Better Offline CES 2025: Day 4 - Pt. 2

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 Part 2 of our 4th day covering CES, Ed Zitron is joined by writer Ed Ongweso Jr, David Roth of Defector, Karissa Bell of Engadget, reporter Rob Pegoraro and Senior Transportation Reporter at TechCrunch Sean O’Kane to discuss mobility at CES, violent robots, furry robots, electric boats and, well, varying levels of potential fraud. Ed Ongweso Jr.: https://bsky.app/profile/bigblackjacobin.bsky.social The Tech Bubble Newsletter: https://thetechbubble.substack.com/ David Roth, Defector: https://bsky.app/profile/davidjroth.bsky.social It’s Christmastown Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/its-christmastown/id1407429849 Defector: Defector.com Defector.com Karissa Bell, Engadget https://bsky.app/profile/karissabe.bsky.social https://www.engadget.com/about/editors/karissa-bell/ Rob Pegoraro: https://bsky.app/profile/robpegoraro.com Sean O’Kane: https://bsky.app/profile/seanokane.bsky.social https://techcrunch.com/author/sean-okane/ --- 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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• 1:48Speaker 03

  Sponsored by Alaska Airlines. It's not sponsored by that better offline. It's not sponsored by Alaska Airlines. I just want to be abundantly clear. However, my name is Ed Zitron. That is not made up. It's on my passport and my

• 1:59Ed Zitron?

  Birth certificate.

• 2:12Ed Zitron?

  Welcome to BetRothLine with day four on our part two episode and we're joined now by Shaun O'Kane of TechCrunch, the transportation, senior transportation reporter, I believe.

• 2:20Speaker 05

  Yeah, among other things.

• 2:21Ed Zitron?

  Wonderful. Carissa Bell of Engadget, how are you doing, Carissa? I'm doing great. Hell, yeah. And of course, David J. Roth.

• 2:27Speaker 02

  Hi.

• 2:28Ed Zitron?

  Which is what you have to type in to find you on Bluesky. Can't just type Roth.

• 2:31Speaker 02

  No, there's another guy. There's a more famous guy with my name.

• 2:34Ed Zitron?

  No, there's just a bunch of other guys with, okay, Yo Roth maybe.

• 2:37Speaker 02

  No, the Van Halen guy.

• 2:39Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, he's not on Bluesky.

• 2:40Speaker 02

  You don't know that? He's probably just lurking.

• 2:42Ed Zitron?

  I've looked.

• 2:43Speaker 02

  Alright.

• 2:43Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, he's on an alt.

• 2:45Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's Adrian Ditman.

• 2:48Ed Zitron?

  Oh, God, that's like hours of Japanama. Panama. Okay, anyway, so Shaun, what have you seen at the show that matters?

• 2:58Speaker 05

  Well, it's a weird show for me because on the transportation side of things, for years, this was like, everybody was like, CES is a car show, CES is a car show. All the people who ran Detroit Auto, the other American auto shows felt very fearful that this was what was drawing all the attention.

• 3:12Speaker 02

  Right.

• 3:13Speaker 05

  That, you know, I don't know if it's accommodation of the pandemic or the US automakers not caring as much about trying to show off that they're innovative, that's just not, there's nothing here on that side of things, on the automotive side of things. So it's been a lot of trying to find anything else within our sort of scope of that kind of broad transportation stuff. So I don't know, it's been weird. Like, the biggest thing that we've had keynote wise, there's been two. There was BMW, which was just showing off. It was the most like, I always separate them into sort of like, there's just the straightforward press conference keynote-y thing. There's the mid-tier one, which was BMW, was definitely that. It was like Tim Meadows sadly making jokes about like his dick, because the whole

• 3:58Speaker 05

  conceit was like we were being shrunk to fit inside of a BMW car. I bet both the woman allowed into that really didn't like that. It was, yeah, I mean, it was, it was not explicit, but it was. What fucking year is this? Well, and he was joined by Ken Jeong, so, you know, at least 2017. Oh, good, he's subtle. But that was all just about like, you know, a user interface that's years away from being here. It wasn't even about like a new vehicle or anything.

• 4:21Speaker 02

  Nice.

• 4:21Speaker 05

  But then there's like the top tier, like go all out. And that this year that was Delta, which Ed Bastian, the CEO of that, they did it in the sphere. They filled the room with what seems like many Delta employees.

• 4:34Speaker 02

  Nice.

• 4:34Speaker 05

  So people were like going crazy and they brought out the whole thing started.

• 4:38Speaker 02

  Was this with Lenny Kravitz?

• 4:40Speaker 05

  Yes, it ended with Lenny Kravitz. It started with Viola Davis. Who is that?

• 4:45Speaker 02

  The actor.

• 4:46Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 4:46Speaker 02

  What did she? I know Lenny Kravitz played a song where he rhymes fly with fly. But what if, what if Viola Davis dude, like just come out there and have gravitas and?

• 4:55Speaker 05

  Yes, absolutely. I mean, you could, that is, that is probably, that is definitely what they wrote on the invoice.

• 5:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, she rocks. I'm sure that nobody does it better. There is just kind of like, I wouldn't.

• 5:05Speaker 05

  Somebody in our, somebody in our, on our team that's been helping cover this made the joke that it was like the biggest gap between talent and substance as far as these like celebrity presentations of this week. And it was definitely true, but yeah.

• 5:18Speaker 02

  Orson Welles Paul Masson wine commercial.

• 5:21Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 5:22Speaker 02

  I bet Orson Welles would really fucking hate apps. Anyway.

• 5:27Speaker 05

  He would be here at CES though, taking a check.

• 5:29Speaker 02

  I will not use the.

• 5:31Speaker 05

  Samsung Bali.

• 5:35Speaker 05

  But it started with her. It started with her and it had, you know, it was, it was very weird because Ed Bastian was like, it felt like he was trying to like justify being in the sphere and being at CES by talking about, we're going to talk tonight about the next hundred years of aviation. And I was like, that's weird. That wasn't in the embargoed press materials, but he never did. That's not what it was. It was like them spending, they had these like little vignettes about how generative AI is going to tell you not to take the car through traffic and instead you'll take a, a electric vertical takeoff and landing thing to the airport. It was just, it was all I could think of.

• 6:10Speaker 02

  The, the very real V tolls that definitely exist.

• 6:13Speaker 05

  Exactly, yeah. It was like, here are all the ways we're going to treat the richest passengers on Delta like babies because that's what they want. And, and then Tom Brady came out. Yeah, this is why I'm surprised you didn't know about it. Tom Brady came out and two incredible gifts that he gave the world. One. They're launching an exclusive travel show hosted by him that will only be available on Delta flights. Uh huh. It's incredible. And

• 6:38Ed Zitron?

  It's more of a threat.

• 6:40Speaker 05

  And in lieu of, you know, in addition to that, he wanted to offer the, the second gift, which was his top three travel hacks.

• 6:46Ed Zitron?

  Be rich, be Tom Brady.

• 6:49Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 6:50Ed Zitron?

  And C1 and 2.

• 6:51Speaker 02

  Do you remember what the hacks were?

• 6:53Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, actually genuinely wondering.

• 6:54Speaker 05

  Yeah, the, I mean, you're really, you're awfully close, sir. The first one was drink water.

• 6:59Speaker 02

  Yeah. The second one, don't eat nightshades. The third one, some dietary shit that's even crazier than that.

• 7:07Speaker 05

  Uh, yeah, I mean, you guys, I mean, I was imagining that you would be pretty close to the, the heartbeat on this one.

• 7:13Ed Zitron?

  You could have so many ideas other than water.

• 7:15Speaker 05

  Yeah, that's what he started with. Number two was, uh, make sure you're healthy. Make sure you're maintaining your health.

• 7:20Ed Zitron?

  Oh boy.

• 7:21Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 7:21Speaker 05

  Uh, and then number three.

• 7:23Ed Zitron?

  So no.

• 7:24Speaker 05

  Uh, number three, get work done on the airplane. Use that time to be productive.

• 7:28Ed Zitron?

  What work are you fucking doing, Tom Brady?

• 7:30Speaker 02

  Thoughts of dog. Love it. That's really great.

• 7:32Ed Zitron?

  So, Karissa, how's your show been? What have you been, anything good?

• 7:36Speaker 06

  So I've been on the robot beat.

• 7:40Ed Zitron?

  Cool. That sounds like a real thing.

• 7:41Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 7:42Speaker 06

  Um, yes.

• 7:44Ed Zitron?

  Oh, no.

• 7:46Speaker 02

  Don't break his heart.

• 7:47Ed Zitron?

  Oh, far broken.

• 7:48Speaker 06

  Mostly, the best ones I've seen so far have been cute robots that don't really do anything, but make you kinda happy.

• 7:55Ed Zitron?

  Uh huh.

• 7:57Speaker 02

  I saw one that I found, uh, heartrending. We went down, uh, Edward Ngueye's, and I went down to the, like, the Eureka Room, which is basically like, it's like Gollum lives there most of the time.

• 8:07Ed Zitron?

  The undercity from Arcane.

• 8:08Speaker 02

  And they had, uh, it was a very cute robot dog, but it was for people that have, like, dementia or that, like, couldn't really have a pet, but that the experience of having a pet would work for them, you know, it would be beneficial. And I, I mean, that part was nice and heartrending to me for reasons I don't need to, you know, put on this podcast because we're trying to keep it light. But mostly I was just like, damn, that's a, that's a cute robot dog that you've made.

• 8:33Speaker 06

  There are a surprising number of emotional support robots here at CES.

• 8:36Ed Zitron?

  Interesting.

• 8:37Speaker 02

  Is that like a longstanding thing? I don't, this is my first time doing it.

• 8:40Ed Zitron?

  I've seen it a few years ago. Like, they've had them before.

• 8:43Speaker 06

  Yeah, they're not necessarily new. There are a lot of them are from Japanese companies, which is kind of interesting.

• 8:47Ed Zitron?

  Is there a reason behind that or?

• 8:51Speaker 06

  I mean, I don't know if there's like an official reason, other than I think they have like, they like weird stuff more there. Like, I don't.

• 8:59Ed Zitron?

  No, that's cool.

• 9:00Speaker 06

  Um, our favorite one, which we actually ate one in Engadget board for best of CES was this cute little furry robot that can sit on your arm or on a purse or something. It all does is stare at you.

• 9:11Ed Zitron?

  Okay, they mentioned this earlier and it chilled me to the bone. I'm just thinking of the Morrowind NPC, like just snapping on you like, criminal, put that down.

• 9:20Speaker 06

  No, it's so cute. And it's like, soft and it's not, what I like about it, it's not supposed to do anything other than just like make you happy when you look at it and it does it, so.

• 9:29Speaker 02

  Does it need to be a robot? Yeah. Cause like what you're describing could work as a stuffed animal to me, unless like, what is it? What's the robot stuff that it does? Oh, the eyes follow you?

• 9:38Speaker 06

  Yeah, the eyes look at you a little bit. I mean, that's pretty much it. You know, it's more of a like souped up Furby.

• 9:43Speaker 02

  Yes, I mean, I saw a bunch of stuff that to me like in, you know, again, just as more or less being ignorant with it, just I was like, yeah, that's a Furby of some kind. Like, I'm gonna come back to that. But yeah, they're still like refining the Furby experience for different, you know, market sectors and needs, it seems like. Which I guess is cool. I mean, Furby is probably one of the.

• 10:02Ed Zitron?

  Was Furby here?

• 10:03Speaker 02

  What's that?

• 10:03Ed Zitron?

  Was Furby actually here?

• 10:06Speaker 06

  I don't think so.

• 10:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, I don't think so.

• 10:07Ed Zitron?

  That's a disappointment.

• 10:08Speaker 05

  I can't stop thinking about the Furby. Iterating on the Furby to return more shareholder value.

• 10:13Speaker 02

  Right.

• 10:14Ed Zitron?

  Adam Sandler innovated as far as the Furby goes in Uncut Gems.

• 10:18Speaker 02

  Banging on a table in like on a Zoom call with like 300 people. Check this out. It's a cryptocurrency. Yeah, he loves to say it wrong. This is how I lose.

• 10:28Ed Zitron?

  So did you see any weird robots though? Other than the emotional support ones? Did you see anything bizarre?

• 10:35Speaker 06

  Yes. So I was attacked by one.

• 10:39Ed Zitron?

  Perfect.

• 10:40Speaker 02

  Ish. How was that?

• 10:43Speaker 06

  Slightly terrifying. So there's this Chinese company called, I think it's pronounced Unitree, that they have a, like, they have like knockoff Boston Dynamics robots. So they, their new one is like a, like a quadruped that's like Spot, you know, it's like, yeah, creepy dog ones that runs around and they have

• 10:59Ed Zitron?

  They kind of bounce around.

• 11:00Speaker 06

  Yeah. And then they have a humanoid one.

• 11:02Ed Zitron?

  Oh, no.

• 11:03Speaker 06

  That I think is called the G1. And, um, so we're at the booth and we're taking photos of it and I'm standing right in front of it. And there's a guy controlling it. And he puts the controller under his arm and mashes the joystick forward. So it runs at me full speed.

• 11:17Ed Zitron?

  Oh, my God.

• 11:17Speaker 06

  This is a 60 pound.

• 11:18Ed Zitron?

  Jesus.

• 11:20Speaker 06

  Probably four foot tall robot. And just, and he didn't really realize what was happening at first. So there was probably about four seconds where it was just like, fully.

• 11:28Ed Zitron?

  Pursuing it.

• 11:29Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 11:31Ed Zitron?

  What the hell?

• 11:31Speaker 06

  I know, but I can't even blame the robot because it was user error from this guy. But the funniest part was, was that the conversation that happened immediately after this implied that this was not the first time that it happened.

• 11:43Ed Zitron?

  Come on, man.

