Better Offline CES 2025: Day 2

Welcome to Better Offline’s coverage of the 2025 Consumer Electronics Show - a standup radio station in the Venetian with an attached open bar where reporters, experts and various other characters bring you the stories from the floor. In the second episode, Ed Zitron is joined by Health Physicist Phil Broughton, actual priest Gabriel Mosher, journalist Ed Ongweso Jr., and eventually Robert Evans and Gare Davis of It Could Happen Here, to talk about turning our health into an analytics nightmare, the amount of made-up stuff on the floor, how we beat the generative AI slop, and something called a "suicide helicopter." Ed Ongweso Jr.: https://bsky.app/profile/bigblackjacobin.bsky.social Robert Evans: https://bsky.app/profile/iwriteok.bsky.social Gare Davis: https://bsky.app/profile/hungrybowtie.bsky.social Gabriel Mosher: https://bsky.app/profile/eighthway.com Phil Broughton: https://bsky.app/profile/funranium.bsky.social Linda Yaccarino’s CES Speech: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1R9LtHiZ74w Meta ends fact-checking program: https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-media/meta-ends-fact-checking-program-community-notes-x-rcna186468 --- LINKS: https://www.tinyurl.com/betterofflinelinks Newsletter: https://www.wheresyoured.at/ Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/BetterOffline/ Discord: chat.wheresyoured.at https://discord.com/invite/QUUQUP9szv Ed's Socials: https://twitter.com/edzitron https://www.instagram.com/edzitron https://bsky.app/profile/edzitron.com https://www.threads.net/@edzitron See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:04Speaker 01

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• 1:19Speaker 03

  Call Zone Media.

• 1:21Ed Zitron?

  Chosen by God, perfected by science. My name's Ed Zitron. You're listening to Better Offline.

• 1:37Ed Zitron?

  This is day one technically, but really day two of the Better Offline CES Saga, the consumer electronics show here from beautiful Las Vegas, Nevada, my home. What I, my Van Helsing-like curse, but also my job. I must be in Vegas. Our beautiful slot machines must be filled with beautiful dollars. I am joined today by a remarkable coterie of people. Ed Ongueso Jr. of course, joins me for another episode. Ed, lovely to see you.

• 2:04Speaker 05

  It's really great to be back. Thanks for having me again.

• 2:06Ed Zitron?

  So just before we go any further, as people think, why did I say? Say that at the beginning other than the fact it's true. Where did you hear the phrase chosen by God perfected by science today?

• 2:16Speaker 05

  Well, it was on a giant, a giant banner above CES on the Venetian Expo floor.

• 2:24Ed Zitron?

  Nice.

• 2:24Speaker 05

  It was advertisement for Germ Pass.

• 2:27Ed Zitron?

  Germ Pass.

• 2:27Speaker 05

  Which is this um, automatic, ultraviolet light technology uh, that automatically kills ninety nine point ninety nine percent of germs on any high touch surface.

• 2:39Ed Zitron?

  Oh no. So, to my right sits Philip Broton, who is going to tell you what he does.

• 2:48Speaker 06

  So, hi, I'm Phil Broton. I am a health physicist, which means radiation safety and laser safety officer, which means I deal with the entire electromagnetic spectrum from gamma rays all the way down to radio.

• 3:02Ed Zitron?

  And Phil is also the bartender for the suite. So if you somehow came to episode two of the CES saga, I don't know why you would do this. This isn't like a, there's not like a chron, there's not a plot to follow. I guess you could jump anyway, but like you probably start episode one. Anyway, we are in the beautiful Venetian suite. We're in a recessed area, a separate room on the side. We are running a suite with booths for journalists all week, tons of places to sit down and me, which is why no one's tonning up. But nevertheless, we are also recording a podcast and Phil, Phil and I have been doing this eight, it's eight times now.

• 3:35Speaker 06

  This is the eighth time, been doing it since twenty fifteen.

• 3:38Ed Zitron?

  And we love doing it. It's a, Phil takes vacation time from his job elsewhere. And yeah, it's great. And also Phil's other thing he likes to do is uh, suffer torment. He likes to um, suffer pain at all times because Phil is a safety man and is well aware of like things like codes and laws and stuff and regulations. And so Phil, you may make a record this year. It's every year by Wednesday, someone has brought you something that required you to call the fire marshal.

• 4:10Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 4:12Ed Zitron?

  Now, why is that?

• 4:14Speaker 06

  Cause sometimes people lie on their applications. They lie when they're then.

• 4:20Ed Zitron?

  Applications for what though?

• 4:21Speaker 06

  Oh, so everyone who has a booth at CES is required to submit how many square feet they're gonna have. What utilities they're gonna need and any hazardous things they might bring to the floor to the people who run the show, who then are required to tell the fire marshal and the fire marshal then comes back and goes, oh, you've added rabid flaming radioactive gerbils to the show. That changes the occupancy we're allowed to have in this building. So please don't do that. And then they lie.

• 4:56Ed Zitron?

  And so what do you usually tell the fire marshal?

• 4:59Speaker 06

  So what comes to me is a journalist will say, hey, Phil, one, could I get a drink? Two, I saw a thing and I don't think it was okay. Or that seemed dangerous and I'm worried. Okay, so what do you have? Where did you see this roughly? And let me go ahead and pull up the CES map of all the vendors. Oh, you were on that corner of that aisle. Cool. Let me go make a call.

• 5:30Ed Zitron?

  So have has anyone been like arrested for this? Have they been like taken off the floor? Like, what are the consequences of the fire?

• 5:40Speaker 06

  Removed from the floor. Yeah.

• 5:41Ed Zitron?

  That's fun.

• 5:42Speaker 06

  Arrested? No. But you end up forfeiting your fees and you don't get to present anymore for the rest of that show. Or they take the dangerous thing away.

• 5:52Ed Zitron?

  I think that maybe based on what Ed will be telling us about in a little bit, I think we should maybe remove all of the booths from CES. Like, it sounds like that might be a good idea. But before we get to that, we're also joined by a man of the clergy. So for some reason, and I really mean this, I do not fucking know, we have a priest that joins us, Father Gabriel Mosher, who joins me on my left.

• 6:18Speaker 07

  Ed.

• 6:18Ed Zitron?

  And weirdly connected with the tech media as well, but you just kind of show up in the robes, not complaining, just I really do not remember why.

• 6:26Speaker 07

  I have no idea how this all got started, but it was also 10 years ago.

• 6:30Ed Zitron?

  Was it 10 years ago? Fucking hell. Anyway, I age every day. But like, do you know how he got here?

• 6:37Speaker 06

  Yes, I paid for his flight.

• 6:38Ed Zitron?

  I know where.

• 6:41Ed Zitron?

  Bloody hell.

• 6:43Speaker 07

  You know, I think part of it was I, especially back then, I was connected to quite a few sort of like tech people and whatnot.

• 6:50Ed Zitron?

  Right.

• 6:50Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 6:51Speaker 06

  And we figured, might as well.

• 6:53Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, so, and just to be clear, you have no worldly possessions other than those which are given to you, correct?

• 6:58Speaker 07

  Pretty much, yeah.

• 6:59Ed Zitron?

  That's great. Would you describe CES as sinful or not sinful?

• 7:03Speaker 07

  Depends, depends on which party you go to.

• 7:05Ed Zitron?

  I'm not, no, I mean the convention.

• 7:07Speaker 06

  Oh, not the yo party again.

• 7:08Ed Zitron?

  No, I mean, that's enough about yo. This is a scobleless zone.

• 7:13Speaker 07

  No, I, I think it's great unless you, you think that, you know, technology is going to save you from everything, but yeah, no, it's, it's interesting. I, I, I find, you know, the whole idea of, of these various people trying to develop innovations to make life a little bit better or a little bit more convenient to be a good thing. I mean, it's, that's just, that's just human nature. It's great, unless they're a bunch of liars, which they are half the time.

• 7:36Ed Zitron?

  And talking of liars, so the, there is an article in the New York, New York Times at the moment about priests that are using ChatGPT. To make sermons, how do you feel about that?

• 7:48Speaker 07

  Well, I think that's pretty lame.

• 7:50Ed Zitron?

  Do you think, is it sacrilegious?

• 7:52Speaker 07

  No, but.

• 7:53Ed Zitron?

  Why not?

• 7:53Speaker 07

  Uh, well, it's just like if you're going to use ChatGPT, for instance, to create sort of the outline of a book or something like that, I think that's fine. But if you're, if you're using, if you're using ChatGPT to like write your sermon as a whole, then you, you failed. It's just like writing your term paper.

• 8:08Ed Zitron?

  Okay, so very specific question though. So if it hallucinated a verse of the Bible. Would that be like a false idol situation? Would that actually be a sin?

• 8:19Speaker 07

  No, I mean, I mean, not from the ChatGPT because it's not like.

• 8:22Ed Zitron?

  No, no, no, for the person publishing.

• 8:23Speaker 07

  The person, yeah, sure. I mean, yeah, that would be, that would be pretty lame. I mean, you would, you would definitely be trying to like lead the people into like weird places and yeah.

• 8:31Ed Zitron?

  Cause if it imagines a saint, I imagine that's also bad.

• 8:34Speaker 07

  Who knows? I mean, I don't know. I mean, it depends.

• 8:36Ed Zitron?

  This is where, this is why the show is happening. We need to.

• 8:38Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 8:39Ed Zitron?

  It, it's just the. And that article was, I don't know why it had to, it's one of those things you read and you're like, huh.

• 8:46Speaker 07

  I've got to read this article.

• 8:48Ed Zitron?

  Not great. It's weirdly well reported. Like, it's the guy went out and like really reported the shit out of it, but it was just like, okay, a bunch of people who believe in something that not everyone believes in, believe in another thing that even less people believe in. Lots of people spend more money on.

• 9:03Speaker 07

  But I can tell you, like, most preaching is pretty terrible, so this might actually be a notch up. So, anyway.

• 9:08Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, you think.

• 9:09Speaker 07

  I mean, preaching's pretty bad these days.

• 9:12Ed Zitron?

  Isn't that no fucking point they're good at that?

• 9:14Speaker 07

  You would think.

• 9:15Ed Zitron?

  That's why I can't go into churches other than the burning thing. So, terrible. Mr. Ongreso Jr., tell us a little bit about what you've seen today on the floor.

• 9:24Speaker 05

  All right. Well, you know, I scanned a bit for a while because I was trying to find something that spoke to me first. I went for these healthcare management devices for two reasons. One, you know, my co-host, Jason.

• 9:37Ed Zitron?

  On This Machine Kills podcast?

• 9:38Speaker 05

  On This Machine Kills podcast.

• 9:40Ed Zitron?

  We did not introduce you. I'm so sorry.

• 9:41Speaker 05

  You're totally fine. You know, listen to the first episode, everybody, and then the second one.

• 9:47Ed Zitron?

  And then the other podcast.

• 9:48Speaker 05

  Right, yeah. You know, Jason writes a lot about network devices and mythologies behind them, and that was one of the core subjects of his first book. And so, I pulled into that for that reason, also because, you know, my partner uses medical devices to monitor glucose levels since they're diabetic. So, I'm always interested. I've been increasingly interested in them because, you know, these devices don't really work. And so, when I see innovative offerings, or, well, you know.

• 10:17Ed Zitron?

  Actual devices are qualified and do work, but health management aids aren't real.

• 10:24Speaker 05

  Yeah, this is what I, or what I should say is that their devices work, but they are malfunction regularly at a rate that surprises me, considering they're supposed to be and are necessary, you know, for staying within a healthy range for blood sugar. But the health management aids, you know, they offer, they present themselves as. More aggressive salves as preventative healthcare mechanisms.

• 10:52Ed Zitron?

  Right.

• 10:52Speaker 05

  As ways to overhaul your entire lifestyle. So I was on the lookout for a lot of these because I've been interested in them increasingly as in writing about the ways in which this, you know, people are encouraged to be healthier or to empower wellness or to rewarded and the ways this data gets, you know, accumulated, sent back to insurance companies. So the first time, first one I went to was Biopop, which is this, um, sorry. It's this device that is interesting because ostensibly it's, it is promising and it's a non-invasive device, healthcare management device that would allow you to get access

• 11:30Speaker 05

  to some biometric metabolic, you know, data, but it uses, um, it uses ultra, sorry, it uses a N I R spectro- spectro.

• 11:42Speaker 06

  Spectro- spectroscopy.

• 11:43Speaker 05

  Spectro- spectro.

• 11:45Ed Zitron?

  I couldn't say it.

• 11:46Speaker 05

  I'm a reader.

• 11:49Speaker 06

  Near infrared spectroscopy is what N I R.

• 11:53Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 11:55Speaker 06

  Spectrum. Speculum, yes.

• 11:57Speaker 05

  It activates my old speak thing, speech.

• 12:00Ed Zitron?

  Just gonna be staring into the abyss the whole time trying to say it.

• 12:03Speaker 05

  And so I came into the booth, you know, listening to them, you know, listening to them talk to other people about it. One of the use cases that was offered was, you know, imagine you have a CGM, they're so expensive, hard to maintain, you can use this to monitor your, your blood glucose because that's the only thing you can monitor right now. You know, implying it's a medical device, I go in and I say, hey, is this a medical device? And she goes, ah, no.

• 12:25Ed Zitron?

  It's so cool that they have, that they have to do that.

• 12:29Speaker 05

  Yeah. Actually, it's a healthcare management device that doesn't work if you have a lot of melanin in your skin because.

• 12:35Ed Zitron?

  Interesting.

• 12:36Speaker 05

  They've only tested it on Asians and light skinned people. And so it's not in market yet because they need to test it out on people from India and Africa.

• 12:46Speaker 05

  And so.

• 12:47Ed Zitron?

  Thankfully, there's not that many people.

• 12:49Speaker 06

  Just a few billion, that's all.

• 12:51Speaker 05

  That's all.

• 12:52Ed Zitron?

  And there's like way less than Montana.

• 12:53Speaker 05

  So Biopop is very interested in helping you improve your healthcare management and empowering you to be a healthier person. They also want to reward you for doing so, so they are both on the blockchain and they will share your information.

• 13:07Ed Zitron?

  All right, with insurance companies.

• 13:10Ed Zitron?

  Which blockchain?

• 13:11Speaker 07

  This is crazy.

• 13:13Speaker 05

  They did not specify.

• 13:15Ed Zitron?

  I was listening the whole time, but my brain was just like, this is the same shit you hear. Blockchain?

• 13:20Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 13:21Ed Zitron?

  Didn't specify one?

• 13:22Speaker 05

  No.

• 13:23Ed Zitron?

  To what end? This is the stuff I'll be screaming at them.

• 13:27Speaker 05

  They want to encourage users to meet certain, to meet certain goals and to stay within certain ranges. If you're on the blockchain, you might be able to get a reward.

• 13:36Ed Zitron?

  Great.

• 13:37Speaker 05

  Maybe it's a coin in the ecosystem they might create.

• 13:39Ed Zitron?

  Hook to a token.

• 13:41Speaker 05

  Yeah, maybe it's a more established blockchain. They also, again, are sending the information to the, um, uh, to the, uh,

• 13:50Ed Zitron?

  Insurers?

• 13:51Speaker 05

  Insurers, uh, because this is how they're going to be able to, you know, kind of, they're, they're, they're trying to avoid, um,

• 14:03Ed Zitron?

  FDA certification?

