Better Offline CES 2025: Day 5 - Pt. 1

Welcome to Better Offline’s coverage of the 2025 Consumer Electronics Show - a standup radio station in the Venetian with an attached open bar where reporters, experts and various other characters bring you the stories from the floor. In Part 1 of our 5th day covering CES, Ed Zitron is joined by writer Ed Ongweso Jr, David Roth of Defector, Cherlynn Low of Engadget and Health Physicist Phil Broughton to talk about men and their lack of vulnerability about sex, the sex toy industry, age tech, exoskeletons…and lasers! Ed Ongweso Jr.: https://bsky.app/profile/bigblackjacobin.bsky.social The Tech Bubble Newsletter: https://thetechbubble.substack.com/ https://thetechbubble.substack.com/ David Roth, Defector: https://bsky.app/profile/davidjroth.bsky.social https://bsky.app/profile/davidjroth.bsky.social Defector: Defector.com It’s Christmastown Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/its-christmastown/id1407429849 Cherlynn Low, Engadget: https://bsky.app/profile/cherlynn.bsky.social https://www.engadget.com/about/editors/cherlynn-low/ Engadget’s Best Of CES: https://www.engadget.com/ces/ Washington Post story about AVNs: https://www.washingtonpost.com/style/of-interest/2024/02/25/ai-porn-avn-industry/ 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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• 1:14Ed Zitron?

  Hello and welcome to day five of the Better Offline Consumer Electronics Show Saga. I'm your host Ed Zetron.

• 1:32Ed Zitron?

  I am well slept. I ate two meals yesterday. My feet feel great. I look fantastic. I'm having a hell of a show, but it's the last day sadly. But only the last day of the show we have today and then we have tomorrow of kind of a positive masculinity day. We're getting, we're getting massages, we're having brunch, we're gonna have a wonderful podcast and talk about our feelings. It's gonna be amazing. But today, we have an incredible cast with us. To my left is Edward Ongreso Jr., my wonderful correspondent.

• 2:01Speaker 04

  Hello. How's everyone doing?

• 2:03Ed Zitron?

  I'm great, as I just said. Clearly was thinking of something else. But over to my right, I have the wonderful Sherlyn Lowe, the deputy editor at Engadget. Sherlyn, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for having me.

• 2:14Speaker 05

  Me.

• 2:15Ed Zitron?

  And to my right, David J Roth. How you doing, David?

• 2:17Speaker 06

  I'm good. How are you? Oh, wait. No, you already said.

• 2:19Ed Zitron?

  There we go.

• 2:20Speaker 04

  There we are.

• 2:21Speaker 05

  I'm the only one that didn't ask.

• 2:22Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 2:22Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:22Speaker 06

  Well, you were paying attention.

• 2:24Speaker 04

  Everyone was doing.

• 2:25Ed Zitron?

  Oh, OK. Well. I didn't ask, though. Anyway, until now. Sherlyn?

• 2:31Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 2:32Ed Zitron?

  So how many CES is this for you?

• 2:34Speaker 05

  I've, well, a few enough that I'm not like as seasoned as people who have done this 25 years. I think I'm under 10. I think I'm nine or eight.

• 2:43Ed Zitron?

  That's still a lot.

• 2:44Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:44Speaker 06

  Yeah, that sort of still seems high to me. This is my first and Edward's first.

• 2:47Ed Zitron?

  Mm hmm.

• 2:48Speaker 05

  Oh, how does it feel?

• 2:50Speaker 04

  Oh, surreal.

• 2:51Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah?

• 2:51Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:52Speaker 05

  Is it everything you expected?

• 2:53Speaker 04

  Um, and more.

• 2:55Speaker 05

  I want to know about and more. I want to know about and more.

• 2:57Speaker 06

  Most of what I got in terms of expectation setting was from Ed and it was, like, I kind of expected it to suck more than it does.

• 3:04Speaker 05

  OK.

• 3:05Speaker 06

  Like, because he was more or less, you know, trying to get me. I don't know if it was just that's how you get me motivated. Whereas like, you have no idea how depraved it is. Like, you're gonna see things down there. And it's like, that's, it's a trade show. Like, I mean, it still kind of stinks, but there's, it was more normal for the most part, which made the stuff that was, uh, like, ridiculous and dystopian pop that much harder for me. I enjoyed it pretty well.

• 3:28Speaker 05

  I wish it were more depraved. I'm sorry to say.

• 3:31Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 3:31Speaker 05

  Go on.

• 3:32Speaker 06

  Was there a version of it that was? I feel like it.

• 3:35Speaker 05

  OK, this CES is like, surprisingly, I feel like Las Vegas as a city has figured a lot of its shit out. Can I swear?

• 3:42Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 3:43Ed Zitron?

  Oh, crush, yes.

• 3:43Speaker 05

  Great. Uh, fuck.

• 3:45Speaker 06

  All right. Well, no, not.

• 3:47Ed Zitron?

  Whoa.

• 3:48Speaker 06

  Don't do all the swears.

• 3:49Speaker 05

  Oh, OK. Just some. All right. Low level. OK.

• 3:52Speaker 06

  You can do the brown word. You could say damn, but not, uh, you know, but no longer.

• 3:56Speaker 05

  All right. No C words. No.

• 3:59Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, I think that's the one.

• 4:00Speaker 05

  Yeah. OK, gotcha. So chicken. Um.

• 4:06Speaker 06

  So what do you, how do you, you mean you think that like Vegas has like assimilated this?

• 4:10Speaker 05

  Yeah, so I mean, you can see all the construction happening, but they've managed to make it so the construction is not impeding a lot of the getting around, which they have done in previous years of traffic, I'm sure you know has been awful.

• 4:20Ed Zitron?

  Living here and being at CES is like a double punishment.

• 4:23Speaker 05

  Oh God, I don't know why you chose to do that to yourself, but you did choose to do this to yourself.

• 4:27Ed Zitron?

  I make many decisions.

• 4:28Speaker 05

  The West Hall is beautiful. The fact that the, the weather is extremely beautiful this week makes everyone feel better when they're outside. I've been here when there was the rain and the snow. And then one year, everything, all the power went out and all of the booths at the same time. And I was on stage doing like a panel, hosting a panel, interviewing Sony's like head of hardware or something. And we were like vamping on stage for a minute there while the power came back on. So there's been like CES this past where like things haven't been as nice or I, I, to me, this has been nicely run and fairly smoothly.

• 5:03Ed Zitron?

  Yeah. The one thing I will say that worries me about Las Vegas is for like a solid decade, we lost the flappy guys, the guys who have the, the cards that they flip together to offer escorts. Those guys disappeared for a long time, but for the first time since like 2014, I would say, they're, they're back. But there's not many of them. They're just kinda.

• 5:23Speaker 04

  See, I saw them when I was last here.

• 5:25Ed Zitron?

  Really?

• 5:26Speaker 04

  When I saw you, the first time that we met. Yeah. But they were like outside of the insurance convention that Jason had been.

• 5:36Speaker 05

  The right place to be.

• 5:37Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 5:39Speaker 06

  So maybe they're just like looking at the people that are going to CES and are like, these are, this is not an escort crowd.

• 5:44Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, they just, they have a meeting beforehand and they have like an Excel spreadsheet they all work through and like, well, really the odds are.

• 5:51Speaker 04

  Let's make it happen during AVN again.

• 5:52Ed Zitron?

  No, no, no, no.

• 5:55Speaker 04

  No.

• 5:55Speaker 05

  Maybe they're, maybe they're like, these guys can build their own escorts, you know, like the robots that we saw this year. Oh my goodness.

• 6:01Ed Zitron?

  Yeah. Yeah, there is a, Time Hunter, Washington Post, an article about that where it was like the conversation with the guys about that. And everyone's just like, I don't, I don't know, man. Like it's just, I'll, I'll link to it in the, in the thing, but I do think. The tech industry reporters do kind of need to look at AVM more and kind of broaden out from this stuff because as much and I do apologize to female listeners who feels like we said who said stuff about being gross a few times on this, but I will say sex, perversion, all that is a part of society and one can be puritanical about it, but that area needs more coverage and we've kind of talked about seeing the various dildonics manufacturers around here.

• 6:39Speaker 06

  Sounds better when you use the technical term.

• 6:41Speaker 05

  Dildonics.

• 6:42Speaker 06

  Advanced dildonic.

• 6:44Speaker 05

  It's a lot more consonants than you'd expect, right?

• 6:47Ed Zitron?

  But I feel like that is a weirdly left out part.

• 6:51Speaker 06

  A little jet age.

• 6:53Speaker 05

  I think I can't speak for all of the tech media, but for Engadget, it's like we've got to prioritize. He has such a huge show. We've got the cars, the drones, the robots. We do cover sex tech. Like this year there was the motor bunny or motor fluffy.

• 7:07Speaker 06

  Motor bunny powered or no, uh, something powered by fluffer. I have it written down.

• 7:12Speaker 05

  Yeah, thank you. No, it's awesome. Yeah.

• 7:14Speaker 06

  That was why I went back down to the floor for what I'm writing. It is, yeah, motor bunny powered by fluffy.

• 7:19Speaker 05

  Thank you.

• 7:20Speaker 06

  And then there's another, uh, low vents is the one that's across from it. That was the one where they actually like.

• 7:25Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 7:26Speaker 06

  I was there with a guy who's like a producer for other podcasts, like friends of ours that were also here and has like, it's sort of like a running gag in those podcasts that this guy's life is just completely feral and like he doesn't know how to take care of himself. And I saw him like blush while getting just instructions on how this thing syncs with that at the low vents thing. The, I didn't go to the motor bunny powered by fluffer.

• 7:49Speaker 05

  Sure.

• 7:50Speaker 06

  Bit just because.

• 7:51Speaker 05

  Do you know the news there though?

• 7:52Speaker 06

  No.

• 7:53Speaker 05

  Like they're making, uh, I believe a dildonic that's powered by game controller.

• 7:56Speaker 06

  Yeah. So there was a game. The game is called Fappy Bunny.

• 8:00Speaker 05

  Fappy Bunny.

• 8:02Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 8:03Ed Zitron?

  Fappy Bird.

• 8:04Speaker 06

  But it's the sort of thing like you, there's a limit. No one expects me to do really rigorous journalism. So I'm a sports writer and I'm here because there's a fold out bed and everything and I enjoy hanging out with my friends.

• 8:13Ed Zitron?

  Also for the podcast.

• 8:14Speaker 06

  Yeah, also for the podcast, but, uh, the idea of like having to look someone in the face while he says like Fappy Bunny to me, like, just like it's a normal thing to say to a guy.

• 8:22Speaker 05

  I think, do you think it's odd because you? You're both men, presumably cis hetero men in the same space. Because I covered this from the woman's angle to your point that like in tech, especially a space that's not predominantly like friendly to women. You know, you know, the CTA has been notorious for not wanting to showcase sex tech for women.

• 8:45Ed Zitron?

  And has that been a consistent theme?

• 8:46Speaker 05

  Yeah, so I mean, since the big hoo-ha, I think four or five years ago, Laura DeCarlo really went out and said like, why are they not allowing? They rescinded our innovation award. They made a smart vibrator, I believe, and were granted an innovation award in sort of the health category and then had it rescinded like weeks before the show started. I can't remember how many years ago this was. Yeah, and they like didn't let them display at the actual show floor area. I remember even before Laura DeCarlo did all of that, I was covering this company.

• 9:16Ed Zitron?

  And who was Laura DeCarlo?

• 9:16Speaker 05

  I'm sorry, Laura DeCarlo is a sex tech company that made a smart vibrator with a focus on women and women's sexual health and empowerment. I have, I interviewed them for a piece back then and I haven't kept in touch as much. And so I've completely forgotten, like my brain's RAM has run out. But I remember very well another brand, Lioness, who makes also a smart vibrating dildo. And they had to like show at an off-site, sort of non-official, non-sanctioned CES event in Vegas. That they had made orgasm art. So they have a smart vibrator with sensors in it, right? And it would like tell you when you've had an orgasm based on the vibrations.

• 9:53Ed Zitron?

  That actually feels like that might be very useful.

• 9:56Speaker 05

  It is actually useful because the pitch back then and you know, men, when you have erectile dysfunction, for example, it could be an indicator that something's wrong with your heart health. It could be something that's wrong somewhere else in your body. It's like a check engine light. And for women, it could be similar, like we don't have enough data. And that was step one on collecting the data. So the Lioness smart vibrator was very impressive, to the point where like on the Engadget team, like we, we gave it like one of the, it was a nominee for an award in the health category that year that we were awarding the CTA's Best of CES Awards. And it is, it does like to your point, Ed, we were just talking before the podcast started, that we need people in this space who are like aware and familiar. It was gatekeeping some of this or it was like not open to because it was squeamish. I get it makes people squeamish to be like, you put this inside you.

• 10:41Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 10:42Ed Zitron?

  But I think that you raised something with David. Men in general do not discuss sex.

• 10:47Speaker 05

  Thank you.

• 10:48Ed Zitron?

  And men have a very hard time talking about like arousal, they talk about lust. They're very good at discussing like horny and all that. Like it's almost like, oh, sex is something we do in a dark room and we hide from it despite men also craving it. So the discussion with men about sex is actually quite rare. I only have to, I've never talked about having sex with you guys, not literally doing it. But also having had sex in general.

• 11:13Speaker 05

  Right.

• 11:13Ed Zitron?

  Which is the one rule we have here does not happen at CES. That's, that's a choice. But nevertheless, it's like men don't have these discussions about sex in general. So the idea of a man being able to go up to, and it's a challenge, especially if it's outside of your coverage, to go up and be like, hey, so how do you use this? So that'd be like, huh huh. But also not feeling a little vulnerable.

• 11:31Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 11:32Ed Zitron?

  Because with men, especially with sex toys, at least in my experience of discussing with them, they're scared of the idea of using it with a partner.

• 11:38Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 11:38Ed Zitron?

  Like male or female, that the idea is it's like giving up. Even though from my experience, whatever gets the job done, a woman tend to be pretty happy. But even then, even saying this out loud, I'm like, yeah, this is the conversation I wouldn't have with guys in general.

• 11:52Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah. I think we should be talking more and more about it. Like I, I just from you bringing that up, that Ed, I was like, Zed, I was like, oh yeah, men probably don't even talk about it. Cause I have for a large chunk of my life been like, we need to talk more about sex, just amongst women. I think we need to talk about what gets you off, what an orgasm feels like, like what is all this stuff? Cause there's people that are not having it and that's just depressing. It's like, they're like, I don't know what does get me off or not, but have I had to know or not? Like it's.

• 12:18Ed Zitron?

  And there's joy in it.

• 12:19Speaker 05

  There is so much joy.

• 12:20Ed Zitron?

  And the intimacy you can have with someone with having a detailed, meaningful conversation about what gets you both off. It's something you can work.

• 12:26Speaker 05

  And you need to talk to your partner about it. What are you gonna do? Or, or talk to yourself about it, figure yourself out and then talk to your partner or partners or whatever you want to do with people about it. Like you should be experiencing joy in every, and, and I get that as we're talking about this, people are already feeling squeamish. Like I'm sure listeners are like uncomfortable with the topic. It's, it's not.

