Better Offline CES 2025: Day 1

Welcome to Better Offline’s coverage of the 2025 Consumer Electronics Show - a standup radio station in the Venetian with an attached open bar where reporters, experts and various other characters bring you the stories from the floor. In the first episode, Ed introduces you to Better Offline’s coverage, bringing in writer Edward Ongweso Jr., as well as It Could Happen Here’s Robert Evans and Gare Davis. We’ll be here all week - two episodes a day, with a finale on Saturday. A talk show in the center of the Rot Economy. Ed Ongweso Jr.: https://bsky.app/profile/bigblackjacobin.bsky.social Robert Evans: https://bsky.app/profile/iwriteok.bsky.social Gare Davis: https://bsky.app/profile/hungrybowtie.bsky.social --- LINKS: https://www.tinyurl.com/betterofflinelinks Newsletter: https://www.wheresyoured.at/ Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/BetterOffline/ Discord: chat.wheresyoured.at https://discord.com/invite/QUUQUP9szv Ed's Socials: https://twitter.com/edzitron https://www.instagram.com/edzitron https://bsky.app/profile/edzitron.com https://www.threads.net/@edzitron See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:04Speaker 01

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• 1:19Speaker 03

  Call Zone Media.

• 1:22Ed Zitron?

  Hello and welcome to Better Offline live from beautiful Las Vegas, Nevada. I am your host and most punished man ever to walk this earth, Edward Zitron.

• 1:42Ed Zitron?

  I live here, I live other places too, and I am joined by an incredible crew. This is going to be a week-long extravaganza, roughly 12 and a half hours of what I want to say is radio, but I just mean the detritus of society and great reporters coming here and reporting, live-ish from the largest consumer electronics show I think in the world. And I just have an incredible crew tonight. I have Robert Evans, of course, the famous podcaster.

• 2:08Speaker 05

  Representing the detritus section of the, of the, of the team, yes.

• 2:12Ed Zitron?

  Yes. And Gare Davis, of course.

• 2:15Speaker 06

  Representing the... The lower southeast of the United States.

• 2:22Ed Zitron?

  I am, of course, representing the perverts and Ed Onguoso Jr., one of my two wonderful reporters who are joining with me this entire week. Ed, thank you so much for coming here. Thanks for having me. Okay, so why are we doing this and what are we doing? So I want to walk you through what the experience is like. We are sat in a recessed level of the Venetian Hotel. In the other room is a full bar that we set up just for people to come in. Our guests, Robert, Gare, Ed, Matt Asalski, our wonderful producer, and we're going to be doing this live to tape all week. This is going to be basically a tech radio show about a show that has no heart and no soul. A show that, as Gare correctly said earlier, is basically the same show as a year ago, except a year ago I was a terrified baby. I had just got

• 3:05Ed Zitron?

  handed the sword of podcasting. I was afraid of the microphone. Now the microphone is afraid of me. And the important thing is, is that I brought everyone together, not just to talk to you about this show, but I want to give everyone a temperature check of this fucking hellhole. Because what happens is reporters come here every year and they're kind of walk in like they have to visit their racist uncle, except their racist uncle doesn't say racism, he says artificial intelligence every fucking year. And generally, everyone here feels kind of miserable. I refuse to have that for my people. I refuse to have that for anyone in my orbit. So I set up a week-long piss-up where we talk about technology with people who actually know what the hell they're talking about and care about it. So yeah, welcome to the Consumer Electronics Show. Gare, Robert, you have actually seen things today, though.

• 3:50Ed Zitron?

  We aren't, Ed and I only just got in today. What have you seen? What horrors?

• 3:54Speaker 05

  Today I did five hours of back-to-back panels on artificial intelligence at the Aria. And it was, it included a number of great moments, including an entire room full of people led by the folks on the panel, laughing about people losing their jobs due to artificial intelligence.

• 4:11Ed Zitron?

  So how did that happen? Like, what were they laughing at?

• 4:13Speaker 05

  The emcee came up and she was like, okay, I'm gonna do some yes or no questions. And one of them was, there's going to be a lot of job losses due to AI. And like, the, I can actually pull up who they were from, but like, there was an initial attempt to be like, no, it'll just be like, job, job, the changes in the way jobs are lost. And then someone was like, no, there's gonna be a lot of job losses. And everybody started cackling in the entire room.

• 4:36Ed Zitron?

  Oh my god.

• 4:37Speaker 05

  It was like, one of the most ghoulish experiences I had, I've had here. I've got the audio queued up, so we'll listen to it.

• 4:43Ed Zitron?

  We can loop that in there. That's fucking disgusting.

• 4:47Speaker 05

  Yeah, it was pretty vile. Um, and then there was, uh, there was a great moment where like, uh, the first panel I did today was about, uh, like AI, using AI in Hollywood. And so the, the founder of that company, Secret Level, that does like video game themed videos on Netflix and stuff.

• 5:05Speaker 06

  Amazon Prime Video.

• 5:06Speaker 05

  Amazon Prime, sorry, sorry.

• 5:08Speaker 06

  Jesus, Robert.

• 5:09Speaker 05

  But it was also one of the team members behind that all AI Coca-Cola Christmas ad that everybody fucking hated.

• 5:14Speaker 06

  Which I, I did not realize until you made that connection for me, that it's, it's those guys. So if you love those visuals.

• 5:20Ed Zitron?

  Wait, wait. So the, it was the actual company that did the Coke one?

• 5:23Speaker 05

  I mean, there were three companies, but his company was one of them.

• 5:25Ed Zitron?

  Wait, it took three companies to make that piece of shit?

• 5:28Speaker 07

  The greatest piece of art that's ever been made in human history.

• 5:31Speaker 05

  And I don't know what they were doing because he came up to show videos that he had just made by like inputting text into an automatic image generator, like little movies that he'd made, which also looked like shit, but looked exactly as good as the fucking Christmas ads. I'm like, what were all those companies doing on that fucking Christmas ad?

• 5:51Speaker 06

  Laundry money.

• 5:52Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 5:52Speaker 05

  Laundry money, yes.

• 5:54Ed Zitron?

  How much did it cost? This, yeah, this sounds, yeah, this cost fifty million dollars. No, no, no, we can't do accounting due to stuff. I, you, I wonder how much fraud there is like that in AI at this point. Like how many just guys exist for like, yeah, I'll do your AI integration and they just dick around for three months and then they connect chat GPT to something?

• 6:12Speaker 05

  I'm sure it was still cheaper than like the traditional Coke things, but I'm sure there's a lot of fat.

• 6:17Speaker 06

  I, I'm not sure that's even true anymore.

• 6:20Ed Zitron?

  Like they don't get a real polar bear, like.

• 6:22Speaker 05

  No, they certainly don't.

• 6:22Ed Zitron?

  They don't, like if they did that, maybe even then I don't think it would be as expensive. And it definitely wasn't, it was definitely not cheaper on the actual AI side because news came out a couple, a day or two ago that apparently the two hundred dollar a month chat GPT subscription loses them money. And this is the thing, this is where we are in the tech industry at this point. We're in this world where we're meant to get extremely erect over the idea of a Coca-Cola ad that looks like it was the from made by the same people as the Black Hole Sun video. And then we're meant to also look at like the apps we use and they fucking suck. And then we come here to CES and they're like, you know what's gonna happen next year? The exact same thing that we have nothing. It's we there's AI in an oven now, I think.

• 7:04Speaker 05

  Mm hmm. Oh, I'm very excited. And and a grill, there's a grill that has an L L M integrated into it.

• 7:09Speaker 06

  Okay. The most exciting thing is that it it only gets smarter. It's only gonna get better.

• 7:15Speaker 05

  Well, that's what Jason from Secret Level said. He played a video of like a a bank heist chase where the main character, every time it cut back to him, he was dressed differently and his face was different. At one point.

• 7:27Ed Zitron?

  That's so sick.

• 7:27Speaker 05

  He's just driving down a normal city street, but there's randomly fires every thirty feet in the road because the AI just hallucinated them.

• 7:34Ed Zitron?

  Yes.

• 7:35Speaker 05

  At a certain point, he crashes and he's on the run from the cops. And every time it cuts back to the cops chasing him, there's more or less cops from scene to scene.

• 7:43Ed Zitron?

  This is. That's the most realistic bit.

• 7:44Speaker 06

  That actually is very realistic. Union rules, I got a fifteen minute break.

• 7:50Speaker 07

  Listen, it took us fifty million dollars, but we redid a six star chase in Grand Theft Auto.

• 7:55Ed Zitron?

  No, someone said it wasn't overtime and they were like, oh, I gotta do paperwork.

• 8:01Speaker 06

  No, when we were in Chicago running away from police, if you turned the wrong corner, there would be more or less cops than what you thought there were. So, hey, you know, you you gotta give them maybe maybe maybe the benefit of the doubt.

• 8:14Speaker 05

  What I wanna see someone do.

• 8:15Ed Zitron?

  We have qualified immunity for that.

• 8:17Speaker 05

  Cause he was he was emphatic that like, all I did was read a script and it was like, send a script to this thing.

• 8:23Ed Zitron?

  They love this bullshit.

• 8:23Speaker 05

  And it just just put it out.

• 8:24Ed Zitron?

  They love it.

• 8:24Speaker 05

  So this is unedited, you know, from that. And so what I really wanna do is put the script to Heat into one of these things.

• 8:30Speaker 06

  Oh, yeah.

• 8:31Speaker 05

  And just see what the what the big gunfight from Heat looks like in this. Does it have that Michael Mann quality?

• 8:38Ed Zitron?

  That's what I'm trying to think of what I put into it. The fight like the Boris Balkin scene from the end of the ninth gate where he's setting himself on fire. I would fuck, I would love to see what they're gonna do with.

• 8:48Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 8:48Ed Zitron?

  But they also lie about.

• 8:49Speaker 05

  How about how about Antichrist? Just like, see how they do that?

• 8:54Ed Zitron?

  The end of um kids. Okay, moving on.

• 8:57Speaker 05

  Nymphomaniac.

• 9:00Speaker 05

  Just run that through it. See, see what ChatGPT makes of it.

• 9:03Ed Zitron?

  This is their favorite lie, though. They're like, oh, yeah, it's just as simple as a prompt. Yeah, even the coke had, they're like, we have an editor. We have an editor. We have a separate colorist because it looks like shit and also probably looks completely different. This is the slop they want to give us.

• 9:18Speaker 06

  Well, and they're absolutely like hiring like VFX, like cleanup artists to like touch up all all of those visuals to make them like in any way publishable.

• 9:26Speaker 05

  And the the colors were completely fucked on this. And he complained because all of the comments on this video, which had, by the way, for this company, the big thing he was, everyone in the room clapped when they played these things. I looked on YouTube, the best of them had like 50,000 views, like, like, like some of them were just like five or 6,000. Um, and the color grading, everyone in the comments is like, the colors on this look like shit. His clothing changes. And Jason like referenced that and is like, yeah, I know people had that complaint, but come on, guys. This is the worst it's ever gonna look like that line. That's a line I keep seeing also. This is the dumbest ChatGPT is ever gonna be.

• 10:01Speaker 06

  Take a shot.

• 10:03Ed Zitron?

  I love that. That's also their defense.

• 10:05Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 10:05Ed Zitron?

  They're like, hey, it sucks.

• 10:07Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 10:08Ed Zitron?

  But it's all, it's all uphill from here, like.

• 10:11Speaker 05

  We've all lived through the last eight years. If there's one thing everyone knows, it's that things only get dumber. Yeah. Like.

• 10:20Ed Zitron?

  Well, my my shadow theory is because I got uh Chat uh OpenAI's O1 model to do typos. I hope my, this is not really something I've proven in any way, and indeed, the academics have asked about it, have not returned my emails. Due to woke and it's that I saw typos. I'm hoping that model collapse is happening. I hope they fed the synthetic data into it, destroying these models, because that would actually be the funniest and dumbest way that ChatGPT just starts like going on the fritz. Because that's what model collapse, just for listeners who don't know, you go back to March, you should have been listening to all the episodes you got. I'm not my fault. Model collapse is when you feed instead of real training data from real human beings, synthetic stuff created by another model. The problem is that human beings are magnificent creatures, very.

• 11:03Ed Zitron?