• 14:04Speaker 05

  Uh, no, sorry, step back. They're trying to achieve, uh, it and they're trying to get insurance coverage and they're also trying to figure out a way that they can work with or, you know, participate in some of these wellness programs that are popping up where your insurance coverage is modulated based on your own personal behavior to kind of ensure or regulate or govern, uh, govern how you behave outside so that you just become a healthier person.

• 14:26Ed Zitron?

  I think it's fucking sick that everything is becoming Metro Mile now.

• 14:30Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 14:31Ed Zitron?

  Everything is just like, and what this kind of sounds like, and I hate to go a little far. It does sound a little eugenics, so Jayce, it is just like if we all optimize, our health insurance will be cheaper if we have the right numbers.

• 14:43Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 14:43Ed Zitron?

  We're the right kind of person.

• 14:45Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 14:45Ed Zitron?

  And there's an only one way all that stuff goes and they'll claim that it's an efficiency thing, but I've yet, all of this, I have a fucking Oura ring on. I occasionally have an Apple watch on. Sometimes it even reads my heart rate. I have all of this data and it's useless.

• 14:59Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 14:59Ed Zitron?

  And occasionally United Healthcare will be like, hey, can you, uh, you want to connect your Apple watch to us for some reason?

• 15:06Speaker 05

  Well, yeah, it's not useless. You're creating a profile that if, you know, they have, and they got their hands on it, it would be rich.

• 15:11Ed Zitron?

  You want to connect that?

• 15:13Speaker 05

  You want to connect that? Let me see. Let me in.

• 15:17Ed Zitron?

  Do your fucking watch. Let me see how much you lift.

• 15:20Speaker 05

  You know.

• 15:20Ed Zitron?

  You don't lift enough. We'll put you on the blockchain.

• 15:22Speaker 06

  So the real customer is the insurance company, not you.

• 15:25Speaker 05

  Yeah, the real customers, whoever's interested in the data. Um, I mean, and that's really also the thing that you'll see with a lot of, I, you know, saw a lot of healthcare ecosystems and apps and smart tech that were purportedly about rewarding you for getting better sleep, rewarding you for eating better, rewarding you for meeting certain goals. But then when you think about what the reward actually is or how it's being distributed, what it is, is that they are going to cut some sort of deal with someone who actually wants that data on you.

• 15:54Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 15:55Speaker 05

  Will use that to extract a little bit more profit out of you. And then they're also going to give you a little bit of that, a crumbs of that.

• 16:03Speaker 06

  Value that's being created, right?

• 16:05Ed Zitron?

  Yeah. This is great. This is also, and there were lots of companies doing this.

• 16:09Speaker 05

  Yes. I would say almost every single health company I saw that was using artificial intelligence or was using some sort of reward system for empowering wellness seems to have a model that is premised on, um, regulating and governing your behavior so that they can generate data about you that would generate profits about you and other people that then they could give you a small piece of, you know?

• 16:34Speaker 06

  That's.

• 16:34Speaker 05

  Or, you know, another company actually use the data to offer you discounts to other devices and other products that you could use.

• 16:43Ed Zitron?

  It's a pyramid scheme.

• 16:44Speaker 06

  So it's through on that.

• 16:45Ed Zitron?

  It's a canamoy.

• 16:46Speaker 06

  Health group.

• 16:46Speaker 05

  This is Nemway.

• 16:47Speaker 06

  It's Nemway.

• 16:48Speaker 05

  We give you a AI sleep mask and realize you're not sleeping properly because of your pillow. So we give you $30 off the pillow.

• 16:56Ed Zitron?

  Honestly, at this point, I'm like on my seventh pillow. I actually want a computer to try and work this one out for me.

• 17:01Speaker 05

  Don't you want a computer and your pillow and your?

• 17:03Ed Zitron?

  I want to know what this AI sleep mask is because I sleep with, I sleep in an insane way.

• 17:07Speaker 05

  Mm hmm.

• 17:08Ed Zitron?

  I have like a skull cap on and I have a giant eye mask. I must sleep in complete darkness. I also like, um,

• 17:16Ed Zitron?

  I grab the covers and I like curl into a ball at the edge of the bed. My therapist says this is good.

• 17:21Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 17:22Ed Zitron?

  Anyway, an AI sleep mask, what the fuck would that do?

• 17:26Speaker 05

  Every time one of these things said AI, it's an app and an algorithm that collects the data, presents it to you on a colorful graph.

• 17:35Ed Zitron?

  Right.

• 17:36Speaker 05

  Maybe gleaned or infers insights about other elements of how you're sleeping, eating.

• 17:42Ed Zitron?

  Did they explain any of how this would work?

• 17:44Speaker 05

  No, you know, for example, one place, you know, for example, they said they can uh offer a way for you to reduce mental stress. And I asked how they measure mental stress and they say, well, if you got enough of our devices in the ecosystem, we can measure. We can measure physiological things like your heartbeat, we can and how much you sweat, right? And we can say, oh, this is not in the usual range for you. What's going on?

• 18:08Ed Zitron?

  True with me.

• 18:08Speaker 05

  You're being anxious, you know?

• 18:11Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, I also, I had, and I'm.

• 18:13Speaker 05

  You can see it, but also a person can do this.

• 18:17Speaker 07

  Is your reward booze to make that happen? It's like, I don't know. I don't know how this works.

• 18:21Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, like these rewards, what are they?

• 18:23Speaker 05

  So.

• 18:24Ed Zitron?

  Other than discounts off of other members of the scam.

• 18:27Speaker 05

  Discounts on unnamed crypto payout.

• 18:31Speaker 07

  See, you were right.

• 18:33Ed Zitron?

  This is so sick.

• 18:35Speaker 05

  This is, I was so surprised.

• 18:36Ed Zitron?

  Dig into the history of these people.

• 18:38Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 18:39Ed Zitron?

  I would love to learn what their previous job was.

• 18:41Speaker 06

  I'm hurting over here. I cannot stress enough that not a single one of these things is an FDA certified product.

• 18:47Ed Zitron?

  If I hit Costa Rica, I am gonna fucking lose it.

• 18:51Speaker 05

  Listen, I would like to know too, because I didn't think I was gonna see crypto. I think we talked about it the other day and you guys were like, it's not here. And then what's the first thing I go blocked? We're on the blockchain, so that would give a reward you.

• 19:02Speaker 07

  This is the thing, like it's insane.

• 19:04Ed Zitron?

  It feels like the one place you wouldn't.

• 19:06Speaker 05

  Well, they were, they were kind of saying that by being on the blockchain, your data is secure.

• 19:12Speaker 06

  That's not entirely open.

• 19:13Speaker 05

  Yes, I know.

• 19:14Ed Zitron?

  Unless they do a private blockchain, those do exist. And at which point you can ask the question of why don't I use any number of other databases that would be more efficient?

• 19:23Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 19:23Ed Zitron?

  Oh, it's immutable. Who cares?

• 19:25Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 19:26Ed Zitron?

  No one gives a fuck.

• 19:27Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 19:27Ed Zitron?

  So the databases can be like that too.

• 19:29Speaker 07

  It's such a trendy word that they can use.

• 19:31Ed Zitron?

  It's not even trendy anymore.

• 19:33Speaker 07

  But like 10 years ago, right?

• 19:34Ed Zitron?

  It's not the people still saying new phone who diss.

• 19:37Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 19:38Ed Zitron?

  It's the like, learn a new meme. And also do another, why is the, I love that that's still legal?

• 19:45Speaker 06

  I'm scared.

• 19:46Speaker 05

  It's gonna be super legal.

• 19:48Ed Zitron?

  It's gonna be super legal. The FDIC is dissolved.

• 19:51Speaker 07

  Super as in like above legal?

• 19:53Ed Zitron?

  Yeah.

• 19:53Speaker 07

  It's above.

• 19:54Speaker 05

  It's encouraged. It's sanctioned by.

• 19:59Ed Zitron?

  Sanctioned by the Department of Governmental Efficiency.

• 20:02Speaker 06

  I'm so scared to check Kaiser when I get home to see if they're thinking about this.

• 20:07Speaker 07

  No, they.

• 20:08Speaker 05

  One new alert.

• 20:09Speaker 07

  It's like Kaiser's, Kaiser's private blockchain.

• 20:12Ed Zitron?

  That's a good question, though. Did any of these companies have any contracts with insurance companies?

• 20:16Speaker 05

  No, actually, almost every single one that would talk about this either didn't have the product that was offering out in the market yet, or didn't have a single insurer that was approval to even work with insurers.

• 20:29Ed Zitron?

  I just feel like insurers would build these things themselves.

• 20:31Speaker 05

  You would think that and probably they will.

• 20:34Ed Zitron?

  Or they just.

• 20:34Speaker 05

  I mean, not with the blockchain bullshit, but they are already building like, you know, well-established data pipelines to get insights. I mean, one example of this is like cars and car insurance, right? Your car is a computer, right? And car insurers have a relatively easy time of using your driving behavior to modulate, you know, what they're going to charge you on a basic level, of course, if you do accidents and such, but you know, getting to the point where it's like, you know, how are you braking? How are you, how fast are you usually going, you know?

• 21:03Speaker 07

  But no, the thing is that this, this already exists for the insurance companies. MIB is a thing.

• 21:08Ed Zitron?

  What's MIB?

• 21:09Speaker 07

  It's the Medical Information Bureau. It's, it's a housing for all of the medical data of everybody that is involved in any medical stuff in the United States. And it's all housed, University of Michigan, I think.

• 21:22Ed Zitron?

  Okay, so who can access this?

• 21:24Speaker 07

  This is, it's effectively supposed to be like metadata for actuaries. And so this is why actuarial data for insurance companies is so precise and accurate because they can see all of this data and then use it to rate policies.

• 21:40Ed Zitron?

  So we created like a little surveillance state just so that health insurance could continue.

• 21:45Speaker 07

  And this has existed since like the seventies, like sixties or seventies, I think. Yeah.

• 21:48Ed Zitron?

  One of my people are pissed off about insurance companies.

• 21:51Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 21:52Speaker 06

  And have been for decades.

• 21:53Speaker 07

  Have been, yeah. So it's like, this isn't new. It's just now it's being monetized. But I mean, it was already being monetized, but just in a different way.

• 22:00Speaker 05

  By a different way, by a different group of people who are trying.

• 22:06Speaker 05

  It's unclear if they're trying to replicate the thing or build their own infrastructure and products around it, but yeah.

• 22:12Speaker 07

  Yeah, because M I B is the whole point of it is and why it's at an academic institution is that it's it's supposed to be, you know, outside of outside of industry, right? That's kind of the idea.

• 22:22Ed Zitron?

  And available to everyone.

• 22:24Speaker 07

  Right. And so whereas this is now, this is now something you can put a patent on. This is something that you can, yeah, this is this is shady.

• 22:31Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah, to say the least, to say the least.

• 22:34Ed Zitron?

  Was there anything other than this kind of shit there?

• 22:37Speaker 05

  Um, in the healthcare space, a lot of it was like, you know, what, um, you know, what's called like, you know, luxury surveillance, where it's just like, we are gonna pay, you know, you're gonna pay us for the privilege of giving us a continuous stream of your behavioral data so that we can figure out a way to give you more

• 22:54Ed Zitron?

  Cool, way cool.

• 22:54Speaker 05

  products or, you know, generate some money off of it, right? It's amazing. It's beautiful. I love it. I think it's a, you know, it's a, it's a, it's a genuine value chain.

• 23:04Ed Zitron?

  Wasn't sure where you were going with that. You had me for a second there. I was, I was about to get concerned, honestly.

• 23:11Speaker 05

  Yeah, no, I'm actually a capitalist.

• 23:13Ed Zitron?

  I had a stroke. So what else did you see out on the, on the hell floor?

• 23:18Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, you know, what else we saw, we saw, I saw a lot. There's, um, there's an A I baby monitor.

• 23:24Ed Zitron?

  Okay, great.

• 23:25Speaker 05

  Yeah, this is.

• 23:25Ed Zitron?

  Is this for my A I baby or?

• 23:28Speaker 05

  No, um, it's actually, uh, for your real baby.

• 23:32Ed Zitron?

  Okay.

• 23:33Speaker 05

  So the pamphlet that I had, I don't know if I actually still have it anymore, but it opens up with saying, did you know, you know, how many kids die from a sudden infant death syndrome that could be one of your kids? The way to prevent that is to use our devices so that you can monitor your child if they stop moving for more than a.

• 23:47Ed Zitron?

  These have existed for so long, like Nannet is like over a decade old. And there's the sleep, like the ones for like the actual, like the feet are very valuable, but that's also solved problem.

• 24:00Speaker 05

  Yes, it is a solved problem, right?

• 24:02Ed Zitron?

  But they've found a new way to solve it.

• 24:03Speaker 05

  Because what they're trying to do here, it seems, is build. An ecosystem where.

• 24:11Ed Zitron?

  It's always an ecosystem.

• 24:12Speaker 05

  It's always an ecosystem.

• 24:13Ed Zitron?

  It's like, what are we on, the savanna?

• 24:15Speaker 05

  We have a catalog of products that your baby can have that.

• 24:20Ed Zitron?

  My baby loves products.

• 24:21Speaker 05

  Right. Babies love products. Babies are consumers.

• 24:24Ed Zitron?

  Go for it.

• 24:25Speaker 05

  You know?

• 24:25Ed Zitron?

  Well, they have eyeballs. I mean, so.

• 24:28Speaker 05

  You know, stuff for their eyes, for their nose, for their ears, for their breathing, for their toes.

• 24:33Speaker 06

  The fully online baby.

• 24:35Ed Zitron?

  These are all separate products. I thought you were just being.

• 24:37Speaker 05

  These are all tooth. All separate products. Replacement, toothpaste, gel.

• 24:42Speaker 06

  What was the thing for the ear?

• 24:44Speaker 05

  Yeah, there's stuff for the ear.

• 24:45Ed Zitron?

  These are all AI powered?

• 24:46Speaker 05

  Nails, trimmers.

• 24:48Ed Zitron?

  Oh, you found a slop company?

• 24:50Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 24:51Speaker 06

  Do they have the spike that goes in the base of the skull for the matrix?

• 24:54Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, calipers. This is an important CES history thing. So there are some fascinating companies. The most honest part of CES is the crust on the outside. So you go to the very ends of CES and it's just like a black text on white background Chinese companies. And it's just like the something, something electronic corporation and they sell CCTV gear, battery packs, miscellaneous plugs and dildos. And it is just that. You can find these every CES and they're the most fun to talk to. They don't give a shit.

• 25:29Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 25:29Ed Zitron?

  But what Ed is referring to is a slop company where the ones that are not honest enough to just be like, yeah, we sell everything. Just we're here to money launder, I guess. Not saying the people who actually at the fine companies that I've kind of named money laundered just for the legal purposes, but I feel like this one is like trying to pretend they're like doing good for the world versus being a wholesaler of sex toys.

• 25:49Speaker 05

  Keeping your baby safe.

• 25:50Speaker 06

  Well, they opened with terror for your baby is going to die.

• 25:53Ed Zitron?

  Exactly. They sell on fear. And also outlet exists. Like, what the fuck is the AI part? What's that?

• 25:59Speaker 05

  Um, so that one was literally just monitoring if your child is moving and if it doesn't move, alerting you.

• 26:06Ed Zitron?

  Okay, that really has been.

