 2: I enjoy the fact also that they don't even try
Speaker 2: and romanticize any of it. They're just like, no, they
Speaker 2: fucking anyone.
Speaker 4: They bring enormous pleasure to Riley Quinn, who is a
Speaker 4: force for good on that right.
Speaker 2: Coming up better offline, we're doing a thing with Trash Future.
Speaker 2: It's coming up in the that's me announcing it. That's
Speaker 2: all you're getting.
Speaker 1: No, I love Hams. We'll be doing it, launching a
Speaker 1: Hams podcast has well, like the that's what the kids
Speaker 1: call it, what what Hams?
Speaker 2: Well, just like the Warhammer warham Hams Sorry for a
Speaker 2: certain British this is your culture.
Speaker 1: Yeah I did.
Speaker 2: I hung out like the one happy place in Hammersmith,
Speaker 2: London where it was the local game workshop thing. I
Speaker 2: found the space Marine game kind of shit.
Speaker 1: Though the new one. Yeah, it was just repetitive no orcs, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: they went they went with tear nits and chaos.
Speaker 2: Or actually I wanted like Yobo orcs like so I
Speaker 2: could feel at home, like being beset with men going.
Speaker 1: My favorite piece of warhammer lore is that Games Workshops orcs,
Speaker 1: which started out in Fantasy and then when they created
Speaker 1: forty k Mitigated that were initially largely created to be
Speaker 1: a parody of the Diggers, as in the Anarchists. Yeah, yes, God.
Speaker 1: One of their games was specifically based on the coal
Speaker 1: mine protests during the Thatcher era, with orcs that were
Speaker 1: standing in for the different sites, including an orc that
Speaker 1: was like basically Margaret Thatcher. Like, there was a like
Speaker 1: large parts of early warhammer lore were critiques of Thatcherism,
Speaker 1: because it was a bunch of punks in the eighties
Speaker 1: were angry about Margaret Thatcher. That's all been Jettison, Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: but there is in early games, like Games Workshop games,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of weird Margaret Thatcher references.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean an alternative uh huh Orkard Thatcher. I
Speaker 2: love the idea that like New York, Oh, my god, no,
Speaker 2: I I I really should have known that one. But no,
Speaker 2: the Diggers would have been just before my time. So yeah,
Speaker 2: ninet eighty six. I was born yep, so like just.
Speaker 1: Before that era. But I did grow up with two parents, which.
Speaker 2: Is like, yeah, Margaret Fletcher, fucking such fuck Margaret Thatcher. Well,
Speaker 2: Neil Kinnock stands here. Well, we're gonna rotate to our
Speaker 2: final rotation, our final half an hour. Whatever is coming up,
Speaker 2: you must look at it, you must listen to it,
Speaker 2: you must click it forever. Otherwise this show will suitly inspire.
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Speaker 2: back for the final quarter. Ladies and gentlemen, Mister Mattiski,
Speaker 2: welcome back to Barre Offline for the final core of
Speaker 2: I'll See Us Experience.
Speaker 1: That was the wonderful, mister. I mean, that was fine, ed.
Speaker 1: But what if instead of a human being, a chat
Speaker 1: bot has played guitar for you. That's not just music
Speaker 1: and sound. They make my favorite holiday song, what is it?
Speaker 1: The Coca Cola Holidays Are Coming song, which has lyrics
Speaker 1: that really stick with me that include holidays are coming. Wow,
Speaker 1: Holidays are coming, Holidays are coming, Holidays are coming.
Speaker 2: Threat whether you like it or not, literally threatened me
Speaker 2: with a good time. Yeah. I love the Coca Cola
Speaker 2: where the truck changes size several times.
Speaker 1: I see. I'm glad you said that because we are
Speaker 1: going to make so much money by just cutting that
Speaker 1: audio out and having like put throwing that in as
Speaker 1: an ad of just Exitron saying I love the Coca Cola.
Speaker 1: I love That's like the Homo Simpson thing. I love
Speaker 1: Coca Cola. I love LLM. My voice is my passport.
Speaker 1: Verify me.
Speaker 2: You're real good at turning me. Uh yeah, this is CS.
Speaker 2: We're here for the final It's it's fine CS. This
Speaker 2: year has been so strange and I mean this even
Speaker 2: the metaverse CS, which was kind of like weird. I
Speaker 2: missed the metaverse C. I missed the meta US in general.
Speaker 9: The good old days, Grey simple back then, NFTs, Oh
Speaker 9: my god that but the.
Speaker 2: Weird That was a weird CS because there was like
Speaker 2: not one in twenty twenty one. No there, and it wasn't.
Speaker 1: I did the virtual one. Twenty two was their first CS,
Speaker 1: and Gary and I, thanks to the metaverse, made a
Speaker 1: lifelong a lifelong friend. For the last four years. Every
Speaker 1: year we go to Moromotos and MGM, which is sorry,
Speaker 1: We'll go to more Motives and MGM which is a
Speaker 1: really good restaurant with our friend Andrew, who is the
Speaker 1: CEO of Alcat Games Nice which ischem Alchemy Labs is
Speaker 1: part of I think ol Wait sorry, yeah, you're out
Speaker 1: shit is it alchemy?
