CES: Google vs. Alexa and the latest 5G delusion

More from CES with The Verge’s Nilay Patel, Dieter Bohn, Dami Lee, and Dan Seifert who talk through the ongoing developments in voice assistant technology and the continuing rivalry between Google Assistant and Amazon’s Alexa. They also discuss a range of gadgets from the showroom floor such as Alienware's Area51m laptop to a laundry-folding robot as well as Verizon’s shots fired at AT&T over their 5G claim. 2:05 - Tim Cook says Apple will “announce new services this year” 8:02 - Google’s plan to take on Alexa: new features, new devices, and a Trojan horse 9:25 - We finally heard Google Assistant work on Sonos speakers 12:01 - Google Assistant’s new interpreter mode can translate conversations — but it’s not magic 15:06 - Google Assistant is coming for your car with new hands-free voice control from Anker and JBL 27:05 - Foldimate’s laundry-folding machine actually works now 31:24 - Wacom’s $649 Cintiq 16 bridges the gap between hobbyists and pros 38:16 - BOCCO emo 42:05 - The Alienware Area-51m is a full-fledged desktop disguised as a laptop 42:23 - Lenovo’s new Yoga S940 is all about its impressive display 49:12 - Verizon says it won’t launch fake 5G icons like AT&T did Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Nilay Patel?

  This episode of The Vergecast is brought to you by the new Microsoft Surface Pro 6. It's light, super fast, and has great battery life, so you can work how you want for as long as you want, wherever work takes you. Get more power and more speed with the new Surface Pro 6.

• 0:16Nilay Patel?

  Hello and welcome to The Vergecast, the flagship podcast of technology. Ooh. Amazing. All of technology. The whole thing. The whole thing. I'm Neil, I'm your friend. I just want you to remember that in your heart. I'm going to challenge you, though, as your friend on this show today. Dieter Bohn is here. I'm your compatriot. I don't like it when Dieter talks.

• 0:37Nilay Patel?

  Dammy Lee is here. Hi, Dammy.

• 0:39Speaker 01

  Hi.

• 0:39Nilay Patel?

  How are you doing?

• 0:40Speaker 01

  I'm good. This is my Vergecast debut.

• 0:42Nilay Patel?

  Is it really?

• 0:42Speaker 01

  It is.

• 0:43Nilay Patel?

  No.

• 0:44Speaker 01

  No, it is. Believe me.

• 0:46Nilay Patel?

  Dammy's a superstar on The Verge. We've hosted, like, the Circuit Breaker show together.

• 0:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 0:50Nilay Patel?

  That's why I didn't think about it.

• 0:51Speaker 01

  I really miss it.

• 0:52Nilay Patel?

  We've done so many shows together.

• 0:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 0:54Nilay Patel?

  And then Dan is here. Hi, Dan.

• 0:55Speaker 02

  I'm here.

• 0:56Nilay Patel?

  You don't get a, you don't get a last name. Dan Seifert is here.

• 0:59Speaker 02

  I am the only Dan on our staff.

• 1:01Nilay Patel?

  That's true. I'm gonna call, Dan, I'm gonna call you out right now and make you uncomfortable. Dan is running our CES coverage.

• 1:06Speaker 01

  He's CES Dad.

• 1:07Nilay Patel?

  He's the dad of CES.

• 1:08Speaker 02

  CES Dad is better. It's because, like, there's actually other people that are running it, but like, I like yell at people to go places.

• 1:16Nilay Patel?

  You're like, Dan 100% reminded me to pee a couple days ago. It's our second episode of The Vergecast at CES. Today, we're gonna talk about the Google Assistant. There's tons of Google News. We're gonna talk about a bunch of wacky gadgets and laptops that came out at CES. And then I'm gonna yell at Dieter about 5G. But a lot of news. So we gotta talk about Google Assistant. Yep. Google made a bunch of news today. There's a million gadgets to talk about, including a bunch of laptops. We've been kind of paying more attention to Creator Tools at CES this year, much like tablets and drawing tools, talk about. And then, of course, Verizon had its keynote today. Five gee. We're at the CEO of Verizon. Is it true? He pronounces it Five gee.

• 1:55Speaker 02

  So technically, maybe it's different than 5G.

• 1:57Speaker 03

  Ooh.

• 1:58Nilay Patel?

  I don't, I think that's just his accent, but there's some stuff to talk about in the 5G universe, which is interesting. But let's start, actually, with Apple one more time, just for a moment.

• 2:10Speaker 03

  Step, okay.

• 2:11Nilay Patel?

  For 30 seconds, I want to talk about Apple. Tim Cook went on TV today, went on CNBC today, talked to Jim Cramer.

• 2:19Speaker 03

  Mad money.

• 2:20Nilay Patel?

  And said conclusively, "Apple will announce new services this year." Tim Cook to Jim Cramer.

• 2:25Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:26Nilay Patel?

  Maybe that's iMessage on Android.

• 2:28Speaker 03

  I don't think it's iMessage.

• 2:29Nilay Patel?

  But given what we talked about yesterday on the show, what we, all the news we've seen, Apple working very hard with TV makers, it is fairly conclusive now that the Apple TV service, which is the next logical service for them to announce, given they've spent billions of dollars

• 2:43Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:44Nilay Patel?

  on content creation for TV. It seems very conclusive that Apple's in the launch of a TV service this year.

• 2:48Speaker 03

  Yep, for sure. And like, the only question is, the other, one of the posts that went up today, we put up the post of, "Here are all the TVs that support AirPlay." And it's like relatively short. And it became very clear, and Neel and I both tweeted the same thing, and then I got mad at him for tweeting like two minutes before I did, because I had thought of it first. I just don't type as fast as he does.

• 3:10Nilay Patel?

  That's right.

• 3:11Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:12Nilay Patel?

  So my ideas are superior.

• 3:13Speaker 03

  It is too short a list to support a grand TV and movie service from Apple.

• 3:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's all high-end stuff.

• 3:20Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:21Speaker 02

  And as we learned yesterday, somebody was saying, who was saying during one of their conferences? TCL was saying that 99% of TVs are sold under $2,000.

• 3:31Speaker 03

  TCL, also the company that announced that contrast in a TV is the frosting.

• 3:35Speaker 02

  Yes, contrast is cake.

• 3:36Speaker 03

  So I don't know if they're aware of what they're saying.

• 3:40Speaker 02

  All of the TVs that are in that list that Dino mentioned, you can go check it out on the site, because I don't remember all of them, but they're all pretty high-end. They're all brand new. The only ones that go back a couple of years are Vizio's models, which date back to 2017. So yeah, these aren't the TVs that most people have.

• 3:55Nilay Patel?

  And if you just look at the numbers, something between 35 and 40 million TVs are sold a year, and they don't have all of them, right? So like, not all 40, just the United States. So not all 35 to 40 million TVs in the United States will have Apple services on them. Just by definition, like no Roku TVs, which are some of the best selling TVs in the country are gonna have these services. So.

• 4:16Speaker 03

  The end of the story is that right now, as you are listening to this, Johnny Ive is sitting in a room at Apple Park in the giant spaceship campus and they've closed all the shades and they've turned on a beautiful high end TV. And on that beautiful high end TV is Roku. And Johnny Ive is looking at and giving design notes on an Apple TV service Roku app.

• 4:44Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 4:45Speaker 03

  Just imagine that for a moment. Imagine him, imagine Johnny Ive holding that weird ass purple remote with the fucking little loop on the side of it and the headphone jack on the bottom, the headphone jack on the, on the remote.

• 4:58Speaker 02

  And don't forget the Netflix and HBO and Hulu buttons on it.

• 5:01Speaker 01

  I totally use those, just kidding.

• 5:03Speaker 03

  And the crackle button. Johnny Ive is holding a remote in his hand right now with a crackle button on it.

• 5:09Nilay Patel?

  I mean, incredible.

• 5:10Speaker 03

  That's what's happening, right? That there's, there's no other way they hit the skill they need. They need, they need, they need to get them Amazon. They need to be everywhere.

• 5:16Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, like if they add AirPlay 2 to it, then they bypass the app problem, right? Cause then you use your phone and you cast.

• 5:23Nilay Patel?

  Sure.

• 5:23Speaker 01

  So I use a very shady app that mirrors, I have a Roku.

• 5:28Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 5:29Speaker 01

  And it mirrors my MacBook. It cost me $10. I think it's called like Roku Mirror and they have it for like all these different apps. It's very laggy. Like I'll hit the play button and then five seconds later it plays on the TV. But it works for me. Like after I switched to a MacBook Pro, I lost my HDMI cable port. So I had to improvise and I was like, what's, what's on the app store? Let's see. And then there it was and it works for me. So.

• 5:54Nilay Patel?

  Wow.

• 5:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:55Nilay Patel?

  I think some people do it. And like the AirPlay 2 HomeKit, you can be like, hey Siri, play this thing. Presumably that will work. But I don't know, we had the CEO of Roku on the road chest last year and I was like, why is your stuff ugly? And he's like, cause people don't care. And like that, that combination of like question and answer.

• 6:13Speaker 01

  Is that really what he said or did he like?

• 6:16Nilay Patel?

  He was very much like, look, at the end of the day, people just want the video to play.

• 6:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:21Nilay Patel?

  And like, this is what people are used to with Roku and we're like, sticking with it and like, the hardware is cheap and we're not gonna overdo it.

