CES 2026: Part Three (Tuesday)

Welcome to Better Offline’s coverage of the 2026 Consumer Electronics Show - a standup radio station in the Palazzo Hotel with an attached open bar where reporters, experts and various other characters bring you the stories from the floor. In Tuesday’s second episode, Ed is joined by Victoria Song of The Verge, writer Rory Cellan-Jones, Robert Evans of Behind The Bastards, standup comedian and host of the Factually Podcast Adam Conover, and standup comedian and actor Chloe Radcliffe to talk about the useless numbers generated by wearables, Chinese peptides, how absolutely nobody at CES is Steve Jobs, LLMs getting read-write access to your taxes, and a bunch of stuff about sex toys that I recommend you do not listen to if you have children around. EXCLUSIVE CES SALE! Get a *permanent* $10 off an annual subscription to my newsletter through January 13 2025: https://edzitronswheresyouredatghostio.outpost.pub/public/promo-subscription/cue848p5sc Rory Cellan-Jones: https://rorycellanjones.substack.com/ https://www.moversandshakerspodcast.com/ Robert Evans: https://bsky.app/profile/iwriteok.bsky.social https://podcasts.apple.com/de/podcast/behind-the-bastards/id1373812661?l=en-GB Chloe Radcliffe: https://www.instagram.com/chloebadcliffe/?hl=en Adam Conover: https://www.instagram.com/adamconover/?hl=en Donate in Sean-Paul’s honor: https://www.perc-epilepsy.org/ --- LINKS: https://www.tinyurl.com/betterofflinelinks Newsletter: https://www.wheresyoured.at/ Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/BetterOffline/ Discord: chat.wheresyoured.at https://discord.com/invite/QUUQUP9szv Ed's Socials: https://twitter.com/edzitron https://www.instagram.com/edzitron https://bsky.app/profile/edzitron.com https://www.threads.net/@edzitron Email Me: [email protected] mailto:[email protected] See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:34Speaker 01

  My name is Jessa. One of the things I love the most about working for United Healthcare is that everybody matters. Every moment matters. There's a person behind every problem. I care because it's what I was put on this earth to do.

• 0:50Speaker 02

  I'm Ben and I work at United Healthcare. I am just one piece of a larger puzzle, but every piece matters. It's more than just work. We want to make the healthcare system better for everyone. I care because I want to make a difference. That's what committed to care means to me.

• 1:09Ed Zitron?

  Forty years ago, the old gods decided to create a podcaster capable of withstanding 20 hours of podcasting in the space of five days. I am Ed Zitron and this is Better Offline CES Coverage.

• 1:28Speaker 04

  Better Offline.

• 1:31Ed Zitron?

  We are large and in charge in the Palazzo Hotel in Las Vegas, beautiful Las Vegas, Nevada, with an open bar, tacos, and the strongest bench of tech commentator talent in the known universe. As ever, we're bringing you coverage of the world's biggest tech conference. It's day two, episode two, and our first contestants have just arrived. Joining me for the first block is the amazing Victoria Song of The Verge.

• 1:50Speaker 05

  Hello.

• 1:50Ed Zitron?

  And we've got the wonderful stand-up comedian and host of the Factually Podcast, Adam Conover. Hello. And of course, the legendary broadcaster, my dad's going to be so happy, Rory Kecklin-Jones, who writes the Always On newsletter and is on the Movers and Shakers podcast. Thank you for joining us, Rory. Hello. So pleased to please your dad. Oh, he's gonna be elated. So Victoria, you describe your beat as the cursed technology beat. And I think this is a great place to begin.

• 2:16Speaker 05

  Uh, not for my mental health, but sure.

• 2:20Ed Zitron?

  Yes, but but for the for the yucks, perhaps? What what have you seen? Just just start anywhere.

• 2:26Speaker 05

  Oh, okay. So um with my editors, you know, we're talking trend pieces right now. And they're like, V, what's your what's your trend this year? And I was like bodily fluids. We are talking piss, semen, uh, blood, urine, bodily fluids, because, you know, my actual beat is wearable and health technology.

• 2:45Ed Zitron?

  Right.

• 2:46Speaker 05

  Uh, so, you know, I'm, you know, I'm surprisingly light on the on wearables today.

• 2:51Ed Zitron?

  How many have you got today?

• 2:52Speaker 05

  I only got two. The other day I was rocking four.

• 2:55Ed Zitron?

  Like a Parallax style thing.

• 2:57Speaker 05

  Yeah, actually, actually, no, I have AI. Um, you you sent me these.

• 3:01Ed Zitron?

  Oh, yes, yes.

• 3:03Speaker 05

  The AI generated.

• 3:04Ed Zitron?

  Don't name them.

• 3:04Speaker 05

  Insuls, the AI generated insuls. Um, my feet still hurt, so there we go. Uh, but yeah, so, you know, longevity, quote unquote, longevity tech is is in right now. Uh, wellness is bullshit, as we know, but a lot of my beat deals with wellness and therefore the snake oil perpetuated by wellness influencers around the world. And I get to have the lovely job of going,

• 3:33Speaker 05

  what bullshit are they gonna make me wear this year? Um, so I've worn, uh, I've worn an LED face mask that makes Jason Voorhees look funny.

• 3:44Ed Zitron?

  Okay.

• 3:44Speaker 05

  But you know, it's not the Jason Voorhees type LED mask. It's, um, you'll see it tomorrow on the verge.com.

• 3:51Ed Zitron?

  I look forward to it.

• 3:52Speaker 05

  There's that. Uh, I closed the loop on the taint zapper. Um, and, you know,

• 3:57Ed Zitron?

  I'm gonna stop you there.

• 3:59Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 3:59Ed Zitron?

  What is that?

• 4:01Speaker 05

  Okay, so we have to go back six years because this is a year, this is a story that is six years in the reporting and the making. So CES 2020, right before the world closes down because of COVID. I'm at CES suffering. I have a cold or whatever. I'm at CES Unveiled, which is the inaugural night's showcase of of vendors and whatnot. I'm walking along, I'm going, what am I gonna cover? What am I gonna cover? And I see a table. It's one of those booths that's very empty and sad.

• 4:27Speaker 06

  Right.

• 4:28Speaker 05

  And there on there's on the table, there is a mannequin and it's just this mid torso section of a male mannequin with Ken doll smooth giblets.

• 4:38Speaker 06

  Hmm.

• 4:38Speaker 05

  And it's on its back, so its taint is exposed to a roving crowd of tech journalists. And on on the gooch of this of this mannequin is a Band-Aid.

• 4:51Speaker 06

  Right.

• 4:51Speaker 05

  And on this sparse table, I really have to paint the picture here. There's a laptop and on the laptop, there is a slideshow presentation. And I want you to think of a black and white picture of a couple in bed and they're disgruntled. The woman is on the bed and she's sitting here with her arms folded and just like, oh, a look of disgust on her face. And the man is at the edge of the bed with his head in his hands and he's so sad. And the text on this slideshow is premature ejaculation is the number one male dysfunction. So I take a picture, I was at Gizmodo at the time, so I take a picture of this and I send it to our Slack channel and my editor goes, bitch, you must write this.

• 5:35Speaker 05

  And I go, okay, so I'll just describe it. I wrote it a week later, the CEO, lovely man, Jeff, he reaches out to me and he goes, I, because I had some burning questions about this taint Band-Aid. And I was like, is it gonna rip off the hair off these men's gooches? Like, what is, what are we doing here? And it's like the the proposed, it was a concept wearable. So

• 5:56Speaker 06

  Okay.

• 5:56Speaker 05

  The proposal was that to help men with premature ejaculation, it was gonna zap you.

• 6:01Speaker 06

  Okay.

• 6:02Speaker 05

  Uh, to, you know, delay orgasm.

• 6:04Speaker 06

  Right.

• 6:05Speaker 05

  And so I was like, I have so many questions. I asked many penis hat lovers that I knew, I was like, would you, would you try this? Would you do it? And they're all like, bitch, no. Uh, and so, you know, a week later, he reaches out to me, I was like, I want to answer some of your questions. No, it's not gonna rip the hair off. We've done a lot of research into the type of adhesive used. And I was like, oh, okay, I'll write that follow up. The next year I see them again and they have the most, um, They have this gif that shows how it works and it's like a, if you were on the floor and you were panning up, it's like you have a view of the gooch and just, it's the most cursed gif I've ever seen in my life. It's in our social video if you want to see it. But um, yeah, so

• 6:47Speaker 05

  that was there and we were talking and he's like, we've discovered uh, something mysterious in our testing. And I was like, oh, okay, cool. Sure. And so I met up with this guy this year and it's now a product. They are FDA cleared.

• 7:01Ed Zitron?

  Nice.

• 7:02Speaker 05

  Uh, and the mysterious discovery that they discovered was that not only can it help men with premature ejaculation, uh, delay orgasm.

• 7:13Ed Zitron?

  Mm hmm.

• 7:14Speaker 05

  The electrical signal contracts the prostate and makes ejaculation more forceful. So it,

• 7:24Ed Zitron?

  How did they measure that?

• 7:26Speaker 05

  It was discovered, it was discovered in testing.

• 7:30Speaker 07

  You can tell when you do it, Ed, how forceful it is.

• 7:33Ed Zitron?

  Well, I've never had sex, so.

• 7:34Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah.

• 7:35Ed Zitron?

  No.

• 7:36Speaker 07

  You know, sometimes you're in a good, sometimes you're in a good mood and you hit the wall.

• 7:40Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 7:40Speaker 07

  And, and, and people must have experienced this.

• 7:43Speaker 05

  Yeah, I actually, you know, that year after when I was doing the follow up, I talked to a user who had used it. Um, he, he wanted to be anonymous and he was like, it's saving my marriage. It's great. It doesn't hurt. It feels great.

• 7:53Ed Zitron?

  I'm being kind of cynical, but seems like it's actually possibly useful.

• 7:58Speaker 05

  Oh, it's FDA cleared. It's FDA cleared. But you know, there's, there's like a lot of meaning between FDA approved, FDA cleared, FDA listed. It, it has to do with the type of medical class device it is and whatnot. But, but, but, but I did get to try it myself on my forearm as I do not possess the actual body part necessary for real life testing. So I put it on my forearm. I got to try it out. Uh, it costs $300 for the starter kit. Uh, it has, um,

• 8:26Ed Zitron?

  Does it require a subscription?

• 8:27Speaker 05

  No, and there's no AI involved. So you know, but you know,

• 8:31Ed Zitron?

  Ail intelligence.

• 8:32Speaker 05

  You can customize the zap pattern. So you can, you can, there's a strength level of one to 100. I could feel the, the, the strength at one, which I was

• 8:43Ed Zitron?

  Right on your arm taint.

• 8:44Speaker 05

  Yeah, on my arm taint, which I was told that makes me a unicorn. Cause most people can't actually feel it at one. Like he was saying that depending on your body, uh, how hairy you are, how much body fat you have, you might need to like go up to 25 to feel something.

• 9:00Ed Zitron?

  Nice. That's, that's,

• 9:01Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 9:02Ed Zitron?

  That's good. I'm try, I'm like, I'm trying not to like, just laugh at the idea of bums. Just like, just like, huh, huh, huh, bum, boo. But like, it seems like a natural, like weirdly useful thing, like.

• 9:12Speaker 05

  Well, you know, a lot of men don't want to talk about premature ejaculation.

• 9:14Ed Zitron?

  Men don't want to talk about sex at all. Like that's like, that's a universal thing with the fellas. Like this came up last year with Sheldon Low, like men, just like you start talking about sex and they go, no, I, I couldn't possibly.

• 9:24Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah. And you know, the, their founder is a really good sport. Cause Jimmy Kimmel did roast him on a monologue in 2022 about it. And he's like, that's fine. I just want people talking about it. And I want men who suffer from this to actually do something about it.

• 9:37Ed Zitron?

  Good for you, Jeff.

• 9:38Speaker 05

  Yeah. Jeff is like, he's, he's a cool dude.

• 9:41Speaker 07

  And the FDA clearance would mean this, it works. Like they've tested it or is it just not gonna kill you?

• 9:47Speaker 05

  It means that it's safe, uh, basically. So they did have to test it on rabbits. So, um,

• 9:53Ed Zitron?

  You mean they didn't have a double blind, uh, placebo controlled trial?

• 9:57Speaker 05

  I will.

• 9:58Ed Zitron?

  The one that doesn't shock your bar.

• 10:00Speaker 05

  So like FDA clearance.

• 10:01Speaker 07

  You think you've been shocked, but you haven't actually been.

• 10:05Ed Zitron?

  It's just, it's just naturally hard.

• 10:07Speaker 05

  It feels more like a vibration, to be quite honest. It's not like a zzz type of feeling. Um, but what FDA clearance means is like, there's different types of medical devices. There's class one, which is like a tongue depressor. It is not really doing anything. Class two is like moderate risk. And I believe this would probably be in class two because they require five, 10 clearance. And basically they have to go through testing for safety, efficacy, privacy.

• 10:31Ed Zitron?

  And this one, this is all of it. It's past that.

• 10:33Speaker 05

  Yes, it passed that. It took a long time. Cause this is a six year period. I want to say like, they had to go through two rounds of funding, like FDA clearance costs millions of dollars. It costs millions of dollars.

• 10:45Ed Zitron?

  Right now, the Titan Zapper is the most functional product we've discussed on the show. Like I'm deadly serious. Like we spent the last two hours being like, yeah, this doesn't work. This doesn't exist. No, the Titan Zapper is real.

• 10:56Speaker 05

  It's real and, um, you know, So part of the thing was is that, you know, they had done their initial round of gathering data, which took them a year and a half to gather all this data. And then the FDA was like, yeah, but we're gonna need you to do animal testing. So you're gonna have to put this taint zapper on bunnies.

• 11:12Ed Zitron?

  And just to be clear, that's not their taints.

• 11:15Speaker 05

  No, it's not the bunny taints. They're putting it on the bunnies because bunnies are furry.

• 11:21Ed Zitron?

  Right.

• 11:21Speaker 05

  And some taints are furry. So you need to make sure that when you put this adhesive on, on, on skin, that when you take it off, you're not causing rashes, irritation, ripping things out. So, you know, they, he told me that, you know, they'd have to put the patch on the bunny every single day and monitor it for a few hours and, and, you know, and, yeah.

• 11:42Speaker 08

  So Rory, moving, moving on from the taint for now. I'm, I'm just a gog. I've wandered off the street and it's an old BBC man and.

• 11:50Speaker 05

  Oh, it's actually not called a taint zapper. That's just what I've called it all these years. It's called MOR, M O R.

• 11:57Speaker 07

  That's a horrible.

• 11:58Ed Zitron?

  That is one of the worst names they could have come up with.

• 12:01Speaker 05

  Well, that's what it's called. It's called MOR.

• 12:03Speaker 07

  But it does, but it sounds like the one thing you don't get is MOR. You don't like, there's, you don't get more.

• 12:08Ed Zitron?

  More, more velocity.

• 12:10Speaker 07

  More, more velocity.

• 12:12Speaker 05

  More lasting power. So the company behind it is called Morari Inc. And Morari in Latin means delay. So chef's kiss.

• 12:20Speaker 07

  Call it longer, longer, L O N G R.

• 12:24Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, with no E.

• 12:25Speaker 07

  Yeah, cuz then it's like you're going longer and your dick is longer.

• 12:28Ed Zitron?

  Yeah.

• 12:29Speaker 07

  Men like longer.

• 12:31Ed Zitron?

  That's the, and that's the ad. That's the ad. There we go. Men like longer. But Rory, what have you seen at the show? Anything unrelated to bums?

• 12:41Speaker 08

  I, I'm just a gos, but I, I've not got any human detritus to bring before you. I mean, I've seen something incredibly wholesome.

• 12:52Ed Zitron?

  Please, please tell me.

• 12:54Speaker 08

  I, I went to the Lego press conference and I used to come here year after year for the BBC and it was a nightmare because of the time difference. And we had to make a story on a Sunday and a Monday. To go out on the Tuesday, eight hours behind and be desperate. And I learned a good lesson there, which is never go to a CES press conference.

• 13:20Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 13:20Speaker 08

  Because they're terrible.

• 13:21Speaker 07

  Yes.

• 13:22Speaker 08

  Because every single press conference features a CEO who thinks he's Steve Jobs unveiling the iPhone.

• 13:30Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 13:30Speaker 08

  And he's not Steve Jobs and he hasn't got an iPhone.

• 13:33Speaker 07

  Right.

• 13:35Speaker 08

  And I know this because my very first CES was my best ever because it had a historic event in which, in the, the BBC having paid an awful lot for a lot of us to come over.

• 13:48Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 13:48Speaker 08

  Led by me, I said to them, listen, we're going to take a day out and leave CES and go to a thing called Macworld. Because there's a rumor something big's going to happen. And so I was there when Steve Jobs did unveil the iPhone, which was better than any event that I've ever seen.

• 14:05Speaker 07

  I forgot.

• 14:06Speaker 08

  CES.

• 14:07Speaker 07

  When he goes, when he goes, are you getting it? That's my favorite part.

• 14:11Speaker 08

  Yeah, yeah.

• 14:11Speaker 07

  Are you getting it? Were you getting it in that moment? Were you like, wait, it's one device?

• 14:16Speaker 08

  Well, I was kind of shocked in a kind of very British way by the fact that there were people standing up and cheering.

• 14:22Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 14:24Speaker 08

  We're journalists, we don't cheer for Christ's sake. There was not the requisite level of cynical old hackery. But even I got carried away and I knew something was big when my desk in London rang.

• 14:40Speaker 08

  People who were not remotely interested in technology and said, you've got to get your hands on that phone. And I said, you are deluded. Apple is like North Korea, but less, less open.

• 14:55Speaker 08

  They will never let me near a phone that's not coming out for six months. Are you dreaming? And then I remembered that we'd been promised an interview with Phil Shiller, the tubby little marketing guy, who did not quite have Steve Jobs charisma. And I had said, yeah, yeah, yeah, we'll do that, thinking, no, we won't. And I changed my mind and we headed back to the Moscone Centre and said, we would like that interview with Mr. Mr. Shiller after all. He appears, I say, you don't happen to have the phone? And he said, oh, yeah, handed it to me. I did my piece to camera. And did an interview with Phil Shiller, which we didn't use.

• 15:40Ed Zitron?

  Nice.

• 15:40Speaker 08

  And I had my shot on the on the main news and the following weekend, a tech columnist in the Venerable Observer newspaper described me as looking like a French medieval peasant holding a piece of the one true cross.

• 15:54Ed Zitron?

  Jesus. I guess, yeah.

• 15:56Speaker 08

  Which was accurate because.

• 15:58Ed Zitron?

  God damn.

• 16:00Speaker 08

  Christ, I'd actually got the whole of the damn thing. So, which is a long way around saying CES has been sort of 20 years of disappointment for me mainly, but but this year I decided against my better instincts, I would go to one press conference.

• 16:18Ed Zitron?

  Yeah.

• 16:19Speaker 08

  And that was the Lego one.

• 16:21Ed Zitron?

  Right.

• 16:22Speaker 08

  And the contrast between that experience and sitting through, I didn't bother to go, but watched the live stream of the Nvidia press conference was was quite instructive.

• 16:34Ed Zitron?

  We cursed ourselves with that on the first day. It was truly, truly boring.