• 12:44Speaker 06

  I want to know how we're going to integrate AI into all this. The listeners are demanding.

• 12:49Speaker 04

  Did CES try to overcrack? Because I feel like when I looked at the innovation awards when I first, well, not overcrack, but have they tried, have there's, has their response been like, oh, we don't want that backlash? Or, oh, we are like changing our mind about it. Because I, because I didn't realize that they had given an innovation award and removed it. They had an innovation award to a vibrator, to a, to a smart, I think dolphin or vibrator toy in general. But that was the only one that I saw and most of it, it, it, I'm curious about whether it's like, okay, since that, since they had this scandal, they're like, okay, we'll just do a sort of small carve out.

• 13:31Speaker 04

  And that will be enough as a sort of superficial move, but we're not actually going to talk about it, change attitudes about it, integrate it more.

• 13:38Speaker 05

  Kind of like lip service, kind of like just giving you your, here, have that, have this and like, don't bother us anymore.

• 13:43Ed Zitron?

  I think it's like thematically relevant as well, because there's a real irony about it. Because the reason they're probably not putting it front and center is they're like, I was just giving into iniquity. All these people will just be talking about sex. So instead you do the thing that's well known with sex that you should do, which is repression.

• 13:58Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 13:59Ed Zitron?

  When you just hide it all versus, and you talk about people being uncomfortable talking about this, we're not talking about the actual stuff. But also, there is joy and happiness within this. In the same way that not real problems are being solved all the time here, sex toys are actually solving them.

• 14:13Speaker 05

  I know.

• 14:13Speaker 06

  Beyond the, and I can't speak to how squeamish or not squeamish CES is, because I don't know very much about it. But it feels like this is a dynamic that we've kept coming back to in these, which is like, this is a product that solves a, like, a problem that people experience. It's like a thing that like enhances your life in some way. And it feels like much of, for me, I guess, like the balance of the stuff that you see here is not that. It is either like it's doodad stuff to a certain extent, but then also there's this like pie in the sky shit about like, it's a house that like empathizes with you and helps, yeah, and helps you pick out your, you know, clothing for the week.

• 14:47Speaker 04

  Body for your child.

• 14:48Speaker 06

  Yeah, right, yeah. Whereas in this case, it's like, the stuff that I was impressed with down there was stuff that was basically like, that felt like an invention. It felt like an invention that had become a product that could then be like marketed and sold. And it doesn't, I don't know to what extent, and this is something the people that have been to more CESs than me could be, could speak on, like, has the

• 15:09Ed Zitron?

  Was there a time when it was more of a like a place that sold products? Or has it always been a place where like LG promises to fix your life?

• 15:16Speaker 05

  I can't speak for like more than 10 years past. But yeah, it yeah, I guess. I mentioned this recently, like it started as feeling like the home entertainment LG show along with some like laptops and hair butts sprinkled around, right?

• 15:31Ed Zitron?

  I gather there was an auto show era.

• 15:32Speaker 05

  Yeah, there was one year where it was the car show and then now it is the AI show. But then you still have like, I think South Hall has always been filled with like gadgets that feel like doodads from like other parts of the world. And then I think as CTA continues to expand its space and its scope, you've got more and more of like people feeling like they can pay $5,000, get a table, come here and show there. Can like, what's that term for something that does something to like a, there's a term for it like the like something that does something that some other brand does.

• 16:03Ed Zitron?

  Oh, like a copycat?

• 16:04Speaker 04

  Like a clone?

• 16:05Speaker 05

  Pretty much like, yeah, exactly. So anyways, clone substitutes, like doops of like, oh my gosh, I saw so many Dyson hairdryer doops this year, you know?

• 16:13Ed Zitron?

  I saw so many different kinds of the same battery pack.

• 16:16Speaker 05

  Thank you, yes.

• 16:16Ed Zitron?

  I also love battery packs, so I can't.

• 16:18Speaker 05

  I saw so many smart rings. I saw so many, you know, it's the one year there was massage chairs everywhere and now it's like they're transformer massage chairs everywhere. It's it is to an extent always that kind of show.

• 16:29Ed Zitron?

  Somewhat pivot here, but one of Piece of Ink gadget's coverage was about these new like vacuums, the Robo vacuums with the arms. Can you walk me through what the hell that is?

• 16:39Speaker 05

  Yeah, I mean, you had Chris on your show recently. She's covered a lot of these for us.

• 16:43Ed Zitron?

  You covered it. I have Carissa Bell.

• 16:45Speaker 05

  Oh, it's all good, yeah.

• 16:46Ed Zitron?

  Being very unfair to Miss Bell.

• 16:47Speaker 05

  Yeah, no, she.

• 16:48Ed Zitron?

  Tell me about this.

• 16:49Speaker 05

  So, so it started with RoboRock. I'm going to paint a tale for you here. RoboRock is one of the most well-known names in the robo vac space. And you know, those spinning robo robot vacuums that go and clean your floors for you. The innovation in them has in the past or in recent years been like combining the vacuum and mopping features. Now they're like, how else do we innovate? Well, RoboRock builds a robotic arm into its disk of robo vac and the arm can come up.

• 17:19Speaker 05

  And it has obviously sensors and stuff like that that can detect obstacles in front of it and be like, oh, this is sock. I need, like in the past, the robot, the robot vacuum would get tripped up and maybe not, you know, continue to vacuum. Right, or go somewhere else. And now if it can pick up the sock that's in its way, or toothbrush, or a hairbrush, or whatever's in this way, it can put it away and then continue to clean the path that it was on, or, or, you know, put it somewhere else. So somehow everyone was like, hell yes, this is the thing that I wanted all my life, which makes sense. This is a real world application of something that.

• 17:52Speaker 06

  And does it work, though?

• 17:54Speaker 05

  Well, in the limited demo, yes, right? Like, it did work. It's, it did seem to go up to a sock, pick it up and put it in the laundry basket.

• 18:01Speaker 06

  Pick up objects up to three hundred grams, a little more than half a pound.

• 18:04Speaker 05

  Yeah, so RoboRox vacuum only has that weight limit. And then, and then the funny thing is with CES, we were just talking about this. Every other robo vac company was like, we also have arms. Here we go. Dreamy, for example, was supposed to only debut its like stair climbing robot, which also is another obstacle in these homes, decided to show off its arm, but it's a more solid looking clamp situation that seems to be able to handle like way more weight. So, yeah. Yeah, exactly. I'm like, ah, good for you. You go to the gym, but you know.

• 18:38Speaker 06

  I love my yoked out robot vacuum.

• 18:42Speaker 05

  But I don't know what you would call that, the transformer of vacuums, the Optimus Prime of vacuums, maybe? Yeah, but yeah, I mean, look, it's nice to see these companies innovate and then copy the heck out of each other.

• 18:53Speaker 06

  Yeah, but that's CES.

• 18:55Speaker 05

  That is CES.

• 18:56Speaker 06

  There's always a theme.

• 18:57Speaker 05

  Yeah, this is the theme.

• 18:59Speaker 06

  Has like a, you know, it's sort of reassuringly concrete relative to some of the area or stuff. Like, it's like, not only can you see what problem they're aiming to solve, but you can like sort of watch the process of competition playing out in terms of that, whereas the thing that I felt. And you were, you saw like actual crypto guys talking today, like the maximum amount of abstraction allowable in the language. Where you're just kind of like, I don't even understand what you're, what you're fixing for me here.

• 19:26Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 19:27Speaker 06

  Beyond like a comprehensive reimagining of my life that removes any personal agency and replaces it with your proprietary algorithms or whatever.

• 19:34Speaker 05

  Oh, God, yes.

• 19:35Ed Zitron?

  So on the subject of robots, though, what else have you seen?

• 19:39Speaker 05

  Yeah, a lot of the robots we saw and liked, anyway, we did a roundup at Engadget. Mostly were these like cute emotional support robots, like.

• 19:49Ed Zitron?

  Everyone's talking about this and I've been mocking them, but it seems that everyone actually likes them.

• 19:52Speaker 05

  We like them because they're cute, right? And they're like, some of them are like 80 bucks. It's like 80 bucks, yeah, why not? Like, I would get, I'm a person who has some form of self-diagnosed OCD, which is I don't like pets because they mess up my place, right? And so I still want the warmth and tender love of a cute little furry creature that can do its own thing, but not poop. And they, the idea of a furry robot that has warmth, that can simulate the.

• 20:19Ed Zitron?

  Oh, so it generates warmth?

• 20:20Speaker 05

  One of them does. So the, not the Yu-Gi-Oh engineering, the rope head, the rope head does generate warmth. And so it sort of feels comforting, right? When you have it on you. The other one that we saw is the Yu-Gi-Oh engineering's Mirumi. It's something that stares at you.

• 20:35Speaker 06

  Yeah, that was one that cursed.

• 20:36Ed Zitron?

  I really don't, I have not seen this thing yet, but the idea of something staring at me really freaks me.

• 20:41Speaker 06

  She seemed into it, though, like.

• 20:42Speaker 05

  We, I don't know. I think it's a character, a personality type thing.

• 20:46Speaker 04

  The Tombot that we saw.

• 20:48Ed Zitron?

  Yeah.

• 20:48Speaker 04

  You know, there's a dog for people with dementia that, I mean, at first glance also did feel and look like a, like a dog, right? And he's kind of just programmed where it's like, you know, maybe you would, you would benefit from having the companionship, but you, your, your, your, but dementia is too. Progressed for you to be able to take care of.

• 21:09Ed Zitron?

  Right.

• 21:09Speaker 05

  Mm-hmm. See, that's a really good use case, yeah.

• 21:11Ed Zitron?

  Did you talk to them at all? Because the, the only question I have there is if they're, if in the latter stages and experiences I've had mostly through friends is. Wouldn't they forget about it? Would it not be jarring? But I honestly, I really am rooting for them because that sounds lovely. That sounds like something that actually solves a problem of you can't really do contiguous care when you yourself are kind of out of sync with the world due to your condition. See, this is the thing is we roll to the end of this show. It is nice to have a conversation where it's not entirely just, yeah, I don't know what a con man and another con man were conning each other in front of me.

• 21:49Speaker 05

  It's just Vegas.

• 21:51Ed Zitron?

  Exactly.

• 21:52Speaker 06

  Yeah, there is that feeling of that's like the bit of it that has when I felt overwhelmed by this beyond the like the volume, like the physical challenge of just like walking for whatever 20 miles over this. There's the sense sometimes of like, you're trying to to take in the entire spectrum of like free market fuckery in one bite, you know, like from like the white label cable manufacturers on the bottom of things to the, you know, whatever like Amazon or like just literal, you know, globe bistrifying giants on the other one. That it's like you see the plankton and you see the whale sharks and like every single thing in between is like, it's a lot to sort of hold in your head. It makes the, to me at least, it makes the actual products that that seem to have actual

• 22:35Speaker 06

  use cases feel that much more valuable and welcome because there's, you know, it's like I sort of know what it's about. There's a lot of this stuff that is impossible for me to parse.

• 22:46Ed Zitron?

  So how long have you been here as well? How many days?

• 22:48Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah, I landed January 4th, Saturday, and today is what Friday? So, and I'm leaving tomorrow. I have big plans to go explore the desert or something and I'm here like to go and get on an ATV or something and go like just because today officially everyone's flying home for my team and so, yeah, not y'all.

• 23:08Speaker 04

  You ever been to a salt lake or a salt bed, I guess?

• 23:11Speaker 05

  A salt bed?

• 23:13Speaker 04

  I think it's, you know.

• 23:14Speaker 05

  Oh, the flat lake. Gotcha. No, I haven't.

• 23:17Ed Zitron?

  Go for a hike.

• 23:18Speaker 05

  Yeah, I want to do that after this, which is why when you asked me to stay for longer, I was like, Ed, not that long.

• 23:23Speaker 06

  I gotta go, I have to go visit a canyon.

• 23:26Ed Zitron?

  I have to do something more interesting.

• 23:29Speaker 05

  Lost in the mountains if you would never hear from me again.

• 23:32Ed Zitron?

  You want to be very lost, just be me. So, so far, what is your favorite thing you've seen? I say so far as we talk about the end.

• 23:39Speaker 05

  Yeah, hard to choose. Can I say what is not the favorite thing I've seen?

• 23:43Ed Zitron?

  Absolutely.

• 23:45Speaker 05

  Um, I've seen this video making the rounds now that I've finally had some time to get back on my social media like binging habits. And on Reddit and on a lot of social media platforms, this video of this AI sex robot.

• 23:57Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, the hundred and seventy thousand.

• 23:58Speaker 05

  Yeah, the one with the dark hair, dark long hair, looking like they're falling off a chair, basically.

• 24:03Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, I really should bring, when we, oh, we'll hit the break in like eight minutes, they'll show you a picture. But it is really funny because I love that there's always one company that does something like this, where they just, everyone experiences the uncanny valley at once. And they're like, but we got a ton of press out of it. And every article is just like, this horrifying thing a company has made. These, these evil people, they talk about them like one of the bad guys from Fullmetal Alchemist. Like they, like monst- the monstrosities they have summoned and like, nailed it.

• 24:35Speaker 04

  I saw something that kind of reminded me of this where it was, and it was this humanoid robot and it was very loudly, clearly saying, I'm a text-based AI, do not have a body. And it's fully embodied.

• 24:47Speaker 05

  I think we saw that too, yeah.

• 24:48Speaker 04

  And I was just like, okay, that's like, this is a good gimmick because no, you, that only comes up, I stood there for about 10 minutes, it only comes up like once every seven minutes for a while. The rest of the time, you can do the little gimmick where you're talking to it and it's speaking and you just don't hear that. It's like, probably just literally a chatbot speaking out of the speakers, but you finally tuned it, it looks human.

• 25:10Speaker 05

  Right.

• 25:10Speaker 04

  Um, and you get a chance to advertise whatever AI platform, platform that it is, that the company was connected to, which is, uh, W- Waze? Way, it's like W-A-I.

• 25:20Ed Zitron?

  Connected to Waze?

• 25:21Speaker 06

  Oh, that's a tough one.

• 25:22Ed Zitron?

  Hey baby, how you doing?

• 25:24Speaker 06

  Turn left. I somehow missed the hall of uncanny humanoids, which is like, thank goodness. And there's still a couple hours left. I guess I could go down.

• 25:32Ed Zitron?

  I saw a robot with like a Donald Trump mask on, took a picture, then immediately deleted it because I know when someone's trying to get coverage. I know when someone's just being like, mm, you're giving Donald Trump.

• 25:43Speaker 06

  Did you sense that was the case with the, the sex bot, that they were just basically like, you see this? We got mentioned in the Wall Street Journal. They called us the embodiment of everything that's wrong with contemporary culture, you know, like.

• 25:54Speaker 05

  Yeah, no, I think to your point, the, um, I, it's refreshing for me to see the PR angle of this that you're thinking of. And I'm just there like, oh, right. Yeah. This is a cheap method to employ. I, I didn't get that vibe. We didn't even cover it. None of, it was not even on our radars. Like, yeah.