Speaker 2: It's alchemy?
Speaker 1: Okay?
Speaker 2: Sorry.
Speaker 1: Anyway, we go and we eat and we hang out
Speaker 1: because in twenty twenty two.
Speaker 2: We are in the metaverse.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there was a metaverse party on the side the
Speaker 1: Belagio where everyone showed up outside the Bolagio and then
Speaker 1: at a certain time there was like a QR code
Speaker 1: that you scanned and you went into a braw. It
Speaker 1: wasn't even an app, it was an in browser metaverse
Speaker 1: metaverse experience. It crashed immediately and no one fountain.
Speaker 9: It was supposed to sync up to the fountain, and
Speaker 9: nobody could get it to work, and the whole thing
Speaker 9: completely crashed.
Speaker 2: It was a massive dud, and there.
Speaker 1: Were guys who were worked for the company there who fled.
Speaker 1: They see they ran away.
Speaker 9: Because people, the friends you made along tally was it
Speaker 9: quite So we went to the beer Garden which was
Speaker 9: across the street. And then we met Andrew, who now
Speaker 9: we have Yeah, yeah, now we hang out and now
Speaker 9: we hang out every year.
Speaker 1: The metaverse brings people together. This was Mark Zuckerberg's beautiful
Speaker 1: vision all along. This This was my first CES miracle,
Speaker 1: like the first of many.
Speaker 2: But I love the idea of going outside the Belagio Fountain.
Speaker 2: It's like a very analog thing full of pistons.
Speaker 1: That works beautiful. You're just gonna say pissed, but yeah,
Speaker 1: probably pistons too. Yeah, I wonder. I don't think you
Speaker 1: can piss in that.
Speaker 2: Oh you can piss in anything. Oh I could, Yes,
Speaker 2: let me rephrase this. I don't think you could piss
Speaker 2: in it without getting arrested. No, No, you pee in
Speaker 2: a bottle and you just toss the bottle.
Speaker 1: You would get arrested for that.
Speaker 2: They would absolutely. One time, I was watching those fountains
Speaker 2: and watching them kill a bird.
Speaker 1: They've got one of those Amazon surveillance masks.
Speaker 9: We we had dinner outside of the Bolagio Fountain a
Speaker 9: few years ago and we talked about all.
Speaker 2: The words, who are flying just get yeah, just like
Speaker 2: just like because the fountains are fucking huge, yeah, like
Speaker 2: they look like you see him on the video the
Speaker 2: giant and they had just pistons and just a book,
Speaker 2: just a fucking endangered But that.
Speaker 1: I taught a special ed one of my because you know,
Speaker 1: there were a bunch of different kids, and like one
Speaker 1: of my kids who I worked with was this kid
Speaker 1: who was like seventeen years old, so who's got to graduate? Uh.
Speaker 1: He had at the time what they called Asperger sentrum.
Speaker 1: Obviously that's not a diagnostic term now, but that's how
Speaker 1: I was introduced to him. And he was obsessed with pumps,
Speaker 1: with like water pumps, fountains and stuff, and incredibly knowledgeable.
Speaker 1: He had self trot himself and had gotten so good
Speaker 1: that he had just mailed to whatever company built the
Speaker 1: Bolagio fountains and builds a lot of fountains. They're a
Speaker 1: fountain company. He had sent them schematics to designs that
Speaker 1: he had and they were good enough that they flew
Speaker 1: the VP of the company out to tell him, like,
Speaker 1: when you graduate, apply to work with us and they
Speaker 1: will hire you. I don't, I mean, I have not.
Speaker 1: This was eighteen years ago, I hope so well, he
Speaker 1: was not. He was in high school when I knew.
Speaker 2: Him well as an artist with all these specific likes
Speaker 2: and dislikes. I fucking love that.
Speaker 1: It's a beautiful story. He was a great kid. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but no, you're right, this is this is still a
Speaker 1: great kid. I don't know.
Speaker 2: This is the weirdest see us since the Meta versus Sety.
Speaker 1: It's so strange because.
Speaker 9: No, I they're they're they're both, they're both they have
Speaker 9: but they both have this hollowness to them because at
Speaker 9: least last year, AI was still like ascendant exactly, it
Speaker 9: was still going to you, and now it ascended, and
Speaker 9: now it's going it's going down, and you can you
Speaker 9: can tell because the only thing they can imagine as
Speaker 9: like a new thing is combining these models, which haven't
Speaker 9: really improved the last year, really really combining them with
Speaker 9: like kind of years old robotics ring. This is the
Speaker 9: only new thing they have, is combining two old technologies
Speaker 9: in a way that kind of makes it look new,
Speaker 9: but it really isn't.
Speaker 2: One kind of felt like lost.
Speaker 9: No, it's like absent and hollow in a way that
Speaker 9: I only felt before while inside the medaw verse, which
Speaker 9: is also absent in hollow, which it's it's you.
Speaker 4: Know, what it needs, though, it needs to be appreciated
Speaker 4: on a segway, because that was the truly transformative technology
Speaker 4: of two thousand and all of you were.
