Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with tech Stuff from how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with
Speaker 1: I Heart Media and I love all things tech, and
Speaker 1: today I am recording from a hotel suite in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Speaker 1: And if you hear noises in the background and it
Speaker 1: sounds a little odd, that is the reason why, or
Speaker 1: at least one of them. Another, of course, is that
Speaker 1: I'm tired. But I am here for the two thousand
Speaker 1: nineteen c e S, the Consumer Electronics Show, which is
Speaker 1: the largest consumer electronics industry show, at least in North America,
Speaker 1: and it's been going on for decades. This is my
Speaker 1: tenth time attending c e S, although I did take
Speaker 1: a year off last year. Nowise it would have been
Speaker 1: in my eleventh time. And this show is enormous. It
Speaker 1: doesn't take place in just one spot in Las Vegas,
Speaker 1: Nevada anymore. It it covers lots of different grounds. So
Speaker 1: there are exhibitors at the Sands Expo Center, which is
Speaker 1: next to the Venetian Casino in Las Vegas. There are
Speaker 1: all three of the halls of the Las Vegas Convention
Speaker 1: Center are filled up with exhibitors, and they're more in
Speaker 1: other locations as well throughout the city, including some places
Speaker 1: like hotel suites and stuff where there are companies that
Speaker 1: have rented out a suite and they did so in
Speaker 1: order to kind of have maybe a quieter experience. A
Speaker 1: lot of the high end audio exhibitors will do that
Speaker 1: so that they're not competing in a noisy space. In
Speaker 1: other cases, it's because exhibition space might be really expensive
Speaker 1: and trying to compete with everybody else isn't terribly attractive,
Speaker 1: so some companies will run out as suite and try
Speaker 1: and get people to come to the suite to go
Speaker 1: check it out, although that's always difficult if you plan
Speaker 1: on seeing a lot of stuff each day, because it
Speaker 1: means leaving the main areas in order for you to
Speaker 1: go check out something else, and getting around in Las
Speaker 1: Vegas can take some time. Like you know, you might think, oh,
Speaker 1: well that that will just be twenty minutes out of
Speaker 1: my way, and it turns out it's an hour and
Speaker 1: a half and you lose that time. And the show
Speaker 1: floor is only open a certain number of hours each day. Today,
Speaker 1: as I record, this is the first day that the
Speaker 1: actual show floor will be open to the public, the
Speaker 1: public that is that have bought badges for c e S.
Speaker 1: And it doesn't open until ten am UH Pacific time,
Speaker 1: And as I record this, it is nine twenty a m.
Speaker 1: Pacific time, so I have not actually been on the
Speaker 1: exhibit floor space yet, but the press day has already happened.
Speaker 1: A couple of big press events have already happened where
Speaker 1: companies have tried to get a kind of a head
Speaker 1: start and try to get their stuff seen before being
Speaker 1: lost in the cacophony of the general chaos that is
Speaker 1: c e S. And a lot of the bigger news
Speaker 1: outlets out there, like Wired and Gadget, the Verge c Net,
Speaker 1: they're already starting their coverage of the showroom floor because
Speaker 1: they get early access. So today I thought I would
Speaker 1: give an overview of some of the stuff that is
Speaker 1: happening at c e S and and give an idea
Speaker 1: of the trends that we're seeing. I will probably record
Speaker 1: more after I get a chance to walk some of
Speaker 1: those floor myself. Granted, I'm gonna have to pick either
Speaker 1: the convention Center or the sands today because you can't
Speaker 1: really do both. In the same day, so I'll probably
Speaker 1: do the sands today. That's where you get a lot
Speaker 1: of your startups, your smaller companies. Uh, you're Eureka Park
Speaker 1: is there. That's the one that's known for like some
Speaker 1: of the more ambitious startup ideas. Uh. And then in
Speaker 1: the convention center you tend to have the larger established companies,
Speaker 1: companies like Intel, Sony, you know, Samsung, that kind of
Speaker 1: stuff they're they're in the convention center and you can
Speaker 1: see neat stuff in both. But uh, I am going
Speaker 1: to give several caveats to this. First of all, because
Speaker 1: the show is so huge and I am one person. Uh,
Speaker 1: there's a ton of stuff I haven't even seen or
Speaker 1: heard of yet, I'm sure. And even if I spent
Speaker 1: every hour that the show is actually open, walking through
Speaker 1: that floor space and looking everywhere I can and never stopping,
Speaker 1: I still wouldn't see everything. There's just too much here.
Speaker 1: The show is too big for any one person to
Speaker 1: see everything. Even if you were only trying to hit
Speaker 1: the high spots, you probably wouldn't see all of them
Speaker 1: because they're spread out pretty far. And again, just getting
Speaker 1: from point A to point B can take quite some time,
Speaker 1: so This is going to be as a mile high
Speaker 1: overview of the two thousand nineteen show. And before I
Speaker 1: get to some of the stuff that was going on,
Speaker 1: one of the things I need to talk about is
Speaker 1: not so much technological nature, but political in nature, and
Speaker 1: it's because it has a direct impact on the show.
Speaker 1: You can't get around it. So in the United States
Speaker 1: currently we have a partial government shutdown. In other words,
Speaker 1: the government right now, many departments within the government are
Speaker 1: currently unfunded. They have no money to run, so they
Speaker 1: are they're shut off, and the workers aren't working their
Speaker 1: furloughed essentially without pay. So this has had its effect
Speaker 1: on c e S in several ways. One of those
Speaker 1: is that there were a lot of US government officials
Speaker 1: who originally were supposed to attend c e S and
Speaker 1: be part of various presentations and panel discussions, and now
Speaker 1: they're not because there you know, their their departments are
Speaker 1: shut down, so they don't even have the budgets to
Speaker 1: travel to places, so they've all canceled their presentations. That
Speaker 1: includes people like a Jitpi, the FCC chairman, and Brendan
Speaker 1: Carr also of the f C, C Rohit Chopra and
Speaker 1: Rebecca Slaughter both of the f TC and the Federal
Speaker 1: Trade Commission, and Brandon Bray and Barnes Johnson of the EPA,
Speaker 1: the Environmental Protection Agency, among others. So there were a
Speaker 1: lot of like important people in the US government who
Speaker 1: were meant to come out and have these conversations about
Speaker 1: technology who can't. Now it really means that there's a
Speaker 1: missed opportunity for interaction between consumer tech companies and US
Speaker 1: government agents in a publicized setting to kind of create
Speaker 1: a public message of what the current strategy is for
Speaker 1: developing consumer tech and its role in the lives of
Speaker 1: everyday American people, as well as the future of America,
Speaker 1: the future of American industry. All those are very important
Speaker 1: messages that kind of gut pushed to the side because
Speaker 1: of this government shutdown. More than that, in the United States,
Speaker 1: every electronic device that emits radio frequencies has to receive
Speaker 1: certification from the f c C upon moving that this
Speaker 1: device can operate within safe parameters in those radio frequency emissions.
Speaker 1: And a lot of companies are debuting brand new technology
Speaker 1: at c e s and with the government shut down,
Speaker 1: the fcc cannot do this important step. They they can't
Speaker 1: go through the certification process, which means in the United States,
Speaker 1: these devices are effectively in limbo until the government is
Speaker 1: funded again. So that has a very real impact on
Speaker 1: these companies. And also the shutdown has affected travel across
Speaker 1: the United States. T s A employees the Security Agency.