• 26:11Ed Zitron?

  Cause don't encourage them. But also back to the earlier theme, it's like, a theme, a thing made by someone who is not actually interested in people having sex or meaningful, honest, direct sexual relationships. It's like, what are these ugly pigs that never have sex want? Oh, a horrible robot that looks like, kind of like a woman so they can have their horrible sex in a locked room. Criminalizing sex, treating it like this ugly thing that we should hide from the world, while also kind of making fun of people who aren't that way.

• 26:39Speaker 05

  Making fun of their target audience, which is the irony of that is so strange.

• 26:43Ed Zitron?

  Versus empathy and joy and honesty about sex, which is like a meaningful thing that people should explore.

• 26:47Speaker 05

  It's part of life.

• 26:48Ed Zitron?

  Yeah.

• 26:49Speaker 06

  Disagree.

• 26:50Speaker 05

  It's how we got here.

• 26:52Speaker 04

  Listen to Protestants run to something, okay?

• 26:55Speaker 05

  I love it. We seem to be 50 50 split on this.

• 26:58Speaker 06

  Pretty normal about it before I came to Las Vegas. Now I'm taking a hard stance. We gotta get this shit out.

• 27:03Ed Zitron?

  Sex is out in 2025.

• 27:05Speaker 04

  Before I came here as a freak and I'm leaving with some, uh, some changed miles.

• 27:10Speaker 05

  Oh, more of an AI guy. Well, I hear about crypto apparently. You're what? You're a convert now?

• 27:15Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah. I, you know, I think sex should be on the blockchain. I think.

• 27:20Speaker 05

  Oh, gosh.

• 27:20Ed Zitron?

  Oh, God, you know someone's done.

• 27:22Speaker 06

  Yeah, I was gonna say, like with this unutterable horrors that has, now that it's been uttered, who knows what's going on now.

• 27:29Ed Zitron?

  Wall Street Journal's CES abomination of the year.

• 27:32Speaker 04

  Yeah, I'd bet money someone I know, like them or a friend is making it right now.

• 27:36Speaker 05

  Oh, no.

• 27:37Ed Zitron?

  They should be making something else.

• 27:39Speaker 06

  They should.

• 27:40Ed Zitron?

  Like, like getting their affairs in order when I find, no, that's it. So as we, as we approach the break here. Is there anything else you're gonna see on the show, or are you just done?

• 27:51Speaker 05

  Okay, so I'm here for personal interest now. Last night, I was supposed to already be done working, but I went to the Venetian Expo and I saw some like last minute accessibility related products. That's always been like a topic I pay attention to myself. We actually, I'm very proud to say this, Engadget's like best of CES winner, like the best in show, best of all the things we saw, was a smart cane for the blind.

• 28:13Ed Zitron?

  So we talked about this, and it's good, like because my worry with it was, A, it needs an internet connection if it's got a GPT thing, but it works.

• 28:21Speaker 05

  It worked, yeah, and in the busy wife like convention floor where like you assume the wifi is like clogged as shit, right? And I did not clarify or verify what type of internet connection was using, was it on device? I bet it's not because it's a very thin, like well-made device, like they folded it up, unfolded it, it showed me, I held it in my hand and used it a bit. It seems to work really well.

• 28:43Ed Zitron?

  What was the weight like on it?

• 28:44Speaker 05

  Um, it is slightly heavier than I think your conventional like folding cane for people who are visually impaired, but um, not too much heavier. Now, to be clear, this is like the second generation of an existing product. The first one was a bit heavier, so they've refined it, they've made the handle a little easier to hold. They've replaced like a touchscreen sort of button situation with tactile buttons, which should have been in the first one, right? Like, why didn't you think of this?

• 29:07Speaker 05

  So they are, they have made improvements, continue to, and they have a pretty legitimate partner in TDK, who's like a bigger, more established company to see this through. Look, to your point, Zed.

• 29:18Ed Zitron?

  Zed.

• 29:19Speaker 05

  Ed.

• 29:24Speaker 05

  To your point, this thing at least, if it dies, if it runs out of battery, it's still just a cane.

• 29:30Ed Zitron?

  This is what Carissa, I believe, said about it, it's like, it still functions as a device. It's just the wifi thing is what it's for, because if the whole thing is a model.

• 29:38Speaker 05

  Well, but it's not entirely like a chat GPT only. I mean, the turn-by-turn navigations is something that is quite important to the concept here and the fact that it will like, that has a speaker on board to like answer questions and stuff like that. So those are important things, but it's also got like a flashlight on board, those sorts of things that don't require internet, right? For example, so. That's something we, you know, should definitely clarify. We have the contact information of the people. We can get in touch and find out.

• 30:04Ed Zitron?

  I would love to know.

• 30:05Speaker 05

  Yeah, I'll find out.

• 30:07Ed Zitron?

  So as we come towards the break, Edward Onguoso Jr., where can people find you?

• 30:11Speaker 04

  Newsletter, thetechbubble.substack.com, podcast, This Machine Kills, and then Big Black Jacobin on Twitter, and Blue Sky.

• 30:20Ed Zitron?

  Sherlyn, where can people find you?

• 30:22Speaker 05

  It feels like every social media app is closing, so CHIRLYNN.Bsky.Social is the safest one to say, and email, [email protected], or just Engadget.com.

• 30:34Ed Zitron?

  And of course, Engadget. I'll be putting the links to the best of the show in the notes. Don't worry. Mr. Roth, where can people find you?

• 30:40Speaker 06

  Defector.com, and the Distraction Podcast.

• 30:43Ed Zitron?

  And also, It's Christmastown Podcast. I'm Ed Zitron, you can find me everywhere.

• 30:48Speaker 06

  You're not allowed to add that.

• 30:48Ed Zitron?

  Everywhere. You just Google, "Tech's Biggest Nastiest Baby," and that's what I pop up as. Now, if you're a big nasty baby, and you love products because you're, "Wah, I love, I've got all this money, I don't know where to put it, or I don't know a podcast, wah," then just follow the ads after this, you'll have something.

• 31:14Speaker 01

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• 32:02Ed Zitron?

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• 32:07Ed Zitron?

  Put the power of Oppenheimer thinking to work for you. Wealth management, capital markets, investment banking.

• 32:19Ed Zitron?

  And we're back. So Sherlyn, Sherlyn, we talked just before this about this infrared mask.

• 32:25Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 32:25Ed Zitron?

  Now, I say this for both personal and professional reasons. What was this and why does, what does the infrared mask thing do?

• 32:32Speaker 05

  Okay, so it's not just infrared. This is Shark's Cryo Glow and it debuted at CES 2025. It is the latest in a string of like full face, like light based mask devices. You've probably, maybe you've heard of their faces.

• 32:48Ed Zitron?

  Oh, no, I'm going to be completely honest. I've been targeted with these things.

• 32:51Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 32:51Ed Zitron?

  Masks you put on the kind of

• 32:53Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 32:53Ed Zitron?

  Do something to you and just been so, because I have like gaunt eyes. I look like, I'm Polish, British. It's, it's not.

• 32:59Speaker 05

  You're too mean to yourself, but go on.

• 33:00Ed Zitron?

  I am, but that's part of the show. But for real though, what do these things actually, why do you use them?

• 33:06Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 33:06Ed Zitron?

  As a person?

• 33:07Speaker 05

  Okay, so red light therapy, when used with effective components, is supposed to help like anti-aging, help reduce fine lines or signs of anti-aging, fine lines, wrinkles. The blue light is supposed to help with antibacterial, so it's good for acne purportedly. Infrared is helping with some level of rejuvenation under the skin as well as penetrating the layers of the skin. I know this because of the facials that I take and I include the light therapy.

• 33:32Ed Zitron?

  And do they actually work?

• 33:33Speaker 05

  I feel like they work, but I go for the like salon grade ones. So that's like probably going to work better than any of these home treatments. I've been very skeptical, skeptical of devices like the solar wave, which is a smaller one with smaller components. The LED bulbs don't seem as effective.

• 33:50Ed Zitron?

  And as a note, Phil, our bartender, who is a laser safety specialist is currently, he's just got his head in his hands. So. Sheldon, please keep talking, though.

• 33:59Speaker 05

  Yeah, I'm not sure how effective, right? Like, it's so hard to tell with these things, like, when you have to use them for six months to, like, see any results.

• 34:07Ed Zitron?

  Phil is now walking away.

• 34:08Speaker 05

  Oh, no.

• 34:09Ed Zitron?

  No, don't worry, he doesn't deserve.

• 34:11Speaker 05

  Oh, no. I, I don't, I mean, I don't think they're completely unsafe or useless, right?

• 34:16Ed Zitron?

  No, he's not saying that, he's just going, he would come over and say something about how lasers, well, just, sorry, Phil, come over. Why are you complaining? Grab a chair, grab a chair, Ed, please share your microphone with him so he can have his party.

• 34:28Speaker 05

  I wasn't complaining.

• 34:29Ed Zitron?

  You had your head in your hands, sir. Now, he's taking a knee because he had national anthem.

• 34:34Speaker 05

  No, this is just when I, once again, would like to take a moment to really give thanks to the, the deeply overworked, put upon, and underfunded folks at the Food and Drug Administration, specifically for the Center for Device and Radiologic Health. Yeah, I agree. For whom none of these products ever get to them. Nor do they get approved. Yeah.

• 34:59Speaker 06

  Are there not, like, home? I feel like there have to be, like, home versions of this stuff.

• 35:02Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, and that's kind of what you're looking at.

• 35:04Speaker 05

  There are, yes, exactly.

• 35:05Ed Zitron?

  And what did the cryo one do?

• 35:06Speaker 05

  So the cryo part of it were these two metallic plates under the eye, and they were just cold, and it was so comfortable, that felt great.

• 35:13Ed Zitron?

  And that's very useful for skin.

• 35:15Speaker 05

  Exactly, exactly. The, the important thing that, having had products like this come through where I work, at exceptional expense. Yeah. Because they have successfully managed to sell them to NFL teams. I, I've had to stop people from spending hundreds of thousands of dollars for, you have gotten an IR hot red light therapy unit. What it's doing is providing heat. How is that different than the hot lamp at McDonald's that's considerably cheaper? Or alternatively, the thing we have literally been using since time immemorial. Memorial hot water bottles.

• 35:59Speaker 05

  Now, in a face mask form, it's to get it where it needs to be. Right. That is valuable. Right. Putting an IR diode in it is not.

• 36:11Ed Zitron?

  Okay, so nothing wrong with the face mask then?

• 36:14Speaker 05

  No, other than do not sell this as a medical product. Do not try.

• 36:18Ed Zitron?

  No one does that.

• 36:18Speaker 05

  Don't try to make a claim, do not allude to a claim, which many people are. Want to do. Fine to let you make that assumption for them. Yeah. And if they're feeling really good, they actually put a disclaimer on their product. So they, I don't have to report them to the FDA.

• 36:36Ed Zitron?

  No, no, no, you need to do that. Have some Sotol as well, please.

• 36:39Speaker 05

  Absolutely.

• 36:40Ed Zitron?

  Thank you. So this mask, so you have the cold bit, so is that to help with eye bags?

• 36:45Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's just to help with like, yeah, exactly tightening the skin back up or just, you know, feeling fresher when you've had a rough night.

• 36:52Ed Zitron?

  And so the, the heat, and you use these, so.

• 36:54Speaker 05

  I've used it for like a minute, so don't.

• 36:56Ed Zitron?

  So, but you've used the masks in general, though?

• 36:58Speaker 05

  Oh, no, the other two, no, actually.

• 37:00Ed Zitron?

  Well, no, I mean, just the infrared masks in general.

• 37:03Speaker 05

  I have used the salon grade ones, not the at home ones.

• 37:06Ed Zitron?

  Do, like, it's, it's just the heat kind of.

• 37:08Speaker 05

  Yeah, you're supposed to put them on your face and then turn on like a four minute, eight minute, six minute session. And then, yeah, the, the, the, not heat necessarily, the IR ones do have heat. The, the red light therapy just shines the light on you. There's the blue light, depending on which type of treatment you selected. And the cold from, for me was the only thing I could really walk away from the experience having felt.

• 37:30Ed Zitron?

  But it sounds good, though.

• 37:31Speaker 05

  It sounds, I was so, I was very pleased with it. I will tell you, I have come around on these devices. I used to be hugely skeptical because I always thought they were ineffective. Like, how can you get a tiny light bulb to do anything, really? And to like, the same point we're making everyone, yeah, exactly, like, it's, it's heat. It's, it's why do you need an expensive device that their body like, device is $600. The competing Dennis Gross, Dr. Dennis Gross device is $455. This is $349 and that's part of the reason I was intrigued. It's like, okay, you're bringing it down, you're doing something different with the cryo. There's a lot more, I think, I mean, I, I. I quoted the SVP of Product Development from Shark on this in my article, which is also

• 38:12Speaker 05

  the tear body one vibrates and you know to massage your skin and I think the company probably touts some benefits to vibration and I was like, well, I think I know the answer to this, but this is the Shark Cryo Glow Vibrate and they're like, there is no vibration. This is a skincare device. Vibration does nothing for the skin. And I was like, you tell me, girl, you tell me, you know, I was like, I needed this.

• 38:34Ed Zitron?

  That's all I needed, yeah.

• 38:35Speaker 05

  Exactly. And it's like, we're, I think as we see more competition in this space, where hopefully we'll see more people focus on what's actually going to work in this sort of device where there's a lot of like junk science, there's a lot of like, and my brain is so not working, but like stuff that doesn't quite work.

• 38:53Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, pseudoscience stuff and it's they make these claims and they do it at the show where everyone's making some wobbly claims.

• 38:59Speaker 05

  Mm hmm. It's such a challenge to parse through all of it.

• 39:02Speaker 06

  But also, how does, can I ask, just as editorially?

• 39:05Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 39:05Speaker 06

  Like, how do you, I know that you, you know, the short answer is you work with a bunch of smart people and know their fields and stuff like that. How do you know, like, because there's, we saw multiple smart canes. I don't know if we saw the one that you all awarded. Like, how can you tell if it's, if it's good or not? That's kind of a remedial way of phrasing it. My brain's also not, honestly, not the best.

• 39:28Speaker 05

  Same, I know, same with you, yeah.

• 39:29Speaker 06

  But we can just, whatever, make our little dolphin sounds back and forth.

• 39:32Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 39:33Speaker 06

  Try and communicate.

• 39:34Speaker 05

  I'm there with you. I think it's partly because Engadget has had such a history of covering CES, we have the process down pat. We start the, the process the second we get the full exhibitor list for shows like Unveiled and Petcom.

• 39:46Ed Zitron?

  Can you actually walk us through the process?