• 26:08Speaker 05

  Yeah, that's been solved for a long time, like you said, right? But what's?

• 26:13Speaker 05

  Well, that's a great question. What is the AI part of that?

• 26:16Ed Zitron?

  Well, I mean, there is actually very like computer vision, like to be clear with everyone, artificial intelligence has been around for a while.

• 26:23Speaker 05

  Long time.

• 26:23Ed Zitron?

  Has actually been working.

• 26:25Speaker 05

  When they say AI, they're implying there is a novel thing that is artificial intelligence on top of this and obscuring the fact.

• 26:32Ed Zitron?

  On top of the actual AI that has been around for a while. Like some sort of generative AI? What is, what's going on here?

• 26:38Speaker 05

  There's nothing new.

• 26:38Ed Zitron?

  They just want, they just hope that you'll think it's that.

• 26:41Speaker 06

  It's generating a baby.

• 26:42Ed Zitron?

  Yeah. This manual, if you look at the back, it says 2017 on the, no. All of a sudden you have a new baby, like it's just like.

• 26:49Speaker 05

  It's, it's, it's soothing your anxiety so you can generate that new baby.

• 26:55Ed Zitron?

  That would be a really great way for one of these people to sell something, just being like, you're anxious, you're not able to have sex.

• 27:01Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 27:02Ed Zitron?

  Anyway, you need this baby monitor.

• 27:03Speaker 05

  You need a surveillance state in your house.

• 27:06Ed Zitron?

  Or of course, though, wonderful, the AI cat litter thing.

• 27:09Speaker 05

  Yeah. Yeah. Oh my God. 5G connected.

• 27:12Ed Zitron?

  Fuck yeah.

• 27:12Speaker 05

  What the fuck does that mean? That means there's an app.

• 27:17Ed Zitron?

  Isn't 5G's whole point that it's like a home broadband connection, but, but what are you streaming?

• 27:24Speaker 05

  So.

• 27:24Ed Zitron?

  Very wide. Other than cat piss.

• 27:26Speaker 05

  Yeah. This is the thing. Almost all of these devices are like, hey, um, so we will give you an app and in the app, you can see when your cat gets on and off, how much it shits or pisses, and if there's any differences in it. And it will give you immediate alerts, right? Because it's.

• 27:42Ed Zitron?

  Your cat has shit.

• 27:43Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 27:44Speaker 06

  Honestly, we were.

• 27:45Ed Zitron?

  Why do you need that notification? Why do you need to know immediately?

• 27:48Speaker 05

  If you're more anxious than an anxious cat.

• 27:50Ed Zitron?

  Watch just like pops up like your cat has pooped. You're on like a fucking, you're like on a date.

• 27:56Speaker 05

  Sorry, my cat's not shitting right. I have to go home.

• 27:58Speaker 06

  The weird thing is my partner and I were looking at a new cat litter box and of course they all do have that 5G integration. And the app associated with it.

• 28:07Ed Zitron?

  Why do you fucking have it?

• 28:08Speaker 06

  The answer why, and it's a niche case is every time we have taken the cats to the vet, they've asked, do you have a stool sample? How can I tell the difference between the different turds?

• 28:18Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 28:18Speaker 06

  Oh, because I know a fresh one has just dropped. Let me go get that immediately.

• 28:24Ed Zitron?

  I hear, so this is, I'm describing, um, this cat litter box.

• 28:28Speaker 06

  How would AI knows which is?

• 28:30Ed Zitron?

  And apparently it has multi-cat facial recognition.

• 28:34Ed Zitron?

  Yeah. This is a friend of the show, Tate Hunter, Washington Post, brought this to me yesterday. It was this, apparently it can tell the different cats, so that if you have one sickly horrible cat and one beautiful, sweet cat, you know which one to take to the vet for the last time. No, um.

• 28:48Speaker 05

  Yeah, right, you know?

• 28:49Speaker 07

  Or like if it commits a crime, the FBI knows how to.

• 28:52Speaker 05

  Get him!

• 28:55Ed Zitron?

  So that you or the cat.

• 28:56Speaker 05

  He's stealing all the fucking food outside.

• 28:58Ed Zitron?

  But my question as well is, this cat litter thing, which is $899 by the way, which fucking rocks.

• 29:05Speaker 06

  I assume it has proprietary litter that goes in it as well, because that's the consumable.

• 29:09Ed Zitron?

  I mean, why wouldn't you use that?

• 29:10Speaker 06

  All about consumables.

• 29:11Ed Zitron?

  I need a subscription. I assume there's a subscription fee.

• 29:14Speaker 05

  Yeah, I would, I would be surprised if there wasn't.

• 29:16Ed Zitron?

  If there's not, I will absolutely fucking lose it. Like, why am I, if I can't pay an extra $5 a month to catgenie.biz.

• 29:24Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 29:25Speaker 07

  Well, I don't, I don't trust them after that, because I haven't thought through this process.

• 29:28Ed Zitron?

  Clearly.

• 29:28Speaker 05

  For, for some time, I was looking at a automatic, um, uh, feeder, because I had this, uh, I had, I had a schedule and most of my roommates were out and friends weren't in town where I wasn't able to get someone to watch the cat. I was like, okay, well, like, I can get someone to watch them sometimes. Maybe I'll get an automa, not an automatic feeder, automatic litter box. And then every single one I tried to get, there's a fucking app. And then when you compare it to the ones that don't have the app, it's like a $300 addition to the price for nothing, other than, like, we've been talking about.

• 29:59Speaker 06

  Knowing what your cat shit.

• 30:01Speaker 05

  Congratulations. Yeah, congrats.

• 30:02Ed Zitron?

  I'm just imagining being, like, in court and you've, you've silenced your phone and your judge is turning to you, he's about, gonna about to sentence you, you're not meant to have your Apple Watch, and it's like, bing, cat shit. Just like, is it, is it like Nest where you get the alert, but it doesn't show you the video and you drag it down and it's just like a big old.

• 30:19Speaker 06

  I don't want a video of cat shit.

• 30:21Speaker 07

  A big, I'm sorry, your honor, but my cat just shit.

• 30:25Ed Zitron?

  You hold up your hand.

• 30:27Speaker 05

  It's wild, dude.

• 30:28Ed Zitron?

  Mr. Tinkles is tinkling.

• 30:29Speaker 05

  You know? Um, which and it's also so funny because it's like the price, the price jump also from it's like a regular litter box.

• 30:37Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, it's not special.

• 30:38Speaker 05

  Two dollars, three dollars. I mean, it doesn't cost that much.

• 30:41Ed Zitron?

  This is not special.

• 30:43Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's not.

• 30:43Ed Zitron?

  This thing is not like a new kind of litter box, other than the stuff they've stapled to it.

• 30:47Speaker 05

  It's like, hey, you're a sophisticated buyer.

• 30:50Ed Zitron?

  You, you.

• 30:50Speaker 05

  This is not gonna work.

• 30:51Speaker 06

  You love your cats, right?

• 30:53Speaker 05

  And you love your cat.

• 30:55Ed Zitron?

  Your cats must be fancy cats.

• 30:57Speaker 05

  Yeah, and they have to be.

• 30:58Ed Zitron?

  And they need 5G.

• 30:59Speaker 05

  Well, throw in five dollars off Fancy Feast.

• 31:01Ed Zitron?

  Okay, wait, no, something just fucking occurred to me about this that's even weirder. They're talking about 5G. That's a cellular wireless standard.

• 31:09Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 31:11Speaker 05

  It's Chinese, which means.

• 31:14Ed Zitron?

  The cat litter company very unhappy.

• 31:16Speaker 05

  Well, it's uh, put in dirty tech in our.

• 31:19Speaker 07

  The sovereign citizens are gonna come to your house and take your, your litter box.

• 31:24Ed Zitron?

  They're already very unhappy with me. Um, but also it's 5G. Before the end of the show, can you try and get back there just to ask them if they mean 5G Wi-Fi? Because that is an egregious overstatement. Because their people are just like the guys here that don't know how anything works go, oh, it's got 5G in it. Which they think is like the cellphone standard.

• 31:44Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 31:45Ed Zitron?

  Versus.

• 31:47Ed Zitron?

  This is the show though. This is CES. We're just describing like I know. Casey Kagawa, friend of the show as well, was saying to me earlier, oh Ed, the hardware stuff's really cool. It is faster computer now. It's great.

• 31:59Speaker 05

  AI stethoscope, great.

• 32:01Ed Zitron?

  Actually cool? Is that actually?

• 32:02Speaker 05

  No.

• 32:04Speaker 07

  No, I was going to say, it's not a happy AI.

• 32:07Speaker 06

  Did it hallucinate heartbeats?

• 32:08Ed Zitron?

  But you can go to like a, a legacy media outlet and hear about uh, all the computer stuff that actually matters. Because that's not really the story of CES. That's the stuff that happens kind of outside. And what you have in there is people making series of, a series of promises that have gone through a law firm to make sure then they're not going to get them in actual trouble. Hopefully. Did you see any Wi-Fi grills though?

• 32:35Speaker 05

  No.

• 32:36Speaker 07

  Oh boy. Oh buddy.

• 32:38Speaker 05

  I saw a TV with a chatbot.

• 32:41Ed Zitron?

  Why?

• 32:43Speaker 06

  To help you choose channels?

• 32:44Speaker 05

  Yeah, you know, I saw, um, I saw sex toys that used video games for long distance connection with group syncing for multiple orgasms.

• 32:55Speaker 07

  Oh, my gosh.

• 32:55Speaker 06

  Multiplayer.

• 32:56Ed Zitron?

  Wait, wait, they did not promise that.

• 32:59Speaker 07

  No, this ties to the very first CES that I went to.

• 33:02Ed Zitron?

  If they?

• 33:03Speaker 07

  So I was, I still, I'll never forget this. I was at the Indiegogo party, the first CES, and I was talking to these folks and they were telling me about their technology.

• 33:12Ed Zitron?

  Right.

• 33:12Speaker 07

  Technology was about trying to have some sort of tactile response in a virtual environment.

• 33:19Speaker 06

  Keep in mind, talking to a priest in full white Dominican robes.

• 33:23Speaker 07

  Yeah, exactly, right? That's right. And so this is Chinese folks, right? And so we're, we're Chinese company and we're talking about, I was like, man, that's really amazing technology. Like, that would be great for, for like the medical industry. Like, that would really revolutionize a lot of stuff for surgeries. And they're like, yeah, yeah, no, but we're going into porn because that's where all the money is.

• 33:43Ed Zitron?

  Just, yeah.

• 33:44Speaker 07

  10 years later, same, you know?

• 33:46Ed Zitron?

  But it's not taken off yet, though.

• 33:48Speaker 05

  I mean.

• 33:49Ed Zitron?

  It's not scaling.

• 33:50Speaker 05

  There are toys that allow you to have group player to sync them. That's existed for a bit. The, I was trying to figure out the AI element.

• 33:57Ed Zitron?

  The metaverse part.

• 33:59Speaker 05

  Yeah, the extended reality part of, if you will, you know?

• 34:04Ed Zitron?

  Wow.

• 34:05Speaker 05

  Of the super duper, you know, turbocharged fleshlights.

• 34:09Ed Zitron?

  Nice.

• 34:10Speaker 05

  The suction dildos of the, what else did they have? Prostate massagers called Edge 2.

• 34:17Ed Zitron?

  You said of, though, and I thought you were going Caribbean.

• 34:20Speaker 05

  No, yeah.

• 34:21Speaker 07

  This is where we need Father Belisar, like.

• 34:23Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, the other member of the clergy that for some reason shows up here.

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• 36:42Ed Zitron?

  But so, other than dildos and other than health things, any other weird shit, anything loathsome, pig-like?

• 36:50Speaker 05

  Um, anything, oh, there, there was a, there's an app, it's called an AI public transportation bell, and it's, and it rings a bell when you're about to get to your stop on the bus or train.

• 37:04Ed Zitron?

  See?

• 37:08Speaker 07

  Freaking.

• 37:12Speaker 05

  There was no one at that booth and I was like, this is where you're talking about the alleged uh section of the conference where it's just like, this is a front.

• 37:22Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, man, I'm sorry. We're just, we're using this for like that Serbian gentleman behind you. The one that smells of cigarettes. That man, that's who we're talking to here. That's our one meeting.

• 37:33Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 37:33Ed Zitron?

  This thing's that this, we're here for four days to kind of just cover the, for this. He will kill you.

• 37:39Speaker 07

  Smells of cigarettes and sliver bits.

• 37:40Ed Zitron?

  It's, it's so strange that we have a show full of this because you kind of see articles about CES. And it's like faster computer. There's the $3,000 AI machine that I should have uh someone from Reuters coming in to talk about tomorrow.

• 37:55Speaker 05

  Oh, hell yeah.

• 37:56Ed Zitron?

  But um Nvidia also, who knows what they're doing at some point.

• 38:00Speaker 06

  And the eternal hall of TVs.

• 38:02Ed Zitron?

  The eternal hall of, hall of televisions, which are fine. I don't, I, we love the big screens and but really it's just so weird how much of this stuff is just like fake fake.

• 38:11Speaker 05

  Mm hmm.

• 38:11Ed Zitron?

  Or like real, but customer base of like 100 people. Like the cat, how much do you think that cat thing costs to make? Cause I bet it's accidentally really expensive.

• 38:23Speaker 05

  I mean, it depends because it's, is it also one of those ones with the motor that uh rotates? So that it automatically sifts? Yeah, then um.

• 38:30Ed Zitron?

  Those things break.

• 38:31Speaker 05

  Yeah, they break easily because one, cause they're not doing.

• 38:35Speaker 05

  They, they are easy to install, but I feel like they're not, they don't tell you how to install it. And so you're probably gonna break it in installation. Uh the app is probably not gonna work half the time. You know, so I don't know. They're probably accidentally expensive because of how much they wear down and how much they end up getting returned versus like.

• 38:54Ed Zitron?

  And how do you really like load test those things?

• 38:57Speaker 05

  You got a really big boy in there.

• 39:00Ed Zitron?

  Overfeeding a cat. Like you're making flock rock. Freaking Garfield and lasagna, man.

• 39:07Speaker 05

  Say, all right, I just fed you some cheese, get in there. Eat the milk.

• 39:14Ed Zitron?

  Do you think this is how they get the training data to find out about the turds?

• 39:17Speaker 05

  Yeah, I mean, that, listen, chosen by God perfected by science.

• 39:22Ed Zitron?

  To be fair, this is how I describe my cat Babu.

• 39:25Speaker 05

  Yeah, you know?

• 39:26Ed Zitron?

  And also myself, and I do use the litter box, but he just won't use these fancy ones. We've tried fancy ones and he just will not go.

• 39:34Speaker 05

  Only one of my cats uses the fancy one.

• 39:37Ed Zitron?

  You've got a picky customer.

• 39:38Speaker 05

  Yeah, I do. I really fucking do.

• 39:39Ed Zitron?

  That's the most cat thing to do as well. It's not even like you can throw it away.

• 39:43Speaker 05

  Yeah, no.

• 39:44Speaker 06

  Our cats will only use the robot litter box for pooping. All other, we have two other litter boxes. Those are the piss boxes. Only the robot gets turds.

• 39:55Ed Zitron?

  Which one do you use?

• 39:56Speaker 06

  Ah, I, I am a discerning individual. I, I prefer to go use the actual toilet.

• 40:03Ed Zitron?