• 16:39Speaker 08

  Yeah, but whereas whereas the great thing about the Lego one was we got a little freebie, a little package of bricks on every seat.

• 16:47Ed Zitron?

  Nice.

• 16:49Speaker 08

  It was short. It was 45 minutes. It was the toy industry and the media industry because Disney and Lucas Films were there and Star Wars characters.

• 17:04Ed Zitron?

  Right.

• 17:04Speaker 08

  Telling the tech industry, actually, we know a bit about storytelling and which I'm afraid dear Mr. Jensen Huang obviously did not.

• 17:13Ed Zitron?

  He doesn't. And it's weird, other than his shiny jackets, he doesn't really have much going on. And he mostly, I was already, the listeners have already heard me say this, but it's like, it was mostly him just repeating stuff from three to six months ago. It was because he felt kind of washed. And I mean.

• 17:26Speaker 08

  It was quite enjoyable when the tech, when he's describing the most advanced, exciting technology in the world and his PowerPoint fails.

• 17:34Ed Zitron?

  Oh, that was so. Someone's getting shot.

• 17:36Speaker 08

  Well, I was saying, somebody, a whole team is going to be replaced by AI.

• 17:41Ed Zitron?

  Within seconds.

• 17:42Speaker 05

  I do respect when it's a live tech presentation now then, because you know, now they just fly us to the Steve Jobs Theater for Apple. And they're like, watch a filmed presentation in a theater. And you're like.

• 17:53Ed Zitron?

  No sense of peril.

• 17:55Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 17:56Ed Zitron?

  That, you know what, Nvidia could use a little peril in that. There should be some trap doors or something. It was, it was very bizarre. It was like two hours of a man clearly trying to feign excitement. And he's just like, yeah, Blackwell might come out at some point. Yeah, it's in full, full manufacture. And just the audience going, yeah. The reaction was really sad. Yeah, it was, it was very, people were leaving. You know, a failing politician at a party conference, setting up the queue lines, applaud, applaud. And kind of, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's the, thank God. Okay. It's good to, good to know other people heard that, but let's, let's change gears. Adam, what have you seen? You've just got here. So what wonders have you behold?

• 18:40Speaker 07

  You know, uh, I'm sort of drawn to everything that's not AI related, first of all. I would just walk around.

• 18:47Ed Zitron?

  You found something?

• 18:48Speaker 07

  Eureka.

• 18:48Ed Zitron?

  Yeah. Oh, you went to Eureka Hall, the tap section.

• 18:51Speaker 07

  Well, what I found was, uh, strangely, I saw like five or six products related to teeth. Have you guys noticed a teeth trend?

• 19:00Speaker 05

  Uh, there's always teeth, teeth tech.

• 19:02Speaker 07

  Everywhere I'm looking, there's.

• 19:03Ed Zitron?

  Usually it's an AI toothbrush, for Christ's sake.

• 19:05Speaker 07

  The first thing I saw was, I was, I, all the AI, you know, blurred out. And I just, my vision honed in on something called the Y brush.

• 19:15Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 19:16Speaker 07

  It's a toothbrush, but what if the end of the toothbrush was the same shape as all of your teeth? So you just put it over all of your teeth at once and it brushes all your teeth simultaneously. And then, and you know what? As the owner of an electric toothbrush and it has a timer and I do it for two minutes. And it's like 30 seconds per quadrant. And it's so boring and I have to listen to, to like two minutes of a podcast. I was like, you know what? 10 seconds to brush all my teeth? Yeah, someone buy me this shit at Brookstone for Christmas. Thank you. This is what CES is for. This is what it's supposed to be, is dumb garbage that says it's going to save you a minute and a half.

• 19:56Ed Zitron?

  Right.

• 19:56Speaker 07

  That's nice. I like that.

• 19:57Ed Zitron?

  Did you see anything that was useless? I was just going to describe the rest of the CES, I guess. What, what else did you, did you see more teeth related things?

• 20:04Speaker 07

  Yeah, look, I even got a, I got, I got a free night guard. So.

• 20:08Ed Zitron?

  He's got a bag?

• 20:09Speaker 07

  I'm a.

• 20:12Speaker 07

  I have a bag. Loose plastic bag. That is beautiful. I've taken out of my hoodie pocket. I've produced it. Yeah, so there was a a smart night guard that I wear a night guard for tooth grinding. And it's a night guard that will, much like the taint zapper. It when you grind your teeth, it'll buzz in the middle of the night to stop you from grinding your teeth, which reminds me of when I was a kid and I used to wet the bed and my parents would put the the piss alarm. Did any of you know the piss alarm? No. This is from the early 90s. This is even very high tech. It's a little so, you know, if you used to wet the bed, which is common, you know. It's common. It happens to a lot of people, Ed.

• 20:53Speaker 07

  Like, you know, I'm like, older than you should be. I'm wetting the bed. And. It starts again when you get to a certain age.

• 21:00Speaker 07

  Well, you would be interested in this product. It's it's a pad like with electrodes on it that you put into your underpants and then when it detects moisture, it's connected to a little speaker that is like attached to your shirt and that goes like. You're turning it a bastard.

• 21:14Speaker 05

  Nothing's changed.

• 21:15Speaker 07

  So this is a piss. So this is, sorry, I'm lost. This is piss alarm? This is piss. No, I'm describing something that was inflicted on me as a child. Right, right. That frankly was almost like a form of abuse to stop me from doing something that just naturally stops. Yeah, like something that kids do accidentally. Yeah, like a very common thing, but it's a shame alarm. Right.

• 21:33Speaker 08

  It's like a shock collar for for dogs. Is that right?

• 21:36Speaker 07

  Yeah, yeah. This is the same thing for grinding your teeth. And actually, it's not a bad idea because I do. Yeah, I can actually see the use of that because I grind my teeth sometimes as well and I'm I find myself accidentally doing it. Yeah, and I wear a night guard and, you know, sometimes I'm like, am I grinding my teeth? Do I need to keep wearing the night guard? Or I switch to sleeping on my side. Is this still happening? You know, that I was like, all right, that's kind of nice. And then they they gave me a they molded a night guard to my teeth and they gave me a free night guard in this sort of like loose bag you might use to bag produce at the supermarket. This looks like what a criminal would hand drugs to someone and like it's just like. Yeah. Yeah.

• 22:15Speaker 05

  It's a nice. It's the quintessential scene.

• 22:18Speaker 07

  Goes over my teeth.

• 22:19Ed Zitron?

  Onion headline I saw where it says Steph Curry finally finishes eating mouthguard. But for the, for the three basketball listeners.

• 22:26Speaker 07

  No, that's, that's good. There, there's a jerk off machine. You saw the jerk off machine, right?

• 22:30Speaker 05

  In the Eureka Hall. Odoki handy.

• 22:32Speaker 07

  It's called the handy. Yeah.

• 22:34Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 22:34Ed Zitron?

  That's good.

• 22:34Speaker 07

  And the handy too. They've got both of them in the same.

• 22:37Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 22:37Ed Zitron?

  What's the sequel like?

• 22:39Speaker 07

  It looked like the, basically the same thing.

• 22:41Speaker 05

  It just shakes harder on shore.

• 22:43Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 22:44Speaker 05

  I saw that thing two years ago and I was like, okay, cool. That was, that's funny looking. And then it's back here again. I'm like, they're more the same.

• 22:51Speaker 07

  It's, it's like got all this copy where it's like, don't worry, everybody looks twice. Like, yep, it really is. Like it's, it's really hamming it up, you know?

• 23:00Ed Zitron?

  No, the, the only way to do that is be super serious about it.

• 23:03Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 23:03Ed Zitron?

  Just like, you're laughing. It's like, excuse me, is there something funny about this?

• 23:07Speaker 07

  Yeah. See, that would be better.

• 23:08Ed Zitron?

  That would be so much more interesting. It's like a huh, yeah, we went there.

• 23:12Speaker 07

  Yeah. It's very much the cards against humanity.

• 23:15Ed Zitron?

  God.

• 23:15Speaker 07

  Where they're like, just for nerds to be able to, I, I, I recognize this as comedy, you know? And be able to laugh.

• 23:22Speaker 05

  I mean, CES is, as a show is extremely prudish and does not fuck. Like, um.

• 23:27Ed Zitron?

  That's the rule.

• 23:28Speaker 07

  Yeah. Well, it's a jerk off machine. It's not a fucking machine. I'll tell you that.

• 23:30Speaker 05

  There was a time where there was like a, like back in 2019, 2020, there was like a controversy because they had given a vibrator, uh, well, not vibrator. It was like a micro robotic cunnilingus dildo type device. Um, and it was the Laura DeCarlo and they had given them a innovation award. And they're like, no, no, no, we're going to take the innovation award away. And then everyone's like, you don't.

• 23:55Ed Zitron?

  Take it away?

• 23:56Speaker 05

  Cause it was improper. Uh, so.

• 23:58Ed Zitron?

  They could give it to just something that didn't exist, like.

• 24:01Speaker 05

  Yeah. They were just like, this is not, this is not robotics. And everyone was like, yeah, it's robotics.

• 24:07Ed Zitron?

  Literally robotics.

• 24:07Speaker 05

  You're just prude.

• 24:09Speaker 07

  Like they gave it and people complained and then they took it away again. That's so.

• 24:12Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 24:13Ed Zitron?

  That is the most cowardly, fuckless shit I've heard in my life.

• 24:16Speaker 05

  But then the next year, the next year, they're like, no, we fuck. Get all the sex tech companies to come back and we'll have a sex tech pavilion. And they had a whole camper. They had like a build your own dildo experience, which I did. You know, I was reporting on it and now it's just like, where's the sex tech companies? It's one handjob device thing. And it's like, okay.

• 24:41Speaker 07

  I would have expected build a dildo to be a big hit, you know?

• 24:44Speaker 05

  It was that year.

• 24:46Speaker 07

  They could, you know, have it be a kiosk in the mall, you know, you go with your, for your friend's birthday.

• 24:51Ed Zitron?

  No, smaller, smaller, smaller.

• 24:58Ed Zitron?

  You got any, uh, yeah, we got a special one out back, mate. No, it's more than that.

• 25:04Ed Zitron?

  No, I, I like this though, because David Roth sadly was only here yesterday because um, the sex conversation we had towards the end of last year is just watching him like. Rich, right? No, he's a lovely guy. I'm sure he's had sex. Like, I'm not gonna comment further on that before I can get comment from him. Which would be really funny to text him. Actually, last year, yes, I got in trouble for texting my family group chat what my dad's horny level was. Sorry, dad, you're gonna now hear this. Anyway, uh, your son's doing you proud. Yeah, it's, it's in, it's actually kind of nice to hear there's useful stuff, but I guess.

• 25:38Speaker 05

  It usually is. It just takes six years of, you know, development.

• 25:42Ed Zitron?

  Of bum, bum research.

• 25:44Speaker 05

  Of taint research. It's not just.

• 25:46Speaker 07

  Of like coming back here again and again.

• 25:48Speaker 05

  Yeah. Yeah. It takes a long time to get some of the stuff actually made. It's, it's not like a, you know, a lot of the, I say a lot of the tech I see here on my beat is vaporware. Because it's just like, where, where is it? Where is it? Sometimes it takes six years to get approval, you know, and bunny testing to make sure it's safe enough for human use. There's a scientific reason why you might want to actually use this shit.

• 26:14Ed Zitron?

  Yeah.

• 26:14Speaker 05

  So, yeah.

• 26:15Ed Zitron?

  It's funny, like the non-AI stuff is like for real people doing things like fucking.

• 26:19Speaker 05

  Well, you know. They they are looking into AI for the Taint Zapper as well. So.

• 26:25Ed Zitron?

  I just, I, if you can, as a listener, if you're hearing this and you see something at CES with AI and it works, please let me know because so far I'm oh for a hundred, I think it is.

• 26:36Speaker 07

  I mean, I I had a really interesting conversation with a woman and it was like the sort of conversation where I was like, I wish I had had a camera or was recording it or something. Cause it was one of the first booths I went up to and I'm like, I flew here today. I didn't get enough sleep. I'm like, kind of zonked out. So I just walk up to this thing and it's like AI. Uh, fast food ordering thing.

• 26:57Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah.

• 26:59Speaker 07

  The most obvious possible thing, but the guy demonstrates it and he's like, could I have a coffee, please? Do you want to make it a combo? Yes, I want to make it a combo. Could I have a croissant? And it goes five croissants and then do you want to make it a combo? He says, yes. And then it makes one of the croissants a combo. And then he says, could I remove the other four croissants? And it goes, yes. He says, see, it can remove stuff, you know? And they're like, what do you think? And I was like, I mean, it seems worse than ordering. If I were to confront this rather than a person, like I I wouldn't like it.

• 27:27Ed Zitron?

  I'd be actively annoyed.

• 27:29Speaker 07

  Yeah. And and, um, you know, they're like, well, it sounds bad. I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah. But, um.

• 27:34Ed Zitron?

  It sounds bad, but also it is.

• 27:36Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 27:37Ed Zitron?

  Needs a bit of work.

• 27:38Speaker 07

  But what I what I asked the woman was, I was like, and she was very nice to engage in this conversation. I was like, um. Cause she was saying, you know, this, people want a good customer experience and a person doesn't always give you a good customer experience.

• 27:52Speaker 05

  Well, robot doesn't.

• 27:53Ed Zitron?

  So they give you a bad one every time.

• 27:55Speaker 07

  Yeah. She she was like, I checked it at the hotel today and the guy was rude and and, you know, the the the AI can never be rude. It'll always be in a good mood. And I said, okay, even if that's true, if you, you know, did the travel I did here today, right? You got in a Waymo, then you get to the airport. There's no person to check in. It's just a kiosk. There's no TSA agent. There's no person to talk to you in security. When you go get your coffee, it's just a, you know, a thing you talk to and then it dispenses it. Uh, on the plane, there's no one to talk to. You get to the hotel, there's no person there.

• 28:28Ed Zitron?

  Right.

• 28:28Speaker 07

  And it just gives you a key. Is that a world that you would like to live in?

• 28:32Speaker 05

  That's just called Japan. They do that in Japan.

• 28:37Speaker 07

  Okay.

• 28:37Speaker 05

  They do that there. That exists.

• 28:39Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, but it's cool there. I don't know.

• 28:41Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 28:42Ed Zitron?

  As a, as a, as a UK citizen coming through the, the American border, I'd quite like to, you know, global entry is, have a, have a, have a robot.

• 28:52Speaker 07

  There, there's certainly some things, but like, she goes, um, she goes, well, I, I, you know, I like talking to people, but most people don't. I like it. So, you know, I would maybe prefer to have a person. I'm like, I think most people do like other people.

• 29:06Speaker 05

  To your point, I was at Pepcom last night and we saw this thing called AGI bot and.

• 29:11Ed Zitron?

  I've heard about this.

• 29:12Speaker 05

  So this, this, this giant bot, and then there's like a smaller version next to it. So the, just imagine this, that the smaller version is like doing tai chi and breakdancing like a psycho bot. Like quite smoothly too. Very disconcerting. And the big bot is supposed to be shaking tech reporters' hands because the purpose of this bot is to greet people at museums and that stuff. And it's like, it's supposed, you're supposed to walk up to it and it has like a, doesn't have a face. It just has a screen and it's like, my name is Luca, say hi to me or whatever. And, and you're supposed to say, hi Luca, and it's supposed to put out its hand and you're supposed to put your hand out and shake the robot's hand. And so my colleague Jen Tuohy, she's our smart home reviewer and she's like on a robot mission, this particular CES.

• 29:56Speaker 05

  She puts out her, I'm like, Jen, you know, you're doing the robots. Let me get a video of you shaking this robot's hands. This robot was like incapable of shaking her hand. And the one time it does, it pulls her hand down and she's like, Jesus Christ. And then it just starts flirting with her and we're, we're like, oh.

• 30:13Ed Zitron?

  Have you heard about the more?

• 30:15Speaker 05

  Yeah. Yeah. But like the, the funniest thing about this show is that this is the largest tech show in the, in the US. It's the big thing of the year. No one can get fucking Bluetooth or wifi correct at this show. And so all the demos fucking fail all the time.

• 30:30Ed Zitron?

  I just don't want to touch anyone. I don't want, when I go places, I don't want to touch. I like seeing people.

• 30:36Speaker 07

  You don't want to touch a robot.

• 30:37Ed Zitron?

  I don't want to touch any, I don't want to shake hands with someone when I go to the museum.

• 30:42Speaker 05

  Just the robot.

• 30:43Speaker 07

  Wait, to the point that I was asking the presenter I was talking to, like you.

• 30:48Ed Zitron?

  I'm fine with talking to people. I quite like, and I think if I just walk through a series of machines, that would like when I went to Korea, there was a lot of machines, but like still the occasional person. If it was just to your description, Adam, just a series of screens that I interacted with, that would fucking suck. That would be, I'd feel alone in a way that I quite like being solitary, but that would just be like, I feel like I'm going through tubes.

• 31:10Speaker 07

  Yeah. I think what is gonna be the, the future that they're gonna have, I described, you know, when I go to the Alaska Terminal at LAX, they've specifically done this where like, there's no check-in counter, it's mostly kiosks and there's like two people roaming around. So it's the self-checkout of airlines. And whenever I fly Alaska, there's always some fucking problem with my ticket. I don't know what it is with their system. And so every time I'm like, where's the person? And that's what it's gonna be everywhere. And, and this, as I'm talking to this woman, she goes, um, well, I want people to have the choice. Maybe they want to use the automated system. I'm like, I don't think we'll have a choice. And she goes, yeah, we won't have a choice because it's gonna be so much cheaper to automate everything. They're gonna do it.

• 31:50Speaker 05

  Like the robo things, you call your bank and you just want to talk to someone. They're like, press one for the thing that you don't need to do.

• 31:55Ed Zitron?

  And I am British.

• 31:56Speaker 05

  Two for the second thing you don't need to do. And you're just on the phone, you're pressing zero and just like, give me.

• 32:01Ed Zitron?

  I would take that. And I, we're gonna rotate to the next 30 in a second, but I just want to say, as a British person, every fucking single American voice activated thing sucks for me. It's just like, okay, uh, give me a reminder for 7pm, calling your mother.

• 32:20Ed Zitron?

  Calling, calling mum, sending her your last link, which was the taint zapper. All right, we're gonna rotate through the next ad I fully endorse. And if you don't like it, email me at [email protected].

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• 33:10Ed Zitron?

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• 33:54Ed Zitron?

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• 35:27Speaker 09

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• 35:40Ed Zitron?

  Welcome back, welcome back, welcome back, Zitron. We're back. It's the Consumer Electronics Show, better offline. And joining me in the room is Victoria Song of The Verge.

• 35:48Speaker 05

  Hello.

• 35:49Ed Zitron?

  Robert Evans of Behind the Bastards.

• 35:51Speaker 10

  Yeah, I gotta do this real quick, sorry.

• 35:53Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, I've decided-

• 35:54Speaker 10

  I felt like on air was the best way.

• 35:56Ed Zitron?

  I've decided not to do that because I've drunk so many Diet Cokes already and I've got like three more in me. And of course, Adam Conover, wonderful stand-up and the host of the Factually Podcast.

• 36:06Speaker 07

  You know, I stayed at your apartment once and I was frankly concerned at how much Diet Coke was in that apartment. And no coffee maker. You're one of those no coffee- are you a Diet Coke in the morning pervert?