• 39:47Speaker 05

  Yeah, of course. Yeah. So, yeah, for, this was my first year, like, fully running the show for the team. And I started later than I wanted to. Like, since July, I've been like, we need to start planning CES, right? And we at least get the travel and accommodation booked ahead of time. But this year, we started like November, which was late for us. And it was very late. I was very nervous. But the CTA also didn't have a lot of the directories ready for us to parse through until the week before Christmas. So we spent all two weeks, I, I didn't. Take time off during the Christmas break and I just spent it looking at exhibitor lists and we Google every single name that is an exhibitor. We find out what they do and if we don't, we'll reach out, we'll find their PR email address, we'll reach out and be like, what are you showing at CES?

• 40:29Speaker 05

  Then we'll do the research of like, what is this, what is in the space, what else is already in the space? Is it new? Is it like expensive? Is it junk? Right? And then the process actually happens before we fly off to Vegas. When we do get here, then we make the assignments of like, we're going to unveil, we're going to pepcom, we're going to these booths. These are the things that actually look interesting, we'll go and look at them. These are things that we don't know if they're good or not. We need to investigate them. We have a tag internally called investigate. And so we go look at the thing on the show floor, we have our reporters go out, talk to the company. And then also because we're in Vegas, the, the research is going to be limited to what we can Google within two minutes, right? To make a call on whether this is important. But yes, we then, we try to match the people with expertise in the space to the product.

• 41:12Speaker 05

  Um, so at least they have a wealth of information.

• 41:15Ed Zitron?

  Billy Steel is audio and.

• 41:16Speaker 05

  Oh my God, he's so good, right?

• 41:18Ed Zitron?

  But that's the thing, you have specialist people.

• 41:19Speaker 05

  We have so much, yeah. So Billy Steel is our specialist on audio. I mean, Davindra was here, he's our chip guy.

• 41:25Ed Zitron?

  Oh, he was talking Nvidia.

• 41:26Speaker 05

  Oh yeah, all Nvidia all day and NPCs as well. I mean Nvidia, I mean, we have a bunch of chip people too, which I'm so grateful for. And we have multiple experts on some categories and they can trade information. I, I wish you would get a chance to see the debates that happen in our room sometimes where like.

• 41:41Ed Zitron?

  Next year, next year, I'm serious. We'll have you in here.

• 41:43Speaker 05

  Next year, this will be the Engadget podcast. Basically we'll have like the Engadget top, uh, topic experts.

• 41:48Ed Zitron?

  We've had three of you on, I'm happy to have more.

• 41:49Speaker 05

  I'm glad you've had so many. I mean, there is such a diversity of voices and opinions on the team too, which I really like. And when they fight it out, that's my favorite because I'm like, yeah, we can agree to disagree.

• 41:59Ed Zitron?

  But also I've been quite critical of some of the tech media on here and I really, this show was not about like just CES. It's about kind of explaining how the tech media functions because it's very easy to, and I don't mean this as a specific insult to Engadget. You could point at the CNET or even the Verge and definitely TechCrunch. Um, it's. You think, oh, they just turn up and then they go, it's the big company or go look at big company.

• 42:21Speaker 05

  Right.

• 42:22Ed Zitron?

  Television big, but when there is actually quite a refined decade or more process that's gone into it. And also covering this show is insane as.

• 42:30Speaker 06

  That was the bit that was like interesting to hear for, I mean, obviously it sucks that you had to spend your entire holiday season parsing a list of twenty five hundred, three thousand, however many companies there are. But it seems like it's so patently unmanageable.

• 42:42Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 42:43Speaker 06

  Like it is unman, it was unmanageable for us to, I don't know, you probably did see everything ever because you were here longer than me. Or came close to.

• 42:49Speaker 05

  No, you still never see anything.

• 42:50Speaker 04

  Today I discovered that that there was a crypto pavilion that had been going on for the entire time.

• 42:56Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 42:57Speaker 04

  And I felt like I had.

• 42:58Ed Zitron?

  I didn't see it. Yeah. I looked everywhere.

• 43:00Speaker 04

  You know, I accidentally stumbled on it because I was like, what are they doing in Germany?

• 43:04Speaker 05

  You do, you do, yeah.

• 43:06Speaker 06

  Yeah, and that is like, I don't know, I mean, I guess that's like sort of what happens with a show like this that like, you know, the idea is that, you know, for them, I guess the business is, you said whatever it is, five thousand dollars a table for starters and then it's probably significantly more.

• 43:19Speaker 05

  Exactly.

• 43:19Speaker 06

  It's like, so you don't say no to anybody unless it's like a women's health sex.

• 43:24Speaker 05

  I guess, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 43:26Speaker 06

  We don't do that. But the idea of trying to manage something this size, it's impressive, like, that's like a, you know.

• 43:35Speaker 05

  I, I, I have so much self doubt. So I'm always like, did we cover everything? Did we miss something? And it's you're always going to, so that's why I had to like, I let the team pep talk with this, like, we're here, number one, we made it here. Some people missed their flight, some people were sick, right? Number two, something's gonna go wrong. And we'll just have to accept it now.

• 43:52Ed Zitron?

  That was the first thing I said to Phil while planning this.

• 43:54Speaker 05

  There you go, yeah.

• 43:55Ed Zitron?

  Something will go wrong.

• 43:56Speaker 05

  Exactly. So we cannot get hung up on like, I missed this thing. I'd say I, if I do that to myself at this show and to my team, we will just never walk away from this feeling like we've done our jobs.

• 44:06Ed Zitron?

  And your coverage has been great. And I say this like truly as a reader of Engadget from. Fifteen plus years, like, like a long, long time.

• 44:14Speaker 05

  We just turned twenty something, twenty?

• 44:15Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, that makes sense. And it's like, this is a mammoth show to cover. And it's hard to, and I've had the same thing running. This is my first CES I've run better offline on. And it's like, yeah, I'm like, shit, I miss this. I'll see an article going, I'll be like, I'm the worst. I have failed the show. I've endangered the mission. And it's just impossible to do.

• 44:34Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 44:34Ed Zitron?

  So I'm going to change tack because you actually, and this is a miss of mine. Can you tell me what the Samsung Ba- Bali, what this robot is? Because I've seen the articles and I could, I did not get a chance to look at it.

• 44:47Speaker 05

  Well, I don't know that it's even here at CES twenty twenty five.

• 44:49Ed Zitron?

  Well, someone's been showing pictures of it.

• 44:51Speaker 05

  Yeah, Bali, Bali's actually been at CES twenty twenty four. Well, it was debuted at CES twenty twenty four, but the concept of this like rolling robot that Samsung makes has been around for like, what, five years, I want to say at least, if not longer. Um, and it's, and it's like most mature iteration, the one that's going on sale. It's a, this bowling ball sized yellow robot that rolls around your house. It's got a built in projector. It's got speakers built in. It listens to you speak. You can talk to it and be like, oh, turn, you know, open the shades or like start a, the oven or whatever. It, it talks to your smart home appliances. It can beam like your screen on the ceiling, on the wall, on the floor, wherever makes sense for you.

• 45:32Speaker 05

  Um, the, the pitch was like, it's this AI fitness companion, but it's also your home assistant, all of these things. The news, this CES, because last year was when they showed it off. This CES is that it's supposedly going to be available in the first half of this year. I will caveat that when they first announced Bali properly in CES twenty twenty four, they did say it will be available in twenty twenty four. So it's like Samsung, are you, are you really going to push this out this year? You know, um, more of that claims.

• 46:01Ed Zitron?

  Do though.

• 46:02Speaker 05

  Be cute, I guess. Stand by.

• 46:05Ed Zitron?

  I do that for free.

• 46:06Speaker 06

  I was gonna say, seeing the pic, I'm like, again, I don't. There's a part, every time somebody has talked about like, being like, yeah, and it follows you around, it can project stuff.

• 46:13Speaker 05

  Right, right.

• 46:14Speaker 06

  It's not a good question, but the thing that's in my head is just like, really? Like, are you sure? Like, that sounds really hard. That's it, it is a cute little guy. And if you think, this is like, something that I sort of picked up, I guess, also from Chris, that does seem to be like, one of the themes of the CES, is cute little guys.

• 46:30Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 46:31Speaker 06

  So, this, this fits. This is like, you know, it doesn't just blink at you, it follows you around, it turns your stove on.

• 46:36Ed Zitron?

  I say this with my Bengal cat, Babu, who is my familiar, and he follows me around and he meows at me, wants to be on eye level.

• 46:42Speaker 06

  Why is he always screaming at you? I really enjoy the videos.

• 46:45Ed Zitron?

  That's his sister, Poki, I will post it, go to my socials. Poki's his little sister, my beautiful screaming queen, who loves to scream at me. She just wants affection all the time, and who doesn't? Babu is the beautiful, svelte Bengal, who's mostly just up and he has a meow. Anyway, I guess that's why I don't need this thing, because I already have something amazing to follow me. But at the same time, putting that aside, why do I need a robot following me? Why is, to what end is it following me? What, oh, it's gonna project something? What is it gonna project?

• 47:14Speaker 05

  Right.

• 47:15Speaker 04

  Can I also ask, when did the shift to like, affectionate intelligence to cute devices happen?

• 47:19Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, that's actually a good point.

• 47:20Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 47:21Speaker 04

  I mean, has that been something you guys have detected over the past few years?

• 47:24Speaker 05

  So, my opinion is, I mean, the IBO has been around for, for a very long time. And it's piqued everyone's interest, but it never really took off. Nobody really sold them. But robotics, if you really look at the space in the real world, where is robotics? Robotics isn't manufacturing, robotics isn't warehouses. They don't need to be humanoid robots, none of them needs to be. They just need to be arms that repeat in action over and over again, and do it so well.

• 47:47Ed Zitron?

  And there's a great deal of value in that.

• 47:48Speaker 05

  Exactly, do the things that we don't wanna do. These things, you know, we've, I think we are collectively learning that the humanoid robots don't quite make sense, other than to impress people, to shock and awe.

• 48:01Speaker 06

  Great in movies.

• 48:02Speaker 05

  Remind people about the Terminator, exactly. And the, the actual helpful robot arms in those like, manufacturing spaces are not as sexy.

• 48:12Speaker 05

  And not as appealing visually. So what else is appealing?

• 48:15Ed Zitron?

  For some they might be. Anyway.

• 48:16Speaker 05

  For some they might be, right? Sure. But then like, what is the next space? They saw, they looked to Ibo, they looked to the cute ones, they realized people want cute. I mean, I think they looked at Pepper as well. There is, I think, function and use for some of them in specific spaces. Once again, which is, I think, in the hospice care space, there is room for like telepresence robots. There's room for like, sort of some sort of healthcare, like, uh, robots. I go to this place called Kura Revolving Sushi.

• 48:44Speaker 06

  Oh, a conveyor belt place?

• 48:45Speaker 05

  Yes, exactly.

• 48:46Speaker 06

  That was her number one shit all through our twenties. That was the forever, like, whatever her birthday.

• 48:51Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 48:51Ed Zitron?

  This is your wife?

• 48:52Speaker 06

  It was different places. Yes.

• 48:54Ed Zitron?

  You did not say that.

• 48:54Speaker 06

  Oh, did I? But I just say.

• 48:55Ed Zitron?

  You just said her.

• 48:56Speaker 06

  Her. Her. Don't worry about it.

• 48:59Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 49:00Speaker 06

  Yeah, Scarlett Johansson's voice, my longtime companion.

• 49:04Ed Zitron?

  Do you remember Tommy?

• 49:06Speaker 06

  My wife loves the, you know, like, whatever, a piece of Nigiri slowly approaching you and you get to be like, oh, ba-doo.

• 49:12Ed Zitron?

  Honestly, that sounds great.

• 49:13Speaker 05

  It's my favorite thing. Kura Revolving Sushi has a robot that brings you your drinks when you request for it, right? Like, all the servers have to do is place your drink on the tier and then, yeah.

• 49:23Ed Zitron?

  When I was in, was in Korea at the beginning of last year, there was a dishwasher, a dish bot. And it worked, like, and it seemed to actually work. These, like, robotics is here.

• 49:32Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 49:32Ed Zitron?

  But like many things at CES, it is not that exciting.

• 49:35Speaker 06

  Well, this comes back to something that we were talking about yesterday, where the, like, if the actual applications for a lot of these robots are, like, like you said, it's like either elder care or accessibility and stuff like that. That seems like it's the case for a lot of this stuff, a lot of this sort of like augmented reality, is if that's the term for it. I don't know if it's AR or whatever. Not the thing, like the brain implant, what do you call that?

• 49:56Ed Zitron?

  Neuralink?

• 49:57Speaker 06

  No.

• 49:57Ed Zitron?

  Oh, you mean the non-invasive one?

• 49:59Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah, but like.

• 49:59Ed Zitron?

  Oh, the Joel one that was made up?

• 50:01Speaker 05

  Ah, so like gesture, control of devices?

• 50:04Speaker 06

  Yeah, that sort of stuff.

• 50:04Speaker 05

  Gotcha, gotcha.

• 50:05Speaker 06

  It's like, all of that seems to be about helping people who have these, and yet, like, it seems like with this robot, like, you make it cute because, and you show when you're like demoing it for people, you don't want people to think about being sick. I guess that's not good for advertising.

• 50:18Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 50:18Speaker 06

  But you show them instead this thing that like, I'm not sure that people really want to be like. Like followed around their house like I'll turn my own stove on honestly like I don't want anyone else to be

• 50:26Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 50:27Speaker 05

  Right.

• 50:28Speaker 06

  But the it's there's something funny about the idea of like inventing this thing that actually is useful actually could add value to people's lives, but you can't sell it.

• 50:36Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 50:36Speaker 06

  In a way that actually reflects its utility.

• 50:39Speaker 05

  I again, another thing I've ranted about for a couple of years now is how much we're failing people in terms of elder care, long-term care for people in like late stages of life. And the reason we do that as a society is because I think companies and corporations don't see value in providing this sort of care or or more products in this space. Right. And so that's why they don't want to tell you that this is better suited for like older care caregiver situations, even though there are companies that will come out and say that bigger companies won't want to do it because like a PR, I'm I'm thinking this is a PR conversation. I don't know that they want to say that we're investing in this thing that serves a very niche audience that might die off in a few years.

• 51:15Ed Zitron?

  And there is a reason and that absolutely is it because you don't get a growth market.

• 51:18Speaker 05

  Exactly.

• 51:19Ed Zitron?

  The only growth.

• 51:19Speaker 05

  The growth mindset that sucks.

• 51:20Ed Zitron?

  Exactly. And you also don't get growth out of things with elderly people other than being a private equity equity firm that buys old people's homes.

• 51:29Speaker 04

  Yes. I mean, this is this is one thing I think of with the care economy, which is like the growth of it has been decided largely by the consequences of private equity firms laying waste to infrastructure.

• 51:44Ed Zitron?

  And seeing services they can build into it.

• 51:46Speaker 04

  And then the the evaporation of resources for facilities leading to these firms, these on-demand firms coming in and applying the Uber model to them and saying, look, like, we will create a marketplace where the nurses will bid each other to the lowest possible price. They'll come in without training. I mean, training in the sense that like because they're not employees, they're not told where things are, who to take care of, how to how to operate.

• 52:14Speaker 06

  Like that, like itinerant nurse, like traveling nurse economy.