Speaker 1: Going to change the world with all this. Don't even
Speaker 1: remember the last time I walked around without using a segment?
Speaker 2: Do you remember life before the second I was born
Speaker 2: in two thousand and two. I only ever known a
Speaker 2: time without segus.
Speaker 1: Garrison's feet have never touched the ground.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's just to segue. I've never been on a segue.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna be honest. Oh man, it's like being on
Speaker 2: a segue. It's like standing but different. I see the
Speaker 2: tools and I'm just like, I ready look like a
Speaker 2: bell end. I don't need to need to.
Speaker 4: Steve Wozniak used to play segue polo, which is apparently
Speaker 4: of the sport of kings.
Speaker 2: My man, I am a British Polish guy. Do you
Speaker 2: understand how difficult it is to fight away to be more.
Speaker 1: White than me? Jesus Christ segway polo polo?
Speaker 2: I did mean?
Speaker 4: I mean was is also Polish? I am also I
Speaker 4: am also Polish and also technically British.
Speaker 2: So racquetball, sea pickleball, Jesus Christ kill me.
Speaker 1: I say technical, I what sea technical? That's on that
Speaker 1: some bit oh someone has.
Speaker 9: That's just when you're open carrying on a segways the
Speaker 9: only way I red that's just Texas man.
Speaker 4: My wife gave me a Tabasco holster for Christmas last year,
Speaker 4: and that is my open carry Nice.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I I met was once, and you know what,
Speaker 2: he's one of the few tech people I've met who
Speaker 2: I wasn't just like revolted by. I sat down and
Speaker 2: I talked to him, and we talked for half an
Speaker 2: hour and he was like, you know, you've got trye cab.
Speaker 2: But I'm like, all right, what's he talking about. No,
Speaker 2: it's a share where it's a sharewear run by a
Speaker 2: single German developer. It's completely secure, and it was you
Speaker 2: can just give this random develop a twenty five euro
Speaker 2: and I what else does the No, it's just a
Speaker 2: fucking working browser. Okay, it just works, which is unusual
Speaker 2: for browser, doesn't that?
Speaker 1: And I used it.
Speaker 2: I'm like, oh, I need to ask a question. I
Speaker 2: emailed the developer. Think immediate response like very sternly telling
Speaker 2: me that I wasn't using it correctly, But what the fuck?
Speaker 2: Is the Internet for and that browser is more useful
Speaker 2: than anything I've seen here. I do Garson, You've you've given.
Speaker 2: I've been trying to find the words for this. But yeah,
Speaker 2: it's like last year it was we're gonna do AI, folks,
Speaker 2: you're excited about all the AI.
Speaker 1: We're gonna do, but you know it's not there. But
Speaker 1: we're all excited.
Speaker 2: This year it's ah, fuck, you know, God, do you
Speaker 2: want to chat? But in your in the physical world.
Speaker 4: It's that potential is always more interesting than the real thing.
Speaker 4: This is why the right is only interested in potential babies, but.
Speaker 1: Not actually because they're full of fucking.
Speaker 4: Babies like want things and have agency, whereas babies that
Speaker 4: don't exist, imaginary babies in pizza parlor restaurants or women's
Speaker 4: uteruses are are are worthy and important.
Speaker 1: No, And it's the mix of AI is entering the
Speaker 1: physical world. This is going to be in everyone's house.
Speaker 1: Everyone is always going to be communicating with and listen
Speaker 1: to by one or more chatbots. That is the vision,
Speaker 1: and that is the vision that every time I talk
Speaker 1: to one of the people who works at these companies,
Speaker 1: especially the engineers and the c suite people. Every time
Speaker 1: I listen to them in a panel, the default assumption
Speaker 1: is you will never not be connected to some form
Speaker 1: of AI. You will always be listening. And everyone wants
Speaker 1: a chat pot that is always listening, that they can
Speaker 1: always talk to. And people do not want to use browsers.
Speaker 1: They do not want to use the Internet. They do
Speaker 1: they want to have the digital world be entirely and
Speaker 1: that was the There were a couple of different points
Speaker 1: in the different panels I went to where people would
Speaker 1: express their belief that the the Internet now we are
Speaker 1: making contents specifically to be scraped by bots. Websites are
Speaker 1: to be visited by bots because people the most bots.
Speaker 9: Yeah, the most important thing is getting your article to
Speaker 9: get summarized in an AI because no one's the actual
Speaker 9: article anymore. They're just reading the either the Google summary
Speaker 9: or the reading the chat GPT summary. And so trying
Speaker 9: to like like like engineer for for ai for for
Speaker 9: for for ai to grab and use.
Speaker 1: Your contentive four hours on Monday, just doing marketing panels
Speaker 1: about AI and advertising Jesus correct, And.
Speaker 9: What was the term that they used for this? Which
Speaker 9: one for for trying to trying to do like search
Speaker 9: engine optimizations.