  Okay, too good for this show.

• 40:08Ed Zitron?

  Now, you did see a speech from the incredible Linda Yaccarino, CEO of X, the everything app, where I currently do my banking, my taxes, my dating and my professional work. I have a DM I need to see to admit from a 14 words griper. That's my doctor and...

• 40:32Speaker 06

  Ah, the medical care on X as well.

• 40:33Ed Zitron?

  Um, my credit card was just charged $11,000 from it. Everything's going great there. But she is the CEO of this company and you said it was kind of bad. It just wasn't that fun.

• 40:42Speaker 05

  Yeah, it didn't really, you know, it could have been an email, it could have been a press release, you know? She talked a lot about the global collective unconscious.

• 40:51Ed Zitron?

  Unconscious? Oh, God. The fuck does that mean?

• 40:54Speaker 05

  That's X, the everything site, you know?

• 40:57Ed Zitron?

  Did she say unconscious?

• 40:58Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 40:59Ed Zitron?

  The collective unconscious?

• 41:00Speaker 05

  I believe, I believe. I have it in my notes.

• 41:04Ed Zitron?

  But the thing is, if she said conscious, it's still stupid, but if she said unconscious, I would believe that because that's like a Yaccarino classic.

• 41:10Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 41:10Ed Zitron?

  Just like a complete, because the things she says sound like the kind of thing you say immediately after walking out of a car wreck.

• 41:17Speaker 06

  Let's go to the notes and see.

• 41:19Speaker 07

  But it's also, but it's also like what an undergrad like philosopher.

• 41:23Ed Zitron?

  Be student.

• 41:23Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 41:24Speaker 06

  Oh, dear.

• 41:24Speaker 05

  Right, um, she talks about how it's self regulating. You know, the first.

• 41:30Ed Zitron?

  Oh, yeah.

• 41:31Speaker 05

  The first question was about comparing meta to X and talking about how it got rid of fact checkers. And she was like, they're trying to copy uh, community notes, basically. She was like, you know, they're realizing.

• 41:43Ed Zitron?

  Our website sucks shit. Yeah, copying it.

• 41:45Speaker 07

  Buddy, I'm on community notes, uh, so I see all this stuff.

• 41:49Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 41:49Speaker 07

  And it is a shit show.

• 41:51Speaker 05

  It's a shit show.

• 41:52Ed Zitron?

  I mean, have you seen the fucking facts that people post on Facebook?

• 41:55Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 41:55Ed Zitron?

  Do you really want that community?

• 41:57Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 41:58Ed Zitron?

  Anyway.

• 41:59Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 41:59Ed Zitron?

  Now that great idea has been copied.

• 42:01Speaker 05

  And so the idea there is like, you know, she's trying to, you know, talk about how um, meta is going to emulate X's innovative system that inspires great behavior, which is that noted posts are dramatically shared less.

• 42:15Ed Zitron?

  Like suicide bombing.

• 42:16Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 42:18Ed Zitron?

  I wanna die. Like I wanna die. Like where do you think the Cybertruck guy got his inspiration?

• 42:22Speaker 05

  Uh, that and chat G P T apparently where it helped them build the explosives. The police department recently reported.

• 42:29Ed Zitron?

  That didn't quite work?

• 42:31Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 42:32Ed Zitron?

  And that's chat G P T.

• 42:34Speaker 06

  Yeah. As I described it, it's effectively just the anarchist cookbook and you're gonna get similar respo- results.

• 42:40Speaker 05

  Yeah, you know?

• 42:41Speaker 06

  Don't try.

• 42:42Speaker 05

  And so, so, you know, her rating of the meta abandoning uh, third party fact checking, great. Uh, victory for free speech.

• 42:50Ed Zitron?

  Cool.

• 42:51Speaker 05

  She talked about how the greatest product innovation, talked about how there have been like two hundred fifty product innovations during her tenure at X or whatever the fuck.

• 42:59Ed Zitron?

  What?

• 42:59Speaker 05

  Yeah. But the biggest one is trend genius.

• 43:03Ed Zitron?

  Oh.

• 43:04Speaker 05

  Which is when a trend kicks up on X and it hits a certain altitude, advertisers they have agreements with are, they're, they're able to take advantage of those trends and they get matched with them. And as, and your ad campaign kicks into high drive when there's a trend connected to what you're looking to target.

• 43:21Ed Zitron?

  Uh huh.

• 43:21Speaker 05

  Goes into high drive.

• 43:22Ed Zitron?

  Almost some kind of like word you could advertise against.

• 43:25Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 43:26Ed Zitron?

  Like an ad word.

• 43:27Speaker 05

  Right, right, you know?

• 43:29Ed Zitron?

  All of the ads I get are. I should Google that.

• 43:31Speaker 07

  They're all Temu. Everything is Temu.

• 43:33Speaker 05

  I get Temu, um indie sci-fi, um books about how Donald Trump is gonna save America.

• 43:41Speaker 07

  Sick.

• 43:42Speaker 05

  Crypto.

• 43:42Speaker 07

  That doesn't, that that's happening right now.

• 43:44Speaker 05

  Yeah, I mean, yeah, yeah.

• 43:46Speaker 07

  I only get Temu. What are you like looking at, man?

• 43:49Speaker 05

  I don't know. I got a lot of Temu though.

• 43:51Ed Zitron?

  I was blocking so many ads at one point that I just started getting the weirdest shit.

• 43:55Speaker 06

  Oh, yeah.

• 43:55Ed Zitron?

  I got like the most expensive coat ever and it was like a seventy dollar coat.

• 44:02Ed Zitron?

  I actually, which I actually think is a great bit, but it was the worst looking outfit. It looked like something that Baz Luhrmann would have in his Romeo and Juliet movie.

• 44:11Speaker 05

  Do you, do you thumb your nose at me?

• 44:13Ed Zitron?

  Or do you bite your thumb?

• 44:15Speaker 05

  You bite your thumb at me, so.

• 44:16Ed Zitron?

  And all your houses.

• 44:18Speaker 06

  Oh, my God. So what you're telling me is they've created an automated system to guarantee that the advertisers won't miss an opportunity to be next to an incredibly popular racist post.

• 44:29Ed Zitron?

  Right.

• 44:29Speaker 06

  And all these. Don't wanna miss it.

• 44:30Ed Zitron?

  Just are these trends the ones that Grok comes up with?

• 44:34Speaker 07

  Oh, Lord.

• 44:34Speaker 05

  Yeah, they're torturing Grok in the, in the, in the center of the racism computer.

• 44:38Speaker 07

  They changed the image recently.

• 44:40Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, it's like the logo for Grok is really bad. It's so bad. It looks like, like a JPG artifact.

• 44:46Speaker 07

  So bad.

• 44:47Speaker 05

  One of the examples I really also loved, she was kind of like, you know, talking about how X is the everything place. It's real time, so many trends. He's like, you know, sometimes me and my husband, we fight all the time. We fight all the time about what to watch on TV.

• 45:01Ed Zitron?

  Oh, really? Oh, okay.

• 45:03Speaker 06

  I thought she just meant in general.

• 45:05Speaker 05

  No, yeah, can you imagine?

• 45:06Speaker 06

  Yeah, my husband fucking sucks.

• 45:07Ed Zitron?

  My piece of shit husband.

• 45:11Speaker 05

  Um, and so we fight all the time about what to watch and we're fighting over the remote. He thinks football is consequential. I wanna know what's happening on the red carpet. We don't have to fight anymore because now I have X on my phone and I get real time updates and he gets the TV to watch football.

• 45:26Ed Zitron?

  Was she talking about the Golden Globes? What football game is on? When Golden Globes happen?

• 45:31Speaker 07

  Now, this is also garbage. I was trying to, I was trying to check news the other day on Twitter, X, whatever they call it nowadays.

• 45:38Ed Zitron?

  Okay, I guess you should have been watching the.

• 45:40Speaker 07

  And, uh, and I was just like, this is a really bad place to get news.

• 45:43Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 45:44Ed Zitron?

  Okay, it was 5:00 PM PST. Was she really that attached, was he really that attached to Monday night, night football? Maybe he does hate her.

• 45:52Speaker 05

  He might have been. He's just like, uh, so, you know, that's the, that's like first 10 minutes or so, you know, she's talking, she's talking about safety, ad products, and how there's no surrogate for X. This is the most important place, talks about the NFL portal, uh, which, you know, is, uh, an example of how we are expanding the town square and building a model that will bring to other areas of society. They wanna make us a global sports league portal. Um, and.

• 46:19Ed Zitron?

  I don't even know what that means.

• 46:21Speaker 05

  Nobody knows what it means. It's provocative. It gets the people going, you know? Thirty-six billion impressions, four billion views. That's for what? For the NFL portal.

• 46:33Ed Zitron?

  That, thirty-six billion, these num-. Impressions, that's not even, I mean, I get. That doesn't feel like as much as it should, like, it feels, it feels like they had higher numbers like that in the past, but also, the views numbers are completely cracked on there now.

• 46:50Speaker 05

  What she's saying, the best numbers yet, and they're gonna get even better.

• 46:53Ed Zitron?

  Oh.

• 46:54Speaker 05

  They're gonna go to global sports leagues, uh, the interviewer tried to be like, do you wanna do a news or journalism portal? She was very, you know, she's like, look, look, we're not, we're not, she didn't say we're not interested in that, but she basically was like, legacy media has their own thing, we're post legacy media.

• 47:08Ed Zitron?

  Interested in.

• 47:08Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 47:09Ed Zitron?

  Telling the truth.

• 47:10Speaker 05

  We don't want that.

• 47:11Ed Zitron?

  Or providing information.

• 47:12Speaker 05

  We want to distinguish ourselves from legacy media because that, legacy media, it's a one-way filter to that, that's a psy-op to control your mind and influence you.

• 47:22Ed Zitron?

  As opposed to.

• 47:23Speaker 05

  As opposed to Twitter, which is global collective unconscious.

• 47:27Ed Zitron?

  Right.

• 47:27Speaker 05

  And, and free of influence campaigns, right?

• 47:31Ed Zitron?

  Uh, except for Temu.

• 47:33Speaker 05

  Yeah, exactly.

• 47:34Ed Zitron?

  Other than the influence campaigns.

• 47:36Speaker 05

  Yeah, right. That she just mentioned for Tredzinius and also the one that her boss is doing. Yeah, and also the, wasn't there a Paris Hilton one? Oh, Paris Hilton one, Saudis, I mean, we could list all the influence campaigns that are going on.

• 47:49Ed Zitron?

  Do people still care about Paris Hilton?

• 47:51Speaker 05

  Um.

• 47:51Ed Zitron?

  I know.

• 47:54Ed Zitron?

  That's what's so good about it. You know, when you're like behind crypto on a trend.

• 47:58Speaker 05

  Yes, yes.

• 47:59Ed Zitron?

  Like, I think the last time anyone cared about her was when she was like, eating hamburgers for Carl's Jr., like, that's. I'm not familiar with the canon.

• 48:06Speaker 05

  That's pretty bad. The canon.

• 48:08Ed Zitron?

  I haven't, I haven't been following the saga in a while.

• 48:11Speaker 05

  Enter the Hilton verse.

• 48:12Ed Zitron?

  After the J.J. Abrams movie.

• 48:13Speaker 05

  Fair enough, fair enough.

• 48:16Speaker 05

  She also talked a bit about the power of X and she got really excited about the fact that one time she was like, I was scrolling through my feed, leaned in, very excited, animated about Musk and Sundar talking about quantum computing.

• 48:29Speaker 07

  Oh, the brain.

• 48:30Speaker 05

  Yeah, this is the brain.

• 48:31Speaker 07

  Genius twins.

• 48:32Speaker 05

  Where else can you get two executives?

• 48:35Speaker 07

  Who don't really understand what they're talking about?

• 48:38Speaker 05

  And it's definitely them. It's one, there's no.

• 48:41Speaker 07

  Literally every executive.

• 48:43Speaker 05

  Yeah, you know?

• 48:45Speaker 07

  But here's the thing, I refuse, I still, to this day, refuse to use the term X. Like, I will.

• 48:51Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah.

• 48:51Speaker 07

  Dead name.

• 48:52Speaker 05

  I'm only using it here.

• 48:53Speaker 07

  It's just.

• 48:54Ed Zitron?

  It doesn't sound right.

• 48:56Speaker 07

  It's terrible.

• 48:57Ed Zitron?

  It feels like petting a cat's hair the wrong way.

• 48:59Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 49:00Ed Zitron?

  Oh, I'm on X? What the fuck are you talking about, man?

• 49:04Speaker 05

  The everything app.

• 49:04Ed Zitron?

  It's.

• 49:05Speaker 07

  Everything app.

• 49:07Ed Zitron?

  The everything app that has an increasingly.

• 49:08Speaker 07

  X marks the spot, baby.

• 49:10Ed Zitron?

  Right.

• 49:10Speaker 07

  A lack of utility with almost every day.

• 49:13Speaker 05

  The racism generator.

• 49:14Ed Zitron?

  The, you know?

• 49:15Speaker 07

  Terrible. GLOCK is somehow the least racist racist generator on there. Like, look, I didn't, I didn't, I didn't join the full Exodus when, you know, when things, so I stayed there, even though I joined all the other stuff. But it's just like, like, the level of narcissism.

• 49:31Ed Zitron?

  Yeah.

• 49:32Speaker 07

  Is just absurd.

• 49:34Ed Zitron?

  As we are talking.

• 49:34Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 49:35Ed Zitron?

  I have not opened it today, other than to send a thing.

• 49:38Speaker 07

  It's a world ending event, like, it's gonna.

• 49:42Speaker 05

  Yeah, I wonder what's, what's, what's on X, everything app?

• 49:44Speaker 07

  We start the countdown clock.

• 49:46Ed Zitron?

  Oh, there's a thing about Sam Altman's sister, very, very bad for Mr. Altman.

• 49:52Speaker 05

  Oh, I got some betting ads.

• 49:54Speaker 07

  Oh, that's good.

• 49:54Speaker 05

  I got bad MGM. Do you guys want to get up to $250 back in bonus bets if your first wager loses?

• 50:00Speaker 07

  I want that if, without having to do anything, that's what I want.

• 50:03Speaker 06

  Good, online betting strikes again.

• 50:05Ed Zitron?

  Okay, so he is quote, it's a quote post that Elon Musk is posting where someone said, Bill Gates has donated over three, this is just a conspiracy theory thing. Just the moment I started reading that, and it's Elon Musk has quoted it and he has used what appears to be an emoji of a pregnant man.

• 50:24Speaker 05

  What?

• 50:25Ed Zitron?

  So.

• 50:26Speaker 05

  What?

• 50:26Ed Zitron?

  So.

• 50:27Speaker 05

  Sick.

• 50:27Ed Zitron?

  This is the richest man in life.

• 50:29Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 50:29Ed Zitron?

  He could do anything. And he's like, I, I, what if, what if, what if Bill Gates was a, was a pregnant man?

• 50:37Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 50:37Ed Zitron?

  Wouldn't that be funny? Wouldn't, wouldn't that be funny? Grimes, grimes, grimes, grimes. She's not been in the house for years.

• 50:43Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 50:44Ed Zitron?

  Grimes, grimes. Just talking to another person.

• 50:47Speaker 05

  Yeah, this, I love Elon Musk, don't you?