  Strange, our fuckups are actually quite hard to recreate. Those fuckups are important for informing things like how words and logic are created. So if you have a synthetic version, there is something that no one really understands that fucks the whole thing up. Anyway, they are currently feeding synthetic data into all of these models. So what I'm hoping is it fucks them up big time because that would be the funniest thing because there's no fixing it.

• 11:24Speaker 05

  Well, there was a comment like that and I think it was, uh. Let's see, which one of these, uh. Just wanna make sure I'm getting the.

• 11:37Speaker 05

  Uh, AI cinematic, spatial and XR. Which was, uh, which was about XR is extended reality.

• 11:44Ed Zitron?

  Right.

• 11:44Speaker 05

  Um, and there was a comment from, I think it was Rebecca Barkin. Um, but I may be wrong about that. Um, it was, it was one of the people on the panel and my, it might've been, uh, uh, Katie Henson, but like something along the lines of. Hey, we're still gonna need human beings to be making stuff because like otherwise there won't be anything to feed into the models like they were.

• 12:02Ed Zitron?

  Yeah.

• 12:03Speaker 06

  That's so cool.

• 12:04Speaker 05

  I forget exactly who it was like that was.

• 12:06Ed Zitron?

  But not too many.

• 12:07Speaker 05

  Something I like underlined in my notes of the panel is like, okay, so you, you know what you're doing.

• 12:13Speaker 06

  It's also cool that like the point of humans is to have, is to like make things to feed into a model. That's.

• 12:19Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 12:20Speaker 06

  That's all that matters is that as long as we can feed the model, that's fine. It's the only value we have.

• 12:25Speaker 07

  You're here for the market and you're here for the model.

• 12:28Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 12:28Speaker 07

  Those are the most important things.

• 12:29Ed Zitron?

  And what's important to know as well is anyone saying that is not thinking too hard about it because. They need more training data than exists.

• 12:36Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 12:37Ed Zitron?

  Like five to 15 times and they don't have it. We're in the stupidest fucking era ever. There's a panel like. A panel where people are like, huh, wouldn't it be cool if a bunch of people lost their jobs? They should turn into that scene from Kingsman.

• 12:49Speaker 05

  Yeah. Like. That, that's exactly what I thought.

• 12:54Ed Zitron?

  Oh, I can change. And it's like, this is one of the reasons that I really wanted to pull this together as well because CES, I don't think. The way CES has been covered traditionally and I actually. Gary and Robert really opened my eyes to this last year because I've been avoiding panels for. The twelve odd years I've been at CES.

• 13:11Speaker 05

  It's it's easily the best way to see what kind of brain worms are going around. Because people are up there just taught and then no one expects to be challenged or to there to be anyone in the room who's not completely taking the Kool-Aid.

• 13:25Ed Zitron?

  But what's insane is even on the floor, I hadn't looked at it properly. I'd always been like, I'm just here because I have clients here. So to explain the history of this, I'm I've got the bar, I've got the suite. Previously, it's with my dear friend Kevin Raposo, works at EZPR, otherwise not mentioning the agency again. We would have this suite, just kind of network with people that have clients, journalists, and we stopped doing it after Covid just because it was a lot of fucking money for just to piss up, which is always fun. However, the way I used to look at the show was just like, this is all, I almost like took it in good faith. I was like, these people wouldn't spend a hundred thousand dollars on a booth where they're lying. Well, wouldn't you know?

• 14:03Ed Zitron?

  And since I started doing better offline, I was I was truthfully a bit scared when I met with you two last year. I was a bit freaked out. Now I'm not, I'm very excited. But also, I was just flat out wrong about big tech. I thought they, I really at that point was just like, look, Facebook's evil, Meta's evil, but you know, they have something that they they get something like Google, same deal. They'd never do something really fucking stupid again and again. And they would, and everyone here would. And there are things that are at CES every year that never get made. If the, please, if anyone sees the laundry folding robot.

• 14:36Speaker 05

  That's one of my favorite CES. Vaporware stories.

• 14:40Ed Zitron?

  They are like, they have been here. I have been coming to CES since 2011, and those motherfuckers have been promising to fold my laundry ever since.

• 14:49Speaker 05

  Yeah, 2010 was my first year.

• 14:52Ed Zitron?

  Nice.

• 14:52Speaker 05

  And I I think what keyed me in to like what was really going on here was the best, like the best product in show.

• 14:59Ed Zitron?

  Yes.

• 15:00Speaker 05

  That won the award was the Motorola Droid, which was not a functional product and did not exist on the show floor. All they had was a, just a plastic model that was working. It was basically just a, like a, a digital photo case that was just like running a, like still screenshots.

• 15:18Ed Zitron?

  Just a box.

• 15:19Speaker 05

  Would look, because Android was still new at this point and it won best in show and there were functional phones at the show that year.

• 15:25Ed Zitron?

  Yeah.

• 15:25Speaker 05

  And so I remember sending to one of the editors at TechCrunch, um, like an email being like, all right, you know, I'm new to this like tech reporting thing, but it's see this like, do you not consider this a real problem? This seems like a, like a serious issue. Like this isn't really journalism if like,

• 15:42Ed Zitron?

  Yeah.

• 15:42Speaker 05

  This is what's winning here because they didn't have a phone.

• 15:45Ed Zitron?

  If they did the same thing with E3.

• 15:46Speaker 05

  What's wrong with you?

• 15:47Ed Zitron?

  But it's true though. There is a general sense of like, no, you just, what do you, why would you be mad at this? It doesn't exist.

• 15:52Speaker 07

  This is the future.

• 15:53Speaker 05

  Google has a slide at their booth.

• 15:55Ed Zitron?

  They brought us the future. How dare you?

• 15:57Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 15:57Ed Zitron?

  Yeah. And what's crazy is that's 2010. Today's tech media is slightly upgraded in that some of them don't do that. And actually a lot of them are here. A lot of the reporters here generally just feel tired when I talk to them. And when you ask them what their favorite bit of the show, they're, they're like, oh, like the LG, um, I got this big monitor. Big television maybe, I forget.

• 16:18Speaker 05

  I'm excited to see another big TV.

• 16:19Speaker 06

  I'm excited to see what new big curved TV LG has.

• 16:22Speaker 07

  We're gonna build the biggest boom.

• 16:24Speaker 06

  It's gonna be the most beautiful.

• 16:25Speaker 07

  Okay. With the most beautiful OLEDs you can imagine.

• 16:30Ed Zitron?

  Some are calling it QLED, but it's not.

• 16:33Speaker 05

  What is a TV if not a wall?

• 16:36Ed Zitron?

  But to be clear, I love the big televisions. I love seeing big stupid shit and I wish there was more of it.

• 16:41Speaker 05

  At least the big televisions are televisions.

• 16:43Ed Zitron?

  And that's, yeah, exactly. Like you can't really, I guess you couldn't lie about like the specs and the monitors and all that. All that's fine.

• 16:47Speaker 05

  But that son of a bitch folds. I watch it.

• 16:51Ed Zitron?

  I love, I love all that dumb shit.

• 16:52Speaker 05

  I don't know why you'd want your TV to do that.

• 16:54Speaker 06

  We have gotten so good at TV.

• 16:57Ed Zitron?

  We really have.

• 16:57Speaker 05

  It's the only promise of technology that's coming through 100%.

• 17:01Speaker 07

  It's gonna watch you. It's gonna give you targeted ads. It's gonna give you a chat bar. It's gonna be beautiful.

• 17:06Speaker 05

  My roommate just brought a replacement for our TV, like an 85 inch OLED.

• 17:09Speaker 06

  Oh, that's exciting because your TV has been shipped.

• 17:12Speaker 05

  Like it's one of those like, what the fuck? How, how is this the only thing that, that came through?

• 17:17Ed Zitron?

  Yeah. Just for a second though.

• 17:18Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 17:19Ed Zitron?

  How bad was Robert's television?

• 17:20Speaker 06

  It was not good.

• 17:21Speaker 05

  It was great.

• 17:22Speaker 06

  It was not good.

• 17:22Ed Zitron?

  Was it like a CRT one?

• 17:24Speaker 06

  No, it was, it was.

• 17:26Ed Zitron?

  Is that like a dinosaur with pictures that goes, it's a living?

• 17:29Speaker 06

  It was very, it was, it was very large.

• 17:31Speaker 05

  And then I plugged it into my laptop and I used it to, to play my little games.

• 17:35Speaker 06

  It was very large. The frame rate never quite worked properly.

• 17:39Speaker 05

  Nice.

• 17:41Speaker 06

  All of, all of the blacks like did not, did not show correctly. Everything was really crunched.

• 17:46Speaker 05

  Very good.

• 17:46Speaker 06

  Very, very bad.

• 17:48Speaker 05

  That is a problem in the tech industry.

• 17:48Speaker 06

  Very bad dynamic range. And it just slowly got worse over the years. It's, it's, it's, it's something I'm still kind of confused by like what, what, what happened to Robert's TV?

• 17:58Speaker 05

  Motion smoothing on a little harder.

• 17:59Speaker 06

  A little bit more, a little bit, I swear, because every time, every time I try to watch a movie.

• 18:04Speaker 05

  John Lithgow looks like he's thirty.

• 18:05Ed Zitron?

  I have never heard of a television that started to decay.

• 18:09Speaker 06

  No, this is actually becoming more, more a thing. Although TVs have been getting better, the new TVs are breaking faster.

• 18:18Speaker 05

  Interesting.

• 18:19Speaker 06

  And this is something that I've noticed mostly due to like my friends' consumer choices is like, I, I have a TV that my friend gave to me like, maybe like 10 years ago. And it's, it's like a, it's like a 1080p LG. It, it works great. Movies look good. It's not 4K, but it's fine. And he's gone through like three TVs since then that have all like broken.

• 18:40Speaker 05

  Right.

• 18:40Speaker 06

  They've all had like, they've all had like better specs. They've all like looked really good. And then every once in a while, something just goes like oddly wrong. And, and this has just become like a, a new pattern with, with Panasonic's, with LG's, with Sony TVs. And although we are getting quite good at like making TVs, I feel like their lifespan is kind of shrinking. And maybe it's something that I want to like talk to people at CES about.

• 19:06Ed Zitron?

  Honestly, it sounds like consumer electronics in general. I mean, my fucking iPhone's brand new and even then it's fucking up already.

• 19:13Speaker 06

  Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

• 19:13Ed Zitron?

  This is early schedule shit. We usually save this bad boy for April. That's usually when the obsolescence comes in. But now it's just my new favorite thing that my $1,500 fucking cellphone does is when I try and add a song to a playlist. I know it's an edge case. No one does that. But I did that and it just crashes Apple Music now. I can only add it by playing.

• 19:35Speaker 05

  That's an unreasonable burden to put on a phone.

• 19:36Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, I know.

• 19:38Speaker 05

  It's only got eight cores.

• 19:41Ed Zitron?

  They only have a specialized piece of silicon in it to make it work.

• 19:44Speaker 05

  Was it what 16 gigs of RAM? You can't handle that on 16 gigs of RAM?

• 19:47Ed Zitron?

  No, I need my fucking MacBook Pro to do that for my eight Chrome tabs I can have. So format change. Edwin Grayso Jr., please introduce yourself. Tell everyone about your work.

• 19:57Speaker 07

  Okay, um, I am a tech writer. Um, write about tech, I write about finance, I write about labor, Silicon Valley generally and anything that it's, um, you know, tentacles touch.

• 20:13Ed Zitron?

  Where'd you write?

• 20:14Speaker 07

  Uh, I started at Vice, Freelance Now, uh, magazines, uh, news outlets, anywhere that will let me rant about Silicon Valley, basically.

• 20:23Ed Zitron?

  So I brought Ed here because he wrote, well, many great things, but one of my favorite things is his Kara Swisher piece.

• 20:30Speaker 05

  Oh, that's a beautiful piece of writing.

• 20:32Ed Zitron?

  The Burn Book Review where you just really put the boots to her. But I think CES is probably the most Swisher-coded event for a thing she's never been to. And I think it's jarring for the same reason, in that everyone's kind of just accepting a reality that isn't true, but pretending to care. And it's frustrating and I'm glad you're here to see this. This is your only CES right now.

• 20:52Speaker 07

  Yeah, this is my first time. I'm very excited to see all the fake tech that's out there.

• 20:58Ed Zitron?