• 11:45Speaker 02

  That feels like a skill issue vis a vis the joystick, though.

• 11:48Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 11:48Speaker 02

  Like, you just need to stow that shit in a different way.

• 11:51Ed Zitron?

  Or maybe you're trying.

• 11:52Speaker 02

  But, all right.

• 11:53Ed Zitron?

  I would kick that thing's ass.

• 11:54Speaker 02

  Feel like in the four seconds when the robot was on the trail.

• 11:58Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, like.

• 11:59Speaker 06

  Like a 60 pound piece of metal kneecapping you?

• 12:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, like, does that?

• 12:02Ed Zitron?

  Did it hit you?

• 12:03Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 12:03Ed Zitron?

  Oh, no.

• 12:04Speaker 06

  Like, it made full contact with me.

• 12:05Speaker 02

  I thought it was like chasing you and you were kind of like, turn this off.

• 12:07Ed Zitron?

  Vegas is a personal liability haven. There are like lawyers everywhere. You can call one now. That company is dust.

• 12:16Speaker 06

  I know, we're just, we're really disappointed that we somehow failed to get this on video. I was actually taking photos at the time, but I was so shocked by what happened. I did not take photos of it actually.

• 12:24Ed Zitron?

  I mean, how would you? You were being assaulted by a robot. That is crazy. And happened multiple times. Any good ones? Need like positives?

• 12:35Speaker 06

  Um.

• 12:35Ed Zitron?

  We're really trying.

• 12:36Speaker 02

  The little staring guy.

• 12:37Speaker 06

  Yeah, the staring one, that's.

• 12:38Speaker 02

  Yeah. It would never hurt you.

• 12:40Ed Zitron?

  Like that.

• 12:40Speaker 02

  That robot couldn't even chase you, probably.

• 12:43Ed Zitron?

  No, it just looked at you.

• 12:44Speaker 06

  Yeah, it just looks at you and is, you know, gives you a little shot of serotonin.

• 12:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 12:48Ed Zitron?

  I don't get that. Um, I don't have that in me. So anything else, like, is it just robotics for you? You've been covering on this trip?

• 12:56Speaker 06

  No, I also, I went to Linda Iaccarino's keynote.

• 12:59Ed Zitron?

  Oh.

• 12:59Speaker 02

  Oh, wow. So.

• 13:01Ed Zitron?

  I hear the pit was crazy.

• 13:02Speaker 02

  She, I have to, like, watch that tape just as a, as a longtime fan of her work. Uh, was she electric? Was the vibe in the room electric?

• 13:11Speaker 06

  Have you ever seen her speak?

• 13:13Speaker 02

  A, a little bit, and it looks, well, I mean, whatever, strangely rendered, like, it just doesn't, it's lifelike. And so credit where it's due, but.

• 13:21Speaker 06

  We were talking about this, you know, for somebody who was a media executive for a long time.

• 13:28Speaker 06

  She's very, at least, I mean, and I never saw her speak in her prior role, but, you know, when she's speaking, her capacity is ex-CEO, she just, you know, it kind of sounds like she's speaking in sort of like sound bites, but they don't make sense together.

• 13:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 13:43Speaker 06

  You know, like, she's memorized, like, these three-word things that she's supposed to say, but then.

• 13:46Ed Zitron?

  Like someone tucked a joystick under their arm.

• 13:48Speaker 02

  Yeah. It does have a, like, the bit that I always have as my comparison is, like, those, like, soundboards that they used to have online, where it would just be, like, different, like, Arnold Schwarzenegger saying different lines from Kindergarten Cop. And you push a button, then he goes, "No," and you push another one, and he goes, "How are you?" And like, but that's like, sort of, she just feels like she's got the presets, and then someone's just back there going to town, boop and whatever.

• 14:12Ed Zitron?

  I can actually explain, running a PR firm, I can tell you, she is perfectly media-trained. The problem is that media training is very rarely prepared for a person who has nothing else. You usually, ideally, you're training them so they can use that magic inside them, they can bring out the personality. The problem is, I don't know whether Linda has one. And she does, she does everything. She even does the accordion, the, you meant to gesture, bring them in, and then gesture, which is meant to not be literally doing these movements with your hands, like, out and then in. Instead, she's just going, "Brap, rap, rap," the whole fucking time. And also, she sounds like she's prepared this out. Exactly. But you're meant to fill those in, Linda. You're meant to have other thoughts that connect these thoughts together, not just be like,

• 14:56Ed Zitron?

  X is where it happens, and that's what's online.

• 14:58Speaker 02

  So that's what you're saying, then, is it was sort of like similar to the experience of her feed?

• 15:03Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 15:04Speaker 02

  Which sounds like it would be incredibly jarring to witness live.

• 15:09Speaker 06

  I mean, it was lots of, you know, the legacy media is basically fan fiction for something like I was even even just trying to get like a usable quote is very difficult because it just when you look at it in front of you, like the words together don't make sense.

• 15:27Speaker 02

  It's fantastic.

• 15:28Speaker 05

  It's like spinning a big wheel. The legacy media.

• 15:32Speaker 02

  It's like, oh, oh, this was adjective. This could be anything.

• 15:35Ed Zitron?

  Well, no, you say that, but she talked about like the grooming gangs in the UK. So it kind of was that. It kind of actually.

• 15:41Speaker 02

  Did she?

• 15:42Speaker 06

  She did, yeah. I kind of tuned out that part.

• 15:44Ed Zitron?

  I would have too.

• 15:45Speaker 06

  At that end, but I think she just uses like whatever Elon Musk is tweeting about that day is kind of like inspiration.

• 15:51Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, X has been great for the 14. Oh, hmm, maybe not. If, no, she she has managed to stay like for now somewhat pure, but it is interesting that the CES thing she started to just crack and she's letting the Elon Musk bits through. And I think by the like this time next year, she'll either have left or been fired and blamed for everything as the money runs out of X.

• 16:15Speaker 06

  The funny thing was that this keynote room was at best half full. And like half of the people were asleep. But then the other half.

• 16:25Ed Zitron?

  It's hard to find a seat here.

• 16:26Speaker 06

  So the other half were really into it. People were when she started talking about the grooming gangs, people were cheering on, yeah, like.

• 16:33Speaker 02

  Wow. So what were, um, how many like people should there have been in that room? I don't know the space.

• 16:40Speaker 06

  It was one of those larger ballrooms in the Venetian, so it's definitely not, you know, one of like the mega keynote sized rooms. I, I really couldn't.

• 16:48Speaker 02

  It's fine.

• 16:48Speaker 06

  But there's sort of like two sections.

• 16:50Ed Zitron?

  The answer is not enough.

• 16:51Speaker 06

  Like the front half was pretty full, but like there's an entire back half that was completely empty.

• 16:57Speaker 02

  Just the idea of her getting up there and like free associating about grooming gangs in the UK to 60 people feels like, this has been the whole, this is the actual, I mean, like, you know, cards on the table. I don't really like Linda Iaccarino's work that much. I was just doing, I was doing a bit, but I do think that there's something about her as like, as a character and as a performance that I found really fascinating, just because she has to get up there and like, abase herself on Elon's behalf and in Elon's words that like, that's the actual gig, you know? And so the idea of seeing that happening to, it's like, it's weird enough, you know, to every now and then, I don't really look at Twitter much anymore, but people will send that and send me, when she says like a weird reply,

• 17:41Speaker 02

  like the one where she just said hot dog, or, you know, like, I got that a bunch of times. I'm really glad that I did. It's cool that that's my brand, that people are like, you'd probably like this bit of.

• 17:51Ed Zitron?

  Check out this shit.

• 17:52Speaker 02

  But the idea of there being like, a real person doing that in a room feels like I would have felt, I would have had a hard time, I think, watching it. Like, I feel like I would have felt embarrassed for her.

• 18:05Ed Zitron?

  I've been sharing the whole time.

• 18:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 18:06Ed Zitron?

  Was there a point, because she was being interviewed, right? It wasn't just her giving a speech. Was there like a point to the interview? Like, what were they trying to achieve?

• 18:13Speaker 06

  Yeah, so.

• 18:14Ed Zitron?

  It's a good question.

• 18:16Speaker 06

  So they started off, you know, talking about Mark Zuckerberg and him saying that he wants to, you know, do community notes on Facebook.

• 18:23Speaker 02

  Right.

• 18:24Speaker 06

  And of course she was, you know, a very big fan of that. She had like this one very obviously canned line that was, you know, Mark Meta, welcome to the party.

• 18:33Speaker 02

  Okay, that's good, though. You gotta have a couple of real.

• 18:35Ed Zitron?

  The racism part.

• 18:36Speaker 02

  But some real bangers written ahead of time that you know, I imagine that got a huge pop in the room. Everybody was like, yes, go off, queen.

• 18:44Speaker 06

  I was silent.

• 18:45Speaker 02

  Yeah. Oh, really weird. That's interesting.

• 18:49Ed Zitron?

  I'd love to be the guy who's like, woo!

• 18:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 18:51Ed Zitron?

  Yeah!

• 18:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, welcome to the party, pal.

• 18:53Ed Zitron?

  I pay 200 bucks a month for grog.

• 18:59Ed Zitron?

  Yeah. Anyone check out the logo of Grok? By the way, I feel like someone brought this up before, but the logo of Grok is insane.

• 19:05Speaker 02

  I didn't know how to.

• 19:06Ed Zitron?

  I need to, I now realize how impractical it's gonna be to show everyone.

• 19:10Speaker 02

  It's not a visual medium.

• 19:11Ed Zitron?

  I'm just gonna show this to David because.

• 19:13Speaker 02

  All right, I'll describe it.

• 19:14Speaker 05

  It's like an Xi, like, oh, it's, it's the XAI logo, isn't it, right?

• 19:19Speaker 02

  Wait. Is that the fucking?

• 19:21Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's the logo for his artificial intelligence company.

• 19:24Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 19:25Ed Zitron?

  It looks like a generative AI defect.

• 19:28Speaker 02

  It's a, you're talking about the one with the cat?

• 19:31Ed Zitron?

  No, no, I'm saying that it just, the sizes are wrong. Fucking, that's my phone background, David.

• 19:37Speaker 02

  All right, sorry.

• 19:37Ed Zitron?

  It's my beautiful boy Pingus. That's his cat, Grok.

• 19:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 19:41Ed Zitron?

  Pingus, Pingus. Jesus Christ.

• 19:42Speaker 02

  This is why he's so mad at you.

• 19:43Ed Zitron?

  Grok?

• 19:44Speaker 02

  Stealing all of his best ideas.

• 19:46Ed Zitron?

  Not an uncle with three horrible sons that each have a Ford dealership? Jesus Christ.

• 19:52Speaker 02

  So I haven't seen as much about like who's speaking here. I know.

• 19:55Ed Zitron?

  Yeah.

• 19:55Speaker 02

  That like, Yakarino, I was aware of because again, like, people in my life like to tell me when he does things. But the other stuff, is that like, again, as a, you know, noob to the CES experience, it doesn't seem like people are here to, well, they're here to like do deals and like have or be pursued by robots. That there's not like, it doesn't feel like there's a thing where people are here to like, watch people talk. Is that a part of the culture that like, is speech is usually a big deal here?

• 20:26Speaker 05

  Yeah, I mean, yeah.

• 20:27Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 20:28Speaker 05

  Historically. I mean, there's a really good one. I mean, if I could genuinely recommend one, there's one from 2009 that you should watch where Tom Hanks came out to do some presentation on behalf of Sony because this is when he was doing the Angels and Demons Da Vinci Code franchise.

• 20:43Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, okay.

• 20:44Speaker 05

  So it was basically like written into his contract, like come to CDS and CES and like talk about these new AR glasses that clearly materialized in the last decade.

• 20:52Speaker 02

  Yeah. That was the first time anybody saw them before they became ubiquitous.

• 20:55Speaker 05

  Yeah, and it's just the best example of like, someone who was really willing to take the piss out of the whole experience and not, like Tim Meadows, like the other day at the BMW thing was like, sort of doing it, but in like the lightest touch way, like, making fun of like all these German automotive executives around him, but like, you know, within generous reason.

• 21:15Speaker 02

  Is this the one?

• 21:15Speaker 05

  Tom Hanks is like. Like you could feel them sort of like slipping the hook around his neck to get him off the stage.

• 21:22Ed Zitron?

  Nice.

• 21:23Speaker 05

  So it's it's definitely part of it.

• 21:25Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, I haven't witnessed any of the famous person part of it because I know that's apparently there's like a celebrity.

• 21:29Ed Zitron?

  William's here. I hear William.

• 21:31Speaker 02

  William.

• 21:32Ed Zitron?

  William.

• 21:33Speaker 02

  Oh, William, yes.

• 21:33Speaker 05

  I wouldn't be surprised. He's here like pretty much every year with some new bad product.

• 21:38Ed Zitron?

  Some new scam.

• 21:39Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 21:39Ed Zitron?

  Outright scam artist.

• 21:41Speaker 05

  The first few nights, there's always some big event. It's, you know, somebody, different companies get to get it every year. The last time I was here, 2020, one of the big ones was Mercedes Benz did a big, one of the big keynotes and he rolled out some concept car that was sort of based on Avatar. And so the concept car had these like scales that rose up and stuff. And then James Cameron came out and was like, here's a still from Avatar two. Yeah, I'm still making it. It's coming. And like, you know, it was whatever. That was when people were still kind of unsure about that happening. But so, yeah, it's it's a part of the culture.

• 22:14Ed Zitron?

  Okay.

• 22:14Speaker 05

  It's a thing for people to do after they've been like suffering on the show floor all day is like go sit in an arena and watch Michael Bay talk about Samsung displays.

• 22:22Speaker 02

  I was gonna say, like, I would have by the end of today, like, I would sit pretty much anywhere and watch pretty much anyone talk about it.

• 22:27Speaker 05

  Take a not off in the back.

