CES 2015, Day 0

CES is here, and the Vergecast has come along with it. Join Nilay Patel, Dieter Bohn, and Chris Plante on a journey through the show's biggest news. We’ve got cars, the Internet of Things, smart TVs, and more forklifts than we ever anticipated being on the podcast. 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.

• 0:05Nilay Patel?

  Hey everybody and welcome to The Vergecast at CES 2015. I am Neelai Patel.

• 0:11Speaker 01

  I am Dieter Bone.

• 0:12Speaker 02

  I'm Chris Plant.

• 0:13Nilay Patel?

  I have to tell you, this is extremely weird.

• 0:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 0:17Nilay Patel?

  What is happening right now. If you are like most people and you are listening to this in your car, what I want you to imagine is that, just like, don't close your eyes, but mentally close your eyes.

• 0:29Speaker 01

  No, actually, close your eyes.

• 0:32Nilay Patel?

  See what happens. Let's see if self-driving cars can save you now. We are on what is a primarily deserted CES show floor. So The Verge has a booth at CES this year. It is pretty rad.

• 0:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 0:45Speaker 02

  Right next to Polaroid.

• 0:46Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, that Mustang is hot. We're also right next to Sony. It's like, it's like our chill spot. It's at the end of CES.

• 0:53Speaker 01

  Amazing graphics on our TVs. We have leather couches.

• 0:56Nilay Patel?

  So every other day of the show, we're gonna do the Vergecast here in front of people.

• 1:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:02Nilay Patel?

  But today was such a busy day, we actually waited to do it until after the Sony keynote and after the Samsung keynote, and nothing is happening here. Like, the show hasn't officially opened, the Sony thing is over, basically, and we are just alone at CES.

• 1:19Speaker 02

  I mean, we made the right choice because here during the day, it was like Thunderdome. Like, there were just like little yellow vehicles flying about with their prongs poking at each other.

• 1:30Nilay Patel?

  Oh, the people driving the forklifts are...

• 1:31Speaker 02

  Damn tits!

• 1:32Nilay Patel?

  Like, there's a, like, a rally school for forklift drivers before you can come and be a forklift driver in Vegas.

• 1:37Speaker 02

  They have to do stunts.

• 1:38Nilay Patel?

  Like, drifting the forklifts.

• 1:40Speaker 01

  I have to believe that those forklift drivers, when they go to school to learn how to do it, speaking of...

• 1:46Nilay Patel?

  There's one right there.

• 1:47Speaker 01

  There we go.

• 1:48Nilay Patel?

  They're coming for us at all times.

• 1:49Speaker 01

  That they have, like, literal human dummies.

• 1:52Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, and they're swerving.

• 1:53Speaker 01

  That they hang up... No, no, not that they're swerving, that they are, on their last day, they impale them so that they can get it out of their system.

• 1:58Nilay Patel?

  Just to, just to know what it feels like.

• 2:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, because you must, you must want to.

• 2:01Nilay Patel?

  No, it's like cellphone companies, they test the, like, the jelly-filled fake heads for radiation. Forklift drivers just stab the heads.

• 2:10Speaker 02

  That classic Chris Plant video game color commentary. Yeah, so Sega before it died made this game called Chinmoo and it was like the big open world game. It's gonna have everything in it. You can go to a capsule toy machine and get capsule toys. Best level in the game? Forklift driving. 25 minute long forklift races. Sega knew what people wanted.

• 2:30Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 2:31Speaker 02

  That's why it closed.

• 2:33Nilay Patel?

  Okay, so we're at CS. A million things happened today. A million things happened. We're both, we're, here's what I know actually about Dieter. Dieter's mindset.

• 2:41Speaker 01

  Hi.

• 2:42Nilay Patel?

  Dieter.

• 2:42Speaker 01

  What's up?

• 2:44Nilay Patel?

  Dieter has spent most of the day in the trailer.

• 2:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:47Nilay Patel?

  Uh, and he's losing it.

• 2:49Speaker 01

  Oh, God.

• 2:49Nilay Patel?

  Completely losing it.

• 2:50Speaker 01

  The one time I left the trailer.

• 2:51Nilay Patel?

  He's so excited to interact with people.

• 2:54Speaker 01

  And had no internet. I just sat there and tried to get online for an hour.

• 2:58Nilay Patel?

  He was real mad. Okay, so CS was, uh, very busy today. It's what we call CS Day Zero.

• 3:05Speaker 02

  Wait, what was yesterday?

• 3:06Nilay Patel?

  Negative one. No, it's yesterday. Today's zero. Tomorrow, the show floor opens.

• 3:10Speaker 01

  That's day one.

• 3:11Nilay Patel?

  For real, it's like the world.

• 3:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:12Nilay Patel?

  Uh, so this is zero. And the reason for that, it's a super simple reason. For all these booths to be open and full of stuff that you can go look at, they have to announce it first.