Speaker 1: They're not being paid, so a lot of people are
Speaker 1: calling out sick because they need to work other jobs
Speaker 1: in order to make ends meet. So they're they're not
Speaker 1: necessarily really sick, but they're calling out sick in order
Speaker 1: to go work other jobs and actually make some money
Speaker 1: because otherwise they have to work without pay. And uh,
Speaker 1: it's it's a critical role that they fell to help
Speaker 1: ensure safety or at least, if you're very kunicle, put
Speaker 1: on security theater. But either way, it's getting harder and
Speaker 1: harder for that too, uh to happen because they're not
Speaker 1: getting any salary. So that's also had a big impact,
Speaker 1: not just on the tech companies obviously, but anyone traveling
Speaker 1: to come to this show. But that's the government shut
Speaker 1: down and how it's impacting the world right now, in
Speaker 1: the United States or the world, the I guess the
Speaker 1: world because ce S is a global event. You have
Speaker 1: companies from all over the world here at the conference
Speaker 1: and attendees from all over the world as well, but
Speaker 1: specifically affecting the United States. Moving on to what's actually
Speaker 1: going on and being shown off here at the event, Well,
Speaker 1: there are always some broad trends that seem to emerge
Speaker 1: during c e S. For example, uh Am, I very
Speaker 1: first ce S eleven years ago. The theme I remember
Speaker 1: the most were widgets, these little web based widgets that
Speaker 1: were on everything, like kind of like many apps, things
Speaker 1: like weather widgets or news ticker widgets. Primarily they were
Speaker 1: popping up on televisions, but they also would show up
Speaker 1: on things like kitchen appliances like refrigerators or stoves, and
Speaker 1: widgets gradually evolved into more holistic and useful interfaces for
Speaker 1: smart devices, more like the operating systems you would find
Speaker 1: on a tablet or smartphone. Another big theme back when
Speaker 1: I first started going to see e S was three
Speaker 1: D television, which was pushed really hard for several years,
Speaker 1: and the industry is largely backed away from that over
Speaker 1: the last maybe five six years. They received the loud
Speaker 1: and clear message that the consumer tech market out there
Speaker 1: just doesn't really care. They're not interested in three D
Speaker 1: television's so what sort of big themes emerged this year.
Speaker 1: Well some of them are the same ones that have
Speaker 1: been around for years, new versions of technology that we've
Speaker 1: had for ages. And this isn't me slagging off on
Speaker 1: the conference or on the companies at this conference. The
Speaker 1: purpose of c e S ultimately is for these companies
Speaker 1: to connect with retailers and with other companies, because some
Speaker 1: of these companies are business to business companies, right like Intel.
Speaker 1: Intel does most of its business working with other companies,
Speaker 1: having their these other companies by the processors from Intel
Speaker 1: to incorporate into other products. That's the real reason for
Speaker 1: CEES that often people like myself, people of the media
Speaker 1: tend to forget, so to a lesser extent, ce S
Speaker 1: is an opportunity for these companies to connect with the
Speaker 1: press and to get some publicity for their stuff. But
Speaker 1: largely it's for them to talk to other business folks
Speaker 1: about you know, carrying products and stores things like that.
Speaker 1: They're talking about emerging lineups of products, and not every
Speaker 1: new product is going to be a groundbreaking piece of
Speaker 1: technology that breaks the mold and defines a new type
Speaker 1: of gadget. There's going to be countless new laptops bluetooth speakers,
Speaker 1: computer peripherals, headphone owns, kitchen gadgets, smart locks, and every
Speaker 1: other type of consumer electronic gadget you can imagine. They
Speaker 1: this isn't exactly the stuff that tends to get reporters
Speaker 1: salivating about covering the products, right Like a reporter who's
Speaker 1: been doing CS for a while might look at these
Speaker 1: things and just to go like, great, another computer. But
Speaker 1: at the same time, we wouldn't expect companies to just
Speaker 1: keep selling the same old model of gadget year after year.
Speaker 1: Of course, they're going to come out with new ones
Speaker 1: that are maybe faster, more power efficient. They legitimately have
Speaker 1: added value, but it may not be sexy enough for
Speaker 1: the press to really get excited about it. So I'm
Speaker 1: not going to cover all of that. That would take
Speaker 1: thirty episodes about c e s about minute changes in
Speaker 1: some technologies. So what are some of the more innovative
Speaker 1: trends that are emerging. Well, artificial intelligence is a huge one,
Speaker 1: and this is a tough theme to talk about because
Speaker 1: people use the term AI so loosely and in connection
Speaker 1: with all sorts of different concepts. Right, Like, artificial intelligence
Speaker 1: is pretty much everything until you say it's not. Uh.
Speaker 1: Some people refer to artificial intelligence in the sense of
Speaker 1: machines that seemingly think like people. Others use it in
Speaker 1: a more general way to talk about machines that are
Speaker 1: capable of making certain choices based upon the parameters that
Speaker 1: were programmed into those machines to you know, weigh all
Speaker 1: the different elements in any given decision making process before
Speaker 1: coming to a conclusion, that kind of thing. But we're
Speaker 1: really talking more about capabilities built into tech so that
Speaker 1: the tech can make some sort of choice on its own,
Speaker 1: or learn from user behavior, and to customize and experience
Speaker 1: based on user behavior. So along with that, we're seeing
Speaker 1: a continuation of a trend that really started to pick
Speaker 1: up steam a couple of years ago, which is integrated
Speaker 1: support for AI assistance, you know stuff Alexa and Google
Speaker 1: Home and Syrie and that kind of thing. Um Google,
Speaker 1: which has a huge pop up building set up on
Speaker 1: the parking lot of the Las Vegas Convention Center. I
Speaker 1: saw the building, haven't been in it yet, has announced
Speaker 1: that Google Home support will be on one billion devices
Speaker 1: by the end of twenty nineteen. Most of those devices, however,
Speaker 1: the company has admitted, are going to be phones, but
Speaker 1: there will be other devices as well. Meanwhile, security experts
Speaker 1: and consumer advocates continue to express concern about things like
Speaker 1: consumer privacy, security, transparent policies. More people are starting to
Speaker 1: worry about devices that always have an active microphone going right,
Speaker 1: whether it's a phone that's in their pocket, or maybe
Speaker 1: it's a smart speaker on a side table, maybe it's
Speaker 1: your car. And even if you go to great measures
Speaker 1: to make sure that you don't have any of those products,
Speaker 1: that none of your products have an active microphone that
Speaker 1: could be potentially listening in on everything, categorizing all of
Speaker 1: your conversations, and building out a more and more detailed
Speaker 1: profile of your likes and dislikes. You can't be sure
Speaker 1: that all the places you visit don't have those things.
Speaker 1: Like even if you're out in public and people have
Speaker 1: smartphones that have these assistance on them, it starts to
Speaker 1: make you really paranoid. But for good reason, because these
Speaker 1: companies have repeatedly had data issues, data security issues that
Speaker 1: call them to question their practices. So that is a
Speaker 1: continuing conversation and one that I think has to be
Speaker 1: addressed through Like I said in my wish list, transparency,
Speaker 1: really good security measures all of that's incredibly important, and
Speaker 1: ultimately we need to start making some decisions about how
Speaker 1: okay are we at all this information being gathered. Even
Speaker 1: if companies are saying they're not gathering that info, you know,
Speaker 1: they're all I can take is some lines of bad code.
Speaker 1: Even if it wasn't intentional, it could still happen. So
Speaker 1: we have to start saying, well, how how much of
Speaker 1: this do we want to trade off? Like, do we
Speaker 1: find the benefit of these technologies to be so compelling
Speaker 1: that we're willing to uh to deal with the fact
Speaker 1: that we're being recorded, or that are the things we
Speaker 1: say are being analyzed in a way that will affect
Speaker 1: us later on? And Uh, I don't have the answer
Speaker 1: to that, mostly because I haven't seen the benefit being
Speaker 1: so so incredibly compelling that I find the trade off
Speaker 1: to be worthwhile. Anyway, Uh, that's going to be a
Speaker 1: continuing conversation. I think we'll see in twenty nineteen. Now
Speaker 1: related to AI was a new emphasis on robots, and
Speaker 1: robots have been a big part of CS for as
Speaker 1: long as I've been going, I mean ever since I started.
Speaker 1: I've seen robots ranging from very primitive robots that are
Speaker 1: essentially just the equivalent of one of those toys that
Speaker 1: will move when sound is playing, so the robot is
Speaker 1: just kind of boogying down whenever music is in the area,
Speaker 1: all the way up to robots that can more in
Speaker 1: a more sophisticated way respond to questions and return useful information. Uh.