• 36:15Ed Zitron?

  I'm a Diet Coke whenever pervert.

• 36:17Speaker 07

  Oh man.

• 36:18Ed Zitron?

  It was 10:30 PM and I went to bed half an hour later and I drank one of those motherfuckers with my sleeping meds. Yeah, I'm a- they're gonna-

• 36:29Speaker 05

  So caffeine doesn't affect you?

• 36:31Ed Zitron?

  It just- it's fine, yeah. I have like ADHD and I take meds for that as well.

• 36:35Speaker 10

  It's your off-prescription Adderall.

• 36:37Ed Zitron?

  But I also have Concerta.

• 36:39Speaker 05

  Wait.

• 36:40Ed Zitron?

  They give me that, but the doctor gives me that because I actually, unsurprisingly, have ADHD. I haven't worked that out from the tens of thousands of words. So Robert, you got the CEO of Intuit to say something?

• 36:50Speaker 10

  Uh, the CMO.

• 36:52Ed Zitron?

  CMO, my bad.

• 36:53Speaker 10

  CMO of Intuit. Yeah, so I started my day- all I did really today was panels. I was in like six different fucking panels. And the first one was about, uh, oh, one sec, I should probably have had this.

• 37:06Ed Zitron?

  That's okay.

• 37:07Speaker 10

  Hold up.

• 37:08Ed Zitron?

  Intuit, Intuit's wonderful as well because they have this new chat GPT integration they've added.

• 37:14Speaker 10

  That's exactly what I was talking about. So I, I, I was in this, uh, this panel, uh, which is like a leadership roundtable, sorry, um, on like technology and advertising. Although the actual panel did not seem to have much to do with that. And the CMO of Intuit, uh, was there and talked about the integration that they've been doing with chat GPT. Um, and talked about how like they're partnering with OpenAI so that you have, when you're doing your taxes, you have access to like a chatbot basically to help do, and you, you can have an agent. The idea is an agent will at some point be able to handle most of this task.

• 37:52Ed Zitron?

  But just a chatbot, though.

• 37:54Speaker 10

  Yeah, well, that's kind of the problem. And like, so there's, there's a couple of issues with this. When I first started, uh, like I, I had been reading about the Intuit integration because they're putting like a hundred million dollars into, uh, OpenAI, million, not billion, I'm sure if I said that clearly. And when that first happened, I read an article by a security researcher who was pointing out that they are giving, uh, Intuit is giving read and write access to an LLM.

• 38:22Ed Zitron?

  Jesus Christ.

• 38:23Speaker 10

  Of your tax data, of any of the tax data that's integrated into that. Which is, uh, a, a problem from a security point of view. One of the things this guy points out is that there's a kind of attack that you can execute, uh, against, uh, AI models. That is, there's a kind of attack that you can execute against AI.

• 38:46Ed Zitron?

  It's prompt injection.

• 38:47Speaker 10

  Yeah, yeah, prompt injection.

• 38:50Ed Zitron?

  And that's when you do, you go to a website which tells the LLM to do something, right?

• 38:53Speaker 10

  A website or one of the things that this guy proposes, if you want to put in a fraudulent, uh, invoice, you could have an invoice that has text that's not like visible to the naked eye, but that the LLM would read and that text basically executes an exploit. And there's not a, like, you can't defend against these, really. Like, there's not a functional way to stop this. The point he was. Making is that it's not a question of whether or not there will be a data breach of people's tax data because they're integrating it with this chatbot. But when and the question that this researcher had that I thought was a really good question was,

• 39:31Speaker 10

  who is then responsible? This is Chris Black, published this on a website called Araptus, but who is responsible if your data all gets like leaked because of this integration? Is Intuit responsible? Is OpenAI responsible? Is whatever third party you're using that uses Intuit's software? Right. Responsible? So I asked the Thomas Ranez, who's the CMO of Intuit that like when they had time for questions and I said, I basically brought up what's in this article. I said, given the fact that this is an inevitability that attacks like this will be carried out and data will be leaked.

• 40:07Speaker 10

  Who do you like? Who is responsible? Like, who should take legal responsibility in that instance? And like, what safeguards are you building to try and deal with the fact that this is going to happen? And the first answer he gave is that we're talking about it with OpenAI. Yeah. Which, which I viewed as a non-answer. So I came up to him after the panel and kind of cordoned up a little bit. And asked like, you have to have more, you're the CMO. Yeah. Right? You're like the chief marketing officer of this entire company. Security is a pretty big marketing. Huge thing. Standpoint, right? Like, I would think you would know something about this. And he eventually got angry with me and said, like, I don't have any of that information. That's not my job, basically, to care about this sort of thing. I've got a recording of it. We'll play it at some point.

• 40:51Speaker 10

  But, but that, that's literally all that I got from him was like, we're talking about it with OpenAI and I don't really know.

• 40:58Speaker 05

  Same thing with the AI browsers, right?

• 41:00Speaker 10

  Yeah.

• 41:00Speaker 05

  Because AI browsers doing the same thing. They're so, so, so, so vulnerable to the prompt injection stuff.

• 41:06Speaker 07

  I really like that also they're trying to pretend AI browsers are useful.

• 41:09Speaker 05

  They're not. I tested five of them.

• 41:11Speaker 07

  Was that, was that you on the road?

• 41:12Speaker 05

  That was me. I had to test five fucking AI browsers. All I wanted was the pair of fucking New Balances and it couldn't get me. I had to get my mother-in-law to get me the New Balances.

• 41:23Speaker 07

  Like, what are you doing? So what are you doing on the AI browser to try to get the New Balances?

• 41:27Speaker 05

  So, you know, they're like, Agentic AI, you can ask it to find you the fucking New Balances or whatnot. And it's supposed to help you research this stuff and all these tech. Um, CEOs are like, well, the, the future of computing is that you will not do anything on the computer. You'll talk to, it's kind of like her, the movie her, where you just talk to the computer and it goes beep, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, you go. So all I wanted was a pair of fucking New Balances. I take my shoes very seriously.

• 41:56Ed Zitron?

  Right.

• 41:56Speaker 05

  Um, and I'm like, okay, I want a pair of New Balances. What, these are the pri- like the parameters that I want. How am I gonna get them? And my query kept getting longer and longer and longer and longer and longer because they can't intuit things. I was like, my foot size is this. This is the stuff that I have to deal with. This is the color I want. This is the style that I want. These are the scenarios that I want to wear them. And these are the prices that I want to have. So it's like a fucking three paragraph prompt that I have to give. And I'm asking all five of these different stupid AI browsers to just get me a pair of goddamn New Balances. And it's just like, duh.

• 42:30Ed Zitron?

  I

• 42:31Speaker 05

  Can't do it.

• 42:31Ed Zitron?

  Also, I like browsing the internet. Not, not as much as I used to due to all the obstacles, but looking for a pair of shoes, looking for something in a store, that's kind of, you know, you fuck around, you learn some stuff. It's kind of fun. Like

• 42:43Speaker 05

  Yeah, no, I did ruin, again, curse to Tech Beat. I did ruin my mental health just trying to bear a pair, buy a pair of shoes.

• 42:50Ed Zitron?

  A three hundred word essay.

• 42:52Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 42:52Speaker 07

  I mean, the part of, part of the enjoyment of purchasing something is to know that you got the thing that you wanted. You put the work in, you found the, like, I'm trying to, I've been trying to buy the perfect set of towels for a little while. And, and I, and I'm, and I was like, I was like, no, I don't want to get the on- the onsen towels that, like the fake Japanese towels. I want to find some real Japanese ta- and so I found out about like a variety of towel that's like only made in one town in Japan. I'm trying to find the right vendor. And he, I know when I get the towels, I'm gonna be like, these, I, I went through something to get these.

• 43:23Ed Zitron?

  Right.

• 43:24Speaker 07

  And that's how people, you want to feel about your New Balances. I, these are so good. You want, I got the ones, I put a little bit of sweat equity in. You want to just be like, I got some sho- the computer bought me some shoes.

• 43:36Speaker 05

  Also, the computer doesn't listen. I said, I already have the perfect running shoe, right? That I've, I've, I fought, I found that.

• 43:43Ed Zitron?

  So these were stylistic?

• 43:44Speaker 05

  I want walking shoes.

• 43:46Ed Zitron?

  Hmm.

• 43:46Speaker 05

  And what did it do? It gave me the fuck. Fucking running shoes.

• 43:50Speaker 10

  Right.

• 43:51Speaker 05

  Over and over and over again. I said, I didn't want the running shoes. I wanted the walking shoes.

• 43:56Speaker 10

  Right.

• 43:56Speaker 05

  Didn't listen to me.

• 43:57Ed Zitron?

  This is kind of like every one of these AI browsers I read about is kind of the same thing. It's like, imagine if you will, you're sitting there, you want to buy something and there's just no way to do that. It's just like an alien, an alien that's never used anything. It's just like, how do I do anything? Oh, I'll type in and be, and it's like, yeah, after three minutes, it might do something, right? It's like, fucking.

• 44:17Speaker 10

  Yeah, that's the, that's the frustr- oh, that's the frustrating thing about sitting in all of these panels in particular is that it's like entering this alternate world. Where all of the technology works much better than it does.

• 44:29Ed Zitron?

  Yeah.

• 44:29Speaker 10

  And people talk about it as if like, yeah, we deployed 1500 agents, right? That are, you know, they're doing great work. And it's like, okay, but I'm looking at, for example, the statistics that Copilot released last year that about or that were released about Copilot last year, that about 70% of work tasks that it's tasked with, it fails at.

• 44:48Ed Zitron?

  Yeah.

• 44:48Speaker 10

  Because the agents are not functional yet.

• 44:50Speaker 05

  So I, you know, I'm trying to tell Atlas, ChatGPT's thing to, to buy me these fucking New Balances. And it's just like, oh crap, there's a pop up. Let me try and close this pop up. Oh, that didn't close the pop up. Let me click more precisely at the coordinates and it's listing the coordinates on the site. Let me try and close this pop. It took five.

• 45:12Ed Zitron?

  Gas fumes.

• 45:13Speaker 05

  It took five. I'm watching it. It takes five attempts for the AI to close the pop up a minute and 30 seconds. I'm just watching it and I'm just like, Jesus fucking gracious. Close the fucking pop up.

• 45:24Ed Zitron?

  It's narrating as it's doing this.

• 45:26Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 45:27Speaker 10

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 45:27Speaker 05

  Yeah, it narrates. It goes just like, hmm, let me think about the best way that I can close this pop up. It didn't seem like I clicked hard enough. Let me look at the coordinates and click more precisely. Well, that didn't work either.

• 45:38Ed Zitron?

  You know, the compute on that is also bonkers. You know that.

• 45:42Speaker 05

  I boiled oceans to watch an AI struggle to close pop ups for a minute and 30 seconds.

• 45:48Ed Zitron?

  Giraffes from the back of a truck into a furnace to make this like a gas turbine in a poor community in Texas.

• 45:54Speaker 10

  Yeah.

• 45:56Ed Zitron?

  Many people got cancer and you didn't get the shoes you wanted.

• 45:59Speaker 10

  Yeah, and it's in between panels. A friend of mine back in Portland sent me a video that some guy, I think in Tennessee, recorded of like the sound of the data center that went up near his house. That's like this, I mean, for months has just been this like constant like droning beep noise thing like like it just sounds awful. And so I'm I'm going in between these people talking about like, you know, and really focusing on how like AI is going to augment human capability. And, you know, these agents are only getting more capable. And like, we're going to be using this to like really set human creativity on fire. And then I'm like watching a video where a guy's like, yeah, now it screams every day. The internet screams every day outside my house.

• 46:42Ed Zitron?

  The computer is in pain. They're hurting it.

• 46:44Speaker 10

  Yeah. And I'm looking at the statistics that show that like, none of this stuff works as well as these people are are saying it does, right? Like, not to the extent that like, I would want it doing a job that really matters. And I'm just so like, in between that, the other thing that I read while I was going in between sessions was an article that came out today about a patent Sony filed last year to basically create, use an AI agent to play video games for you when you're trying to do something hard. If you can't like beat a boss. Yeah.

• 47:16Speaker 05

  Did you see Razor stuff?

• 47:18Speaker 10

  No. Yeah, well, that's the other cra- I haven't seen the booth yet, though. But you want to talk about that?

• 47:22Speaker 05

  I saw, I saw that I was in that really sweaty Venetian suite where they were giving the preview of the Razor AI concept.

• 47:30Ed Zitron?

  You know, it's real crazy in there.

• 47:31Speaker 10

  Oh, my God.

• 47:32Speaker 05

  Yeah, so so they had two crazy AI concepts. First is Project Ava. And the only way you can describe it is a little anime waifu that you stick on your-

• 47:41Ed Zitron?

  The wife tube.

• 47:42Speaker 05

  The wife tube. It's a little desktop wife tube where the holographic anime waifu named Kira. And like, there's a camera in the thing. And so she's watching you and she's going like, and it's based on Grox Ani, if you know.

• 47:54Ed Zitron?

  Oh, God.

• 47:55Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 47:56Ed Zitron?

  The pedo tube.

• 47:56Speaker 05

  They did tell, they did tell us like specifically that it was based on Grok. And I'm like, oh.

• 48:01Ed Zitron?

  Did you ask if it was based on an adult?

• 48:04Speaker 10

  Well, I'll tell you what it's based on visually. If you ever watched the show Archer, there's like creepy scientist who has the waifu holographic wife. It looks identical to that. I like a smaller, I think.

• 48:16Speaker 05

  So I was there with my colleague Antonio, who, who, Antonio, Antonio, oh God, sorry, Antonio, because he does listen to your podcast, Antonio Di Benedetto, and he's our laptop reviewer. And so they're like, you know, Kira can help you when you're playing your game. And so he's playing like this first person shooter, but it's just like a, it's like not an actual level. So you can't die in this section. And she's like, oh, this is the gun you're holding is not the correct gun. And it's like, oh, you died. And he didn't die. And then they like programmed, they, they programmed like, oh, so did you see anything really cool at CES? Huh? And like, this is how she talks because it's based on Ani.

• 48:55Speaker 10

  Jesus Christ.

• 48:56Speaker 05

  And he's like, no. And she's like, oh, that's cool. And, but so you can have different of like avatars. It doesn't have to be an AI waifu. You can also have Zane, the AI husbando. And he has like snake tattoos on there and he just like goes like, yeah.

• 49:15Ed Zitron?

  Hang on, I'm stuck. I need to ask the wife tube how to get past this section.

• 49:19Speaker 05

  But like, that's the whole point of games is that you're struggles, right?

• 49:22Speaker 10

  Is that you're playing them, right?

• 49:24Speaker 05

  You're using the problem solving and all that. And it's just like, no, tell me how to beat this level. And all the time I talk to these companies and they're like, yeah, you're going to be able to.

• 49:33Speaker 10

  It doesn't work.

• 49:34Speaker 05

  How to do the same.

• 49:35Speaker 10

  It doesn't work. Well, yeah, because they're training it off of like YouTube videos of people playing the game too, which I also, I just don't know if I believe it's going to work. Well, it is a patent. So maybe Sony doesn't either, like they.

• 49:45Speaker 07

  Are they showing the AI just like the, the video frames, like the literal?

• 49:50Speaker 10

  The YouTube videos maybe? From the patent, from, I haven't read the patent. I read an article about the patent application. But that's what it sounds like.

• 49:56Speaker 07

  You could, you could program an old fashioned AI, what we used to call AI in video games, just like, you know, an NPC. You could just pro, when you're making a video game, you have the world state. You know how the game works. You could just like.

• 50:10Ed Zitron?

  Have something in the game.

• 50:11Speaker 07

  I think, yeah, that like is part of the game. It's an artificial world. Why do you need to?

• 50:16Ed Zitron?

  This is an insult to game FAQs.

• 50:18Speaker 05

  Listen, they just wanted to make Cortana. They didn't ask if we should actually fucking make Cortana. These losers just played Halo way too much when they were in their formative years.

• 50:29Speaker 07

  I think a big mistake that they're making, or just.

• 50:33Speaker 10

  Which one?

• 50:34Speaker 07

  Well, look, there's such a big difference between a tool that extends or enhances human capability, makes you more powerful.

• 50:44Speaker 10

  Yeah.

• 50:44Speaker 07

  And you not doing it yourself and having someone else do it for you. I literally just for the first time hired an assistant because I the the perfect person who I knew would do such a great job for me is available for a couple of months.

• 50:56Speaker 10

  She's a lot.

• 50:57Speaker 07

  Great. You you you of course.

• 50:59Speaker 10

  Yeah, she's wonderful.

• 50:59Speaker 07

  She's amazing, right? But like, it's because I have worked with her before in a different capacity. I know she's amazing. I like trust her to do all these various things.

• 51:06Speaker 10

  Exactly.

• 51:07Speaker 07

  That I don't have to do myself anymore. It it but the moment that like I work with someone who fucks something up, I'm like, well, I can never work with this person.

• 51:16Speaker 10

  Yeah, you can't trust them.

• 51:16Speaker 07

  I'm not going to assign things to them. And like versus when I fuck something up with a tool that I'm using myself, I'm like, okay, I need to do a little bit better or whatever. Like, the experience of those things is so fundamentally different. The use cases for them is different. The sort of person who wants to do them is different. And so like, I don't know, like for Intuit to be a company that goes from, you know, here's tax software that helps you do your own taxes if you would really like to do that.

• 51:44Speaker 10

  And also we're lobbying to make it illegal for.

• 51:46Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 51:48Speaker 07

  Yes. But like, to go from that to now we will automat will be an automatic accountant.

• 51:53Speaker 10

  Right.

• 51:53Speaker 07

  Is like, they don't understand the gulf that they're trying to jump.

• 51:57Speaker 10

  No.

• 51:57Ed Zitron?

  Well, it's because they misunderstand. It's kind of the ongoing theme of CS. It's like, people that don't experience the problems they're trying to fix. Because a personal assistant, to your point, is someone that you kind of hand stuff up. Like my my written editor, Matt Hughes, the whole reason Matt works so well with me is he can anticipate, like he kind of gets my thing and he knows.

• 52:15Speaker 10

  Yeah.

• 52:16Ed Zitron?

  And I can trust him to get it without me having to, I don't know, give a 300 word prompt to explain every nuance because.

• 52:23Speaker 05

  So much handholding.

• 52:25Ed Zitron?

  And I don't want a handholding assistant. That's the whole fucking point.

• 52:28Speaker 10

  Yeah. It's handholding and it's also like picking, having an assistant to do the things you wouldn't have an assistant do, like, I don't know, play a video game for you.

• 52:38Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 52:39Speaker 10

  But there's so much of it is focused on like the the tasks that are.

• 52:47Speaker 10

  Deeply human, like whenever I hear like this AI can help you brainstorm. It's like, well, no, it can't. That's not how brainstorming works. Someone else can't brainstorm for you. That's not.

• 52:56Speaker 05

  You're just talking to yourself in the mirror. But the mirror is a chatbot.

• 53:00Speaker 10

  Yeah. And you were hoping to plagiarize a good idea from the chatbot that itself is built from plagiarism, which I also feel like is a mistake.

• 53:08Ed Zitron?

  Regurgitating thought into your own brain in the hopes a new idea comes out.