• 22:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 22:29Speaker 05

  There are limits.

• 22:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm not sure that, yeah, like, if I could get in there and like, charge my phone, I'd be like, can you just not the grooming gang stuff? It's bringing the mood down in the room, but the rest of it.

• 22:39Ed Zitron?

  I got 10 minutes before this thing's full. I just let me sit. So did you like anything at the show, Karissa? Anything good? Anything like truly joyous, like anything, put a big smile on your face, anything? I'm really trying with everyone.

• 22:52Speaker 06

  So we we saw a cane for people who are blind that has AI in it. And it was actually like, we thought it was an interesting use of AI and ChatGPT.

• 23:04Speaker 02

  How do they use it?

• 23:05Speaker 06

  So it has a camera on it and a little speaker. So as you're walking around, it can tell you like when it sees an obstacle. And like, help you like, like, oh, there's a stair ahead of you, or there's, you know, a lamp post.

• 23:18Ed Zitron?

  This sounds really good until the hallucinations.

• 23:21Speaker 06

  But what we liked about it was that it's still cane. So like, even if the AI stuff doesn't work, it's not like, you know, the person is stranded and has

• 23:29Ed Zitron?

  Yeah.

• 23:29Speaker 06

  no way to

• 23:30Ed Zitron?

  Sure, but if the information source, I know, I, it sounds like it would actually be useful, especially because I assume that no one would trust it fully.

• 23:38Speaker 06

  I mean, the person who made it, who runs the company is, has been blind since birth.

• 23:42Ed Zitron?

  Okay, then it's actually a genuinely, like, sorry, that's not a good thing, just to be clear. But it's, they have the experience to make a product that would be good. There we go.

• 23:50Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 23:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, the accessibility tech was the stuff today that I, it was like the first thing that I saw that, like, again, I'm a soft touch, so I'm like impressed by like a cool TV. There's a part of me that's like, damn, you got a lot of colors on that thing. Nice, nailed it. But the, yeah, there were some of the, um, I think if it's the thing that I'm talking about, there's like two of them right next to each other on the Eureka floor, the smart cane, or maybe there's more of them here. But I did see, there was one that did have like the AI bells and whistles. And then there was one of them, which I remember Edward and I both being struck by that was like, you don't have to have the internet to use this. Like, it was like clearly designed for like,

• 24:24Ed Zitron?

  Oh.

• 24:25Speaker 02

  people that were like, older and wanted a simpler experience of it without any of that stuff. But in both of those cases, there's, you know, so much of, for me, walking around on the floor was like seeing these technologies that could potentially deliver solutions, applied weirdly to non-problems in really over-determined ways. And in this case, it's sort of like, oh, well, this would actually help somebody have a better life. That's kind of a cool thing to do with technology.

• 24:52Ed Zitron?

  Yeah. But also, how does it connect to the internet? I'm now, ChatGPT requires an internet connection. Do you have to have Wi-Fi for it? Is it connected to your phone? Like?

• 25:02Speaker 06

  That is a good question. I, I didn't write a piece about it, so I don't know.

• 25:06Ed Zitron?

  Not your problem. I will be looking at the piece later. But also, that's the thing. Every time you hear, as a listener, if you hear ChatGPT, remember, this thing needs the internet. These do not have on-device models, which means that your cane is just like not telling you where things are. Every time I try and avoid the display, it'll be open.

• 25:24Speaker 06

  So this is gonna probably piss you off, but they're, they have two, um, Two different kind of models. So one is that you it's a subscription for the chat GPT functionality.

• 25:34Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, that's the good stuff.

• 25:36Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 25:38Ed Zitron?

  That's.

• 25:38Speaker 06

  Or you can buy the more expensive one, which comes with it.

• 25:41Ed Zitron?

  The lifetime subscription.

• 25:42Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 25:43Ed Zitron?

  See, the thing is that stuff does actually cost money. So they do have to do something, but it's also like, oh, man, granddad, sorry. Life's been rough right now. Can't afford the cane. You're just gonna have to work it out for yourself.

• 25:53Speaker 05

  You're gonna have to turn the subscription off.

• 25:55Ed Zitron?

  Yes, sorry, granddad. We don't have the pro subscription. It's only gonna tell you some objects.

• 25:59Speaker 02

  Although, again, it does have.

• 26:00Ed Zitron?

  We don't pay for the car, Adam.

• 26:02Speaker 02

  If you turn the subscription off, it's like, well, your cane's gonna be a lot quieter this month. It's not like it's going to turn into like an oblong cylinder of plastic, which it was before, and now it's just not gonna talk to you.

• 26:11Ed Zitron?

  Give him a year. They'll make the subscription. They'll make it. They'll make it load bearing, I guess.

• 26:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, the subscription stuff is really sinister to me.

• 26:19Ed Zitron?

  It's everything now.

• 26:22Ed Zitron?

  So Sean, you, how do you feel about Delta, though? What did Delta do differently? What it was the Delta thing? We're talking about useful companies. I assume Delta wouldn't buy the sphere out to just shovel a bunch of operating system stuff, right?

• 26:36Speaker 05

  Uh, no, it was pretty much a lot of that.

• 26:39Ed Zitron?

  Oh.

• 26:40Speaker 05

  It really, I mean, like I said, it was the buildup that Ed Bastian did at the beginning of like, this is the next 100 years. And it was, it was, it almost made me want there to be more bullshit.

• 26:53Ed Zitron?

  Like insane stuff.

• 26:54Speaker 05

  Yeah. And it's weird because like I haven't been here since 2020 and they were a big part of 2020 show. I feel like I saw more from them then, because at that point they were still working on, um, you know, adding a bunch more features to the screen experience in like, you know, in the seat back experience. They were working on this thing, uh, you know, sort of a privacy nightmare kind of thing, but an idea at least that was interesting to think about of like, uh, a screen when you go into the terminal that has, there have been these kind of TVs at CES in the past where you'll have sort of a screen display that can split what it's showing you depending on where you're looking at it from. So theoretically, multiple people could see multiple different things on the same screen.

• 27:39Speaker 05

  They pair that with facial recognition. You would theoretically walk into the terminal. You and I could stand next to each other. We could each get personal information about our flights and where we're going and all that kind of stuff. At least that was like, we're working on this tech and seeing if it works.

• 27:53Ed Zitron?

  Like a thing that might happen, whether you like it or not.

• 27:55Speaker 05

  This year, it was, it was very like, you know, it's all, of course, about generative AI. And it really was just a really weak showing of what they think that can do. Because what the experience they showed off in these vignettes. It's, it's like, it's some of that same stuff. It's, and it really, the best way I can describe it is it's treating these people like a baby. It's like assuming you are the, like a high-class Delta SkyMiles person. And you can't be bothered to get to the airport on time. You can't be bothered to wait in traffic.

• 28:26Ed Zitron?

  That's a simpleton.

• 28:27Speaker 05

  You can't be bothered to, it was like, it'll tell you which gate is, which gate your flight is at. And where that is, as if you can't look at the gate number and like count down. You know, like when you, the airports are built pretty well for this.

• 28:40Ed Zitron?

  I don't have a way of finding out where my flight is.

• 28:42Speaker 05

  Yeah, like I know I'm at gate 17, I see gate three. Oh, look, the numbers go to 17 that way. I really do not need generative AI to tell me that. And it was just, you know, I, the, the other weird thing about it was they're clearly trying to, like so many tech companies, subsume all of your experience into Delta. So it's like, you'll be flying there.

• 29:06Ed Zitron?

  That's what I want.

• 29:07Speaker 05

  And then you'll be able to plan out your trip while you're in midair on your screen. And Delta will help you book your reservations at all of these places. And it's just like, there's no room in the vision that they're painting for you to have any part of your experience outside of the Delta.

• 29:25Ed Zitron?

  Also, none of this seems to make the flight better.

• 29:28Speaker 05

  No, and that's, I mean, that's the thing that really bums me out, has bummed me out a lot about CES this year. Not just at Delta, but for so much of it, like nothing is about making a lot of the little stuff better.

• 29:40Ed Zitron?

  Yeah.

• 29:40Speaker 05

  Even the convention itself, like it's just, there's so much about being here. Like Vegas has built up all of this extra stuff to make CES even bigger. There's this whole new hall that wasn't here when I was here five years ago. And it's still not enough to like contain the people like I went to get lunch today at like a relatively off peak lunchtime.

• 29:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 29:59Speaker 05

  There's not enough seats for people like I'm going to sit at this one counter that I see available and then I'm told that it's part of some sort of display that I can't sit at because I don't belong to those people. So it's like, um, it's like, okay, I'm going to go sit on the floor, which like I've done plenty of times in the many years I've come here and like eat my lunch. But it's just like, no one's working on any solution for the dumb stuff like that. Or even the weird thing is like not even using that as an opportunity to present some of the technologies that are being promised is like, oh, wouldn't it be, it's just like, it's the most pedestrian mall ass experience like here. And it's just, you know, you can just feel how no one's heart is in it.

• 30:37Speaker 02

  That's what I was thinking about when you were talking about the idea of like the full, you know, stem to stern Delta travel experience is that like I flew Delta out here. I had a perfectly fine flight, but like you're still going through an airport. Like it's still the sort of thing where it's like, I was at JFK on a security line. It took 45 minutes to get me through like, and so there's, you know, some of that's my fault because I don't have pre or whatever, or I'm not rich enough to have whatever the, I mean, like Tom Brady does not have to go through security.

• 31:04Speaker 05

  I mean, he's Tom Brady.

• 31:05Speaker 02

  Flying private, or if he just, you know, signs a football for somebody and like gets sent through. But in all of those instances, it's like these sort of weird pie in the sky solutions to things that do not necessarily scan to me as problems, like things that are basically like minor activations of agency, like looking up at the board and like finding the number of my flight and then being like, what gate is it?

• 31:28Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 31:29Speaker 02

  Like, I don't necessarily need that solved. If you could find a way to make it less unpleasant to get to or go through JFK, like that would be sick.

• 31:38Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 31:38Speaker 02

  And yet like, that's harder. This is the thing we keep coming back to in these conversations is that like, that's a systemic, like structural, that would require like state level action. Whereas here they're sort of like, with the power of generative AI, you are going to be able to read words on a screen. While flying through the air.

• 31:55Speaker 05

  And here's Lenny Kravitz.

• 31:56Speaker 02

  And here's Lenny, ladies and gentlemen.

• 31:57Ed Zitron?

  Enough about Mr. Kravitz. We have to finish up the episode. Sean, where can people find you? Well, this block of the episode, I mean. Where can people find you?

• 32:04Speaker 05

  I'm on Blue Sky. That's the best place.

• 32:07Ed Zitron?

  Okay, do you want to say where?

• 32:09Speaker 05

  SeanO'Kane.Biskey. How do you say that?

• 32:12Ed Zitron?

  I don't know.

• 32:13Speaker 05

  SeanO'Kane.Dot, and you'll find me.

• 32:15Ed Zitron?

  Okay, where do you work?

• 32:16Speaker 05

  I work at TechCrunch. I've been there for a year. It's amazing.

• 32:18Ed Zitron?

  Lovely. Karissa, where can people find you?

• 32:21Speaker 06

  Find me on Blue Sky, still on Threads for now.

• 32:24Ed Zitron?

  Yeah.

• 32:25Speaker 06

  Karissa B E on both of them, and Gadget.

• 32:28Ed Zitron?

  Wonderful. David?

• 32:30Speaker 02

  Defector.com is the website, and The Distraction is the podcast I do for them.

• 32:35Ed Zitron?

  You can find me after the ad break. Listen, download, buy it. It's been like hours of this stuff. Now I'm not giving you anything special.

• 32:49Speaker 01

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• 33:22Speaker 03

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• 33:54Ed Zitron?

  And we're back. We've got Shaun O'Kane, of course, from TechCrunch. We've got Karissa Bell from Engadget and David J. Roth of Defector. And we're... Karissa said something very important just before we broke, and that is that Faraday Future are here, my favorite not-quite-car company. They love to be on fire, don't they, folks? So what did you hear of Faraday Future, I must hear?

• 34:17Speaker 06

  So they were here pitching their latest pivot, strategy shift, whatever you want to call it.

• 34:24Ed Zitron?

  Okay.

• 34:25Speaker 06

  Which is FX, a new subsidiary of Faraday Future that will sell cheap EVs. And their plan is to source parts from China, bring them here, make them look nice on the inside, and sell them for probably like between $20,000 to $50,000.

• 34:44Ed Zitron?

  So perhaps you can give some history about how well Faraday Future has done selling cars?

• 34:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, all of you guys are making faces that I'm hearing that number.

• 34:52Ed Zitron?

  Please, Karissa, illuminate how great they are.

• 34:56Speaker 06

  They have, to date, have sold 15 or 16 FF91s, which I believe...

• 35:02Speaker 02

  1,000, 15 or 16?

• 35:03Speaker 06

  No, 15 or 16, 1.5, 1.6.

• 35:06Speaker 02

  That's more manageable.

• 35:07Ed Zitron?

  So good.

• 35:07Speaker 06

  Of the only car that they've ever managed to actually sell, the FF91.

• 35:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 35:13Speaker 06

  They're making about one a month is what the FX is.

• 35:16Speaker 05

  And if I sell, you mean essentially lease to these people and in some cases actually strike contracts with them that basically reimburse them for the cost of the sale of the car?

• 35:26Ed Zitron?

  How long has this company been around?

• 35:28Speaker 05

  2014.

• 35:29Ed Zitron?

  That's so good.

• 35:31Speaker 05

  They're 11 years old.

• 35:33Speaker 02

  Do they advertise themselves as a small-batch automotive company?

• 35:36Speaker 05

  No, they should.

• 35:37Speaker 06

  Asset light.

• 35:38Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 35:38Ed Zitron?

  So their new plan is to sell a cheaper, shittier car?