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure the first year when I went was
Speaker 1: the first time I saw a Parrot drone. I want
Speaker 1: to say that was like when Parrot first showed off
Speaker 1: their consumer quad copter. And uh, every year since there's
Speaker 1: been an army of new robots meant to do everything
Speaker 1: from clean your floors to sweep out your gutters to
Speaker 1: folding your clothes fresh aile of the wash. And we've
Speaker 1: seen several robots meant to interact directly with people over
Speaker 1: the years, but this year that seemed to be emphasized
Speaker 1: a little bit more than usual. So companies are talking
Speaker 1: more about designing robots specifically to work in human environments
Speaker 1: and to have meaningful human robot interactions. Now, personally, I
Speaker 1: think this is a fascinating area of technology because it
Speaker 1: requires not just a deep knowledge about tech in gen
Speaker 1: role and robotics in particular, but also human psychology. You
Speaker 1: have to understand people to be able to design robots
Speaker 1: that can interact with people. And one of the challenges
Speaker 1: that is that our behavior as people are. Human behavior
Speaker 1: can change when we encounter robots. That if we were
Speaker 1: to encounter another person, we might behave one way, but
Speaker 1: when we encounter a robot, we might behave a different way,
Speaker 1: and in turn, this can change the nature of that
Speaker 1: human robot interaction. So designing robots that are meant to
Speaker 1: seamlessly interact with people is incredibly challenging since it's kind
Speaker 1: of like an idea and quantum mechanics, right, there's that
Speaker 1: quantum mechanics principle that says you cannot observe a quantum
Speaker 1: system without also affecting that system. In other words, you
Speaker 1: can't make a measurement without affecting the thing that you
Speaker 1: are measuring, which means your measurement is no longer an
Speaker 1: indication of what that thing was, it's now what that
Speaker 1: thing is because you measured it. It's this mind been
Speaker 1: in concept. Well with human robot interactions. You can't really
Speaker 1: design a robot to work perfectly out of the gate
Speaker 1: because people are not likely to react to that robot
Speaker 1: in the way that you imagined when you started designing
Speaker 1: the robot. So this involves a lot of design and
Speaker 1: redesign work. You create a robot, you create the software
Speaker 1: for it to guide its interactions. You find out people
Speaker 1: are off put by the way the robot behaves, so
Speaker 1: then you have to go back and adjust the robots behavior.
Speaker 1: And now you find out that people are reacting in
Speaker 1: a totally different way, and it's still not exactly what
Speaker 1: you had planned. So you have to start asking yourself questions,
Speaker 1: how do I guide the behavior to be more like
Speaker 1: the result I want? Or do I need to change
Speaker 1: my expectations. This is a fascinating thing for me because
Speaker 1: it really shows that you have to go beyond just
Speaker 1: figuring out how to make stuff work, and then you
Speaker 1: have to figure out, well, how do we as people work,
Speaker 1: and how can we make stuff that works with us
Speaker 1: instead of against us or inspires us to work against it.
Speaker 1: I hope that sometime this year I can have a
Speaker 1: specialist in human robot interactions on the show to talk
Speaker 1: about these concepts and these challenges, because I think it's
Speaker 1: a really interesting area of technology, something that that goes
Speaker 1: beyond uh. Like I said, the circuits and the tech
Speaker 1: also at CES. This is not a surprise. If you've
Speaker 1: been following the progress of the show over the last
Speaker 1: several years, I'm sure you would have expected this. We
Speaker 1: saw tons of driver less car concepts. Some of them
Speaker 1: were practical demonstrations. Some of them were not truly driverless
Speaker 1: car practical demonstrations. I'll talk more about one of those
Speaker 1: in a bit, but there were tons in concept form.
Speaker 1: BMW introduced a concept called I Next, which is meant
Speaker 1: to go into an autonomous car itself. Is not an
Speaker 1: autonomous car. Instead, this is a mixed reality technology. Mixed
Speaker 1: reality is what we all that type of tech that
Speaker 1: kind of incorporates stuff like virtual reality and augmented reality.
Speaker 1: So in this case, uh, it's a concept where you
Speaker 1: would have a car that could have at least some
Speaker 1: autonomous operations. Now, when the car takes over, then you
Speaker 1: could enact this I next platform. And it's a productivity
Speaker 1: platform and an entertainment system, so you could do things
Speaker 1: like look at your schedule, or watch television or have
Speaker 1: a video conference call, and you would see stuff projected
Speaker 1: on the windshield as if it were just a regular display. Uh.
Speaker 1: This obviously would require the car to be controlling itself,
Speaker 1: or else you would have a terrible accident because you
Speaker 1: would have someone's head up here, like Marlon Brando's face
Speaker 1: and Superman, and I think that would scare me to
Speaker 1: see Marlon Brando in the windshield of my car. For
Speaker 1: numerous reasons, his death being one of them. The BMW
Speaker 1: concept was shown off in virtual reality, so this was
Speaker 1: not a practical vehicle that they were putting people into,
Speaker 1: but rather a VR headset so that you could put
Speaker 1: it on. You'd have some controls at your disposal, so
Speaker 1: it'd be like you're driving a vehicle and you could
Speaker 1: go through the demo to see what it would be
Speaker 1: like to hand over control of the vehicle to the
Speaker 1: autonomous system and then engage the I next system. Now
Speaker 1: I did not do this. I did not do this
Speaker 1: for two really big reasons. One is I don't drive. Actually,
Speaker 1: I get anxiety about driving. It's a it's a phobia,
Speaker 1: and it's something I've had to deal with. It is
Speaker 1: a terribly inconvenient phobia to have. Uh, it is socially embarrassing.
Speaker 1: I've talked about it a couple times on the show.
Speaker 1: But I've been dealing with this my whole life, and
Speaker 1: I just haven't gotten any better at it. So that's
Speaker 1: one reason I actually get anxiety. Even with the whole
Speaker 1: virtual driving thing. I don't even like driving video games
Speaker 1: that much. Um, the more arcady they are, the better
Speaker 1: I am at it. But I didn't want to give
Speaker 1: myself anxiety just sitting down to do a simple maneuver
Speaker 1: in a VR car and have it hand over to
Speaker 1: an autonomous vehicle. And I know, I know this is goofy.
Speaker 1: I know I'm a dufas. I get it. You don't
Speaker 1: have to tell me. I'm very aware. But the other
Speaker 1: big reason is kind of practical, y'all. Because this is
Speaker 1: a tech conference. There are hundreds of thousands of people here,
Speaker 1: or at least more than a hundred thousands of people
Speaker 1: here from all over the world. Some of those people
Speaker 1: are likely not entirely healthy right now. They probably have colds.
Speaker 1: That's cold flu season, so some of them are probably sick.
Speaker 1: Some of them, based upon what I have witnessed, failed
Speaker 1: to wash their hands after going to the restroom. And yes,
Speaker 1: this is gross, and I hesitate to even say it,
Speaker 1: but I have seen this over and over again at
Speaker 1: c e s. When you know I'm standing at the
Speaker 1: in the men's room, I'm I'm washing my hands, and
Speaker 1: someone just walks from the inside of the restroom straight
Speaker 1: out the door without washing their hands, and I think
Speaker 1: that is disgusting. Then I think I'm at a consumer
Speaker 1: electronics show where people pick things up and handle them
Speaker 1: and put them back down again for other people to handle.
Speaker 1: And you immediately think, I gotta wash my hands at
Speaker 1: every opportunity when I'm at this show. But then you think,
Speaker 1: I am definitely not putting on a VR headset that
Speaker 1: is not in my cards. Um. And I don't say
Speaker 1: that to gross anybody out, but rather too one to
Speaker 1: stress to my fellow conference goers. For goodness sakes, wash
Speaker 1: your hands, Come on, people, just some hygiene here. And
Speaker 1: two for everyone else, think about stuff before you handle
Speaker 1: it and put it on your face and everything, because
Speaker 1: I don't want you to get sick. I want it
Speaker 1: to be a good conference for everybody, Okay. Also related
Speaker 1: to vehicles is the concept of connected technology within cars.