• 6:29Speaker 01

  I don't care.

• 6:29Nilay Patel?

  And like, all of those, all of those ideas are the opposite of Apple, which is like, our office is a circle.

• 6:36Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 6:37Nilay Patel?

  And we built a garden and you can't, you don't know that you're in a city. And also, like, we, here's this theater that we only use for big events. And when we have other events, we rent Brooklyn.

• 6:48Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 6:48Nilay Patel?

  Because we want to preserve how special the theater is.

• 6:50Speaker 03

  In the middle of-

• 6:51Nilay Patel?

  This is all true.

• 6:52Speaker 03

  In the middle of Apple Park, they have a reflection pool that is perfectly, exactly circular, like, down to the, like, millimeter. And it's-

• 7:00Nilay Patel?

  I like that we keep comparing their billion dollar office building to Roku.

• 7:04Speaker 03

  Yeah. The, the pool is only like, you know, six inches deep or something, right? Cause it's a reflecting pool. And it's weird if there's no wind, because it's too flat and you want a little bit of movement in the water. So they built a crazy plunger in the middle of the reflecting pool that goes wom.

• 7:21Nilay Patel?

  Is this true?

• 7:22Speaker 03

  Yes. That goes wom, wom.

• 7:24Nilay Patel?

  This is true.

• 7:25Speaker 03

  A manhole sized plunger in the middle of the reflecting pool that's designed to just sort of move up and down about-

• 7:31Nilay Patel?

  Is this true?

• 7:31Speaker 03

  Yes. Move up and down about 12 inches, maybe a little less.

• 7:34Nilay Patel?

  Dieter, I've been drinking, you could say anything you want. Is this true?

• 7:37Speaker 03

  It's a million percent true. I kid you not.

• 7:40Nilay Patel?

  They built, they put a HomePod subwoofer in the middle of the reflecting pool.

• 7:42Speaker 03

  There's a plunger in the middle of the reflecting pool.

• 7:44Nilay Patel?

  I said, we're only gonna take 30 seconds on this.

• 7:46Speaker 03

  That makes ripples so that it doesn't look too creepy.

• 7:49Nilay Patel?

  We landed on the ripple plunger at Apple Park.

• 7:51Speaker 03

  And that company needs to make a Roku app.

• 7:54Nilay Patel?

  Just go look at a Roku and just imagine Johnny Ive looking at Roku and being like, I will make software for this platform. Anyway, that's happening. Tim Cook said it today. We talked about it a lot yesterday. Dieter, you spent a lot of time talking to Google.

• 8:05Speaker 03

  I did.

• 8:06Nilay Patel?

  Uh, about Assistant, what they're doing. Today's the first day the show floor is open here.

• 8:10Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 8:10Nilay Patel?

  Google House is open. Everyone's been walking through it. There's a Small World Ride.

• 8:15Speaker 01

  It's very jarring.

• 8:16Speaker 03

  Have you gone on it?

• 8:16Speaker 01

  I actually haven't. I've only seen the, the videos online.

• 8:20Speaker 03

  The 360 video, yeah.

• 8:20Speaker 01

  But there's a really long line to get in and I don't feel like waiting. This isn't Disneyland.

• 8:25Nilay Patel?

  Also, it broke down for a minute today.

• 8:27Speaker 03

  Yes, it did.

• 8:27Speaker 01

  Did you get stuck, stuck in there?

• 8:28Nilay Patel?

  I did get stuck in the Google ride. Uh, but we're going tomorrow, cause, uh, why'd you push that button? It's taping at the Google stage tomorrow, so we're gonna try to go on it. But you spent time with them talking actually about Assistant.

• 8:39Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 8:39Nilay Patel?

  Where it's, what's happening?

• 8:41Speaker 03

  They have today announced something on the order of like 12 or 15 things. And I'm like, not going to remember everything, but you can Google Assistant on Dish Hopper. They have a new thing called Google Assistant Connect where they want to make accessories that are relatively cheap that can be commanded by the Google Assistant, like e-ink displays or buttons, like Alexa buttons, or like smart clocks, like the Alexa smart clock. Basically, there's no way to talk about it without saying like Alexa. They're doing all that. They have a new alarm clock that's like the Echo Spot. It's a cute little Lenovo alarm clock that is small and can, and it also will like turn bright in the morning to wake you up before it makes noise. They, man, I just, there's so much stuff.

• 9:25Speaker 03

  They reaffirmed their commitment to working on Sonos.

• 9:28Nilay Patel?

  We saw the demo, we went.

• 9:29Speaker 03

  So Google Assistant on Sonos works. We heard it.

• 9:32Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 9:33Speaker 03

  Kind of saw it. It's a little buggy still.

• 9:36Nilay Patel?

  It's only better they're not giving us a date.

• 9:38Speaker 03

  There's no date. They refuse to give us a date because the last time they tried that, they, they just didn't hit it.

• 9:44Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 9:44Speaker 03

  Uh, there's all sorts of insanely nerdy details about what made it take so long.

• 9:49Nilay Patel?

  I don't know if there's, it seems like the one detail that we did here, which is really interesting, is a Google Assistant device, Google designs like the whole thing. So in particular, what they design is the microphones and how the microphones work and how the audio from the two microphones get sent to the Google Cloud. And then Google thinks about how to detect a voice, like all the stuff that happens very fast is very impressive. It's just like abstract from whatever is happening. Sonos built their own microphones and their own voice detection algorithms and their own bean forming. And so Google was like, we had to be okay with that. And it really feels like the main thing that happened was like Google went to therapy

• 10:30Nilay Patel?

  to be like, this is fine. This is a relationship.

• 10:32Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 10:32Nilay Patel?

  They're going to be different than me. Sometimes we don't both want to stay out all night.

• 10:36Speaker 03

  Yeah, but they're not so happy with it. They're willing to have both Alexa and Google hot words be active on the same speaker at the same time.

• 10:43Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 10:43Speaker 03

  Like that is, that is a bridge too far.

• 10:45Speaker 02

  Super annoying.

• 10:46Nilay Patel?

  Is it?

• 10:47Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 10:47Speaker 03

  So here, here's Sonos's reason that you don't want it. You are sitting in your home and your Sonos speaker starts going eh, eh, eh, eh. And both you and somebody else in your home don't know why it's making that noise. And you need to tell it to stop. Do you say, "Hey, Google, stop," or do you say, "Alexa, stop"? Because if you get it wrong, it keeps going eh, eh, eh.

• 11:13Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 11:15Speaker 03

  Right? And not only does it keep making that noise, it also, you have to hear the wrong assistant say, "I don't understand," while it keeps making that noise. That's the argument against it. I don't agree with it.

• 11:29Speaker 02

  I don't know if I fully agree with it, because I think that's a super niche case.

• 11:32Speaker 03

  Isn't it?

• 11:32Speaker 02

  In like, in like, an edge case.

• 11:34Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 11:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, why is it beeping in the first place?

• 11:35Speaker 03

  Because you asked it to set an alarm.

• 11:38Speaker 01

  But who did you ask?

• 11:39Speaker 03

  Well, but you asked Alexa, but I don't know that. And so I walk in the room because the thing is making noise and you're off somewhere else in the world.

• 11:47Nilay Patel?

  This implies so much. It implies, for example, yeah, you've got a roommate, you've got a house, you're setting timers.

• 11:52Speaker 01

  That I have a house and a home?

• 11:54Nilay Patel?

  Right, like, you're organized enough to know that something should happen at a certain time from now.

• 11:58Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 11:59Nilay Patel?

  It's a lot. That's a lot to ask, just in general.

• 12:01Speaker 03

  Google also announced Samsung TV integration, so now you can get a Samsung TV that has AirPlay and Bixby and Google and Alexa, I believe?

• 12:10Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 12:10Speaker 03

  You can, Samsung TV will literally do everything.

• 12:13Nilay Patel?

  Are those all active at the same time?

• 12:14Speaker 03

  I don't know.

• 12:15Speaker 02

  Well, and so to clarify those.

• 12:16Speaker 03

  Works with versus works on.

• 12:18Speaker 02

  It doesn't, yeah, on the Samsung TV, only Bixby is there on the TV itself. But if you have a Google Home or if you have an Echo in your house, you can talk to those devices to control the TV.

• 12:27Speaker 03

  Oh, right. They made a KitchenAid display that you can run under the faucet, if that's a thing you want to do.

• 12:33Nilay Patel?

  I get it.

• 12:33Speaker 02

  I mean, like, that makes sense. The smart displays, the biggest pitch for them is like, throw them in the kitchen, so, you know, make it resistant.

• 12:39Nilay Patel?

  We have an Echo show in our kitchen.

• 12:40Speaker 03

  Uh, potentially.

• 12:41Nilay Patel?

  That's actually where we set all of our timers.

• 12:43Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 12:44Nilay Patel?

  And we're aware that we should ask Alexa to stop them. We don't just yell random names to stop our timers.

• 12:49Speaker 03

  But you might, if, what if, what if, what if it also supported Bixby and Siri and everything else? There are like eight assistants on your speaker. You'd never know which one.

• 12:56Nilay Patel?

  Well, I think Bixby should stop in general.

• 12:57Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, okay.

• 12:59Nilay Patel?

  Well, he's got issues.