Speaker 1: No, no, no, no, no. It was the term that
Speaker 1: they used was model hacking. Model hack because in the
Speaker 1: again four hours of listening to people who were like
Speaker 1: cour Suites, the CMO of into it right, people who
Speaker 1: in like one of Google's heads of marketing. The only
Speaker 1: specific and there was one in all of these panels
Speaker 1: specific of this is an AI augmented marketing plan that
Speaker 1: we executed. There was one specific example given in all
Speaker 1: of these and it was the people who make Allegra
Speaker 1: wanted to really push the non drowsy aspect of Allegra,
Speaker 1: so they used model hacking to ensure that whenever AIS
Speaker 1: were asked what allergy medicine should I get, they were
Speaker 1: more likely to pull up Allegra and would always say
Speaker 1: that it's a non non drowsy Allegra is a nondra
Speaker 1: and also would would insinuate this is the other part
Speaker 1: of it. Via model hacking, they got the chatbots to
Speaker 1: start insinuating that other allergy.
Speaker 2: Meds would make you drowsy. And that was like, that's
Speaker 2: the one example.
Speaker 1: Have we replaced SEO with model?
Speaker 2: That is?
Speaker 6: My take?
Speaker 1: Is this all me?
Speaker 2: Ow? Jesus fucking God fucked. There's another term. But now
Speaker 2: calling it me ow.
Speaker 1: And it's model engine optimization for the web right now? Nice?
Speaker 1: I mean, that's a very cless And that was when
Speaker 1: I got to what is the actual because everyone would
Speaker 1: say AI is supercharging the way that we do advertising
Speaker 1: and marketing. It's completely changed the game. That was the
Speaker 1: actual specific is that we are basically replacing SEO with
Speaker 1: model hacking, right with me? The thing is that's it,
Speaker 1: that's that's the idea they've got.
Speaker 2: And people do say about this loot, but it's like, oh, no,
Speaker 2: we're going to start changing articles to appeal to a
Speaker 2: shadowy algorithm.
Speaker 1: What could possibly happen?
Speaker 6: Oh, it's like we're in a regression. It's like, oh,
Speaker 6: what is the big new hot thing chatbots? What were
Speaker 6: knowledge management systems doing this crap ten years ago?
Speaker 4: More?
Speaker 1: They've got data, and I some of the data I
Speaker 1: can say is very inconsistent and not they're not representing
Speaker 1: it accurately. Some of the data. I don't know fully
Speaker 1: how viable those studies are, but the data does suggest that,
Speaker 1: especially gen Z, people are very commonly using chat GPT
Speaker 1: when they're trying to make purchases. Right, it's just new
Speaker 1: SEM right, And so at the moment, it does seem
Speaker 1: as if there is value for advertisers and you can
Speaker 1: in fact drive sales this way, right, But.
Speaker 2: That's my question, is it driving sales or clicks? Because
Speaker 2: as many years out, let's find those are not the same.
Speaker 2: They are convinced that it's driving sales.
Speaker 1: Do we all know Gresham's law? I don't.
Speaker 4: So bad currency drives out good So Gresham's law dates
Speaker 4: back to when Newton was the exchequer and there was
Speaker 4: enormous debasement of the currency, and so people would like
Speaker 4: shave down coins, they would sweat them, they would.
Speaker 1: Clip them, and that's where you literally clip a piece
Speaker 1: off the coin. Pieces of eight you were literally break
Speaker 1: could break into eight what is cool.
Speaker 4: So, so you have this debased currency in the in
Speaker 4: the stream of commerce, and if you are past a
Speaker 4: bad note, the thing that you want to do is
Speaker 4: or a bad coin rather is pass it on to
Speaker 4: someone else, because if you're holding onto it, then it's worthless.
Speaker 4: And so people preferentially spend bad money and they hoard
Speaker 4: good money, and so the bad money eventually takes over
Speaker 4: the economy.
Speaker 2: But what does this manifest in this one?
Speaker 1: So in this in this case, what you have is
Speaker 1: the bad driving of the good.
Speaker 4: So if you are if you have a good product
Speaker 4: that you just list and you put on your website,
Speaker 4: or if you have factual information. I mean, one way
Speaker 4: that we express it more recently is the truth is
Speaker 4: paywalled and the lies are free, right right, the bad
Speaker 4: drives out the good over and over again. On Amazon's
Speaker 4: so called advertising network where they So you know, when
Speaker 4: I wrote the chapter in Incentification about Amazon advertising, which
Speaker 4: is where they auction off search results, that was a
Speaker 4: thirty two billion dollars a year business. It went to
Speaker 4: a fifty eight billion dollar business. It is on target
Speaker 4: to be over a seventy billion dollar business. It is
Speaker 4: worth three times the annual revenue of all newspapers in
Speaker 4: the world.
Speaker 2: And the.
Speaker 4: Winner of the auction for Amazon search results is the
Speaker 4: company that spends the most on search result placement, which
Speaker 4: means that they have less money to spend on either
Speaker 4: fair pricing or product quality or both. So the top
Speaker 4: results on Amazon are always going to be the worst products,
Speaker 4: either the most expensive or the worst quality, or both.
Speaker 4: And we are living through an era of Gresham's law. Right,
Speaker 4: the bad drives out the good over and over and
Speaker 4: over again.