• 50:50Speaker 07

  I mean, I opened up the app and the first thing I get is a, a nice little post from a friend of mine who I know. And then a Temu ad. Yeah. It's literally Temu.

• 50:59Ed Zitron?

  Posted all the way down. Poster me Elon Musk, if protecting children makes one a fascist, then so be it. I think that really is.

• 51:06Speaker 05

  Oh, wow. That's, you know, perfect segue also because the next thing that she talked about were the grooming gangs that he went on a week long tirade about. And she, and they were like, is this a red line? Because now you got diplomats saying, we're going to change the relationship with the US. And she was saying, if not for X, where would the conversation be about saving thousands of girls? Bringing people to justice who must be brought to justice. So I say more than less.

• 51:31Ed Zitron?

  Did that happen as a result of anything that happened on X?

• 51:34Speaker 05

  No.

• 51:35Ed Zitron?

  Great. That's.

• 51:36Speaker 05

  She said there's going to be an inquiry.

• 51:40Ed Zitron?

  Wow.

• 51:41Speaker 05

  And there's going to be an investigation.

• 51:43Ed Zitron?

  Well, I have.

• 51:43Speaker 05

  The allegations.

• 51:44Ed Zitron?

  I have now retracted my statement.

• 51:48Ed Zitron?

  I feel like as we, as we approach the end here, I want to really talk about something that I read about today that I will be doing an episode on. You know, you know, I can't help myself doing content, but we'll talk about it today. So Mark Zuckerberg of Meta has now basically, he's fired all the fact checkers and he's moving the trust and safety people to Texas from California. Some people saying, oh, it's because of some sort of, that one, they're like, oh, it's because of labor laws. Sure, but what that's actually about is the judges, from what I understand. But anyway, if you have not read the news, they have fired all the fact checkers and they're saying that, but they basically made a statement that was, oh yeah, we've done too much of that. And now if anyone listening to this has opened up Facebook in the last year, they probably did not think this could use less work.

• 52:34Ed Zitron?

  And they definitely didn't think I am getting the good stuff here. But on top of that, this feels to me like the beginning of the end for Meta. A lot of people are understandably should be scared. This is a fucking horrible thing to do. I think it's the end of Meta. I think we're actually coming toward it.

• 52:52Speaker 07

  I kind of hope so.

• 52:53Ed Zitron?

  I hope so too. But I think that this is that companies only do this when they're very upset.

• 52:58Speaker 05

  I mean, there's also like these moves also to try to placate Trump. I mean, do there are few questions, right? Because other firms are doing them. Are they gonna make the antitrust trials go away?

• 53:10Ed Zitron?

  I I don't think this, I think.

• 53:12Speaker 05

  I I don't think it's related, but I'm interested in that also as a knockdown effect. Right?

• 53:16Ed Zitron?

  I think it, I think what people need to realize is sure, there's some kissing up to Trump. Sure. But Meta has been helping conservatives for decades now.

• 53:26Speaker 05

  Yeah, you know, correct calculation on their part.

• 53:29Ed Zitron?

  Pandemic, the thing that I talked about in the people killing Facebook episode. It's they were the Joe Kaplan, Jeff. No, it's not Jeff Kaplan. That's the Blizzard guy. Sorry, Jeff.

• 53:41Ed Zitron?

  Jeff Kaplan from Blizzard, by the way, look up what the name of his his character was in in EverQuest. It was Tegold Bitties. That's the guy who runs.

• 53:49Speaker 05

  Sick. We wouldn't want to slander him.

• 53:51Ed Zitron?

  Well, also, that is actually a truthful statement. Activision Blizzard, a lot of weird lawsuits around. Anyway, now back to Joe Kaplan, who is the former head of public policy, who is now like their chief policy officer, replaced Nick Clegg scum.

• 54:05Speaker 05

  Oh, God.

• 54:06Ed Zitron?

  But Joe Kaplan is a former GW Bush guy who specifically intervened to make sure that the COVID conspiracy theory movie, Pandemic, was not removed by the Health Department, which I now assume is just shut down.

• 54:20Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 54:21Ed Zitron?

  Just to be clear, when Meta was restrained, when they were restrained by the boundaries, the vagaries of such ugly things as.

• 54:31Ed Zitron?

  Morals and policies, they still fucking push this shit. They're gonna do anything now and it's gonna turn it into X, but worse because Meta has already fucked Facebook to here and back. The question is what it does to Instagram. I think this kills Facebook. I know it's gonna make Facebook even worse for a while, but it's gonna kill it. The content already fucking sucks.

• 54:52Speaker 07

  I mean, we already call it Boomer Book, like, so, you know, I work with students. I mean, I work with students, right? So I'm always, I'm always in the midst of a bunch of young twenty year olds and

• 55:01Ed Zitron?

  Same.

• 55:01Speaker 07

  And it's just like, yeah, it's Boomer Book and no one goes there because it's the most toxic place that you can go. Like, it's worse than Twitter.

• 55:07Ed Zitron?

  Oh, you need to look for the toxicity. It's usually just confusing to me. But just to be clear, the current state of Facebook that everyone has been used to, this was the one with, with fact checkers.

• 55:19Speaker 07

  Yes.

• 55:19Ed Zitron?

  Now it's gonna be like lunatic, but it's gonna be actually insane. But I think this might, this may be the poison in the veins. And I know a lot of people understandably are very scared of this because of the right wing side. And the fact that this is aiding the right wing. The only thing I can say to calm you down is they've already been doing that in great volumes. They already did this. And it's like, that was this plus that. Anyway, um, and it's frustrating because I wish that was being reported alongside this part of the story. They're like, oh, now Facebook's gonna help all the right wing people. They took down CrowdTangle, which was a data reporting service that reported what the most popular pages were. Because, oh, sorry, most popular, I think, yeah, it was Facebook page.

• 56:02Ed Zitron?

  And Kevin Roos of the, was he at the Times? It's good work from Roos. Yeah, he reported this and then they responded by taking down CrowdTangle.

• 56:11Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 56:11Ed Zitron?

  Now, the reason they did that was because all of the top, like, eight out of ten were always conservatives.

• 56:17Speaker 05

  Was this a story about him trying to analyze the political track of a neighbor or?

• 56:24Ed Zitron?

  No, no, no, this was just what was most popular on Facebook. And it was like Ben Shapiro show, Dan Bongino and all that shit. That's what was happening when they gave a shit-ish.

• 56:34Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 56:35Ed Zitron?

  They don't give a shit. They don't give a shit now.

• 56:38Speaker 05

  I mean, honestly, it's like if I were Facebook, it's in your interest to at wor- at minimum allow for or try to ensure that, you know, maybe right wing stuff is pretty popular. You know, because they'll give you less trouble regulatorily. And, you know, if I'm actually putting my foot on the pedal, you know, if I'm actually putting my hand on the, on the, on the tilt here or trying to, you know, shift the balance, you know, to rev it up, right? So it makes sense, right? It's a, it's a payoff. You know, it's a payoff for them. And I think, you know, the, I think to come back to your earlier point, I think that's like a fair point to say, which is that like, yeah, you know, kissing up to Trump misses it, right? Yeah.

• 57:17Speaker 05

  As you're saying, that there's, there's a deeper, there's a deeper symbiosis or deeper interest there that's being overlooked.

• 57:25Ed Zitron?

  David, David, Dave Lee of Bloomberg did a great opinion piece that I'll link in the, in the notes. He did a thing where he just says, it gave Zuckerberg permission to give up on the thing that he didn't give a shit about.

• 57:37Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 57:38Ed Zitron?

  Somewhat paraphrasing his words there, obviously, because I don't think Bloomberg would report that. But it's a great piece because it basically says, look, Zuckerberg has never really liked keeping care of his garden. He's never really taken care of his shit.

• 57:49Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 57:50Ed Zitron?

  So now he doesn't have, now he can be like, oh yeah, it's, it's a political thing. This is why I'm doing it, which is sure it doesn't hurt.

• 57:56Speaker 05

  It's cover.

• 57:57Ed Zitron?

  It's cover for him just like pour, like knocking the toilet into the kitchen.

• 58:01Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 58:02Ed Zitron?

  He knows Facebook is effectively a monopoly on social media, so he can just fucking turn it into a rancid cesspool and thinks that people will stay. And I think that, I was talking to Ed about this last night. It feels connected with the AI profiles thing, which a lot of people are understandably freaked out about, but I think it comes down to one word, contempt.

• 58:18Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 58:19Ed Zitron?

  It's just, they don't fucking care. It's not about, these people don't have a big strategy. They're just, I want to say evil, but I don't even think they're that motivated. It's just growth at all cost thinking.

• 58:29Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 58:30Speaker 06

  One of the, one of the benefits for, benefit relative to them is it's, they don't have monopoly, but they do have a walled garden. So they can do whatever they want inside of their garden.

• 58:41Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 58:41Speaker 06

  And if you want to bury toxic waste in your garden, well, there are regulations about that, but nothing to stop them from doing it.

• 58:50Speaker 07

  Yeah, exactly. I mean, like, I mean, if Facebook started as a place for Zuckerberg to, you know, get a date, you know, and so.

• 58:55Speaker 05

  That, that, I, I'm sorry.

• 58:57Speaker 07

  You don't like that?

• 58:59Ed Zitron?

  I feel like that point misses the problem again. Because yes, technically, that was like the whole horny Harvard guy thing. The thing is, is that that wasn't where it, that was an evil thing that a college student did. Where it became an evil thing that an adult started doing was the idea of Facebook, was the idea of growing Facebook and what growing Facebook meant. If we start with that, if we reduce him to this horny incel kid, we miss the thing that this guy is like Zuckerberg is something so much worse than that. He is someone who truly does not care. I'm not gonna say sociopath because I actually really don't know the exact definition. I think just describing it in blunt terms is, does someone who give a shit about anything do this?

• 59:42Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 59:43Ed Zitron?

  Because it doesn't even feel like a political move. He's just like, great, I don't have to, it feels like a regulation being removed. He doesn't think, because there really isn't regulations against this thing.

• 59:52Speaker 06

  Yeah, there wasn't one.

• 59:54Ed Zitron?

  It's, it's really good looking out the window at the tech industry right now. I feel very positive.

• 59:59Speaker 05

  This is how it felt to be drinking the water downstream of the chip fabs.

• 1:00:04Ed Zitron?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:05Speaker 05

  You know, great.

• 1:00:06Ed Zitron?

  Except it's everywhere.

• 1:00:07Speaker 07

  That's fantastic.

• 1:00:08Ed Zitron?

  Except that hurt less.

• 1:00:11Speaker 06

  Thanks for getting me right back to groundwater plumes.

• 1:00:14Speaker 07

  But no, there's a cynicism, right? Right, there's a cynicism about the whole thing. And so it's like, you know, people, people just out there in the world sort of use these things, you know, to stay connected to their families, you know, like for instance, the only reason why I still have a Facebook, you know, account is, is like my mom takes photos.

• 1:00:32Ed Zitron?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:32Speaker 07

  Right, and I see that.

• 1:00:33Ed Zitron?

  And I use Instagram because there are some people who don't use anything else.

• 1:00:36Speaker 07

  Yeah, exactly, same thing. And, and so that's, I think that so many people like that's, that's sort of their general sort of use case. That, that these more sort of problematic aspects, they have a hard time seeing what the problem is. But, but the problem really is just this, this cynicism, the lack of care. The, I think, I think you, I think you hit your, right on the head.

• 1:01:00Ed Zitron?

  You ain't seen nothing yet. I'm deadly serious, like Facebook, so shout out to Jeff Horowitz, the Wall Street Journal. Taught me a lot, a lot about what I know about Facebook. I have yet to hear from Jeff. I would, if he was at CES, I'd be so happy. There's no one I want more on the chair, just going fucking. And the thing is, is that they've always been this bad.

• 1:01:23Ed Zitron?

  And as we write history right now, we're like, well, now Facebook, this is the day that Meta became evil. And it's like, it's always been that way. But if you do, if you failed to actually couch it in time, imagine what they'll do next.

• 1:01:37Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, hey, like, you know, what, what, where do you go from, you know, facilitating a genocide, you know, where do you go, you know?

• 1:01:50Ed Zitron?

  And you, you, all things are justified in growth. A terrorist attack plan on Facebook was justified in growth. I'm quoting Andrew Bosworth, who is in the ugly letter. He is now the CTO of Meta. Very cool. Yeah, very good stuff. So as we come towards the end of the, this part of the episode, we're shortly going to be updated with Gare Davison and Robert Evans, of course, as we wrap up.

• 1:02:14Speaker 05

  Especially because I'm almost out of cocktail.

• 1:02:16Ed Zitron?

  He's almost out of.

• 1:02:17Speaker 07

  And I'm thinking about the Facebook leaks at the moment, but anyway.

• 1:02:19Ed Zitron?

  Yes. Well, I think as we come to the end of this day, Ed, did you like anything on the floor? Was there a single thing that you saw? And there is no wrong answer here. If you saw something you liked, what was it? And don't say the exit.

• 1:02:35Speaker 05

  Um, the sex toys seemed neat.

• 1:02:38Ed Zitron?

  Cool.

• 1:02:39Speaker 05

  Um.

• 1:02:43Ed Zitron?

  So I was just gonna ask if you tried one.

• 1:02:45Speaker 07

  I think every CES, this is what I've heard, and that's it. And I'm horrified by that.

• 1:02:50Ed Zitron?

  You walk up, just cracking knuckles. All right.

• 1:02:52Speaker 05

  You know, the, I saw some screens that looked crazy, but you know, I don't game like that. I don't goon like that. Like, I just, I couldn't.

• 1:03:02Ed Zitron?

  I thought we'd get through an episode without fucking saying goon.

• 1:03:06Speaker 05

  So, you know, those aren't really for me. Um.

• 1:03:11Speaker 07

  Every episode title.

• 1:03:12Speaker 05

  You know, I'm, I'm gonna watch, I don't know, I feel like maybe I would have liked the sphere, you know, whatever they're doing there. No?

• 1:03:20Ed Zitron?

  Well, Lenny Kravitz is there tonight. Oh, I forgot to mention an important part of the thing. So found out a competing podcast called The Verge, I hear. They are currently doing.

• 1:03:30Speaker 07

  Haven't heard of them.

• 1:03:31Ed Zitron?

  Haven't either, but I just, The Verge, the French. I thought you were doing like a little German over there. No, I had a hairball.

• 1:03:39Speaker 07

  Elsa's Lorraine, so somewhere in between.

• 1:03:41Ed Zitron?

  Right. And here we go. I try not to be a catty bitch, other than every minute of this show. And I must say that I was seeing, I definitely saw this and there was a moment I was like, oh man, another podcast recording out of here, big one too. I should go and check out what they're doing. Before the Verge podcast, and by the way, you can only see the Vergecast live if you have a Delta Sky Miles membership.

• 1:04:09Speaker 05

  I did get invited.

• 1:04:09Ed Zitron?

  And it features a pre podcast panel discussion about the future of travel between The Verge and Delta's Dwight James, SVP Customer Engagement and Loyalty and CEO, Delta Vacations. Probably could have not fucked up the words there if I wanted to make fun of it, but I just want to say, I get a lot of shit on my ads for this show. I didn't do a single ad break as well, so you're gonna be really pissed with me. I will never interview someone from Delta Airlines unless it's the CEO and I'm screaming at them.

• 1:04:37Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:04:38Ed Zitron?