• 13:00Speaker 03

  Man, there's more. Uh, interpreter mode, so you can now use a Google Home or any smart display device to do translation.

• 13:07Nilay Patel?

  Were any of you there when Shannon made her video?

• 13:10Speaker 02

  I was not, unfortunately.

• 13:12Nilay Patel?

  Okay, so we met, you should go watch that YouTube.

• 13:14Speaker 03

  It's a good video.

• 13:15Nilay Patel?

  It's Shan Lao who speaks Mandarin. So like she was like out speaking Chinese to the, and then there's a person who's dressed as a bellhop. And I just like, did she locate a bellhop?

• 13:28Speaker 01

  Wait, an actual bellhop like the great Budapest?

• 13:31Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. It's like a very formal hotel uniform. And they're just discussing.

• 13:38Speaker 01

  This is a Googler?

• 13:39Nilay Patel?

  I don't know.

• 13:40Speaker 03

  No, the hotel employee.

• 13:41Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 13:42Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 13:42Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 13:43Nilay Patel?

  It's like, it's like a remarkable video. Like, everyone should watch this video. And I just haven't seen Shannon or anybody in our video team. Like, we've all been busy today. So I was like, watching this video in a cab. And I was like, did we travel back in time to the 40s to do this Google interpreter video? Cause it, it's a, you should watch it.

• 14:00Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 14:00Nilay Patel?

  It did a medium job.

• 14:02Speaker 03

  Yeah. It, it thought, it thought I'm allergic to shrimp meant like, I like sand.

• 14:07Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, which is dangerous.

• 14:10Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 14:10Nilay Patel?

  On the scale of things that could kill you.

• 14:12Speaker 02

  They're not exclusionary.

• 14:15Speaker 03

  Google Assistant now can let you use your voice to reply to more apps than it did before. So it used to just be like Android easy auto reply. Now it can do more deep replies. And it will add punctuation without you having to say the word comma or period. And so the question becomes, will the Google Assistant add a period to your texts?

• 14:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, that will ruin my personal brand.

• 14:36Speaker 01

  That's making you sound curt.

• 14:37Speaker 02

  Right? Yeah. Or like, I don't even like it when it auto capitalizes things.

• 14:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:41Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 14:42Speaker 02

  Like, I will, I will, if I voice dictate a text and it's capitalized, I will move that cursor back and change the capitalization.

• 14:48Nilay Patel?

  Really?

• 14:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 14:49Speaker 01

  You want to sound like a fun chill dad.

• 14:51Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 14:52Nilay Patel?

  You got roasted just now, Dan.

• 14:53Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 14:57Speaker 02

  This is just, this is just so happens. Get roasted.

• 14:59Nilay Patel?

  Did you eat it? Did you eat a sandwich? In like lowercase to make you seem chill.

• 15:06Speaker 03

  That's a lot. The biggest news of all, which doesn't seem like it, but I think it is the most important news is Google Maps trend of running everything inside Google Maps continues. Now you can not only text inside Google Maps, you can now use the Google Assistant inside Google Maps. And here's why I think this matters. How many iPhone owners have actually installed the Google Assistant app? One, it's me, it's one. It's Neil Ipatel, that's about it. Of those who have done it, how many used it two days after they installed it?

• 15:42Speaker 03

  I'm gonna go with zero. If I'm the only one that I can conclusively. How many iPhone owners have installed Google Maps? How many of them use it when they drive? Like, Google has basically taken the Assistant and made a whole bunch of iPhone users have this thing in front of them when they drive all the time now. And they're gonna push it pretty aggressively because everything at Google Maps is pretty aggressive and kind of annoying right now. And they're gonna get more adoption of the Google Assistant inside Google Maps because they've put it inside Maps on the iPhone.

• 16:12Speaker 02

  So you can do things like, we were actually playing with it tonight. It already started rolling out. You can use it now. And you can say like, find me a gas station on my route, or what's the nearest gas station on my route? Which seems like something that Google Maps should have already done. But yeah, it's there.

• 16:28Speaker 01

  But you can play.

• 16:29Speaker 02

  It does the little four dots.

• 16:30Speaker 01

  Podcasts within Google Maps?

• 16:31Speaker 03

  Yeah, within Google Maps. You ask a Google Assistant to play a podcast and it'll go to Google Podcasts in the cloud via a Google Assistant. And then the Google Assistant will be playing the podcast inside Google Maps. Like, Google Maps has become the new Android. That's great. You're laughing, but it's true and it's awful. I mean, it's the product. Is it?

• 16:50Speaker 01

  I mean, it kind of also implies that I'll still use a voice assistant, which I won't. So, I mean.

• 16:56Speaker 03

  You don't, you live in New York, you don't drive.

• 16:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:59Speaker 03

  Would you have a voice assistant in your house?

• 17:01Speaker 01

  I don't.

• 17:02Speaker 03

  Would you ever?

• 17:03Speaker 01

  No, I deliberately don't. Because, I mean, I've seen all those articles about like, the mysterious laughing Alexa, and I just don't need that in my life. I'm paranoid enough, as is.

• 17:16Nilay Patel?

  Like how, how much utility would you have to get out of your assistant?

• 17:20Speaker 01

  I think if I did drive, then I think that might be useful. Like I'm driving and I want to listen to a podcast. Like then I can see myself using that, but definitely not in my house. Like if I'm in my house, like I'll use my hands to do things. Like I don't like asking an app to do another thing for me. Like I'll just do it directly.

• 17:36Speaker 03

  Meanwhile, the idea that I could use my voice to like set a timer for two minutes is enough for me to give up all of my privacy.

• 17:42Speaker 02

  Oh yeah, absolutely. And I'm, and I'm like, I want both of them running at the same time. I want to give away my privacy to two at the same time.

• 17:48Speaker 01

  No, I mean, all of my kitchen appliances are dirty because my hands are like dirty and I'll just like press the buttons, whatever, like get drunk all over it. But yeah.

• 17:57Nilay Patel?

  I will say that some voice control is so, Dan was making fun of me earlier because like I insist, was it you? Someone was making fun of me because I, I put Cabo like remote controls in my parents' house and it's like a little buggy. And my wife definitely texted me today and was like, the TV breaks every time you leave the house. But it's great because I, because I installed beta software on my products, which is like fundamentally the problem. But I put it in my parents' house and so they get to say, like, turn on the TV to NBC. And then it will like do a whole bunch of stuff and then NBC will just like be on the TV.

• 18:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, like five minutes later, but yes.

• 18:35Nilay Patel?

  You know, get a cup of coffee, sit down, you're settled in.

• 18:40Nilay Patel?

  I think that is like remarkably effective if you don't know how to use the stuff, right? If you're, if like you're not the kind of person who like wants to like sit there and monkey with apps or understand how a Roku interface works or.

• 18:53Speaker 02

  This is, this is where I have to say that's the exact pitch that Samsung has for Bixby.

• 18:57Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 18:58Speaker 02

  And like, it's a good idea. It's, I mean, Bixby is not a great excuse.

• 19:01Nilay Patel?

  But here's the problem. Bixby is the only assistant who's not invited to my house.

• 19:03Speaker 03

  On a scale of one to 10, turning on NBC on a TV with multiple gadgets is like a six of difficulty, right? Now, no, no, just with your standard setup of like, how many remotes do you have? What's your cable box input on the TV? Call it a six. Like just stay with me. The setup you're describing.

• 19:21Nilay Patel?

  What is the top of the scale? Is it 10?

• 19:23Speaker 03

  10.

• 19:23Nilay Patel?

  Okay.

• 19:24Speaker 03

  Yeah. The setup you're describing is like a three. But between six and three to set to set up turn on NBC is a 9.9.

• 19:32Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 19:33Speaker 03

  Right? And like, everybody that wants to get to the three has to go through 9.9 or have a son named Neelai Patel, who would do it for them. That's the problem with all the smart assistant stuff. Trying to find the right setting in Google Assistant or Google Home is impossible.

• 19:47Nilay Patel?

  First of all, you don't have to have a son. And that son does not have to share my name. It's just a child. Just, I just want to put that out there. Like, the necessary condition is not that you have a boy child with my name. It's just a child.

• 20:07Nilay Patel?

  You know, there's a service, I don't know where this is.

• 20:09Speaker 03

  Boychildadmeelai.com.

• 20:10Nilay Patel?

  No, there's like, there's like, there's literally like an Uber for grandkids.

• 20:14Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 20:16Nilay Patel?

  Where like, older people get to like, push a button and like, a younger person comes to their house and like, does stuff.

• 20:23Nilay Patel?

  It's a true story. So you're right about the 9.9, but the dream is you walk into your house and you say, turn on the playoffs.

• 20:31Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 20:32Nilay Patel?

  And it doesn't even know if you're talking about football playoffs, NBA playoffs, like, whatever. It's just like, kind of knows what you want. And like, a bunch of stuff happens. I think Google is way closer to that than Amazon.

• 20:42Speaker 03

  Yeah, but Google is also, the, the reason that I am not like, 100% yeah, Google's gonna win this is, Google is so thirsty. They're like, they're, they're so tryhard at CES. They built a giant booth with a ride, a small world ride. And they're like, they covered the monorail and they're, wow, look at us. Where Amazon quietly, like, sure, they're 100 million versus Google's billion, but Google's billion doesn't count because it's just phones in terms of numbers of devices. Amazon's just like, quietly like, yeah, everything works with us and we don't care and we'll do whatever you want and it's fine. And here's a, here's a chip that you can buy for three cents that'll make Alexa work with your thing. Right? They're just, Amazon is quietly everywhere and it's, that's a way more confident move.