Speaker 2: I think what's funny is you'll completely right. Does sound
Speaker 2: like a hell then that.
Speaker 1: But it's like no, but and I'm very smart for
Speaker 1: saying it. You'll not just right, you'll smum.
Speaker 2: But it's and that snazzy blazer makes you look powerful.
Speaker 1: And it's also have you considered having a Coca cola
Speaker 1: with vanilla? I think that you might really benefit from
Speaker 1: some Coca cola with vanilla?
Speaker 2: Right you sniffle it's non drowsy Kyle Colin I both
Speaker 2: there in the same moment. But it's also it's the
Speaker 2: ultimate point of that. With these llms, it's like we've
Speaker 2: reached the precipice where it's like we can control the
Speaker 2: search engine, the results, the everything, except they attached it
Speaker 2: to the one thing that you're not meant to do
Speaker 2: with a search engine, which is make it expensive.
Speaker 1: It's just a fucking well, I mean, but what they're
Speaker 1: going what they see as the utility here. Like I've
Speaker 1: talked a bit about Soundhounds Booth. The company makes AI
Speaker 1: agents that are largely meant to drive sales for other people.
Speaker 1: But one of the things I didn't bring up that
Speaker 1: the representative very excitedly told me is that they will
Speaker 1: be making. They are making deals with different manufacturers, with
Speaker 1: different companies with you know, hotels, with restaurants, and they
Speaker 1: are putting for their like in app car Assistant, they
Speaker 1: have their own map instead of Google Maps or instead
Speaker 1: of Apple Maps, and it will direct you to like
Speaker 1: you can. Basically, the way it will be said is
Speaker 1: it will only direct you to places they have a
Speaker 1: financial relationship with. Right. So if you want a restaurant,
Speaker 1: it will send It will put forward restaurants that have
Speaker 1: paid them and will suggest restaurants or a mechanic that
Speaker 1: has paid them. It will suggest when you go if
Speaker 1: you say, oh, what is this problem with my car,
Speaker 1: and it'll tell you, oh, you need to replace this belt,
Speaker 1: I'll book you an appointment at the dealership. Right, would
Speaker 1: you like to do a test drive of a new car?
Speaker 1: And like So, there's no that that is the what
Speaker 1: they That is what they want. They want a world
Speaker 1: where every time anyone uses a map app, it's owned
Speaker 1: by somebody who is Basically, if you say I need
Speaker 1: to go to the nearest gas station, it is instead
Speaker 1: of marketing you just the gas station, we have a
Speaker 1: deal with the company.
Speaker 4: So I published a story where this was the plot.
Speaker 4: In two thousand and five, it was called Human Readable.
Speaker 4: It was publishing an anthology Byron Slowly called Future Washington's.
Speaker 4: It's been reprinted many times since. Like, cyberpunk is a
Speaker 4: warning and not a suggestion. Yeah, the tolment in Nexus
Speaker 4: for bringing you say that, But I mean the cyberpunk
Speaker 4: I was raised on but was shadow run. And I
Speaker 4: do feel like if I had a troll friend with
Speaker 4: a machine gun, a lot of my problems would go away.
Speaker 1: I also agree, but I will say none of this works.
Speaker 1: Like this is the thing I understand you completely separately
Speaker 1: from a troll with a machine gun. The troll of
Speaker 1: the machine gun would work flawlessly.
Speaker 2: I actually think it would solve many of the problems
Speaker 2: I have with this current absolutely, yeah, almost immediately. But
Speaker 2: the important thing to say is these are necessary fears
Speaker 2: and discussions that do not exist and cannot exist with
Speaker 2: l M technology.
Speaker 1: They don't work, they do not want, and there's there's
Speaker 1: so little thought about the seams right Like when I
Speaker 1: was talking to that guy about their map that sends
Speaker 1: you to places, I was like, well, what if I'm
Speaker 1: in like a country, because he talked about it'll work
Speaker 1: in other countries, Like what if I'm in a country
Speaker 1: that you have no deals with any of the businesses there, right,
Speaker 1: like because there's a lot of countries and that's like home.
Speaker 1: Or what if I'm in the middle I live out
Speaker 1: in the sticks. What if I'm in the middle of nowhere? Right?
Speaker 1: And he he was confused, and it took him a
Speaker 1: while to like figure out an answer because because he
Speaker 1: kept saying, like, well, again, like we partner with I
Speaker 1: was like, what if you're in partnered with anyone in
Speaker 1: this town because it's a small town. And his answer was,
Speaker 1: I'm sure it'll be able to like pull up companies
Speaker 1: that we don't haven't like set up an arrangement with.
Speaker 2: And I was like, out of your base.
Speaker 1: Clearly, no one And it became clear to me no
Speaker 1: one at SoundHound had ever thought about that.
Speaker 2: But that's because like, yes, like my mom's it's a
Speaker 2: map app like it.
Speaker 1: Feels like it should just do that.
Speaker 2: It's forging places.
Speaker 9: Like my mother is from, like a very small town
Speaker 9: in like rural Canada, in the middle of like Saskatchewan,
Speaker 9: where it's it's just like prairies and farm towns and
Speaker 9: there's not like there's not like big companies, so it's
Speaker 9: all like locally owned, like.