  Linda Yakarino, you're gonna listen to.

• 21:00Speaker 07

  I'm gonna listen to.

• 21:01Speaker 05

  Right, she's doing a speech or some shit, isn't she?

• 21:03Speaker 06

  She has the X Corporation keynote tomorrow.

• 21:06Speaker 05

  When tomorrow is that?

• 21:07Speaker 06

  Oh, I, don't worry, Robert. I already have it in your schedule.

• 21:12Ed Zitron?

  I'm so glad you make his schedule.

• 21:13Speaker 05

  It's a good thing I don't bring guns to these things because I would just, myself, you know? Like I would just take care of that problem in my hotel room.

• 21:21Ed Zitron?

  Well, you don't look for half an hour of her going like, X is the place where it happens and that's the T.

• 21:27Ed Zitron?

  Well, I can't wait for you to hear Yakarino talk because.

• 21:30Speaker 05

  I'm just.

• 21:31Ed Zitron?

  She's a real Yakarino.

• 21:33Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 21:33Ed Zitron?

  Why do you call it Yesarino?

• 21:36Speaker 05

  Sorry?

• 21:39Ed Zitron?

  But also, I'm looking forward to it because, well, you're African American.

• 21:43Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 21:44Ed Zitron?

  And I truly do not know how they're going to treat you on the floor.

• 21:47Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 21:48Ed Zitron?

  I don't know how they're going to act.

• 21:49Speaker 07

  Yeah, I mean, do we think the school measures are gonna be out in force for the ex offender?

• 21:54Ed Zitron?

  There'll be a guy like really excitedly calling you. I was like, no, we got AI to do this now. And you're like, oh, I use my Ray Bans. Oh, I see.

• 22:01Speaker 07

  It's gonna, it's gonna be interesting. I'm very, I'm also gonna be curious what the hell they're even talking about. I'm trying to go in with as little info as possible so I can take it in objectively.

• 22:10Ed Zitron?

  Yeah.

• 22:11Speaker 07

  Without bias.

• 22:12Speaker 05

  It's like watching queer. You really just kind of wanna show up and take it all in.

• 22:15Speaker 07

  You know, I'm here for the journey.

• 22:17Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 22:17Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, and I think that's important as well because that's exactly what I am here for. I want this to be a journey and there are multiple reporters joining us. We have Jesse Farah from Your Kickstarts Sucks, of course, and David Roth, of course, my second elf. That's what I was calling them in my head of reporters that I hired. That's what I'm calling them now, the elves. David Roth of Defector, a sports journalist, will be joining us tomorrow and for the rest of the week. Other than for our spa day on Saturday, which is very unfair, very nasty. And right now, our bartender, Phil Brawn.

• 22:48Ed Zitron?

  Now, you're speaking to the microphone. Say hello, Phil. Hello. We will have a full rundown of Phil at some point later in the week. But Phil has been joining as the bartender here for years and he just handed me some Sotol. Sotol? I'm saying this. Sotol Parejo.

• 23:04Speaker 07

  That's right.

• 23:04Ed Zitron?

  Ah.

• 23:05Speaker 07

  It's good.

• 23:06Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, I nailed that.

• 23:07Speaker 05

  Was that a mezcal?

• 23:08Ed Zitron?

  It's kind of, but that's the thing. The whole point of this is journalists come here.

• 23:11Speaker 07

  It really is delicious.

• 23:12Ed Zitron?

  In this oasis, uh, this is the oasis in the middle of the bullshit because CES, I was telling Ed earlier, there is nowhere to sit down.

• 23:19Speaker 06

  No, they always want you moving.

• 23:21Speaker 05

  No, they want, they want you to keep on, keep on traveling through. It's like a casino.

• 23:25Speaker 06

  It's like a casino, yeah, it's, it's.

• 23:27Ed Zitron?

  No, you can find place, plenty of places to sit down in casinos. This horrible place is an insult to our beautiful slot machines and our beautiful tables that we have. And they'll get you a seat at the table. Don't worry. Please come spend money. And Phil right now is gesturing because Phil is our wonderful bartender is bringing us drinks as the show goes. Probably not on the first half episodes, but definitely on the second.

• 23:49Speaker 05

  Can I get a Paloma?

• 23:52Speaker 05

  No, we have no refrigerated water. Okay, can I get something with tequila?

• 23:54Ed Zitron?

  Wow.

• 23:55Speaker 05

  I don't give a shit what. Thank you.

• 23:56Ed Zitron?

  That went flawlessly.

• 23:57Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 23:58Ed Zitron?

  That was, that was an example of the bar working. Actually, that is actually the bar working well.

• 24:03Speaker 05

  No.

• 24:04Ed Zitron?

  No, so the point of this week, though, is we want to be the oasis within a tech industry gone wrong and a conference that's gone wrong.

• 24:10Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 24:11Ed Zitron?

  No one likes coming here to cover this. No one is excited. Everyone's depressed. We will not be. We will be, probably not in my case, sloppy, just in case the lawyers ask, but everyone else can be. The reporters we bring here, we're going to have two episodes each day. Ninety epis- ninety episodes? Jesus Christ. Ninety minutes?

• 24:28Speaker 05

  Let's go, Fred.

• 24:28Ed Zitron?

  Already doing great. And it's going to be a lot, but I want to bring you diverse voices. I want to bring you the people that have been here forever and the people who are just being exposed to this. The reason we have Ed and David is we really don't want this to be a fucking tech. No offense to technology, we don't want this to be a tech-reported thing. We actually want this to be a temperature check of this industry.

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• 27:02Speaker 05

  You know, Ed, I always, there's a lot to like, roll my eyes at and be frustrated by. I always really liked CES. And when Gare first started coming to this, the way I explained your job at CES as a good journalist is, you are here to be a terrorist. You are here to find the richest asshole you can find and make their day worse.

• 27:22Ed Zitron?

  That is a joke.

• 27:23Speaker 05

  No. Not in a legal sense, but in an emotional sense.

• 27:27Speaker 06

  You're supposed to terrorize them.

• 27:28Speaker 05

  Your job is to harass them over something, over lies that they're telling.

• 27:33Speaker 06

  Well, yeah, and like, the, the hive mind, like, group think mentality here is like crazy, because you will walk into a panel and you will start hearing people say like insane shit, and you look around to be like, ha, ha, ha, ha. That's crazy, right? And everyone's like, no.

• 27:49Speaker 05

  Nodding along.

• 27:50Speaker 06

  Nodding along enthusiastically. It slightly makes you question your own sanity.

• 27:55Ed Zitron?

  Never once.

• 27:56Speaker 05

  There was a-

• 27:57Ed Zitron?

  Complete certainty. Someone posted on Twitter the other day, they're like, would you trust a clone of yourself? And everyone was like, I wouldn't. I'd be like, absolutely 100%.

• 28:07Speaker 07

  It's you.

• 28:08Ed Zitron?

  We would fucking cook. Anyway, complete certainty. But it's so weird, though. You're right. And people walk around and like, damn, really? So the AI for my pet, how's that gonna work?

• 28:17Speaker 06

  No, it's crazy. And like, because everyone is so bought into it, if you make any objection during like, any kind of like,

• 28:24Speaker 05

  shocking.

• 28:25Speaker 06

  Any kind of Q and A panel, like, people like, are so surprised. It's, it's like, it's like you're a heretic. It's insane. It's like you don't believe in like, the project of humanity.

• 28:38Ed Zitron?

  Yeah.

• 28:38Speaker 06

  To these people.

• 28:39Ed Zitron?

  It's like you don't believe in Santa Claus.

• 28:41Speaker 05

  My, my second.

• 28:41Speaker 06

  It's wild.

• 28:42Speaker 05

  One of these, when rugged, super rugged speakers were like a massive product that you could find like half a dozen booths selling them. I would just go there and I would ask, can I, can I test them out? Can I like drop them and stuff? And then I would pick up the heaviest object, like, because they usually have like logs or something to pose them on. And I would just break stuff on the show floor and it worked every time.

• 29:03Ed Zitron?

  Did you actually break it?

• 29:05Speaker 05

  Oh, a bunch of stuff. And I, I learned that from, we went to see a demo where they were, they were showing off like an indestructible smartphone. And they were doing it by like, they pulled out all the journalists, I think we were in front of Caesar's Palace. And they were driving a limousine over the phone.

• 29:19Ed Zitron?

  Right.

• 29:20Speaker 05

  And then they would do it and then the next group of journalists would come up and they would let a journalist set it down. And I don't know who this was. I wish I'd gotten his name because he taught me one of the best lessons I ever learned. They were laying the phones flat and he just wedged it under the wheel on its side and they just drove over it and it popped in half. That's, that's being a journalist.

• 29:40Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 29:40Ed Zitron?

  But actually, that's a very good metaphor for what's going on at the moment. Everyone's like, well, they say it works. We'll be fine.

• 29:48Speaker 07

  Why would they lie about it?

• 29:49Ed Zitron?

  Why would they possibly lie about ChatGPT becoming super intelligence? Did you hear that fucking Sam Altman? That motherfucker, he's not here. He's not here. This is, by comparison, this is pretty real stuff. Where's Sam Altman? He should be giving like a vacuous keynote about how this is gonna replace doctors.

• 30:06Speaker 07

  He's doing the real work.

• 30:07Ed Zitron?

  He's doing the real work.

• 30:08Speaker 07

  Building super intelligence.

• 30:09Ed Zitron?

  By which he means trying to like leverage his, his startup capital.

• 30:12Speaker 05

  As I read today, we're just thousands of days away from AGI.

• 30:17Ed Zitron?

  Well, Robert, that is-

• 30:18Speaker 05

  Houses a days.

• 30:19Ed Zitron?

  That was said a few months ago, so we're actually about nine hundred and seven-

• 30:23Speaker 06

  That was said a few thousand days ago.

• 30:26Ed Zitron?

  I love that. Honestly, I need to set a calendar invite for that.

• 30:32Speaker 05

  An absence of days from now?

• 30:33Ed Zitron?

  Cause I have Sam Altman's number and he has yet to text me back.

• 30:37Speaker 05

  Oh.

• 30:38Speaker 06

  I am bummed that we haven't seen Palantir here in recent years, cause-

• 30:43Ed Zitron?

  Oh, they've seen you, though.

• 30:44Speaker 05

  I did. That is true. We showed up, I can say this now, we showed up with a flipper zero and we're just turning off all of the televisions at the Palantir booth while they were doing demos?

• 30:59Ed Zitron?

  Oh, someone probably got fired about that.

• 31:04Ed Zitron?

  Actually, no, someone was probably like, "Oh, I'll fix this." No! Someone did that one CES and they got in a lot of trouble.

• 31:13Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah.

• 31:14Ed Zitron?

  Cause they videoed themselves doing it, which is the classic thing you do with crime.

• 31:17Speaker 05

  Yeah, I remembered that, which is why I did not tweet about it from the show floor.

• 31:21Ed Zitron?

  Exactly. You put it on a podcast years later. They never proved you did it. One CES, I did try a bit three or four times before I started getting anxious, which was I would just pick up something and ask if I could have it.

• 31:33Ed Zitron?

  And just like picked up the edge of it, "Can I have this?" And they look at you and they're like, "Shit." No! You see the feeling like, "Wait."

• 31:40Speaker 06

  Sometimes they say yes, though, which is why you have to do it at every booth.

• 31:43Speaker 05

  You can get a lot of free shit if you're really bold.

• 31:45Speaker 06

  Because you actually can surprisingly walk away with some really odd stuff.

• 31:47Ed Zitron?

  I bet they, eventually a security person looked at me in a kind of like, "Should I memorize this guy's face?" way.

• 31:55Speaker 06

  Oh, that's good.

• 31:56Ed Zitron?

  And I thought, "I don't want to be arrested at fucking CES."

• 32:00Speaker 05

  No.

• 32:00Ed Zitron?

  My lawyer will just be like, again-

• 32:03Speaker 05

  It'll be fun. I'm not coming to your arraignment.

• 32:04Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 32:05Speaker 05

  Like, I know you're paid-

• 32:06Ed Zitron?

  You're on your own, bitch.

• 32:06Speaker 05

  Well, I know you're paid up, but I'm not doing this.

• 32:08Ed Zitron?

  You fucking work this out, smart guy. Yeah, why you pick up, pick up the judge's gavel and ask if you can have this click? A fucking idiot.