• 3:22Speaker 01

  Right.

• 3:23Nilay Patel?

  So all the press conferences are today and then tomorrow the show floor is opening and you can go look at stuff. So this morning started out, uh, like bright and early, right? With, uh, what was it? God, it was like a million years ago.

• 3:35Speaker 01

  I'm gonna look at our schedule.

• 3:38Nilay Patel?

  Was it a Seuss?

• 3:40Speaker 01

  Uh, no, Seuss was later. Last night was Nvidia.

• 3:45Nilay Patel?

  What was it?

• 3:46Speaker 01

  It was... It was...

• 3:49Speaker 02

  I'm sure it had like a self-driving car in it.

• 3:51Speaker 01

  Today was so long.

• 3:52Speaker 02

  And Samsung and Sony and BMW and Asus. Guys, this is like literally everyone who was driving the car and didn't die when they closed their eyes has fallen asleep and now crashed.

• 4:01Speaker 01

  Today, today started with LG at 8 a.m.

• 4:04Nilay Patel?

  LG, yeah. Okay, so it was LG. Uh, I will say getting hype for washing machines at 8 a.m. LG introduced today what I would call a baby washing machine.

• 4:14Speaker 01

  It's the best. It's so cute.

• 4:16Nilay Patel?

  It goes under your regular washing machine.

• 4:18Speaker 02

  Oh, so you don't wash a baby?

• 4:19Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, it is about the right size.

• 4:21Nilay Patel?

  Your baby can use this washing machine.

• 4:24Speaker 02

  It's got a cute little advertisement.

• 4:26Speaker 01

  Well, the idea is you put like your, you know, regular load in like, oh God, I gotta wash my delicates and then you put your delicates in there so you can get them done faster.

• 4:34Speaker 02

  Ah.

• 4:34Nilay Patel?

  It's two washing machines. One, LG also had a refrigerator, uh, in which the doors, the refrigerator have their own doors.

• 4:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:42Nilay Patel?

  For quick access.

• 4:43Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 4:43Nilay Patel?

  To things in the doors.

• 4:44Speaker 02

  Do you know what? I think it's quick access.

• 4:46Nilay Patel?

  Innovative dual door.

• 4:47Speaker 02

  One door. That's, that's usually.

• 4:50Nilay Patel?

  No, LG and Samsung both went super hard on appliances today in like extremely strange ways, uh, which I appreciate. Cause here's what I know and here's my theme of the show. Here's my, my number one theme of CS, which is that gadgets are finally back.

• 5:05Speaker 01

  You stole that from me.

• 5:06Nilay Patel?

  No, you said Gizmos and Gizmos is an invalid word. Gizmos is the name of like an eighties movie about like a band of wind up toys that tries to save them.

• 5:13Speaker 02

  Gizmo is the name of the gremlin and gremlins.

• 5:16Speaker 01

  Right. What is the difference between a Gizmo and a gadget?

• 5:19Nilay Patel?

  And I, I, Dieter.

• 5:21Speaker 01

  If you cannot elucidate the difference between a Gizmo and a gadget, then you should not be so dismissive of the word Gizmo because it's perfect.

• 5:28Nilay Patel?

  Here's what I believe. One, you haven't talked to enough people today.

• 5:36Nilay Patel?

  I think that is true.

• 5:37Speaker 01

  Damn it.

• 5:38Nilay Patel?

  You've been alone for too long today. Uh, no, the, our trailer, the inside of our trailer is like, it waxes and wanes. There's like bursts of energy and then like extreme typing sounds. Um, and I think Dieter, you spent too much time in typing. So here's Gizmo versus gadget. I think a gadget is, is, it has weight. It has meaning. The Gizmo is like a trinket. That's my, that's my, my, my feeling, based on nothing more than the sound of those words.

• 6:02Speaker 01

  You can have a serious Gizmo. I think a Gizmo is a thing, a gadget is like a thing that's like, whatever.

• 6:06Nilay Patel?

  I think we're about to have a serious Gizmo.

• 6:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 6:08Nilay Patel?

  A serious Gizmo definitely sounds like it.

• 6:10Speaker 02

  I'm on team Dieter on this one.

• 6:11Speaker 01

  All right. Let's, let's talk about, let's talk about a device with a serious Gizmo factor. I'm, I'm moving on.

• 6:17Nilay Patel?

  Okay.

• 6:18Speaker 01

  You're welcome.

• 6:18Nilay Patel?

  Well, no, let me finish my theme, which is gadgets are back and then you can, you can Gizmo it up. Here's what, no, no, here, uh, in this, I think this is like huge to understand all of CS is here, which is. 2007, right before the iPhone came out, like Windows was poised to conquer the world and everything was going to connect to a Windows computer and like the notion of internet connectivity everywhere and all the platforms completely understanding the internet was like a bolt on to Windows and a bolt on to OS 9 and a bolt on to OS 10 in some ways. And then the iPhone disrupted the PC platforms and the iPhone was not powerful enough and early versions of Android were not powerful enough to let all that other stuff that was going to happen, happen. So then everyone just tried to make phones and tablets and that was garbage. It basically CS for years.