• 35:42Speaker 06

  Cheaper minivan specifically.

• 35:45Ed Zitron?

  Right, so a smaller total addressable market. This company rocks.

• 35:51Speaker 05

  Listen, I actually don't, they, we were just talking off mic, they refused to let me come see it because they didn't answer my questions.

• 35:56Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, man, you've written like seven different, very aggressive stories about them. I wonder why.

• 36:01Speaker 05

  They are, well, yeah, we don't have time for all of that, but the, my assumption is this van is a thing that, that when they did still have some money, because they don't really have a lot of money right now, but when they did have some money, they're, one of their plans was to make this type of vehicle in China. So my assumption would be that this is one of the prototypes that they developed back then that's just been sitting in China collecting dust. And now they've been able to put some new veneer on it. The problem with this company is they, well, a problem with this company is that they need money. Because they've run out of the money from the founder. The founder basically created what was at one point sort of like a combination of Netflix and Apple in China, and it had grown to like 10 billion or more in valuation.

• 36:45Speaker 05

  And then it ultimately crashed because he just over leveraged everything. I believe the term that the New York Times used at one point was debt bombs. And those debt bombs started going off and he exiled himself to the US in 2017. And has been here ever since running the company. But the point is they don't have any money left. And they've been trying to raise it from people related to him and close to his orbit. And so the idea of selling a $200,000 car to people that clearly don't really necessarily want to buy it at scale is unpalatable. So they are going after this idea of making a low cost car because they think it's a more investable business.

• 37:23Ed Zitron?

  Karissa, when we say lower cost, I didn't realize it was $200,000 for that regular one.

• 37:28Speaker 05

  That's the regular ish. I mean, I think it's a sliding scale. To be fair to them.

• 37:33Ed Zitron?

  From not existing to never existing.

• 37:35Speaker 05

  You won't hear me say this often, to be fair to them, the goal with that one was to always compete with like the Maybacks and Bugattis of the world. So it's not like.

• 37:44Ed Zitron?

  So extremely well engineered cars that are well known for their design and their execution on said design.

• 37:49Speaker 05

  Eventually. Yeah.

• 37:51Ed Zitron?

  Well, eventually it's kind of the whole Faraday future.

• 37:54Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 37:54Ed Zitron?

  Thing.

• 37:55Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 37:55Ed Zitron?

  So how much is the van, like the cheap van that they're doing?

• 38:00Speaker 06

  Unclear, probably around $50,000, I think, based on what they said. I'll just say the prototypes we saw, you said that maybe these have been sitting around for a while. Maybe that's true. These were rough.

• 38:11Speaker 05

  I mean, I believe that.

• 38:13Ed Zitron?

  Define rough.

• 38:13Speaker 06

  So there was two different ones. One had sort of the more finished interior where they were trying to show off, you know, how they were kind of going to make a minivan, but, you know, for grownups and fancy.

• 38:24Ed Zitron?

  Right.

• 38:25Speaker 06

  But had no door handles.

• 38:27Ed Zitron?

  Okay.

• 38:29Speaker 06

  Our friend John said, of course, of course it will have door handles, the real one, which is always great when they have to tell you. You know, so it had some, you know, white leather captain seats that had, you know, massage functions and, you know, it was, it was okay.

• 38:41Ed Zitron?

  Just no door handles.

• 38:42Speaker 06

  No door handles, completely like wrapped in that.

• 38:45Speaker 05

  Did they have to like airlift you into it from the top or how did you get in?

• 38:50Speaker 06

  I mean, the doors opened. They just didn't have.

• 38:53Speaker 05

  Yeah, okay.

• 38:53Ed Zitron?

  Just unclear how?

• 38:55Speaker 06

  Um, yeah. And then there was the one that we could actually ride in, which was just covered in fabric that was held together by binder clips, like the entire interior, literally binder clips.

• 39:07Ed Zitron?

  I love the show.

• 39:09Speaker 06

  They said it was a plug in hybrid. I got to drive it around it. Honestly, it could have been a Toyota Sienna covered in fabric for all I know, like it.

• 39:17Ed Zitron?

  Did it feel like an electric vehicle like?

• 39:20Speaker 06

  I mean, it felt like, yeah, kind of.

• 39:23Ed Zitron?

  Yeah. I just love the idea that they would, this company sounds like they would actually do the Toyota Sienna thing, so.

• 39:31Speaker 06

  Yeah, I mean, I don't know. I.

• 39:33Ed Zitron?

  I'm not suggesting, I'm not accusing them of that, just to be clear, legality.

• 39:36Speaker 06

  But it, it could have though been for like, especially, I'm not an automotive journalist. So it was very funny to me that they invited me to do this.

• 39:42Ed Zitron?

  Right.

• 39:44Speaker 06

  Max did tell me that I was the first lady to drive that particular vehicle.

• 39:48Speaker 02

  Wow, what an amazing honor.

• 39:49Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 39:51Speaker 05

  Thanks for knowing that.

• 39:53Speaker 02

  Really doing the like not having door handles thing is incredible. Like again, from being completely outside of the story, like this company rocks to me. Like everything that you've described where they're just sort of like, and this one, it's like got a tarp on the inside of it. Like you're just getting into whatever Kurt Russell's car from Death Proof. And be like, just take it for a spin, take it around the lot.

• 40:12Speaker 05

  The contempt.

• 40:13Speaker 02

  Wild thing. Why would you want somebody to drive a car that looks that messed up on the inside?

• 40:17Speaker 06

  I mean, maybe Sean can speak to this. Like you don't expect a prototype vehicle to necessarily be finished and have

• 40:23Speaker 05

  But not held together with binder clips.

• 40:25Speaker 06

  But what was also telling to me was that the one press image they gave us was so low res. And it showed them, it was like these two vans, like in a field, like at a great distance.

• 40:37Speaker 05

  And also the vans are covered in like camouflage, like wrap. But so, but, but which is, you know, that's a traditional automotive thing, but set in this field, because I saw this image earlier today. It just looks like cow cars because it's like, you know, blocky, black and white. But on in the field, in this weird setting that you don't normally see like a prototype car. And it was like, my brain just like cows.

• 40:58Speaker 02

  Love the idea of it being just like a deep fried JPG. It's like 75K sending that out to the press. And like, so don't, you could use this as like your avatar on social media. Do not put it on your website.

• 41:08Speaker 05

  This will not render on Blues.

• 41:10Speaker 02

  It's gonna be pointless.

• 41:11Speaker 05

  Again, to be fair to them, they do not have many employees left. It's basically most of the people who are here on different types of work visas that staff the company. Everybody else has been furloughed or laid off pretty much.

• 41:25Speaker 02

  Is there like an end game? Is the idea there that like whatever technology they have would be purchased by some other company? Is there like, or what happens?

• 41:32Speaker 05

  I think the founder is singular in his vision of wanting to say that. I mean, from what I've heard from the conversations I've had with people who have worked at this company over many years. This this man is, I'll say two things and then I'll try not to go too long on it. One is that he, since he self-exiled himself from China to here, the thinking is he wants to build up a successful business that would let him go back into China without just being snatched and thrown into a void upon landing. Cause that's like, he was put on a debtor blacklist.

• 42:04Ed Zitron?

  And what is that just for?

• 42:06Speaker 05

  I mean, he, he left the company with like billions of dollars owed by himself.

• 42:10Ed Zitron?

  What are the consequences of a debtor blacklist?

• 42:12Speaker 05

  You could just probably be disappeared by the state.

• 42:16Ed Zitron?

  So can you not leave China? Is that one of the things?

• 42:18Speaker 05

  On paper, the limitations are like, you can't buy train tickets or you can't, you know, like you have like actual economic like restrictions placed. Some of your assets are frozen, things like that. But like the realistic thing, given the scale of the collapse of his business there, is that he would probably be, you know, hidden in a corner somewhere in a, yeah, in a place.

• 42:38Ed Zitron?

  But having lots of money would allow him to avoid that?

• 42:41Speaker 05

  I think, I think in his mind, he thinks that if, I mean, he's, he's, it's too much to get into, but he is a very specific person when it comes to believing in the value of, you know, sort of billionaire entrepreneurs. So I think he thinks that that has enough cachet that it would like.

• 42:56Ed Zitron?

  Other than the billion, having the billions part.

• 42:58Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 42:59Ed Zitron?

  That, that seems to be the problem.

• 43:01Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 43:01Ed Zitron?

  So I will, I will say this, I, if I see a car, I expect the bits to be on. Like the, like, like, I think, I think that like that feels like a reasonable thing. Did they react to the falling apartness of this vehicle that allegedly would buy?

• 43:19Speaker 06

  No, I mean.

• 43:20Ed Zitron?

  Sick. So good.

• 43:22Speaker 05

  It's a fairly common thing to show up with a prototype that's like.

• 43:26Ed Zitron?

  The seats are?

• 43:27Speaker 05

  Half-baked. At CES, we've seen some weird stuff over the years, especially from these startups. I think there's gradations of how complete it is or how much polish you want to put on it. I will say, I think that this company is probably coming from the experiences they've had with the more expensive car, which is actually quite technologically accomplished for seven years ago when they developed it. And they got away with a lot of. Bad finish, you know, sort of rough edge demos at CES in years prior because people would forget about that because they'd jam on the pedal on this thing and it would, I mean, it's fast as hell. Like the more expensive car that they've built is like incredible

• 44:09Speaker 05

  because, or incredibly capable because they hired, when he started this company, they had all this money that he had and they just overspent so much. I mean, so they, they went from being founded in 2014 to 1,500 people by 2016. And they did that by basically paying 50 to 100% more than the going rate for like every position within inside the company. And so they attracted all this talent from Tesla, Apple, all these other companies. But they were very secretive about it, what they were doing because they're kind of trying to hide who was backing it. And this combination of like secrecy and obvious signs of money at one point had people believing that this was a front for Apple's secretive project,

• 44:50Speaker 05

  car project. Yeah. And so like, that's how like crazy the mania was getting around like

• 44:55Ed Zitron?

  what this company was. Damn, that's a good scam.

• 44:57Speaker 05

  But so the point of, the reason I say that is like when the people who developed the car included like the team that made the GM EV1, which is like thought of as like the first real mass market EV in the US. So like they had like real engineering behind it. And when they were demoing that car years ago here, people were like kind of falling in love with it because they were like, yeah, this company's kind of crazy. And like, it doesn't really look like they're anywhere near ready to build these things, but these things are fast as hell and fun. And it's a fun experience. And for a CES experience like that just doesn't involve getting attacked by robots in a booth. Like, oh yeah, that was one of my better experiences this week when I went 0 to 60 in like one second.

• 45:32Ed Zitron?

  Do you not think that some of this is a reflection of how the tech press has looked at tech though? Because, because I feel like thanks to the way Elon Musk was covered, there were a lot of companies that could kind of get away with this shit.

• 45:46Speaker 05

  Well, they've gotten away with it in the sense that they were one of the companies that did one of these SPAC mergers and raised another billion dollars.

• 45:52Ed Zitron?

  So just define a SPAC merger for the listeners.

• 45:55Speaker 05

  A special purpose acquisition company, there's kind of a long history of reverse mergers like this on the public markets. But essentially, if you are an investor or some sort of business type, you could theoretically create a company that's just basically a holding sell for cash that's publicly traded. And you can basically vaguely state your intentions for, ah, we want to invest in this market or that market. And here's our pot of money. We're going to go look for a company in that space to acquire and take them public.

• 46:27Ed Zitron?

  Okay.

• 46:27Speaker 05

  And so that, you know, maybe there's merit to that approach to things. But that whole process got really perverted in like 2020 and 2021, where a lot of different kinds of companies, but especially electric vehicle companies, were getting taken public left and right, well before they were ready to be a public company.

• 46:47Ed Zitron?

  And Faraday Future doesn't sound like it should have ever been taken out of the box.

• 46:51Speaker 05

  Well, I'll put it this way. They went public in 2021 and within four to six months, their board of directors decided to launch an internal investigation into the founder and the people around him for basically more or less allegedly lying in the paperwork that they filed to go public. And then eventually the internal investigation led to him being removed from a particular role at the company, having people around him pushed out of the company and they referred it to the SEC, which is still actually actively investigating the company. So.

• 47:20Ed Zitron?

  Rough few years for this guy.

• 47:22Speaker 05

  I mean, listen, he's here and not in a cell in China. So he lives in a mansion, you know, in Rancho Palos Verdes in Los Angeles. So he's, he's done well for himself.

• 47:34Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, we're four days in and I keep trying to find, I bring in new people. I love the voices we get. And I keep being like, well, maybe this will be the person who found a real company.

• 47:45Speaker 05

  I'll, I'll say, I mentioned this before, I, I got to drive an electric boat this morning.

• 47:49Ed Zitron?

  Okay.

• 47:49Speaker 05

  That was fun.

• 47:50Ed Zitron?

  Well, where?

• 47:51Speaker 05

  There are a company called Arc Boats.

• 47:53Ed Zitron?

  Okay.

• 47:55Speaker 05

  And they're based out of Los Angeles and it's a bunch of former SpaceX engineers.

• 48:00Speaker 05

  That kind of stuff gets thrown around a lot with like Tesla and SpaceX especially where it's like, you know, this company is founded by SpaceX engineers. It's like, these guys are actually genuinely smart at coming up with interesting ideas and trying to apply them to products and, and their whole thing. I mean, there's a lot of different electric boat companies that are trying to find.

• 48:21Speaker 05

  Find a way to replace gas boats, whether that's in water taxis or more traditional sort of just like fishing boats. These guys are really going after a market that I think makes sense, which is just like boats for rich people, you know, like originally they had one that it was just really kind of like a fast fun boat on the water. This one's more specifically like almost like a wakeboard boat, like Wake Sports. It's like made, tailor-made for that. And it costs a lot of money. I think it's in the high $100,000 marks, but it's the kind of boat that you're already talking about spending almost that much with a regular gas version.