  That, and also, what the fuck does that have to do with tech? But also, I understand we've got to get money, honey, but like, Jesus Christ, that's your big...

• 1:04:45Speaker 05

  The future of travel, unless it's no more Boeing planes, cigarettes on the plane, and bigger seats, I don't want to hear it.

• 1:04:53Ed Zitron?

  But also...

• 1:04:54Speaker 07

  No, seriously.

• 1:04:56Speaker 05

  Because what is it gonna be? We recalibrated the formula for Sky Miles.

• 1:05:00Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, we...

• 1:05:01Speaker 06

  We changed the app.

• 1:05:02Ed Zitron?

  We have made it harder to get Sky Miles status.

• 1:05:06Speaker 06

  Smart planes.

• 1:05:07Speaker 05

  Yeah, smart planes.

• 1:05:08Speaker 06

  They finally integrated AI.

• 1:05:09Speaker 07

  All the planes are on the blockchain.

• 1:05:11Ed Zitron?

  Anyway, I think you've had a much better experience with a health physicist and a priest. So I think that that's my choice. So more members of the clergy and more safety professionals, I think. That's what makes a podcast...

• 1:05:25Speaker 06

  Generally, more safety professionals is not what anyone wants to see, because we apparently ruin fun. Fun, which is illegal.

• 1:05:32Speaker 07

  That as well, sometimes, apparently.

• 1:05:34Ed Zitron?

  So, as we, as we close out this part of the episode, and we'll of course be back shortly after this, Phil, where can people find you?

• 1:05:41Speaker 05

  You can find me at Blue Sky, at Funranium, and you can find my blog, funraniumlabs.com.

• 1:05:47Ed Zitron?

  Yes, and he makes a special kind of coffee.

• 1:05:50Speaker 05

  Oh, yes.

• 1:05:50Ed Zitron?

  And if you look on Blue Sky, because I cannot advertise things on here, I will have a link for you at some point, that will do something. I'm not even gonna say what it is. Ed Ongraso Jr., now that I cut you off at the beginning without saying what you did, what do you do?

• 1:06:03Speaker 05

  I'm a, I'm a tech writer, a finance writer, a labor writer, an editor, a shit poster, a son.

• 1:06:16Ed Zitron?

  As the son of a mother.

• 1:06:17Speaker 05

  Yeah, I'm a son of a mother and the father of cats.

• 1:06:21Speaker 06

  Were you baby monitored?

• 1:06:22Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:06:23Ed Zitron?

  You have yet to give a link.

• 1:06:26Speaker 05

  That's true. I thought you were gonna say to my cats and I was like, I don't, they're, they're on my profiles. Big Black Jacobin on Blue Sky and Twitter.

• 1:06:36Ed Zitron?

  X the everything app.

• 1:06:37Speaker 05

  That too. And This Machine Kills is the podcast where we yap about the political economy of tech. And the Tech Bubble is my newsletter where I yap about tech also.

• 1:06:48Ed Zitron?

  Where can they find that?

• 1:06:50Speaker 05

  Techbubble.substack.com.

• 1:06:52Ed Zitron?

  Roger that. And Father Gabriel Mosher? Mosher?

• 1:06:56Speaker 07

  Yeah, Mosher. Yeah, I mean, these days, these days, just on all the social medias and the same, same thing.

• 1:07:02Ed Zitron?

  You do not, I fucking, every, none of these people know their links. Your name is like Lukey something. Like, they type in your name, it doesn't come up sometimes.

• 1:07:12Speaker 07

  L U K E I four six five five. That's on everything, except for Blue Sky. On Blue Sky, it's 8way.

• 1:07:18Ed Zitron?

  Well, thank God you specified that before I said anything.

• 1:07:22Speaker 07

  Yeah, no, or you can just put in, like, if you just search Gabriel Mosher.

• 1:07:26Ed Zitron?

  Just type priest.

• 1:07:27Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:07:27Ed Zitron?

  Into Google.

• 1:07:28Speaker 07

  Then I'm there.

• 1:07:29Ed Zitron?

  Well, we will be right back after these amazing products. You're gonna hear about these products. They're so beautiful. I personally love them all. They're definitely not going to immediately embarrass me in a way that every week I get one email from one guy who's like,

• 1:07:46Ed Zitron?

  this does not match up with the things you were saying.

• 1:07:49Speaker 06

  We're here to embarrass you, Ed. Don't worry.

• 1:07:51Ed Zitron?

  We, did you know?

• 1:07:53Speaker 05

  They write those emails with one hand.

• 1:07:55Ed Zitron?

  A commercial that came on that was not in line with your beliefs.

• 1:08:00Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:08:01Ed Zitron?

  What do you think?

• 1:08:02Speaker 05

  No, I'm not sure, Mr. Red.

• 1:08:04Ed Zitron?

  And every time I respond with the same thing, which is, I bet you'd love it if I died.

• 1:08:09Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:08:10Ed Zitron?

  And then I hit send. Anyway, the next thing that comes up, maybe buy it.

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• 1:10:28Ed Zitron?

  And we're back and we've replaced some of the people. We've got Gare Davis and of course Robert Evans from It Could Happen Here and they are just glowing from their time on the floor.

• 1:10:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm happy to be here. I'm kind of concerned that the former panelists you took out and forced into a Gulag outside of Novgorod. Like that, that seems a little extreme, Ed, but I don't want to question.

• 1:10:48Ed Zitron?

  That's your business.

• 1:10:50Speaker 02

  This is your show.

• 1:10:50Ed Zitron?

  That's show business.

• 1:10:51Speaker 02

  I'm glad you made the cut, Ed.

• 1:10:54Speaker 05

  Other Ed.

• 1:10:55Ed Zitron?

  You know?

• 1:10:56Speaker 05

  We have to have two Eds at least.

• 1:10:59Ed Zitron?

  One of the chosen.

• 1:11:00Speaker 02

  Always two there are, a learner and a master.

• 1:11:02Ed Zitron?

  One to crave the mic. Oh, God.

• 1:11:08Speaker 05

  And one to destroy it.

• 1:11:09Ed Zitron?

  I'm gonna be thinking about that all evening now. That's great. So, we were previously talking about the Linda Iaccarino speech.

• 1:11:17Speaker 02

  Oh, my God.

• 1:11:18Ed Zitron?

  And I did not know that Gare was also there. Gare, what was your experience of the, uh, the matriarch of social media?

• 1:11:25Speaker 02

  The first time there was applause was when she mentioned Doge. The second time was the rape gangs. So incredible vibes happening. Audiences love Doge and rape gangs, you know?

• 1:11:38Ed Zitron?

  But what's in, so what specifically was this rape gang thing? I should know about things that happened in England, but I've been running from England my whole life.

• 1:11:46Speaker 02

  Well, there was like a kind of a bit of a, bit of a pogrom over the, earlier last year over, over the idea that there were like migrants were running rape gangs. And so people started like, were like right wing riots in several cities, including like a large.

• 1:12:02Ed Zitron?

  Sorry, this was the thing that actually fucking caused that?

• 1:12:05Speaker 02

  Well, this was, no, no, this didn't cause that, but this is an extension. This is trying to keep it going.

• 1:12:10Ed Zitron?

  Yeah. Oh, sorry. I meant it.

• 1:12:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:12:13Ed Zitron?

  That right wing shitstorm was what caused the riots?

• 1:12:16Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:12:17Ed Zitron?

  Okay, great. Cause I knew the riots were happening and then, uh, got very upset with the amount of racism that England had newly created, considering it's England and has quite a lot already.

• 1:12:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:12:28Ed Zitron?

  Oh, God. Anyway, so that was, that got applause.

• 1:12:31Speaker 06

  Yeah, talking about that and how important it is on X to protect children and as a mother is very, it's especially important.

• 1:12:42Speaker 05

  So, what would we do without posting?

• 1:12:45Speaker 06

  We need more, more posting to save the children.

• 1:12:47Ed Zitron?

  I mean, that I agree with, just the posting part, though. All things are possible through posting.

• 1:12:51Speaker 02

  I mean, one of the last times I was on X, the everything app, I saw a deep fake porn of an 18 year old. Uh, so, yeah, I really, I can, I really do feel what she says.

• 1:13:01Ed Zitron?

  We are very, is deeply committed to protecting children.

• 1:13:04Speaker 06

  The last time I spent a decent amount of time on X, it was after a teenager did a mass shooting and I had to talk to all of their other teen friend Nazis who are on X and they use-

• 1:13:14Speaker 02

  The everything app.

• 1:13:15Speaker 06

  The everything app and they use X to communicate.

• 1:13:17Ed Zitron?

  And that's where you find them.

• 1:13:18Speaker 06

  A whole bunch of teenage Nazis who had all just like talked, like talked to each other and share phrenology memes.

• 1:13:24Speaker 05

  Oh, is this, um, yeah. What's that girl's name? The like, there's like some Hitler.

• 1:13:30Ed Zitron?

  They're not naming them on the podcast.

• 1:13:31Speaker 06

  Radfem Hitler.

• 1:13:32Speaker 05

  Radfem Hitler.

• 1:13:33Ed Zitron?

  Say the name on the podcast.

• 1:13:36Speaker 02

  One of my favorite podcasts, to be honest. We're having her on the show very, very soon to talk about the other Hitler.

• 1:13:41Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:13:41Speaker 02

  I'm calling it the two Hitlers.

• 1:13:43Speaker 05

  When I seen that name, I was like, I can't believe this exists. Of course this exists.

• 1:13:47Ed Zitron?

  Well, I love talking about technology. Um, yeah. So that was, but that, what was the context for the Doge thing as well? Was it just the idea of firing people?

• 1:13:57Speaker 06

  No, it was just talking about like how important X will be as Elon and Vivek Ramaswamy focuses on Doge in the next year.

• 1:14:07Ed Zitron?

  For a government program.

• 1:14:08Speaker 06

  So you'd be like, you know, well, it's a fake, a fake government.

• 1:14:10Ed Zitron?

  It's not part of the government. Like a consultancy service that pretends to be a government program.

• 1:14:15Speaker 06

  Yes, but like it was basically a question about like, how much will Elon be using like X to like, you know, get like people like, how much will he be getting like users to give suggestions for things?

• 1:14:27Speaker 07

  To cut, you know, just like

• 1:14:28Ed Zitron?

  Oh, God.

• 1:14:28Speaker 07

  Open source government regulation.

• 1:14:30Ed Zitron?

  Sure. I mean, no, open source works.

• 1:14:33Speaker 07

  Mm hmm. Yeah, but yes, but yes.

• 1:14:35Speaker 02

  Look, think about Linux, right?

• 1:14:37Ed Zitron?

  Oh.

• 1:14:38Speaker 02

  Stable operating system run by a guy who's only committed a few sex crimes.

• 1:14:43Ed Zitron?

  Right.

• 1:14:43Speaker 02

  Um, we all love Linux. Why shouldn't the government be that way? It's already run by guys who commit sex crimes.

• 1:14:49Ed Zitron?

  Right.

• 1:14:49Speaker 02

  Match made in heaven.

• 1:14:50Speaker 07

  And it was crazy.

• 1:14:52Speaker 02

  I'm not trying to shit on Linux.

• 1:14:53Ed Zitron?

  Oh, I am. Okay. Much like Linux, it's way more complicated than they describe it as.

• 1:14:59Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:14:59Ed Zitron?

  And and in the end, and in the end, it only works for a few people and they can barely explain why.

• 1:15:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, but their computers are unhackable because honestly, if you're if you're hacking shit, nobody, nobody needs that kind of hassle.

• 1:15:11Ed Zitron?

  That's really good. I'm glad you added that bit because we've now said several things that Linux fans are gonna email me about.

• 1:15:18Speaker 02

  It's the most secure way to do things. The same way that inventing your own language and losing the ability to communicate with the rest of the world is the most efficient way to avoid getting spied on.

• 1:15:28Speaker 07

  Right.

• 1:15:28Ed Zitron?

  Kind of like trying to use another app on Linux.

• 1:15:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, exactly.

• 1:15:33Ed Zitron?

  I said something about Linux, like I I wrote this newsletter and turned into a script as well, where I talked about, and I I talked about all sorts of things and the rot within tech. And I quote tweeted it at one, quote posted it on Blue Sky, I should say, and I said, just to be clear, stop recommending me Linux. Normal people don't use Linux. And it was like 50% hardcore Linux people being like, you're completely right, man. Like, this shit's, this shit's bonkers. And 50% being like, I will fucking kill you. I will actually.

• 1:16:04Speaker 02

  It is. There's no, Linux guys are exactly the same as like Norse pagans in the modern world, where half of them are like the chillest, like, like, and violently anti racist, will literally fucking die to like fight a Nazi. And half of them are just the absolute fascist, evil people, like, like the vile scum.

• 1:16:26Ed Zitron?

  So good. We're also calling them that.

• 1:16:28Speaker 02

  Linux people are either will at the drop of the hat, like, like, put down everything in order to like help you secure your phone to stop the FBI from getting in. And half people whose primary goal in life is to reform the age of consent to be lower.

• 1:16:42Ed Zitron?

  Just to be clear, this is Robert saying these things, Linux fans. I, please, that was like two fucking weeks.

• 1:16:49Speaker 02

  I assume all the people listening to this are the first kind of Linux.

• 1:16:52Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, I, that's what I'm saying. They all are. Mm hmm. Yeah, great. They're gonna get 100 emails.

• 1:17:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:17:01Ed Zitron?

  So, but otherwise, so there was no applause at all during this otherwise?

• 1:17:05Speaker 06

  It was just for the mention of Doge and then for the rape gangs.

• 1:17:10Ed Zitron?

  Otherwise, she just kind of.

• 1:17:11Speaker 06

  They were just talking for 30 minutes. And like, the biggest point of of this discussion was basically laying out how in tandem X and

• 1:17:20Speaker 02

  The everything app.

• 1:17:21Speaker 06

  And and the new Trump administration are gonna function as basically like trying to view these things as like as like symbiotic tools.

• 1:17:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's kind of like a Der Stürmer type deal, right? Like, the nice thing about it being a Der Stürmer deal is we all know what happened to the guy who ran Der Stürmer.

• 1:17:41Ed Zitron?

  I don't, but.

• 1:17:42Speaker 02

  Oh, he got hung by a drunk hangman that the US appointed because we didn't care who did the job, who made extra sure that it took a long time. Julius Stryker was kicking up there for a minute. So we got something to look forward to.

• 1:17:55Ed Zitron?

  That's one of the funniest things I've heard all day. Thank you for sharing that anecdote. I put a big smile on my face.

• 1:18:02Ed Zitron?

  Oh, God.

• 1:18:03Speaker 06

  Did you talk about the Zuckerberg fact checking thing?

• 1:18:06Ed Zitron?

  We can talk about it again because as I was saying to Ed earlier, it is just Facebook slopping up. Like, this is the shit they've always done. This is just them fucking instead of flushing the toilet, just pushing it into the kitchen. Like I said, everyone's like, oh, it's for Donald Trump. No, he just does an excuse now. He knows laws won't or like morals will no longer be enforced. And Facebook already fucking sucked. I can't wait to see how much worse it gets.

• 1:18:31Speaker 02

  My Facebook feed right now is fully 30, 40% of it is. Yeah, like, there's like a number of people that I used to know that the only way I have of like checking in with them is Facebook. I don't use it regularly, but every time I log in, a full third of my feed is war reenactors who are dressed as always dressed as members of the Voth and SS and AI generated pictures of the Voth and SS. And all of the comments are, those brave boys, those poor boys, they were just trying to defend hundreds of them, hundreds of them, hundreds of them. It's bleak.