• 52:17Speaker 04

  And so and that and this makes me think of what we see sometimes with some of this technology that's being offered and that. You know, some of the things that we've seen would be very good and very useful and should be durable, sustainable businesses, just offering care to help people who are not able-bodied, to help people who are in cognitive decline, to help people who need care. And yet, when we would talk with some of them, you could see, like, that's not always the first way they think or talk about it. They're also talking about like, oh, like this firm would love this application that we have. And it's like, okay, but like, that's not real. The thing that is real is this care, this way you would have to be able to help people who need care.

• 53:01Speaker 04

  But you're kind of using it, some of these firms feel like they're using it to bootstrap into the growth.

• 53:07Speaker 06

  Yeah, but you have to like bang, it's such a bizarre thing for me too, especially when you consider like what, I mean, for the ones that actually exist, like not everything that we saw, you know, exists in any sort of real stage yet. But like, the idea that you have to like bang on the sort of fantastical growth possibilities instead of the actual

• 53:28Speaker 05

  Service.

• 53:28Speaker 06

  Yeah, that you have created a thing that can, you know, provide this very necessary service.

• 53:33Speaker 05

  Right.

• 53:34Speaker 06

  With this remarkable bit of technology you did.

• 53:36Ed Zitron?

  There's no further ways to monetize the old person. I'm not, I like that it's funny, whatever. Well, not for me, because I'm like the Joker, because I laugh at the sad things. But it's this sense of, well, there's not, why am I investing in these people? Like, why would I invest in the old person? They're gonna die soon anyway. We need to get a Yeah. We live in a society, that's right.

• 53:55Speaker 06

  That's the part that's kind of weird about it, because it's not wrong to say that this is like a niche marketplace.

• 54:00Speaker 05

  Correct.

• 54:01Speaker 06

  And yet, it's like, it's also not. It is also like, one of the least niche experiences possible is getting old and needing help. Like, that's a pretty universal human, I mean, for those of us that are lucky to make it that far, like, yeah, it's weird. I mean, I guess this is like, sort of gonna be a recurring theme anywhere that you go to like, a trade show where people are trying to make a billion dollars.

• 54:21Speaker 05

  To that end, I was very encouraged to see this year, there has been quite a lot more attention in this space, right? We saw the AARP head, I mean, I saw, I stopped by the H-Tech Pavilion on the show floor.

• 54:32Ed Zitron?

  We really haven't heard about this.

• 54:33Speaker 05

  Yeah, so I went there and the H-Tech Pavilion Presented by AARP, I guess, is is just a space in the show floor. They have so many of these like dedicated spaces carved out. They had a speech that where they presented four special products. I believe, well, the one I saw and I tried on were this pair of pants by Arcturix. And a company called Skip that they've worked with. Um, this pair of pants is like, um, like a robotic powered pants situation where you put them on and they have sort of almost an exoskeleton to help you move and climb better. And we're at the point with products that are designed for improving life. For people with mobility issues where it's not, you don't have to be like, it's not binary.

• 55:17Speaker 05

  Right? You don't have to be a full on paraplegic and it's not crutches and wheelchairs. This is for people who have some pain, struggle with painy pain, that sort of thing.

• 55:25Ed Zitron?

  And often these people are maybe thinking of someone in my family.

• 55:30Speaker 05

  Uh huh.

• 55:30Ed Zitron?

  Refuse to get any fucking help because they are like, I'm not, I'm not, nothing's wrong with me. I'm just in constant pain and have mobility issues. But these things sound kind of magical for that.

• 55:39Speaker 05

  These are, these are going to be good, but these are for, because they're Arcturix, they're an outdoor like apparel brand and that sort of thing. They're designed for like hiking and this. So it's more like if you're at a stage in life where you're so burdened by some like leg pain or body pain that like going outside seems like such a pipe dream anymore, like climbing a mountain, a hill, right?

• 55:57Ed Zitron?

  You can walk around, but you can't really be active.

• 55:58Speaker 05

  Exactly. Like challenges, like scaling, like elevation and whatnot. This, this is what this pair of pants is designed to do.

• 56:05Ed Zitron?

  And were they powered by anything or were they just?

• 56:06Speaker 05

  There was a battery pack in the back of the pants and in the waistband.

• 56:10Ed Zitron?

  And what did they do? Did they support the knees or the legs?

• 56:12Speaker 05

  Yeah. So the one I tried by Arcturix had three like braces, one around the ankle, one around the knee and one around like the thigh. And then the robot arm would just kind of propel you in those.

• 56:22Ed Zitron?

  Well, as the joints moved around.

• 56:23Speaker 05

  Right. And it's designed, my demo, we had to go to like stairs because that's where you would demonstrate the effectiveness more. Yeah. It's supposed to push you up. I tried to do speed squats, right? And those, I don't, I'm not the target market, clearly. But I was like, yeah, I was like trying to see speed squats. And I think when I tried them, they weren't on. But they're, they're supposed to help you get from like the bent knee position to the up position more easily. Which is where I think a lot of people struggle with pain.

• 56:46Ed Zitron?

  Well, I in the last few, in like the last year, I've really got into yoga and I would say a year ago, I'd have trouble getting on and off the floor.

• 56:53Speaker 05

  Right.

• 56:53Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, and I'm decent, like I'm decently able bodied, like I don't have something wrong, other than the fact that I was deeply inflexible. Being able to do that now is magic, but that took a shit ton of effort to get. But also I didn't have any mobility issues that would have precluded me from doing yoga.

• 57:07Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 57:08Ed Zitron?

  So this, do you know how expensive these are?

• 57:10Speaker 05

  It's expensive.

• 57:11Ed Zitron?

  How expensive are we talking?

• 57:12Speaker 05

  I mean, you know, the Arcteryx brand.

• 57:13Speaker 06

  I was gonna say, like, the stuff that they have that doesn't have robot arms in it is still, like, expensive.

• 57:19Ed Zitron?

  So how much, how much are we talking?

• 57:21Speaker 05

  Yeah, I didn't think, so they have no like actual info, yeah, but the ballpark figure that I'm hearing is like five thousand.

• 57:27Ed Zitron?

  Ooh.

• 57:28Speaker 05

  And I was like, are you gonna talk to insurance providers to get this subsidized? They were like, they want to consider it. I don't think this is a product, the insurance providers have to decide whether to cover it.

• 57:38Ed Zitron?

  They barely cover medicine.

• 57:39Speaker 05

  Exactly. There you go. My, I don't want to get into it, but.

• 57:42Speaker 06

  But also, I can't imagine you're like anybody's paying, like, you're not selling a lot of stuff at MSRP, but it's five thousand dollars either.

• 57:48Speaker 05

  Exactly.

• 57:49Ed Zitron?

  I will be honest, though, secretly, this is the stuff I'm most excited about. Cause like the idea of just putting on a suit that makes you able bodied for anyone is kind of magical.

• 58:00Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 58:00Ed Zitron?

  Like, I, I don't know, like, I was a very heavy kid growing up, I was like three hundred and twenty-five pounds. And that alone, like, didn't mean I was strong, which is very embarrassing when you're large, I will add. But nevertheless, like, even when I got thin, I still felt quite weak. I still had, like, some joint issues even. And it's like the idea that we can kind of level the playing field, other than the fact it's five thousand dollars, is kind of cool.

• 58:22Speaker 05

  You wanna hear something?

• 58:23Ed Zitron?

  Absolutely.

• 58:24Speaker 05

  After I saw those, I walked downstairs to the Kickstarter booth and the Kickstarter booth had a company from somewhere in Asia, I think Taiwan or China, I can't remember, called Hypershell, and they make like a non-pants version of this exoskeleton. It is between eight hundred to fifteen hundred dollars, depending on the material.

• 58:40Ed Zitron?

  When you say non-pants, how does that?

• 58:42Speaker 05

  Yeah, so it's this sort of brace that you strap on around your waist to start, and then you strap like two things to your knees. And they're basically an exoskeleton. The reason it's not on Engadget.com is I haven't written it up yet. I'm still technically working, I guess, but chilling. And, yeah, and so they do the same thing the Arcteryx pants do, except for in an exoskeleton that you strap around your clothes.

• 59:04Ed Zitron?

  This is so cool. I love this.

• 59:06Speaker 05

  Actually, I'll show you a video right now. I don't know if.

• 59:08Ed Zitron?

  If you can, when, when will you write up your story?

• 59:11Speaker 05

  Ah.

• 59:12Ed Zitron?

  Just send me the link.

• 59:13Speaker 05

  I will send you the link. Yes, I'm hoping to do it tomorrow and have it up over the weekend on our website.

• 59:17Ed Zitron?

  And I just, I think that this is what I wish CES all was, because if you think about what makes technology actually magical, it's stuff that makes you stronger, connect with people quicker, allows you to explore who you are and who other people are in an honest way. And when it gets worse, it's when people interfere with that process.

• 59:34Speaker 05

  Or slap AI in everything.

• 59:35Ed Zitron?

  Or slap AI in everything. So as we go, as we sadly come to the end, we've got four minutes left. Was there anything you were like, your favorite, favorite thing? Was there something you missed? Is there anything you really missed that you truly liked or despised?

• 59:49Speaker 05

  I can't, something that made me laugh, but I kind of liked it.

• 59:52Ed Zitron?

  Sold. What was it?

• 59:53Speaker 05

  So we started noticing a trend at CES 2025. Chris, I might have talked about it, but Dan Cooper and our team was the first one to crystallize this idea with this term. I mean, I crystallized the idea without this fancy name that he came up with it.

• 1:00:06Ed Zitron?

  Classic Dan.

• 1:00:07Speaker 05

  Classic Dan, great term. The Hawk Tour Show.

• 1:00:11Ed Zitron?

  Oh, God, yes. What are you talking? I want to know.

• 1:00:13Speaker 05

  Uh, there were so much like saliva sensing, saliva detecting tech.

• 1:00:20Ed Zitron?

  Oh, boy, on that thing, huh?

• 1:00:22Speaker 05

  On that thing. I mean, look, when we walked into CES Unveiled, which is the first show on Sunday night, um, I already knew there were two saliva-based like devices there. I was not expecting the most popular booth at CES Unveiled where like crowds of people were around them the whole time. I couldn't even get into a demo. This thing called Salt Spoon. Have you heard of it?

• 1:00:41Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:00:42Speaker 05

  Everyone was licking it. It was like, everybody's putting things in their mouths at this show. I was like, I don't know.

• 1:00:47Speaker 06

  I got to, so I checked out the salt spoon. It's a cool idea. They were not letting people put it in their mouth at that point. There was like a video.

• 1:00:54Speaker 05

  They probably ran out.

• 1:00:55Speaker 06

  Maybe.

• 1:00:56Speaker 05

  They were giving away disposable ones at Unveiled, yeah.

• 1:00:58Speaker 06

  Yeah, there were like a couple of them sitting on the counter and I like picked it up and I was like, I don't know, feels good. Like, I don't, like a spoon more or less, but stranger. But then there was like a video of a guy eating ramen with it. Yeah. And but, you know, you had to guess, like, he like, it was just sort of like.

• 1:01:13Ed Zitron?

  It's the one with the electromagnetic things to make you taste the saltiness, right?

• 1:01:16Speaker 05

  Yes, exactly. So think about it. If you're trying to consume like less sodium in your. Alive, but you still want to have salty foods. This food suppose that you, if you use the spoon, it'll turn everything you put in your mouth by tricking your taste buds into something that's like thinking that something salty or saltier than it is.

• 1:01:33Speaker 06

  So what I learned about this from, from Jesse Farrar, where I get all of my scientific information. This is apparently the same technology that people use for saltwater pools. That it's basically a way of like making something salty without like dumping a bunch of sodium into it.

• 1:01:46Speaker 04

  So the idea is you will shy away from things that have a certain level of salt because they'll taste even more salty.

• 1:01:54Ed Zitron?

  I can answer this because I've had a lot of emails when we last mentioned it. Want to apologize to the people who kind of turned their nose up at this. It turns out there are people who have like real physical problems with salt. They have to, it's not like I should have less salt. It's if I have too much, I will be in physical pain. And this is magical for them. It's like I, I wanna like, as this show goes on, as we approach the end, anything I really mess up, I will try and fix. But apparently like this is a big deal for those people who can like have salt.

• 1:02:23Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's not just like a diet thing too, right? It's like some people have irritation, inflammation, or I don't know if there's a salt allergy in the world, but.

• 1:02:30Speaker 04

  Or hypertension.

• 1:02:30Speaker 05

  Right, hypertension. So you want hypertension as a diet based thing that I'm considering as an issue, right? Like for healthy reasons, you still want to be able to taste salty foods. It's not about making something taste so salty that you will avoid it. It's more drinking bland things that will then taste salty because of the using of the spoon.

• 1:02:46Speaker 06

  And as I gathered it, it was like, you also get the, you can kind of like dial in the experience to like what you want, I think. Cause there's, isn't that right? That it's like, you can go from like one to four and how salty it is.

• 1:02:56Speaker 05

  I walked the periphery of the booth the whole time because I couldn't get inside to this one.

• 1:03:01Speaker 06

  What was the other saliva based stuff?

• 1:03:03Speaker 04

  Yeah, let's find. There's like one thing you could spit on.

• 1:03:05Speaker 05

  Yeah, there were two things you could.

• 1:03:08Ed Zitron?

  We call it the thing.

• 1:03:11Ed Zitron?

  We call it the thing.

• 1:03:11Speaker 05

  Yeah, I have no knowledge of this thing.

• 1:03:15Speaker 05

  I, uh, here we are giggling about it.

• 1:03:17Ed Zitron?

  But it is weird.

• 1:03:18Speaker 05

  It is, this is, there are two devices. One is called the cordyceps and the other is called hormometer. We're not fans of the, yeah.

• 1:03:25Ed Zitron?

  Sorry, hormomets?

• 1:03:26Speaker 05

  Hormo- hormometer, like hormone meter.

• 1:03:29Speaker 06

  Sounds good.

• 1:03:31Ed Zitron?

  Really funny and good name.

• 1:03:31Speaker 05

  It's a great portmanteau, I think. Hormometer is slightly further along in my opinion of the process. Basically, these are at home tests that you can use your saliva, that you can use on your saliva. And they'll tell you how much like cortisol is in your system.

• 1:03:46Ed Zitron?

  So I think the problem is the labeling. Because everything you've described is wonderful.

• 1:03:50Speaker 05

  Exactly.

• 1:03:50Ed Zitron?

  And could also have not been described as saliva based.

• 1:03:53Speaker 05

  Well, I, that was to me, the way it came off. And that was my vibe.

• 1:03:57Speaker 04

  There's a mean, yeah, that's, that is saliva based.

• 1:04:00Speaker 06

  Yeah, I'll get like some faint Theranos tasting notes on this.