• 48:56Ed Zitron?

  And I am.

• 48:56Speaker 05

  Yeah, of course. So they've been around for a couple of years. They, I think they got founded in 2021. But they're actually delivering these. They started delivering this boat. They hand build them in, or mostly hand build them in Los Angeles. They started delivering them a couple of months ago to the first owners. So they're actually generating revenue. They have a bunch of investment. They have some celebrity investors. I can't remember who they are off the top of my head. That always makes me wary. But

• 49:23Ed Zitron?

  You drove it, though.

• 49:25Speaker 05

  Yeah, so I got to drive it this morning.

• 49:26Ed Zitron?

  Where?

• 49:27Speaker 05

  Lake Mead.

• 49:28Ed Zitron?

  Oh.

• 49:29Speaker 05

  That's the only, the only bummer of the experience was it was at Lake Mead, which is like

• 49:34Ed Zitron?

  It's like it's three inches of water.

• 49:37Speaker 05

  So it's like, you know, the, if I, if I removed myself from the experience, it was kind of depressing because you're like, oh, this isn't fun to tool around in this electric boat in the lake that barely exists anymore.

• 49:47Ed Zitron?

  Just in time for the end of the inland freshwater experience here in the United States.

• 49:52Speaker 05

  Yeah. But, you know, if I was able to set that aside for a moment, it was a pretty fun experience.

• 49:58Ed Zitron?

  Other than just the terrible threat to humanity.

• 50:01Speaker 05

  Yeah. And, you know, I mean, like, I think it's pretty clear that

• 50:04Ed Zitron?

  Which I'm somehow putting on the boat company. I apologize.

• 50:06Speaker 05

  No, but I, you know, I think it's interesting that some of these products, these, these vehicles, you know, for a long time, especially at shows like CES, were sold as solutions to that larger problem of what we're doing to the planet.

• 50:20Ed Zitron?

  As opposed to the fact that corporations are causing it.

• 50:22Speaker 05

  Yeah. And now that's just, you know, that doesn't, that doesn't really get put front and center anymore because I think people, A, they don't want to Have to like live up to that.

• 50:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, right.

• 50:35Speaker 05

  And be like, because it doesn't seem like that's actually going to help us. So like, you know, I don't begrudge them for not trying to like, put that front and center. But it was, it was hard to separate it from the experience, but you know, it was a lot of fun.

• 50:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, that was something I was sort of struck by. I mean, I guess just in general, I think that assessment is correct in terms of how people are thinking about, like, you know, not individually, but I think that like broadly speaking, that there's like a turn in the culture towards like, well, we're not going to win this one. And so either people are being hedonistic and, you know, like sort of being like, ah, whatever. Let's see what happens if you put literally the worst guy of his generation in charge of the country again and see where that goes. But in this instance, it's like, I haven't seen as much, like very few of the, even in the like big tech spaces that I saw this morning at the convention center. Like people, like energy efficiency kind of seems like I expected to see more of it. Like even just in terms of people wanting to save money on bills or whatever. And I didn't see a lot of that.

• 51:30Speaker 02

  Like, I don't know if it's just like, if it's considered to be like, you know, off the vibe of like people showing up and wanting to get excited about stuff and about having new things or.

• 51:40Speaker 05

  Yeah, I mean, I think a place like this sort of incentivizes the people who are coming up with the weirder, dumber, more boisterous displays anyways. And it's kind of hard to like, you know, I think that's where there actually is some value in these like weird shows. They do the first few evenings, like CES Unveiled or Pepcom, where it's basically just like a gauntlet of like 200 startups in a room. They don't seem very properly vetted, but like, that's where you're going to find like the place that, you know, the company of like three people. That's like, we can actually use AI to like, save you nine bucks a month on your energy bill or something like that. Cause like, they're not going to be able to afford a show floor booth.

• 52:14Ed Zitron?

  I also need to be clear, Pepcom is an enemy of Better Offline. They're an enemy of Better Offline fully because we applied and they said, I run a PR firm, I can't be allowed in. Enemy. Everything at Pepcom diseased.

• 52:27Speaker 05

  I stand shoulder to shoulder with you.

• 52:29Ed Zitron?

  Thank you, thank you.

• 52:30Speaker 06

  I'm shocked they have standards.

• 52:31Ed Zitron?

  I was too. That's what was so offensive.

• 52:34Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 52:35Ed Zitron?

  Like, do you know how bad it is? Like, I already get looked on, down on quite a lot for many reasons, many listeners know.

• 52:41Speaker 02

  For your dangerous views.

• 52:42Ed Zitron?

  To my, my dangerous views.

• 52:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 52:44Ed Zitron?

  My political opinions of, I don't know anything, but also just like. Oh my God, I'm not going to spend money on a pep con party. No one should have to pay to go there. The booth people, sure, but not me. Why, why would you do that to me? And that is why they're an enemy of the show now. Nobody has to agree with this. Everyone's looking at me like, very worried. Don't worry, this is my opinion, not anyone else's.

• 53:06Speaker 05

  Not to be like self promotional, but uh, it was one of the things that I really enjoyed about going to our conference TechCrunch Disrupt a couple of months ago. Cause I'd never gone to it before until I worked here and I was so almost like low level nervous walking in for the first time. Because it looks a lot like pep con and CS Unveiled. It's like people at like these little like cocktail tables with like a sign behind them of their company. Yeah, there's 200 that were there and I'm just so attuned to like the like Hawker vibe of these events here. Where it's like guys just popping out at you like they recognize your name or you're out and they're like, hey, can I tell you about the new robot vacuum? Like or whatever. And uh, and it was such a different experience because at least there we were trying to like find companies.

• 53:51Speaker 05

  These events, it's like they're paying to be here and there's really not like a vetting process. There's like some sorting, you know, that like each day it's going to get a little bit worse. But other than that, there's really not much of a bar for most of it. So it was, it was, I didn't realize how much like the pep coms and the CES unveiled had ruined me for like that experience until we went to our conference.

• 54:09Ed Zitron?

  We have like an assault style.

• 54:11Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 54:12Ed Zitron?

  And Karissa gets attacked by humans and robots apparently.

• 54:17Speaker 02

  Literal assault.

• 54:18Ed Zitron?

  Do they, do you feel like they treat you differently as a woman at the show?

• 54:21Speaker 06

  The robots?

• 54:23Ed Zitron?

  Well, I mean, I don't know a guy who got attacked by one. So yes, but no, that'd be, do you get treated differently?

• 54:27Speaker 02

  You know, you're the first woman to get attacked by that robot.

• 54:31Ed Zitron?

  They didn't specify that, man. But no, do they, do you get treated differently?

• 54:37Speaker 06

  You know, I think, I mean, I don't think that I do most of the time, but then you have those moments where somebody makes that comment like, oh, you're the first lady to drive this. And you're like, why?

• 54:46Ed Zitron?

  So ins-

• 54:47Speaker 06

  First what?

• 54:48Ed Zitron?

  Yeah.

• 54:49Speaker 06

  Second of all, like, why would you feel need to just say that out loud? So, you know, I think there's always those little moments, especially when you come to CES and, you know, you end up interacting with a lot of people who are maybe either like not used to interacting with so many people all the time or are just so exhausted from having to give their same speech over and over again that people say weird things. I try not to

• 55:15Speaker 02

  That's very generous of you. Edward had a similar statement when he had some weird stuff happen. We were down on the floor earlier and I think it's like the, I guess you just have to assume that like at baseline, these are the, it's like the least socially adept salespeople that you're likely to encounter.

• 55:30Speaker 06

  It's also just such an unnatural environment because you have so many people from all over squeezed into, you know, these really small spaces and you're just trying to survive.

• 55:41Speaker 02

  At least that's, you know, that's how I feel. They never get to go outside. It seems really brutal. You know, what it reminds me of, actually, this is like, that kind of puts a finger on something that I've been like kind of trying to figure out. I covered the dog show, the Westminster Kennel Club show many years ago.

• 55:55Speaker 06

  So jealous.

• 55:56Speaker 02

  And it was amazing. I would do it again for no money. It was the best experience I've had. Basically, I mean, whatever, it like isn't sports writing, you know, like I was able to sort of fake it at the time and have it pretend to be, you know, enough. But the people that, so part of that is like a trade show, you know, that like the dogs competing, you can go up on the floor. It's like literally the floor of the garden where like the Knicks play and watch like some corgis run in a circle. And I obviously had a great time doing that. It's like, you know, better than anything that happened at the Garden for like, until like Jalen Brunson came to town. But everything that happens below that is breeders trying to like basically get you to buy either their dog's seed or

• 56:39Speaker 02

  to like promote their, their breed, you know, that they're like, cause it is like, there's a eugenics light aspect to it where they're kind of just like my, like I'm a Belgian Malinois guy. Like that's everything about Belgian Malinois is more important to me than anything else about anything else in my life. And yet those people, so that's a level, again, like a baseline level of weirdness, like somebody that's just like such a terrier pervert that they can't like be normal, that other stuff. And yet like, There is something kind of like wholesome-ish about it too, because like they're, they're under this incredible duress. They're in like the room under the room, under the locker

• 57:18Speaker 02

  rooms at Madison Square Garden. It's like the room smells like dogs and people intensely.

• 57:25Ed Zitron?

  We're talking about the dog show still.

• 57:26Speaker 02

  The dog show, still, yes. And it gets, it gets worse and worse. And yet, like, they wouldn't be doing it if there wasn't some part of them that was like strange in the way that made that seem like a good idea to them at some point.

• 57:38Ed Zitron?

  Right.

• 57:39Speaker 02

  And I guess that's probably true to us. I mean, I don't know that that's true of everybody here.

• 57:42Ed Zitron?

  I actually think the difference is, most people are not like that here. Everyone is like, just like, I gotta fucking come here for the, I gotta, I gotta stand there and be like, yeah, this dishwasher can wash in five seconds. Please don't count how many seconds. It's eight.

• 57:53Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, I guess it's also there's like a level of uncanniness. It's more fun when it's dogs.

• 57:57Ed Zitron?

  But also, levels of, but also with a dog, I feel like there's, there's not that much abstraction. You know, you're getting like a fine ass terrier.

• 58:04Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 58:05Ed Zitron?

  Like this Pekingese is really gonna do it for you. You know what comes out theoretically. But with this, it's like you've got PR people, you've got like, sales development people, you've got random people who are just like, I kind of know the product and it's theoretical anyway. So it's like, I can't take that next step.

• 58:21Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 58:21Ed Zitron?

  If you need depth, I don't have it, man. And the guy who pays me will be very angry if he has to answer a question for reasons that I've chosen to ignore.

• 58:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's true. The, the dog version of that was basically like guys being like, oh yeah, he loves ice cream. You know, that's fine. You know, like, that was actually the most intense question that I had about this dog.

• 58:42Speaker 06

  The best is the, the look of panic that comes over, um, you know, someone in the booth's face when you, you ask what you think is a relatively simple, straightforward question.

• 58:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 58:51Speaker 06

  And they just get this look of sheer panic and they're like, well, I can find someone.

• 58:56Speaker 02

  We had one, when I was walking around with Edward, who actually is a tech journalist, there was a moment where like, there was one guy that was talking to us, he's sort of doing his sales thing. And then like, Edward started asking like, the good follow-ups that a tech journalist would ask, like in terms of like, do you have a prototype? Is it like, and it was exactly that. Like this guy who kind of reminded me a little bit of like Mark McKinney from Kids in the Hall, like just kind of like a big goofy Canadian guy being like, well, that's a Great question, I think. But there was a moment where he clearly was like, there were reach and grasp issues that were not going to be reconcilable. And he tapped himself out. He was like, there's our product guys eating pizza back there. Can you wait like 30 seconds? Because like, I'm not gonna like, lie to you and I can't tell you the truth. I don't know it. Which, you know, I found honorable.

• 59:38Ed Zitron?

  Most honest guy I'd see. Yeah. I walked up to the person, I told this story in the show already, and I was like, it was a thing claiming to be a new hope for autism and dyslexia. Yeah. Shocker, it wasn't. And I walked up and said, uh, Dev, you talked to the FDA about this? And they just went, what's that? Which is what we call a good start. And I had to walk away because I was too pissed off. But that happens a lot to me with almost everything. It's just so weird having a show with so many. I keep coming back to this point. I've said it, I think, every episode where it's like, it's so weird how much of this is fake. Just completely made up. Even the expensive ones.

• 1:00:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:00:17Ed Zitron?

  What the? I, even with cars, I didn't think you could fake that one. They got fucking wheels that go forward and backwards and side to side. Tesla sometime a little too much, but it's like, you can't fake, you can fake cars. Hundreds of millions of dollars, it sounds like.

• 1:00:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, and across multiple companies.

• 1:00:33Ed Zitron?

  I'm going insane. I, by the end of this trip, I'm gonna.

• 1:00:37Speaker 02

  I think it's nice.

• 1:00:39Ed Zitron?

  And I guess they're doing this so they can get more investment capital? They just like, keep doing the con?

• 1:00:44Speaker 02

  The car company in particular?

• 1:00:45Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, yeah, Faraday.

• 1:00:47Speaker 02

  Uh, I mean, they're trying to raise money from the Middle East now.

• 1:00:49Ed Zitron?

  Again?

• 1:00:50Speaker 02

  Yeah. From the UAE.

• 1:00:52Ed Zitron?

  Oh my god.

• 1:00:53Speaker 02

  They got a lot of money over there.

• 1:00:56Ed Zitron?

  I just, I, I keep bringing people in and hoping they'll help and help redeem this show, but they can't do it.

• 1:01:02Speaker 02

  I keep coming back, well, the dog door. There's a really good dog door.