• 1:19:03Ed Zitron?

  I get like. Pitching and lifting things and like boxing.

• 1:19:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, maybe this tells us more just about Robert, like your own interests.

• 1:19:11Ed Zitron?

  Mine's just like all workout things.

• 1:19:13Speaker 02

  I didn't read more than like seven or eight books about the Imperial German Army last year. So like, it's not like I'm that into the German, German military history, Garrison. This might just be the Facebook tracking is coming to bed, is coming to bite you all of. I do have the reading habits that are like, the only other people with my reading habits are very problematic. Yes.

• 1:19:31Ed Zitron?

  Magician versus slow mo camera.

• 1:19:33Speaker 02

  Ooh, that, that one sounds good.

• 1:19:35Ed Zitron?

  Actually, this one's really good. It's kind of just free photo editing group. And it's just from December 31st, 2024, and it is like a week later. And it's just like a very grainy picture of a woman saying, is it possible to make this fuzzy photo sharp?

• 1:19:50Speaker 02

  It is now with the power of AI. Enhance. Yeah.

• 1:19:54Ed Zitron?

  The legacy of nerd Hulk Hogan returns to WWE.

• 1:19:57Speaker 02

  A crude AI cartoon of a soldier with neither, both of his legs kind of melting off into a puddle that says, why don't pictures like this ever trend? I don't get any of the AI slop.

• 1:20:07Speaker 05

  Yeah, this is like what I got.

• 1:20:09Speaker 02

  Boomer slop, so much boomer slop. Yeah. I don't get any of that.

• 1:20:13Speaker 05

  Only women can understand. Not married yet, and it's a picture of a tomato.

• 1:20:17Speaker 02

  Uh huh.

• 1:20:18Speaker 05

  And then got married and it's a picture of a watermelon.

• 1:20:20Speaker 02

  A, a lot of pictures of like kids crying, um, and it's, it's with like, with like sad captions about how Kamala Harris is making kids cry.

• 1:20:29Speaker 05

  Okay, like if you agree.

• 1:20:30Speaker 02

  And like, like literally every like fifth post is some sort of picture with, why don't photos like this ever trend? Mm hmm.

• 1:20:36Ed Zitron?

  Oh, my other thing is I've subscribed to a lot of Joker related media.

• 1:20:41Speaker 02

  That makes kind of unsettling, but yeah.

• 1:20:43Ed Zitron?

  No, no, no, no.

• 1:20:44Speaker 02

  You are the smiling man.

• 1:20:45Ed Zitron?

  No, no, no. To explain the Joker meme thing, it's not because I believe in their views. It's that I had a brief two year long anthropological thing I was working on where I found the most insane typos in Joker memes and found this entire part of the global south that is guys who have clearly never watched a single thing with the Joker in it.

• 1:21:04Ed Zitron?

  Putting the most insane and my favorite was a picture of Joaquin Phoenix and it said, would you like to know which W I T C H of them we're liars? And to be clear, that is a Heath Ledger joke quote.

• 1:21:17Speaker 02

  Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah.

• 1:21:18Ed Zitron?

  And that one was just like, I really didn't need much more. I'd found at Summit at Olympus at that point.

• 1:21:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:21:24Ed Zitron?

  But nevertheless.

• 1:21:25Speaker 02

  Free Dan, free Dan, get him out.

• 1:21:28Ed Zitron?

  The thing that you get now on here is just apparently luxury hotels and now like some Google Maps group. What is this fucking experience? What is Facebook for anymore? What is this app?

• 1:21:38Speaker 02

  It's, it's all, I mean, the everything app.

• 1:21:40Ed Zitron?

  Yeah. No, it actually is the everything app. This is actually.

• 1:21:44Speaker 02

  It actually does have everything now.

• 1:21:45Ed Zitron?

  This might really piss off Elon Musk.

• 1:21:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:21:48Speaker 05

  If they can't meta the everything app.

• 1:21:49Ed Zitron?

  No, if Mark Zuckerberg just says, yeah, with the everything app, he should do that just to see what.

• 1:21:53Speaker 02

  If he gets banking, working on Facebook before Twitter, that would be so funny.

• 1:21:57Ed Zitron?

  They already got payments.

• 1:21:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, I guess, yeah. Oh, yeah. Who, who would you rather trust with your money than Facebook?

• 1:22:05Ed Zitron?

  I mean, Linda Yaccarino. I mean, I thought we all agreed.

• 1:22:09Speaker 02

  I, I, I went to so many panels today and half of them sounded uh like the Stand Up Solutions comedy sketch.

• 1:22:16Ed Zitron?

  Please tell, tell me some of these wonderful things.

• 1:22:18Speaker 02

  You're gonna have to explain that joke too, Garrus. Oh, no, Stand Up Solutions is just a, is a comedy standup routine released, I think, earlier this year uh by a really good comedian who I cannot.

• 1:22:28Ed Zitron?

  Connor O'Malley?

• 1:22:29Speaker 02

  Connor O'Malley.

• 1:22:30Ed Zitron?

  Okay, you should all watch it because it's very insane.

• 1:22:33Speaker 02

  And it's also exactly the vibe of about half of, half of the C A S panels.

• 1:22:38Speaker 05

  Vegas?

• 1:22:38Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, it's him.

• 1:22:39Speaker 05

  And he, and he.

• 1:22:40Ed Zitron?

  It's a PowerPoint presentation of completely made up insane shit by Connor O'Malley.

• 1:22:44Speaker 02

  It's how, it's how you can make an AI, it's how you can buy an AI that does standup comedy.

• 1:22:49Ed Zitron?

  Yes.

• 1:22:50Speaker 02

  Um.

• 1:22:50Ed Zitron?

  And this is what the things are like.

• 1:22:52Speaker 02

  And this is what everything is. I mean, the first, the first panel I went to today, I heard the phrase like augmentation, not replacement, probably about 10 times. I've heard that a lot. Um, a lot about keeping.

• 1:23:01Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, that's what the plastic surgeon was telling me.

• 1:23:04Speaker 02

  There was a lot of fear in the AI panels from people scared of how much.

• 1:23:09Speaker 06

  Like backlash there is to AI tools and

• 1:23:12Ed Zitron?

  That's actually fascinating.

• 1:23:13Speaker 06

  Trying to like find ways to like trick audiences into enjoying or like consuming AI slop. Like a lot of it was about that. Um, I don't like, like, like a phrase one of the panelists used was, uh, trying to solve the AI ick problem. Like, like there's like, there's like an ick around AI.

• 1:23:32Ed Zitron?

  We have this problem. It fucking sucks.

• 1:23:34Speaker 02

  And nobody wants to use it.

• 1:23:36Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, it looks bad and they hate it.

• 1:23:38Speaker 06

  They had someone from Meta at, at this panel and they talked about how a few days ago, uh, Instagram announced they would be having like AI, AI generated, like fake profiles. People that don't exist. And there was so much backlash, uh, like based on this that they, that they took it away. But they explained it by saying, actually, the market just isn't ready yet.

• 1:23:55Ed Zitron?

  Right. This isn't Back to the Future.

• 1:23:57Speaker 06

  It's not, it's not, this is a terrible idea. It's that the market's not ready yet.

• 1:24:02Speaker 02

  There are certain issues where like, yeah, I do want to specifically hear it from like a, a queer woman of color who's a mother in New York City, right? There's a number of issues.

• 1:24:10Ed Zitron?

  Yes, but an actual one.

• 1:24:11Speaker 02

  But, but a person. Yeah. Like, I don't, I don't need a, an AI that admits it was coded by some white ladies in the bay pretending to be this person.

• 1:24:20Ed Zitron?

  It's that like the pigs are yet, the, the pigs have not been suppressed enough. We've not, we've not sedated the pigs enough. Yeah. Get the hogs ready for the slop. And it really is.

• 1:24:31Speaker 06

  Another phrase they use is like, is like AI, like, like, um, improvements will all be based around consumer acceptance. It's like, we have all the tech, but we have to, but we have to trick people into actually liking it now.

• 1:24:43Ed Zitron?

  They're looking for is consent.

• 1:24:44Speaker 02

  There's a lot of attitude, there's a lot of vibe from them that is very much like a, like, like a dude who's trying to pressure someone into sex and is like.

• 1:24:55Speaker 02

  I can like massage this into like them being okay enough with it, right?

• 1:24:59Ed Zitron?

  I can get him to agree to this.

• 1:25:01Speaker 02

  Yeah. It's, it's this very, we're, we're in a very interesting position with this fight where it's still recent enough. Every, like everyone who is trying to push the, the AI line remembers NFTs and the metaverse going down in flames. And how unified and effective the backlash against them. was. Now, neither of those ever had any actual technology underlying.

• 1:25:23Ed Zitron?

  Or really.

• 1:25:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, there's some stuff you can call metaverse.

• 1:25:26Ed Zitron?

  Any consumer adoption as well.

• 1:25:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, there was no real technology that was in any way impressive and there was no real user hunger. There's user hunger for some of the things AI does.

• 1:25:37Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, totally.

• 1:25:38Speaker 02

  And there's real technology there. But there's also a backlash that's very similar to the backlash for those two things. And they see that and they're very, they're scared of it because they know it is a threat to, because of how much, how, they, they, they have to keep up momentum. If momentum drops at any point, a lot of these companies, like obviously the tech won't go away, but a lot of these companies.

• 1:26:00Ed Zitron?

  Well, they're not getting a series A.

• 1:26:01Speaker 02

  Like, yeah, exactly. And so they're scared of that. And, and that's a really interesting position to be in because it shows that, number one, the, the fight is still winnable.

• 1:26:10Speaker 06

  Yes, totally.

• 1:26:11Speaker 02

  Talking about it this way.

• 1:26:12Ed Zitron?

  And that's what I've been saying.

• 1:26:14Speaker 06

  Like the same way that we were able to beat NFTs and beat the metaverse to some degree. Like that is, this is going to be a longer battle than those, but like it is having an impact. You can like even look at like a, like Chaperone posted something about like AI generated images that really received a lot of backlash. And like people and like ad agencies are like looking at this. Um, and they're trying to figure out a few ways to kind of navigate it. A few of the other panels I went to specifically about like how to market stuff to Gen Z was like talking about like the importance of like, like authentic brands.

• 1:26:44Ed Zitron?

  Saying on fleek.

• 1:26:45Speaker 06

  Gen Z uh, is, is, is so vested, is so vested in like authenticity. Um, and if you're going to partner with influencers who use AI, it has to have that authentic angle.

• 1:26:55Ed Zitron?

  So what's funny about the influencer thing that I don't think companies realize is they think every influencer is this pliant brain who will do anything for vacation and there are an alarming amount of them that will. What they don't realize is that there are many of them that once they reach a certain scale go, wait a fucking minute. I don't have to go to the LG pain maze. I don't have to, to ride a horse to the LG compound to see the secret fridge.

• 1:27:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:27:21Ed Zitron?

  And then they become angry and they crush them. Steven from Gamer's Nexus is my favorite. He's never done access. He does. Steven, if you're listening to this, please come on my fucking show. I love you.

• 1:27:31Speaker 02

  I don't know who you are, Steven, but.

• 1:27:33Ed Zitron?

  Gamer's Nexus, probably the single most YouTube important, the single most YouTube, Jesus. Single most important YouTube in pretty much processes and chips. There are some others as well, but like Steven's done this credible thing. And it's mostly just him standing, looking exhausted over a table. Just ripping these fucking companies to shreds or going to their offices and be like, hey, hey, Steve from Gamer's Nexus. Hey, what you doing? Like British politician style. I don't think they realize that there are so many influencers like that out there. Coffey Zilla. Yeah, he's a fucking beast.

• 1:28:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, especially considering what I think is so interesting about him is that he is, he is into in speaking to this group of people who are profoundly anti-media and like kind of chatty.

• 1:28:12Ed Zitron?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:12Speaker 02

  Like that's a lot, but he's also, he does very good journalism.

• 1:28:16Ed Zitron?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:17Speaker 02

  Within that space, like, and really has done more than almost anyone to, to, to kill specific kinds of cons.

• 1:28:24Ed Zitron?

  Did a, did a podcast with me, rabbit reporting, no big deal. Um, but it's funny as well because they're definitely thinking that, oh yeah, we'll get these stupid fucking Gen Z kids and these idiot influencers. And Gen Z, as you all know, yeah, being, you're, you're Gen Z?

• 1:28:40Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:28:41Ed Zitron?

  I'm thirty-eight years old and I sound a hundred.

• 1:28:43Speaker 05

  What's the age for?

• 1:28:44Ed Zitron?

  I do not know.

• 1:28:45Speaker 02

  It's, at this point, it's like fifteen to twenty-seven or twenty-eight.

• 1:28:49Ed Zitron?

  No.

• 1:28:50Speaker 02

  It depends. Uh, usually born. Twenty, twenty-seven are, are, are cusps. They're cuspers. If you're born between nineteen ninety-seven and around two thousand twelve.

• 1:28:59Speaker 05

  Oh, no, I'm a millennial.

• 1:29:00Speaker 02

  Is usually the Gen Z bracket. I feel like. You are, you are a young. Millennial, yeah. Yeah. If you, if your knees make a sound when you stand up, you're, you're a millennial or older.

• 1:29:10Ed Zitron?

  I do, yeah. Yeah, every time I do yoga, my knee makes a noise like a pimball machine breaking.

• 1:29:15Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 1:29:15Ed Zitron?

  That doctor said it's great.

• 1:29:16Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 1:29:17Ed Zitron?

  Um, but it's funny because what they don't realize is as legacy media dies, yeah, you're gonna have a bunch of insane influencers. Those insane influencers will be the ones that actually have a genuine animus with the LG fridge.

• 1:29:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:29:28Ed Zitron?

  The fridge guy is eventually going to turn on the fridge manufacturers. And the fridge guy will bring them great pain as he reviews the fridge with alarming accuracy. And I think that that, they don't realize that that is what will come to replace some of legacy media. It's going to be posters.

• 1:29:44Speaker 02

  It's gonna be people of no vested interest in the politess that they can expect from like legacy media, right?

• 1:29:51Ed Zitron?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:52Speaker 02

  But there's no, there's no space in like YouTube review guys or TikTok guys for Walt Mossberg. Nobody, nobody wants a dude like that. You want somebody who's snarky and got an angle and funny. And it's just easier to rip up a lot of these shitty AI products to, to like, than it is to fucking pump them up.

• 1:30:13Ed Zitron?

  And I will tell you something, running a PR firm, not a single fucking PR person for the most part can prepare you for that.

• 1:30:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:30:21Ed Zitron?

  The only thing that can prepare you is, well, actually deposition training.

• 1:30:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:30:25Ed Zitron?

  You get a lawyer to train you, that will do you far more good with media training.

• 1:30:29Speaker 05

  Having, you know, growing up roasting people that might help you a little bit.

• 1:30:32Ed Zitron?

  A little bit, but you also have to realize that the truth is generally useful. And if you're trying to hide that.

• 1:30:37Speaker 05

  That's important.

• 1:30:38Ed Zitron?

  An influencer will really get around that.