• 1:04:04Speaker 05

  Interesting, interesting. I, I like it because like, I'm really into like, uh, getting data about yourself, right? But I don't want blood testing all the time. I don't believe in the photo scanning of your face. It's how your face age. I want you to actually use, I guess bodily fluids to know what is up with me. And this seems smart, right? Like it's non-invasive, it's an easy way. And, and there are so many ways that we can avoid going to the doctor, I guess. It's not like going to a doctor is a bad thing. It's that like, people want to know more about themselves. People have this trapping glucose monitors on themselves just to understand their blood sugar levels when they don't have diabetes, right? So there's so many reasons people could benefit from analyzing their saliva, in my opinion.

• 1:04:48Speaker 05

  For a hormometer, they do both cortisol and progesterone levels. So.

• 1:04:52Ed Zitron?

  And what would those be, just, just for the listeners and myself?

• 1:04:55Speaker 05

  Yeah, cortisol is the stress hormone. So the levels of cortisol are higher in higher stress. And then progesterone is something that people can use to track, I guess, fertility related things or cycle related or there's so, I, I, I'm not velvrous enough in the science here to tell you what else progesterone's about.

• 1:05:12Ed Zitron?

  That makes all of us. And sadly, we have to come to the end of this part of the show. Ed, where can people find you?

• 1:05:18Speaker 04

  The talkbubble.substack.com, thismachinekills and bigblackdracobin on Twitter and Blue Sky.

• 1:05:25Ed Zitron?

  Cheryl, and where can people find you?

• 1:05:26Speaker 05

  I think I'll still be on the meta apps for a bit. So Cheryl Instagram, C H E R L Y N S T A G R A M.

• 1:05:33Speaker 06

  Defector.com, the Distraction Podcast, It's Christmastown Podcast, and DavidJRothe.BSKY.social.

• 1:05:43Ed Zitron?

  Though I realize many of you plop my end, and indeed, when you hear I'm hurt, you cheer and laugh and squeal annoyingly. Nevertheless, if you don't want to cause me misery, you'll follow the following ads with your complete undivided attention.

• 1:06:05Speaker 01

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• 1:06:38Speaker 04

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• 1:07:10Ed Zitron?

  And we're back. And we're just talking about the fact that we, each of us, has two or three drinks at this point. We're not, all right, it's not to destruction, it's just a little bit.

• 1:07:19Speaker 04

  Triple fisting is a beautiful thing.

• 1:07:20Ed Zitron?

  Okay, well, we've already had complaints about the language, so let's just move on from that one. So we're once again joined by Mr. Phil Broughton. Lou. The health physicist. Just, let's reintegrate that and reintroduce you to the show. Allow me to introduce myself. Okay. So I'm Phil Broughton.

• 1:07:40Speaker 05

  I'm a health physicist, which is a radiation safety professional. I'm also a laser safety officer. So I take care of the full electromagnetic spectrum of radiation. I also am the weird shit guy and your bartender.

• 1:07:53Speaker 06

  Phil is here at CES showing the laser mask that he made that people can, it's not FDA approved.

• 1:08:00Speaker 05

  I hate that product. So you have seen that?

• 1:08:03Speaker 06

  No.

• 1:08:04Speaker 05

  Have you seen the laser bra as well?

• 1:08:06Speaker 06

  No, that's, is that really down there?

• 1:08:08Ed Zitron?

  Is that real?

• 1:08:08Speaker 05

  That is real.

• 1:08:09Ed Zitron?

  What does it do? What are you talking about? You haven't been on the floor.

• 1:08:12Speaker 05

  No, this wasn't on the floor. This is just why the internet exists, my sons.

• 1:08:17Ed Zitron?

  So Phil is someone I torture.

• 1:08:20Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 1:08:20Ed Zitron?

  We've been friends for 15 years. Sorry, I also missed something out. Mr. Ed Onguoso Jr. is to my right. Wonderful. Hello.

• 1:08:27Speaker 04

  And I'm Ed now, he's Zed.

• 1:08:29Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, so Sherwin has been calling me Zed.

• 1:08:32Speaker 06

  You having a laugh? You having, you taking a piss, mate?

• 1:08:36Speaker 04

  You having a laugh? Mr. Zitron, ooh, cockles and muscles. I'm like searching my head. Can I do any accent?

• 1:08:45Speaker 06

  Try it out.

• 1:08:45Speaker 04

  Beans on toast, yeah. Oh, one time I did have an English breakfast and I felt like I was gonna die.

• 1:08:53Ed Zitron?

  That's just how it feels to be British, mate. Okay, back to.

• 1:08:56Speaker 06

  All of your British levels maxed out.

• 1:08:59Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, the British saliva test.

• 1:09:01Speaker 04

  All my Kenyan ancestors were like, what is this?

• 1:09:04Speaker 06

  Don't let them, don't let them win.

• 1:09:07Ed Zitron?

  Oh God, oh, oh boy, there's so many directions, but back to Phil. So why does this show frustrate you so? We've gone over the fire marshal aspect, but just the general milieu of CES does appear to torture you so.

• 1:09:23Speaker 05

  So a lot of what vendors are coming to CES with are not, despite the fact it says Consumer Electronics Show.

• 1:09:32Speaker 05

  Many of the things are not aimed for consumers, never meant for consumers. Or these are not products that are actually on the market, not going to get to the market. And it's terrifying how many people who have come on the show have, in talking to me separately at the bar, have said that they've met people at the stalls who asked them, so what do you think our product should do? No, that's not what you do. If you have a product you're going to sell to someone, you really better know what it does so it can be sold legally and safely.

• 1:10:09Ed Zitron?

  Or so that it could do it.

• 1:10:10Speaker 05

  Oh, well, there's that, too.

• 1:10:11Speaker 06

  Is that part of the, again, be asking an ignorant question.

• 1:10:15Ed Zitron?

  Okay, you are days in, you need to stop leading in with the I don't know stuff. You know plenty.

• 1:10:18Speaker 06

  No, I don't know a lot about CE. I mean, I know something about like what this one is like and how it feels, maybe. That seems, that does strike me as strange, the idea of showing up with something that's like halfway done. Like the idea of me just like publishing a draft with a bunch of TKs in it and being like, I'm really interested in anybody's feedback on how you think this story should conclude.

• 1:10:38Speaker 04

  Well, listen, brother, after this, we're gonna drive out west to a little place I like to call Palo Alto, where you get to see a whole world that is built on stuff.

• 1:10:48Speaker 06

  Yeah, shipping the prototype.

• 1:10:50Ed Zitron?

  Well, it's like Pete Alonso just made an offer, a three-year deal to the Mets, which is news I'm giving to David.

• 1:10:56Speaker 06

  You're allowed to do that?

• 1:10:57Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, like, it's much like that, like, what will you do, Peter? And that is actually a good question for the Mets at this point, but nevertheless.

• 1:11:03Speaker 06

  Happy to field that one if you want.

• 1:11:05Ed Zitron?

  Oh, please, please.

• 1:11:06Speaker 06

  Should we do some Mets stuff?

• 1:11:07Speaker 05

  Lasers, shoot them all with lasers?

• 1:11:08Ed Zitron?

  Handle the Mets real quick.

• 1:11:10Speaker 06

  Couldn't hurt. Uh, no, the Alonso thing, I, as sentimentally as a Mets fan, I hope he returns, I think he's declining.

• 1:11:16Ed Zitron?

  Right.

• 1:11:16Speaker 06

  The Mets seem to think he's declining.

• 1:11:18Ed Zitron?

  Right.

• 1:11:18Speaker 06

  If he's making offers to them, uh, maybe he thinks he's declining, but whatever. He's, he seems very happy to be on, on the Mets, and I think that that is rare enough that I hope he stays. That's a completely straight-faced answer.

• 1:11:30Ed Zitron?

  What apps do you think Pete Alonso has?

• 1:11:32Speaker 04

  For listeners who don't know, what are the Mets?

• 1:11:34Ed Zitron?

  The Mets are, so they're one of the...

• 1:11:37Speaker 06

  That's a great question.

• 1:11:38Ed Zitron?

  That's such a me thing to say, thank you.

• 1:11:40Speaker 06

  Obviously, you haven't been down to the eureka level. They are a, it's a, it's an AI-enabled.

• 1:11:46Ed Zitron?

  No, the Mets are a private equity firm owned by a billionaire that ostensibly sells baseball-related services. They only recently updated their terms of services to allow for baseball-related success with the acquisition of a company called Juan Soto.

• 1:12:01Speaker 06

  They're on a subscription model like a lot of these guys. You gotta keep paying if you want them to, well, whatever. We're not gonna talk about the National League East.

• 1:12:09Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, I just realized we have gone fully into the Mets, so we need to move.

• 1:12:12Speaker 05

  That was beautiful.

• 1:12:13Ed Zitron?

  I am so sorry. But Phil, we're putting the Fire Marshal stuff aside. What is it with lasers and these people? Like, what is it? Why do they love to bring up lasers so much? Like, what do you think it is?

• 1:12:24Speaker 05

  Okay. So, this would be several decades of career experience and just watching people and what they do. There's something in the human psyche that gets very excited about whatever thing there is in the world. What if I put a laser on it?

• 1:12:42Ed Zitron?

  Right.

• 1:12:42Speaker 05

  That will make it better. Or alternatively, this thing that already does the thing it normally does, would a laser make it do it better?

• 1:12:50Ed Zitron?

  So, do they know what a laser is also?

• 1:12:53Speaker 05

  Often not.

• 1:12:54Ed Zitron?

  Great, keep going.

• 1:12:55Speaker 06

  What is a laser?

• 1:12:57Speaker 05

  Light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation.

• 1:13:00Speaker 06

  I didn't know it was an acronym.

• 1:13:02Speaker 05

  It is, just like Skuba.

• 1:13:03Speaker 06

  That it was cool.

• 1:13:04Ed Zitron?

  And I didn't realize it was an acronym until you asked that question.

• 1:13:07Speaker 06

  Yeah, this is amazing.

• 1:13:08Ed Zitron?

  I have an IQ of seven.

• 1:13:10Speaker 05

  But the, the more exciting thing, and the reason why I get excited about it and products that happen, is how we regulate lasers in the United States of America. This is your important asterisk that goes in the post of, "These rules and regulations only apply in the United States of America. In your jurisdiction, they may be different." When lasers became a thing that weren't just stuff nerds played with in the national laboratory, the Very first market they hit, the first consumer, consumer is very relative,

• 1:13:48Speaker 05

  product was for ophthalmological treatments where you're doing the laser cautery zapping to fix.

• 1:13:56Speaker 06

  In the eye.

• 1:13:57Speaker 05

  In the eye to cauterize off new veins growing in the retina to save people who are losing their vision from glaucoma or other diabetic, diabetic retinopathy. Because the first application of lasers that really hit the consumer market was a medical application is the reason why lasers are regulated by the Food and Drug Administration's Center for Device and Radiologic Health, which means any consumer product that incorporates a laser is supposed to have been vetted and compliant with the federal laser product performance standard that the FDA promulgates, and they only get one chance to catch you is when you

• 1:14:37Speaker 05

  release your product into commerce, and that has a very specific regulatory meeting.

• 1:14:43Speaker 06

  Which is?

• 1:14:44Speaker 05

  Oh, God, you actually want to know.

• 1:14:46Speaker 06

  Yeah, yes. Well, I'm assuming for our purposes here, the stuff that's downstairs, a lot of the places have, as you've pointed out, like, they'll be like a little tagline where like, this has not been shown to the FDA yet.

• 1:14:57Speaker 05

  Or, no, not, not, not approved by the FDA.

• 1:15:00Speaker 06

  Yeah, all right.

• 1:15:01Speaker 05

  Or is being used under basically the funsies code of the regulation.

• 1:15:06Speaker 06

  When you have something at CTS, even if you have a prototype on it, it has not been released into commerce. Is that correct?

• 1:15:11Speaker 05

  Correct.

• 1:15:11Speaker 06

  Okay.

• 1:15:12Speaker 05

  So commerce's specific meaning is you have a, excuse me, laser product that you have made more than one of, is be, and/or is being used somewhere other than the place where it was initially built, and/or by someone who was not the person who originally built it, which means if you listen to those three statements, at no point does money have to exchange hands.

• 1:15:41Speaker 06

  It does, so they only have to build two.

• 1:15:43Speaker 05

  The moment you hit two, you have made a laser product.

• 1:15:47Speaker 06

  Versus people reading this as commerce, meaning it's on Amazon.

• 1:15:50Speaker 05

  Which is what most people think it means.

• 1:15:52Speaker 06

  Sweet.

• 1:15:52Speaker 05

  That's how the regulation covers it to try to cover tricks like people being, oh, well, just, you're a friend, I'll make you a second one of these setups, and I'll ship everything that I just did over to you. At your other laboratory, you have no idea how the very specific quirk of I have duct tape sitting right here on this setup to protect that beam from going out that will blind me. Also, it takes so very little laser power to actually be blind.

• 1:16:18Ed Zitron?

  But also, that feels like a valuable point to this, which is just because they've made two doesn't mean they've made two safe ones. Like if there are little workarounds, like when you release something under these regulations you're discussing, I imagine you probably want to think of a more rigorous housing than tape.

• 1:16:37Speaker 05

  Correct. That's when I mentioned the federal laser product performance standard, aka the FLIPS. It specifies the components that your laser should have to be a legal laser product that could be sold into commerce.

• 1:16:51Ed Zitron?

  Right.

• 1:16:52Speaker 05

  They're not just, you have to be I-safe levels of power, which is defined as less than one milliwatt per square centimeter on the retina. It also has things like you have interlocks, so that if you pop open the housing, it turns off, or it drops a shutter.

• 1:17:09Ed Zitron?

  And these are things that people don't classically put in the first version?

• 1:17:12Speaker 05

  Not classically, no.

• 1:17:13Ed Zitron?

  Good.

• 1:17:14Speaker 05

  Also, other things like there's indicator lights, there's switches, there's key interlocks, all the things that sound like buttons.

• 1:17:23Ed Zitron?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:24Speaker 05

  Things that vanish from the design of products the moment you catch apple disease and decide that every single product should be a smooth tablet of silicon that you wave your hands at and they do magic, rather than what is my product doing?

• 1:17:39Speaker 04

  So how God/Steve Jobs intended.

• 1:17:42Ed Zitron?

  So how does this manifest into problems at CES?

• 1:17:47Speaker 05

  Well, first, you have handed products often to salespeople on the floor to go set up and talk about and try to make a sale.

• 1:17:54Ed Zitron?

  Who are most certainly not.

• 1:17:55Speaker 05

  The engineers who built it.

• 1:17:57Ed Zitron?

  Or laser safety officers.

• 1:17:58Speaker 05

  Correct. The other thing is bringing a laser onto the floor, and let's take this back to the fire marshal chat, that constitutes one of the hazards you actually have to let the CTA know about, so they can tell the fire marshals, because that changes the occupancy of the room. Also, they have safety personnel they call to come evaluate setups. So if you say you're bringing a laser to the floor. A laser safety officer will come, "Oh, you should put an enclosure around that product you bought, brought because you don't actually have one." Now, this defeats the purpose of you're trying to show your product. Hmm. Now, they can't see it through the enclosure that protects people from it. That should indicate that maybe your product is not great.