Speaker 1: So this is kind of like the Internet of Things concept,
Speaker 1: and it goes beyond cars systems. Right, We've seen these
Speaker 1: this connected idea and all sorts of technology, but in
Speaker 1: car systems are one of those that get a lot
Speaker 1: of attention year over year, and this year is no
Speaker 1: exception that these systems have huge amounts of connected technology
Speaker 1: and them some of them are pretty cool, Like they
Speaker 1: have cameras that are inside the cabin of the car.
Speaker 1: I've already seen vehicles that do this, obviously. There have
Speaker 1: been several that have been on the market for a
Speaker 1: couple of years. A friend of mine actually has a
Speaker 1: car that has a camera mounted on the rear view
Speaker 1: mirror so that if her eyes drift away from the
Speaker 1: space in front of her, her car gives her an
Speaker 1: alert saying, hey, put your eyes back on the road.
Speaker 1: So if she looks down at the radio, or if
Speaker 1: she were to look at her phone, she would get
Speaker 1: a notification from her car saying don't do that, or
Speaker 1: if she were to nod off, she would get a warning.
Speaker 1: This is something that we're seeing in cars, but we're
Speaker 1: seeing even more of it now, Like there's aftermarket systems,
Speaker 1: their systems that are being designed for cars as soon
Speaker 1: as you get them right off the lot, and some
Speaker 1: of them are uh, pretty nifty stuff that we also
Speaker 1: see a lot of touch screen interfaces, a lot of
Speaker 1: app integration into cars. Navigation tools obviously been a big
Speaker 1: part of vehicle systems for a while. Now personal assistants,
Speaker 1: like I said, with Google Home and Alexa, all of
Speaker 1: that incorporation is happening right into the vehicles. At this point,
Speaker 1: we've seen studies that prove that distractions can be as
Speaker 1: dangerous as driving while intoxicated, and that makes me a
Speaker 1: little concerned about all these features. I'm worried that they
Speaker 1: might have an impact on driver attention and focus. They're
Speaker 1: not supposed to. They're supposed to allow a driver to
Speaker 1: access all these things without diverting their attention from the road.
Speaker 1: But these are features that go beyond what you would
Speaker 1: typically access in a car. Right, Like if I'm thinking
Speaker 1: about before we got to all these in car systems
Speaker 1: years and years ago. Let's say it's like the seventies.
Speaker 1: You had your radio, you might have an eight track player,
Speaker 1: and then you had your vehicle and that was it. Right.
Speaker 1: You didn't have navigation systems, you didn't have entertainment systems,
Speaker 1: you didn't have in dash information systems. You know, you
Speaker 1: had your your regular speedometer and things like that, but
Speaker 1: you didn't have all this other stuff. So there were
Speaker 1: things that you could be distracted by, like if you
Speaker 1: kept on searching the radio to find station that was
Speaker 1: playing something you liked, but it was limited. These days,
Speaker 1: we've added in so many interesting features and toys that
Speaker 1: it makes me worried that it's pulling too much attention
Speaker 1: away from the road, which might mean that autonomous vehicle
Speaker 1: systems aren't a necessity anyway, because we're making it more
Speaker 1: dangerous to drive a car. But um, the concept is
Speaker 1: supposed to be that it doesn't take your attention away.
Speaker 1: Maybe you're using voice activation for all of the different features,
Speaker 1: which is fine if those features don't pull your attention away. Um.
Speaker 1: But as I see all these cool screens and really
Speaker 1: flashy displays and and interesting apps and all this stuff
Speaker 1: integrated into cars, I it just it starts to make
Speaker 1: me think more and more about the casinos I'm walking through,
Speaker 1: with all the slot machines and flashy lights and stuff.
Speaker 1: It just seems distracting to me. And again, it's hard
Speaker 1: for me to say if this is meaningful to any
Speaker 1: actual driver, because I don't drive. I'm looking at this
Speaker 1: from an outsider perspective, so maybe again I'm making a
Speaker 1: big deal out of nothing. But it just doesn't sit
Speaker 1: well with me in every case. Now, there are some
Speaker 1: driver lists or some in in car connected systems that
Speaker 1: I think are pretty cool that maybe don't have that
Speaker 1: kind of factor to them, so I don't want to
Speaker 1: paint them all with the same brush. And there's also
Speaker 1: a related element of privacy and security issues with connected cars.
Speaker 1: I mean, the more features you create that UH allow
Speaker 1: a car to access off the vehicle services, the more
Speaker 1: opportunities you have for someone to perhaps take advantage of
Speaker 1: that and hack your car, for example. But we've already
Speaker 1: seen examples of of car hacking even with limited in
Speaker 1: car systems, So I hope that security is something that
Speaker 1: is a first and foremost in the minds of the
Speaker 1: designers who create these systems. I've got a lot more
Speaker 1: to say about what's going on at c E S
Speaker 1: two thousand nineteen, but before I get into all of that,
Speaker 1: let's take a quick break to thank our sponsor. Alright.
Speaker 1: I talked a lot about some of the broad trends
Speaker 1: that are going on. Let's talk about some specifics here.
Speaker 1: One of the big news items that that broke here
Speaker 1: at CES was really surprising to me, and I found
Speaker 1: out about it from my buddy I as actor. He
Speaker 1: works over at c net. He's a really smart guy
Speaker 1: and is doing incredib will work. If you're not familiar
Speaker 1: with his work had seen it, I highly recommend you
Speaker 1: go check it out. I don't say that just because
Speaker 1: he's my friend. I say that because he does really
Speaker 1: good work. Anyway, he was telling me, Hey, you heard
Speaker 1: about airplay, right, I'm like, well, yeah, I know what
Speaker 1: airplay is. That's that's the Apple feature that allows you
Speaker 1: to stream content from iTunes to something like an Apple
Speaker 1: TV platform that then can connect to a television and
Speaker 1: you can watch stuff from like iTunes. You know, you
Speaker 1: can send it via airplay. It's kind of similar to
Speaker 1: Chrome cast. That's Google's version. He says, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: no airplay too. You heard that more and more manufacturers
Speaker 1: are integrating airplay two directly into their their products, into
Speaker 1: their television sets. This was news to me. We're talking
Speaker 1: about manufacturers like Samsung, Sony and l G and Samsung
Speaker 1: and Apple have not had the smoothest of relationships over
Speaker 1: the years, so that is big news because typically what
Speaker 1: Apple does is it likes to play within its own
Speaker 1: ecosis them it doesn't tend to like to incorporate its
Speaker 1: technology into someone else's products. It tends to like to
Speaker 1: create its own products and then you connect those to
Speaker 1: other people's technology. And I say it likes to as
Speaker 1: if the Apple Company is its own sentient entity. As
Speaker 1: far as they know, it has not yet gained sentience.
Speaker 1: But now Apple's working with these other companies to support
Speaker 1: its airplay technology. So if you buy a Samsung or
Speaker 1: Sony or LG television with this feature, you will be
Speaker 1: able to use like an iPhone and stream stuff that
Speaker 1: you bought on iTunes directly to these televisions without having
Speaker 1: any other peripheral attached to it. You don't have to
Speaker 1: have an Apple TV hooked up to it or anything
Speaker 1: like that. This is an interesting move because for years,
Speaker 1: probably for the better part of a decade, there have
Speaker 1: been a lot of rumors that Apple was developing its
Speaker 1: own television so that it could do this and again
Speaker 1: keep it all within the Apple ecosystem them so that yes,
Speaker 1: you could do the same thing, but it would all
Speaker 1: be an Apple product. The television itself would be made
Speaker 1: by Apple. This appears to say maybe they're backing off
Speaker 1: from that. Maybe, and to be fair, the heads of
Speaker 1: the company have always been coy about whether or not
Speaker 1: they were going to come out with a television, and
Speaker 1: it may very well be that Apple has come to
Speaker 1: the conclusion that developing its own television to compete on
Speaker 1: the market against all these established manufacturers that have been
Speaker 1: making TVs for decades might not be the best business move,
Speaker 1: and so they're backing off instead and partnering with those
Speaker 1: companies to incorporate this technology directly into their products. So yep,
Speaker 1: future TVs from major television companies will likely have airplay support,
Speaker 1: which is kind of neat if you use airplay. I don't,
Speaker 1: but it's only because I don't have any Apple gadgets. Um.