• 32:16Speaker 05

  Well, speaking as a judge, that's very offensive.

• 32:18Ed Zitron?

  Are you, you a judge?

• 32:19Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 32:20Ed Zitron?

  What? No, this is not good.

• 32:21Speaker 05

  This is true. I'm a municipal judge for the state of New Mexico. I got sworn in. I'm good.

• 32:25Ed Zitron?

  What the fuck?

• 32:26Speaker 06

  Right next door.

• 32:27Speaker 05

  Right next door. Very close.

• 32:29Ed Zitron?

  Why?

• 32:29Speaker 07

  You gotta cross the border when you do.

• 32:31Speaker 05

  A fan of mine is a judge and was like, did you know that judges can just make other judges? Like you have to read a little thing and then you're good. I got a, I got a plan.

• 32:41Ed Zitron?

  So Robert. I got an idea.

• 32:43Speaker 06

  You can make all of us judges.

• 32:45Speaker 05

  No, no, it's again, it's, it's, it's interview with a vampire rules.

• 32:48Ed Zitron?

  Okay.

• 32:49Speaker 05

  So the, the youngest vampire does not have the power to make other vampires.

• 32:53Ed Zitron?

  Oh.

• 32:54Speaker 05

  And it's kind of unclear to me.

• 32:55Ed Zitron?

  But your mate does.

• 32:56Speaker 05

  Yes, yes. She's the Lestat of this situation.

• 32:59Ed Zitron?

  But I can't, how do I become an older vampire though? Because you realize that my goal here is not just to become a judge myself, but start making more judges.

• 33:07Speaker 05

  That I don't know because I have not looked up anything about what a judge is.

• 33:10Ed Zitron?

  This would be all I'd look up.

• 33:12Speaker 06

  We gotta ask the Deloitte people this. They, they have to know.

• 33:16Ed Zitron?

  I would get made a judge and then the first thing I would be Googling is how to make more judge. And I would be making them.

• 33:23Speaker 07

  Who are your first five judges that you're making?

• 33:25Ed Zitron?

  I mean, all of you other than Robert, obviously. I would, no, it would be like the entirety of Cool Zone Media. You make everyone judges.

• 33:32Speaker 05

  Yeah. And then we can all go, we can all go to New Mexico and do a blood meridian.

• 33:36Ed Zitron?

  Fuck yeah.

• 33:37Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 33:37Speaker 06

  Nah, not anymore. Not anymore.

• 33:39Speaker 05

  Well, yeah, there was, there was actually a lot of child abuse in that guy's background.

• 33:43Ed Zitron?

  So this is the format that you're gonna have for the entire week with Better Offline. Because this is also something, because after a year of doing this, I'm just trying everything. And I do think that tech also kind of needs a talk show. And the reason I say that is tech has got everything. It's got finance. It's got basically sports team shit. Do you like Anthropic? Do you like OpenAI? And the thing is, that really is like a, let's think, Cowboys-Jets situation. And that's gonna hurt someone's feelings. I'm very happy about that. Anyway, moving on from that, you've also got a bunch of gossip and you've got a bunch of shitheads that you can be pissed off at and actual real events. I just think that nails, this format nails it. And that's why. I am excited to start with all of you because at the end of the first day, everyone feels a certain way.

• 34:26Ed Zitron?

  Dread for the rest of the week, sad about the horrible things they saw. Or just wondering why they're doing the fucking job they're doing. They just, none of, none of us in this room. It's just very, it's an interesting way when you talk to the tech media to see how they're doing. But also people who work, I wish I could get more people off the floor, but I don't want fucking companies on here. That would be so boring.

• 34:46Speaker 07

  How did you feel your first CES when you're, when you're going around on the floor?

• 34:50Ed Zitron?

  So I was just a child back then. I was, it was 2011. I can't do math.

• 34:54Speaker 05

  You all were, yeah.

• 34:55Ed Zitron?

  I was a young boy. Um.

• 34:58Ed Zitron?

  That one, I have some stories I can't tell, but I was a young, I was a young PR person and I loved it because it was like 2011. So before we realized tech had problems, we were just like ignoring them.

• 35:09Speaker 05

  Well, and this was back too, when the, the porn industry trade show was at the same time.

• 35:13Ed Zitron?

  I didn't, oh, I was terrified of women.

• 35:15Speaker 05

  I watched Steve Ballmer get out of a fucking, uh, uh, elevator with two porn stars that were even taller than him. And he is massive. It was, it was amazing.

• 35:25Ed Zitron?

  Just found the Amazonian ones.

• 35:26Speaker 05

  It was like watching Greek gods stride across the field.

• 35:30Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, the god of sweat.

• 35:32Speaker 05

  He did smell exactly like that.

• 35:33Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, yeah. You know, it smelled crazy.

• 35:36Speaker 05

  And I, I leaked that to another tech publisher.

• 35:38Ed Zitron?

  Very good. That's fucking journalism, all right? That, but my first.

• 35:43Speaker 07

  Guess what I saw?

• 35:44Ed Zitron?

  But CES used to be fun when I was stupid. When I was just like, oh, this will happen. And also 2011, there were still new Lance the Conker. They still had new fun things to find. New things that they could make, that they could actually make good on. I think it's been like five or six years of them just being like, we don't have.

• 35:58Speaker 06

  It's, there's nothing.

• 35:59Speaker 05

  We've got nothing else.

• 36:00Speaker 06

  So it's, it's like, I, I was so lucky that my first CES, the big thing was like crypto NFTs. And so like, so like.

• 36:09Ed Zitron?

  Someone of the lasting industry.

• 36:12Speaker 06

  I knew going into that, like, uh, uh, everything I hear here, everything I hear in this convention is complete bullshit.

• 36:16Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 36:17Speaker 06

  And then the next year I came, the big thing was the metaverse. So again, everything I hear here is bullshit.

• 36:23Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 36:23Speaker 06

  Um, and you've just been able to like slowly watch the life drain from these people's eyes because they know like every. Every year, there's like this new thing that's supposed to be like the new thing. Like this is, this is what we have done as an industry. And it, and it, and like it doesn't, it doesn't work. They're dry. And, and, and it's, it's odd because like this year is the first year where there hasn't really actually been anything new. It's just, it's the same as last year. It's just more AI stuff again.

• 36:49Ed Zitron?

  I, I actually think 2024 was pretty ahead of the pack.

• 36:52Speaker 07

  I was gonna say, this is, this year I keep seeing places be like, this is the year of agents. They're gonna show agents.

• 36:57Speaker 05

  They were talking about that a lot in panels.

• 36:59Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 37:01Speaker 06

  The, the, the one thing I've seen in the panel list is like, there's been a lot more integration for like content creators and like streamers. And you even saw this with the Golden Globes a few days ago, how like they let tons of streamers and influencers onto the carpet for like the first time. And there's way more panels this year that's about like, how do we like get this whole like streaming ecosystem? That's like separate from like legacy media and even like legacy like tech media. Like, how do we, how do we get that into our sphere?

• 37:28Speaker 05

  And that was a big thing they talked about in my third panel, AI cinematic, spatial and XR, the next level of creativity.

• 37:35Speaker 07

  I am putting a gun in my mouth.

• 37:37Speaker 05

  They were specifically talking about how, uh, you know, nowadays, like, you know, individual creators can be as big as studios. And then someone on the panel was like, well, not really, like, like not in any way that's actually meaningful.

• 37:51Speaker 06

  I'm excited to see the new movie from Destiny personally. Really excited to see that.

• 37:56Speaker 07

  You know, I'm excited to see it.

• 37:58Speaker 06

  He is trying though. He actually is trying.

• 38:00Ed Zitron?

  I would love a Destiny movie, just Wikipedia brought to life.

• 38:04Speaker 05

  There was a, there was a great moment in there speaking of like failed CES's past where they like, cause the extended XR stands for extended reality, which is just metaverse.

• 38:13Speaker 06

  It's just the metaverse, but they can't say that anymore because they will get murdered.

• 38:17Speaker 05

  And that's what they said that in the panel. They were like, you can't say metaverse at CES anymore. They'll kick you out.

• 38:23Speaker 07

  But we all know it's a real thing. Do they say web three at any point?

• 38:26Speaker 05

  Oh, oh, so much.

• 38:28Speaker 07

  Why is that okay, but not the metaverse?

• 38:30Ed Zitron?

  That's what we arrested, Peter.

• 38:32Speaker 06

  They are careful though, NFT. They still do say, like, they still definitely say web three.

• 38:39Ed Zitron?

  Which is insane.

• 38:41Speaker 06

  It, it, it is, it is odd.

• 38:43Ed Zitron?

  Yeah.

• 38:45Ed Zitron?

  I'm just shocked they still say metaverse with a straight face, even like talking about this nonsense. But also XR is a great term because it's been around for a while and it usually just means, I don't know if this is mixed reality or virtual reality. I don't know what device I'm selling this on yet.

• 39:00Speaker 05

  The guy I'm seeing this panel was Charlie Fink, who's a, he was like the oldest of the metaverse guys.

• 39:07Ed Zitron?

  He's like a Forbes writer, who is like an old school like.

• 39:10Speaker 05

  He was writing, he wrote a metaverse book in 2017.

• 39:13Ed Zitron?

  Honestly, mad respect for actually like knowing stuff early. I don't know if I'd agree with all of the assumptions such as the metaverse existing.

• 39:23Speaker 05

  That was my big disagreement with him, that it's a thing. Cause they were just saying the metaverse is just, you know, attempts to extend the internet into everyday life. And I was like, no, no, no, that's, that's just, that's just the internet.

• 39:34Ed Zitron?

  Yeah.

• 39:36Speaker 05

  That's just everyday life.

• 39:37Ed Zitron?

  That's called the tech industry.

• 39:39Speaker 05

  It's not the metaverse that I can now order food to be delivered to my house.

• 39:43Ed Zitron?

  Are you sure?

• 39:45Speaker 05

  Fairly certain.

• 39:46Ed Zitron?

  I do miss that period in the media though, when it was just like anything, anything, they're like, yeah, they're gonna have sure, houses in there now and we're gonna have families.

• 39:54Speaker 05

  We're all gonna live in the metaverse.

• 39:55Ed Zitron?

  We're gonna live in the metaverse and how do we?

• 39:57Speaker 05

  That was so funny. People thought that for like a year. Spend money on Nikes in the metaverse?

• 40:02Speaker 07

  Yeah, and you'd have banks in the metaverse that would be better than our real banks to centralize finance.

• 40:08Speaker 05

  Absolutely.

• 40:09Speaker 07

  I want to, I want to. We don't have our own Federal Reserve.

• 40:12Ed Zitron?

  Didn't they have like an Arby's in the metaverse?

• 40:14Speaker 05

  That's the only thing that we're writing about. Is the only way I'm getting into an Arby's is if I know I cannot make physical contact with the food.

• 40:23Ed Zitron?

  Oh, ooh la di da, someone too good for the, for the Arby's, for the beats, the beats are not for you. But also what's important is I think we need to meet everyone who goes to the digital Arby's and then connect them with mental health. Personnel because.

• 40:38Speaker 05

  Maybe a red flag, then maybe take their guns.

• 40:40Ed Zitron?

  Not necessarily for a list, but I think you've got like therapists could be made, this is real.

• 40:43Speaker 05

  Just do therapy in the metaverse.

• 40:45Ed Zitron?

  Yeah.

• 40:45Speaker 05

  Problem solved.

• 40:46Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, not doing it in the fucking real world if they're in the metaverse Arby's. But it's so funny as well that everyone's like, the metaverse is happening and then they're like, oh, how'd you get in there? Well, it's very simple. We have this expensive and uncomfortable stuff. Does it make you sick sometimes? Yes. Does it physically hurt? Yes. But when you get in there, it sucks.

• 41:09Speaker 06

  Vision Pro dropped less than a year ago.

• 41:11Speaker 07

  And they just, didn't they discontinue it?

• 41:13Ed Zitron?

  No, no, they, they just.

• 41:14Speaker 05

  They can't have yet, did they?

• 41:15Speaker 07

  No, there was a.

• 41:15Ed Zitron?

  Oh my God, I can't believe that review.

• 41:17Speaker 07

  There was one of the Apple products.

• 41:19Ed Zitron?

  No.