• 7:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, it wasn't, most of it was garbage, but what it was, was they like, they were just, they lost. They, they could not keep up with the lead that Apple and Google made.

• 7:12Nilay Patel?

  Garbage. They made garbage and lost, which is fine, like you do. Um, but it's true, right? They couldn't win, like all the, the other companies, like Polaroid tried to make phones here for years. Like they were garbage.

• 7:23Speaker 01

  I would say that most of it was garbage. There were some people that had like systemic things working against them. But like the main point is that like, nobody else can win.

• 7:33Nilay Patel?

  CS 2010 was like a sea of crappy Android 2.2 tablets.

• 7:38Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 7:39Nilay Patel?

  Or, right? And like, they weren't even licensed by Google. And like Honeycomb came out and there was like a sea of crappy, like, and that was all fine, but that wasn't the thing that you needed to make.

• 7:47Speaker 01

  Right.

• 7:48Nilay Patel?

  What you needed to have happen was iOS and Android and the cloud services to all like combine and be powerful enough for this universe of other stuff to happen again. And then on top of that, because there's this huge drive to put sensors and wireless and make wireless not cost a lot of battery in phones, those chips got really cheap and really like power efficient. And now you can just be like, yo, I want to make a coffee maker. I can just put a wifi chip and a temperature sensor in it and that will connect to a cloud service and the iPhone will be smart or your Android phone will be the smart thing. And that means like, what Samsung wants to rule the world with internet things is really just like, we're just back to like gadgets.

• 8:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, but what's great about the-

• 8:28Nilay Patel?

  They don't, they don't USB connect to your computer anymore. They're like wifi up to a cloud.

• 8:32Speaker 01

  Or, or they, they just, they, they do their own thing and then maybe they, they Bluetooth to a phone, but you can just take a- A thing that did one thing and a thing that did another thing and stick them together. It's like my favorite gadgets from yesterday was like, uh, the, there's a bike pedal that turns your bike into a smart bike.

• 8:47Speaker 02

  That's cool.

• 8:48Speaker 01

  Right? Just like, that's just like, cool. Like, oh yeah, of course we should do something like that. Like, you don't need it, but it's like a fun gadget. It feels like CES before the iPhone, honestly. It feels like what CES was.

• 9:01Nilay Patel?

  I know, I was Christmas shopping and I was at Best Buy and I was like, there's cool stuff at Best Buy.

• 9:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:06Nilay Patel?

  Like in a weird, I'm not gonna buy most of it way because all of it is fitness trackers, but it's here.

• 9:11Speaker 01

  And it's relatively cheap. And so if you're like, I can't think what to get Uncle Joe, but Uncle Joe will be like, oh hey, headphones that like, track my head motion?

• 9:22Nilay Patel?

  But Uncle Joe's too dumb to know what's going on.

• 9:24Speaker 02

  I know we're gonna talk about the internet things like every day this time, but I still, I don't know. I think there's a lot of assumptions going around that all this stuff just works. I mean, you just said just works. And I, I don't believe it. I mean, I believe it for us, right? When I picture my parents who like can barely get onto their own wifi network, I love you Ken and Kathy, but we have trouble sometimes with that. And then imagining them trying to figure out how to do that and dial it in with something that doesn't even have a screen on it, or has like a tiny, small screen, like a coffee maker.

• 9:58Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 9:59Speaker 02

  That sounds like a nightmare for most people. And they're just gonna say, I just want a normal coffee machine. And I know that we'll come around and get to that, but this feels a little like early hype. It feels like...

• 10:10Speaker 01

  No, I think that was last year. That's what I'm saying. Like, there was a moment last year and the year before where to solve the problem of how do we make this coffee machine smart? What they did was like bolt a crappy Android smartphone to the back of it.

• 10:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:22Speaker 01

  Like, that was the answer. Like, here's a reference board from MediaTek that runs Android 2.2, and now your coffee machine is smart. And it's gonna run like an embedded app on old Android. And that was never gonna work, like...

• 10:35Nilay Patel?

  I literally don't let my parents, I don't allow them to expose themselves to new software. Like, it terrifies me. My parents want a smart lock. I'm like, no. Because what you really want is an app that I will have to walk you through. And like, that, we're not gonna, we're not gonna put access into your home at that level of comp- like, that's too much. But now, what I'm saying is you don't have to, you're not, they're not doing that anymore. The, all the software lives on your phone, and all that's happening on all these devices is a little bit of wireless connectivity and a little bit of like censor stuff. Yeah. And so like, to get that coffee maker on Wi- on your Wi-Fi network, you just configure it on the phone.