• 1:18:43Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, but I want to see the product.

• 1:18:46Speaker 05

  You won't see at all.

• 1:18:48Ed Zitron?

  You won't see anything at the end.

• 1:18:50Speaker 06

  That's disturbing, and that's where that's the hand of a big brother in a lot of ways, trying to keep you from being blinded by a laser.

• 1:18:56Speaker 05

  Yeah, big vision, gotcha.

• 1:18:57Speaker 06

  Under a hotel.

• 1:18:59Speaker 04

  What is it, move fast, blind quick?

• 1:19:00Speaker 06

  Yes, that's right.

• 1:19:01Ed Zitron?

  Yep. So, but I just want to actually, here's a really good thing for listeners. What are the consequences of not following these things? What do these products do to you as a person in the event these regulations are not followed?

• 1:19:14Speaker 05

  Blinding, fires.

• 1:19:18Ed Zitron?

  And is that bad?

• 1:19:19Speaker 05

  Fair question.

• 1:19:22Ed Zitron?

  That is a good question. I'm glad that we have a balanced, balanced group here.

• 1:19:26Speaker 05

  So, just a quick rundown. If you go look at your product that has a laser in it, odds on favor, you have one. It's probably a printer in your home.

• 1:19:36Ed Zitron?

  Right.

• 1:19:37Speaker 05

  If you go look on it, there will be a little yellow sticker on the box that's, box that says "Class 1 Laser Device."

• 1:19:41Ed Zitron?

  Right.

• 1:19:42Speaker 05

  That means it is safe for use under any viewing conditions. You have no access to a hazardous laser beam.

• 1:19:51Ed Zitron?

  You don't need eye protection or anything like that.

• 1:19:53Speaker 05

  You do not, because the housing that's in there will protect you. Mind you, most laser printers are actually Class 4 lasers, which are absolutely blinding and capable of setting fires if you took all of the housing that makes the printer off of it.

• 1:20:07Ed Zitron?

  Okay.

• 1:20:08Speaker 05

  So, there is a much more powerful laser that is dangerous to you hiding inside of it.

• 1:20:13Ed Zitron?

  Hmm.

• 1:20:14Speaker 05

  One of the other things that happens at CES and other shows like Photonics West, where I will be in a couple of weeks, is people try to get around some of the consumer protection standards by rather than selling you a finished product, they sell you parts as original equipment manufacturers.

• 1:20:33Ed Zitron?

  Hmm.

• 1:20:34Speaker 05

  If you go buy OEM parts, which you are free to do because America, everyone salute.

• 1:20:39Ed Zitron?

  He is saluting. I'm, I'm saluting right now, of course.

• 1:20:43Speaker 05

  Thank you, everyone.

• 1:20:44Ed Zitron?

  Thank you, everyone.

• 1:20:47Speaker 05

  If you go buy a laser, OEM laser product and integrate it into your system because you thought this, this stuff is great.

• 1:20:56Speaker 06

  This bangs.

• 1:20:57Speaker 05

  All it needs is a laser.

• 1:20:59Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:20:59Speaker 05

  The moment you add a laser to it, you just churned the thing you made into a laser product. A finished one is subject to all of those rules, like enclosures, lights, housings, interlocks. You just became a laser manufacturer and you didn't want to be.

• 1:21:19Ed Zitron?

  And at that point.

• 1:21:20Speaker 04

  Should we be supporting entrepreneurs with that sort of initiative?

• 1:21:23Speaker 06

  I agree with Edwitt's question. It does feel weird. This is like the, it's like a 3D printer-y type scenario where there's like, it seems like the.

• 1:21:32Speaker 05

  Oh God, the 3D printers.

• 1:21:33Speaker 06

  But like the distance between reach and grasp here is like actually a matter of life and death. Like the idea that like I could, by doing a few different things that more or less involve following instructions, become a laser manufacturer. Like I don't even brush my teeth before 11:00 in the morning a lot of days. Like I shouldn't be trusted with being able to do stuff like that.

• 1:21:52Ed Zitron?

  No, and that's, that's actually was a very good point, which is what Phil is describing is how easy it is to do this insane shit.

• 1:21:59Speaker 05

  Very. And to bring it back to the FDA, their control point is releasing a product into commerce, after which the FDA doesn't really have control of it anymore because it's now in. The only other thing that a laser manufacturer is required to do as far as the FDA is concerned is maintain a log of injuries associated with their product and recalls.

• 1:22:26Ed Zitron?

  I have to do that with the podcast.

• 1:22:27Speaker 05

  Yeah. Several listeners have already.

• 1:22:30Ed Zitron?

  Just to my heart.

• 1:22:31Speaker 06

  Recalling bits.

• 1:22:32Speaker 05

  Recalling bits or entire systems.

• 1:22:36Speaker 04

  We, after close examination, we've realized that bit number 76C from episode 243.

• 1:22:42Speaker 06

  The thing about the wussy was.

• 1:22:44Speaker 04

  Was problematic.

• 1:22:44Speaker 06

  Could cause emotional injury to listeners.

• 1:22:47Ed Zitron?

  But so Phil, on the floor over the years, what are the manifestations specifically of this thing? What are the things that you have seen and heard of that you can terrorize my good friends, Mr. Roth and Mr. Onguoso with?

• 1:23:00Speaker 05

  So let's go back to the laser bra.

• 1:23:04Ed Zitron?

  Okay, um, please.

• 1:23:06Speaker 05

  This was actually a club item where the idea was you could be your own laser light show. Not just you put out the laser emitting product to go with the music, but it will actually react to your dancing and will change the brightness, change the color.

• 1:23:25Ed Zitron?

  Why do they need lasers, though? If it's an LED situation.

• 1:23:28Speaker 05

  Because lasers make everything better. Also, LED also can stand for laser emitting diode.

• 1:23:33Ed Zitron?

  Lasers are a sensing thing, are they? They don't sense things, they do things.

• 1:23:35Speaker 05

  They can also emit.

• 1:23:37Ed Zitron?

  Right, but are you saying that they use lasers to emit light?

• 1:23:42Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 1:23:43Ed Zitron?

  On the fucking bra?

• 1:23:44Speaker 05

  Dozens of them per pop.

• 1:23:46Ed Zitron?

  We have lights!

• 1:23:47Speaker 05

  No, but they could be lasers to shine in very visible beams across the entire room.

• 1:23:52Ed Zitron?

  Okay, I'm not the lazy set, lazy Jesus Christ.

• 1:23:54Speaker 05

  This slip of the tongue happens constantly.

• 1:23:56Ed Zitron?

  Laser safety expert here, but I think the idea of shooting a bunch of lasers out of one's breasts where people might be looking is fun.

• 1:24:06Ed Zitron?

  It may be, but it also might.

• 1:24:07Speaker 06

  Fun and flirty, a great look for the season.

• 1:24:10Ed Zitron?

  Thirty flirty and thriving. That feels dangerous.

• 1:24:15Speaker 05

  You have all very pain looks on your faces at the very idea.

• 1:24:18Ed Zitron?

  Not me, I feel no pain like the Zohan.

• 1:24:21Speaker 04

  I'm thinking about whether it would be worth it, you know?

• 1:24:26Speaker 06

  Like, literally risking it all. Risking your ability to proceed.

• 1:24:30Ed Zitron?

  To look at a bra.

• 1:24:32Speaker 04

  What sort of party could I go to and I'd be like, "That was fine."

• 1:24:36Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, I'd go blinded.

• 1:24:37Speaker 06

  I pretty much got what I paid for.

• 1:24:38Ed Zitron?

  Philly is desperate to actually.

• 1:24:40Speaker 05

  There's also totally been the laser butt plug that showed up at DEF CON.

• 1:24:43Ed Zitron?

  Okay, that, no, no, no, no, no.

• 1:24:44Speaker 05

  But same thing, dropping travel.

• 1:24:45Ed Zitron?

  Much like.

• 1:24:46Speaker 04

  What's the name of the manufacturer so we can?

• 1:24:48Speaker 05

  No, this actually was someone.

• 1:24:50Speaker 06

  Please make one of them more effective.

• 1:24:52Speaker 05

  But the one that was most relevant that actually did show up at CES, and it has shown up dozens of times on Hacker News and other interesting maker websites, is someone who had made a laser-based bong. And now, this is a problem. Because again, you've taken a concept of a totally workable product that already exists, bongs. We have known how these work for a very long time.

• 1:25:16Ed Zitron?

  And we have made them so that people who may be under the influence can operate them.

• 1:25:19Speaker 05

  Can even operate them, maybe not safely with a torch, but you know.

• 1:25:23Ed Zitron?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:24Speaker 05

  So the certain kind of mind looks at that and goes, man, I can make that so much better with a laser. And

• 1:25:30Ed Zitron?

  Okay.

• 1:25:30Speaker 05

  The problem is lasers are not necessarily hot burning enough

• 1:25:36Ed Zitron?

  Right.

• 1:25:36Speaker 05

  to actually properly combust your weed

• 1:25:40Ed Zitron?

  Right.

• 1:25:40Speaker 05

  to then inhale. Incomplete combustion is a problem because, okay, now what did I break down on my plant material too? Oh, it's every organic molecule you possibly could break it down to, some of which are carcinogens. Yeah.

• 1:25:57Ed Zitron?

  So those are good?

• 1:25:58Speaker 05

  No.

• 1:25:59Speaker 04

  So your reefer becomes something even more dangerous, but you don't even really get the enjoyment of getting

• 1:26:05Ed Zitron?

  I am genuinely asking, what is the consequences of the carcinogens? No, no dumb questions.

• 1:26:11Speaker 05

  You just said the word carcinogens.

• 1:26:13Ed Zitron?

  No, no, but explain, please.

• 1:26:15Speaker 05

  Cancer causing agents.

• 1:26:16Ed Zitron?

  Thank you.

• 1:26:17Speaker 05

  Some of which are just straight up toxic, not just carcinogenic.

• 1:26:21Ed Zitron?

  And do you not get

• 1:26:21Speaker 04

  Do you get high at least?

• 1:26:22Speaker 06

  Yes, good question.

• 1:26:22Speaker 05

  You might.

• 1:26:23Ed Zitron?

  So just to be clear though, when you break

• 1:26:25Speaker 06

  You got away all this stuff.

• 1:26:26Speaker 05

  But you're also

• 1:26:27Speaker 06

  This part of the show is about

• 1:26:28Speaker 05

  You are You're also effectively wasting weed. You are not completely combusting.

• 1:26:33Ed Zitron?

  Okay, now I'm taking this very seriously. Not that I ever have it, but the specific thing I'm saying here though is so the laser is not even efficient as a heating source.

• 1:26:44Speaker 05

  It's not a good answer for it. It's just, cool, I used a laser.

• 1:26:47Ed Zitron?

  Do you not regularly burn carcinogens when you do like weed that you smoke in bong? For example.

• 1:26:53Speaker 05

  You get, often get full combustion. The goal is to get full combustion to get the THC out.

• 1:26:59Ed Zitron?

  Does that get the carcinogens out? Is, are there less?

• 1:27:02Speaker 05

  You don't make them in the first place.

• 1:27:03Ed Zitron?

  Okay, so the idea of using a laser in this case creates new problems that makes weed less healthy.

• 1:27:09Speaker 05

  Again, it's time for another brand new acronym for you. LJAX, laser generated airborne contaminants, which is something we regulate under

• 1:27:18Ed Zitron?

  And why do lasers create those?

• 1:27:22Speaker 05

  So anytime you have a laser interacting with material, they start burning things off of it. It's sorry, if it has enough power to start burning things off it, it will make fumes, it will do micro machining of surfaces. And you start getting nanoscale particulates, which are very exciting, very They sound cool. Yeah, but no. So normally you put on a respirator to protect yourself from particulates when you're doing woodwork and stuff, which you already mentioned, the laser cutters and then burners. Yep. When you use those on your wood, rather than just making simple smoke or sawdust, you are making nanoscale particulates that go right through your respirator. And rather

• 1:28:05Speaker 05

  than getting stuck in your, your sinuses with all your mucus there, some may, to your lungs, some may get stopped there. Suddenly, the target organ for smoke is your liver, rather than your lungs. Christ.

• 1:28:20Ed Zitron?

  It see, this is the thing. This is, I'm so happy you put this down. It has been like eight years of doing this. We've never actually got you to run down where your actual expertise lies here. And it's wonderful to do. No, I fucking love it. It's wonderful. The show has been amazing. But the thing is, it's like a classic CES style problem where it's like, ah, we got the solution to something.

• 1:28:39Speaker 05

  But you have so many more problems.

• 1:28:41Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, we, we may have created some more problems, but did we create a solution? I don't know. Do you think we did? Did you come, did we, can you tell us if we, what do you think? Can you buy this and then give us an idea?

• 1:28:53Speaker 06

  Right. That's the bit that I kept waiting for you to get to because a lot of it is like the, especially with, you know, like the idea of a laser bong. Like this is, it's a worse way to address a problem that has been pretty comprehensively solved, but

• 1:29:05Speaker 05

  But it's cool.

• 1:29:06Speaker 06

  Right.

• 1:29:07Ed Zitron?

  Sold in a way that stoners would absolutely buy.

• 1:29:09Speaker 06

  Yeah, that somebody's like, well, this is like, maybe this is cool enough that we could sell it, even if it's delivering like. Just of, not even 25% of the experience. Like you're getting all the carcinogens and none of the

• 1:29:21Speaker 04

  You're getting an extra 100%.

• 1:29:22Speaker 06

  I don't know what percentage.

• 1:29:23Speaker 04

  It feels like when I was in high school and we were out of weed and our plug was out of town. And so we'd scrape our bowls to get

• 1:29:30Speaker 06

  Oh, right.

• 1:29:32Speaker 04

  To smoke out of some PVC pipe, you know, like just.

• 1:29:35Speaker 06

  Okay, I was. Maxing out the dirtbag standards.

• 1:29:39Speaker 05

  I was gonna say you were in good shape there, right up until you said PVC.

• 1:29:42Speaker 04

  I mean, yeah, I'm trying, I'm trying to maximize the unhealthy, horrible, damaging carcinogenic elements.

• 1:29:51Ed Zitron?

  There you go, you know, British culture.

• 1:29:53Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:29:54Speaker 05

  Just. So to correct you though, David, it's not, you get all of the carcinogens that were there. It's, you made some that weren't there in the first place.

• 1:30:02Speaker 06

  Yes, my bad.

• 1:30:03Ed Zitron?

  You made a new problem for your not solution.

• 1:30:06Speaker 06

  This is like the thing where like, I don't think this is like not a novel observation, but they like, the ways in which like a commercial consideration, just the most basic commercial consideration, like, can I sell this? Can I make this thing and bring it to market? That is the highest hurdle for any of these products.

• 1:30:24Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:30:24Speaker 06

  The technological stuff, the magic, the shit that you need, like advanced degrees to be able to do, doesn't often seem to be a problem. The bigger problem is trying to find some way to either invest in it or to find a way to sell it. And that's how you, that's like when these things get bad.

• 1:30:39Ed Zitron?