• 41:20Speaker 07

  Discontinued, did they not?

• 41:21Ed Zitron?

  They discontinue something that, that sounds like Apple eventually, like they just give up.

• 41:25Speaker 05

  We'd rather check that.

• 41:26Ed Zitron?

  No, no, no. So the Vision Pro, I know, again, people are very upset with me.

• 41:31Speaker 07

  Fake news, okay.

• 41:32Ed Zitron?

  People are very upset with me about my Vision Pro review. Very unfair. It was the second episode. Very still learning, but.

• 41:39Speaker 05

  Oh, Gare's got something.

• 41:40Speaker 06

  There is, sorry, the most reputable outlet, Game Rant.

• 41:44Speaker 07

  Oh, yeah, I know Game Rant.

• 41:46Speaker 06

  Says that Apple has reportedly ceased production of the headset.

• 41:50Ed Zitron?

  Really?

• 41:51Speaker 05

  Wow.

• 41:51Ed Zitron?

  It is Game Rant.

• 41:52Speaker 05

  Well, and that's the New York Times of ranting about games.

• 41:54Ed Zitron?

  Ed, congratulations. You have won.

• 41:56Speaker 07

  You knocked it out of the park.

• 41:57Ed Zitron?

  You have won our first fact point.

• 42:00Speaker 06

  And apparently.

• 42:02Ed Zitron?

  Fact point system.

• 42:03Speaker 06

  Apparently, Game Rant is citing an article in another website called theinformation.com.

• 42:10Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 42:10Speaker 07

  Oh, no, the information's.

• 42:12Ed Zitron?

  Yeah.

• 42:13Speaker 07

  More or less real.

• 42:14Speaker 06

  It's, it's realish. It's realish.

• 42:15Ed Zitron?

  The information I would trust.

• 42:17Speaker 07

  You just have to climb up that very high paywall, which they've improved crazy.

• 42:20Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 42:21Speaker 07

  I used to be able to get around every single one now.

• 42:23Ed Zitron?

  But also.

• 42:23Speaker 05

  It's hard. It's hard, yeah.

• 42:25Ed Zitron?

  I feel like it was kind of insane. That was more insane to me than crypto. Crypto is pretty insane. But it's like, oh, how am I going to get in the metaverse? This very shitty fucking headset that sucks. Vision Pro was pretty good. I know my review. I know people are upset. I liked the product. There was potential there. They just did not access it.

• 42:42Speaker 05

  The Apple has the money for there to be potential there, but I still maintain that Steve, and I'm not a guy, as you know, Ed, having said it for four hours.

• 42:50Ed Zitron?

  Yeah.

• 42:51Speaker 05

  I'm not a guy who worships Steve Jobs. I don't think he would have let that product out yet.

• 42:54Ed Zitron?

  No. No, it needs like two or three years, but it had potential. Even then though, this is the biggest company in tech. The really only company capable of making consumer electronics that are actually good anymore. Like everyone else is kind of like just mostly making it up and maybe putting shit together. Yes, they're a company like, there are, there are others, but like the biggest. And they're like, here is our best go at it. And when I tried to watch Dune on my Vision Pro on a flight back from London.

• 43:19Speaker 05

  Oh, wow.

• 43:19Ed Zitron?

  I got the worst migraine of my life. And what sucked was I was really enjoying the film and actually the giant screen was super cool. But I was in so much pain, I took it off and I was like sweating.

• 43:31Speaker 07

  Well, that was the extended reality of the vision.

• 43:33Ed Zitron?

  Yeah. Arrakis.

• 43:36Speaker 06

  It was extending your reality, yeah.

• 43:38Ed Zitron?

  That is how it feels.

• 43:39Speaker 05

  Like, I see it. That is how it feels to read past the third book. Dude.

• 43:43Speaker 07

  Oh, no, no, we cannot slander the worst and best book.

• 43:47Speaker 05

  That's a compliment. That's a compliment.

• 43:49Speaker 07

  That is true. Okay.

• 43:52Ed Zitron?

  But what's important was, I really watched too much of that movie and I had like a migraine for like a day or two.

• 43:58Speaker 07

  Could you see the golden path?

• 44:00Ed Zitron?

  No, I, and Tim Cook.

• 44:01Speaker 05

  That was your, that was your time in the pain box?

• 44:03Ed Zitron?

  I did not, I watched like the beginning of the film. I do not know the plot.

• 44:08Speaker 07

  He didn't know that's gonna be you.

• 44:10Ed Zitron?

  Robert, on the first episode of Better Offline, called me the shy halud of content, I'm like, ha, ha, ha, yeah, great. Googling it as we go.

• 44:17Speaker 06

  That has been proven completely true, though.

• 44:19Ed Zitron?

  Yes, yeah, absolutely.

• 44:20Speaker 05

  I came from a different era in which all of my friends in high school, none of us had sex, but we all had very strong opinions about.

• 44:26Ed Zitron?

  Well, well, let me tell you, I too come from a rich line of not fuckers. And not having sex in high school at all.

• 44:34Speaker 05

  Absolutely not.

• 44:34Ed Zitron?

  My thing was EverQuest.

• 44:36Speaker 07

  Oh, okay, okay.

• 44:37Ed Zitron?

  One might say I was even cooler than you were.

• 44:39Speaker 05

  Yeah, it was wow for me.

• 44:42Ed Zitron?

  Oh, no, I got into wow later. It was like getting off of cocaine to do heroin.

• 44:46Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah.

• 44:48Ed Zitron?

  Barely worked on me. I just gave up after a while. Turned to drinking. Anyway, um. It's just great that this is the tech industry now. It's just the group hallucination where we all go, yeah, fuck it. This. As we sit here and talk, and I know I'm grinding this act quite hard, but we're hearing a lot about AI in this fucking conference and everyone's staple in chat GPT and anthropics clawed to everything. And it's like, okay, great. But we are sitting here and every major company is not making a single fucking dollar, actually losing money on this. And I feel a bit insane. I feel a bit crazy every day because every day I look out the window in tech and we're just like, our biggest thing is everyone burning money. I've now seen two stories in the last week from major publications going, what if AI is a bubble?

• 45:30Ed Zitron?

  Which is probably the most worrying, so it was like The Economist had one that was like, what if a bubble bursting was good? What if it was good that the bubble burst? Which is insane because there is a David Leonhardt story in the New York Times saying that a housing bubble burst in the 06, 07 region would have been a good idea too. And let me tell you, I don't know history super well, but I don't think the housing bubble bursting went well for anyone.

• 45:56Speaker 07

  No.

• 45:57Ed Zitron?

  So.

• 45:58Speaker 05

  It didn't go well for some people.

• 45:59Speaker 06

  See, no.

• 46:01Speaker 06

  You need to have the disruptor mindset, right? And the problem, the problem with the bubbles is that as, as they get bigger and bigger, it stifles innovation in other areas because we're all focusing on this bubble. Right. So as soon as it bursts, now, now you have so many more opportunities to, to really disrupt who, who knows how many other industries.

• 46:25Speaker 05

  Well, as a kid during the housing bubble, we had to innovate by like eating 99 cent burritos and making $4 of those stretched three to four, five days.

• 46:32Speaker 06

  And now we have Airbnbs taking over half, half of entire neighborhoods. Innovation. So much better.

• 46:37Ed Zitron?

  That's good.

• 46:38Speaker 05

  Innovate sleeping.

• 46:39Ed Zitron?

  And people were really, they were innovating ways to top themselves when I moved to New York in 2008. That was great. Watching people, that's the thing. You weren't really going to have people doing themselves in on this one, but I don't think people realize the bubble bursting is going to be very bad for two reasons. One, all the tech stocks are going to take a kind of a haircut, but also I think CES is kind of a bad omen. The fact that they're, this is basically 2004 CES, that kind of speaks to the larger problem I've talked about before, which is they don't seem to have a new thing. AI isn't new and that's not working. And they're like, well, what if we put AI in a, in a, we can laugh at the kind of like AI in the oven thing, but really beneath the surface here, and I look forward to seeing the show floor myself for this, there is this undercurrent of,

• 47:23Ed Zitron?

  what the fuck do we do? What, what, what are we, what are we doing that? What, what? How do we make money now? What, what, where money and where please?

• 47:30Speaker 05

  I think Ed had a really good point, which is that obviously what they see is AI agents being the future.

• 47:35Ed Zitron?

  Oh, my fucking god.

• 47:36Speaker 05

  And those kept getting brought up. And what was one of the things that's interesting to me, it's interesting to me is that obviously there's a, there's a, a lot of potential value in being able to do something like, say, hey, I want to plan a trip to this, this and this locations and having a thing that can book it. That's, that's not a multi-billion dollar industry, but there's utility.

• 47:54Ed Zitron?

  Theoretical utility.

• 47:55Speaker 05

  Or to being able to be, being able to plan out like five or six different meals that you want to, you know, repeat over the course of a week or two and then like plan out a, there, there's some utility there. But the way people talk about AI agents isn't in that way. It's about another living thing that they like bounce ideas off of and invite socially into their lives. There was a lady at the, uh, the, um, the first panel today, which was about like AI and entertainment. Who was like, and my agent, obviously she just is growing every year, uh, or every day. And it was like talking about her like a person, like gendering her AI agent.

• 48:34Ed Zitron?

  I must be clear, what was she talking about?

• 48:36Speaker 05

  Her AI agent.

• 48:37Ed Zitron?

  Okay, but does this thing exist?

• 48:39Speaker 06

  No, no, no. Me and my rabbit have a very intimate relationship.

• 48:42Ed Zitron?

  Sure, sure. We all fuck up pets, man, believe me.

• 48:45Speaker 06

  No, no, no.

• 48:46Speaker 05

  She didn't say which product she was using, but there are a couple of them out right now.

• 48:51Ed Zitron?

  Just to be clear.

• 48:52Speaker 05

  Character AI was one people talked about.

• 48:53Ed Zitron?

  That's not an agent. Oh my fucking god, I have to do this. Okay.

• 48:56Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 48:56Ed Zitron?

  An AI agent?

• 48:57Speaker 05

  No, no, that's what she was referencing, because it might have been like your co-pilot or some shit.

• 49:02Ed Zitron?

  A co-pilot is also not an agent. An AI agent is meant to be. An autonomous AI that goes out and does shit and can do things and then respond to things based on how people act.

• 49:13Speaker 05

  Big part of it's like what Rabbit was trying to sell with the R1 last year.

• 49:16Ed Zitron?

  Rabbit wasn't even doing that. They were just doing like the very early stage agents, which, okay, you're technically correct, which is the agents are meant to be. They take actions for you. That's the official definition. But what everyone's talking about with agents, and this is driving me fucking insane, because no one's really wants to talk about the reality here, is they're talking about, I will staple a few fucking LLMs to each other. And then enough LLMs will talk to each other that things will just start happening. Kind of like The Incredible Machine, if you ever played there. Just like a Rube Goldberg situation, he says, not really knowing that reference. Peewee's Playhouse? I don't know. Nevertheless, these series of actions then allow theoretically this thing to do something at the end. The big common one right now is sales, sales agents.

• 49:58Ed Zitron?

  These things are insanely expensive and I have yet to hear of one that does more than send emails and answer emails. And I've yet to really see anyone explain how anything else is fucking possible. And the thing is, people will say agent about anything. Character.ai is just an LLM company that like.

• 50:16Speaker 05

  That got a kid to kill themselves.

• 50:17Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 50:18Ed Zitron?

  Insane, but also just like has like a denarius Targaryen bot that will also be a therapist. It's fucking insane.

• 50:24Speaker 06

  Of course.

• 50:25Ed Zitron?

  But that's not an agent. Chat GPT, not an agent. They want us, Ed, I'm so glad you brought this up because it's like this agentic thing is their next bullshit. But I cannot be clear enough. If you think regular LLMs are expensive, imagine a bunch of LLMs playing dipshit tennis with each other. That is how agents work.

• 50:40Speaker 07

  You know, I think, you know, A16Z is really big on this. There's a, there's a manifesto, one of their many manifestos.

• 50:47Speaker 07

  They, we're here, they say, every child will have an AI tutor that is infinitely patient, infinitely compassionate, infinitely knowledgeable, infinitely helpful.

• 50:56Speaker 06

  Infinite.