• 11:09Speaker 01

  Censor stuff.

• 11:10Speaker 02

  I'm very excited to see all of it. As someone who still doesn't get my remote control to work.

• 11:14Nilay Patel?

  Right. So we should talk about what actually happened here today. Um, he said ominously.

• 11:21Speaker 01

  Do we, can we talk about a couple more gizmos before we get into like the big ass companies?

• 11:25Nilay Patel?

  There was yesterday, we actually saw a lot of gadgets yesterday.

• 11:28Speaker 01

  That CES Unveiled, which is like the, like the little company show before the show, before the show.

• 11:31Nilay Patel?

  I actually finally figured it out. I finally figured out what CES Unveiled is.

• 11:35Speaker 01

  Alright.

• 11:35Nilay Patel?

  So the show, press conference day is today, and the show opens tomorrow. So most media gets in yesterday. Like, we come in like, I was here in, in October, right? Like, we came in wa- like, really early and like set up and we have a trailer. Most people arrive yesterday in the afternoon, and they immediately go from the airport to Unveiled.

• 11:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:54Nilay Patel?

  Where they're starving.

• 11:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:56Nilay Patel?

  And so, the CEA sets up food and booze in like, somewhat extravagant fashion, which we don't, we don't take.

• 12:05Speaker 01

  Or take.

• 12:06Nilay Patel?

  Because ethics and video game journalism.

• 12:11Nilay Patel?

  But many, many people arrive at the airport, go, and they just like gorge themselves on like free shrimp. While, and then, that's how you, that's how they get exposed to the little companies.

• 12:21Speaker 01

  Right.

• 12:21Nilay Patel?

  So we've always looked at this all wrong. Like, we go there for news. Other people are going there for sliders.

• 12:27Speaker 02

  Dude, we got good news out of that.

• 12:29Nilay Patel?

  We did, we had some fun.

• 12:30Speaker 02

  I got a video box.

• 12:31Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, yeah, tell me about that.

• 12:32Speaker 02

  Okay, so the O box is-

• 12:33Nilay Patel?

  I got a CD.

• 12:34Speaker 02

  Snow games. Snow games, man. I, I gotta dig more into snow games, because they're the strangest company. Chinese game developer, kind of, made browser games, starting in 2000.

• 12:45Speaker 02

  And they're like, hey, you know what? Uh, Apple has disrupted the entire landscape. Video games are not going to make money because free to play is the whole thing. And we can't just be on browsers. So they started making mobile games. And they're like, hey, you know what'd make this easier? Making the hardware that will be optimized for this. And then they were like, you know what'd be even easier than that? Becoming a telecom and becoming the fifth largest, uh, mobile telephone provider in China. Which like, fifth, I mean, it's like 2% of the market or something. That's a lot of people. That's a ton of people. So then they're like, oh, this was so easy, apparently doing whatever we wanted. Let's do something so, so easy. Let's launch a video game console in America and a handheld in the same year.

• 13:27Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 13:27Speaker 02

  So they're launching Ovox, which is like an Android console. But it's like the most absurdly souped up version of that. Even though it's running on Nvidia's K1, which just got kind of replaced. So we'll see if they stick with that.

• 13:42Nilay Patel?

  By the way, the X is because of Maxwell.

• 13:46Nilay Patel?

  Carry on.

• 13:47Speaker 02

  I'm surprised that you heard that in that entire thing.

• 13:49Nilay Patel?

  Nvidia's press conference was very long yesterday. And that was but one of many ridiculous things that were said.

• 13:54Speaker 01

  I'm gonna, I'm gonna write the, the blog post that's like, stop putting X in your brand name.

• 13:59Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 13:59Speaker 02

  From now on. Stop just using letters. Uh, but yeah, so I mean, the cheapest version of it, they think will be like $99. Which is interesting because it also, uh, displays 3D and 4K video. So potentially, this could be your Netflix 4K video streaming thing.

• 14:17Speaker 01

  None of this is going to happen. The thing is not going to come out on time. It's going to be buggy. It's gonna run Android. The games are gonna suck because it runs Android. It's going to crash and burn. I'm sorry. No.

• 14:27Speaker 02

  I mean, guys.

• 14:28Nilay Patel?

  A lot of people are gonna hear that the wrong way. They're gonna hear that you said it's gonna fail because it runs Android, which is what Dieter said.

• 14:34Speaker 01

  Android gaming consoles are doomed.

• 14:37Nilay Patel?

  They're doomed to fail.

• 14:38Speaker 01

  They're inherently doomed because gaming on Android is inferior to gaming on any other platform.

• 14:45Speaker 02

  Guys, I'm gonna give you a little, I'm gonna give you a little bit of a pep talk. This is a little CES pep talk. Ready? I come from the game space. I know full well what happens to Android things. But when something does something interesting, I like to at least humor it and give it the benefit of the doubt.