• 53:13Speaker 07

  Yeah. I mean, like, I've talked about this before. My, my most positive experience with chat GPT was I was trying to decide whether to get myself a little apartment in New York. And I talked to you about this, right? Whether it's a good financial decision. And I plug into chat GPT. Hey, here's all the numbers and like, is this a good find? You know, would this be a big mistake? And it sort of goes, no, it wouldn't be a big mistake. You could do that if you wanted. You can do it. And then I'm like, okay, but what about the fact that I can't sublet it? Oh, that means it's bad. Now you shouldn't do it.

• 53:42Ed Zitron?

  Now you're fucked.

• 53:43Speaker 07

  Oh, but what about the fact that it's kind of important to me? Well, if it's really important to you, you should do it. And, and I did actually find that clarifying. Like, it did help me think through it a little bit.

• 53:51Ed Zitron?

  But it ultimately just agreed with your last statement.

• 53:53Speaker 07

  A hundred percent because I was talking to myself in the mirror.

• 53:56Speaker 05

  That's the only, that's the, the most useful it is. It's like you need to talk out loud to yourself.

• 54:01Speaker 07

  I can do that to myself.

• 54:03Speaker 05

  You can, but sometimes some people.

• 54:05Speaker 07

  Yeah, because you answer all my texts for some reason.

• 54:07Ed Zitron?

  Because you're my friend and I love you. Like, that's why I do it. Like, because, because I care about you and want you to be happy. And the chatbot doesn't care.

• 54:15Speaker 05

  No, the chatbot doesn't care.

• 54:17Ed Zitron?

  I actually wonder if my latent, like, actual autism gets mounting myself on the show. Like, that's why it doesn't work. Because one, every time I've tried anything like this, I'm just like, just talking to my fucking self. Why are you agreeing with me on everything?

• 54:29Speaker 05

  But I mean, like, that's because that's you. Like, to be real, that's you. Like, I know I'm talking to myself on that, too. It's just like.

• 54:35Ed Zitron?

  But it just doesn't work. Like, I literally have tried to do the things. I'm just like, no, just like, there's a block. I'm just like, it's just repeating what I just fucking said.

• 54:43Speaker 05

  Yeah, no, you like, you have to know the artifice in order to like, get to a point where you're like, if you understand that you're talking to yourself, you're just thinking aloud in a different format, it can be helpful if you understand that that's what you're doing. People don't understand that's what they're doing. That's why they're getting the AI psychosis.

• 55:00Ed Zitron?

  Yeah.

• 55:01Speaker 05

  They're mistaking this for a friend. It's, it's not a friend. It's literally a personality programming.

• 55:06Speaker 10

  Yeah. I will say one thing that was interesting to me, I did a panel that was Intelligence Through Motion, AI Takes Physical Form, and it was about like robots, robots with AI in them. It was actually the better one of the day. There was not much that was silly and it was, I think it was a really good example of like how you ought to be responsibly talking about and thinking about products like this. So, one of the people who was there was Andrea Thomas, who's the co-founder and CEO of Diligent Robotics. And they've built a robot that is basically an assistant for doctors and nurses at the hospital, not doing medical stuff. But like the thing that she pointed out is when we, because we started, and this was the first thing I liked, we started not with a product idea, but by talking to a

• 55:50Speaker 10

  bunch of doctors and nurses and figuring out like, what are the different jobs you have? And one of the things they figured out is that nurses in particular spend a shitload of time every day running stuff back and forth through the hospital. And so like, well, if we have a robot that can move things and can potentially move refrigerated things or move things that you have to be very careful when carrying, then a skilled, trained human being isn't doing that bullshit work and they can do more medical work and there's not enough medical professionals. And that's effectively a conveyor belt. Right, right. That's more maneuverable than a conveyor, because it can go. No, but the point is like, it's useful because it's moving stuff between places. Right, right. And I believe there was some talk about other, like they're looking at adding other capabilities. But the way that they were thinking about it were, well,

• 56:34Speaker 10

  first, we're going to talk to the people who we want to, we want to be making products that will be used in hospitals. Let's talk to people who work in hospitals to see where it's useful. And then the other thing that they said during that, and this was something a couple of other people pointed out, is that you have to, when you're talking about building products, that human beings will be working alongside in an industrial capacity, you have to assume that there will be failures and build that in, because otherwise you're taking risks with people's lives, right? So you have to be figuring out, we want this thing to fail when it does, because it will, in a way that doesn't endanger human beings. How do we build that in from the ground up? This is like a fundamental assumption. It will fail. We need to make sure it fails in a way that does not lead to it crushing

• 57:17Speaker 10

  or killing people, because it's going to be around them. And so I really appreciate it. And it was such a, that was such a gap to me from how everyone else, I'm used to other people talking about this stuff.

• 57:30Speaker 05

  A lot more in the health tech and the medical space, because the stakes are so high. And you know, like, all the tech people are like, break shit, disrupt. But like, medicine is like, no, no, don't break the people. Please don't. Something's already broken. They're broken already. Yeah. So, yeah.

• 57:48Ed Zitron?

  I think one of the barriers to that, though, and this is not even me being cynical, is just, you ask people what their problems are, and then you go, oh, you're an LLM, can't do that, sorry. Like, the answer is, the problems that you have are not fixable with the technology we have. Like, the actual, like, housing and health, like, health stuff, it's like, there are very big limitations because of medical device clearance, but also just.

• 58:08Speaker 05

  Well, technology is streamlining, right? Like, if you think about the, like, I, I just remember this from a macroeconomic class in, in, in, uh, college, but like, all technology does is it moves the curve up. It doesn't, it doesn't, like, change the angle of the curve or whatnot, it just, you know, allows you to do more, so it's about streamlining things, it's not about fixing problems. It's about finding things that you could do more efficiently. Being more efficient doesn't fix the problem. Right. It's a different, it's two different streams that you're approaching, but they're conflating it by being like, if you're efficient, you fix the problem. It's like, no, the problem isn't always efficiency.

• 58:45Speaker 07

  Yeah, and, you know, I mean, the thing I think about a lot is, uh, what I'm in any city, but especially New York or LA, where I spend a lot of time, it's like, the physical infrastructure is so bad, but everybody has cell phones.

• 58:57Speaker 05

  Right, right.

• 58:58Speaker 07

  Like, like, no one's even like, oh, homeless people have cell phones. We know everybody has cell phones, like, because the price of them is so cheap, and, and you can do a lot with them, but like, there's potholes, the trains don't run.

• 59:08Speaker 05

  Right.

• 59:09Speaker 07

  And like, those are the problems in society, and the fact that we have such, you know, high technology in these particular areas, but not in like, the rest of our society, is like, a weird distortion, we all know this, we don't think about it often enough. But like, what you're talking about is, is this, the, the, AI will like, push that distortion even further.

• 59:29Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 59:30Speaker 07

  I- i- in the best case scenario, and people like, you know, Simon Willison or whatever, will have like, some crazy agentic shit happening, you know, like, they'll, they'll be, you know, in some fucking matrix, and everybody else will be like, how do I, uh, buy food?

• 59:45Ed Zitron?

  Well, Simon, Simon Willison will be trying to draw a pelican on a bicycle, I think that's the one thing, that's literally the test he runs on every LLM, but even Willison is kind of realistic about it.

• 59:54Speaker 07

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 59:55Ed Zitron?

  To your point, Robert, with that panel, it's like. Yeah, we're talking about this fantasy land, where even when we saw during the Nvidia conference, it was talking about, yeah, and now agents are getting even more powerful and doing this.

• 1:00:06Speaker 05

  No, they're not.

• 1:00:06Ed Zitron?

  What the, yeah, not, no, they're not. But also, gun to your head, explain what that means like, because I, I regularly am arguing with people about this online.

• 1:00:14Speaker 05

  They can't. They're talking about the agents and the consumerism and the commerce aspect of agents just because that's the only way they have a chance of making their investment back.

• 1:00:23Speaker 10

  Such a lack of specificity. Like, that is the thing that is most like, in like, the first three panels I did, all of which were, one way or the other, talking about like agents and their ability to like, improve productivity and creativity. There was an exactly one specific example of, of a thing that people used AI, like that a marketing company used AI to do for marketing, right? Because these were all fairly marketing focused panels. And it was, specifically, it was the company that makes Allegra, had like a new non-drowsy formula, and they engaged in what the, the, the, I think it was a, I forget, I forget who, who said this, it's in my notes. But what the person who was talking about it described as, uh, model hacking,

• 1:01:04Speaker 10

  to basically put out a bunch of content so that it, uh, uh, ChatGPT would repeatedly scrape articles or whatnot that talked about how Allegra was non-drowsy, so that if people asked questions about it, the LLM would return both, always would say Allegra is non-drowsy, would like, put that before the word Allegra, and would like subtly talk shit about other allergy medicines causing drowsiness. And they were talking about like, and that's like a really great example of like, the, the, this is like a strategy developed using AI that like, uh, it's not, we couldn't have done marketing like this before.

• 1:01:40Ed Zitron?

  We couldn't possibly have come up with a way to remind people.

• 1:01:43Speaker 10

  Yeah, first off, like, your, your, the most specific example of the use of this technology in advertising is disinformation, right? Basically, you know, or, or at least on that, yeah, on that spectrum.

• 1:01:56Ed Zitron?

  And that probably cost thousands of dollars to develop. Like, probably so, thousands of articles or whatever, and just fed into the training, Jesus fucking Christ.

• 1:02:07Speaker 10

  The same time, they're talking about how important trust is and that like you have to be, you have to keep and

• 1:02:13Ed Zitron?

  As they lie.

• 1:02:14Speaker 10

  Yeah, as they lie and they're like, well, you know, people only trust you will only trust your AI as much as they trust your company. So it's really about like having a good, right?

• 1:02:22Ed Zitron?

  So isn't it the other way around as well?

• 1:02:24Speaker 10

  That's what kind of what I took it as them saying is that like, look, people don't trust AI, but they still have some trust for specific brands. So if you really want to like, there's a limited period of time for, for that trust to stay alive.

• 1:02:37Ed Zitron?

  It feels like AI psychosis is everywhere.

• 1:02:39Speaker 10

  Yeah.

• 1:02:40Ed Zitron?

  It's like

• 1:02:41Speaker 05

  Honest to God makes this show more boring.

• 1:02:43Speaker 10

  Yeah, it really, it's, it's all fucking AI shit.

• 1:02:47Speaker 07

  Yeah, like the stuff I was popping for was there was a robot lawnmower that could go up a hill.

• 1:02:52Speaker 10

  Yeah.

• 1:02:52Speaker 07

  You see that?

• 1:02:53Speaker 05

  All the robots are getting, Jen, again, if you look up Jen's coverage, it's just about how last year, the robots had arms. This year, the robots have legs.

• 1:03:04Ed Zitron?

  Next year, big old Willie.

• 1:03:06Speaker 07

  There was also a, uh, there, there was, we were, I was talking about the jerk off robot last time. But, but first I saw, uh, there was a robot called Beat Bot and it said,

• 1:03:15Speaker 10

  That wasn't the masturbation robot, huh?

• 1:03:17Speaker 07

  That wasn't, it was said, nothing beats Beat Bot. And I was like, this is a masturbation robot.

• 1:03:21Speaker 10

  Still a great robot.

• 1:03:22Speaker 07

  Turns out it's a little robot that swims in your pool and cleans your pool. And I think maybe also the Bluetooth speaker. And I was like, it's like a pool room.

• 1:03:29Speaker 10

  Also.

• 1:03:29Speaker 07

  I was like, that's cute.

• 1:03:30Speaker 10

  You didn't make, if you're gonna, if there's any good call for a hybridized robot, a combination pool robot orgasm robot, like make the sexy pool boy a robot.

• 1:03:41Speaker 05

  Cabana Bot.

• 1:03:42Speaker 10

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:03:44Ed Zitron?

  And it's just doing that weird song from Rose like,

• 1:03:48Ed Zitron?

  you remember that one?

• 1:03:49Speaker 10

  Yeah.

• 1:03:49Ed Zitron?

  It was the offbeat song the guy was claiming he could only have sex to. No, no, no one remembers that. No, just, oh God.

• 1:03:55Speaker 05

  Cabana Bot.

• 1:03:56Ed Zitron?

  Cabana Bot is great.

• 1:03:57Speaker 10

  Yeah, you can market it to rich men with like wives in their twenties where you're like, look, your wife is gonna cheat on you with the cabana boy. Just make sure it's a robot.

• 1:04:06Speaker 05

  Cabana Bot.

• 1:04:07Ed Zitron?

  Come on love, fuck the cabana bot.

• 1:04:09Speaker 10

  What?

• 1:04:09Ed Zitron?

  What?

• 1:04:10Speaker 10

  You look depressed, honey. Do you need some time with the cabana bot?

• 1:04:13Speaker 07

  I'll put on new music. Genuinely, the best, one of the best use cases for generative AI is sex stuff. Like it's, you know.

• 1:04:20Speaker 10

  It's certainly one of the most uses for generative AI.

• 1:04:23Speaker 05

  I'm sorry. As someone who was subjected to testing Annie, the Grok sex bot.

• 1:04:28Speaker 10

  Jesus.

• 1:04:29Speaker 05

  That was damaging.

• 1:04:31Speaker 10

  You might have a workman's comp.

• 1:04:32Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:04:33Speaker 05

  Oh, listen, I keep asking for hazard pay at theverge.com and for my title to change to Senior Curse Tech Reviewer. And it's not happened yet. It's not happened yet. But I did have to test Annie and boy, did she, yeah.

• 1:04:46Ed Zitron?

  And boy, was she racist.

• 1:04:48Speaker 07

  Yeah. Like, the only people who are really making good use of, like, Sora-style videos are niche fetish communities on the internet. Who have been able to move from writing fanfiction for each other, because that's a cheap thing that where they can, you know, have, have, make media for each other. Now they can make little videos.

• 1:05:06Speaker 10

  No, they're not making them.

• 1:05:07Speaker 07

  And they're so happy. They're.

• 1:05:10Speaker 05

  Okay, but AI doesn't know how to animate tongues. And I know this because, again, my job is cursed. And I had to, I had to test these AI video generating things and making people.

• 1:05:22Ed Zitron?

  Than any man can see.

• 1:05:23Speaker 05

  Making the AI make people kiss each other. No, they don't. They don't. They don't understand how tongues work. It's just.

• 1:05:32Ed Zitron?

  Jensen Huang said that the new generation Vera Rubin is four times more, uh, powerful for training. So maybe that's like Jensen Huang's bringing, bringing the tongues in. But sadly, we are, we're gonna have to end this 30 second. The next thing coming up is an ad for tongue training models. And if you hear something else, that's an error. Whatever it is, just ignore it because we're meant to, it's the tongue training app. But before we get to the tongue training app, Robert has a very important message.

• 1:06:01Speaker 10

  So I, I came across the booth during the brief time I spent on the floor today of a, of a robotics company called Zeroeth, which I think is a reference to the laws of robotics. And, you know, you had the, the normal laws and there was the zero with law, yada, yada, yada. Anyway, we don't, we don't need to get into Asimov right now, but it's, they had a whole booklet. I actually thought these were like notebooks at first, but every page of this is printed. Explaining the vision for their company. And the robots they make, the origin story. I'm just gonna read a little bit from here, okay? "The prevailing narrative in robotics has long been one of replacement and utility. Robots as instruments of precision, built for efficiency and stripped of warmth. Yet across from, across the long memory of civilization, the impulse to create was never merely mechanical. From Yan Shi's graceful wooden automaton in ancient China to Talos, the bronze guardian

• 1:06:46Speaker 10

  of Crete, our earliest machines were not tools, they were mirrors, reflections of an ancient longing to, reflections of an ancient longing to understand ourselves. Zeroeth emerges from that unbroken thread of imagination." And hearing that, and there's so much more flowery prose, I need you all to see the robot that they wrote this about.

• 1:07:06Ed Zitron?

  Okay, let's, let's take it.

• 1:07:12Ed Zitron?

  Why is he, why is he wearing a little T.O. polo shirt?

• 1:07:16Speaker 10

  I love that that's your first question. So listeners at home, what they've got is a robot that looks kinda like a cross between Elon Musk's shitty robot and a guy in a fencing helmet.

• 1:07:26Ed Zitron?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:27Speaker 10

  But because it can't stand on its own power, they have like a sex harness built that's like standing it up, that's like, so it doesn't fall on its ass. I wanna die. And they put an awkward T-shirt on it, I think to hide the straps from the thing that keeps it standing.

• 1:07:42Ed Zitron?

  Jesus fucking Christ. This is the consumer electronics show, everyone. This is what, they are lying to you. Any motherfucker that tells you that robotics or AI is coming, they're fucking lying. Anyway, if there's an AI ad after this, that's their fucking problem.

• 1:08:05Speaker 11

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• 1:08:33Ed Zitron?

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• 1:09:16Ed Zitron?

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• 1:09:33Speaker 06

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• 1:10:49Speaker 09

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• 1:11:03Ed Zitron?

  Diane, I'm once again in scenic Las Vegas and the locals are staring at me with daggers in their eyes as I insist on podcasting further. After rotating cubes in my head all day, I'm now rotating my guests. Joining me once again is Victoria Song of The Verge.

• 1:11:15Speaker 05

  Are you sick of me yet?

• 1:11:16Ed Zitron?

  Not remotely. You're wonderful. And your very popular listeners love you as well. It's important for you to hear this.

• 1:11:22Speaker 05

  Oh, not for my ego. That's dangerous.

• 1:11:24Ed Zitron?

  You need it. You need the ego. Edonguezo Jr. of the Tech Bubble Newsletter.

• 1:11:27Speaker 05

  Hello, my friend.

• 1:11:29Ed Zitron?

  And the incredible, wonderful stand-up comedian, the star of the movie Is This Thing On? Chloe Radcliffe is joining us.

• 1:11:35Speaker 12

  Yo.

• 1:11:36Ed Zitron?

  What is up?

• 1:11:37Speaker 12

  Hello.

• 1:11:38Ed Zitron?

  Your first CES.

• 1:11:39Speaker 12

  Yeah.

• 1:11:40Ed Zitron?

  What do you think?

• 1:11:41Speaker 12

  I'm a CES virgin.

• 1:11:42Speaker 05

  Oh, man.

• 1:11:43Speaker 12

  Wow, there's so many boys. It's crazy.

• 1:11:49Speaker 05

  But not the cute boys.

• 1:11:50Speaker 12

  No, no, no, no. There's so many hairlines, is what I should say.

• 1:11:55Speaker 05

  A lot of balls.

• 1:11:56Speaker 12

  Yeah.

• 1:11:56Ed Zitron?

  A lot of balls.

• 1:11:58Speaker 12

  A lot of combs.

• 1:11:59Speaker 05

  Yeah, a lot of combs, a lot of balls.

• 1:12:00Speaker 12

  A lot of combs. Comb over ponytails.

• 1:12:02Speaker 05

  Do they offer any hair stuff? Yes, they do.

• 1:12:05Ed Zitron?

  Wait, wait, wait.

• 1:12:06Speaker 05

  Yes, they do. Go to Eureka Park. There's always someone who has like some LED hairband situation. And it's, yeah, yeah.

• 1:12:14Ed Zitron?