• 21:25Speaker 03

  Like, the, that, then Google just like, look at us.

• 21:30Speaker 01

  I did see a little bit of Amazon presence on the show floor today.

• 21:34Speaker 03

  Oh, really?

• 21:34Speaker 01

  It was in the form of a banana stand.

• 21:36Nilay Patel?

  Nice.

• 21:36Speaker 01

  They were literally just giving out.

• 21:38Nilay Patel?

  The Blues, we're here.

• 21:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, the Blues are here. They were literally just giving out bananas and it had an Amazon sticker on it.

• 21:44Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 21:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:46Speaker 02

  So that's hilarious. But you know, you can extend that data to what you were saying about how Google's thirsty and Amazon's quiet into how these assistants actually are behaving in your home and how you use them. You, if you live with both of them and use both of them for a lot of the same things, you'll find that it's a lot easier to command Alexa for everyday things like turning lights on and like controlling music and things like that.

• 22:08Speaker 03

  And it's just kind of does it.

• 22:10Speaker 02

  The hot word doesn't suck. It doesn't always respond back to you with like, okay, turning seven lights on. It just goes ding and the lights come on, right? Like whereas Google, it's like you gotta say Google every time. It's got to respond back to you every time. It's just a very like thirsty and like, kind of like frustrating thing to have to deal with when you're using these over and over and over again, really integrating them into your life. So like, even though I agree with Neelai that Google has more of the pieces to make this happen, it's more pleasant using Alexa most of the time. So like, Google doesn't have the user experience down yet.

• 22:43Speaker 03

  But they do have the depth of knowledge that Alexa doesn't have. So like, you look at the chart of like, ask a random question, do a thing and Google will get it right more often.

• 22:51Nilay Patel?

  Sure, but like, but think about this way, like, oh, I've definitely been drinking because here's my idea. It's like, the goal is like they replace a butler. Like you have a butler there in your house.

• 23:02Speaker 03

  It's got shoes, it's a dog.

• 23:04Nilay Patel?

  Butler that wears shoes, it's a dog with shoes, right? Like, very obviously makes me is the goal. No, like the goal is like you have this like butler is like caring for you, right? Literally the way Alexa's architected is more things happen locally, right? So you're like, Alexa, turn on the lights. It actually sends it over U P and P like on your local network. It never goes to the cloud. They like, these things just happen. It's like in your house, Alexa's in your house. Run.

• 23:31Nilay Patel?

  Google is like super cloud oriented. So you're like, Google, turn on the light. It goes to a cloud. It wants to talk to Belkin's API service. It comes back down and that lag, that round trip lag through the cloud is actually very slow and it makes Google seem super thirsty because A, you're saying the brand name and then Google's like, let me think about your request. And like just that lag because Google's all happening in cloud. And like there's some, I think there's some like U P and P stuff that assistant will do, but it's default is to figure it out in a cloud. Whereas Alexa's default, like you never actually have to install skills. Like I have.

• 24:08Speaker 03

  Well, yeah, but that's how Google was architected from the jump.

• 24:10Nilay Patel?

  No, no, but I mean, like, I have, I think it's a WeMo outlet in my house.

• 24:14Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 24:15Nilay Patel?

  And I never installed the skill.

• 24:17Speaker 03

  Right.

• 24:17Nilay Patel?

  So I just said, discover the device.

• 24:18Speaker 03

  I hate to tell you this, but that only exists for the top 200 skills. They've made those automatic, the rest you still have to install.

• 24:23Nilay Patel?

  No, but there's no.

• 24:24Speaker 03

  They're doing it one by one.

• 24:25Nilay Patel?

  No, no, there's no skill at all. There's no cloud service. I never set up the cloud service.

• 24:28Speaker 03

  They only did that for the top, like, one or 200 things that work with Alexa. Everything else is still a skill. It's not as automatic as Google's is.

• 24:36Nilay Patel?

  Right, so I'm with you. But what I'm saying is that automation.

• 24:39Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 24:40Nilay Patel?

  Is Alexa's doing it on the local network without ever talking to a cloud service. Google's automation is like, we are aware of all the cloud services. So Google, like, lives in the cloud. A bunch of Alexa stuff just, like, lives in your house.

• 24:53Speaker 03

  Let me step back.

• 24:54Nilay Patel?

  That just makes it faster.

• 24:55Speaker 03

  A half a step.

• 24:56Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 24:57Speaker 03

  This argument that we're having is fascinating in the context of the fact that we've been talking about Apple, like, being the surprise of the show for putting Airplane and everything. But Siri is a non-entity in this discussion.

• 25:08Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 25:09Speaker 03

  We've joked about Bixby, like, we're creeping up and making a joke about Cortana. We're talking about Alexa versus Google in a deeply nerdy way. And Siri is just nowhere.

• 25:20Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. But there is a bunch of HomeKit stuff here.

• 25:22Speaker 02

  There is a bunch of HomeKit stuff, and that's because.

• 25:24Speaker 03

  Which is different, but it's, like, also good. Like, I prefer using HomeKit to control my smart home.

• 25:28Nilay Patel?

  HomeKit by far is the fastest.

• 25:30Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 25:30Speaker 02

  Yes, yes. Yeah, if you, if you are an iPhone user and you want to set up stuff in your home, you are much, gonna be much happier if you get HomeKit compatible stuff. It integrates with your iPhone easier, you can use Siri and stuff like that, and it's faster. And we are seeing a ton of HomeKit stuff here at the show, particularly because Apple talked about this a long time ago, that they were changing the way HomeKit certification worked to be software-only based. That finally rolled out mid-2018, so here are all the products that are actually using it.

• 25:59Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 25:59Speaker 02

  So we're seeing PowerStrips and light switches and fan switches and all this stuff that have had Alexa and Google Assistant integration for years are finally getting HomeKit as well.

• 26:08Speaker 03

  Right.

• 26:09Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 26:11Nilay Patel?

  HomeKit is by far the fastest, like, instantaneously fast, whereas even asking Alexa to turn off my Christmas lights, it's like.

• 26:18Speaker 03

  It's instantaneously fast as long as you can, like, find the right button in the stupid Apple Home app, which is the worst.

• 26:24Nilay Patel?

  Yes, I think Apple should redesign its entire interface.

• 26:26Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 26:26Nilay Patel?

  On that note, we're gonna read an ad.

• 26:29Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 26:29Nilay Patel?

  When we come back, we'll talk about some gadgets. It's gonna be great.

• 26:33Nilay Patel?

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• 27:05Nilay Patel?

  Let's talk about some gadgets.

• 27:06Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 27:06Nilay Patel?

  Domi, I want to start with you.

• 27:07Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 27:08Nilay Patel?

  I think you've been seeing the silliest, most interesting gadgets here so far.

• 27:12Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 27:12Nilay Patel?

  And I want to start with the Foldamate.

• 27:14Speaker 01

  Oh, man.

• 27:15Nilay Patel?

  Which you saw last year.

• 27:16Speaker 01

  I did.

• 27:17Nilay Patel?

  You saw two laundry folding gadgets last year.

• 27:18Speaker 01

  It was one of two laundry folding machines I saw last year.

• 27:21Speaker 03

  Only one survived the year.

• 27:22Speaker 01

  Only one survived this year, because I broke the other one last year. It was $16,000. That one, actually, they said they used AI to pick up the clothes and determine which way to best fold it. And then I put in a verge, like a black verge t-shirt, and it ended up confusing its cameras. So it, like, broke the thing, and then a bunch of engineers had to run in and, like, figure out how to detangle it from the machine. So that company is not here this year, and instead, we have Foldamate, which is back for the third time with a working prototype this year. It actually works this year, and it was, it was, like, kind of impressive, you know? I'm eating my shorts, and, I mean, it takes five seconds

• 28:04Speaker 01

  to fold those shorts. It's, like, very, I can imagine them using it in, like, retail stores, for, like, retail employees who have to do a ton of folding, or in, like, laundromats, you know? But I definitely wouldn't have it in my home, because it costs $1,000, and it's the size of, you know, like, a washer, an entire washer, so.

• 28:22Speaker 03

  Now, if you want your shorts folded, do you just, can you just, like, ball them up and chuck them in a hole?

• 28:26Speaker 01

  That's what I usually do. Me? Oh, you mean, like, with the machine?

• 28:30Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 28:31Nilay Patel?

  Wait, wait, wait, hold on. When you want your shorts folded, do you ball them up and chuck them in a hole? That's what I usually do.

• 28:40Nilay Patel?

  What kind of hole do you have in your apartment?

• 28:42Speaker 01

  I live in New York. There's holes everywhere.

• 28:47Nilay Patel?

  It was a lot.

• 28:48Speaker 01

  Anyway.

• 28:49Nilay Patel?

  You have to like feed them in.

• 28:50Speaker 01

  Yes, you have to individually clip each item on, which is, you know, not ideal, but I was putting in like a pair of pants today and then the CEO was like, oh, you have to put it in this way, like backwards, upside down. So I did that and it worked.

• 29:05Nilay Patel?

  But are they gonna ship it for a thousand dollars?

• 29:07Speaker 01

  That's to be seen. Maybe, you know.