• 1:01:05Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, okay, I talked to the cat door company, just to be clear. And I said, what was the training data you used for the company? And they said, oh, my cat. And he was British, so I gave him a little easier time. They're simple people. And but I wanted to be like, you've never seen those different shapes of cats alone? And he just had this video of this cat with a bird in its mouth, just shoving its face in again and again. And I just stood looking at it. And I think the guy worked out that I was already coming up with an annoying question and just turned his back to me.

• 1:01:34Speaker 05

  So it's honestly a pro move.

• 1:01:35Ed Zitron?

  No, no, that is expert offensive line work. But before we go, Karissa, how many CES is this for you?

• 1:01:43Speaker 06

  I think this is number seven.

• 1:01:44Ed Zitron?

  Nice. Sean?

• 1:01:46Speaker 05

  I think around the same, yeah.

• 1:01:47Ed Zitron?

  Yeah. Is this better or worse, would you say?

• 1:01:53Speaker 06

  Worse in the sense that I see less, fewer things that are really cool and interesting and excite me. And that might also just be because I'm more traded now from having done this seven times.

• 1:02:05Ed Zitron?

  It's their job to impress you.

• 1:02:07Speaker 06

  But better because I also get a lot less stressed out than when I first started coming to CES. You know, I used to show up and be so stressed out and make too many appointments and spend the whole week running around and forgetting to eat. And, you know, now I feel like I can, um, maybe not, relax is not the right word, but I can, uh, you know, have a, I don't get too, uh, too worried about it anymore.

• 1:02:31Ed Zitron?

  Sean?

• 1:02:32Speaker 05

  I think that's a really repeatable experience for the people who do it a lot, where you start to realize, you realize you can let go of what seems important. But I do think it tracks with there being maybe less interesting stuff. Cause we're also just in this weird, it's like a, a moment where so many people have started over the line with the AI stuff. And like, people feel like, oh, I better do it too, regardless of the product. So, I don't know. In that sense, I feel like it's worse, but I, it better in that I know how to like hack the experience more because I.

• 1:03:07Ed Zitron?

  More efficient.

• 1:03:07Speaker 05

  I got, well, I like, I came here with goals and I like accomplished some of those goals, but those goals are not about like finding a lot of new technology. It's like, I know people are going to be here who I need to get information out of.

• 1:03:18Ed Zitron?

  Right.

• 1:03:18Speaker 05

  Or, or build a relationship with. And it's like, that's more of what I'm after. Although you have, you can't separate yourself from all the other stuff, so.

• 1:03:29Ed Zitron?

  So I will now get information from you. Where can people find you, Sean?

• 1:03:33Speaker 05

  I'm at TechCrunch. Go to techcrunch.com. It's a great website.

• 1:03:37Ed Zitron?

  Hell, yeah.

• 1:03:37Speaker 05

  I'm on Blue Sky. Sean Kane.

• 1:03:39Ed Zitron?

  Karissa?

• 1:03:40Speaker 06

  I'm at Engadget and social media, Blue Sky, Threads. Still technically have an account on X.

• 1:03:48Ed Zitron?

  The everything app, yes, of course.

• 1:03:49Speaker 06

  Yes. You just Google my name, you'll find.

• 1:03:51Ed Zitron?

  Okay. And David?

• 1:03:53Speaker 02

  Rightfordefector.com. I have the podcast there, It's The Distraction. I have a podcast about Hallmark movies called It's Christmas Town. It did the alternating thing, like we discussed earlier.

• 1:04:02Ed Zitron?

  I'm still putting it everywhere.

• 1:04:03Speaker 02

  And, yeah, davidjroth@bsky or .bsky.social.

• 1:04:09Ed Zitron?

  My name's Adam, 38 years old, and I just started a podcast called Better Offline. It's paid for by the bloody ads that follow this, so can you please click them this time? I'm going to lose the podcast if I'm not careful, so please look at the ads. I need this.

• 1:04:33Speaker 01

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• 1:05:06Speaker 03

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• 1:05:40Ed Zitron?

  Welcome back to the show. It's me, Ed Zitch, on You're the Thing to Better Offline. You're still within the same episode. Why am I reintroducing you? You don't need this. But more importantly, I'm joined by Rob Pegoraro.

• 1:05:50Speaker 02

  Hello.

• 1:05:51Ed Zitron?

  Old school dogs of freelance tech journalism.

• 1:05:53Speaker 02

  I'm feeling very old after five days here for CES.

• 1:05:57Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, this place ages. It's the beach that makes you old of tech. So what are you writing for right now?

• 1:06:01Speaker 02

  PC Mag, Fast Company, Wirecutter, various other publications as they come up.

• 1:06:06Ed Zitron?

  How many CESs?

• 1:06:08Speaker 02

  This is the 27th for me.

• 1:06:10Ed Zitron?

  No.

• 1:06:11Speaker 02

  That's not...

• 1:06:11Ed Zitron?

  Hell, yeah.

• 1:06:12Speaker 02

  1998 onwards. So the only one I did not attend in person didn't happen in person, 2021. And at the start of that, I realized, yeah, my kid has never seen me that week of January, either has my wife, because we started dating in 1999.

• 1:06:27Ed Zitron?

  So was it always called CES?

• 1:06:29Speaker 02

  It was originally the Consumer Electronics Show, then it was the International CES. Now it's just CES. It's like ARP. It doesn't stand for anything anymore.

• 1:06:37Ed Zitron?

  Right.

• 1:06:38Speaker 02

  That's interesting.

• 1:06:39Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, we had a debate a day or two ago. Honestly, at this point, I have no idea what day it is. Let's be honest, fellas.

• 1:06:47Speaker 02

  Four, five?

• 1:06:48Ed Zitron?

  Thursday.

• 1:06:51Ed Zitron?

  But no one really knew.

• 1:06:52Speaker 02

  It's definitely a weekday. Yeah, that seems clear.

• 1:06:54Ed Zitron?

  Now, we're at the point in the week, and you will know this from your immense experience, that CES begins to just crackle. Like, everyone left over on the Thursday is just like, I just want to see my family again.

• 1:07:05Speaker 02

  Yes, yes. But also, traffic starts getting a little bit better.

• 1:07:09Ed Zitron?

  Right.

• 1:07:09Speaker 02

  The line to get lunch, or a cup of coffee, or a beer, whatever, it's not as bad as it was two days ago.

• 1:07:15Ed Zitron?

  Right. Well, have you had a good show?

• 1:07:19Speaker 02

  Yes, I have. Yes, I'm very tired.

• 1:07:21Ed Zitron?

  Fun or enjoyable?

• 1:07:22Speaker 02

  Yeah. You know, to me, the most interesting transformation of CES, I've seen it over the years, how first it started becoming a car show, to the extent that it basically killed off the January Chicago North American International Auto Show. Although, Chicago weather in January may have had some factor in that, too.

• 1:07:40Ed Zitron?

  Right.

• 1:07:41Speaker 02

  But then it's become all these other aspects of it. So now you have the West Hall of the Las Vegas Convention Center, where you have like giant earth-moving machinery from Caterpillar.

• 1:07:52Ed Zitron?

  Right.

• 1:07:52Speaker 02

  John Deere's got a lineup of agricultural and, you know, construction machinery. You have boat makers.

• 1:08:00Ed Zitron?

  Right.

• 1:08:01Speaker 02

  We've got Oshkosh showing off a battery electric garbage truck and the cute little duck billed truck they're building for the US Postal Service.

• 1:08:10Ed Zitron?

  Right.

• 1:08:10Speaker 02

  Oh, they have that here? Oh, yeah, yeah. It's like my dream to see that truck because I feel like they're gonna spike the project. I'm a little worried about, yes, my, my new neighbor coming to Washington DC. They're super behind on it, right? Or is it, there's, or there was another company that was screwing it up worse? No, it's near times that the Wall Street Journal said, yeah, they've shipped way fewer than they should have. Yeah, I was like. They, they say they're delivering in volume now and I'd like to see them because yeah, the, the letter carriers in my neighborhood are using these Carter administration vintage. The ones without AC. Yeah, and I'm like, every time I see one, I'm like, is, is the wheel gonna fall off while I'm looking at it? Yeah, it's miraculous that they're still upright. Right. It's like the pictures you see from Havana where they're just like, kept a Studebaker going for 60 years. We're actually gonna sell them to the Cubans next. Yeah.

• 1:08:55Ed Zitron?

  Well, I'm surprised we haven't threatened to take over there at this point, but well.

• 1:08:59Speaker 02

  Don't give any putting in ideas.

• 1:09:00Ed Zitron?

  I think they've already had this.

• 1:09:01Speaker 02

  We're gonna buy it, we're gonna do a great deal. It doesn't even feel funny anymore.

• 1:09:05Ed Zitron?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:05Speaker 02

  We hate doing it, I hate doing the voice now.

• 1:09:07Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, the voice is less enjoyable due to the consequences, but have you enjoyed any? Is there something you've seen that actually like, felt good? I'm really desperate at this point. I'm like, everyone I talk to is just like, well, I saw something that worked.

• 1:09:20Speaker 02

  Well, yeah, so there's a lot of junk, there's a lot of AI slop out there. Like, so I stopped by Amazon's booth, they, they have this feature where you can have your Fire TV show art on the wall. Samsung did that with The Frame.

• 1:09:33Ed Zitron?

  I've always wanted to put stuff on my wall that looked good.

• 1:09:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's a good idea. You know, I hear you can go to stores that sell exactly that stuff.

• 1:09:39Ed Zitron?

  That sounds implausible, anyway.

• 1:09:41Speaker 02

  And so you can ask the Fire TV to do some art via generative AI.

• 1:09:44Ed Zitron?

  Oh.

• 1:09:45Speaker 02

  And so they're, well, okay, I'm, I'm gonna be a nerd about this. I said, uh, draw a New Glenn rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral in Florida. And the first time I'd heard nuclear rocket, and then I drew it to this generic rocket and like, okay, at least it's not a rocket with a reactor, cooling tower attached to whatever. Then I said, it's slower, and then still drew a generic rocket. I thought, shouldn't Amazon's AI know about its founders' space company?

• 1:10:16Ed Zitron?

  These things don't know anything.

• 1:10:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, people are throwing AI into anything and everything. So see, now I'm just complaining about.

• 1:10:21Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, just bad.

• 1:10:22Speaker 02

  I'm just gonna stick with that for a little while.

• 1:10:24Ed Zitron?

  That's fine.

• 1:10:24Speaker 02

  Delta had this keynote. So this is a mix of good and bad. The production values were nuts. I'd never been to this here before.

• 1:10:31Ed Zitron?

  Right.

• 1:10:32Speaker 02

  And so they had this thing at the start where it's the the screen that envelops you goes all around and above and around you.

• 1:10:38Ed Zitron?

  Right.

• 1:10:39Speaker 02

  Uh, it's a sort of cockpit perspective of taking off down the runway.

• 1:10:43Ed Zitron?

  That's kind of cool.

• 1:10:44Speaker 02

  Seeing it speed at you, the the subwoofers in the seats rumble as if, you know, you're on the plane. And they've got these fans blowing wind faster and faster.

• 1:10:54Ed Zitron?

  It's exactly like Shrek 40.

• 1:10:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. And so the and they had the whole smell-a-vision feature, which I didn't actually know about.

• 1:11:01Ed Zitron?

  No, man.

• 1:11:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:11:02Ed Zitron?

  I don't want to smell it.

• 1:11:04Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:11:05Ed Zitron?

  The guy next to you on the plane.

• 1:11:07Speaker 02

  You can smell the awful lasagna that they're serving.

• 1:11:10Ed Zitron?

  Lasagna.

• 1:11:12Speaker 02

  Uh, even even that's good comfort plane food.

• 1:11:16Speaker 02

  The Uber CEO showed up because they're doing a partnership and he had a sort of joke delivery of two hazelnut lattes. And so they they had the smell of it actually smelled like a good hazelnut or caramel latte.

• 1:11:29Ed Zitron?

  And that guy got paid $3.

• 1:11:31Speaker 02

  Probably, yes. And the last part was maybe they wouldn't do this now. It was fireworks bursting over downtown LA.

• 1:11:39Ed Zitron?

  Ah.

• 1:11:39Speaker 02

  And the the air filled with the sort of smell of gunpowder like you would have if it were actual fireworks. Yeah, they might.

• 1:11:45Ed Zitron?

  One of those poorly timed ones by accident.

• 1:11:47Speaker 02

  Seemed like a great idea two weeks ago.

• 1:11:48Ed Zitron?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:49Speaker 02

  Uh, so great stagecraft. It was really neat. Uh, but then the announcement, they had this Delta concierge, which will be this Gen AI assistant in the flight Delta app.

• 1:11:58Ed Zitron?

  We've heard a little bit about this, but I love specifics.

• 1:12:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I I'm an AF geek. I I fly a lot. I'm with United, being based in DC. And they're talking about things like it will suggest alternate ways to get to the airport. Uh, your best best path to it through it. I thought, is that really AI? Because like United's app will say, you know, you can use TSA Pre. Uh, don't forget the United Club is here. Uh, I was doing things like it will book an Uber for you where when you land, which an example was a woman taking a business class flight to Tokyo.

• 1:12:30Ed Zitron?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:12:31Speaker 02

  Like, take the train, man. It's Japan. What are you doing?

• 1:12:34Ed Zitron?

  Take the but like, but also you can also just do this by using your finger.

• 1:12:39Speaker 02

  Right. Yeah. And so all these sort of contrived examples. Uh, and of course, obviously you can't talk about AI on airlines without. Air Canada had a chatbot which made up a customer service.

• 1:12:50Ed Zitron?

  Which wasn't even GPT, by the way. It wasn't even. Oh, no, I I've been over this one because people really want to make this one. No, it's going to be shit in the future, not in the past.