• 50:56Speaker 07

  And then they say that every person will have an AI assistant slash coach slash mentor slash trainer slash advisor.

• 51:04Speaker 05

  How can it be a mentor? It doesn't know how to do things.

• 51:06Speaker 07

  Slash therapist.

• 51:07Speaker 06

  Slash therapist, that's good, that's good.

• 51:09Speaker 07

  That is infinitely patient, infinitely compassionate, infinitely knowledgeable, infinitely helpful.

• 51:14Speaker 06

  I just, they want a friend without having to do any of the work that makes like having a friendship.

• 51:19Ed Zitron?

  But also.

• 51:20Speaker 07

  Not only makes it happen, but worth so much.

• 51:22Ed Zitron?

  None of these fucking people into therapy, but also on top of that. If everyone keeps talking about this idea, and I think they've been doing it for years, and this of AI being your assistant. Why are there no AI assistants that work?

• 51:36Speaker 07

  Yes.

• 51:37Ed Zitron?

  You can make your phone do reminders now.

• 51:39Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 51:40Ed Zitron?

  We're on like the 16th, 17th iPhone and we can now make Siri most of the time understand sometimes.

• 51:46Speaker 06

  It's like half the time for me, but yeah.

• 51:48Ed Zitron?

  I, the British Siri actually understands me, unlike most people.

• 51:52Speaker 06

  I have mindset of Scottish Siri, but so maybe, maybe that's, maybe that's the problem. I like, I like the way that voice, I like the way that voice sounds.

• 52:00Speaker 05

  One of the panels where they're like, is voice the new operating system?

• 52:04Ed Zitron?

  I am gonna kill myself.

• 52:05Speaker 06

  Yes!

• 52:06Speaker 05

  One of the ladies on the panel was British and was like, well, usually they don't understand what I'm saying. So I, like, all of the Americans were like, oh, absolutely. And the one person with an accent was like, I, probably not.

• 52:17Ed Zitron?

  Okay. That makes me so angry because when fucking Alexa came out, we would, we did this one already. We've done this one already. I've, I have already done pitching for clients about voice being, it wasn't. Guess what? It was not the future because it turns out that talking is annoying.

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• 54:50Speaker 07

  Well, I've been seeing discussions about this. I saw someone online try to be like Scarlett Johansson, fumbled the bag.

• 54:55Speaker 06

  I saw that too, yes.

• 54:57Speaker 07

  And it's like, wow.

• 54:58Ed Zitron?

  What bag?

• 54:58Speaker 07

  Yeah, they were saying that if she had simply let OpenAI use her voice, she would have been the future of AI voice forever.

• 55:05Speaker 06

  She would have like achieved immortality, be like the AI voice for generations.

• 55:09Speaker 07

  Right. I'm like, yeah, just like, you know, what happened with Alexa, right?

• 55:12Ed Zitron?

  And the thing that happened with Siri, I know the voice actors, all of them.

• 55:16Speaker 07

  I know them personally.

• 55:17Ed Zitron?

  Granville Chambers, my favorite.

• 55:19Speaker 06

  What a bad like business decision for an actress. Uh, because now you'll have like kids who grow up with like, like Alexa machines in their house and then they'll watch a movie and be like, oh, wow, the Alexa's in.

• 55:31Ed Zitron?

  Well, and more than that, casting directors will be like.

• 55:32Speaker 06

  It's in the movie. It's like, you're being typecast as like a voice servant. It's Siri.

• 55:39Speaker 05

  Casting directors will be like, well, Scarlett Johansson, no, she's that, she's that lady who everybody has to talk to to get a dentist appointment. Nobody wants to see her in a movie. Like, it's a terrible idea to be that.

• 55:51Ed Zitron?

  You mean Lost in Translation?

• 55:52Speaker 07

  I think.

• 55:53Ed Zitron?

  And that's the only film I've seen.

• 55:55Speaker 07

  They've watched her a little too many times. That's really one of the, one of the factors that keeps coming in here. The, the, this idea that the voice is gonna be the transcendent thing there.

• 56:04Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, I, and also that it can do more than it can because I don't think people realize, and I know this due to my accent, how fucking bad voice is, even in the best case. It just does not. Sometimes the things it hears are truly insane and the more data you have in your phone, the more numbers and names you have saved, the more insane the idea is.

• 56:24Speaker 07

  Mm-hmm.

• 56:24Ed Zitron?

  I don't need to text someone I know from North Carolina 11 years ago and I certainly don't need to text them about the burger I'm ordering. Was I ordering a burger? No, I was trying to do a meeting related thing, but did this fucking thing hear me? But also it just angers me that I have to hear this. It's been like a decade. I thought we got away from this fucking angle.

• 56:41Speaker 07

  Nope.

• 56:42Ed Zitron?

  Very foul mouth today. I apologize to the numerous.

• 56:45Speaker 07

  Well, at the very least, at least there's no crypto TS, right?

• 56:49Ed Zitron?

  Oh.

• 56:52Speaker 05

  I'm sure we'll hit some crypto. I haven't run into it yet.

• 56:55Speaker 06

  I'm sniffing it out.

• 56:56Speaker 05

  No, I did. I did. Because one of the women on one of the panels worked for Republic, which is an app that allows you to, everyone to do in like venture capital investing with as little as $25.

• 57:08Ed Zitron?

  Sick. Great. Perfect.

• 57:09Speaker 05

  And yeah, and also invest in crypto at the same time.

• 57:12Ed Zitron?

  Why not?

• 57:13Speaker 05

  And the one review of it, it said like, it's a great service if you want to diversify, but it's extremely risky and everyone loses money.

• 57:20Speaker 06

  That's not diversify. I guess people are still reeling from Hawk to a coin. So maybe that might be more on the down low.

• 57:28Ed Zitron?

  You know?

• 57:29Speaker 05

  I hope Hayley Welch is here. I really do.

• 57:31Ed Zitron?

  I love that she is probably in trouble with the SEC.

• 57:34Speaker 05

  That would be pretty cool.

• 57:35Ed Zitron?

  I love that the SEC is gonna have to sort.

• 57:36Speaker 07

  She should go somewhere with no extradition, tweet a bit and then get extradited anyway.

• 57:42Ed Zitron?

  These people lack the moxie of the classic scam artist.

• 57:47Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 57:47Ed Zitron?

  Yeah.

• 57:48Speaker 05

  No, look.

• 57:48Ed Zitron?

  You do that rug pull when you're in Costa Rica. You fucking.

• 57:52Speaker 05

  He was a real piece of shit, but I miss McAfee now.

• 57:57Ed Zitron?

  If McAfee had.

• 57:59Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 58:00Ed Zitron?

  If he'd had just hung in there another year or two.

• 58:03Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 58:03Ed Zitron?

  My favorite John McAfee thing was if you looked at the champagne he was drinking.

• 58:07Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah.

• 58:07Ed Zitron?

  It's like the cheapest.

• 58:08Speaker 05

  Always shit. But he didn't have that much money. Like it was a shitty yacht. They had terrible guns.

• 58:16Ed Zitron?

  But he was eating like, like, like Walgreens cheese.

• 58:19Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah.

• 58:19Ed Zitron?

  Like, hell, yeah. He's drinking like Corbella.

• 58:22Speaker 07

  Real libertarian.

• 58:23Ed Zitron?

  But like.

• 58:24Speaker 05

  Which is living on the ice.

• 58:25Ed Zitron?

  No one's so.

• 58:26Speaker 05

  Till the Dominicans took his guns.

• 58:29Ed Zitron?

  Wait, did they really steal his guns?

• 58:31Speaker 05

  Yes, they did steal his. Well, they didn't steal his guns. He sailed into a foreign port with a boat full of illegal rifles. They didn't win any country would do.

• 58:40Ed Zitron?

  You can't do that.

• 58:41Speaker 05

  You're not allowed to do that.

• 58:43Ed Zitron?

  As usual, the fucking fun police, the woke mafia.

• 58:47Speaker 07

  Yeah, the globalist.

• 58:48Ed Zitron?

  Oh, I can't ride into another port with a bunch of guns.

• 58:51Speaker 05

  This is obviously just because Dominican, the Dominican Republic's so corrupt. And it's like, man, any country would take your guns. You can't do that.

• 58:58Ed Zitron?

  But also this is like one thing of a fun. functioning democracy if a guy if a very strange man on all sorts of substances

• 59:04Speaker 05

  clearly on drugs possibly trafficking human beings

• 59:08Ed Zitron?

  if a guy turns up just like yeah yeah it sounds like beavis but looks like he's dying

• 59:13Speaker 05

  it's like yeah you could do that on the boat but no

• 59:14Ed Zitron?

  yo yo I'm like hey I have all of these guns out of that like just fucking lying around

• 59:19Speaker 05

  taking your boat John

• 59:21Ed Zitron?

  yeah like like we've like you've killed a bunch of NPCs on there and they've dropped their loot like

• 59:25Speaker 05

  and he did in fact I mean like that's that's what none of these modern day grifters can do they don't live interesting bold enough lives to have racked up the kind of body count John Mack

• 59:37Ed Zitron?

  he was like a like a blacklist character

• 59:39Speaker 05

  he sure was

• 59:40Ed Zitron?

  like Raymond Reddington

• 59:42Speaker 05

  a lot of people in

• 59:46Speaker 05

  because they were his nephew died

• 59:48Ed Zitron?

  his nephew died

• 59:51Speaker 05

  they had like a paragliding thing that they did in the desert they called themselves sky gypsies and they traveled around like like drifting from a little airport in the desert to little airport in the desert and like a 70 year old man and his nephew both crashed and died doing this and then he fled the country for Costa Rica because his whole his whole family got angry at him

• 1:00:14Ed Zitron?

  John McCaffrey this is why he left

• 1:00:17Speaker 05

  yes that's why he went to Costa Rica

• 1:00:21Ed Zitron?

  my god first of all insane yeah second of all none of the tech people are this interesting

• 1:00:27Speaker 05

  no absolutely not

• 1:00:28Ed Zitron?

  Sam Altman has never fled a country

• 1:00:30Speaker 05

  no

• 1:00:31Ed Zitron?

  ever he might though now he won't that that's the thing

• 1:00:34Speaker 07

  the closest is like Zuckerberg dressing like Stan you know from the

• 1:00:38Ed Zitron?

  I love I love that he dresses like Kevin Federline

• 1:00:42Speaker 06

  yeah but even all of that's just a Peter Thiel like bit it wasn't even his idea so like

• 1:00:48Ed Zitron?

  this is one of the many consultants that have crawled up Mark Zuckerberg's asshole now being like what you should do is you should dress like a like a you've you've just done a zen pick but you're also a 90s rapper and he's like Huh?

• 1:01:02Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:01:02Ed Zitron?

  Uh huh.

• 1:01:03Speaker 07

  Will we ever get him rapping? You know, there's pictures of him with rappers.

• 1:01:06Ed Zitron?

  I would love him to rap.

• 1:01:08Speaker 05

  He should, he should try.

• 1:01:09Ed Zitron?

  I would love, we really do need a Howard Hughes era and a crazy crone era of tech. I wonder what Mark Zuckerberg is gonna be like when he's like 80. Like an Al Davis style, just wretch.

• 1:01:22Speaker 05

  An elder being.

• 1:01:23Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, just, just like a lich. Just floating, he won't queer. I think he may Al Davis meta. And for the listeners who don't know the NFL, Al Davis was the owner of the Oakland Raiders and now the Las Vegas Raiders. And he held on to the team until he looked like he was physically dying. And I really do mean like bits were falling off of him on air. Like it was fucking insane. This is actually what I hope for meta more than anything. I actually don't think meta lasts another 10 years. But if it has to last decades, I hope it's Mark Zuckerberg just crazy and all like, we're not putting photos on there anymore.

• 1:01:56Speaker 05

  Nothing but, the entire website is nothing but AIs of your dead grandparents and like elderly loved ones. And Mark Zuckerberg running it alone.

• 1:02:05Speaker 07

  If you believe in me, you can make your pop pop come back. You can bring your beautiful wives back. That's what he's gonna run for president.

• 1:02:14Speaker 05

  Yeah, that is what he's finally.

• 1:02:17Speaker 07

  That's what I'll vote for.

• 1:02:18Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, like can't vote of course as a resident, just wanna really put my government.

• 1:02:22Speaker 07

  You can't vote once, but you can vote twice.