• 29:09Nilay Patel?

  Year four.

• 29:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:10Speaker 02

  I have to say, I saw, you know, our footage and I saw you do it and it spit out, you put the T-shirt in, it sucked it in five minutes, five seconds later, it spit out the folded T-shirt.

• 29:19Nilay Patel?

  Five minutes.

• 29:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, five minutes.

• 29:21Nilay Patel?

  The AI is like, I don't know.

• 29:22Speaker 02

  But it folded very good.

• 29:24Speaker 01

  Right, okay. So there's no AI in this machine. It's really, I don't know what's inside it. It's gotta be some sort of like robotic, I don't know.

• 29:33Nilay Patel?

  It's a child.

• 29:33Speaker 01

  I was like, what is the catch this year? Cause it is big enough to fit a child, but I'm sure it's not a child.

• 29:41Speaker 02

  I saw the thing spit out and I was like, I was looking at it. I'm like, to fit that in my drawer, I have to refold it.

• 29:46Speaker 01

  Like, it very much depends on how neatly you clip it in.

• 29:50Nilay Patel?

  Really?

• 29:51Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, so there's a lot of effort involved on your part, you know, but.

• 29:57Speaker 03

  More than folding the shirt in the first place.

• 29:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, actually, like when I'm folding my shirt, when I'm folding my laundry at home, usually I'll just like do it in front of the TV. Like I'm sitting on my couch and I take my time with it, but I mean, the folding it, you have to be standing to clip on each item and I don't want to be standing when I do that.

• 30:14Nilay Patel?

  So the thing I think about CES every year is, what is like, what's the thing here that like the local news will take away from CES?

• 30:21Speaker 01

  Right.

• 30:21Nilay Patel?

  Or we were just having a drink with our friend David Pierce, like, what's the thing that like the Wall Street Journal is gonna be like, at CES, folded laundry, a thing of the, you know, like, what's that headline that hits like that really big? And it's, it is like the laundry folding machine. Bell helicopters is here. They have a giant fiberglass fake Uber.

• 30:42Speaker 02

  There is a yacht in the North Hall.

• 30:45Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, there's like a bunch of, so the question is, is this like the dumb thing that happens for the local news? Or is this like a real thing?

• 30:54Speaker 01

  I really think it would be helpful for, you know, retailers, maybe like in the back room and like, you know, people can fold clothes in the back.

• 31:03Nilay Patel?

  At least for, that's like the case of death. You're like, this would be great for like lazy Gap employees.

• 31:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, I mean, I'm always thinking of the lazy Gap employees.

• 31:13Nilay Patel?

  Uh, okay. So that's, I just wanted, it's, it's like many years of you covering the laundry machines.

• 31:19Speaker 01

  I can't wait to cover it next year.

• 31:20Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, they're gonna try again. They're like, look, no baby inside the machine. But you also covered a bunch of really interesting tablet-y things.

• 31:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:28Nilay Patel?

  I'm very interested in your take on this new Wacom tablet.

• 31:30Speaker 01

  Okay, so Wacom has a new Cintiq 16 that is pretty much their most affordable tablet ever. So it's meant to be for people like me who, I mean, I mostly just, just draw like pretty simple 2D cartoons. Um, so I've had the same old like bamboo tablet. It's, it's like three years old and I eat soup on top of it sometimes. So, I mean, I treat it like shit. And then this tablet bridges the gap between, you know, these amateur, uh, like maybe hobbyists, who people who draw for fun, to their next big like creative device. And before that price difference was like so steep, like the, maybe the cheapest Wacom tablet you could have gotten was like

• 32:14Speaker 01

  a thousand dollar in, um, like a Cintiq 22 or something. And this is like the most affordable it's ever been. Um, and I think it's gonna be like pretty popular for, you know, most artists.

• 32:27Nilay Patel?

  Why is it more affordable? Is it smaller?

• 32:29Speaker 01

  So it's not 4K, like there are other Cintiq tablets. It's, yeah, it's 2K, but it, it is, it does give you the sense that you are kind of stepping up your creative, uh, career. Like, there's a difference between drawing on a tablet, like the bamboo that I have, which is, you know, you're drawing on a separate tablet that connects to the computer, uh, with a cable. And you have to be looking at the screen while you're drawing, where a Cintiq 16 is like a pen input. Like, they have such like difficult naming devices. Like, this is a pen display, whereas a bamboo is a pen tablet. So a pen display lets you draw directly on the screen. And, um, yeah, it's just super affordable. I think, um, it's probably gonna be like a really good.

• 33:11Nilay Patel?

  How much is it?

• 33:12Speaker 01

  For them. It's $650.

• 33:14Nilay Patel?

  Okay. And that's super affordable in this market.

• 33:16Speaker 01

  It is affordable for Wacom, which is, it's expensive, but I mean, all of their product quality is great. There's a lot of like cheaper, like Chinese tablets, like Huan, uh, that make the same thing for. A lot cheaper, like hundreds of dollars cheaper. But Wacom, you know, there is that, you know, kind of brand name value and a lot of like industry professionals like use it, like Spider-Man Into the Spider-Verse was made with, you know, Wacom products, as are like pretty much everything you see like on CES, like has to be a, it had to have been designed like on a Wacom.

• 33:48Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 33:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:48Speaker 03

  Okay, so stupidest question ever.

• 33:51Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 33:51Speaker 03

  This thing is six fifty or so, right?

• 33:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:53Speaker 03

  I am an artist, I'm pretty good, I had some old busted thing and I'm ready to go buy something new. Why do I need to spend sixty in this instead of three twenty-nine plus a ninety-nine dollar Apple pencil on iPad?

• 34:05Speaker 01

  Okay, the, the iPad, the three hundred twenty-nine dollar iPad is, it's not very fast. Or, okay, I think, wasn't it like you can only have three apps like running at once?

• 34:16Speaker 03

  Well, there's that, but like just like the drawing experience is different too, right?

• 34:20Speaker 01

  The drawing experience is different because it's a lot smaller. The screen is way smaller, but I mean, that iPad is really great. I mean, I generally think it's a great new product for artists and it, you know, really makes having a tablet like super affordable, but I personally don't draw on an iPad just because I don't really like the experience of drawing on like such a small screen. Well, I have like a nine point seven, I think I should have gotten a bigger one, but also it just doesn't have the keyboard shortcuts that I use. So when I use my bamboo tablet, I'm constantly like doing Ctrl-Z on my keyboard and you just don't have that flexibility with iPad. Huh? Yeah.

• 35:00Speaker 03

  The Cintiq like mirrors your display, right? Like you put Photoshop on it, like the iPad is like still an iPad.

• 35:08Speaker 01

  Right, the iPad doesn't have Photoshop, yeah. That's the biggest thing, it doesn't have the software.

• 35:13Speaker 03

  If Apple built the software that let the iPad do the thing the Cintiq did, I think this conversation would be different.

• 35:17Speaker 01

  Right, but I don't think that's ever going to happen just because we've already seen the version of Photoshop that's coming to the iPad and it's not the same thing.

• 35:25Speaker 03

  Right.

• 35:26Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, there's a real womp womp with the iPad. Yeah. Every time I talk to Dami about it, she's like, yeah, this is nice. It's fine.

• 35:32Speaker 01

  Honestly, I don't touch it unless I'm traveling.

• 35:35Nilay Patel?

  Wow. Okay. And then you also looked at something called the iSlate.

• 35:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:39Nilay Patel?

  iSkin Slate Repaper.

• 35:40Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 35:41Nilay Patel?

  Dash the Slate. What? That's what I have written down.

• 35:45Speaker 01

  Okay, so it's just the Slate Repaper and it's made by a French startup called iSkin. And they actually launched their first product in 2015 as a Kickstarter. And this is the fourth generation of their tablet, which you can put in like a piece of paper and draw on top of it with any pen or pencil that you own. And it comes with this magnetic ring that you fit onto your own tools. And the it, there's magnets on the tablet, which would show like where you're drawing. So the strokes show up on the screen.

• 36:18Nilay Patel?

  Is it also pressure sensitive?

• 36:19Speaker 01

  Yes. So the newest generation is pressure sensitive. And they actually sold the last one, like in the MoMA Design Store. It's like really cool. But yeah, I tried, I tested it out a couple of years ago and back then it was a little bit buggy. But I tried it out again this year and I really like it. And you can also unplug it from the computer and, you know, take it with you to a cafe. It's portable. And when you draw, all the, all the strokes get saved inside of the SD card. That's like, it's, it gets saved internally. So when you come back to your computer and you plug it in, it'll like automatically upload.

• 36:53Nilay Patel?

  What does it upload? Like, what's the format?

• 36:55Speaker 01

  Uh, I think you can export it into like pretty much any format, file format. But it only works with the companion app. So you can't work, you can't use like Photoshop with it.

• 37:07Nilay Patel?

  Got it.

• 37:07Speaker 01

  Yeah. And the companion app isn't like, you know, super art friendly, I would say. But it is a neat concept and, you know, maybe good for like parents who don't trust their kids with iPads just yet. Or, you know, it's like for me.

• 37:21Nilay Patel?

  Wait, I don't trust you an iPad. I'm going to give you this like magnet ring to put on a pencil and like wander the streets of New York sketching.

• 37:27Speaker 01

  I mean.

• 37:27Nilay Patel?