Speaker 1: I don't think it's I don't think it's a bad
Speaker 1: service at all. I just literally don't own anything that
Speaker 1: can do it. My wife has an iPhone. I guess
Speaker 1: she could do it, but you know, she doesn't let
Speaker 1: me play with her phone for good reason. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm a I'm not a responsible person. You can't put
Speaker 1: me in charge of an iPhone anyway. That was a
Speaker 1: big announcement that I found very surprising. One of the
Speaker 1: products that's getting a lot of buzz, and I've seen
Speaker 1: videos of it, but I have not actually seen it
Speaker 1: in action yet. I hope I can swing by the
Speaker 1: booth and maybe see a demo of it. Is the
Speaker 1: LG Roll Up Television. Uh. It's going on sale in
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen. Sale is probably the wrong word. It's going
Speaker 1: for a premium price in twenty nineteen. And it's an
Speaker 1: oh led screen and it rolls up like a window shade.
Speaker 1: So if you remember those old window shades where, especially
Speaker 1: like in cartoons and stuff, you pull it down and
Speaker 1: then to pull it back up, you just you give
Speaker 1: it a little tug and then it activates a spring
Speaker 1: and the whole thing rolls back up. It's kind of
Speaker 1: like that, but much slower and and measured because you
Speaker 1: don't want to break a incredibly expensive television set. The
Speaker 1: version that LG showed off is a four K resolution
Speaker 1: screen sixty inches across the diagonal, so pretty big screen,
Speaker 1: larger than my television at home. It has a one
Speaker 1: what Dolby Atmos speaker in the base. The base looks
Speaker 1: kind of like a like a cardenza. It's like a
Speaker 1: like a cabinet almost, and so it folds down or
Speaker 1: rolls down into this basse and when the screen is
Speaker 1: all the way down. A cover slides on top, and
Speaker 1: so it looks like a little piece of furniture, and
Speaker 1: then you activate it and the cover slides back and
Speaker 1: the television can extend back up. You can actually even
Speaker 1: extend it just a quarter of the way if you like,
Speaker 1: and use it as a music player, and it will
Speaker 1: it will show like the title of the song and
Speaker 1: the basic controls and everything, um, and so then it
Speaker 1: becomes like a weird little soundbar um. And it's super
Speaker 1: neat looking. Also, it has airplay to support, so it's
Speaker 1: one of those TVs I was just talking about a
Speaker 1: second ago. It also was going to have Google Home
Speaker 1: and uh An Alexa support, so you'll be able to
Speaker 1: use the assistance in that case with these TVs. So
Speaker 1: it's super high tech and it's getting, like I said,
Speaker 1: a lot of buzz. A lot of people really like this,
Speaker 1: and I like the videos I saw of it, But
Speaker 1: as I said, I have not yet set eyes upon
Speaker 1: it in person. I hope to do that, probably not today.
Speaker 1: I think today I'm going to the Sands, which is
Speaker 1: the like I said, the Eureka Park area with all
Speaker 1: the startups and stuff, and then tomorrow I'll hit the
Speaker 1: convention center. Rollable and foldable oh LED screens are showing
Speaker 1: up in other places too. We've actually seen some foldable
Speaker 1: displays for several years, but they were always in the
Speaker 1: prototype phase. It wasn't meant to be a consumer product,
Speaker 1: but rather here's what the future can hold kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: So we're now starting to see it rolled out into
Speaker 1: actual products, including one that is already on the market
Speaker 1: in China. That's from Royal r O y O l E.
Speaker 1: They are mostly known for their playze Uh. They did
Speaker 1: a cinematic like a personal cinematic display, essentially a headset
Speaker 1: that allows you to watch movies. They had that on
Speaker 1: on display a few years ago. Now they have a
Speaker 1: flexible sort of tablet slash phone kind of thing called
Speaker 1: flex pie f l e x p a i UH,
Speaker 1: and as I said, it's already on sale in China.
Speaker 1: So when it's unfolded, it's like an eight inch screen
Speaker 1: but you folded in half and it has a specific
Speaker 1: area where the the bezel allows for the folding and
Speaker 1: you can turn it into a phone. When it's folded,
Speaker 1: it looks pretty thick, especially right where the bend is.
Speaker 1: It looks a little bulky to me. I haven't had
Speaker 1: my hands on this either. I've only watched videos of
Speaker 1: this as well. Uh So, I don't know how well
Speaker 1: it works as a phone, but the screen is gorgeous
Speaker 1: and the fact that it does bend and it still,
Speaker 1: you know, is a perfect display on both sides is
Speaker 1: really nifty looking. Uh. I hear that some of its
Speaker 1: features are a little low tech, like the camera I
Speaker 1: understand is not particularly good on it, but it's still
Speaker 1: for an early technology, pretty impressive. Also. I mentioned VR
Speaker 1: in a demonstration earlier that was just meant to demonstrate
Speaker 1: a different technology, but VR itself is still a thing. Um.
Speaker 1: It's one of those technologies that we've been waiting to
Speaker 1: see breakout for a while or just fizzle away, kind
Speaker 1: of like it did in the nineties. And like the nineties,
Speaker 1: I think we're seeing the same sort of reaction where
Speaker 1: people are starting to feel like the promise of VR
Speaker 1: doesn't quite um like the like the reality of VR
Speaker 1: doesn't measure up to what the promises. So anyway, we're
Speaker 1: still seeing some interesting VR tech shown off at the
Speaker 1: e s HTC showed off a new Vibe Pro headset
Speaker 1: that has eye tracking support it's called the Vibe pro I,
Speaker 1: So you can use your eyes to navigate menus and
Speaker 1: control interfaces and that kind of thing. Um. So you
Speaker 1: might have choices displayed in front of your eyes, and
Speaker 1: when you stare at a specific choice for a certain
Speaker 1: amount of time, it's alex It that kind of thing,
Speaker 1: And so you can navigate through menus, you can, you know,
Speaker 1: have game developers develop games where specifically your eyes are
Speaker 1: the control It's kind of neat um. They also introduced
Speaker 1: a new user interface design called the Vibe Reality System.
Speaker 1: So previously, the menu screens that you would encounter in
Speaker 1: the Vibe were pretty much like PC type menu screens,
Speaker 1: flat two dimensional screens that kind of takes you out
Speaker 1: of the immersed feeling you would get in virtual reality.
Speaker 1: The new system creates a more three dimensional approach to
Speaker 1: redesigning menus and transitions and stuff, so that way it's
Speaker 1: more like you're navigating through a virtual world to make
Speaker 1: your choices, as opposed to just looking at a screen.
Speaker 1: They also introduced a new headset called the Vibe Cosmos
Speaker 1: that's meant to be easier to set up and to use,
Speaker 1: and that way it removes one of the perceived barriers
Speaker 1: of virtual reality. I would say that the two big
Speaker 1: barriers to adoption. One is that it is fairly complicated
Speaker 1: technology that tends to require multiple pieces like a computer, cables,
Speaker 1: power chords, you know, the headset, all the controllers, all
Speaker 1: this kind of stuff. So this is meant to cut
Speaker 1: down on that. And the other would be the price
Speaker 1: that it costs a lot just to buy the equipment
Speaker 1: and then to have a decent computer that can also
Speaker 1: run all the software that also adds to the cost.
Speaker 1: So Vibe Cosmos is meant to be kind of an
Speaker 1: answer to both of those. Um I am curious to
Speaker 1: see if they are able to really make that compelling,
Speaker 1: because then the question is do you trade off the
Speaker 1: experience to such a degree that people don't know. Yes,
Speaker 1: it's more affordable and easier to use, but people don't
Speaker 1: care because it's not particularly fun or interesting. That's a possibility,
Speaker 1: and I don't know the answer to that. Allow of
Speaker 1: that depends upon the developers who create the software for
Speaker 1: the hardware. Intel showed off the ninth generation of its
Speaker 1: current processors, now with elements measuring in the ten nanometer range,
Speaker 1: which blows my mind. It's way smaller than I ever
Speaker 1: thought we would manage to get and still be able
Speaker 1: to cope with quantum effects, and yet here we are.