• 1:02:24Ed Zitron?

  No, no, people need to stop saying things that make it sound like I am committing a crime.

• 1:02:32Speaker 05

  Now, don't joke about the title of our signal loop in here.

• 1:02:35Ed Zitron?

  No, we will not be saying that, nor will we be saying it's blowing up like a cyber truck either.

• 1:02:42Speaker 05

  I thought it was a pretty good post.

• 1:02:44Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, I'm sure it was a great post for you. Sending it to my lawyer being like, it's a bit.

• 1:02:49Speaker 05

  Look, he's already dead.

• 1:02:50Ed Zitron?

  It's a bit. Uh, yeah, I, I was.

• 1:02:53Speaker 06

  I was planning a bit. To bring my gray hoodie and my green jacket and my netgator and just walk.

• 1:03:03Speaker 06

  And just walk around all of the CEO booths.

• 1:03:05Speaker 07

  Oh, wow.

• 1:03:06Speaker 05

  Cosplays Luigi's.

• 1:03:07Ed Zitron?

  That's the thing, though. The show's got big enough now that people are responding to me with stuff like that.

• 1:03:11Speaker 05

  Mm hmm.

• 1:03:11Ed Zitron?

  Like, oh, Luigi, sundar. I'm like, shut the fuck up, man.

• 1:03:15Speaker 05

  People, people love posting about crimes on the internet.

• 1:03:18Ed Zitron?

  People love to tell me the crimes they wish I'd commit.

• 1:03:20Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:03:21Speaker 05

  Wouldn't it be cool if you did?

• 1:03:22Speaker 06

  That's, that's, that's always true. Yeah, yeah.

• 1:03:24Ed Zitron?

  I am a coward. I am a, I'm not hitting anyone. I'm terrified of violence both happening to me and committing it.

• 1:03:31Speaker 05

  The only drugs I do are the ones I legally buy at stores on the street.

• 1:03:35Speaker 06

  Yeah, like that weird mushroom gummy. We're like, forty minutes into.

• 1:03:39Speaker 05

  Kind of mushroom is in the gummy? Yes, we're on.

• 1:03:42Ed Zitron?

  As another introduction to the Consumer Electronics Show and this beautiful show I'm putting on, my boss, Robert Evans, uh, sat down at the table and produced a mysterious bag, I think is the fairest description, saying, "These are mushrooms I bought at a corner store."

• 1:03:58Ed Zitron?

  I don't know what's in.

• 1:03:59Speaker 05

  There's a mushroom vape.

• 1:04:00Ed Zitron?

  There's, there is also a mushroom vape. Everyone has been letting me know about the mushroom vape as well.

• 1:04:06Speaker 05

  Hit the rig, hit the rig.

• 1:04:07Ed Zitron?

  We do not know what is, what kind of mushrooms.

• 1:04:09Speaker 05

  No, none of them tell you what kind of mushrooms.

• 1:04:12Speaker 06

  Also, we would never vape in this, uh, hotel suite.

• 1:04:14Ed Zitron?

  Yes, thank you.

• 1:04:15Speaker 05

  That would be illegal.

• 1:04:15Ed Zitron?

  Two hundred and fifty dollars I will not get back. Anyway, this is my boss, the mushroom man, and this is what the week is gonna be like, because we, we refuse to be held by the norms of tech coverage in the sense that we actually want to have a good time. And I believe, and I've done a lot of things about the tech media recently, and this is not the fault of the individual writers, but the outlets themselves, I believe we have all lost the fun in tech.

• 1:04:37Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:04:37Ed Zitron?

  I don't think people enjoy their gizmos anywhere near as much as I do. I want, I want to enjoy my shit. I love my phone. It's got problems with it, but I love technology. It's great.

• 1:04:46Speaker 06

  The funnest thing at this show can't be the LG giant screen.

• 1:04:49Ed Zitron?

  Exactly.

• 1:04:50Speaker 06

  And that's why I'm so, I'm so thankful that you put this thing together, because yeah, usually covering this is like, kind of like, brain breaking. Um, and I, I, I love having something to look forward to. It's not just the big screen, and also drinking as many, like, as many cocktails at Showstoppers as I can, which we will be doing tomorrow night.

• 1:05:09Speaker 05

  Every year.

• 1:05:10Ed Zitron?

  And the people of Showstoppers have been very unfair to me, very nasty. They said that I'm a public relations executive and they will not have me there.

• 1:05:18Speaker 06

  Will they still not let you into Showstopper?

• 1:05:21Ed Zitron?

  No, they want to make me pay. And I'm not paying. They should pay me.

• 1:05:26Speaker 06

  Don't worry, I will, I will.

• 1:05:27Ed Zitron?

  Oh, no.

• 1:05:28Speaker 06

  I will drink.

• 1:05:29Ed Zitron?

  Showstoppers.

• 1:05:30Speaker 06

  I'll drink for you.

• 1:05:31Ed Zitron?

  Maybe it's Pepcom they didn't let me into. Either way, if it show, it was Pepcom, I think. Nevertheless, the many mean people at Pepcom, if you don't let me in your show, I will find a way in there in spirit. This is a threat.

• 1:05:42Speaker 06

  Which is mostly through me drinking their-

• 1:05:44Ed Zitron?

  Okay, not that kind of threat.

• 1:05:45Speaker 05

  You're gonna blow down the door.

• 1:05:46Ed Zitron?

  No. No. Someone is going to be there that will tell me what happened and then I will talk about it. I will not be doing any crimes.

• 1:05:57Speaker 05

  No crimes.

• 1:05:57Ed Zitron?

  Thank you.

• 1:05:58Speaker 05

  I don't know, anyone's ever committed a crime.

• 1:06:00Ed Zitron?

  This is gonna be the entire goddamn week, isn't it? This is gonna be my entire week is Robert and Gare and Ed now. And Ed, Ed has joined in, uh, saying, Ed, why don't you do crime? And I will be saying, I won't. I've never committed-

• 1:06:12Speaker 05

  Of course.

• 1:06:13Ed Zitron?

  Which is great. But this week is, I think it's gonna be a special week, cause I think over the course of the week, we're really gonna realize how fucked the tech industry is. I think that there is some life in the hardware side, but I think there's a genuine fucking hole in the consumer electronics side that is just bleeding. And I think people need to wake the fuck up about it. Maybe the reason CES is fucking miserable is cause there's nothing here that's cool. Like the, I, I, maybe that was why I liked it in 2011. 2011, there were still, I don't remember very much from that trip.

• 1:06:41Speaker 05

  Google had a slide. Maybe there was a Mobile World Congress that year. Either way, there was a slide at one point.

• 1:06:45Ed Zitron?

  But also there was stuff that actually got made that was interesting, that solved needs. And indeed, it might be that they've solved a lot of the needs already, but it's like, fucking hell.

• 1:06:53Speaker 06

  No, like, tech was evolving so much back then. Like, it, it, like, every, like, there was, like, genuine, like, massive, massive changes and improvements on, like, the, the availability of having a supercomputer, like, like, in your hand at all times.

• 1:07:09Speaker 06

  And I've had the same iPhone for four years and I, it, nothing's-

• 1:07:12Ed Zitron?

  But that's actually the problem.

• 1:07:13Speaker 06

  Nothing is better.

• 1:07:14Ed Zitron?

  Maybe we're at the end. Maybe we're at the end of time. Have we considered this?

• 1:07:19Speaker 05

  Yeah, I mean, I, I have a buddy named Francis Pukuyama.

• 1:07:23Ed Zitron?

  Okay, explain the joke for those of us who get it but need the audience to.

• 1:07:26Speaker 05

  Oh, I mean, he wrote a paper that was largely misinterpreted about, uh, at the end of the Cold War, about the end of history.

• 1:07:34Ed Zitron?

  Right.

• 1:07:34Speaker 05

  Really wasn't saying what it sounds like he was saying.

• 1:07:37Ed Zitron?

  Sounds like a thing I should have read.

• 1:07:39Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:07:39Ed Zitron?

  But did not.

• 1:07:40Speaker 05

  It's okay. No one actually read Francis Fukuyama. We all just joked about.

• 1:07:44Ed Zitron?

  Like a real Shoshana Zuboff situation.

• 1:07:47Speaker 05

  I don't know who the fuck that is.

• 1:07:48Ed Zitron?

  Surveillance capitalism person. She wrote a 700-page book. If you read the first 100 pages, you're like, god damn.

• 1:07:53Speaker 07

  I use it to keep my door open so my cats can get in my room.

• 1:07:57Ed Zitron?

  It is a very long, it's a very long book, and I say this as someone who does very long podcasts, but the first 100 pages, like, damn, you're really on to something. And the next 600, you're like.

• 1:08:06Speaker 05

  Maybe an editor would have been helpful.

• 1:08:08Ed Zitron?

  Oh, maybe. Definitely. But also, the larger point is that capitalism is simply sick. That we must just fix the obvious problems, because otherwise, the tech companies would run well if capitalism worked well. And the answer is, shut the fuck. Anyway, I'm gonna have Cory Doctorow to talk about that book at some point, because he has some fucking views.

• 1:08:26Speaker 07

  Oh, yeah. He wrote, he wrote his own book about the book.

• 1:08:28Ed Zitron?

  Oh, yeah. But it is interesting, and I kinda wanna, I think I'm gonna try and ask everyone what they were excited about at this. Because I need to find out, first of all, who's a liar, and then, second of all, I need to find out if someone truly believes that something is exciting here, why. I don't remember a single thing I've ever seen at CES other than one year where I saw a sign for a semen analysis thing with AI.

• 1:08:53Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah, all the cum products are great.

• 1:08:55Ed Zitron?

  I was heading out at the time because, and I was, I was not in a great mood, because otherwise I would have gone in and be like, can I try it? What'd you think? Nah, you like what you see? Oh, the AI says it's bad, huh?

• 1:09:06Speaker 07

  I don't know, but you, I, I'm pretty excited about that folding laundry robot that you guys were talking about.

• 1:09:12Speaker 05

  They're gonna do it right this year?

• 1:09:13Ed Zitron?

  It'd be really funny to go over there and be like, where's my fucking shirt? I gave it to you two years ago. Where's my fucking shirt, man?

• 1:09:19Speaker 07

  You never give me that shit back.

• 1:09:21Ed Zitron?

  Like KG yelling, uh, where's my money?

• 1:09:24Speaker 05

  I am a sicko laptop pervert, so I always look forward to, like, Lenovo's weird, twisting, folding laptops. I've got their folding 13-inch laptop now, and I'd love it.

• 1:09:32Ed Zitron?

  I do like.

• 1:09:33Speaker 05

  I like their sick little laptops.

• 1:09:34Ed Zitron?

  A weird little laptop, and I wish it was all that weird little fucking laptop. Ooh.

• 1:09:38Speaker 05

  Yeah, give me a weird laptop. Put four screens on the son of a bitch and have it fold down to the size of a napkin.

• 1:09:43Ed Zitron?

  That's what I want from CES. I want, I don't mind if you don't make it. I just mind that it's fun. If it's like, hey, here's something that's plausible and we are not building it. That's so boring.

• 1:09:52Speaker 05

  I don't get angry at the folding 100 inch television. I don't, I would never buy one, but I am like, that is a TV that's folding. That is pretty cool.

• 1:10:01Ed Zitron?

  And I could see that would be delayed due to the fact that you're doing the thing unassociated.

• 1:10:05Speaker 05

  And no one wants one.

• 1:10:06Ed Zitron?

  Mostly associated with clothes. And also there is no market of any kind. But even then, they still make them. You still get like the $50,000 LG TV that can run on a battery.

• 1:10:16Speaker 05

  It's like that $3 million glasses free 3D television they used to bring around where it's like, this fucker works. You gotta stand in one specific area, but my God, it works in that area.

• 1:10:25Ed Zitron?

  Basically a giant 3DS, but it.

• 1:10:27Speaker 05

  It does work.

• 1:10:28Ed Zitron?

  Well, last year they had, I think their biggest TV thing was like a trans transparent.

• 1:10:33Speaker 06

  Transparent TVs. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:10:35Speaker 05

  I love that. That was so stupid.

• 1:10:37Ed Zitron?

  I love that because they were like, even like the tech journalists just trying, they weren't trying, they were just reading off the fucking press. It's like, I don't fucking know. I don't fucking know.