  This is how I'm raising my child.

• 37:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:29Nilay Patel?

  You don't get an iPad. You must sketch and sketch alone.

• 37:32Speaker 01

  That's how you learn.

• 37:33Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. And they'll be like, what's a computer? Wow. Poor Max. Did you like it?

• 37:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, I, okay. And it's also really cool because you don't have to draw on paper with it. You can also just use it as a regular tablet.

• 37:45Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 37:46Speaker 01

  And it's $200, which is about the same price as like a Wacom Intuos.

• 37:51Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 37:52Speaker 01

  So I think it's great.

• 37:54Nilay Patel?

  Cool. Is it shipping or is it like?

• 37:56Speaker 01

  So.

• 37:56Nilay Patel?

  Out in the world?

• 37:57Speaker 01

  The third generation is already out, but the fourth one is coming out sometime in September.

• 38:03Nilay Patel?

  Okay, so a ways away.

• 38:04Speaker 01

  It's a little bit, yeah, a ways away. We saw a prototype today, but I think, you know, the final version.

• 38:09Nilay Patel?

  It's like the true CS story is like, here's some prototype that kind of works, just trust us.

• 38:15Speaker 01

  Don't worry about it.

• 38:16Nilay Patel?

  The last gadget I really want to talk to you about is the Bako emo.

• 38:20Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 38:21Nilay Patel?

  What is the?

• 38:21Speaker 01

  Emo, short for emotional.

• 38:23Nilay Patel?

  Of course. Who is the first?

• 38:25Speaker 01

  And it's a little robot that honestly, like, okay, it doesn't have Alexa and maybe that's a good thing, but it's kind of meant for checking up on your elderly, the elderly folks. It comes with four sensors that are detached from this little robot. It's a really cute little robot. It looks like a snowman. And there's four different sensors that detect like light, movement. It sends out notifications through a companion app.

• 38:58Nilay Patel?

  Of course.

• 38:58Speaker 01

  Of course. And it tells you like, oh, like grandma like left the house today or like.

• 39:02Nilay Patel?

  Oh, my God.

• 39:03Speaker 01

  But it's really cute and it reacts to the tone of your voice. So if you're like, I don't like that, it'll like put its head down and like make a sad noise. It doesn't talk, but you can record voice messages on an app and it'll play like through the robot. And yeah, apparently it's been out for some time in Japan. So they work with this security company called Secom, which is like their ADT, I guess. And apparently the elderly folk over there can speak with those like Secom customer care people. Whenever they're feeling lonely, like through this robot, it's got this like play button where you can like hold it down. It can be like, hello. Wow.

• 39:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's not for like emergencies or anything like that. It's just like people who are standing by who like want to keep, you know, the elderly like.

• 39:53Nilay Patel?

  I will say a theme of CS I've noticed is like the tech industry's recognition that like mortality is inevitable.

• 40:01Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 40:01Nilay Patel?

  Like Andrew, was it you at, our producer Andrew sitting here, was it you at Enveil who was like, so many devices here are designed to like tell you that you're sleeping shitty. And that when you fall down, your children should be notified.

• 40:13Speaker 03

  Yeah, there's a lot of fall detection, like not just stuff you wear, but like robots with cameras that are just like watching you all the time and they hear or see you fall. They'll like tune over to be like, are you okay over there? And then you say no, and then they like call.

• 40:27Nilay Patel?

  And this one's like, are you a lonely elderly person?

• 40:30Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 40:30Nilay Patel?

  This corporation will keep you company by talking to a snowman. That's sometimes sad.

• 40:34Speaker 03

  And they will Uber a grandkid over to you.

• 40:36Nilay Patel?

  By the way, the Uber, I Googled this while we were talking.

• 40:40Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 40:41Nilay Patel?

  I'm so sorry to report this. It's bad news.

• 40:43Speaker 03

  Not real.

• 40:45Nilay Patel?

  The Uber for grandkids service is called Papa.

• 40:47Speaker 03

  No.

• 40:48Speaker 01

  No. How do you, how is that spelled?

• 40:50Nilay Patel?

  P A P A.

• 40:51Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 40:52Nilay Patel?

  Alexis Sorhanian's an investor. The reason I read about it is because he was recently profiled and it's like a thing. You should read the profile of Alexis. He's like, it's a good profile. He's a good dude. We like whatever.

• 41:01Speaker 03

  There's a whole Johnny Johnny thing here that we could do if we wanted to.

• 41:05Nilay Patel?

  But Papa is a service that operates in Florida.

• 41:07Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 41:07Speaker 01

  Of course, it had to be Florida.

• 41:09Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, we don't yet have robot snowmen who are sometimes sad for them.

• 41:14Speaker 01

  I thought you were gonna say the, the service shut down.

• 41:17Nilay Patel?

  No, no, it's very real. It's doing quite well.

• 41:20Speaker 01

  It's good for them.

• 41:20Nilay Patel?

  Um, but I'm sorry.

• 41:21Speaker 01

  Oh, but yeah, I should mention that this robot is made by the same people who brought to you, brought us the tail, the cat tail, the wagon cat.

• 41:28Nilay Patel?

  Oh, the cat tail is amazing.

• 41:29Speaker 01

  Yeah. And that pillow is also a kind of like for therapy purposes. It's for keeping like people in nursing homes happy.

• 41:35Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 41:35Speaker 01

  Um, and it's very charming.

• 41:38Nilay Patel?

  Tell the listeners what the cat tail robot is.

• 41:40Speaker 01

  The cat tail robot is a pillow that is shaped like a headless cat. And when you pet it, it kind of purrs and wags its tail.

• 41:49Nilay Patel?

  Yes.

• 41:49Speaker 01

  That's it.

• 41:50Nilay Patel?

  It was good.

• 41:51Speaker 01

  That's the end.

• 41:51Nilay Patel?

  We spent a lot of time with it.

• 41:52Speaker 01

  We really did, yeah.

• 41:54Nilay Patel?

  Everyone in our office was like quite taken with it.

• 41:56Speaker 01

  I think Jake took it home. Somebody took it home and their actual cat was afraid of it.

• 42:01Nilay Patel?

  That's amazing.

• 42:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:02Nilay Patel?

  All right, more CS gadgets. Daniel.

• 42:05Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 42:06Nilay Patel?

  We're hard shift from cat robot to gaming PCs.

• 42:10Speaker 02

  You can still hug a gaming PC.

• 42:12Nilay Patel?

  You can hug a gaming PC.

• 42:13Speaker 02

  It won't hug you back.

• 42:14Speaker 01

  It'll get really hot and warm though.

• 42:16Nilay Patel?

  Jake has also taken a gaming PC home. His cat was afraid of it. Uh, but you want to talk about the Area 51M, which is like quite a laptop.

• 42:24Speaker 02

  It is quite a laptop. It's barely a laptop. Like, I mean, it's like one of those gaming PCs that's like, you don't move, but it is a laptop in that it is an all in one thing with a clamshell that opens and yes, you could play it on your lap for like 90 minutes before the battery dies, which is like every gaming PC, right? But this one, you can actually take out the processor and take out the graphics chip and upgrade them in the future, which like you could never do with a laptop before because Alienware says like, you know, people want to invest in these computers. They cost thousands of dollars, but then in two years they're outdated. You can't upgrade the GPU and then you like, you're getting like sniped by a 12 year old in Fortnite 4 or whatever it is.

• 43:04Nilay Patel?

  That's not because my GPU sucks.

• 43:06Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, yes, but you can't.

• 43:07Nilay Patel?

  I am personally.

• 43:08Speaker 02

  But you can now blame the GPU and then go buy a new laptop. So, so this one, they put them, they put the processor and the GPU on these modular boards and you can take the whole thing apart really easily. It has like standard screws. It doesn't use that weird stuff that Apple uses. It doesn't have like stickers that like get in your way and stuff. You can just open it up and you can take these boards out and you could put in, in theory, a new board with the new chip on it and pop it in there and upgrade your computer.

• 43:35Nilay Patel?

  Will they actually make these boards?

• 43:36Speaker 02

  That is like the question. They say they will make them. Like right now, the, the machine that we saw, the Area 51M that will be able to be purchased soon or whatever, um, has a desktop Core i9 processor and it has the new RTX 2080 GPU.

• 43:51Nilay Patel?

  Damn.

• 43:52Speaker 02

  This thing is a monster. Like it's, it ain't gonna be cheap.

• 43:54Nilay Patel?

  So it's a tower PC with like a foldable LCD out the side.

• 43:57Speaker 02

  Basically, but you know, in two years, when the 2080 is like old and creaky and you want to get a new one. The question is.

• 44:05Speaker 03

  You don't need a new screen. You don't need a new motherboard.

• 44:08Speaker 02

  Exactly. Screen's fine. You know, you just want to upgrade your GPU. The GPU has to fit on that modular piece that Dell designed. And so the question is, will Nvidia's next generation GPU fit on that modular board? Alienware Dell says, if it does, we're doing it. We will make an upgrade. If it doesn't, and it's like a technical constraint, we can't. You know, make it like fit on there. We we're kind of stuck. We don't know because we don't know their roadmap. But like they're like, as long as it fits on the board, we're gonna put it in.

• 44:41Nilay Patel?

  Seems like a talkative.

• 44:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, you know, I don't, I don't know. Um, you know, it's a good question.