  And then the fill destroying ones are where they fail both.

• 1:30:42Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 1:30:42Ed Zitron?

  Where they're just like, well, do we have a product that people want? No. Do we have a product that works? Absolutely not.

• 1:30:49Speaker 06

  However, we do have a name.

• 1:30:50Ed Zitron?

  We have science. And we technically do have science. That's one thing your wokeness can't take away, Phil. They do have science.

• 1:30:57Speaker 06

  Get them, Ed.

• 1:30:57Ed Zitron?

  Now, the problem is, do they understand the science?

• 1:31:01Speaker 05

  No.

• 1:31:02Ed Zitron?

  The big one. And this is the thing, I think the.

• 1:31:05Speaker 05

  Or rather, they understand their specific incredibly narrow niche and have never picked their head up to look and acknowledge there are other humans around them.

• 1:31:15Ed Zitron?

  Ah, why would they do that unless they're consumers?

• 1:31:17Speaker 05

  Some of them are customers.

• 1:31:18Ed Zitron?

  Okay.

• 1:31:18Speaker 05

  They want their money.

• 1:31:19Ed Zitron?

  Consumer.

• 1:31:20Speaker 05

  Oh, sorry.

• 1:31:21Ed Zitron?

  You are not there to be happy, you're there to consume. And this is CES, baby. It's just a series of people from the top of the people who actually release things, all the way down to the people releasing the laser bomb.

• 1:31:34Speaker 05

  The, the other thing for CES is, sorry.

• 1:31:41Speaker 05

  They move in fads. Well, I said, there's something in the human spirit that says you just gotta attach lasers to things.

• 1:31:47Ed Zitron?

  Hmm.

• 1:31:48Speaker 05

  Not according to the people who've gone to the floor, not this year.

• 1:31:51Ed Zitron?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:52Speaker 05

  People were not excited to staple lasers onto stuff, but in past years, absolutely.

• 1:31:56Ed Zitron?

  That's what they took.

• 1:31:57Speaker 05

  And that, that first time we visited, see it, well, together to CES in 2015, I actually did go to the floor.

• 1:32:04Ed Zitron?

  2011?

• 1:32:05Speaker 05

  First time we went together.

• 1:32:06Ed Zitron?

  Which year was that?

• 1:32:07Speaker 05

  First time we went there together.

• 1:32:09Ed Zitron?

  The DJ Woo kid year?

• 1:32:09Speaker 05

  No, I wasn't with you.

• 1:32:10Ed Zitron?

  Okay, yeah. Nice, you were. We met in the Californian.

• 1:32:13Speaker 05

  Right, but I didn't get to meet DJ Woo kid.

• 1:32:16Ed Zitron?

  No, no, no.

• 1:32:17Speaker 05

  You left me out.

• 1:32:18Ed Zitron?

  He's one of my cool friends, by which I mean a guy I emailed like a year ago.

• 1:32:23Speaker 05

  But the, the first time I, we were here together and I went to the floor in 2015, there was a whole bunch of post-disaster Fukushima tech.

• 1:32:32Ed Zitron?

  Oh.

• 1:32:33Speaker 05

  Where people were developing so many new apps for your phone for integration into the radiation monitoring networks. There was no radiation monitoring network to integrate into.

• 1:32:42Ed Zitron?

  They just like made up a?

• 1:32:43Speaker 05

  Well, we're gonna have some, some detectors that you can log into really, would you like to buy some detectors, by the way?

• 1:32:49Ed Zitron?

  Uh huh.

• 1:32:50Speaker 05

  To add?

• 1:32:50Ed Zitron?

  For the inevitable future.

• 1:32:51Speaker 05

  For the full network that you want to be?

• 1:32:53Ed Zitron?

  Of course, the thing that will exist.

• 1:32:54Speaker 05

  Or a detector you can plug into your phone. No, your phone doesn't generate enough voltage to actually run that detector to do it. There was a whole lot of radiation-related, I am terrified of Fukushima in my backyard across the entire Pacific tech that got rolled out, which vanished the following year. There's cycles.

• 1:33:15Speaker 06

  We were talking about this this morning too, and I think the thing that was kind of interesting about what you said about that too was that, and this again, you know, I kept sort of having this feeling down there. You were describing as basically, you know, people wanted this, you know, spectrometer or whatever the term is.

• 1:33:32Speaker 05

  You got it.

• 1:33:32Speaker 06

  Is it good? I saw Craig Mazin's Chernobyl mini-series.

• 1:33:36Speaker 05

  Uh huh.

• 1:33:37Speaker 06

  And I took copious notes during it, so I know a lot.

• 1:33:40Speaker 05

  I loved that.

• 1:33:40Speaker 06

  I thought it was good, actually, but.

• 1:33:43Speaker 05

  People expected me to hate it.

• 1:33:45Speaker 06

  I had like a t-shirt on that seemed to be like.

• 1:33:46Ed Zitron?

  I was born on Chernobyl, by the way.

• 1:33:48Speaker 05

  Yes, Chernobyl Day baby, right here.

• 1:33:50Speaker 06

  Really?

• 1:33:50Ed Zitron?

  25th, 1986. I think the time zones work out with Russia.

• 1:33:53Speaker 05

  Two disasters the same day.

• 1:33:54Speaker 06

  You were alive for the last Mets World Series win. That's beautiful.

• 1:33:57Speaker 05

  Three disasters the same day.

• 1:33:58Ed Zitron?

  The collapse of multiple dynasties.

• 1:33:59Speaker 06

  Anyway, but what you were saying about this is that like, all of these things were, you know, not just flawed in the ways that you described, but they were like successful products insofar as they would generate a number with a decimal point in it, that you could then look at and be like, oh, that seems high, or that seems low and fine. But as in the mini-series, but I think just in general, like this was the point that you made is generating a number for somebody, you know, by way of an app or by way of, you know, some sort of device that, you know, is chargeable via USB C or something, is not the same thing as informing them of anything. It's just producing a number. It like, it's an outcome, but that's that.

• 1:34:36Speaker 05

  It was, I hope every time someone comes to, I have this new detector. Is this good, Phil? Or is this worth the money? I go, okay.

• 1:34:46Speaker 06

  You have to know how to use it, right?

• 1:34:47Speaker 05

  I ask the questions, what are you trying to detect? Does the detector actually detect that? Do you know how to use it? And a lot of the consumer products in spaces like this related to environmental health and safety, emergency response, no. Most people buying stuff on Amazon have no idea how to fucking use it, much less what it actually sees or how it works. And that's why I get angry constantly.

• 1:35:16Ed Zitron?

  And as we wrap up more things to upset you, we'll go into more of this tomorrow, I think. So you can just buy illegal shit on Amazon, just to wrap us up?

• 1:35:26Speaker 05

  As I regularly send you. It is the largest gray or black market in America. There was, there was a really sad time. The other show I come to Las Vegas to go to is DEF CON.

• 1:35:40Ed Zitron?

  Covid Central.

• 1:35:42Speaker 05

  I describe coming to CES as a chance to see the things I'm going to have to contend with when cheap professors buy stuff and bring it to me.

• 1:35:53Speaker 05

  Going to DEF CON, I describe as a vacation to other people's problems. Because InfoSec problems are analogous to radiation and laser safety ones, but not actually mine to need to fix, but the stuff I can learn.

• 1:36:09Speaker 05

  One time I was there, I caught three senior Amazon engineers at a bar, and I was aimed at them by a friend who said, "Those are the Amazon people. Talk to them." And I went over and at angry cocktail point, laid down, "You are the largest black market and illegal importer of dangerous laser products and other things in the world, specifically America."

• 1:36:35Speaker 06

  Really like, "Yes, do you want our card or something?"

• 1:36:37Speaker 05

  To which, to their credit-

• 1:36:39Speaker 06

  Thank you.

• 1:36:40Speaker 05

  To their credit, they looked ashamed at their shoes and said to me, "I could fix this with a code push at midnight if anyone..."

• 1:36:50Speaker 05

  But the very heavily implied, a certain bald owner cared.

• 1:36:56Ed Zitron?

  Professor Charles Xavier's-

• 1:36:58Speaker 05

  That's him.

• 1:36:59Speaker 06

  Very nasty and unfair.

• 1:37:00Ed Zitron?

  Very nasty.

• 1:37:01Speaker 04

  He doesn't listen to Magneto anymore.

• 1:37:03Ed Zitron?

  Cerebro. It's gun to his head, folks.

• 1:37:06Speaker 05

  But worse-

• 1:37:07Ed Zitron?

  Get out of my mind.

• 1:37:08Speaker 05

  Having shared this story with contacts at the FDA, the FDA, they haven't quite surrendered to Amazon, but they do not have the staff, they don't have the bandwidth, they don't have the funding to try to deal with a problem like Amazon, and instead are doing their best to work with Amazon, which is something you've written about and talked about. It's just regulatory capture.

• 1:37:31Speaker 04

  What would happen if we gave guns to the non-police-

• 1:37:37Ed Zitron?

  I was gonna, I was gonna, I was gonna say, anything that Ed is about to say is not reflective.

• 1:37:46Speaker 04

  It's, it's the, it's Ed, not the other Ed.

• 1:37:48Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, Edward Onguoso Jr.

• 1:37:50Speaker 04

  Some of you who cannot tell the difference between our voices-

• 1:37:52Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, because we sound so fucking similar.

• 1:37:55Speaker 05

  I'm seeing double. Four Eds.

• 1:37:58Speaker 04

  Four brace of one.

• 1:38:00Speaker 05

  Shit, I thought there was two of you.

• 1:38:03Speaker 04

  In a way, we are the same, you know, Britain, Kenya, what's, you know, we are connected by.

• 1:38:08Ed Zitron?

  It is also wonderful and I'm so happy. Anyway, please stop saying the thing that is legally actionable, if you could.

• 1:38:14Speaker 04

  Well, I feel like legally actionable, because I'm asking, I'm actually asking a really good question. What I'm asking is, what would things look like if regulatory agencies actually had the ability to enforce and not just to like litigate, you know, like, what, you know, I, I think one example just being, you know, if they were able to enforce in the way that an ATF or a DA might when it comes to illegal, harmful, uh, goods and services proliferating in an open air black market like this.

• 1:38:47Speaker 05

  So that was a funny question you asked me the other day, of, do I think any government agencies are working well? And I had to take a long, sad pause and go, the problem is, I know how they're supposed to work. I also know how they are working.

• 1:39:09Speaker 05

  The DEA and ATF don't work nearly as well as we would like them to.

• 1:39:14Speaker 06

  But I feel like they're much more robustly funded, if nothing else, than like that Federal Trade Commission is like six guys in an office with a leak in the ceiling.

• 1:39:22Speaker 04

  Like if we gave, I'm sure if we gave like Nina Khan and her advisors, you know, like a Ruger, like they, like, we could get some things to happen.

• 1:39:31Speaker 05

  Actually, the, the, the people that we would be most excited to have work to do this in association with the FDA, because the FDA, they do not, they don't get guns.

• 1:39:42Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:39:42Speaker 05

  They review things to see if it's safe for people to use and consume.

• 1:39:46Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:39:47Speaker 05

  The interdiction point is the United States Postal Inspection Service, which are the mail cops. Shout out, shout out to the mail cops and the Comstack.

• 1:39:57Ed Zitron?

  They are an actual like police.

• 1:39:58Speaker 05

  Do not fuck with them.

• 1:39:59Speaker 04

  Yeah, what's their conviction rate? It's like 99% or something.

• 1:40:02Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, they're just arresting packages though, mate.

• 1:40:06Ed Zitron?

  Stop resisting.

• 1:40:07Speaker 06

  Like a padded envelope.

• 1:40:09Speaker 05

  But again, there's not many people, many of them to do interdiction and investigation. Similarly, for customs, which had got stapled together to customs and border patrol under the Department of Homeland Security, when it was an independent agency, they inspected everything. They were looking for illegally transported crude. They were looking for illegal cloth because specific weaves and contents are trademarked. They're looking for that. They were looking for fake tech. An iPhone that actually just has a piece of cardboard in the middle of, rather than chips. Customs used to look at all of this. We got no support time for anything other than drugs.

• 1:40:52Ed Zitron?

  So on that note, I'm afraid we have to come to the end of this 90-plus minutes show. David J. Roth, where can people find you?

• 1:40:59Speaker 06

  Defector.com is the website. I do a podcast there. That's the distraction. I'm on Blue Sky. David J. Roth is the handle there. And that is all I have to say for that.

• 1:41:10Ed Zitron?

  Mr. Broton.

• 1:41:12Speaker 05

  So you can find me on Blue Sky at at Funranium. You can find me on my blog, FunraniumLabs.com. If you would like to learn more about me being angry about laser products, go to the adventure and radiation part and of the blog or reference rants.

• 1:41:28Speaker 06

  Yo, tell them about your coffee product.

• 1:41:30Speaker 05

  Yeah, go on. The other thing I do is I make a concentrated coffee called Black Blood of the Earth. That is what I had to make in order to drink coffee again without adding sugar and cream to it.

• 1:41:41Ed Zitron?

  We're gonna talk more about this tomorrow.

• 1:41:43Speaker 06

  Folks, it rocks.

• 1:41:44Ed Zitron?

  It does, and it's actually-

• 1:41:45Speaker 06

  Wholehearted endorsement.

• 1:41:46Ed Zitron?

  How Phil and I met. And by the way, tomorrow's episode, which I'm about to talk up and we'll talk about more later, is going to involve Phil a lot in talking about that. Mr. Onguoso Jr.

• 1:41:56Speaker 04

  I was debating whether to do a Nelson Mandela accent.

• 1:42:01Ed Zitron?

  Been thinking about it all week.

• 1:42:02Speaker 04

  I really have. To find out, you must go to the tech bubble.

• 1:42:07Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, that's what I was afraid of.

• 1:42:08Speaker 04

  Dot com. That's my newsletter. My podcast is This Machine Kills. And I'm on Twitter and Blue Sky at Big Black Jacobin.

• 1:42:23Ed Zitron?

  And you can catch me outside. How about that? That's what I wrote down in my notes there. I'm Ed Zitron. You have been so generous with your time. Thank you for listening. I am so grateful and love all of you. And we'll say that a few more times as we go. We're approaching the first episode, at the end of the first episode of The Last Day of CES Proper. You'll have another one after this. I have been joined by so many wonderful people. I want to thank everyone who's been on so far. This has been an incredible trip. Please listen to the Totally Canned message after that. I'll get one of you little pigs emailing me and being like, "Ed, you need to update it." I've done like 10 and a half flipping hours of audio on this. What more could you want from me? I'm online. You can email me. I

• 1:43:06Ed Zitron?

  always email you back. Jesus Christ. I'm just kidding. I adore you. Sir, let's get you home. Okay, I am home. I'm in a Venetian hotel room. This is where I live.

• 1:43:15Speaker 05

  Let's get you a drink.

• 1:43:24Ed 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 wheresyoured dot at to visit the Discord and go to r slash betteroffline to check out our Reddit. Thank you so much for listening.

• 1:43:57Speaker 07

  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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