• 1:30:40Speaker 02

  And what I think is so important to get back on the topic of like, how do we win this fight against AI? Sloppification of everything beautiful in the human spirit. This is not a political fight. And, and that's like, you, the guys like Coffeezilla on it, right? Like this is a, a lot of people, when they look at this shit and when they consider like the art and the actors and musicians being replaced. So that like some fucking Bay Area assholes like can. Hoover up even more money and like destroy the ability of like the human mind to to represent itself. That's not a political issue and there is, I think, a immense amount of potential.

• 1:31:23Speaker 02

  Still to get a lot of people together and to fucking strangle this thing in its cradle. Because we all, we all have this kind of visceral feeling that it's wrong. Yeah, this revulsion. That revulsion is what we need to lean into.

• 1:31:39Speaker 06

  The AI ick.

• 1:31:40Speaker 02

  The AI ick.

• 1:31:41Speaker 06

  They they simply don't have the thing that matters most was that like, which is its ability to make like good compelling stuff. And this is something that this is something like they actually know. I'm I'm gonna read something about something one of the guys on the panel from Adobe was talking about. He was talking about how when you're making AI content specifically like targeted towards specific people. Like a personalized content is always like the most like impactful. And there's three parts that are needed to create a personalized content pipeline. You need data, you need you need like a journey to take the person on and you need the content itself. And and we need content at scale that is highly personalized. And he said that we're good at the first two parts.

• 1:32:25Speaker 06

  The data and the journeys and I would I would argue about the journeys part. But he he said now we just have to improve the actual content. It's like they know, they know the content's bad. Like, yeah, that's the thing we have to still actually like figure out. It's like how to like turn data into like a good content. And that's that's still the thing that they're really struggling to do.

• 1:32:46Ed Zitron?

  And it also looks the same as it did like a year ago.

• 1:32:48Speaker 06

  It does look the same as it did a year ago.

• 1:32:50Speaker 02

  There's so much talk and and finally on what, because I I listened to like the first two tech and Holly AI and Hollywood panels I listened to. There were a lot of talk about like, we just need to be able to like. If we can read people's brains while they're watching stuff, we can see how they're reacting and then we can alter like.

• 1:33:07Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:33:08Speaker 02

  The the the content that they're taking in.

• 1:33:10Speaker 06

  That Meta was talking about.

• 1:33:11Speaker 02

  The ending or whatever to to really make it more engaging. And it was fine. Finally, somebody in that in the fourth panel, when it was actually like people who write and stuff on it was like, people don't want that. People don't people what like we consistently see. And if you look at the shit that went huge last year, the most profitable movies last year was the result of two movies that were the result of huge amounts of human effort, the Barbie movie and the Oppenheimer movie. Say what you will about both of those movies.

• 1:33:38Ed Zitron?

  Me for also.

• 1:33:39Speaker 02

  I mean, I'm sure that one made some money, but like.

• 1:33:41Ed Zitron?

  It's still extremely hard work from 3D animators. However, you feel about those disgusting creatures, the minions.

• 1:33:47Speaker 02

  And more than anything, like the Barbenheimer thing was like certainly the most significant single movie trend last year. And that was the result of people wanting a shared experience.

• 1:33:57Ed Zitron?

  And a very specific aesthetic in those cases, not something that changes every frame.

• 1:34:02Speaker 02

  Not not wanting to. Yeah, not wanting to like go, hey, did you see that movie last night? Well, I saw the version that was made for me. What was yours? Yeah.

• 1:34:08Speaker 06

  People don't want personalized content. I don't want AI music generated for me. I want music that I can share and that's in some kind of cultural conversation with other people who also enjoy music, who I can talk to like that about and like compare it.

• 1:34:23Speaker 02

  Yeah. What do you think of that speech at the end of The Great Dictator? Well, when I watched The Great Dictator, Charlie Chaplin just turned to the screen and said, everything's good. Keep doing what you're doing.

• 1:34:33Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, my one Nick Fury walked out and I invited him to the Avengers.

• 1:34:38Speaker 06

  This is this is literally the future that these people want.

• 1:34:40Ed Zitron?

  Travis Kelsey and Mr. Beast and everything.

• 1:34:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, Mr. Beast told me I look like Iron Man.

• 1:34:46Speaker 05

  He said, you can be president too when you grow up.

• 1:34:49Speaker 06

  Someone from Meta who works in like their hyperreality division was talking about how like they can start using AI and the metaverse.

• 1:34:56Speaker 02

  What is the hyperreality?

• 1:34:58Speaker 06

  Let's say that you're watching an immersive live concert, something that me and all my friends do, by the way.

• 1:35:03Ed Zitron?

  Right, all the time. Me and me too.

• 1:35:05Speaker 02

  Why would you want to go to a real concert?

• 1:35:07Speaker 06

  Using using MR mixed reality and and the AI can sense your excitement and it can personalize your experience based on your favorite song or artist. So an AI Taylor Swift near the end of the song can like come down from the stage and like and like dance with you.

• 1:35:24Ed Zitron?

  Me the fuck out.

• 1:35:25Speaker 02

  Or they can change the song based on what your favorite songs are. So it's using AI and the metaverse to create ultra personalized experiences.

• 1:35:34Ed Zitron?

  I have never done worse than we, but can you even imagine this while stoned? That would be horrifying. It's following your emotions.

• 1:35:40Speaker 02

  That actually does sound like a good time.

• 1:35:42Ed Zitron?

  No, it sounds like the idea of like stoned brain being like, well, this is what I know. This is what.

• 1:35:47Speaker 02

  Me and Atticus Rocks are gonna get down in the metaverse.

• 1:35:50Speaker 05

  Yeah, we're gonna candy flip in the main and the metaverse.

• 1:35:53Speaker 02

  You get it. You get it.

• 1:35:55Ed Zitron?

  I don't know what this is. I don't listen to.

• 1:35:57Speaker 02

  I would rather play a game of spec ops the line with Taylor Swift. Oh my. See her contemplate like the necessity of war crimes.

• 1:36:05Speaker 05

  You're Taylor Swift the whole time.

• 1:36:08Speaker 02

  Shoot that white phosphorus, Swift. Yeah, Taylor Swift. I want to watch AI Taylor Swift.

• 1:36:13Speaker 05

  Look at what you made me do, Nick Jonas.

• 1:36:14Speaker 02

  Using Willie Peet on a stool in Northern Iraq. Travis Kelsey can't save you. You gotta shoot those kids. You gotta shoot those kids.

• 1:36:20Speaker 05

  They're gonna turn into Swifties.

• 1:36:22Speaker 02

  This is a single Taylor. No one else. Nobody else was in that fucking bunker with us. No one else can understand what we had to do. And then you light your AI cigarette and you get your little hit of AI nicotine. Yeah.

• 1:36:32Ed Zitron?

  Well, thank fuck there's not a more crazed fan base than Linux people.

• 1:36:37Ed Zitron?

  I'm gonna get killed.

• 1:36:38Speaker 05

  Doesn't everybody want to go to Metaverse Fallujah? I mean, come on.

• 1:36:42Speaker 02

  Meta Fallujah. That's.

• 1:36:44Ed Zitron?

  Meta Fallujah or Meta Palooza?

• 1:36:46Speaker 02

  The Fallujah verse. Yeah. But no, it was great.

• 1:36:48Speaker 05

  Cinematic Fallujah universe.

• 1:36:51Speaker 02

  As I was sitting through all these AI panels, I get a text from both Ed and Robert about some breaking news regarding the Tesla truck bombing.

• 1:37:02Speaker 05

  Yeah, that he used chat GPT to plan it.

• 1:37:04Speaker 02

  Sick. First off, Green Beret training is not what it used to be.

• 1:37:09Speaker 05

  Yeah, you should have figured that out.

• 1:37:11Speaker 02

  They're taking us for a ride with whatever we're paying. If they have to use, this guy had to use chat GPT to make a bomb.

• 1:37:17Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:37:18Speaker 02

  My uncle was a Green Beret and I'll tell you one thing. He did not need chat GPT to make an explosive device.

• 1:37:26Ed Zitron?

  Every time I have you on, I'm just, I'm just like texting my lawyer, just, I'm sorry.

• 1:37:35Speaker 02

  Well, what's interesting is he was specifically looking up, as a detonator, he was trying to use at some point Tannerite. And he must have, if he either got a detonator to detonate the Tannerite, but he was looking initially at trying to shoot the Tannerite to detonate it, which would not have allowed him to kill himself. Well, that's, that's the issue. That's why he went with something else. Chad GPT couldn't figure that one out.

• 1:37:57Ed Zitron?

  This might violate our terms and policies. I, yeah.

• 1:38:03Ed Zitron?

  I love doing a show on the podcast about the future. And every fucking conversation I've had, without fail, has been like, everything I've seen is either fake or bad. And I don't even mean this, we get the occasional, oh, you're a pessimist. Motherfucker, bring me some optimism.

• 1:38:20Speaker 02

  Robert showed me one good thing today.

• 1:38:21Ed Zitron?

  Please, please, something. Oh shit, what was it? That's so good.

• 1:38:25Speaker 02

  Oh, the suicide helicopter. Yeah, there's a helicopter that'll kill everybody.

• 1:38:29Ed Zitron?

  Describe.

• 1:38:30Speaker 02

  Imagine if you had a helicopter, but it's two thirds the size of a smart car. And it can drive on city streets, but it has no side or rearview mirrors. All of that's, all of that's a lot of cameras.

• 1:38:41Ed Zitron?

  I'm already sold.

• 1:38:41Speaker 02

  Cameras in this cramped little, and then when you're ready to fly, it's a quadcopter. And you can fly up to 200 meters in the air.

• 1:38:50Ed Zitron?

  Great.

• 1:38:50Speaker 02

  Cause if you're under that, you don't need a pilot's license.

• 1:38:53Ed Zitron?

  Do we have a price on this?

• 1:38:54Speaker 02

  Emphasized to me, under 10 grand.

• 1:38:55Ed Zitron?

  Wow.

• 1:38:56Speaker 02

  So little portable helicopters that you can fly for up to 20 minutes. Wait, wait, wait, 20 minutes? 20 minutes in the air, that's what you get.

• 1:39:06Speaker 02

  What, what happens if you run out of battery? Again, let's, let's say you, a former Green Beret, decide to rent the suicide helicopter. Then you just fill that motherfucker up with fuel. All you need is 10 minutes. As long as you like, you, you tow it up in your truck outside of whatever building you're in a 911. You can't see that. Look, this is never gonna be a real product.

• 1:39:29Ed Zitron?

  This is, this is, I do love, they made like a kamikaze simulator, like that's just.

• 1:39:33Speaker 02

  No, yeah, that is what it is, right? Yeah.

• 1:39:35Ed Zitron?

  I swear to.

• 1:39:36Speaker 02

  You can be your own.

• 1:39:37Ed Zitron?

  I was like, I do genuinely ask the question of, did you see something you like in good faith?

• 1:39:43Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:39:44Ed Zitron?

  Every time, and every time it's just someone being like, no. I mean. You don't wanna dive bomb into the street? I don't. I love committing no crimes. I'm the king of the, the air.

• 1:39:56Speaker 02

  We're calling it the Tora Tora Tora.

• 1:39:59Ed Zitron?

  Oh, God, I've got to wrap this up before I get in any more legal trouble. Okay.

• 1:40:04Speaker 02

  Even the solar powered peltors are not the, but I don't think, I don't think they're the military like gunshot safe ones. No, no, they are. I saw them. What is that? What are you talking about? I saw them too. Peltors are high grade, uh, like adaptive headphones. So like. The ones I saw had like a mic output too. It did have a mic. They look just like my peltors.

• 1:40:27Speaker 02

  They didn't, they didn't have like the indent to wear under a helmet. I think these were like workplace peltors because like peltors make a lot of different models of noise cancelling headphones. And only certain, only certain ones are used for like military or like law enforcement or like gunshot suppressing. But it looked, it looked to me like they were actually the, the peltors that you get where they're not attached to a band. So that you can attach them directly to a helmet and they had instead attached them to a solar band. Maybe, maybe I need to go check on it tomorrow. I have to as well. But those were promising. I talked to him specifically about using it for hunting. Okay, okay, okay.

• 1:41:03Ed Zitron?

  So we found one thing.

• 1:41:04Speaker 02

  It was pretty cool. Like head, like headphones that can suppress loud noises, but allow you to continue to converse while shooting. That charge themselves. So you never need to worry about batteries.

• 1:41:14Ed Zitron?

  How do they charge themselves?

• 1:41:15Speaker 02

  Photovoltaic band. That also can be charged by lights on the inside.

• 1:41:19Ed Zitron?

  That's very cool.

• 1:41:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, that's, that's neat.

• 1:41:21Ed Zitron?

  We found one product, everyone. We can wrap this show up then. Okay, Robert, where can people find you?

• 1:41:26Speaker 02

  People can find me at I write okay on Blue Sky and X the everything app. And then we have a podcast called It Could Happen Here, but we'll be talking more about CES and where the technology industry is going.

• 1:41:40Ed Zitron?

  A very good place. Gare, where can people find you?

• 1:41:42Speaker 02

  Also on It Could Happen Here with Robert Evans and on Twitter, sorry, X and Blue. Guys, at Hungry Bowtie.

• 1:41:52Ed Zitron?

  And Ed, where can we find you?

• 1:41:55Speaker 05

  Big Black Jacobin on Twitter and on Blue Sky and then This Machine Kills and techbubble.substack.com.

• 1:42:03Ed Zitron?

  And you can't find me at the gym, but you find me at the bank. I'm at Zitron. You can find me at Zitron and everything. Yeah, I am.

• 1:42:11Speaker 02

  I'm excited to get you on the show floor, Ed.

• 1:42:12Ed Zitron?

  I can't wait, but I really could.

• 1:42:15Speaker 05

  It's so crazy.

• 1:42:15Ed Zitron?

  I don't want to go. I have not been.

• 1:42:18Speaker 02

  It's downstairs.

• 1:42:19Speaker 05

  Yeah, you do.

• 1:42:20Ed Zitron?

  I have had a lot of.

• 1:42:21Speaker 05

  You do. You want to go.

• 1:42:23Ed Zitron?

  I'm gonna roll in the snow tomorrow.

• 1:42:25Speaker 05

  You're gonna love it.

• 1:42:26Ed Zitron?

  Okay, everyone. Thank you for listening to the wonderful Better Offline. Now you'll hear a really, like, jaunty theme, which Matosowski, our producer, did, and a bunch of stuff that you continue to fucking complain about, me not updating, which only makes me want to leave it.

• 1:42:40Speaker 02

  You should use AI-generated music, like in that great heist video last night. Personalized. Every listener gets a different outro song. Every listener gets a different outro song. They are all Billy Joel's uptown.

• 1:42:51Ed Zitron?

  Can you imagine?

• 1:42:52Speaker 02

  That's the only outro.

• 1:42:54Ed Zitron?

  All right, we're going out now, but just to be clear, like, can you imagine the shit that the people on the forum, on the Reddit, would, "I'm a hundred years old on the forum"? They're on the message boards about me again.

• 1:43:05Speaker 05

  They're emailing me.

• 1:43:06Ed Zitron?

  Anyways, thanks for listening, everyone.

• 1:43:17Ed Zitron?

  Thank you for listening to Better Offline. The editor and composer of the Better Offline theme song is Matosowski. You can check out more of his music and audio projects at matosowski.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.

• 1:43:49Speaker 03

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

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