• 44:45Speaker 03

  All right.

• 44:46Speaker 02

  They seem pretty confident that they can like, you know, keep the same size boards for the processors. You know, for a little while because those don't really change size all that often. I think the GPU is the big question mark, but the GPU is also the one that people want to upgrade the most often. So. I don't know. It's kind of weird. It's a really cool idea.

• 45:02Nilay Patel?

  It looks really.

• 45:03Speaker 02

  It looks really cool. It looks really neat. Of course, it's got some lighting on it, but it's got some better design than Alienware's had lately. And like, you know, the fact that they are actually trying to make this problem of gaming laptops that cost a ton of money. And then get outdated so quickly. Uh, they're trying to solve it. So, you know. They're doing a clever way to do it, whether it's going to be successful or not. I don't know. We'll see. But yeah, it's probably the most interesting laptop here. And there's a lot of laptops here.

• 45:28Nilay Patel?

  There are a lot of laptops here. Um, I'm quite taken with the fact that Dell fixed the XPS 13.

• 45:34Speaker 02

  Only took them four years, four years of me complaining about the webcam being in the wrong spot. They like moved it over. It was on the left side. They're like, oh, we'll move it to the middle. And I'm like, no, no, that ain't it, guys. And then they, uh, you know, finally put it back on top.

• 45:46Speaker 03

  You know what's exciting about this, Tan? In another four years, they're going to switch away from 16 by nine screens.

• 45:50Speaker 02

  Maybe, if only I could be happy.

• 45:53Nilay Patel?

  I feel like there's a bunch of Lenovo news. You actually have this like weird leather HP PC here.

• 45:58Speaker 02

  That, yeah, this was not announced at CES.

• 46:00Nilay Patel?

  I know, but I'm just staring at it.

• 46:02Speaker 02

  It is a very cool PC.

• 46:03Nilay Patel?

  Cause you are aggressively using a leather computer right now.

• 46:05Speaker 02

  I am aggressively using a leather computer and, uh, it's pretty cool. You know, it's, it's a, it's a, it's a laptop that speaks to my own heart.

• 46:13Nilay Patel?

  Pretty cool. You say it's pretty cool in a questioning way.

• 46:17Speaker 02

  I like it. I like the leather, but like

• 46:19Nilay Patel?

  I like it too.

• 46:19Speaker 02

  It looks cool.

• 46:20Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, you're fine. All right. Well, Lenovo did a bunch of stuff.

• 46:23Speaker 02

  So Lenovo's got a bunch of new stuff.

• 46:25Speaker 03

  The S940.

• 46:26Speaker 02

  The S940.

• 46:26Speaker 03

  We should talk about that for a second.

• 46:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 46:29Speaker 03

  So we were talking about before the podcast, sometimes yoga books are

• 46:34Speaker 03

  they're bad and you never know, like Lenovo will be like, all right, here's the new yoga. It's high end and you're like, sweet. And then you're like, oh, you lied this time. And sometimes they give you a new yoga book and you're like, it's high end and you're like, oh, actually, yes, it is. Good job, guys. And the S940, so far as we could tell, is definitely the high end one of the

• 46:53Speaker 02

  They fixed the bezel problem.

• 46:54Speaker 03

  They

• 46:54Speaker 02

  Just like Dell finally fixed the webcam on the XPS 13, Lenovo fixed the bezel problem.

• 46:59Speaker 03

  It's another one with a nigger notch.

• 47:00Speaker 02

  It's got a nigger notch.

• 47:01Nilay Patel?

  I hate this phrase.

• 47:01Speaker 02

  It doesn't have a big chin at the bottom like the other ones had.

• 47:04Speaker 03

  We've, we've, we're trying to decide.

• 47:07Nilay Patel?

  There's only one right answer.

• 47:08Speaker 03

  When, so when you have a webcam at the top of a laptop and it like actually sticks up from the top of the laptop.

• 47:15Nilay Patel?

  I'm trying to ESP the right answer to you right now.

• 47:17Speaker 03

  Like, like you can barely see it in this picture.

• 47:20Speaker 01

  Why would they do that?

• 47:21Nilay Patel?

  There you go.

• 47:23Speaker 01

  Can you put it back?

• 47:25Speaker 03

  You either have the entire top of it be just an even hunk of plastic or you like slim bezels down. So it looks like you've got a nice bigger screen and a smaller, smaller bezel on the top. And then you just make a little at the top, like Star Wars at the top. And the question is, what do you call that bump at the top of the screen?

• 47:42Speaker 02

  I call it a handle for opening it.

• 47:43Speaker 03

  And I think it should be called a nigger notch, because instead of a notch going down into the screen, it's a reverse notch.

• 47:49Speaker 01

  That's a good one. I like it now.

• 47:51Speaker 03

  Nigger notch.

• 47:52Speaker 01

  Because of the name.

• 47:54Nilay Patel?

  All that ESP energy. I'm exhausted now. I've been concentrating in Dominic's direction for like seven minutes. I have to like lie down on the floor.

• 48:02Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 48:03Nilay Patel?

  Like a superhero is like out of juice.

• 48:06Speaker 03

  Yeah. It's got the nigger notch and it has a 2.5 D screen. So the glass actually curves back a little bit, which makes the bezels look even smaller.

• 48:13Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 48:14Speaker 03

  We've also seen this on the Pixel Slate, which is a garbage device, but this seems good.

• 48:18Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 48:18Speaker 02

  It's also probably on most phones that you've

• 48:20Speaker 01

  Reminds me of a manila folder.

• 48:22Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 48:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 48:23Nilay Patel?

  There it is.

• 48:23Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 48:26Speaker 03

  They should put it over on the side.

• 48:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:28Speaker 03

  They should put it on the side like a Chrome tab.

• 48:31Speaker 02

  No, no, no, no, keep it in the middle.

• 48:33Speaker 03

  Keep it in the middle?

• 48:33Speaker 02

  We don't need them moving the webcam. The webcam needs to be where it is.

• 48:37Speaker 03

  I don't know why it reminds me of Star Wars, but there's something about that.

• 48:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, I didn't understand that reference.

• 48:40Speaker 03

  No, there's something, there's something about the like, the art, the design of like, the physical thing where it's just like, there's a random trapezoid just for the hell of it.

• 48:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 48:48Speaker 03

  That feels like Star Wars to me.

• 48:49Speaker 02

  I agree. I get that vibe.

• 48:51Nilay Patel?

  All of this would have been a great conversation if you didn't insist on calling it the Nega Notch.

• 48:54Speaker 03

  Well, this is the problem.

• 48:56Nilay Patel?

  But now I'm just not gonna engage.

• 48:57Speaker 03

  Well, the Nega Notch also has. And you're gonna think in your head, oh, they got a Nega Notch.

• 49:01Speaker 02

  The Nega Notch also has Windows Hello.

• 49:03Speaker 03

  It is fully insepted into your mind.

• 49:06Nilay Patel?

  We used to be such good friends.

• 49:08Speaker 03

  Sorry.

• 49:09Nilay Patel?

  And now it's over. It's, and I just want everyone to know, this is where it ended. Okay. Lastly, Dieter.

• 49:14Speaker 03

  Oh, God.

• 49:15Nilay Patel?

  There has been some more 5G drama today.

• 49:18Speaker 03

  Five G?

• 49:19Nilay Patel?

  I, I, I think I'm the only one on our staff who sat through the entire Verizon press conference.

• 49:24Speaker 02

  No, Chris Welch was there in person.

• 49:26Nilay Patel?

  The only one on this podcast who sat through the entire, it's true. Chris Welch was there in person. He said the only thing this was good for was taking photos of Hans Vestberg, who's the new CEO of Verizon. So Hans Vestberg.

• 49:38Speaker 03

  Who is?

• 49:39Nilay Patel?

  The new CEO of Verizon.

• 49:40Speaker 03

  Right.

• 49:41Nilay Patel?

  He took over about six months ago.

• 49:44Speaker 03

  Oh, he's the one who came in and was like, this Oath AOL Yahoo thing is dumb.

• 49:49Nilay Patel?

  He was, he was previously the CTO.

• 49:51Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 49:52Nilay Patel?

  He is Swedish. He definitely pronounces it Five G in his like adorable Swedish accent.

• 49:58Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 49:59Nilay Patel?

  Before, and I just, I just, I just need to let everyone know this. He is one of the first executives at Verizon that like hold this position. He's not like an engineering background. He's like the CFO of Ericsson. And then, this is true. This is directly from the Wikipedia page with citations to real sources.

• 50:17Speaker 03

  Uh huh.

• 50:18Nilay Patel?

  He was previously the chairman of the Swedish Handball Federation.

• 50:21Speaker 01

  No way.

• 50:22Nilay Patel?

  It's a fact.

• 50:23Speaker 03

  He also showed up for the keynote wearing a black t-shirt with the V Verizon logo.

• 50:28Nilay Patel?

  Oh, yeah, he got, he got John Ledgered out.

• 50:29Speaker 03

  Yeah, he's like trying to be John Ledger. It's not, not, you're not that, I mean, not that John Ledger is cool.

• 50:34Nilay Patel?

  Look, he's a Swedish handball executive.

• 50:37Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 50:38Speaker 01

  What does that entail?

• 50:39Nilay Patel?

  He's a, huh?

• 50:40Speaker 01

  A handball executive?

• 50:42Nilay Patel?