• 1:13:00Speaker 02

  Yeah. And so I'm like, there, there's lots of ways this could go bad. And the actual examples seem kind of, you know. Are you sure this isn't just software?

• 1:13:08Ed Zitron?

  But also not that exciting or useful?

• 1:13:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, you know, I'm like, I'm thinking areas where I could use help. AI would be useful if when like your flight gets canceled, or if you were trying to fly here on Monday. When there was a snowstorm in DC. Evaluate my options. What's the, the best chances me getting here?

• 1:13:29Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, like Flighty, which is one of the best apps of all time. Flighty is just what if an air, a flight tracking piece of software worked? It will tell you, it will tell you usually more reliably whether your flight is being moved or canceled. But Delta appears to have come up with a new idea, which is less useful.

• 1:13:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, you know, they're, they're talking about they're going to have YouTube clips curated in the seatback entertainment.

• 1:13:53Ed Zitron?

  That's fine. I never know what I want to watch on YouTube.

• 1:13:56Speaker 02

  Uh, you know, the Uber partnership, a lot of it was just a whole lot of stagecraft. And apparently it didn't go over well on the YouTube stream. In the audience, it was, it was a lot of Delta employees. So it was a big love fest for all the. Delta employees who I guess really do like their CEO, which you cannot count on in the airline industry.

• 1:14:14Ed Zitron?

  Right. Or they were probably worried to not like miss me.

• 1:14:17Speaker 02

  I, I don't know. I don't spend enough time on the airline. Was he a real showman?

• 1:14:20Ed Zitron?

  You guys.

• 1:14:21Speaker 02

  Ed Bastian, he's, he's, he's had enough. He, he, he's not like a natural at it, but he didn't seem like overwhelmed or, you know. Like I've seen a lot of Musky keynotes. Not what you want? No. Well, even less these days. Yes. Well, that's true. Yeah. That just form and content being separated in this case. Right. Yes. Form, content, substance, style, et cetera.

• 1:14:44Ed Zitron?

  What was Lenny Kravitz like?

• 1:14:45Speaker 02

  He was good. Like I'd not seen play before.

• 1:14:48Ed Zitron?

  Did he play circus?

• 1:14:50Speaker 02

  I don't think he did that.

• 1:14:51Ed Zitron?

  By him.

• 1:14:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, it's. Heard out with are you gonna go my way and of course the the closing song was fly away. Got to do that. How many songs did he play? Was it like a proper? Forty five minutes. It was like, you know. Oh, that's actually.

• 1:15:02Ed Zitron?

  A decent set. You got like a festival set.

• 1:15:04Speaker 02

  I mean, I was glad it was that short because they did have to go on to the next.

• 1:15:08Ed Zitron?

  And you were in the pit.

• 1:15:09Speaker 02

  Uh, no, the the press sheets were in like the 200 level.

• 1:15:14Ed Zitron?

  Those are actually really good. I watched the NHL draft there and it was really cool like. But like the sphere is objectively cool.

• 1:15:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, so my the parts of CS have enjoyed the most are the unusual experiences. The sphere, uh, Sunday afternoon, I had a ride in a Zooks Robo Taxi.

• 1:15:29Ed Zitron?

  How was that?

• 1:15:30Speaker 02

  Pretty cool. Um, very smooth in general. It gets a little skittish around traffic cones. And we had this part at the end, which there were a lot because you all apparently never stop repaving or rebuilding the streets.

• 1:15:42Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, yeah, but it constant state of chaos here.

• 1:15:44Speaker 02

  Yeah. And so this one road, there was a lane, a row of traffic cones, a lane, another row of traffic cones. Car drives between the two of them and stops as if it's just been like, uh, now what? Yeah, this seems like you got the actual Robo Taxi experience. And so then apparently there's some sort of overseer who could say, you can back up. And so for people who haven't seen this, this is a pure Robo Taxi. It's not a converted car or anything.

• 1:16:12Ed Zitron?

  Like Waymo is like a Jaguar with a wheel.

• 1:16:15Speaker 02

  Two seats on each side facing each other. There's no front or back end.

• 1:16:19Ed Zitron?

  Hmm.

• 1:16:19Speaker 02

  There's an engine over.

• 1:16:20Ed Zitron?

  That's kind of cool.

• 1:16:21Speaker 02

  Over both sets of.

• 1:16:22Ed Zitron?

  It's electric, right?

• 1:16:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:16:26Speaker 02

  And so it can reverse, um, front end becomes the back end, whatever. We backed up, went into another lane. It was fine.

• 1:16:34Ed Zitron?

  Right.

• 1:16:34Speaker 02

  And we had a couple of moments where people looked at it. You know, if you're in a Robo Taxi, there are these rock star moments where people are like, is that what I think it is?

• 1:16:43Ed Zitron?

  Right.

• 1:16:44Speaker 02

  So this guy Tesla starts doing video of us at a stoplight, mind you, not driving. Um, the, this couple in a Jeep were like waving hi and they were rolling down the window, but you can't open the window on a, on a zoo.

• 1:16:56Ed Zitron?

  Should have banged on the side.

• 1:16:58Speaker 02

  So help me, get held up aside like we're just like thumbs up.

• 1:17:01Ed Zitron?

  Can't get out.

• 1:17:02Speaker 02

  Yes. Uh, and Monday afternoon I took a little field trip to Lake Mead.

• 1:17:07Ed Zitron?

  Right.

• 1:17:07Speaker 02

  There's a company called Arc.

• 1:17:08Ed Zitron?

  Uh, the, the electric boat Sean O'Kane just told us about.

• 1:17:11Speaker 02

  Battery electric. Yeah. And that thing hauls ass.

• 1:17:14Ed Zitron?

  That's cool.

• 1:17:15Speaker 02

  Yeah. And, and apparently I, I'm not a boat guy. I like, I like other people's boats.

• 1:17:21Ed Zitron?

  Right.

• 1:17:22Speaker 02

  Uh, I had not looked up winterization checklists for boats. You don't want to do that. It's a whole lot of work if you have a gas engine.

• 1:17:31Ed Zitron?

  And this is why I don't have a boat.

• 1:17:32Speaker 02

  Yeah. Well, also this thing is like, it will cost $258,000, I think.

• 1:17:38Ed Zitron?

  Only?

• 1:17:39Speaker 02

  Yeah. Uh, I don't know what boats cost. I don't.

• 1:17:41Ed Zitron?

  My, my regular series of boats.

• 1:17:43Speaker 02

  Prefer boat as a service where somebody else you know has it.

• 1:17:47Ed Zitron?

  That was quite literally a 2013 era startup called Boatbound, I believe.

• 1:17:52Speaker 02

  Sure. Why not? Sounds plausible.

• 1:17:53Ed Zitron?

  It actually existed. Pray for the end. Anyway, but it, it sounds like the fast electric boat was fun, at least.

• 1:18:00Speaker 02

  Yeah. And you know, the, the whole way we're, we're finding ways to electrify all these different modes of transit. That's good.

• 1:18:06Ed Zitron?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:07Speaker 02

  That's good and useful stuff.

• 1:18:08Ed Zitron?

  How do you charge that thing though?

• 1:18:10Speaker 02

  Same. Uh, it's actually the same kind of plug on most non-Tesla EVs. The J1772 slow charging.

• 1:18:19Ed Zitron?

  How does that do with water?

• 1:18:21Speaker 02

  It's all sealed. Uh, so the whole thing, yeah, the, the battery's in a sealed compartment. Uh, the plug itself is at like the top of the hull. You, you step over it, boarding.

• 1:18:32Ed Zitron?

  Right.

• 1:18:32Speaker 02

  And the whole model is this is something built to tow like, uh, water skiers. Where people like surfing on the wake. So you don't spend overnight with it. You do like four to six hours. Everyone is tired, needs a nap, dock it, plug it in. And slow charging is overnight is fine.

• 1:18:52Ed Zitron?

  Right. But it worked, though.

• 1:18:55Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:18:56Ed Zitron?

  It actually worked.

• 1:18:56Speaker 02

  And also, like, just pulling out in the no-wake zone on the lake, really quiet, and there's no smell of gasoline, like, regular boats, they're, they're, they make a certain amount of noise. Yeah, it's not an efficient engine, by any stretch.

• 1:19:09Ed Zitron?

  So, Ed, David, you went to the Venetian Expo, and you went down to the Eureka Zone.

• 1:19:14Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:19:15Ed Zitron?

  Real toilet bowl.

• 1:19:16Speaker 02

  I was there earlier today.

• 1:19:18Ed Zitron?

  What did you fellas see? What wonders did you?

• 1:19:21Speaker 02

  I thought it would be weirder than it was.

• 1:19:23Ed Zitron?

  It really is disappointing.

• 1:19:24Speaker 02

  I've, I've seen weirder stuff there, yes. Yeah, I was prepared to go down there, and it was just gonna be like, a hairdryer that's been trained to scream at you. You know, just like nonsense tech sold to you by maniacs. Yeah, let me look through my notes to see if anything sort of jumped out at me. We had, I think the biggest challenge for us, and this is maybe it's my sense of direction issue, is just finding stuff that, like, there's multiple food courts, and then there's a lot of, like, country-type zones. Yes, the, the French tech one is the single biggest occupant of space.

• 1:19:55Ed Zitron?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was, I mean, like, some of the stuff I saw was, like, boring but useful. There was some French startup, they make a little podgy stick on the floor of a garage to tell you, is this an ICE car or an EV? Has the EV been there too long?

• 1:20:10Ed Zitron?

  And ICE means internal combustion.

• 1:20:11Speaker 02

  Internal combustion, yeah. Uh, which, you know, boring but useful. Yeah. Probably need that.

• 1:20:16Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, but nothing really weird and fun?

• 1:20:20Speaker 02

  It was weird. I, I, so I had, I don't want to try to gas you up here on the podcast. Gas him up. As an actual journalist, watching you ask good questions of people that were, we were sort of wandering around the, like, accessibility tech, uh, area, and that stuff is, like, kind of hard to parse in some ways, because it's like, it seems useful to me. I don't have, you know, limited mobility. Right. And it does have that sort of veneer of it, and yet, you were able to, and I don't, I don't want to make you, like, break down your own tape here, like, it's

• 1:20:53Speaker 02

  John Gruden's quarterback club, but there's...

• 1:20:56Ed Zitron?

  Well, I, I think there's one major reason why that would...

• 1:20:58Speaker 02

  Well, right, but the, in this case, it's like, you asked a series of questions about that, uh, the, like, Bluetooth earpiece thing that I found, like, really illuminating in terms of, like, how this stuff gets sold. Yeah, do you? Yeah, yeah, so we, there's a section of the area that was for digital health, and some of it was for... Uh, people who are unable to use their arms and so you want to give them some tech that they can put in their ear or somewhere close enough to the jaw so that when they clench that can be um assistive.

• 1:21:30Ed Zitron?

  Right.

• 1:21:30Speaker 02

  Be used in place of their arms. When we first approached one of the booths, the guy was pitching it as uh something that would be useful immediately in retail. Let's say you're at like a fast food restaurant or at some sort of store and you are unable to use your hands because you're doing another task.

• 1:21:45Ed Zitron?

  Right.

• 1:21:45Speaker 02

  You can, you know, clench your jaw or use it in a certain way. And he was talking about how, you know, these firms love their product because they are able to have the workers, you know, do multiple tasks at once.

• 1:21:56Ed Zitron?

  Perfect.

• 1:21:57Speaker 02

  And then we talked to the product guy and there's actually, there's nothing. There's no real product. It's in development and the core concern is accessibility, which makes sense. Like it is people who are not able bodied and then all this other stuff is uh proposed, it it feels as if a way to attract investment so that they can do the core thing that they actually want to do, which is.

• 1:22:20Ed Zitron?

  One would hope.

• 1:22:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, you know, I would, I would hope so. Or it could be reversed, which is that you are developing something that is clear, concrete and and has a definite use case. Um, but then pitching investors the much more speculative and spurious thing so that you can scale up and build and never really eventually land there, but keep, you know, pulling in funds. I feel bad for the investors now. That sounds terrible. Also, what was interesting to me about that was like tonally, and we were talking about this, the difference in the approach between like the marketing guy who like kind of knew some stuff, but was mostly just like a goofball Canadian dude. Yeah. And then the, the product guy who was more or less able to be like, not only in

• 1:23:02Speaker 02

  the sense that one guy's like, we've already got a prominent fast food place that's like ready to place an order. So like act now. Yeah. And then the other dude was just sort of, it, once you got into the, like, as you were saying, like the accessibility stuff, like it more or less makes sense. Yeah. Like there, the things that you'd be doing with it uh are, you know, which is basically, it's like a very small facial gesture.

• 1:23:22Ed Zitron?

  What are the, what are the things you're actually? Like what are the commands you're making?

• 1:23:26Speaker 02

  So in conjunction with moving your hand or maybe tilting it with some sort of micro-expressions or small gestures with clenching your jaw, you'd be able to move cursors, click, you know, very simple commands. But the way that the marketing guy was talking about it was as if you would be able to immediately, as someone's making an order, parse through a menu or a screen faster than you could tactile. And then like make change. Yeah. Right. And so the product guy was basically like the way that he explained it, which I thought was like pretty honest was like, you know, so it's like building like a sort of a user interface and like theoretically you could get really complex with it, you know, that it could, all of these could be different applications.

• 1:24:10Speaker 02

  But at some point you're making a lot of expressions and you're like moving your nose very slightly because you're basically like scrolling through this long series of options so that you can select that this person is trying to get like a four-piece box. Right. You know, and like he, you know, obviously he was like professional, he wasn't like, that's a stupid use for this technology. But it was the sort of thing where you could see how like that is not just like sort of harder and like further down the line. It's also like, it's hard to make something that is designed to be one thing do something else, like theoretically it could happen.

• 1:24:45Ed Zitron?

  It sounds like, it sounds like it isn't designed for anything because it doesn't exist.