• 15:00Speaker 01

  It's very interesting.

• 15:01Speaker 02

  It's very interesting. Second thing, though.

• 15:02Nilay Patel?

  By the way, benefited the doubt plant? My favorite plant.

• 15:05Speaker 02

  After I talked to you, you know what I did? I called up my father this morning, and he loves technology. He downloads so much freeware. And he was like, "Boy, oh, boy." He talks like this. He's like, "Boy, oh, boy, golly, you're at CES. I'm so gosh dang proud of you. And there's technology, and have you seen all the new things? There's what? Try to skateboard." Yep. He's my favorite person. But like that, I was like, "Yeah, I need to be, I need to give these things a chance." And that's why I want to talk about the other thing that they showed. The W3D, which I'm gonna be really honest about who this is very clearly for. It is a Vita, essentially.

• 15:40Nilay Patel?

  It's a Vita clone.

• 15:40Speaker 02

  That runs Android, and it has four buttons on the top, so you have all four bumpers.

• 15:45Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. I know where you're going.

• 15:46Speaker 02

  There's only one person in the world who's gonna play this, and they're gonna buy good billions of them. And those are people who emulate games illegally. And whatever money they lose on the O box, I'm sure they're going to do a fair amount of business on that. Because it is clearly designed from top to bottom to make that an enjoyable experience.

• 16:05Nilay Patel?

  That's great.

• 16:06Speaker 02

  So, for those people...

• 16:07Nilay Patel?

  And if you're the fifth largest Chinese phone manufacturer, this is gonna be great for you.

• 16:11Speaker 01

  All right, so, Nellie, what's your favorite gadget? Gadget that you've seen so far, not Gizmo, actually Gizmo.

• 16:16Nilay Patel?

  God, this is...

• 16:17Speaker 01

  It's fine.

• 16:18Nilay Patel?

  Favorite gadget? You keep litigating these words and don't know what they mean. I just know that yours sounds dumber.

• 16:23Speaker 02

  Well, gadgets are cruddy, because like Inspector Gadget, his stuff never works.

• 16:27Nilay Patel?

  Uh, yeah, you tell me. I don't...

• 16:28Speaker 01

  No, I haven't. I haven't even mentioned it yet.

• 16:30Nilay Patel?

  I haven't seen anything yet, but you tell me yours is.

• 16:33Speaker 01

  My favorite, I haven't seen it personally, but my favorite thing is the Band-Aid that you stick on your baby when it has a fever. And it lasts about 24 hours. And it just, you could just check the app, check your baby's temperature whenever you want. And, or you could just set it to like, make your phone beep if it changes radically. So for parents that wanna freak out and like, check their baby's temperature all the time, and they've got a fever and they're really nervous about it, you just stick this Band-Aid on your baby and chill out.

• 16:58Speaker 02

  Wait, you don't have a child, right?

• 17:00Speaker 01

  No, but it's an amazing idea.

• 17:02Speaker 02

  This is a man who's like, "Please, be warned."

• 17:05Nilay Patel?

  Do you hear Lisa surreptitiously checking her temperature all the time?

• 17:08Speaker 01

  In terms of like... Weird little, in terms of technology getting cheaper and that making people's lives better, this is a perfect example.

• 17:16Nilay Patel?

  But I will say this, Liz and Ariel constantly remind me that all these wearables and all these sensors and all this Quantified Self stuff is like heaven for complete obsessive compulsive hypochondriac.

• 17:29Speaker 02

  Oh my gosh.

• 17:29Nilay Patel?

  Like Ariel's like up in arms about HealthKit and how you can't delete it from the iPhone because she's like, this will just enable, like if you are like a crazy parent, like a modern 2010's parent.

• 17:40Speaker 02

  A parent.

• 17:41Speaker 01

  You'll just have one of these things in your kid all the time.

• 17:43Nilay Patel?

  You will literally just swaddle your kid in like sensor later Band-Aids.

• 17:48Speaker 02

  There's not enough skin for more wearables.

• 17:50Nilay Patel?

  You know what I'll say, we should, we can talk about Sony because we're sitting right, we're sitting in the shadow of the Sony booth. I literally, I covered, I live logged the Sony keynote and then walked here and sat down and we started Vergecasting.

• 18:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:01Nilay Patel?

  So we might as, we might as well talk about Sony, which is the last thing that happened. So my favorite gadget so far, and only for what it stands for, not for necessarily what it is, is Sony's 4K TV, which is ridiculously thin. It is, the demo they're giving is they're walking around with Chapstick and the TV at the top is thinner than the part of the Chapstick that you turn at the bottom. Like it's ridiculous. And they keep holding up phones. I mean, I see how crappy your phone is, our TV's thinner than it. Which is the best. I don't know why that's a valid comparison, but it fills everyone with glee. But here's the thing about that. So the hardware's beautiful, the picture's great, 4K, all the stuff. Sony just threw out their software.