  He was a, he was a president, chairman of the Swedish Handball.

• 50:44Speaker 03

  I have never met a Swedish person who wasn't cooler than me.

• 50:47Nilay Patel?

  He left the Swedish Handball Federation to serve as president of the Swedish Olympic Committee from 2016 to 2018. He had previously played semi-pro handball in Brazil. I'm sure he was like running his career at Ericsson doing at the same time. But it's just like very fun. Anyway, Hans Westberg, just imagine a handball player, which everyone can do instinctively. He's on stage, he's wearing his cool Verizon shirt, he's got his cool hair, he's got his relaxing, sync five gear over and over again. Verizon today took a shot at AT&T like super hard.

• 51:13Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 51:14Nilay Patel?

  Sprint today took a shot at AT&T super hard.

• 51:16Speaker 03

  When you are getting made fun of by Sprint, you've definitely lost.

• 51:21Nilay Patel?

  So if you don't remember from yesterday's episode of the Roach Cast, AT&T is lying about 5G on its phones. They literally issued a software update to the Galaxy S8 Active, the, the S8 Active, not the S9.

• 51:33Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 51:34Nilay Patel?

  Just the S8 Active, which is like the rugged Galaxy S8. The V, the LGV 40, like two or three other phones, that literally just changes the 4G icon to a 5G E icon.

• 51:45Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 51:46Nilay Patel?

  And so all the other major carriers in America are now like, they're lying to you. When, when other major carriers are back, lies are bad.

• 51:55Speaker 03

  I love this.

• 51:56Speaker 02

  It's like. The carrier that has not one, not two, but three different plans it calls unlimited is telling you that you're lying to your customers.

• 52:06Nilay Patel?

  Lies are bad.

• 52:08Speaker 03

  T-Mobile, which previously had lied to its own customers about G's, started this.

• 52:13Nilay Patel?

  So this is, this is like the context of Hans Westberg on stage today.

• 52:16Speaker 03

  Yeah. No one believes the G's.

• 52:18Nilay Patel?

  No one believes the G's. So he's like, here's the real 5G. It's the guy who pronounces it. Here's a real fight. And this is true. This is a real thing that happened. He's like, here's a 10 minute technical discussion about how it's going to give you 10x battery life and super speeds, a low latency. Verizon, if you don't remember, owns Yahoo. So they had like Yahoo Sports on stage. They brought like a Laker, like a Los Angeles Laker on stage, and he was wearing like a VR headset. And the camera in the headset was streaming to the cloud and then back to the displays over 5G. So that to prove how low latency is, and they made him shoot like baskets. This was a lot. It was a lot. Yeah. And so you're like, look how low latency

• 53:02Nilay Patel?

  is. Like, he's shooting baskets. It's fine. Great. Cool. And then he's like, we're gonna now do something really special. And they placed a call to the first 5G Verizon 5G customer. He's in Houston. He's at his house, like a floppy hairdo, two monitors. And the video call was so laggy that they kept talking over each other. I feel so bad for everyone. He's like, how's the speeds? And I was like, hello?

• 53:29Speaker 03

  No bees.

• 53:34Nilay Patel?

  So that was, that was our first, like, real big 5G moment today. I'm excited to just keep calling it 5G for the rest of time.

• 53:40Speaker 03

  Has anybody done a good 5G demo yet? Because all the demos that Sean Hollister saw in Hawaii turned out to be not good or not real. And now we have the CES keynote 5G demo with the very first real customer, and there was lag.

• 53:57Nilay Patel?

  It's like, where do you, what do you blame that lag on? Do you blame that lag on the 5G connection? Or do you blame it on like CES?

• 54:03Speaker 03

  There was some guy backstage who like, had like, the patching wrong on the board.

• 54:09Nilay Patel?

  Or he just super thought the customer was gonna swear at hands of Esper. It's like the 10 second delay of like, I hate you, you're overcharging me. He's like, muting him really fast. Um, no, who knows what you can blame. That's like a super demo fail. But that was like, the moment, right? Like, the CEO of Verizon, which is all in on 5G, he took over, he's like, shutting down the media business. He's like, we're a network company. This is what we do. It's a whole thing. Here's our first real 5G customer. Screw you, AT&T, you're liars. And he was like, hello, Carl? And the guy was like, yes.

• 54:44Nilay Patel?

  Like that, like Dieter and I just sat there being like, oh, this is really bad.

• 54:48Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 54:48Nilay Patel?

  And it happened a lot. And the guy, he was like, how are the speeds? And there was like eight seconds of silence. And the guy's like, I've been getting pretty good speeds. And he's like, I'm gonna run a speed test. And I hit it. And the speed test started running in the background. And you can like see it on one of those two monitors.

• 55:03Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 55:05Nilay Patel?

  And he's like, I've been getting between 600 and like 1.2. And like, right then, the big speed test number hit 1.7 like gigabits down. And like, wow, Verizon, like, someone's at his house, just like shoving bits into his computer. But then it's like, started slowing down really fast. And it ended on like 620. And then Hans Vestberg is like, thank you.

• 55:28Nilay Patel?

  It was, it was a lot today, but a good 5G keynote. I tried, it's the story of CS. I was on a panel this morning to talk to like industry types of 5G. Dieter was on like 18 podcasts this afternoon talking about 5G.

• 55:41Speaker 03

  Yeah, I, here's the thing. I'm gonna put Eli and Tommy and Dan on the spot. For a minute, you get one minute to think, and we'll sit here in silence together. If you're in your car, pull over and pause. This is the time. For a minute, you have 10 seconds to answer this very simple question. What is 5G?

• 55:58Nilay Patel?

  Okay, it's like three seconds we're stopping this. The answer is no one knows, and it's just in your heart.

• 56:03Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 56:05Nilay Patel?

  It's one more than before.

• 56:06Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 56:07Nilay Patel?

  And that's like where CS is, is a thing. Verizon and T-Mobile want to tell you it's like a technological innovation.

• 56:12Speaker 03

  The cable companies want to talk to you about 10G. I don't even.

• 56:16Nilay Patel?

  No, it's not a thing.

• 56:16Speaker 03

  No, I'm not going there.

• 56:17Nilay Patel?

  Yep. Can I go talk to cable companies tomorrow?

• 56:20Speaker 03

  Yes, please do.

• 56:21Nilay Patel?

  All right, we gotta end the virtual chat, so I need to go to sleep, because I'm talking to cable companies tomorrow. I will tell you that the, the story of CS that is happening under all the stuff we've talked about is everyone here, all the like, marketing people, all the company executives, their money comes from talking about 5G.

• 56:37Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 56:37Nilay Patel?

  It's like flooding, and we are not talking about it except for these hilarious anecdotes, because it's just not real yet.

• 56:44Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 56:45Nilay Patel?

  And it's years away, and yet that's like the heartbeat of CS. It's like everyone's on a panel being like the 5G future.

• 56:51Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 56:52Nilay Patel?

  That's the thing. What's your answer, by the way?

• 56:54Speaker 03

  It is a shared delusion that technology makes things amazing.

• 56:58Nilay Patel?

  Dieter.

• 56:59Speaker 03

  Also, also micro cells.

• 57:01Nilay Patel?

  I would like everyone to tweet at Dieter and tell him if he did a good job or a bad job on the Vergecast today. I know my answer. I'm, I mean, I'm, you're fine.

• 57:09Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 57:11Nilay Patel?

  I think you did, I think you did fine.

• 57:12Speaker 03

  If you think I did a good job, just tweet the word negadach.

• 57:16Nilay Patel?

  I hate you so much.

• 57:17Speaker 03

  At reckless.

• 57:18Nilay Patel?

  All right, we're done with today's Vergecast. Thank you, Dan. Thank you, Donnie. It was wonderful. We've got some more stuff from CES coming. Ashley and Caitlin are doing, why'd you push that button live in front of an audience tomorrow morning? You'll be able to hear that on their feed.

• 57:35Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 57:35Nilay Patel?

  We're doing some stuff at the Google stage. We'll find a way for you to listen to at some point. It'll be a thing. You can listen to Function with Neil Dash, which is also happening, actually taped today. That'll be out. You can listen to Pivot, K Swish, Scott Gals.

• 57:49Speaker 03

  I'm telling you, you called her that.

• 57:51Nilay Patel?

  There's all kinds of stuff happening, all kinds of audio experiences for you to have. A child in a box will fold your socks for you.

• 57:57Speaker 01

  Oh, man.

• 57:59Nilay Patel?

  It's gonna be great. That's it. We've got more interviews from CES. We'll be back very soon. Thank you for listening. This is Vergecast. Rock and roll.

• 58:05Speaker 03

  Paul.

• 58:07Speaker 03

  Say promo code.

• 58:08Speaker 01

  Paul?

• 58:26Nilay Patel?

  This episode of the Vergecast was sponsored by the new Microsoft Surface Pro 6. The Surface Pro 6 can help you get things done whether you're on the field or running a business like Brian Arakpo and Michael Griffin, for example. Two former NFL teammates who opened up a cupcake shop in Texas. They use the Surface Pro 6 to do everything they need from setting schedules to creating promotions for social media and designing new flavors. It's light, super fast, and has a great battery life. I'm not talking about the cupcakes. I'm talking about the Surface Pro 6. Tackle your passions with the power and speed of the Microsoft Surface Pro 6.