• 1:10:47Speaker 06

  We have, we have no more horizon.

• 1:10:49Ed Zitron?

  No, there's no more lands to go. The rock con bubble in July, I fucking said it, there's nothing left. We're at the end. And I will narrate it. Cause and that really, it does feel like I'm narrating the end of the world at times. And this show does not fucking help. It doesn't give me hope. I don't get, I don't see anything at CES where I'm like, finally.

• 1:11:08Speaker 06

  No, but I, I think it's so crucial because the whole thing about AI right now, the thing everyone says is like, it's only going to get better. Right. This is, this is the worst it's going to get. And the thing that you've been so good on, like specifically for your beat is, is showing how things don't actually like infinitely improve. Like, uh, like Google search is such a good, is such a good example that like, no, sometimes things actually can get worse. Like we, we can't assume everything will just get better.

• 1:11:36Ed Zitron?

  Well, it hasn't though. I think that that's the real thing. And this show kind of shows it in the. Nothing has got better. They don't show us stuff here where I'm like, other than TV stuff. TVs are cool. I love TVs, whatever. Big, big computer, fast computer, whatever. But like of actual things we've seen at CES, I first of all cannot remember a single fucking thing that I've seen at CES. I just, I go in, I look at them for hours and then my brain just leaves and I leave and my brain's like,

• 1:12:02Speaker 06

  It's gone.

• 1:12:03Ed Zitron?

  Okay, that's going with where Spanish, French, German and Latin went.

• 1:12:06Speaker 07

  So who are the winners? It's gamers, gooners, investors?

• 1:12:10Ed Zitron?

  The thing is, I don't even think those-

• 1:12:11Speaker 06

  Always, right. Those are the three groups that always keep winning.

• 1:12:16Ed Zitron?

  It's the Guy Fieri Show. Gamers, gooners and tech enthusiasts, but there's not even stuff for gooners anymore.

• 1:12:24Speaker 06

  Oh no.

• 1:12:25Ed Zitron?

  Oh no.

• 1:12:26Speaker 05

  We know a true gooners. They're always DTG, as the kids don't say.

• 1:12:33Speaker 06

  We have been reporting on the come beat every CES.

• 1:12:35Ed Zitron?

  Okay, well, love to introduce my listeners to this, especially the ones that came in through the very serious podcast and the Lena Kahn interview. That's the ones, the people hearing this from the Lena Kahn interview-

• 1:12:45Speaker 05

  Lena Kahn, come on, come on.

• 1:12:47Ed Zitron?

  No.

• 1:12:48Speaker 05

  And let's talk about the FCC.

• 1:12:50Ed Zitron?

  No. No. She said she'd come back on theoretically.

• 1:12:56Speaker 05

  You know what you just said, Ed.

• 1:13:00Ed Zitron?

  Jesus Christ on the fucking-

• 1:13:02Speaker 06

  No, but I, you know, 2025 is the year that we are all, that we are all gonna have sex with robots. I'm excited for some kind of-

• 1:13:08Speaker 05

  You guys haven't been having sex with robots?

• 1:13:09Ed Zitron?

  No, there's no sex at CES.

• 1:13:11Speaker 06

  Insane.

• 1:13:12Speaker 05

  Champagne room of sexology.

• 1:13:16Speaker 06

  No, I, I, I'm waiting for some like, some insane like, like AI powered like masturbation tool. Uh, because I, I, I know, I know there's gonna be a new one on the floor. They did, but there's gonna be a new one on the floor this year.

• 1:13:28Speaker 05

  They only sent us the sheaths.

• 1:13:32Speaker 06

  They didn't send us the actual device.

• 1:13:33Speaker 07

  Like a fucking samurai.

• 1:13:35Speaker 05

  We're handing out home sheaths and loot.

• 1:13:42Ed Zitron?

  You have to forge this one yourself?

• 1:13:43Speaker 07

  Goonin' Ronin, roving the halls.

• 1:13:46Speaker 06

  It's so good, because it's like the most like sex averse group of people walking the show floor. And you have these like, you have these like PR people enthusiastically trying to like, give people lube and you're like, these people aren't, these people aren't.

• 1:14:01Speaker 05

  These people are from countries where you're not allowed to come.

• 1:14:05Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, there are ads that tell me I can't. Anyway, moving on from that one.

• 1:14:10Speaker 06

  But no.

• 1:14:11Ed Zitron?

  I'm so sorry to like the respectable like ta- I, I, we got like awards this year from like Real Business Publication. There's some person who's like, I can't wait to hear what's out.

• 1:14:20Speaker 06

  This is because like this is, this is actually a pretty big part of CES.

• 1:14:24Ed Zitron?

  How the fuck did we get gooning into the first episode of this goddamn shit?

• 1:14:28Speaker 06

  Because it's, because it's CES. What else are you gonna do with all of those curved, all of those curved TVs?

• 1:14:34Speaker 07

  And the humanoid robots.

• 1:14:36Speaker 06

  Cause.

• 1:14:36Speaker 07

  What do you think they do with them after they don't fold the laundry? You know, they put them, they put them on the line. On the goon line.

• 1:14:44Ed Zitron?

  Maybe the show was a mistake.

• 1:14:46Speaker 06

  This is also like one of like, one of the biggest uses of like all, of all of these LLMs is just people using them as sex bots.

• 1:14:55Ed Zitron?

  And actually, you know what? I don't mind what people do with that, but I will say, I don't think that they've got anything else other than that. I don't think there's any other sticky.

• 1:15:04Speaker 06

  That's the thing.

• 1:15:05Ed Zitron?

  I could have chosen another word.

• 1:15:06Speaker 06

  You really walked into that? Fucking hell.

• 1:15:11Ed Zitron?

  No, I, I actually can't come up sticky, we just don't.

• 1:15:13Speaker 05

  I learned a lot socially by meeting other weird freaks on World of Warcraft.

• 1:15:18Ed Zitron?

  Right.

• 1:15:18Speaker 05

  And doing roleplay sex with them. That was a way you grew up as a seventeen year old when I was a kid.

• 1:15:24Ed Zitron?

  What race were they?

• 1:15:25Speaker 05

  I mean, usually night elves, obviously. Like, of course. It was two thousand and seven.

• 1:15:30Ed Zitron?

  I mean, you could have been a gnome. A gnome.

• 1:15:34Speaker 05

  Sometimes they were gnomes. You just, you just tried things on the internet back then.

• 1:15:39Ed Zitron?

  Love is love.

• 1:15:39Speaker 05

  You grew as a person.

• 1:15:41Ed Zitron?

  But nevertheless, it is funny that that appears to be the one use case of LLMs. Like the, the what? Because people are just like, just like millions of people getting into erotica for the first time. Now, our bartender Phil just walked in and that was the first thing he heard. So, um, very good stuff, Phil. All the normals are happening here.

• 1:15:59Speaker 05

  We're talking about how AI is helping people come.

• 1:16:03Ed Zitron?

  I'm so, I'm so sorry, by the way, there are people who listen to this podcast ostensibly to learn about the roti economy and the tech industry's collapse. And now everyone's talking about their willies and hoo-ha's and such.

• 1:16:17Speaker 06

  I mean, this is a core part of the industry, though, like it really like, this is why we have.

• 1:16:22Speaker 05

  Porn is always driven tech.

• 1:16:24Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, actually pornography has always driven tech, which is why they pulled the AVN away, because then they'd have something to aspire to. And also, that's a profitable industry, right?

• 1:16:33Speaker 05

  Yeah, you can't remind people there's no money being actually made.

• 1:16:36Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, like, oh, my God, thi- this is the thing, I really, I really didn't think about how likely it would be that someone would bring up gooning, let alone on the first episode, but I mean, this is still more fun I've had, any C, yeah. Cause you go into the, these shows and they are definitely sexless.

• 1:16:55Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:16:55Ed Zitron?

  And there are definitely guys in the tech industry, like if they had like good sex, they'd be really happy, Elon Musk being one of them. But it's, it is also weird how just like joyless it is, putting aside horniness deliberately. Um, it does just feel very fucking joyless. No one seems to, I think this is probably in the tech media as well. No one seems excited about anything. No one even is looking forward to it. It's like a group burden that we all share every year. I just refuse to have it that way anymore.

• 1:17:20Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's, uh, I, I think it's good. I'm excited for the rest of this. I think we probably should, uh, uh, close things up.

• 1:17:28Ed Zitron?

  Oh, okay. Don't worry. I'm always, I was just planning to, I'm the MC, Robert.

• 1:17:32Speaker 05

  Cause I gotta show you guys some weird AI videos after this.

• 1:17:35Ed Zitron?

  And I have to pee. So, as we do our outro now, I'm gonna talk you through the rest of the week. Robert and Gare will be joining us again on Friday for one of our two slots, but the way this is gonna work is, you're gonna get this episode, you're listening to this around 12 AM ET, I assume that this is the one thing you do with your day. And then maybe about eight, 10 hours later, you're gonna get the second episode. Then we're gonna have David Roth of Defector, he's gonna be joining us. My two elves are gonna be here to look on the floor. I will be going to the floor, yes, I will, but not until Wednesday due to situations. We will have a gaggle of wonderful reporters, we'll have Jesse Farrar of Your Kickstarter sucks. We will have a real life priest, an actual Dominican monk, and we're gonna have many more fun things in store. Robert, Gare, where can, where can people find you?

• 1:18:20Speaker 05

  Uh, you can find our daily show, It Could Happen Here. Well, we'll be talking about some of the great AI-generated movies that I watched today during my panels.

• 1:18:29Ed Zitron?

  I do not look forward to seeing.

• 1:18:30Speaker 05

  Oh, you're gonna, you're gonna be really unhappy, Ed. Um, and, uh, yeah, that's it. You can listen to us on, on It Could Happen Here.

• 1:18:37Ed Zitron?

  You've got social profiles?

• 1:18:39Speaker 05

  I am on the Blue Sky.

• 1:18:40Ed Zitron?

  Blue Sky.

• 1:18:41Speaker 05

  At Iwriteok. I don't want to tell you my Twitter. Get off Twitter. Don't go on Twitter.

• 1:18:45Ed Zitron?

  Get working, people.

• 1:18:45Speaker 05

  I, I am. Am I not following you?

• 1:18:47Ed Zitron?

  No, you're following me now.

• 1:18:48Speaker 06

  You're not following me on Blue Sky, Robert?

• 1:18:50Ed Zitron?

  I've responded to a post asking.

• 1:18:51Speaker 06

  But yes, I am. I am on Blue Sky at, at, at hungryboitai.bluesky.social.

• 1:18:58Ed Zitron?

  On grace, so where can people find you?

• 1:19:00Speaker 07

  On, on, um, Twitter and on Blue Sky. I am, uh, BigBlackJacobin. And then, um, I'm at, uh, the Tech Bubble, uh, the Substack.

• 1:19:12Ed Zitron?

  What's the address?

• 1:19:14Speaker 07

  Uh, techbubble.substack.com.

• 1:19:16Ed Zitron?

  Very good. And you can, of course, find me at EdZitronGAB. And otherwise not, no, I'm, I'm on, I am not on Gab. I am not on Gab.

• 1:19:24Speaker 06

  You don't need to anymore, because it's just Twitter now.

• 1:19:26Speaker 05

  I am on Gab, but it's a secret account, just to see if any of the people I'm following are about to do a mass shooting or have just.

• 1:19:34Ed Zitron?

  No, I'm not gonna tell you shit, because you can see the episode links. And also, Ed Zitron is on, who the fuck else has a dumbass name like this? This is, of course, the first episode of the Better Offline CES Extravaganza Saga. Of course, mastered by the wonderful Matt Osowski, who is here producing us in real time. Thank you so much for listening. Very excited for this week.

• 1:20:00Ed Zitron?

  Thank you for listening to Better Offline. The editor and composer of the Better Offline theme song is Matt Osowski. You can check out more of his music and audio projects at mattosowski.com. M A T T O S O W S K I dot com. You can email me at [email protected] or visit betteroffline.com to find more podcast links and, of course, my newsletter. I also really recommend you go to chat dot where's your ed dot at to visit the Discord and go to r slash betteroffline to check out our Reddit. Thank you so much for listening.

• 1:20:33Speaker 03

  Better Offline is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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