• 18:43Speaker 01

  Right.

• 18:43Nilay Patel?

  They just stopped. Like the one thing Sony has always needed to do, just stop, just stop. And all of their new TVs just run Android TV.

• 18:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:52Nilay Patel?

  Which is cool.

• 18:53Speaker 02

  And they knew it too, because when they said it, there was kind of tepid claps and he was like, you can clap. Like, we did this for you. We're not using any of that junk on those other TVs.

• 19:03Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it was amazing. It's like, they finally did it and like they're, it's a little, I played with one, it's obviously a little bit buggy. It's like brand new.

• 19:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, Android TV is a little buggy, but I think that Google TV was a huge.

• 19:14Nilay Patel?

  Just forklifts coming at us.

• 19:15Speaker 01

  Google TV is a huge failure.

• 19:17Nilay Patel?

  By the way, if I'm ever murdered, that will be the sound of my murder. Like, not like a terribly scary sound and not like a.

• 19:23Speaker 01

  Go impale a dummy, guys.

• 19:25Nilay Patel?

  Just sort of a dull beeping that indicates peril is at hand. And then I'll like, I'll screw it up.

• 19:31Speaker 02

  I like that you think a warning signal means peril is at hand.

• 19:34Speaker 01

  What else is warning?

• 19:36Speaker 02

  It's designed to warn you.

• 19:38Nilay Patel?

  That's what it is.

• 19:39Speaker 01

  Like, warning and peril are...

• 19:40Speaker 02

  You are literally that character in Austin Powers. Where it's like backing up, and he's like, "Please get out of the way," and you're like, "Oh, peril is at hand." Finally, an Austin Powers joke in 2015.

• 19:51Speaker 01

  Man.

• 19:52Speaker 02

  God.

• 19:53Nilay Patel?

  I'm telling you, man. I'm just saying, I'm not saying that will be how I die, I'm saying that will be the sound.

• 19:57Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 20:00Nilay Patel?

  Have you ever thought about the ambient sound environment of your own mortality? Who doesn't?

• 20:06Speaker 02

  What are we talking about?

• 20:07Speaker 01

  It doesn't matter.

• 20:07Nilay Patel?

  I think we're talking about TV.

• 20:08Speaker 02

  Oh, sorry.

• 20:09Speaker 01

  I was gonna say Android TV doesn't suck, that's all, that's the whole thing.

• 20:11Speaker 02

  So what you're excited about is the software on it?

• 20:14Nilay Patel?

  What I'm excited about in general...

• 20:18Nilay Patel?

  Our hearts filled with terror, once again. What I'm excited about, I don't know, can we even keep going?

• 20:23Speaker 02

  The problem is, you never know which one of those sounds is gonna be when they kill you.

• 20:26Speaker 01

  The question is, are our microphones picking up the beeping? Because if they're not, we sound like French people.

• 20:31Nilay Patel?

  I see John's face, and John's face tells me that we screwed it up again.

• 20:39Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, well, one year CES won't be loud. CES 2016, the quiet one.

• 20:47Speaker 02

  After Neelai died to that noise, everything was just so quiet.

• 20:50Nilay Patel?

  CES 2016, permanent headphone rave.

• 20:54Speaker 02

  God.

• 20:56Speaker 02

  Yes, yes. Software.

• 20:58Nilay Patel?

  No, I'm saying, like, the platforms are extended down to all the screens, right? So like, they gave up on the software and they're just using the mature platform.

• 21:05Speaker 02

  Can I be honest with you though?

• 21:06Nilay Patel?

  It's kinda like having a TV that runs Windows.

• 21:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, but, but, so here's the thing.

• 21:10Nilay Patel?

  Like, two years from now, the processor will be slow, the software will be cracking.

• 21:12Speaker 01

  The problem with that is, giving up and using somebody else's software platform, only, like, Sony's not good at making its own software, it's not always good at using somebody else's. And, uh, example A, exhibit, exhibit A...

• 21:28Speaker 01

  Is the Walkman.

• 21:31Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 21:31Speaker 01

  The new Walkman is running a two-year-old version of Android.

• 21:34Nilay Patel?

  I really wanted that too much.

• 21:34Speaker 02

  A thousand dollars.

• 21:36Nilay Patel?

  You got it wrong. It's $1,200.

• 21:40Speaker 01

  Bah!

• 21:40Nilay Patel?

  So there's a new Walkman, the NW2. I would say it's my favorite gadget here for only because it is so ridicu- it is such an audacious thing to make. So I have this other theory that the 90s are back in every which way, and this gadget proves not because it's called a Walkman, but because Sony believes it can launch a new high-end audio format, which is basically what Sony tries to do every decade.