Speaker 1: It's one of those reasons why despite the fact that
Speaker 1: we keep on saying Moore's long is going to have
Speaker 1: to come to an end soon, somehow people keep finding
Speaker 1: a way to push that further off into the future. Uh,
Speaker 1: these processors are able to pack more power than previous models,
Speaker 1: and the company also showed off a new microprocessor architecture
Speaker 1: and motherboard design that they called lake Field, and that
Speaker 1: builds out the processor into three dimensions that couples various
Speaker 1: elements together very tightly to decrease the amount of time
Speaker 1: and energy it takes for data to travel between these
Speaker 1: various components. Now, the Intel says that the result is
Speaker 1: that this family of processors are faster, they're more powerful,
Speaker 1: and they're more power efficient than any of their predecessors.
Speaker 1: And the demonstrations the company held were atty impressive. But again,
Speaker 1: I haven't seen it in action yet. I'll see that
Speaker 1: when I go to the convention center, because in tells
Speaker 1: one of the largest booths over in the central hall
Speaker 1: of the Las Vegas Convention Center. They also revealed that
Speaker 1: through a partnership they have with Ali Baba, they're creating
Speaker 1: a three D athlete tracking system for the next Summer Olympics,
Speaker 1: and they'll be able to use video cameras and this
Speaker 1: software to analyze athletes movements and quantify athletic performance in
Speaker 1: a really crazy granular way. So if you want to
Speaker 1: know precisely what angle a shot put thrower chose when
Speaker 1: he or she set a world record, that system will
Speaker 1: grab that information for you, will tell you tons of
Speaker 1: quantifiable information about every single aspect of an athletic athletes
Speaker 1: performance during the Olympics. UM, I'm not sure if that
Speaker 1: information will ever come a cross as being anything more
Speaker 1: than just interesting from a curiosity standpoint, Like I don't
Speaker 1: know that it would necessarily ever become informative or helpful
Speaker 1: or educational for anybody. Like it's it's one thing to
Speaker 1: know that someone threw a shot put at a specific angle.
Speaker 1: It's another thing to be able to replicate that precisely.
Speaker 1: Like if you told me, oh, you just need to
Speaker 1: stand at a thirty seven degree angle to the ground
Speaker 1: in order for this thing to happen, Well, first I'd say,
Speaker 1: there's that's impossible. I don't have the calf's strength to
Speaker 1: hold myself at a thirty seven degree angle. But I'd
Speaker 1: also say I don't know how to process that in
Speaker 1: a way to actually do anything about it. Until also
Speaker 1: talked about five G. Five G is going to be
Speaker 1: one of those buzzwords that gets a ton of coverage
Speaker 1: here at c E S. That's the upcoming new wireless
Speaker 1: data transfer standard that will allow for much, much faster
Speaker 1: wireless data networks. So they talked about working with that
Speaker 1: on a chip code named snow Ridge, which will help
Speaker 1: handle processes that are running on five G two optimize
Speaker 1: them so that you're getting the absolute most out of
Speaker 1: your connection. Uh, then we can move over to Samsung.
Speaker 1: They showed off five G smartphone designs, so they also
Speaker 1: talked about five G quite a bit that they talked.
Speaker 1: Showed off a ninety eight in eight K television. I'll
Speaker 1: never mind that there's no eight K content out there.
Speaker 1: In fact, in the presentation they say, when eight K
Speaker 1: content becomes available, So this is a television that literally
Speaker 1: is able to display resolutions higher than what anyone has
Speaker 1: generated for content that you can watch at home, eight
Speaker 1: K will come along. But I I've talked about resolution
Speaker 1: before on tech stuff and my own personal experience with
Speaker 1: high definition two K and eight K and four K
Speaker 1: and all that kind of stuff. I have to say
Speaker 1: from experience, once you get to a certain level of
Speaker 1: of resolution, let's i mean, even HD to two K
Speaker 1: isn't at that big of a jump unless you're talking
Speaker 1: about an enormous screen and you're sitting really close. But
Speaker 1: two K, I would say, I could tell there's a
Speaker 1: difference between two K and HD if both all other
Speaker 1: settings are as equal as they possibly can be. Because remember,
Speaker 1: the quality of a picture you see on a television
Speaker 1: is not just up to the resolution. There's color representation, brightness, contrast,
Speaker 1: there are all these other things that are important with
Speaker 1: the quality of a picture. So you could have an
Speaker 1: HD set and a two K set, and if you
Speaker 1: were really good at tweaking all the settings for the
Speaker 1: h D set, and you were really bad at tweaking
Speaker 1: all the settings for the two K set, the h
Speaker 1: D might actually look better. But if all things are equal,
Speaker 1: then I might be able to tell a little difference
Speaker 1: between two K and HD, But I probably wouldn't be
Speaker 1: able to tell much difference between two K and say
Speaker 1: four K or eight K and that is. I don't
Speaker 1: that that could just be my own physical limitations. As
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland, you know, humans are different. Some humans have
Speaker 1: better vision than others. My vision is not the best obviously,
Speaker 1: so it may very well be that for someone else
Speaker 1: there is a definitive difference. They can they can see
Speaker 1: that there is a difference between the resolutions. For me,
Speaker 1: not so much like if I if I'm not told
Speaker 1: which set is eight K versus you know, four K
Speaker 1: or two K, then I'm not likely to be able
Speaker 1: to pick them out other than if one is just ginormous. Still,
Speaker 1: Samsung showed off their ninety eight K television and they
Speaker 1: said that eight K screens are coming out in the
Speaker 1: spring of twenty nineteen, so we're gonna start seeing eight
Speaker 1: K sets, which does mean that the UH lower ultra
Speaker 1: high definition resolution television sets will get cheaper. So I'm
Speaker 1: all for it, uh because I don't have one yet. Again,
Speaker 1: I don't know that it would even matter. Samsung also
Speaker 1: talked about family Hub and Bixby. Family Hub is sort
Speaker 1: of their Internet of Things platform, and Bixby is their
Speaker 1: personal assistant essentially, and they have a fridge that will
Speaker 1: send you a notification on your phone if you leave
Speaker 1: the door open to the fridge, so you know that's something.
Speaker 1: And then they talked about their PCs. They talked about
Speaker 1: their InCAR systems falling in line with some of those
Speaker 1: trends I mentioned earlier. The in car system includes cameras
Speaker 1: like I talked about, but these cameras actually have facial recognition.
Speaker 1: So it's not just that they can tell if you're
Speaker 1: not looking at the windscreen when you're driving or the
Speaker 1: road when you're driving. They can actually tell who you are.
Speaker 1: There's facial recognition technology incorporated with the camera system, so
Speaker 1: the car technically quote unquote knows who is driving and
Speaker 1: who's a passenger in the car. And this means that
Speaker 1: each person can have his or her own profile with
Speaker 1: the vehicle, with their own preferences, and that the car,
Speaker 1: when they detect who's driving, can toomatically enable those preferences.
Speaker 1: So let's say that you have specific settings, like you
Speaker 1: want the car seat to be a specific distance away
Speaker 1: from the steering wheel, you like a particular range of
Speaker 1: radio stations, maybe you like a particular temperature, Maybe you
Speaker 1: really like the car seat heater to be on on
Speaker 1: cold days. That kind of stuff when you get in,
Speaker 1: this car recognizes it's you and sets all those things
Speaker 1: to your preferences automatically. But then maybe your your spouse,
Speaker 1: or your kid, or your parent or your friend gets
Speaker 1: behind the wheel. They also have a profile with your car.
Speaker 1: Then the car will automatically adjust to their preferences if
Speaker 1: they have been established, which I think is kind of neat.
Speaker 1: It's also kind of creepy. Um And again it raises
Speaker 1: questions about data privacy and security. You want to make
Speaker 1: sure that all of those preferences are kept pretty much,
Speaker 1: you know, between you and the car. You don't necessarily
Speaker 1: want companies to know all the things that all of
Speaker 1: your peculiarities, the things that make you you um there.