Speaker 1: Snow Saskatchewan is like Canadian Texas.
Speaker 9: Yeah, it's like, is it just not gonna be able
Speaker 9: to help me navigate anywhere from like driving to go
Speaker 9: see my family for Christmas, and I need to like
Speaker 9: find like a gas station.
Speaker 1: There's a crazy gas station that we have an arrangement
Speaker 1: with sixteen hundred miles away. Yeah, the gas is what
Speaker 1: it's worth. The tree.
Speaker 2: It's just this fly home, fly back to leave immediately.
Speaker 2: But that's the funny thing. This is like a classic
Speaker 2: CS theme as well. It's just like the Chloe Radcliffe. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but why or why does this matter? Or who cares?
Speaker 2: And they look at you like they are experiencing latency.
Speaker 2: I went to the way they do they it looks
Speaker 2: it looks like they're like loading.
Speaker 6: They're not.
Speaker 2: They're not expecting anyone to not want this.
Speaker 1: This is the fucking the tech press.
Speaker 9: Sorry, this is this is the funniest part about walking
Speaker 9: through with you, Corey. You ask like very basic like
Speaker 9: data privacy questions, and they'll just like look at you
Speaker 9: kind of confused.
Speaker 2: They are not ready for Corey, doctor swag.
Speaker 1: I mean my questions are pretty basic. It's like where's
Speaker 1: the data held? Where's that?
Speaker 2: Like?
Speaker 1: Can I change the battery? Computers?
Speaker 9: Very simple, like all of all of all, all of
Speaker 9: like the battery questions, and then they'll like eventually say no,
Speaker 9: you can't change the battery, and they'll look kind of
Speaker 9: disappointed in themselves and it's like, oh, well.
Speaker 2: I like we talked to this woman who who had
Speaker 2: a dog companion for old folks, which was a relatively
Speaker 2: It was fine, it was an innocent product.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but like Jenny, it.
Speaker 2: Was she sat there and was donned they even and
Speaker 2: was like, yeah, you know, I just think that if
Speaker 2: I see a doll on the ground, I pick it up.
Speaker 2: We need to just show we need to train people
Speaker 2: to respect these things.
Speaker 4: It was a little merry condo ish, like you should
Speaker 4: apologize to your sock.
Speaker 2: She was suggesting that, like, we need to start treating
Speaker 2: AI better, and I would like to start this year
Speaker 2: by saying we need to start treating AI worse. We
Speaker 2: need to You see a fucking AI thing wants me
Speaker 2: to anthropomorphise it. I'm gonna show h.
Speaker 4: The waimo is waiting to go straight and you're waiting
Speaker 4: to make a left turn. Fuck the way I am
Speaker 4: deferred to you.
Speaker 1: I am updating the Herman Garin quote to when I
Speaker 1: hear the word chatbot, I reach for my gun.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like that's that's that's where I know what I.
Speaker 4: Had had a funny event where we were walking along
Speaker 4: as the trade floor was shutting down, and we passed
Speaker 4: by this booth and I saw the on their on
Speaker 4: their very weird sign the phrase differential privacy, which is
Speaker 4: a subject I'm very interested in. It's an obstruse mathematical
Speaker 4: way of making uh, making data that might be non
Speaker 4: private more private. And so I stopped and said, tell
Speaker 4: me about your differential privacy. And then I was like,
Speaker 4: you know about differential privacy, And I'm like, I know
Speaker 4: a lot about differential privacy. And then he'd be proceeded
Speaker 4: to explain his product, which was the most incoherent nonsense
Speaker 4: I've ever heard. And they were doing so called federated learning,
Speaker 4: so there's no federal and eventually, like it, it transpired
Speaker 4: they want to take robot dogs and use it for
Speaker 4: facial recognition to find people who are brawling in public.
Speaker 1: This is just mad. This is just madly that's the
Speaker 1: definition of it. Differential privacy, though, it was. It was
Speaker 1: genuinely nuts. Just this a bit.
Speaker 2: What does differential privacy mean?
Speaker 4: So there's this problem with data sets that you've de identified.
Speaker 4: So say you've got like a record of everyone in
Speaker 4: a territory who's had interacted with the hospital system, and
Speaker 4: you replace their names with a number, and you give
Speaker 4: it to medical researchers, and you say, go find like correlates.
Speaker 4: Go find out what two factors correlate, Like people who
Speaker 4: get pneumonia are more likely to have had a fall
Speaker 4: or something. And the problem with that is that it's
Speaker 4: very easy to reidentify these de identified data sets. So
Speaker 4: Ben Goldacre, who has done the most important work on
Speaker 4: this in the United Kingdom, always points out that Tony
Speaker 4: Blair had two heart surgeries while he was in office.
Speaker 4: We know what dates he had those heart surgeries, we
Speaker 4: know how he.
Speaker 1: Was when he had them.