• 1:24:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:24:49Ed Zitron?

  But also it doesn't sound like they've tried it, like they, they didn't even have a prototype.

• 1:24:54Speaker 02

  When we talked about it, they said they were in late-stage prototype development with partners and tried to press them on what that meant. Doesn't seem like it's an actual thing.

• 1:25:04Ed Zitron?

  They can cover a multitude.

• 1:25:04Speaker 02

  Yeah. Is there like any transitive state of superposition? Oh, okay, you're the PR guy.

• 1:25:10Ed Zitron?

  Yeah. No, no, so speaking to the, I can actually speak to this, nothing exists. In my opinion, this is my professional opinion, not having seen it, but anytime, and I don't work with, never worked with clients like this. I think the time I stopped was in like 2014 when I had my first client that just had something completely fucking made up. And like the fit, they had a thing like a nutrition thing, I'm being as vague as possible. And it's set on fire during a demo.

• 1:25:34Speaker 02

  Mmm.

• 1:25:35Ed Zitron?

  Which is traditionally not a great nutrition thing. I guess if you're eating something. Nevertheless, that was them like, I need to up the quality control. Because if they're saying, yeah, late-stage prototype development.

• 1:25:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:25:48Ed Zitron?

  That phrase has been through a few people, none of them lawyers.

• 1:25:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:25:51Ed Zitron?

  Because the lawyer would be like, don't say, don't say. It's kind of a lot of words when you say.

• 1:25:55Speaker 02

  It is sort of taking them a long time for you to say that you don't have a thing.

• 1:25:59Ed Zitron?

  Yeah. Like, there's nothing to use. And if they're saying, if they had the way around that professionally is you actually have a video of someone using it. And you, they go, well, we'll do rendering. You're like, no, no, no, no, no.

• 1:26:11Speaker 02

  There's none of that. All that was, was it felt like there was an earpiece that someone had, but there were no efforts or, you know, attempt to demonstrate it. And purely sort of like the X-ray blue outline of a body. Illustrations illuminating what muscle groups would be used when clenching your jaw, which is.

• 1:26:33Ed Zitron?

  These also feel like very different use cases though. Because the experience of, I imagine, not having arms, like not, not actually being able to move one's body. And the things you would need to do as a result are vastly different to someone who just doesn't have their hands free.

• 1:26:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:26:49Ed Zitron?

  On top of that, people have different sized faces.

• 1:26:53Speaker 02

  That's, yeah, we talked about this a bit where it's like, you know, what you would need to do to be able to, with micro expressions, muscles, whatever, outpace tactile manipulation. Or do it fast enough where you could do it and have it as a secondary task. I mean, we're, we're getting into like sci-fi territory at that point. Because you need to be able to what? Create some sort of design that, you know, it would distinguish between all these gestures, be able to immediately and reliably 100% of the time, get them to, get to there and be able to internally manipulate them with thought. Because this is also a non-invasive alternative to brain implants.

• 1:27:32Speaker 02

  So it has to somehow create a mental schema that's one-to-one matching with gestures, movements, you know? We're, we're getting into territory where each step is less and less feasible or even constructive.

• 1:27:46Ed Zitron?

  Did they say how they would receive the signals? Would it be?

• 1:27:51Speaker 02

  Uh, what did they say? Uh, EM? It was EM, EMGs, which was, I don't remember what that stood for. It honestly, it seemed legit enough to me, again, as a simpleton. I also invested $300 million. I mean. We all will. But the, there, it was like one of those things where like, more or less, the technology seemed to make sense. The usage didn't seem to make sense. Like, I believe that there is probably like, high level engineering that could make something like this work. I don't think that there's anything that's like, gonna make it work for Wendy's. Yeah. You know, but that was. Also, one example I think of, there, I've seen, I think, two different companies doing some, some kind of powered exoskeleton. And it is, it will help you hike.

• 1:28:36Ed Zitron?

  Oh, I want, I want the robot, too. Like, I want an ultra strong.

• 1:28:39Speaker 02

  If you can do that, and so it works naturally with you, not like against you. You know, older people who might have, at risk of falling.

• 1:28:47Ed Zitron?

  Which, this stuff sounds great.

• 1:28:50Speaker 02

  You know, ask anyone that's got a little relatives, gravity can kind of be terrible for older people. Yeah. That's why I'm gonna retire to a space station if I can afford it by then. But yeah, that's, it's interesting also how you'd market it, because I did see those, that was, yesterday I saw that. And it was definitely sort of like, a lifestyle enhancer, like the way that they were pitching it was being like, you know, you're gonna be able to hike like you never hiked before. Yeah, you get the tech bro who wants to be like Iron Man. Right, I'm trying to. Make that money and use it to then, uh, you productize it for a larger market. Yeah. And in this case, it was like the, the idea that you had to imagine the larger market, because I guess of like how comparatively unglamorous to investors, the actual market would be. Pivot. Yeah.

• 1:29:33Ed Zitron?

  So, Rob, would you say this is a more bullshit or less bullshit?

• 1:29:37Speaker 02

  Yeah. Hmm. I might say slightly less.

• 1:29:40Ed Zitron?

  Really?

• 1:29:41Speaker 02

  Like, one thing I've seen less of, uh, and this is a piece I still needed to do for PC Mag, 8K television. You go back like four years ago, or six years, everyone was like, well, it's gonna be the next 4K. I'm like, actually, it's the next 3D.

• 1:29:54Ed Zitron?

  And 4K is yet to be the next 4K as well.

• 1:29:56Speaker 02

  It's become the, it's, it's become a sort of Pyrrhic victory for the industry. Got it adopted. It's in any set you'd buy bigger than like forty two inches. But because everybody's doing it, there's no profit margin left, which was the problem it was supposed to solve.

• 1:30:11Ed Zitron?

  Right.

• 1:30:12Speaker 02

  Uh, but yeah, AK Samsung is still trying to make it happen. No one else is.

• 1:30:16Ed Zitron?

  Right.

• 1:30:17Speaker 02

  And I'm like, that's great. The industry realized no one actually wants to buy this.

• 1:30:21Ed Zitron?

  So they found a new thing that no one wanted to buy.

• 1:30:24Speaker 02

  You know, yeah, like.

• 1:30:25Ed Zitron?

  AI.

• 1:30:26Speaker 02

  Just add AI as a label, like what Delta's doing with the concierge that may be just software.

• 1:30:32Ed Zitron?

  I just.

• 1:30:33Speaker 02

  You know, your AK TVs now have AI upscaling instead of just upscaling.

• 1:30:37Ed Zitron?

  No, they were doing that last year.

• 1:30:38Speaker 02

  That probably.

• 1:30:39Ed Zitron?

  They absolutely were doing that. If they're trying to sell that shit again.

• 1:30:42Speaker 02

  Is there a distinction between those two things?

• 1:30:45Ed Zitron?

  Well, 8K is actually 8K resolution versus upscaling, which is effectively filling in the frame.

• 1:30:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, which you need because there's nothing to watch in 8K.

• 1:30:54Ed Zitron?

  Well, you can't even watch terrestrial television on 4K.

• 1:30:57Speaker 02

  So in theory, you can't.

• 1:30:58Ed Zitron?

  Well, you can in theory.

• 1:30:59Speaker 02

  Next gen, but that's not going to be doable until stations take that. Note, my first CES was the introduction of digital TV in nineteen ninety eight.

• 1:31:08Ed Zitron?

  Geez.

• 1:31:08Speaker 02

  And that's, y'all can't see the gray hairs on my head, most of which are CES's fault. Why would you watch something in 4K?

• 1:31:15Ed Zitron?

  I would watch a football game in 4K.

• 1:31:17Speaker 02

  If it's a big enough screen, you're appreciated. Like, I was a skeptic for a long time. The monitor on my Mac at home is a 4K screen. And yeah, for all mankind is pretty great at that level.

• 1:31:26Ed Zitron?

  Sport, like baseball especially with very precise placement, but past that point, really.

• 1:31:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, now there's no reason for 8K and, you know, maybe, I guess the sphere, I guess, has sixteen K screens on the wall. But that's the definition of an edge case.

• 1:31:40Ed Zitron?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:40Speaker 02

  If your East case is a two billion dollar building in Vegas.

• 1:31:45Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, the constantly loses money as well.

• 1:31:47Speaker 02

  Also, to your point on the watching things in 4K things, like I think, so we're also, uh, current on For All Mankind. Last two seasons are pretty preposterous, but it's like, you know, it's got its strong suits. I've noticed that, and this is the case with a lot of the Netflix stuff, which they make them shoot on 4K cameras, right?

• 1:32:05Ed Zitron?

  I've also never seen. This show.

• 1:32:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's it's a really goofy show. It's like a space soap opera, but.

• 1:32:09Ed Zitron?

  Okay.

• 1:32:09Speaker 02

  I'm a space nerd. I like it. But a lot of the issues, I like it too. But so the effects look incredible. The scenes of people talking in rooms often look like a telenovela to me. Like they're. Overly sharp. Yeah. And that's like an issue with a lot of Netflix stuff too, because they they shoot in 4K and then they have to mush it down to get it through your pipes. And then it expands again on your TV. And that's why everything on Netflix kind of looks like you're watching it on your phone, even though you're watching it on your TV, I think. This is like my understanding of it. But I do think that there's like, as much as it would be cool to like, watch sports like that. And I do think it's true. Like I, you know, have my mind blown by like, how good a lot of the TV displays were in the big, um, you know,

• 1:32:48Speaker 02

  TV manufactured things that I looked at this morning. And yet it's like, we, you do kind of at some point like bump up against the

• 1:32:59Speaker 02

  like necessity question on any of this stuff like. Yeah, like the whole Apple definition of a retina display, like, can you no longer see the the constituent pixels? Which is absolutely a thing in TVs. And so, yeah, you need such a huge screen for 8K to be discernibly better. And so.

• 1:33:16Ed Zitron?

  There was no content for it, like.

• 1:33:18Speaker 02

  No, there's nothing. The odd time that IFA in Berlin, I want to say like two years ago.

• 1:33:23Ed Zitron?

  And that's, what is IFA? Just for the.

• 1:33:25Speaker 02

  It's the, basically the European version of CES.

• 1:33:28Ed Zitron?

  Okay.

• 1:33:28Speaker 02

  It originally stood for German for International Radio Show. I don't speak German, but it's like. Internationale Funkstelle. Now they say it's innovation for all.

• 1:33:37Ed Zitron?

  Well, I do, and that was flawless. Okay, I don't.

• 1:33:41Speaker 02

  And it that IFA has gone on from like 2023, except for a few years in the 40s, don't like to talk about. And so Samsung had commissioned an 8K version of the Sirius Dass Boot.

• 1:33:55Ed Zitron?

  Okay.

• 1:33:56Speaker 02

  And that's like literally the only time I've seen a TV vendor get you something to watch in 8K.

• 1:34:01Ed Zitron?

  And that shows like, the movie's like four and a half, isn't that very?

• 1:34:04Speaker 02

  I didn't even know they made a. Series out of the movie.

• 1:34:06Ed Zitron?

  Oh, sorry, the series.

• 1:34:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:34:08Ed Zitron?

  I know the movie's very long.

• 1:34:10Speaker 02

  I have watched the movie and it was in an old school theater in DC on Connecticut Avenue. Yeah, the movie's from like 1985, too. I feel like watching that in 8K would feel like you were on LSD. Yeah, over processed. Yeah, like just like you're so much closer to Jürgen Prunk now than you really need to be.

• 1:34:26Ed Zitron?

  Jürgen Prunk.

• 1:34:27Speaker 02

  We love Jürgen Prunk.

• 1:34:28Ed Zitron?

  We love Jürgen Prunk.

• 1:34:29Speaker 02

  He's a good actor.

• 1:34:30Ed Zitron?

  So let's bring this to an end. Rob, where can people find you?

• 1:34:33Speaker 02

  You can find me at pcmag.com, masscompany.com. My website is robpecarrera.com. I am on Blue Sky at the exact same handle.

• 1:34:40Ed Zitron?

  Lovely.

• 1:34:40Speaker 02

  That's on Blue Sky. Everyone has a website.

• 1:34:43Ed Zitron?

  Mr. Onguessa.

• 1:34:45Speaker 02

  Newsletter, the techbubble.substack.com. Podcast, This Machine Kills. And on X, the everything site, and Blue Sky, Big Black Jacobin. I write for defector.com. The podcast I do there is The Distraction and I am davidjroth.bsky.social on Blue Sky.

• 1:35:07Ed Zitron?

  So you're at the end of day four of the CES coverage. We are absolutely high energy. All of us are.

• 1:35:14Speaker 02

  Energy's peaking out in here right now.

• 1:35:16Ed Zitron?

  More awake than we've ever been. I'm gonna take these boys out for burgers after this. Thank you so much for listening, everyone. Two more days. You've got another double tomorrow. Another two pairs. Another two pairs. Jesus Christ. 90 minutes each, two episodes tomorrow. And then a finale on Saturday. Jesus Christ, man, it's not that bad.

• 1:35:33Speaker 02

  No, I have not been this tired for God knows how long. When do you get to be my age?

• 1:35:40Ed Zitron?

  I'm brimming with life and I'm like a decade older than you, full of the spirit of CES.

• 1:35:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:35:47Ed Zitron?

  Of John CES, the founder, the Christian cult leader.

• 1:35:51Speaker 02

  He gave us so much.

• 1:35:51Ed Zitron?

  At the first CES who did a sacrifice and that's why the show is still around. Yep, that's facts. Anyway, I'm Ed Zitron. Thank you for listening. You've really indulged me this week. More to come tomorrow. Thank you so much.

• 1:36:11Ed 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 app to visit the Discord and go to r slash better offline to check out our Reddit. Thank you so much for listening.

• 1:36:43Speaker 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 iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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