Speaker 1: There's gonna probably be some point where you're thinking, Yeah,
Speaker 1: companies just don't need to know that. They don't need
Speaker 1: to know that I sing along with Taylor Swift whenever
Speaker 1: she comes on the radio. And I'm not saying that
Speaker 1: I do, but I'm not saying that I don't anyway.
Speaker 1: Samsung also unveiled a line of robot products, including a
Speaker 1: robot that can take your vital signs. You can put
Speaker 1: your finger on its screen and it will measure your
Speaker 1: blood flow and blood pressure. He'll tell you how healthy
Speaker 1: you are or not, I guess. And it can also
Speaker 1: do stuff like play soothing music if you're totally stressed
Speaker 1: out by having a robot in your home. Maybe. IBM
Speaker 1: showed off it's Q system quantum computer, which is the
Speaker 1: twenty cubit system that the company developed and now offers
Speaker 1: up as a cloud based platform, and I talked about
Speaker 1: this when I went to the IBM Sink conference last year.
Speaker 1: They showed it off a little bit more this year.
Speaker 1: It's the e s The really important thing about this platform,
Speaker 1: I think is that we should keep in mind this
Speaker 1: is not meant to be the ground bake breaking machine
Speaker 1: that's going to help scientific researchers find new discoveries and
Speaker 1: and breakthrough barriers that have previously been up in front
Speaker 1: of them. It's more like a stepping stone towards that
Speaker 1: goal because twenty cubits that's sufficient for some small applications,
Speaker 1: but it's not really at a level that's going to
Speaker 1: be transformative, I don't think. However. What it does do
Speaker 1: is it gives developers the chance to actually explore how
Speaker 1: the quantum system works and figure out the best way
Speaker 1: to leverage that. So, in other words, how to program
Speaker 1: software that can take advantage of this quantum computing system
Speaker 1: Without knowing how to build out the software, then it
Speaker 1: just ends up being a really impressive machine that doesn't
Speaker 1: really do anything right. The real potential of computers isn't
Speaker 1: just in their horsepower, but what we do with it
Speaker 1: the software that we create four of those computers. So
Speaker 1: that's kind of what this platform is going to allow
Speaker 1: people to do, is to ask questions like, how can
Speaker 1: we design something that could be really useful with this
Speaker 1: new method of computing. And as we start to develop
Speaker 1: those practices, when we begin to make bigger, more powerful
Speaker 1: quantum computing systems, will be able to take better advantage
Speaker 1: of them, and then we hit those hopefully amazing breakthroughs
Speaker 1: that we've been thinking about all this time. So it's
Speaker 1: not like the the end of encryption is right around
Speaker 1: the corner, but we can see the end of it
Speaker 1: off in the distance. On the PC side, most of
Speaker 1: the changes and features were evolutionary, not revolutionary. Not a
Speaker 1: big surprise. A lot of the laptops I've seen so
Speaker 1: far have sported really thin bezels, for example, that's become
Speaker 1: kind of the new trend in the last couple of years,
Speaker 1: and we're starting to see manufacturers talk about five G
Speaker 1: integration so that there will be native support when that
Speaker 1: technology is ready. But generally speaking, I haven't seen a
Speaker 1: whole lot of truly like wild wacky stuff. For several years,
Speaker 1: there have been tons of personal transportation devices on display,
Speaker 1: things like you know, stuff like that that's in the
Speaker 1: range of segue right, the hoverboards, the segue like material,
Speaker 1: or gadgets rather things like that, electric skateboards, pedal assist bikes.
Speaker 1: These have all been part of CS for ages. But
Speaker 1: one thing I found really inspiring was a demonstration of
Speaker 1: the one wheel x R plus um personal transportation device.
Speaker 1: It's it looks like a balance board with a wheel
Speaker 1: in the middle, so kind of you know, you've got
Speaker 1: that one wheel in the center, and you've got the
Speaker 1: the board you stand on on either side of the wheel.
Speaker 1: Derek Ross gave a demonstration and it was pretty remarkable
Speaker 1: because Mr Ross lost a leg in Afghanistan after a
Speaker 1: bomb exploded, so he has a prosthetic leg, but he
Speaker 1: also uses the one wheel device. He's able to get
Speaker 1: on this thing and wheel around like it's a natural
Speaker 1: way of traveling around his environment, and the way he
Speaker 1: was really able to do this is through firmware on
Speaker 1: the one wheel that is a code named Gemini allows
Speaker 1: each user to customize their experience, so you can make
Speaker 1: sure that the devices responding to you exactly the way
Speaker 1: you wanted to, so you don't have to necessarily just
Speaker 1: learn how it works. You can teach it to work
Speaker 1: with you, which again that's sort of like the big
Speaker 1: goal of machine learning in general, is that we take
Speaker 1: away the necessity for us to learn how the machines work,
Speaker 1: and we teach the machines how we work, and then
Speaker 1: the machines help us work better. So Ross uses this
Speaker 1: to glide around his home even though he has a
Speaker 1: prosthetic leg, which I think is pretty inspirational. When we
Speaker 1: come back, I'm going to talk about some of the wacky,
Speaker 1: weird fun stuff that I've seen or have heard of
Speaker 1: so far at c E S and uh there's some
Speaker 1: there's some weird ones on there, so stick with me.
Speaker 1: I'm going to take a quick break to thank our sponsor.
Speaker 1: So one of the weird things that we saw here
Speaker 1: at CES this year is is a camera called baby
Speaker 1: Eyes or babies Um it's a camera you mount on
Speaker 1: your baby, because that's where we are now. It's a
Speaker 1: it's kind of a camera on a sticker actually, and
Speaker 1: you put the sticker on your baby and this camera
Speaker 1: can record for two hours on a single charge, and
Speaker 1: then you offload the video onto another device like a computer,
Speaker 1: and it comes with some software, and the software has
Speaker 1: facial recognition abilities, so it can start pulling out all
Speaker 1: the video that happens to have people's faces in it,
Speaker 1: so you know, you skip all the stuff where there's
Speaker 1: no one in the frame, and your baby is just
Speaker 1: not pointed at anything in particular. So I guess when
Speaker 1: you do point your baby at someone, thinking of the
Speaker 1: baby is almost like a tripod. Uh. Then the camera
Speaker 1: software knows that there was a person there. And in
Speaker 1: the future you're supposed to be able to search through
Speaker 1: the collective video footage for specific people, and according to
Speaker 1: the company, you could even search according to specific moods.
Speaker 1: This was one of those really quirky things to make
Speaker 1: it to c e s that got some early coverage
Speaker 1: because it wasn't exactly like everything else that's already out there.
Speaker 1: Speaking of cameras, Valio that's a company that often works
Speaker 1: with autonomous car developers create a system called the Extra
Speaker 1: View trailer. So imagine you're towing a trailer behind your vehicle.
Speaker 1: So you've got a trailer behind you. Now imagine that
Speaker 1: both your vehicle and the trailer itself have rear mounted
Speaker 1: cameras on them that can capture video footage of everything
Speaker 1: behind them. Now imagine that the forward surface of that trailer,
Speaker 1: the surface that's actually facing the back windshield of your vehicle,
Speaker 1: is really a video screen and it's got a live
Speaker 1: feed from those cameras. So when you look in your
Speaker 1: rear view mirror, instead of seeing a trailer, you see
Speaker 1: a screen that is displaying a video feed of whatever
Speaker 1: is behind it. It's like the video screen is almost
Speaker 1: like a cloaking device for the trailer. The trailer has
Speaker 1: gone invisible and you can see through it. That's the effect.
Speaker 1: It's supposed to help drivers change lanes and park more
Speaker 1: safely because they can see what is behind their trailer
Speaker 1: and they can have a greater awareness of their surroundings.
Speaker 1: I thought that was pretty cool. Hyundai also showed off
Speaker 1: a concept vehicle called Elevate, or the Ultimate Mobility Vehicle.
Speaker 1: You need to look at pictures of this thing. I
Speaker 1: don't think this is ever going to see production. It
Speaker 1: is a concept, not not an actual vehicle that you
Speaker 1: can get in. But it is nifty because, in addition
Speaker 1: to the wheels that you would expect to find on
Speaker 1: a car, you know, typical car features are wheels, this
Speaker 1: thing has legs. So the legs can extend down and
Speaker 1: now it can go from wheeled mode into legged mode,
Speaker 1: and then it can climb over terrain that wheels would
Speaker 1: have trouble getting over. Now, details about this concept are
Speaker 1: pretty scared or probably because it is just so darned conceptual.