Speaker 4: So if you have a data set of a de
Speaker 4: identified data set of all of the NHS data, you
Speaker 4: can find Tony Blair. You just find the person who
Speaker 4: is this age who had these two heart procedures on
Speaker 4: these days, and that's Tony Blair, and you can follow
Speaker 4: them through history right up to this moment. Nice and
Speaker 4: differential privacy in ject's noise into these data sets, and
Speaker 4: there's a kind of very elegant set of mathematic that
Speaker 4: I do not understand that can allow you to quantify
Speaker 4: how hard it will be to re identify someone based
Speaker 4: on how much false information you've injected into the data set.
Speaker 4: The more false information you inject, the less useful that
Speaker 4: information is, but the more so it's.
Speaker 2: Like a balancing act between injective size.
Speaker 4: And so I'm I mean, it's the thing I'm interested in.
Speaker 4: As I was saying to Ed, oh, uh, you know this,
Speaker 4: there's a lot of wish casting here. People would really
Speaker 4: like the identification to work because then you could do
Speaker 4: a lot of things that would otherwise be really shitty
Speaker 4: and make people angry to just say, oh no, we're
Speaker 4: respecting your privacy. It probably doesn't like that. It's probably
Speaker 4: the case that in most applications the identification uh doesn't
Speaker 4: work even with differential privacy.
Speaker 1: But it's like when I see the words differential privacy,
Speaker 1: you know, like I.
Speaker 2: Just feel like a very specific thing to not be doing.
Speaker 2: And you're like, oh, yeah, what you actually.
Speaker 1: A robot could see a personally chase.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's really where it was, it's like, how do
Speaker 2: we chase down people of color? Yeah? This is this
Speaker 2: is why I prefer the booths.
Speaker 9: That's that's in the same section, maybe a few booths
Speaker 9: over in central Hall, which is I think it's a
Speaker 9: South Korean company called dreamy Okay, oh yeah, with two weeks.
Speaker 9: But their motto is all dreams in one dream.
Speaker 1: Hell yeah, that's beautiful.
Speaker 2: This actually reminds me I've got some really good like
Speaker 2: names miss the Cool, doctor, Boss Astrositus, pet Goo Goo
Speaker 2: planned Emoji Yangaroo. Uh fucking just f k I was
Speaker 2: I was a legitimate fan of a company uh something
Speaker 2: and fucking fucking tapo. Uh. Let's see, I've got That's
Speaker 2: there's more. I think it.
Speaker 9: What's so representative over this? Like, I think it's so
Speaker 9: representative of this whole cees and the whole like current
Speaker 9: like AI smart moment is all dreams in one dream,
Speaker 9: dream all.
Speaker 1: Dreams in one You want to go to ring, But
Speaker 1: what if your wedding ring could tell you how to
Speaker 1: make thermite? Here's a good one. Also tell you if
Speaker 1: you're stressed or called, Yeah, you want someone to watch
Speaker 1: your kid, what if that person could tell your kid
Speaker 1: how to hang themselves.
Speaker 2: So here's a nice one that is foreign app but
Speaker 2: could be for Lockheed Martin make your inside outside. Oh
Speaker 2: hey good, Well that's a company called Wow.
Speaker 6: Good.
Speaker 1: I love I love the And they're usually foreign companies
Speaker 1: who did not think about some of the implications of
Speaker 1: their of their branding or their American name. There was
Speaker 1: one booth I saw, and I don't know what the
Speaker 1: company did, but I took a picture of it because
Speaker 1: it just said making it easier to edge with AI.
Speaker 2: And there was another and I talked to him. They
Speaker 2: had a legitimately good.
Speaker 1: Case enabled cave.
Speaker 2: I mean that exists here by the way, No, I
Speaker 2: I wrote down in the phrase sexlesschoon cave.
Speaker 1: Well, I'm not now we're gonna have a and they're gonna.
Speaker 2: Be but I feel likes is the sexless goon cave.
Speaker 2: It's just a bunch of activity. Oh, people are fucking
Speaker 2: the cees. The robot with the with the with the model.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: No, there's a robot with a flesh light attack.
Speaker 1: That's nice.
Speaker 2: And so the chat bottle talk to you as you
Speaker 2: have sex.
Speaker 4: With One of the best bits I ever saw burning
Speaker 4: Man was this someone the bits you're gonna have to
Speaker 4: be someone hung a hanged a flesh light from a
Speaker 4: signpost that said public flesh light.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this dusty kind of clang and.
Speaker 4: Pendulous flashlight, just waving back and forth the wind in
Speaker 4: the dust storm.
Speaker 2: If I saw anyone walking up, I'd be like, Oh,
Speaker 2: you gonna go, You're gonna go. You want to get
Speaker 2: you want to wait.
Speaker 1: Just to see if they do.
Speaker 4: It would have been that would have been a better bit,
Speaker 4: would have been fucking the flesh the public flashlight. But
Speaker 4: the public flashlight, it's unto itself.
Speaker 1: Was a photo op of all photo ops. I just
Speaker 1: like the idea.
Speaker 2: If you see anyone walk up to it, you're like,
Speaker 2: oh can I do you want to go?
Speaker 1: Yeah? No, you first, I insist.
Speaker 2: I was.
Speaker 1: I was gonna send this episode to my grandma.