• 22:05Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 22:05Nilay Patel?

  So in the 90s it was SACD, Super Audio CD. And I had one, I had one Sony, like, I got a home theater in a box and I was in college, and I had one Super Audio CD.

• 22:15Speaker 01

  What was it?

• 22:16Nilay Patel?

  Uh, I don't even remember.

• 22:18Speaker 01

  Yes, you do. You know the band.

• 22:19Nilay Patel?

  No, I honestly don't remember. I'm pretty sure it was like a Rolling Stones.

• 22:22Speaker 01

  Big Audio Dynamite.

• 22:23Nilay Patel?

  It was not.

• 22:24Speaker 01

  It was CNC Music Factory.

• 22:26Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, like, you've literally just named two bands that no amount of additional, like, audio resolution can, like, reveal anything.

• 22:35Speaker 02

  It was T-Rex.

• 22:36Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. No, I think it was like some, like, old, like, Rolling Stones, like, B-side collection, right? It's like the free CD that comes with the home theater in a box. Like, they didn't pay a lot for it. And I just remember being like, "Man, those guitar tinkles, they're so crisp." And then I never bought another Super Audio CD. But I was like, I was like, "Check out this one CD I have." It was awful. And that's what this Walkman is. It's a Walkman. They invented a new thing, HXEE, or DXEE. It doesn't even matter what the letters are. It's basically-

• 23:04Speaker 01

  But they have an X in them.

• 23:05Nilay Patel?

  It's super expensive mega bass. It's an audio upscaler that can make MP3s in your $1,200 Walkmans sound really good.

• 23:12Speaker 02

  If you have the, like, $3,000 headphones that will make use of them.

• 23:16Nilay Patel?

  No, high-res audio is, like, that's Sony's thing. And they're, like, all, they have this whole line of products. They made a big announcement about how the CEA and everyone else at the CEA, all the member companies are gonna support the same logo so consumers really know that it's high-res. This was part of the keynote today. They said it on stage.

• 23:34Speaker 01

  I'm sorry.

• 23:34Nilay Patel?

  They brought 3,000 journalists to Vegas and sat them down in a- Room with like a big circular screen above them. And first they talked about the interview and then they talked about 4K and then they talked about cameras. And then they landed on and we're all going to use the same logo for our super high end audio format. And then looked expectantly upon us.

• 23:52Speaker 01

  Oh, no.

• 23:53Nilay Patel?

  And he's like, and then $1,200 Walkman.

• 23:56Speaker 01

  We got that from Samsung too. They announced the UHD Alliance.

• 24:00Nilay Patel?

  Can we, okay, we can stop talking about Sony. There's whatever.

• 24:02Speaker 02

  Wait, I, I have one thing that I want to hit because it strikes me as funny that you care about software on a TV. And it's because I don't know why it matters. Because I, I have a TV that I am obsessed with, as we've talked about. I have the last line of the Panasonic TVs. I think it's perfect television.

• 24:19Nilay Patel?

  You have the higher end one. I get the CT60.

• 24:21Speaker 02

  I think it is absolutely perfect and I can never imagine getting rid of it at this point. Uh, and what I did with it, because I bought a nice TV, is I have my own separate sound. I'm not going to use the junky sound in it.

• 24:30Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 24:31Speaker 02

  And I'm also not going to use any junky software in it. I plugged the computer into it.

• 24:34Nilay Patel?

  Do you use the camera that pops up?

• 24:36Speaker 02

  No. Why, I don't use anything but the TV.

• 24:39Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 24:39Speaker 02

  That's what I want.

• 24:40Nilay Patel?

  Right. Panasonic makes a nice panel.

• 24:41Speaker 02

  They make a great TV. And that's what a TV is. And it seems funny to me that we know like the sound's going to be junky on a TV if we're buying a nice TV. So it gets surround sound, but then when it comes to the computing angle, why people would want a computer inside of the TV? When they can just hook a relatively affordable computer up to a TV and it works magnificently. And I've written about this on the site, having a computer connected to your TV changes everything about having a TV. It, it, it is, I mean, it was a total revelation how I use my TV and in what it's connected to and what services I use. And how those services are actually reliable.

• 25:15Nilay Patel?

  You can't, you can't, that idea has been tried so many, like that first Microsoft tried it for real. Then they were like, nope, bad idea. Then Google tried it with Google TV and they're like, literally it almost killed Logitech. Like Google was like, I'm, I'm holding a sniper. Would anyone like me to stab them? And Logic was like, that sounds like a great direction for our business to go in. And Google was just like, they were just like.

• 25:36Speaker 01

  Fundamentally, the problem with your vision is nobody wants a keyboard on their coffee table.

• 25:41Speaker 02

  Because none of the keyboards are cool enough.

• 25:44Nilay Patel?

  That's it. You're, you're, whatever. I don't, I admit that there are some cool keyboards. I will concede such a thing.