Speaker 1: But one of the things that Hyundai was isn't saying
Speaker 1: is whether this is a driver controlled vehicle or an
Speaker 1: autonomous vehicle. But it is worth pointing out that robotic
Speaker 1: legs are really hard to get right. Boston Dynamics has
Speaker 1: spent years working on the kinks to just basic robotic
Speaker 1: leg motion. You know, they had countless experiments with one
Speaker 1: legged robots hopping in a circle trying to get it
Speaker 1: just right. The wheel has been a go to for
Speaker 1: a lot of vehicles and robots because it's orders of
Speaker 1: magnitude easier to operate than a leg. You know, legs
Speaker 1: have to contend with things like balance, shifting of gravity,
Speaker 1: like it's gravitational center, that kind of thing, pressure, and
Speaker 1: it has to deal with these things in the ways
Speaker 1: that wheels just don't. So it's tough to do. I
Speaker 1: would imagine it would have to be autonomous, but it
Speaker 1: was a really nifty concept. Mercedes Benz showed off another
Speaker 1: concept called the Urbanetic. It's sort of like a minivan
Speaker 1: pod type thing that you would get in. There's no
Speaker 1: no no driver controls or anything. It's The interior is
Speaker 1: a couple of seats or or like almost like benches
Speaker 1: that all face inward and has a nice skylight you
Speaker 1: can see out into the Vegas skyline. Uh. And it
Speaker 1: looks like it's an autonomous taxi or autonomous vehicle delivery vehicle,
Speaker 1: but it's not truly autonomous, at least not the version
Speaker 1: shown off at CS. It was actually driven remotely by
Speaker 1: human operator. But the concept is for an autonomous vehicle
Speaker 1: and what such a vehicle would be like in the future.
Speaker 1: So you would sit in this nice, large, kind of
Speaker 1: funky design, UH vehicle. I didn't get a chance to
Speaker 1: write in it because the line was super long, and
Speaker 1: also I don't even know if my badge would let me, Like,
Speaker 1: I don't know if I have the level of of
Speaker 1: notoriety and importance to be able to get in such
Speaker 1: a vehicle. But look neat, let's see. Uh, there's the
Speaker 1: ob spot. That's a four K camera that has AI
Speaker 1: functionality build into it so it can follow the subject
Speaker 1: as the subject moves around the environment. So the camera
Speaker 1: stationary has a base uh that the camera sits on.
Speaker 1: The camera itself is connected to an arm that's on
Speaker 1: a gimbal, so it has three axes of rotation, and
Speaker 1: so the camera can pan up and down, left and right.
Speaker 1: You know, I can do some tilt and um or rotate.
Speaker 1: And you set up the camera. You use just your
Speaker 1: controls to indicate to the camera follow me. I am
Speaker 1: the person that needs to be the focus of this video,
Speaker 1: and the camera will automatically track you, so as you
Speaker 1: move around the environment, the camera will turn and continue
Speaker 1: to keep its focus on you. It also has a
Speaker 1: twelve megapixel resolution and a three point five times optical zoom,
Speaker 1: so not a digital zoom. It actually has an optical zoom.
Speaker 1: It's using lenses and distance to create the zooming feature
Speaker 1: and there are other gesture controls. If you hold up
Speaker 1: your palm, that's what tells it to follow you, but
Speaker 1: you can also hold up a piece sign that would
Speaker 1: tell it to zoom in. Uh. The camera'slaunching on Kickstarter
Speaker 1: and may even the Kickstar may even be up and
Speaker 1: running by the time you hear this podcast and from
Speaker 1: why I understand. The camera has a price tag of
Speaker 1: four fifty dollars, so it's not cheap, but it does
Speaker 1: look pretty nifty. Uh. There's a company called Bell formally
Speaker 1: Bell Helicopter that showed off a concept called the Bell
Speaker 1: Nexus here at c e S. It's a flying taxi
Speaker 1: type thing. It looks kind of like a really large
Speaker 1: version of a consumer drone, you know, like a quad copter,
Speaker 1: except this one has six ducted fans, not four, and
Speaker 1: they can rotate to provide lift and thrust, so it's
Speaker 1: like a v T O L vehicle. The company has
Speaker 1: partnered with Uber and they plan to have an air
Speaker 1: taxi service launch figuratively and literally sometime in the twenty twenties.
Speaker 1: So according to Bell, this concept could hold up to
Speaker 1: five people and it has a weight capacity of six
Speaker 1: hundred pounds, so it's not gonna be carting around the
Speaker 1: starting lineup of a hockey team or anything that'd be
Speaker 1: too heavy. But if all goes as planned, within a decade,
Speaker 1: we're gonna have flying taxis taking us places, assuming that
Speaker 1: they are proven to be safe and we figure out
Speaker 1: how the heck to create regulations for such a thing.
Speaker 1: This is gonna be another one of those in the
Speaker 1: cases where technology and the law are not in alignment.
Speaker 1: Have a feeling that the law is going to have
Speaker 1: to catch up quickly to this kind of tech. Finally,
Speaker 1: for this episode, I mean, there's tons more I can
Speaker 1: talk about, but I've been going super long already, and
Speaker 1: this is like an old school tech stuff episode. Harley
Speaker 1: Davidson showed off its first all electric motorcycle here at
Speaker 1: c E S. It's going to be available for purchase
Speaker 1: later in twenty nineteen for the princely sum of twenty
Speaker 1: nine thousand seven dollars. One of the most expensive electric
Speaker 1: motorbikes I've heard of, In fact, it might be the
Speaker 1: most expensive one I've seen. It can go from zero
Speaker 1: to sixty miles per hour in just three and a
Speaker 1: half seconds, and according to the company, well I actually
Speaker 1: produce a quote new signature Harley Davidson sound end quote
Speaker 1: as you accelerate because you know it's electric, so otherwise
Speaker 1: it would be completely silent when it was gearing up.
Speaker 1: But now, and you don't have to worry about switching
Speaker 1: gears either because it's an electric motor. But now it's
Speaker 1: going to have a electronically generated sound so that you
Speaker 1: still get that feel of the Harley rumble. I imagine.
Speaker 1: I really hope to get a chance to look at
Speaker 1: that in person. I'm sure that's at the North Hall.
Speaker 1: It's where most of the cars and vehicle stuff as
Speaker 1: here at the at c e S. It's sowhere at
Speaker 1: the Las Vegas Convention Center, So hopefully tomorrow I'll get
Speaker 1: a chance to see that. All right, Well, that is
Speaker 1: our overview of C E S two thousand nineteen. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna get out of here. I'm gonna send this off
Speaker 1: to my wonder producer, Tari, and hopefully she'll be able
Speaker 1: to get this up and running soon, whereas I will
Speaker 1: be wandering the halls of c E S trying to
Speaker 1: see if there's anything else interesting to talk about in
Speaker 1: future episodes. So you, guys, I hope you've had a
Speaker 1: great new year so far. I look forward to hearing
Speaker 1: from you guys. If you have any suggestions for future
Speaker 1: topics of tech stuff, whether it's a company technology, maybe
Speaker 1: there's someone in tech I should focus on. Let me know.
Speaker 1: Send me an email the addresses tech stuff at how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com, or drop me a line on
Speaker 1: Facebook or Twitter tech Stuff hs W at both of those,
Speaker 1: go to our website that's tech Stuff Podcast dot com
Speaker 1: and you can check out the archives and find out
Speaker 1: more about the show. Also, don't forget to head over
Speaker 1: to our merchandise store that's over at t public dot
Speaker 1: com slash tech Stuff. There you can buy items that
Speaker 1: are connected to the show, and every purchase you make
Speaker 1: goes to help our show. We greatly appreciate it, and
Speaker 1: I will talk to you again really soon for more
Speaker 1: on this and thousands of other topics. Is it how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com.