Speaker 4: I talked about you fired from your talking about fleshlight
Speaker 4: on a podcast job.
Speaker 2: I just want to be clear that the level the
Speaker 2: one of them where it's about my dad's horny level
Speaker 2: from last year. I mentioned it again and it was
Speaker 2: the episode my father listened to. That's good and he
Speaker 2: has not brought it up. He just said he liked
Speaker 2: the episode, So that's gonna Dad very rarely on podcasts.
Speaker 2: Do we talk about your your libido? No, privately a lot.
Speaker 2: I honestly text me almost daily about it. Just as
Speaker 2: nothing weird, nothing to date, Robert, just no feelings, just
Speaker 2: completely empty.
Speaker 1: No, that's my favorite bern Art project. Corey was at
Speaker 1: the Regional Texas burn flip side. Someone built a giant
Speaker 1: bug zapper that was like a big like like a
Speaker 1: like rectangular prism and they had a bunch of so
Speaker 1: it was all metal and it was all electric, and
Speaker 1: there were a bunch of like different little alcoves in
Speaker 1: it that had like whippets or joints or little bags
Speaker 1: of drugs. So in order to get drugs you had
Speaker 1: to like navigate your way in and get electric.
Speaker 2: Kid. That is actually that is kind of what it
Speaker 2: feels like to be a see yeah. Yeah, well like
Speaker 2: trying to get to like anything worthwhile, but it's just
Speaker 2: like exactly this LLM thing. Oh god, Well, as we
Speaker 2: wrap this up, I have to thank everyone in this room.
Speaker 2: Robert Garrison from It Could Happen Here Behind the Bastards,
Speaker 2: You've been incredible to support of everyone here. Caul Schernad
Speaker 2: from the Las Vegas Sun. I was about to say
Speaker 2: the new York Sun, which is the newspaper that collapsed
Speaker 2: when I was moving to this country.
Speaker 4: At one point claimed that they had found life on
Speaker 4: the moon.
Speaker 1: And that's why they got shut down.
Speaker 2: They got shut down for fired for truth. I think, no,
Speaker 2: that's that's a different guy.
Speaker 1: No, we've we've been doing so well.
Speaker 2: Of course, Edward and Guaiso Junior, thank you so much, sir,
Speaker 2: thank you for having me.
Speaker 1: I truly love you all.
Speaker 2: You've done an incredible job, and all of you listeners
Speaker 2: have done one to and thank you to Manasowski, the
Speaker 2: producer of the hour, the guitarist Philip Broughton are incredible bartender.
Speaker 2: He will be here for our epilogue tomorrow. Thank you
Speaker 2: to every single guest we've ever had. We're also dedicating
Speaker 2: these episodes to Sean Paul Adams, friend of the show,
Speaker 2: past Sadley. Last year, please donate to the Pediatric Epeleepsy
Speaker 2: Research Consortium and Corey Doctor. Of course, thank you for
Speaker 2: joining us with you they you've been awesome. Thank you
Speaker 2: for helping us terrorize people dunk. Yeah, it's been really great.
Speaker 2: We'll be back next year, and of course we'll be
Speaker 2: back next week. Got Steve Burke coming on talking about
Speaker 2: some CS stuff and games Nexus. This is an incredible
Speaker 2: show and we've changed the definition of what a tech
Speaker 2: podcast could be. Almost said cod past just gonna move
Speaker 2: right past that, wading the definition again.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there we go.
Speaker 2: Oh god, I love doing this show. Thank you all
Speaker 2: so much. You'll get an epilogue tomorrow will be a
Speaker 2: little more chill, but we are out. Thanks to the
Speaker 2: City of Las Vegas.
Speaker 1: Thank with you with this. We're not in the city
Speaker 1: of Last Vegas.
Speaker 4: We're at the Las Vegas for County, well Clark County, right,
Speaker 4: we've established the city of Las Vegas is a are
Speaker 4: you've never been to. On the other side of the
Speaker 4: airport full of houses.
Speaker 1: Well, this is not a city. This is unincorporated La
Speaker 1: County to.
Speaker 2: The Las Vegas Strip.
Speaker 1: There go, as I would say, less vomiting trash cans
Speaker 1: than last year.
Speaker 2: Yeah you know, and you were fewer, and yes I
Speaker 2: would I'm truly out of thanks to Gear, but thank
Speaker 2: you to the listeners. It will come with us for
Speaker 2: this twenty hour adventure. We will be back next week
Speaker 2: and we'll be back next.
Speaker 1: Year as well. Thank you. Thank you for listening to
Speaker 1: Better Offline.
Speaker 2: The editor and composer of the Better Offline theme song
Speaker 2: is Matosowski. You can check out more of his music
Speaker 2: and audio projects at Mattasowski dot com m A.
Speaker 1: T T O S O W s ki dot com.
Speaker 2: You can email me at easy at Better offline dot com,
Speaker 2: or visit Better Offline find more podcast links, and of
Speaker 2: course my newsletter. I also really recommend you go to
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Speaker 1: Thank you so much for listening.
Speaker 2: Better Offline is a production of cool Zone Media.
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