  That's good. Yeah, so Chloe, your first CES, have you seen anything that's stuck in your brain?

• 1:12:20Speaker 12

  Um, my biggest take has so far from being on the floor for a pretty limited amount of time.

• 1:12:26Ed Zitron?

  That's fine, yeah.

• 1:12:26Speaker 12

  Uh, is that the theme is numbers that you don't need.

• 1:12:31Ed Zitron?

  Okay.

• 1:12:32Speaker 12

  I stopped at a booth that had a smart dog cage.

• 1:12:37Speaker 05

  Oh, the smart pet crate, yeah.

• 1:12:39Speaker 12

  Yeah, smart pet crate. And it tells you your dog's, um, it tells you your dog's heart rate and breathing rate. And then it also tells you the distance between the top of the cage and the dog.

• 1:12:50Speaker 05

  Welcome to my beat. Useless numbers.

• 1:12:53Speaker 12

  Useless numbers. And I said to the guy, I was, I like stopped and was looking at it. And I was like, well, why do you need the distance from the top of the cage to the top of the dog? And he goes, well, that's how you know whether the dog is moving or not. And I was like, yeah, but can't you just look? And he goes, well, but you're like looking at your app. And so you want to know, maybe if the number, if the number has stayed static for a little while, maybe the dog has died.

• 1:13:17Speaker 12

  And I said, yeah. But wouldn't you know that from the other numbers like heart rate and breathing?

• 1:13:26Ed Zitron?

  No. This is a patented dog, dog death detector.

• 1:13:31Speaker 12

  Is your dog dead?

• 1:13:33Speaker 05

  They're gonna ramp up to 400 biometrics at some point.

• 1:13:36Ed Zitron?

  Just a notification, your dog is dead. The Lena Dunham indicator. Someone's gonna be mad at me for that one.

• 1:13:46Ed Zitron?

  I love that as well because it's like, oh, if the dog's moving, couldn't a motion sensor?

• 1:13:51Speaker 12

  I mean, there's so many things couldn't.

• 1:13:55Speaker 12

  We already have pet cams. Whoever has, whoever is buying a smart pet crate also already has a video camera trained on that dog's crate. That person is not doing smart crate over pet cam.

• 1:14:06Ed Zitron?

  They're like, hey, can you look at this graph? Do you think?

• 1:14:10Speaker 05

  I've got, I've got two cats and a lot of cat tech. I don't need a crate. No, no. Like I got an auto feeder. It has a little camera. And we did that because when we went to Italy, I was just like, I gotta make sure these dumb cats are eating in between pet sitter visits. And literally day one, I'm in Italy. I watched my cat look at me through the camera. It's pissed, knocks the feeder open.

• 1:14:37Ed Zitron?

  Cat rage.

• 1:14:38Speaker 12

  And I do need to ask, if the cats were not eating between feed, feeders, between pet sitters. What were you gonna do for me?

• 1:14:47Speaker 05

  Nothing, nothing. I was gonna call the pet sitter and be crazy lady and be like, my extremely rotund 19.5 pound cat, Pablo, is not eating.

• 1:14:57Speaker 12

  Is now living off its own body fat.

• 1:15:02Speaker 12

  And it has enough calories to support itself, but. I mean, that's the thing. I think that like all of these numbers that my theme of numbers that you don't need, what they wind up filtering into is anxiety. It's like too much information leads to anxiety.

• 1:15:18Speaker 05

  Senior Curse Tech reviewer. Cause I I test wearables.

• 1:15:23Ed Zitron?

  The numbers.

• 1:15:23Speaker 05

  So I have useless numbers for humans.

• 1:15:25Speaker 12

  Yes.

• 1:15:25Speaker 05

  All the time.

• 1:15:26Speaker 12

  Yes.

• 1:15:26Speaker 05

  And just I'm completely overwhelmed and over inundated and yeah, it's very accurate.

• 1:15:32Speaker 12

  It would drive me insane. All of the sleep tech, I'm, the thing is that I'm like, sort of the wrong person to be here because I'm like, stay away from me with your, with your cameras and your vibrations.

• 1:15:45Ed Zitron?

  Having you here is good. We need that kind of energy because there's too many perverts here like, actually, we need another number. So we know how the space between your dog and the ceiling of the crate, but what if about, what about the sides?

• 1:15:56Speaker 12

  Yeah. How are they gonna get that?

• 1:15:58Ed Zitron?

  And also just, I love the idea of getting a notification about, what does the notification say? Your dog is this tall. We've measured your dog.

• 1:16:06Speaker 05

  Like the smart litter robots, they're now having like cameras so you can watch your cat go into the, the litter robot to piss.

• 1:16:13Speaker 12

  For the freaks.

• 1:16:16Speaker 05

  They already weigh the cats as well. So you can see how much my, like, I can, I can literally look into an app and go like, oh, you lost like 0.5 pounds on that dookie. Good for you, Pablo.

• 1:16:30Ed Zitron?

  What you been eating, brother?

• 1:16:31Speaker 05

  What you been eating, brother? How much you been pushing?

• 1:16:33Ed Zitron?

  The only exception is, is if I have a cat with a urinary thing, how my beautiful, big, beautiful and annoying, just like daddy. But he is this beautiful cat who's, he occasionally has pee problems, but you can mostly just get that by looking at your cat. Like you're just checking occasionally be like, oh, okay. He hasn't peed in a while. I don't need a $450 wifi connected thing to be like, biding.

• 1:16:55Speaker 05

  $450?

• 1:16:57Ed Zitron?

  I think that's how much they are.

• 1:16:58Speaker 05

  No, hon, they're like $800.

• 1:17:01Ed Zitron?

  Fuck off. Sorry, not to you, but the cat thing.

• 1:17:03Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:17:04Ed Zitron?

  Jesus Christ.

• 1:17:04Speaker 12

  How much do you love your cat?

• 1:17:06Ed Zitron?

  I love my cat so much, but I could get him like a beautiful Armani suit. I assume you can get, God, he'd look fetching. He's a big, big white and ginger cat. Armani bow tie? Oh my God. No, I did get him a bow tie at one point. Got to get an Armani bow tie? He chewed it off. Oh.

• 1:17:23Speaker 13

  I hear, yeah, I used to get my cats, I had the bell ties with bells so I could hear them because they would disappear and disappear because I didn't know where in the house and they always would rip them off and leave them.

• 1:17:32Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, like a real fuck you, like, just like, that's where that shit goes, alright? Yeah, don't, don't put bells on me. Yeah.

• 1:17:40Speaker 05

  That's peak cat behavior.

• 1:17:41Ed Zitron?

  I put a little tat on it, a little tie on him as well once, there's so many good things you can do with a cat, none of which involve an $850 piss measurer. I love, yeah.

• 1:17:50Speaker 12

  One time I tied a balloon around a tortoise.

• 1:17:54Ed Zitron?

  Why?

• 1:17:55Speaker 12

  Because we kept losing it. I lived with my roommate, had a tortoise, and it kept getting stuck under the radiator. But then we wouldn't find it for a couple of days. She was fine, but we kept being like-

• 1:18:04Ed Zitron?

  This tortoise was just walking around the apartment with a fucking balloon? Like a tortoise version of Up?

• 1:18:10Speaker 12

  Yeah, she was trying to get taken away.

• 1:18:12Speaker 05

  That's innovation.

• 1:18:13Speaker 12

  Yeah, that should be at the consumer-

• 1:18:14Speaker 05

  No, but like, no, at the consumer electronics show, it would probably be like a wearable tortoise tracker with Bluetooth and a sensor.

• 1:18:21Speaker 12

  No, no, you can steal a balloon for a kid. You can ruin a kid's day to get your tortoise found.

• 1:18:26Speaker 05

  It would have like an optical tracker to read the tortoise's temperature and its heart rate, so you'd go to an app and be like, is my reptile alive?

• 1:18:34Ed Zitron?

  Has this ever happened to you, it's just the tortoise slowly walking on something? Yeah, that'd be $700 in pieces.

• 1:18:41Speaker 13

  There's this video from an account I follow because of this video where they have a tortoise and they have a cat, and the tortoise has a skateboard to follow the cat around all day and harass him. That's the tech I would get my, you know, a little skateboard for my little guys, you know?

• 1:18:56Speaker 12

  Someday we're all gonna go back to analog.

• 1:18:58Speaker 13

  Yes, you're right, you're just saying before the show.

• 1:19:00Ed Zitron?

  Tortoises, cats and skateboards, that's the real technology we need. Did you get any other numbers that didn't, that don't matter or make you upset?

• 1:19:08Speaker 12

  Um, there was a, there was a sleep bot.

• 1:19:10Ed Zitron?

  Nice.

• 1:19:11Speaker 12

  I think I'm calling it the right thing. It's a, it's a smart pillow.

• 1:19:14Speaker 05

  Oh, I've tested those before.

• 1:19:16Ed Zitron?

  Okay.

• 1:19:17Speaker 12

  And it, uh, it seems like the actual useful thing is that it's filled with these little like pneumatic air sacs that inflate or deflate based on your snoring to stop you from snoring.

• 1:19:28Speaker 05

  I already do that in beds, yeah, okay.

• 1:19:31Speaker 12

  That seems right, like, I can buy that. It's like, that, that, that passes the sniff test. But this pillow, also, when you're, when it senses your head is on the pillow, it turns off your lights. It turns off your speaker, if you have a speaker playing. It closes your curtains for you automatically and then it, this is not a lie, texts your family that you are asleep.

• 1:19:56Speaker 12

  And I took pictures of-

• 1:19:58Speaker 05

  It's a do not disturb song.

• 1:19:59Ed Zitron?

  Pillow for a prison? Just wanna let you know, I'm going to sleep.

• 1:20:03Speaker 12

  Pretty close. It, I'm reading, I'm reading the example text that it has. Sending a message to the family. Cassie, Oscar has been detected lying down.

• 1:20:13Ed Zitron?

  Wow.

• 1:20:16Speaker 12

  Jimmy, Oscar has been detected lying down, period.

• 1:20:22Speaker 12

  I am, I am not making this up. Dr. Larry Calabrese, Oscar has been detected lying down.

• 1:20:32Ed Zitron?

  Texting my doctor. He has lied. This is a, this is a prison pillow. But this is just for- What would you do if you got that text? I, I, I would be horrified.

• 1:20:42Speaker 05

  That'd be so funny.

• 1:20:43Ed Zitron?

  I mean, everyone, and of course, everyone who comes to CES with me has to use this pillow. I love the idea as well that you're just going to bed, your, your blinds are open, all of the lights are on, you're just blaring corn, I assume.

• 1:20:54Speaker 12

  Yeah, definitely.

• 1:20:55Ed Zitron?

  And I have no way of doing any of this myself, so just my pillow will take- What fucking psychopath?

• 1:21:01Speaker 12

  I know.

• 1:21:01Speaker 05

  Sleep tech is all about like optimization. That's why my newsletter is called like Optimizer. This whole beat of health tech and all that is just about having the most optimal something.

• 1:21:12Ed Zitron?

  Right.

• 1:21:12Speaker 05

  So they're like, oh, science shows that if you sleep in like XYZ conditions, you'll sleep so good. So have a pillow, close all of these things, so you're in the most optimal sleep environment, whatever. I'm like, yeah, it is good to have an optimal sleep environment. It is good for you to do all that stuff, but you don't need to fucking text your Dr. Calabracis about your sleeping.

• 1:21:35Ed Zitron?

  That would be such a strange text to receive. Like he is, and especially with the way it was written, like Galactus just telling you-

• 1:21:43Speaker 12

  Has been detected. Also, the smart pillow doesn't like smooth out your bed sheets for you. You know, like all of the stuff that actually makes-

• 1:21:57Speaker 12

  Everything that actually makes sleeping good.

• 1:21:59Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:21:59Speaker 12

  Which is like, wear the right clothes for you to sleep in. And have the right bed. You know, it's like the, the.

• 1:22:06Speaker 05

  I've done so much. I've done so much sleep tech testing and the only thing that's really worked for me and my spouse is unfortunately a $5,000 smart mattress cover. Which is.

• 1:22:18Ed Zitron?

  What did it do? The cooling one?

• 1:22:20Speaker 05

  It's the A sleep, yeah.

• 1:22:21Ed Zitron?

  I burn, I, I pay for one as well. I've got a few. And like, but people made fun of it because of the AWS thing. When it went down, your bed wouldn't work.

• 1:22:28Speaker 05

  Yeah, no, that, that happened to me too.

• 1:22:29Ed Zitron?

  That didn't happen to me. I, I think.

• 1:22:31Speaker 05

  It happened. It definitely happened to us.

• 1:22:33Ed Zitron?

  But like, I need to sleep in an ice coffin. Like I, I just, my poor girlfriend, just like, even for her, it was too cold. I'm just like, yeah, this, I sleep at 50 degrees, like Drac- Dracula.

• 1:22:44Speaker 05

  It saves marriages and relationships because you could sleep at different temperatures. I need to be a cozy little, a cozy little gal. I need to be warm.

• 1:22:51Speaker 12

  Yeah, I need to be a little bug in a rug.

• 1:22:54Speaker 05

  I need to be like toasty and my spouse also needs to be a corpse. So we can set different temperatures also.

• 1:22:59Ed Zitron?

  I need to set to Dracula.

• 1:23:01Speaker 05

  Yeah. And you know, they snore and it used to be a thing where every, every like day I would, I would hear them snoring and I'd be like, wake the fuck up so I can sleep. But now the bed actually just lifts when it detects them snoring.

• 1:23:13Speaker 12

  Oh, it's nice. On, only on his side?

• 1:23:15Speaker 05

  No, on our side. So sometimes I go like, oh, it's moving and I will fall right back asleep. But you know, ever since that happened, he doesn't wake me up snoring anymore.

• 1:23:22Ed Zitron?

  That's good.

• 1:23:22Speaker 05

  Like, it saved our marriage.

• 1:23:24Speaker 12

  Wow, this is lovely. Unfortunately, you're selling me on this fucking mattress cover.

• 1:23:29Speaker 05

  But unfortunately, it also comes with useless numbers, like how often I sleep.

• 1:23:32Ed Zitron?

  I know. Most useless number. Here's my psychopath thing though. I have my numbers for my eight sleep and I have my numbers for my Oura ring and they disagree all the time.

• 1:23:39Speaker 05

  Same.

• 1:23:40Ed Zitron?

  I love it. Yeah.

• 1:23:40Speaker 05

  Same. This is like long-term testing that I do.

• 1:23:43Ed Zitron?

  My favorite thing was I posted, because I also use Somni, which is the thing that electrocutes for, actually, I love it. Um, it's this thing that electrocute you. It sounds insane. Just best not to think too hard. But like, I posted my numbers on Blue Sky once, which was a mistake. And someone was immediately like, you're not getting enough deep sleep. You, you should be really concerned. I'm like, I, I really had to stop myself being like, kill yourself.

• 1:24:04Speaker 05

  To be clear, the Oura ring is like, they do a lot of science. They do a lot of research. They're only about like, I want to say 79% uh correlation between the cold standard of polysomnography.

• 1:24:14Ed Zitron?

  Nice.

• 1:24:14Speaker 05

  So that's a 20% difference.

• 1:24:16Ed Zitron?

  Are you guys dreaming a lot? No.

• 1:24:18Speaker 05

  Uh, I do have medications.

• 1:24:20Speaker 12

  Y'all dreaming a lot?

• 1:24:22Speaker 05

  My new medications are giving me night terrors. It's really bad.

• 1:24:26Speaker 13

  I heard him go. You know, just in the middle of the night. I was like, you got, he's.

• 1:24:31Speaker 12

  I started.

• 1:24:32Ed Zitron?

  No, no, he was listening to disturb, but he lied down on his pillow.

• 1:24:36Speaker 13

  You're mad, I'm cool, you know.

• 1:24:39Ed Zitron?

  He, he has night terrors? Yeah. He strikes me as the kind of guy who just wake up like.

• 1:24:43Speaker 13

  Yeah, I used to think when he went to sleep, he would just be in his memory palace.

• 1:24:47Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, yeah, exactly. Like regarding it. Yeah, that's the thing as well. It's like the basic things for sleep are like, is it light in there or dark in there? Are you the right temperature? Are you comfortable? And it's like, yeah, but what if the pillow did all this shit that you already?

• 1:25:02Speaker 12

  I asked, I asked the people at the booth. I was like, but what if I want to lay in bed and not have the lights out?

• 1:25:08Ed Zitron?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:09Speaker 12

  And he goes, well, then you'd have to put another pillow on top.

• 1:25:17Ed Zitron?

  Fuck, yeah, dude. What's great is, what's so good about that is likely no one has asked them that. You're the first person to be like, what if I am in bed but not sleeping yet? He's like, fuck. How much was this? Did he give you a price?

• 1:25:34Speaker 12

  I didn't even ask. I should have asked.

• 1:25:35Ed Zitron?

  It's probably like.

• 1:25:36Speaker 05

  It's probably, my estimate is $675 or something like that. It's always a stupid number.

• 1:25:42Ed Zitron?

  Cause you could go on like eBay and get some like really nice sheets that were like some like crisp per kale perhaps.

• 1:25:48Speaker 05

  I, I've tested smart pillows in the past, but like it was a very different smart pillows testing, like my breathing rate or whatnot. But it was also like it had a speaker in there. So you could listen to your podcast to fall asleep in your smart pillow. And I was like, this is dumb. It's so dumb.

• 1:26:05Speaker 13

  I'm, I'm someone who, you know, I'm not trying to optimize sleep, but I do value the dream portion of it. So is there, for someone like me who's just like, I, you know, I'm interested in deeper sleep. Does it make sense to go on the journey of trying out the smart tech or is it, or should I just invest in?

• 1:26:22Ed Zitron?

  Melatonin.

• 1:26:24Speaker 13

  I can't, I don't dream on melatonin.

• 1:26:25Ed Zitron?

  What about trazodan?

• 1:26:26Speaker 05

  Really? Cause usually melatonin will make your dreams super intense.

• 1:26:30Speaker 13

  Does nothing. I wake up.

• 1:26:32Speaker 12

  What about magnesium? The one that doesn't make you poop?

• 1:26:35Speaker 13

  Haven't done, what is it? I know, I haven't, I haven't tried a magnesium.

• 1:26:38Speaker 12

  I think it's magnesium glycinate makes you sleep and magnesium citrate makes you shit.

• 1:26:43Speaker 05

  L-theanine relaxes you, magnesium L-theanine. And then there's also, you could try a GLP because one of the side effects of that is intensely vivid dreams.

• 1:26:52Speaker 13

  Oh, yeah. I mean, yeah, I, I like, I lucid dream regularly, which is why I'm, I'm like, okay, I'll do anything as except whatever goes and infringes on that. But I've never thought too much about doing the tech beyond like, I'll just invest in really nice sheets, you know, and get myself really comfy.

• 1:27:11Ed Zitron?

  The sleep measurement stuff sucks, but I really love the key. I love the cold. I love the fact.

• 1:27:15Speaker 13

  The control over the environment sounds really.

• 1:27:18Ed Zitron?

  I burn hot. I sleep in, I look inside. I have like a full scale like blackout eye mask. I have a giant sheet. I like curl myself up in a ball. It's probably not great. Like, but it's probably not a great sign. And I'm just like cold and like wrapped in this thing. Like I've just blacked out like, and I wake up when my alarm goes off and not a moment earlier. It's fucking great. I mean, I write constantly. I think like this is the only reason I can just like endless sleep. But it's, again, the numbers do fucking nothing for me. I wake up feeling like shit. It's like you didn't sleep enough. Thank you.

• 1:27:48Speaker 12

  Yeah, for me, the numbers make it so much worse because mostly if I'm having trouble sleeping, then a huge proportion of my brain is fixated on, I am not sleeping and that is bad. And so then to have, when they're like, this is gonna help you sleep better. I'm like, no, no, no, it's gonna remind me how badly I'm sleeping. And that's gonna make me sleep so much worse. Because every night when I lay down, it's gonna be like, well, tonight has to be the night that it is good now. Yeah.

• 1:28:14Ed Zitron?

  And you get, your loved ones get a text saying she's not sleeping.

• 1:28:18Speaker 12

  Chloe has been detected lying down, but has not been detected unconscious yet.

• 1:28:24Ed Zitron?

  Chloe has violated the, the rules of the pillow.

• 1:28:27Speaker 05

  That, that metric is called sleep latency and it fucking sucks.

• 1:28:32Speaker 12

  Yeah. Wait, what's the, what?

• 1:28:33Ed Zitron?

  How long it takes you to sleep?

• 1:28:34Speaker 05

  How, how long until you try to go to sleep and how, when you actually fall asleep, it's called sleep latency. And you can kind of measure certain things by that. It's, it's bullshit. It's not bullshit, but it's bullshit.

• 1:28:46Ed Zitron?

  I occasionally really like, I'll get like a two minute one. I'll be like, fuck, yeah.

• 1:28:50Speaker 05

  Well, like all it does, all it does is if you have a sleep latency under 15 minutes, it just means you're real fucking tired. And that's bad.

• 1:28:57Speaker 12

  Interesting. Wait, you mean like healthy people have?

• 1:29:01Speaker 05

  About 15 minutes to fall asleep.

• 1:29:03Speaker 12

  Interesting.

• 1:29:04Speaker 05

  That's like a normal.

• 1:29:05Speaker 12

  Take that boyfriend.

• 1:29:06Speaker 05

  Yeah, like if you're falling.

• 1:29:08Speaker 12

  He falls asleep in forty five seconds.

• 1:29:09Speaker 05

  It's like if.

• 1:29:10Speaker 12

  And then I lay there angry. I lay there listening to him get this peaceful rest that I should be enjoying. And I'm like.

• 1:29:20Speaker 05

  You fall asleep too quickly, uh, it could be.

• 1:29:23Ed Zitron?

  One hour yesterday, Jesus Christ.

• 1:29:25Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:29:25Ed Zitron?

  Okay. Seventeen, six minutes, two days ago, thirteen, sixteen, seven, seven, sixteen, twenty eight, eight, thirty three, one. Fucking, fucking last Friday, one minute, just fucking duh. I would, I think, I think I was like in for a moment with my girlfriend and very happy. So like, that's lovely. And I was, send it that later.

• 1:29:47Speaker 05

  And she goes, all, all you need is like a baseline and like, but the only point of these numbers is to build a long term baseline. And when you're off the baseline, you go like, oh, okay. Maybe something's happening.

• 1:29:58Speaker 12

  To me, it's yet again, to go back to sort of the theme of earlier, don't you know when you're off the baseline by? I'm having trouble sleeping lately.

• 1:30:08Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, I'm having trouble getting to sleep.

• 1:30:10Speaker 05

  Like, the whole point of this is that they're trying to do something like illness prediction. And there is science that they can do that, like during COVID, they were doing all of that stuff.

• 1:30:19Ed Zitron?

  Aura is not great at that.

• 1:30:21Speaker 05

  It actually is.

• 1:30:21Ed Zitron?

  It hasn't been great for me.

• 1:30:23Speaker 05

  I, I've gotten it where like the symptom radar is just like, you're getting sick and then I would get sick. So like, but you know, it's not that helpful. Cause it's like a forty eight hour window.

• 1:30:31Speaker 12

  Again, I know, I'm like, my throat has a tiny tickle. I'm about to get sick.

• 1:30:36Speaker 05

  Like, all of this stuff came from like when they were doing COVID research because it's asymptomatic. So you could get like that sort of like.

• 1:30:44Ed Zitron?

  But this is the thing with all this wellness shit. It's like, well, you can't be mad at us that it isn't really useful because once it was.

• 1:30:50Speaker 05

  Snake oil.

• 1:30:51Ed Zitron?

  It's.

• 1:30:52Speaker 05

  That's my beat, snake oil.

• 1:30:53Ed Zitron?

  The snake oil cursed, the cursed amulet beat.

• 1:30:56Speaker 05

  Yeah. I just, I just sit here and go like, no, that's not true. No, that's not true. Here's the nuance. And everyone yells at me and they're like, you're a big pharma shill. And I'm like, no, I'm not.

• 1:31:05Ed Zitron?

  What the fuck does that mean? What do you mean, big pharma shill?

• 1:31:08Speaker 05

  Oh, I wrote a story recently about the wellness wild west. It's kind of like a storyline that I've read about a lot. And I was talking about how people shouldn't be injecting unapproved drugs into their bodies. Uh, even if a TikTok.

• 1:31:19Ed Zitron?

  As in peptides?

• 1:31:20Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 1:31:21Ed Zitron?

  Chinese peptides.

• 1:31:22Speaker 05

  Don't, don't do that. Don't take GLP three. It's not actually a GLP three because the only people with access to the proprietary like components to that is Eli Lilly. So whatever you're getting from China is almost 100% not a GLP.

• 1:31:35Ed Zitron?

  And you're not saying GLP three is a problem, just getting it from an unlicensed Chinese pharmacist?

• 1:31:38Speaker 05

  Getting it from an unlicensed Chinese pharmacist is not a great idea, bub. Reconstituting it yourself. You are not a pharmacist. I don't see any of you on TikTok using fucking sterile ingredients or sterile instruments or whatnot. Like I said that and they were like, you fucking bitch pharma shill. And I was like, I can't believe me saying, don't use unapproved drugs is me being a big pharma shill.

• 1:32:01Ed Zitron?

  I'm, this week I'm using the new viral GLP from, from China.

• 1:32:05Speaker 05

  They're calling it Reda and Ratatouille because they're, you know, the, the videos, it's like, oh my God, here's week one on Reda. I'm like, first of all, you're not on Reda. You're on some other fucking cocktail bullshit. It, the, the, the thing that they're calling GLP three, which is also like, not the correct way to call it is, um, Reda True Tide.

• 1:32:22Ed Zitron?

  I feel like if you describe this like a hun, like I went to a mysterious man who handed me some pills. You'd be like, yeah, that sounds bad. You should go to the doctor. But this is like, well, no, because I got it from the internet.

• 1:32:33Speaker 12

  Yeah. I just was reading an article about peptides because not because I was like, would those make my life better? Not, certainly not that. Not because I was thinking about trying them. And I, I read an article and there, somebody was quoted, somebody was just saying like, they're all over Silicon Valley and, uh, like this crew, you know, crypto loves them, AI loves them, whatever, whatever else. This other thing loves them. And, and whoever was quoted said, The only group that's a little more skeptical is, uh, anybody who works in biotech is a little bit more skeptical, but they're just so in the pocket of the FDA, or they're, they're so, they're so, uh, they like bow down to the FDA. And I was like, well, the other interpretation

• 1:33:17Speaker 12

  is they, uh, this is the world that they work in and they're steeped in way, way, way more information than somebody who works in crypto is about peptides specifically. So maybe their skepticism is like healthy and rational.

• 1:33:30Speaker 05

  It's partly like, like the FDA doesn't want you to have that. And I get where that's coming from because, you know, healthcare sucks in our country. It's expensive. These things could be helpful, but you're getting blocked from it. They are trying to, you know, make sure that they're making the most amount of money of it. Those are all true things. But the FDA exists. We have these regulations because people fucking died. People died before. Like this is how people die or get really adverse effects. Cause I, I don't know, but Dr. Matt on Tik Tok, who is most certainly not an actual doctor, telling you how to dose gray market Chinese peptides from like things you bought from Amazon. I'm sorry, when you're in the comments and you're

• 1:34:15Speaker 05

  like, oh yeah, I was vomiting uncontrollably. Oh, I wonder why. I wonder why.

• 1:34:19Ed Zitron?

  I'm just doing weight loss meth. Well, I guess that's just meth.

• 1:34:22Speaker 13

  I had such a, a distant sense of the GLP ones. Cause I, I've been learning about them from the way in which they're displacing, uh, insulin production in a lot of places and hadn't had a good sense of the extent to which I was like, oh, why are they calling them Chinese peptides so incessantly? And that piece was interesting. And that, that time piece was interesting laying out, uh, one Silicon Valley's obsession with them and also, uh, making click into sense the, the fact that I feel like we're seeing other subcultures be like, well, like, yeah, of course you gotta do it yourself. Of course you gotta looks max. Of course you gotta, yeah, you know, like, uh,

• 1:35:02Speaker 05

  optimization.

• 1:35:03Speaker 13

  Yes, exactly. Yeah.

• 1:35:04Ed Zitron?

  I just want to be abundantly clear about something. By the way, we're not saying GLP-1 is a bad thing. It's fine. Like it's totally fine. Just want to be really abundantly clear.

• 1:35:13Speaker 13

  They were developed. I mean, and one of the use cases is for like, you know, if you have, uh, for example, diabetes, you know, they, they, you know, that's, that's one of the, uh, the, the proven use cases and

• 1:35:23Ed Zitron?

  Or if you use it for weight loss.

• 1:35:24Speaker 13

  Oh yeah. Wait, you know, wait.

• 1:35:25Ed Zitron?

  As long as a doctor gives it to you.

• 1:35:26Speaker 13

  Yeah. As long as you're not doing it in your bathtub. Doctor Matt, a PhD of philosophy. Who's teaching you. But it has been so fascinating to see the extent to which people are like throwing a lot of reason out of the door, just to be like, no, this is fine. This is okay, actually. And you are a big Pharma Shell, if you are, you know.

• 1:35:48Speaker 05

  If I just go like, maybe, maybe, you know, bodybuilders who already are very lean taking GLP, so-called GLP-3, maybe that's not a great idea because they've actually never studied what this medication does in people with low body fat. You don't know what it'll do.

• 1:36:05Speaker 13

  How many times are we gonna do this? How many times are we gonna do a wave of a drug that does seem to have a really miraculous impact on people and then, you know, the crusading group of power users maybe will, you know, who are like, you know, well, if you're not supporting everyone using it as widely as possible, then you're in the pocket of the.

• 1:36:25Speaker 05

  I mean, side effects are. A lot more times.

• 1:36:27Speaker 13

  Yes, no, exactly, yeah.

• 1:36:28Speaker 05

  Side effects are real. You may not actually want to have those side effects and like, these drugs are so new, we don't know what the long-term effect is. And it's not bad to say like, you know, you're, you're always doing a weighing a pro and con, like, I'm willing to do the side effect because the alternative is worse. And like, those are conversations you need to have with a real fucking doctor. Oh, my God. Not a comment section, not some Billy Bob Doctor Boo on TikTok.

• 1:36:54Speaker 12

  It seems, it.

• 1:36:59Speaker 12

  Let me set the sounds over. Um, a thought that I was having on the plane here is it feels like society as a whole, and particularly like the, this, this sections of society that are more online, that are more techified, that are more, you know, whatever, for sort of forward in that kind of progression,

• 1:37:20Speaker 12

  have plenty of room for skepticism when it comes to systems of like social support, but do not have room for skepticism about tech.

• 1:37:31Speaker 05

  Or science.

• 1:37:31Speaker 13

  Yeah.

• 1:37:32Speaker 05

  Yeah. Just like medicine, like, oh, medicine, vaccines, why would we do that despite hundreds of years of evidence? Like, they can't possibly be right because. Coach Matt told me on TikTok and it seems right.

• 1:37:46Ed Zitron?

  And I mean, I say this from a perspective of I've been very overweight in my life. Like I used to be like three hundred fifty pounds a while back and it's like, I get the desperation.

• 1:37:55Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:37:55Ed Zitron?

  I get the desperation, especially when it's like GLP one is like very expensive, GLP three, I'm sorry. But it's like very expensive. You have to go to a doctor and all that and just being like, maybe I could do this cheaper. Maybe my doctor won't give it to me, maybe whatever. And I get that fucking desperation. You'll try it like when I've had weight problems, like you're fucking scratching at the walls, trying to find some cheat code around the actual hard thing of changing lifestyle, which I should be clear, it's very fucking difficult. I have sympathy with everyone. I've been through it multiple cycles in my life. I get it, but it's like, to your point, Victoria, it's like, yeah, you're gonna get side effects. I'd rather roll the dice on the doctor who's using the thing that they know the side effects. They've done trials and such versus.

• 1:38:34Speaker 05

  The doctor, it's hard because you go to doctors and doctors don't listen to you. I have PCOS, I have metabolic conditions. I'm on a GLP actually for, for like PCOS and fatty liver and getting to that point was over a ten year long journey.

• 1:38:49Ed Zitron?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:49Speaker 05

  But these are conversations I was having and I had to fire like five doctors because one was like, listen to the Huberman lab. No.

• 1:38:58Speaker 05

  Or like, maybe you should be, maybe you should be a vegan. Fuck off. Not, not to like say anything about vegans, but like that's not the, the solution I was looking for or just being like, well, you know, PCOS causes weight gain. Also, the solution is weight loss, but also your body will not let you lose the weight. So just lose some weight. And like, I understand that desperation, like from a very personal level. But at the same time, you have to believe in science. You have to believe in, in like the process exists because people have died. Because side effects are also debilitating to quality of life. The worst part about being on a GLP for me is that I like food. I don't have a lot of food. I actually genuinely don't have food noise. My liver just wants to fuck me over.

• 1:39:41Speaker 05

  And so like, I can't eat. It's. Sucks.

• 1:39:45Ed Zitron?

  Sounds fucking terrible.

• 1:39:46Speaker 05

  It takes the joy out of eating for me. I don't enjoy it at all.

• 1:39:50Ed Zitron?

  I'm sorry.

• 1:39:51Speaker 05

  Yeah, no, and like, I'm tired. I get fucking clown nightmares. I literally had a nightmare that my spouse's ex came running after me and I was like, oh, this hoe. And then she turned into Pennywise, the fucking clown, the Bill Skarsgård version. I woke up screaming, like, this is a side effect that I have.

• 1:40:09Ed Zitron?

  Ex and a clown.

• 1:40:10Speaker 05

  Yeah, no, that's a side effect I have. This is a thing, you know, and you have to weigh those pros and cons for health, but you know, in the pursuit of optimization, and that's rampant here at CES, people are like, yeah, numbers that don't matter. Do this, do that. And it's like, this is why I have mental health problems doing my job.

• 1:40:29Ed Zitron?

  But now you have numbers to help.

• 1:40:30Speaker 12

  Yeah, yeah, now you have so many numbers. I wanna, I mean, I wanna go back to one thing that you said, which is, you said you have to believe in science.

• 1:40:37Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:40:38Speaker 12

  Because people have died, we've done this, whatever. Um, I think that there's just a huge swath of the population, which is heavily represented here, of people who would just say, no, you don't have to believe in science. It is lies. It is, you know, it is bunk, it is biased, it is whatever. And that fracture is where I'm like, oh, no. We've, not just about science particularly, but sort of like, the, the like communal agreement on some like really foundational social pillars.

• 1:41:08Ed Zitron?

  Consensus reality.

• 1:41:10Speaker 12

  Yeah, consensus reality is, is like, seems to be crumbling.

• 1:41:13Ed Zitron?

  And it doesn't help that the leader of the FDA sounds like a fucking cyberman.

• 1:41:17Speaker 05

  Mm-hmm. Oh, you know.

• 1:41:18Speaker 12

  He should be at CES.

• 1:41:19Ed Zitron?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:19Speaker 05

  Oh, don't, no.

• 1:41:20Ed Zitron?

  No, we can't make fun of him. It's, it's a physical condition. We can't make fun of him for that. We can make fun of that for the fucking worm in his brain.

• 1:41:26Speaker 05

  The worm in his brain and the fact that he says that.

• 1:41:28Ed Zitron?

  And the bear corpse.

• 1:41:29Speaker 05

  I, I, he keeps me up at night because in June, he was like, in four years, I want every American wearing a wearable. And as one of the most quantified people on the earth, wearing three to four wearables continuously, 24/7, 365, no! Don't do that!

• 1:41:47Ed Zitron?

  So, at that point, we can rotate our guests one last time. Thank you so much for listening. The upcoming ad, I assume, is not for weight loss drugs. If it is, um, well, I guess you know how we feel about that now, but that's not really my goddamn problem.

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• 1:45:10Ed Zitron?

  Welcome back to the better offline CS experience. We were just talking about wanking, I guess.

• 1:45:15Speaker 07

  Yeah, we were talking, I was.

• 1:45:17Speaker 12

  Be more specific.

• 1:45:18Speaker 07

  I was saying the fleshlights, they're just okay. And so why would you even need them to be motorized?

• 1:45:22Speaker 12

  And I was saying, interesting take.

• 1:45:23Ed Zitron?

  I must be clear, I don't.

• 1:45:25Speaker 07

  Oh, what? Because you're, oh, because I admit to using a sex toy.

• 1:45:28Speaker 12

  This is a sex negative podcast, Adam.

• 1:45:31Speaker 07

  Oh, a man who uses a sex toy. Women are vibrator, vibrator, vibrator.

• 1:45:36Speaker 12

  Yeah, because men are inadequate. Because men, and if you say that women are inadequate, I will take deep.

• 1:45:43Ed Zitron?

  Introducing the next generation of sex toy. Welcome. Welcome to better offline. You complained last year, we didn't have enough women, which was true. Now we've got one that's just immediately created a fracture. We got you, got you for two more days as well. It's gonna be great.

• 1:46:00Speaker 12

  Yeah.

• 1:46:00Ed Zitron?

  Now this.

• 1:46:01Speaker 12

  I'm gonna cause chaos.

• 1:46:02Ed Zitron?

  And truthfully, having like, amazing team is the core better offline team for the show as well. And I'm actually like, both you and Adam, Chloe, you both kind of were like, ah, it's like, like Adam, you've done a bit of tech, Chloe, you've not done really any, like, oh, is this, am I gonna be all right to do this? Because like, I haven't done it. This is the perfect view, because I think the really tech poisoned people are incapable of just being like, that sounds fucking useless. That sounds dumb as shit. Even the jackoff machine. It's like, you're gonna attach this heavy looking, looks pretty heavy.

• 1:46:33Speaker 07

  It didn't, it didn't look useful or necessary. It's a.

• 1:46:37Ed Zitron?

  Welcome, CS.

• 1:46:38Speaker 07

  We've already, we've already talked about it in a previous segment.

• 1:46:42Speaker 12

  Big band says CES. It doesn't look useful or necessary.

• 1:46:49Speaker 07

  To describe, because we talked about the Handy and Handy 2 in a previous segment. We need to describe what it is.

• 1:46:55Speaker 13

  Oh, that's the name.

• 1:46:56Speaker 07

  It's basically the, yeah, it's called the, it's, it's a joke product. They're just there to make people laugh. It's like the inner core of a fleshlight, which is like, okay, a fleshlight, if you're not familiar. You know the sticky hand from the vending machine at the supermarket?

• 1:47:09Speaker 13

  Jesus Christ.

• 1:47:10Speaker 12

  Is that the material?

• 1:47:12Speaker 07

  That's the material inside of a fleshlight.

• 1:47:13Speaker 12

  Put lube in it?

• 1:47:14Speaker 07

  You put lube in it and it's squishy, okay? And, and again, the, just okay as an experience. Had, I got, well, it's been in a drawer for years, right? Um, and I got it, uh, for free, by the way, because I used to do a comedy show in a sex shop in Los Angeles. Wonderful show at the pleasure chest. Um, but, uh, I didn't pay for it. Uh, but so imagine, so.

• 1:47:34Speaker 12

  I would have. I, it was on my list.

• 1:47:36Speaker 13

  I support the industry.

• 1:47:38Ed Zitron?

  I actually genuinely support this stuff.

• 1:47:40Speaker 07

  It's this, it's a squishy core of a fleshlight and then it's attached to a Velcro harness, which is attached to like a big piece of metal machinery that, that moves it up and down.

• 1:47:50Speaker 13

  Yeah.

• 1:47:51Speaker 07

  And I'm like, I have hands.

• 1:47:55Speaker 12

  I just, and here's my pitch, here's my pitch for an analog version of that. Is take one of the actual sticky hands that you actually stick on the window and put some lube on that and put, just hold that on the palm of your hand. And check that out. That's gonna feel like it's somebody else's hand.

• 1:48:11Speaker 07

  Here's what, here's what I would like. I would like a woman to stand across the room.

• 1:48:17Speaker 07

  A big sticky hand right on my dick.

• 1:48:20Ed Zitron?

  I must, I must also be clear, by the way, so I looked up the Handy 2. I just want to be clear, there are two SKUs. And there is the standard, which is one hour of battery life, save $60 launch price and it's regularly $299. And then there's the five hours of battery.

• 1:48:37Speaker 13

  Oh, the Gooner, the Gooner package.

• 1:48:40Ed Zitron?

  $379 down from $499 and you scroll down and it's like, um, we recommend the fast charger Handy. And I just got to ask, how much are you, how much are you doing that?

• 1:48:52Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:48:52Ed Zitron?

  Well, purchase the award winning VR compatible automatic stroker.

• 1:48:57Speaker 13

  Sometimes it takes a while.

• 1:48:58Speaker 07

  But isn't the, isn't the point of it, V, it's VR compared, come on.

• 1:49:02Speaker 13

  I mean, you're watching the pornos and all that, but.

• 1:49:05Speaker 07

  But, but isn't the point of the device that it's supposed to be very fast, supposed to make you come fast?

• 1:49:10Speaker 12

  Really?

• 1:49:11Speaker 07

  I would think so.

• 1:49:12Speaker 13

  They should put a screen on it.

• 1:49:13Speaker 12

  It's got four hours of battery life.

• 1:49:14Speaker 07

  Yeah, I know.

• 1:49:15Speaker 12

  I just.

• 1:49:16Speaker 13

  They should use like most of that battery life for a little screen where you can watch some porn on it while you're, you know, going at it.

• 1:49:21Ed Zitron?

  It's just really like, people that don't have sex or jack off, it sounds like, just like the, these sexless people.

• 1:49:28Speaker 12

  I would love to know the, the man who is horny enough to want to use the jack off machine, but so dedicated to tech that when he goes to pick up his jack off machine and the battery's dead, he goes, oh, I have to put it on my fast charger now and wait for seven minutes for it to gain enough battery life to make me come.

• 1:49:48Ed Zitron?

  Tapping his foot like Sonic the Hedgehog.

• 1:49:51Speaker 12

  Sitting on his hands being like, there's no other way to do this.

• 1:49:55Ed Zitron?

  Has this ever happened to you? Ah, just, I, it's just, I, and I must be clear, this is a sex positive podcast. It's great. Sex wonderful. It's a great thing. Between consenting adults and waifu tubes, I guess. And it's just very strange to look at another product on the show. It's just like, an alien made this. Like what, you, what do you need? You can't jack off, I guess, or you really want to. And also I just feel like, and just there's a masturbator. That's a great thing to say. Um, I just feel like picking this thing up, I would just be consumed with shame. Immediately. The only thing that would make me more ashamed would be if it was out of battery.

• 1:50:35Speaker 12

  Mm hmm.

• 1:50:35Ed Zitron?

  You're like, oh, fuck.

• 1:50:37Speaker 12

  I've used it.

• 1:50:38Ed Zitron?

  Yeah. Just like, I'm too into this.

• 1:50:40Speaker 07

  See now, this, this is my pet peeve because I think when you say be consumed with shame, you're ashamed of your own sexuality yet. That's what's happening.

• 1:50:48Ed Zitron?

  God, no.

• 1:50:48Speaker 07

  Is you, is you are ashamed of the idea of masturbating with a device. Why? Why?

• 1:50:52Ed Zitron?

  Because my hands can do it perfectly fine.

• 1:50:54Speaker 07

  That's.

• 1:50:55Ed Zitron?

  Or I can have sex with my girlfriend.

• 1:50:56Speaker 07

  Why shame? Why shame?

• 1:50:57Speaker 12

  Why not, why not amusement? If your hands can do it perfectly fine.

• 1:51:00Ed Zitron?

  Like, I'm just, well, already we're in this weird world where I wouldn't buy it.

• 1:51:04Speaker 12

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:51:04Ed Zitron?

  Like, so it's just.

• 1:51:05Speaker 12

  Would you feel ashamed, not, not ashamed, would you feel shame if you picked up a flashlight, if you were going to use a flashlight? Or is the machine worse?

• 1:51:13Ed Zitron?

  No, I just feel like.

• 1:51:14Speaker 12

  Is the machine laughing at you?

• 1:51:16Ed Zitron?

  I just have never seen this, we're now going on the show where just everyone's like, how does it jack off? No, it's just like the idea of a machine for it is unnecessary to me. I don't like if someone else used it.

• 1:51:28Speaker 07

  That's because.

• 1:51:29Ed Zitron?

  Maybe they're goon maxing.

• 1:51:30Speaker 07

  The male sex toy is not a jerk off device because we can do that perfectly fine.

• 1:51:36Speaker 12

  It's a novelty item.

• 1:51:37Speaker 07

  The, the real male sex toy is a butt plug and men won't buy them. That's, that's the real, it's prostate stimulation.

• 1:51:44Speaker 12

  Yeah, that is true.

• 1:51:44Ed Zitron?

  And you know what? If you like that, that's fucking cool. I like, my problem isn't, and you know what? Maybe there's a guy who just like, he's like a sex guy and he likes all the different kinds. Fine. That sounds fine. I just think like, if I got a machine that was out of batteries to jack it off and it was unpowdered, I'd be like, oh, I've been doing this a lot, haven't I?

• 1:52:02Speaker 13

  Do the, do the sex toys have big useless numbers too?

• 1:52:05Ed Zitron?

  Oh my God, I wonder if they do.

• 1:52:08Speaker 13

  You, you haven't been coming lately.

• 1:52:12Ed Zitron?

  You haven't sex.

• 1:52:12Speaker 12

  Your come latency.

• 1:52:16Speaker 12

  The distance of time between when you begin to jack off.

• 1:52:20Speaker 13

  It's like a little prompter. You okay? You haven't, you haven't come this time.

• 1:52:23Speaker 12

  Establish a baseline and when you are off the baseline, that is when you will know.

• 1:52:28Ed Zitron?

  I'm actually looking now to see if there's any metrics that come discreet delivery. I mean, sure.

• 1:52:33Speaker 13

  Discreet delivery.

• 1:52:34Speaker 07

  What a nice, what if, what if Withings made a sex toy and then it, it tracked your, you know what I mean? It gave you some stats. The gooners might like that. Like some jerk off. So what? Yeah. Like a, oh, how about like a, a special watch for jerking off that like Matt, you know?

• 1:52:51Speaker 13

  You have like a stat line, you know?

• 1:52:53Speaker 07

  It's a stat line. It lets you know how efficient you're being and how much time you spent jerking off.

• 1:52:57Speaker 12

  Or it's like, do you know how on treadmills you can follow the little workouts where it like shows it? It's like, it's gonna get faster now. And then the treadmill goes faster. You have to run faster. And then it's like, now it's slower. If you're, if you had a little like, if you had a little gooning workout line where it could be like, go faster now. And then it's like, slow down, slow down, slow down, slow down. And you like, follow your little workouts.

• 1:53:17Speaker 07

  I mean, this is.

• 1:53:18Speaker 12

  Gooners, listen to me.

• 1:53:20Speaker 07

  You're describing J O Y videos. Jack off instruction videos.

• 1:53:25Ed Zitron?

  I just want to read something from the website.

• 1:53:26Speaker 07

  Really good form of video porn. I think those are like, it's very kind of wholesome. Cause it's sort of like. I want someone to instruct me.

• 1:53:34Speaker 13

  There's a, there's a relationship.

• 1:53:35Speaker 07

  There's a relationship about the jerking off.

• 1:53:38Ed Zitron?

  I just want to be clear, there is a button on this website that to lead you to various videos. It says, explore the handy verse and.

• 1:53:44Speaker 13

  Handy verse.

• 1:53:45Ed Zitron?

  I don't feel great having read that.

• 1:53:47Speaker 12

  The greatest sin that Mark Zuckerberg has committed on the face of this planet. He's giving us blank verse. Nothing else he's done has come close.

• 1:53:57Speaker 13

  We got the handy verse with Earth 69.

• 1:54:00Ed Zitron?

  What else? What's going on? What is handy feeling? There's like a whole thing and I'm like coming around to this like this isn't for me, but I'm like, okay. If someone's a real beat offerer, like this is quite nice.

• 1:54:11Speaker 07

  I don't know. The reason I feel shame is because I feel like we're falling for it because this is a gag product.

• 1:54:16Ed Zitron?

  No, no, no, this is real. No, this is real. This is like a real thing they're charging for it.

• 1:54:20Speaker 07

  It exists, but I don't think it serves a, it's to laugh at at CES and to buy your friend for a bachelor party.

• 1:54:25Ed Zitron?

  I just don't know if I agree. Like, here's the thing, women's sex toys, very well documented and used and talked about quite.

• 1:54:31Speaker 12

  We've seen pictures of them. Yeah, they're real.

• 1:54:33Ed Zitron?

  Also like women discuss them. I feel like Adam, you're like one of the only men I've talked to about sex who's just not immediate like, uh, yeah, I've had it like one million times, but I can't discuss it at all.

• 1:54:44Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:54:44Ed Zitron?

  But it's like, I believe that like there are men who jack off in this manner and good on them as long as it's like normal and consensual and like.

• 1:54:52Speaker 07

  I, I could be wrong. I just don't believe in this product. I believe in sex toys for men. I believe they're underrepresented in this category, but I believe where this product is situated in the hall and the way that they have designed it.

• 1:55:03Ed Zitron?

  Oh, this is.

• 1:55:03Speaker 07

  Yeah. Yeah, at CES.

• 1:55:06Speaker 12

  Welcome to the pod, Edward.

• 1:55:08Speaker 13

  I thought we were just talking about a topic.

• 1:55:10Speaker 12

  Hey, hey, welcome to the chat.

• 1:55:12Speaker 13

  The only one I saw was the love sense one, which was the vibrator. I was like, okay, I saw that last year also. So I was like, okay, that's the one I know.

• 1:55:18Speaker 07

  It's in the Eureka Hall and it's sort of positioned. It's like meant to make you laugh and, and I think it's a $500 bachelor party gift.

• 1:55:26Ed Zitron?

  But was it a big, was it a big booth?

• 1:55:29Speaker 07

  They had a big booth, yeah.

• 1:55:30Ed Zitron?

  Then that's a real company because that.

• 1:55:31Speaker 12

  Well, I mean, look, men called it big, women called it average.

• 1:55:35Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, it was just a regular size, but nice.

• 1:55:39Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, it's, but that's the thing, if they have a regular sized booth. Possibly bordering.

• 1:55:44Speaker 12

  It's a perfectly normal sized booth, okay?

• 1:55:47Ed Zitron?

  It's a good sized booth.

• 1:55:48Speaker 13

  It's a da da.

• 1:55:49Ed Zitron?

  It gets bigger during the show. If like, that's a real company because otherwise it's just like, yeah, we put a hundred thousand dollars in the jack off booth. I do, I do like the idea of just walking over, can have a go.

• 1:56:01Speaker 12

  Hey, come on over to the jackoff booth.

• 1:56:04Ed Zitron?

  Come in, uh. We have a nice booth in the booth for you? We're gonna segue away from this right now.

• 1:56:10Speaker 12

  Well, here's, here's a question that is sort of off of this theme. As a CES virgin.

• 1:56:15Ed Zitron?

  Right.

• 1:56:15Speaker 12

  Not to really lean into this kind of language.

• 1:56:18Ed Zitron?

  Lean into it.

• 1:56:19Speaker 12

  Uh, how many of these products, like, there are a lot of products that seemed absolutely fucking useless.

• 1:56:26Ed Zitron?

  Yes.

• 1:56:26Speaker 12

  And what I don't know is how many of the people who are here earnestly believe that what they are hawking is going to make the world better in some way? And how many people, like, what, what is the percentage split between earnest believers? People who are here for a paycheck because they need a job and this happens to be the job they're doing? And people who are totally disillusioned, but are still doing it for the paycheck, but like are, are totally jaded. I, I would be curious for that split.

• 1:56:55Ed Zitron?

  I think what it is, is like, you get a job, it's hard getting a job, and you get the product and it's like, well, I gotta fucking believe in something. So you learn the talking points and you're like, the pillow thing you were talking about last, last piece. It's like, that person clearly had never had a conversation with someone who was like, yeah, but what if I want to lie in bed without falling asleep? Cause they've memorized the talking points, they've internalized them. I'm sure that there are a percentage of cynical people, but I think a lot of these people are just like, not thought about it too much. They're like, yeah, the air purifier with the spike on it, the dog scratches itself on, that makes perfect sense because I've been forced to believe it because this is how I make money. And I think that there's something kind of sad about it because you have to believe, I mean, working PR, like, there's a certain degree at times when you get a product.

• 1:57:38Ed Zitron?

  I don't do consumer electronics, but like in the past where I've had to be like, yay, here we go. It's like, I'm gonna pay my mortgage. Like, I think that there's a degree of that, and I think some people are just fucking stupid. I think there's some people who are just like, yeah, it's, it's a pillow, isn't it cool it can do this? And they focus on how cool it is. And then when they think for two seconds and they go, oh, fuck, this is what an alien would use. This is like, it's just like Star Trek, except nothing like it. And I think so.

• 1:58:04Speaker 07

  Well, I also think a lot of them are just happy to like do the job.

• 1:58:07Ed Zitron?

  Yeah.

• 1:58:08Speaker 07

  You know, like when I went to the orb thing, my orb debacle.

• 1:58:12Ed Zitron?

  Oh, boy.

• 1:58:12Speaker 07

  People I talk, well, whatever. People know about it or they don't. But when I talk to people who work for this horrible product, like some of them seemed kind of enthusiastic. Some of them sort of had thousand yard stairs.

• 1:58:23Ed Zitron?

  Yeah.

• 1:58:24Speaker 07

  Where, where I was talking to them going like, ah, they're making like 300 grand a year, probably.

• 1:58:30Ed Zitron?

  Yeah.

• 1:58:30Speaker 07

  Working for like a Sam Altman company, doing interesting work, like they're like, they wanted to be an engineer. They're a software engineer. They're working on something that's technically, technically interesting. They would like for it to work. They sort of have to drink the Kool-Aid.

• 1:58:43Ed Zitron?

  Exactly.

• 1:58:44Speaker 07

  In the same way that someone who's like working on a shitty movie is like, I'm living the dream. All the movies kind of sucks, but I'm living the dream, but it's gonna be good. It's gonna be good. I'm making movies. Like it's this.

• 1:58:54Speaker 12

  Yeah, that makes sense.

• 1:58:55Speaker 07

  Suspension of disbelief.

• 1:58:57Ed Zitron?

  But I respect people on movies way more. Like just to want to be clear, like learning about how movies are made recently. It's insane a single movie has ever been made.

• 1:59:06Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:59:06Ed Zitron?

  I do not understand how any movie is made.

• 1:59:09Speaker 07

  Well, they're, they're not made anymore.

• 1:59:10Ed Zitron?

  Well, yeah, that, that's, that's also the other thing. No, they're either 100 million dollars or 1 million dollars.

• 1:59:15Speaker 07

  When you watch.

• 1:59:15Ed Zitron?

  The movies.

• 1:59:16Speaker 07

  When you watch movies now, like I, you know, I was watching like Rob Reiner movies because he passed away, of course. And we watched like Harry Met Sally or another movie like that. It's like walking through like the, the, the ruins of like a Roman Colosseum.

• 1:59:28Ed Zitron?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:28Speaker 07

  In the dark ages, like, look at what humans used to be able to do. Like it's.

• 1:59:32Ed Zitron?

  And then you watch Stranger Things and there's a big crab and Winona Ryder punches it to death. And you just, I don't watch that show.

• 1:59:39Speaker 07

  None of it has any.

• 1:59:40Ed Zitron?

  My life's strange enough already and it's just sad. But I, I, I think, I think movies are going to be okay. I'm choosing to be optimistic for no reason.

• 1:59:48Speaker 12

  Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's a sort of a whole.

• 1:59:51Ed Zitron?

  That's a separate, yeah.

• 1:59:51Speaker 12

  Whole other conversation, but I do think that there's a lot of people who would say, like the same people who are, who. Are who see movies as sort of the dinosaurs, the things of the past are the people who see a lot of shit at CES at who sort of willingly drink the Kool-Aid of a lot of the shit at CES. And are like, this is the stuff of the future without actually even being paid $300,000 by the company.

• 2:00:16Ed Zitron?

  Because they want to be first. They want to be first of this.

• 2:00:18Speaker 12

  They sort of have gotten on the roller coaster of they're addicted to the high of the possibility of success.

• 2:00:27Ed Zitron?

  The newness.

• 2:00:27Speaker 12

  Yeah.

• 2:00:28Speaker 07

  I mean, I remember when it was over 10 years ago now, but I was working at College Humor and stuff like Google Glass would come out. And my coworkers would be like, it's it's gonna be the future. And just based on the premise alone. And I'd have to be like, I don't think so. And I was right. Same thing happened with VR, you know?

• 2:00:44Speaker 12

  Just you wait, Adam. Google Glass is coming.

• 2:00:47Speaker 13

  Ray ban Meta glasses.

• 2:00:50Speaker 07

  People were so they had the script in them.

• 2:00:52Speaker 12

  Yeah, I think.

• 2:00:53Speaker 07

  You know, and they want it to be true. They just want something new that's gonna be fun.

• 2:00:56Speaker 13

  I also, I'd be curious what you think, because you know, you've been coming to CES for a while. How much of it is also people at a firm that tried to sell something to another business? And it failed and now they're doing consumer because I feel like I would talk to some people, especially in Eureka Park. And they wouldn't say it, but you could hear in the conversation that there was a much more ambitious plan. And that fell through and now they're narrowing it down to something else that a consumer might be able to use.

• 2:01:24Ed Zitron?

  It's the rot economy, baby. It's growth at all costs. Because if you solve a small boring problem for a million people, that fucking rocks. Is that going to be worth $10 billion? New. Are you going to be able to take that public? No. Are you going to sell it to another company? No. But if you say, I'm gonna solve fucking everything forever. You'll get hundreds of millions of dollars because you've just overpromised. And being part of this newness futuristic thing and vaguely attaching yourself to it. If you're wrong, you can say, oh, it was experimental. If you're right, you can say, I was first.

• 2:01:53Speaker 12

  Yeah. But and that's sort of to what Adam was saying about, you know, wanting it's my language now. Like wanting the possibility of success, addicted to the high of that possibility. But ever what you were saying, I think you're saying like. The, uh, when you're saying that they had a more ambitious plan, do you mean they had a more ambitious plan for what the tech itself could be capable of? Or do you mean like they've had, they've figured out a tech that is capable of whatever it is? And they, the ambitious plan was to use it in a much broader use case or a much higher scale use case. And now they've sort of been like shunted down to

• 2:02:26Speaker 13

  Yeah.

• 2:02:27Speaker 12

  a booth at CES where they're trying to make somebody pay $600.

• 2:02:30Speaker 13

  It feels like they thought the idea was worth 10x what it actually is.

• 2:02:34Ed Zitron?

  Do you have an example?

• 2:02:35Speaker 13

  I mean, uh, I, I saw it a lot more last year where it would be people talking about, uh, tech that would be, that's helpful, assistive tech, but their initial formulation of it seemed to be, we are going to apply this at scale in workplaces.

• 2:02:49Ed Zitron?

  Right.

• 2:02:50Speaker 13

  To augment your productivity as a worker.

• 2:02:52Ed Zitron?

  Like that chip for like standing up, uh,

• 2:02:53Speaker 13

  Yes.

• 2:02:54Ed Zitron?

  the thing for opening the cash register.

• 2:02:56Speaker 13

  Right, you know, something like that where it's like not even really clear that would be adopted at a individual scale.

• 2:03:02Ed Zitron?

  Also, that one really pissed me off because it's like, you don't give a fuck about anyone working at McDonald's. You don't look them in the eye.

• 2:03:08Speaker 13

  No.

• 2:03:08Ed Zitron?

  You were excited about touching a screen toward a treatsy little pig.

• 2:03:12Speaker 13

  You know, it feels like, it's like, we wanted to sell this at scale to like McDonald's at a bunch of other fast food restaurants and that didn't work. So now we are cobbling together some of the IP to figure out another approach that might be usable in smaller, uh, uh, settings. And I feel like, you know, when I talk with people, especially in some of the assistive, uh, tech, you know, it where they're not really talking about it in the way of, we're helping people who are disabled, helping people who need, uh, mobility aid. It's, it's, it's, it's almost adjacent to, or sounding just like how we talk about convenience.

• 2:03:45Ed Zitron?

  Yeah.

• 2:03:46Speaker 13

  You know?

• 2:03:46Ed Zitron?

  But did you see anything today that was of note, like?

• 2:03:50Speaker 13

  I mean, most of the stuff that I saw today in Eureka Park was, uh, more a misuse of agentic language.

• 2:03:57Ed Zitron?

  Yes, give it to me.

• 2:03:57Speaker 13

  And saying, you know, uh, let's, you know, what if you had, uh, a chatbot that, you know, managed your home Google calendar and told you when to pick up your kids because you forgot or, you know, when they got the...

• 2:04:11Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, yeah, because you don't give a shit.

• 2:04:13Speaker 13

  You know, what if you had something that would look at your shit um and tell you uh when you're sick or not sick?

• 2:04:20Ed Zitron?

  You you mean literally your poop?

• 2:04:21Speaker 13

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, literally, yeah, your poop.

• 2:04:23Ed Zitron?

  That was one thing that Victoria, I we didn't get to the piss poop. We got to the cum sadly. Uh but it was like there's like many different toilet measurers now.

• 2:04:31Speaker 13

  Yeah.

• 2:04:32Speaker 07

  Oh, I saw a good product.

• 2:04:33Ed Zitron?

  Yes.

• 2:04:34Speaker 07

  And I would describe it. I walked, I saw this product. I looked at it. I immediately recognized what it was. I walked up to them. I said, Fitbit for your cat. And they said, I I guess that's what you go, but no, it's Fitbit for your cat. You're gonna sell that. And it's like a little food dish, a food dish and a bubbler for your cat. And then it like, I don't know, has some stats about your cat. And it it said like, here's how much food is left. Here's the temperature of your cat. And then it just said, healthy, yes. And that's that's like really all the cat owners want is is like, what could it could the box say my cat's healthy and it'll relieve my my anxiety? You're a cat owner.

• 2:05:08Ed Zitron?

  Yes, I I don't know, like, and it's not, the only measurement is like how beautiful they are, is like, which I remind them of constantly. I just, how hot my cat is is very funny.

• 2:05:18Speaker 13

  Yeah, I got two cats and it's like when I learned, I got a, I got one of the litter boxes is those automatic ones. When I learned there was an app, I asked them, can I, do I need that? Can I delete that? They're like, yes. And I was like, okay, I will never look at this shit again.

• 2:05:29Ed Zitron?

  Yeah.

• 2:05:29Speaker 13

  And it works out, you know, that anything that even wears other or has a little motor other than the litter box, they destroy. They swat it, they throw it down the stairs, they push it, they literally push it to the stairs and throw it down. So I can't get anything smart for them.

• 2:05:45Ed Zitron?

  I get a Fitbit for a dog, though, because you've like walked them.

• 2:05:48Speaker 13

  Mm hmm.

• 2:05:48Ed Zitron?

  I would love to actually just for my sick pleasure, know how fast Babu runs. Hmm. Cause him and his sister Poki, two Bengals.

• 2:05:54Speaker 13

  The zoomies.

• 2:05:55Ed Zitron?

  Then, no, they just, they will be sleeping all day and then just run into bam, just fucking like across the entire house, gone. Bam, back. I. They're trying to get their steps in. Yeah, exactly, like. They're napping all day. Just cats like don't experience the same things that human be like, they're not sitting there being like, do I run around a lot? They get the instinct like, I need to fucking run so fast in a straight line, faster than I've ever, but it's not because they're like, I need to be healthy. They're just fucking cat. Stop trying to optimize my cat, bro. My cats, cats are not optimal, other than how beautiful and fancy they are.

• 2:06:28Speaker 13

  How great they are.

• 2:06:29Ed Zitron?

  And how beautiful. Oh, I miss them.

• 2:06:33Ed Zitron?

  Anything else like it's just this you you're gonna be here for another two days. You're gonna see more stuff like this, but I'm genuine.

• 2:06:40Speaker 07

  I saw something we all do need and present ads inside of AI. They're figuring out how to put ads inside of chatbots, how to put ads inside of any sort of interface or product that might use a generative AI.

• 2:06:53Ed Zitron?

  It's so cool. They haven't worked that out.

• 2:06:55Speaker 07

  I know. Yeah, that's also.

• 2:06:58Ed Zitron?

  Like the most obvious thing that they needed, the way that they would monetize this fucking thing.

• 2:07:04Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 2:07:04Speaker 13

  The one way to make.

• 2:07:06Ed Zitron?

  The one way that every I get three emails a week from someone being like, have you thought that they could put ads in chat G P T? Yes, motherfucker. I fucking thought every single time you've emailed me about this. I've thought about it.

• 2:07:18Speaker 12

  Do we know why they haven't yet?

• 2:07:19Ed Zitron?

  Uh, because it's very hard to guarantee. The whole thing with ads is you need to have replicability and reliability and accountability. You cannot have your you can't have like an ad for a children's thing by someone looking up sex and vice versa. And the best example we have that this doesn't really work is perplexity. Their ads chief left a few months ago and they made twenty thousand dollars selling ads in twenty twenty four.

• 2:07:42Speaker 07

  Wow. Yeah, I mean, the needs of advertisers like determine everything. It's like, you know, why does YouTube work the way it work? Ninety percent of YouTube is to please advertisers and to make sure that, you know, age verification, like content warnings, like all of it is just for them. And like they'll sort of run the show, but also isn't part of the problem that like advertising is not enough money for, you know, the massive amount of investment these companies are taking on? Like you put ads in chat G P T, it's still not enough.

• 2:08:13Speaker 12

  Yeah.

• 2:08:14Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, one sustain. They still need trillions. Well, the other problem they have is the information of good story about this where it's like nine hundred million weekly active users ish, even though OpenAI double counts people all the time. They admit this in their own academic papers, but nevertheless, only a hundred million of those are in America, which is a large number, whatever. But that means like they're mostly overseas who are lower value advertising clients. Because there's a very big difference between advertising someone in America versus in India or Indonesia, where they they released ChatGPT Go, which is a cheaper one, which will inevitably be advertising supported. And it's just like, I do love that there are like different boots of people being like, what if we could solve the problem that OpenAI, Google, Perplexity and multiple other companies just haven't been able to touch.

• 2:08:58Ed Zitron?

  It's it feels like watching the end of the world in a very boring way at times.

• 2:09:03Speaker 12

  Well, so that's what brings me back to my that that brings me back to my question about how earnestly do these people believe in what they're pushing? Like, are there people who are like, yeah, yeah, yeah, we are the we have the secret key. We are the geniuses. And sure, would I be hired at Google if I was really a genius? Maybe, but that's not what we're talking about right now.

• 2:09:25Speaker 07

  I think they've they at the very least consider themselves to have be the holder of a lottery ticket. Maybe it'll work. And if it works, I'm a billionaire. And if I can convince someone it kind of works, maybe I get Aqua hired by Google. And then I make half a million dollars. Yeah, you know, and like, and I only have to get to like, you know, next month to make that happen. I just got to convince some dope who's here right now.

• 2:09:49Ed Zitron?

  I believe all the TV people believe it fully, and I get it. And I'm a big dumb ape. I see a giant screen like, yeah, baby.

• 2:09:56Speaker 07

  Oh, yeah, I want to see the TVs, actually.

• 2:09:58Ed Zitron?

  They're so go into.

• 2:10:00Speaker 07

  And I got mad because I I saw, I think I was looking at the Verge's coverage or something. And there's a new TV technology that's better than OLED.

• 2:10:07Ed Zitron?

  I I just. Mini LED or micro LED.

• 2:10:09Speaker 07

  Bought the best OLED. I bought the I bought the you know, the one the one really good Sony one? I got the really good Sony. I'm like, I don't want a fucking better TV. This is as good as TVs need to be. Seventy seven inches. It's true black. Stop.

• 2:10:20Ed Zitron?

  Also, just to be clear, you're you're fine. They haven't really made better than that. Like.

• 2:10:27Speaker 07

  I know it'll be in 10 years. I'm still just like, stop it.

• 2:10:30Speaker 12

  I don't know if you're gonna have kids, but I've heard a couple dad sentences, both in this TV discussion and earlier when you were like, now I saw a good product.

• 2:10:40Speaker 07

  I'm, oh yeah, but, but I was able to buy this TV because I'm not as price sensitive as a real dad.

• 2:10:45Speaker 12

  Sure.

• 2:10:45Speaker 07

  Because I don't have the kids. That's why I got to get the, get the, get the good one.

• 2:10:49Ed Zitron?

  And it's like, as, as a child have a, that's the normal way to say it. Uh, like big screen. Big screen's fine. As long as you got a big screen. That's the coolest thing to.

• 2:10:57Speaker 12

  Big screen.

• 2:10:57Ed Zitron?

  Giant screen to play Minecraft on. You fucking set best father in the world. Two, so you can both play it.

• 2:11:03Speaker 12

  Or one on. In separate rooms, so you don't have to talk to each other.

• 2:11:06Speaker 07

  Exactly. That's what they want.

• 2:11:07Ed Zitron?

  One of the most cherished things is watching my son play Minecraft and me explaining shit to me.

• 2:11:12Speaker 07

  But we're not, we're not talking about a normal thing. We're talking about what the consumer wants.

• 2:11:16Ed Zitron?

  To separate themselves.

• 2:11:18Speaker 12

  We're talking about what that guy who did the tweet about how he gets boiling mad if he spends more than 10 minutes with his children. Did you see this? There was some, some dad was like, am I normal? If I spend more than 10 minutes, uh, was it day with my children? My blood boils. That's normal, right? And everybody was like, hey buddy, that's not totally normal, but like, we totally get it. The being a dad is hard.

• 2:11:41Speaker 07

  You're valid.

• 2:11:42Ed Zitron?

  You know, for that. It is, but not, like 10 minutes should not. Cause you're gonna, you have a lot more of those in the day with the child than, than that.

• 2:11:51Speaker 12

  Yeah. I mean, it seems like this guy doesn't have to, but.

• 2:11:55Speaker 07

  Well, it reminds me of when, when, you know, the COVID lockdown first happened and, and all the parents I knew. And the ones on the internet were suddenly like, someone needs to help me from being around my kids.

• 2:12:06Ed Zitron?

  Yes, like lockdowns.

• 2:12:07Speaker 07

  I thought you liked having the kids. You, now you're mad that you gotta be around the kids? What, why do you, why do you have the kid if you don't want to be around them? And it also makes you realize that like, oh yeah, the main purpose of school was not education. It was just childcare. So people go to work.

• 2:12:23Speaker 12

  Yeah.

• 2:12:23Speaker 07

  That's why they're complaining. They're like, I need to go to work. Well, that's, you've just revealed a fucked up thing about school and parenting all at once.

• 2:12:29Ed Zitron?

  I actually think that's the lens. I'm going to go through everything tomorrow. I'm just going to look around the expo center being like, okay, what's the shit where it's just people like, I need to get away from my obligations. Like I, I've made these fucking decisions throughout my life. I got a fucking fat ass unhealthy bitch of a cat. I got a fucking.

• 2:12:47Speaker 12

  We were all waiting on what that last word was gonna be.

• 2:12:49Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 2:12:50Speaker 12

  Oh, we were on the edge of our seats and there were some options. There were balls of orange.

• 2:12:57Ed Zitron?

  No, it's like, and it's just-

• 2:12:58Speaker 07

  Oh, cat. Okay, he's saying cat. Okay, great.

• 2:13:01Ed Zitron?

  Wasn't referring to any of my perfect fucking angels. But it's like, these people are just like, okay, I need to find out if my cat's healthy because I don't want to look at it or use it. Oh, can I keep my child in a separate room? Can I give it an action figure that will talk-

• 2:13:14Speaker 07

  Can I give it a robot and an action figure that will talk to each other and it?

• 2:13:18Ed Zitron?

  And also, if you want any of these things, don't worry, they don't fucking work. They don't even do the thing that we're promising you. But it's funny just imagining this guy's walking around being like, please fucking get me away from all this. Can, can, is this robot gonna be, oh, the robot's gonna fall over. Oh. It's falling over. It's gonna kick me in the nuts. Do you see that video? The guy just getting fucking hoofed in the nuts by a robot. That was great. If you've got a booth who's being kicked in the balls. I don't care what you're selling me. Fucking Lockheed Martin.

• 2:13:47Speaker 07

  I'll buy it.

• 2:13:49Speaker 07

  I mean, some of them made me kind of sad. Like, there was one that was, I don't want to say the name of it because it did make me sad, but it was a little, it was like a little toy, like a little Hello Kitty type toy. And it was, you know, you could talk to it. Was it the one that was like the future of robot friend? Something like that. It was a fuzzy, it was fuzzy. I think, I think I know what you're talking about.

• 2:14:07Speaker 13

  Fuzzy brown. I know exactly what you're talking about. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 2:14:10Speaker 07

  It was also like, it'll watch everything that you do and remember it. And I was like, all right. And I, and I walked up and I was like, all right, what was it doing? Here it is. I was like, oh, can I talk to it? And she was like, no, you know, the wifi is in here, in here is bad. And it uses ChatGPT, so it can't connect to ChatGPT right now. And I'm like, this is just some, somebody put like a couple hundred grand of their own money into like a little doll that connects to the ChatGPT API and is here thinking that's anything. Like, like, why would we want such a thing? Why would anybody here be excited by just a front end to ChatGPT, a product that already exists?

• 2:14:46Ed Zitron?

  But that's the thing. I feel, I feel like as we wrap the episode, it's a good way to put it. It's like, there are two, there are two real cons of AI. There's the con of the consumer being told it will do this for you or that for you, be a personal assistant. And then there's for companies where they're like, yeah, if we put ChatGPT in this, it'll be smart. No, motherfucker. He's not gonna do that at all.

• 2:15:05Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 2:15:05Ed Zitron?

  And it's like, it's, you don't- Want to name company, which is fine, but it's like, there are so many that were there last year as well. It's like, oh, it's an agent. It's like, it's just a fucking chatbot. And you've poorly trained it and it's like gonna tell you that Taiwan is part of China or like BDSM shit like. And it's just quite sad. It's like everyone is being conned by these companies. Both the consumer and the companies themselves. I can't wait to catalog them. I'm looking forward to watching the sadness. But it's just, it's, it is quite sad. So glad I'm here all week. This is great. My doc, my Joker like.

• 2:15:38Speaker 07

  It, it, it's a shrug. It's a shrug economy. Like everyone's just sort of hoping. Like I was talking to people about the, the Disney OpenAI deal, cause that's like a bunch of people in Hollywood are like freaked out about it. Especially writers who are worried about IP and stuff like that. But like my take on it, if you look at the deal is that nobody even knows why they're doing it. Like, like OpenAI has the idea that like, we need licensed characters for Sora. And Disney just doesn't want to be left out.

• 2:16:05Ed Zitron?

  Yeah.

• 2:16:06Speaker 07

  Um, but like, they think, they appear to think maybe it's marketing for Disney plus. OpenAI has some idea, maybe people will want to create scenes of Deadpool hanging out with Elsa or whatever. How does that result in money? Question mark. Nobody knows. Yeah, loses money, but like. Disney, Disney is just like not getting left out of a thing that's maybe the future. OpenAI is making a deal that makes their business look better to whoever the fuck is gonna give them money next. And they didn't even pay Disney for it.

• 2:16:37Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, they're doing a licensing deal where they pay Disney in OpenAI stock, which Disney already bought more of. And in fact, Disney has the option to buy more stock. It's just, you gotta wonder what happens when OpenAI collapses, cause it's gonna fucking happen. And it's just like, these companies will change to the Chinese models, I guess, or what remains of Anthro. It's just.

• 2:16:58Speaker 13

  Everyone can use Quinn.

• 2:17:00Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, the Kimmy two, K two, that's the coding model.

• 2:17:03Speaker 13

  Two deep sea, gonna be fun.

• 2:17:05Ed Zitron?

  Well, all right, I'm gonna wrap it there. So I don't just launch into a rant about AI as fucking usual. Thank you so much. We've got the core three here. It's gonna be joining us for the next day or two. It's gonna be wonderful. Thank you so much for traveling in with us. We're gonna end the episode as we have, dedicate to Sean Paul. He's a wonderful fella, came in 2020, donate to the Pediatric Epilepsy Research Consortium. Link will be in there, dedicate to his son. Thank you so much, everyone for listening. We'll be back tomorrow. Thank you so much.

• 2:17:40Ed Zitron?

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

• 2:18:13Speaker 14

  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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