• 25:51Speaker 02

  I guess what I'm saying is as somebody who actually knows, or I would hope, or has tried the experience and knows it's better. It just seems weird to concede that it's an exciting thing, even though it's crappier.

• 26:01Nilay Patel?

  No, I think that, here's the thing. So.

• 26:05Nilay Patel?

  To get really nerdy, it's about where the software lives. It's not about having a computer on your TV. It's about where does your software live? And like, how fast does it age? And where does it get updated? And like, is it gonna crash? And why is it gonna crash? And like, is the hardware behind it fast enough to run it? And having a computer next to your TV.

• 26:19Speaker 01

  A company that supports it gonna update the...

• 26:22Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 26:22Speaker 01

  Update it.

• 26:23Nilay Patel?

  And so like, the best answer that anybody's had so far has been something like AirPlay or Chromecast, where all the software like, kinda lives on your phone.

• 26:32Speaker 02

  Elsewhere.

• 26:32Nilay Patel?

  Elsewhere. And you like, send stuff to the TV.

• 26:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 26:35Nilay Patel?

  You're, what, all you're saying is...

• 26:36Speaker 02

  Mine's the same thing.

• 26:37Nilay Patel?

  All the software's gonna live on a PC and we're gonna send it over.

• 26:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 26:40Nilay Patel?

  It's like, whatever. But you, that is like, that's not an integrated solution. So, either you go all the way down the, "This is a dumb panel", or you find some way to make the smart panel like...

• 26:49Speaker 02

  Actually, I think I can understand it.

• 26:51Speaker 01

  Why doesn't anybody sell a dumb panel? Just give me a dumb panel with no speakers, no nothing. I just want a panel.

• 26:57Nilay Patel?

  Cause we're not the market.

• 26:58Speaker 01

  And I want five HDMI inputs.

• 27:00Nilay Patel?

  No, we're, cause we're just definitely not the market.

• 27:02Speaker 02

  This makes more sense to me now that I think about it, because then what you're saying is, the Android thing is optional in the same way the sound is optional. There's still sound on my TV, even though it's a laughable idea that I'm gonna use it.

• 27:12Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 27:13Speaker 02

  The Android thing's there, but I can still use my computer and still have a superior experience.

• 27:17Nilay Patel?

  Right, I mean, any, like, so I'm gonna transition us right into Samsung, which is the other big set of announcements today. So Sony made, announced a bunch of stuff. I mean, the big, I think Sony's big announcement was all of their new TVs are running Android TV. Then they announced some like, smart glasses nonsense weird Sony thing. Then, then they announced a bunch of, obviously, Internet of Things, things. Uh, like a, a light, uh, a lamp that's a speaker.

• 27:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:40Nilay Patel?

  A proprietary vertical firing speaker. The glass of the lamp, that's the tweeter, cause it vibrates. I mean, like, that's, like, that's what I mean by gadgets are back. Like, they're just whole hog into like...

• 27:51Speaker 02

  Weird gifts.

• 27:52Nilay Patel?

  Weird, weird gifts. There's a lamp that's a speaker, right?

• 27:54Speaker 02

  Also, there are so many in that good hall. Have you seen those Marley headphones?

• 27:58Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, they're, those are nice.

• 27:59Speaker 02

  They look nice. I have like, shat, how nice they look.

• 28:02Nilay Patel?

  They're good. They, uh, also if you catch it right at the right time, Marley's kids, or, he has a thousand kids. They're actually there and they're just hanging out, talking about headphones.

• 28:11Speaker 01

  Let me, let me, let me float a, let me float a dark theory. That the reason that everybody's finally making weird gadgets again, and weird gifts again, is because they're waiting for the economy to turn around. Like, oh, well now people actually buy this stuff.

• 28:24Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Sure. I mean, maybe. Or they just have an opportunity to make something that connects to something that's you. I mean, the whole point of this is all of these things are only enabled by phones. Right? Like you, you need to have a phone to like make some of these things work.

• 28:39Speaker 02

  Do you know what's kind of funny about it? When you think about like the like gift economy, right? Is that for the past probably six years, the junk that you always got from your grandparents was like something that connected to your phone, but was garbage.

• 28:50Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 28:50Speaker 02

  Where it's like, oh, I, I guess I need this like wrap around my phone that looks like a puppy dog. And now it's an evolution of that to the extreme where it's like, yeah, these still are kind of connected to my phone. And the phone is like the safe base.

• 29:02Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 29:02Speaker 02

  For all companies like, okay, it connects to your phone. So we know people will buy it, but we're actually making a guitar. It's like, great, cool. It's, but who, thank goodness it connects to the phone.

• 29:11Nilay Patel?

  Today, Lenovo put out a flash for selfies. Like that is the ultimate, like, I don't really care about you gift, but I had to spend $40.

• 29:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:21Nilay Patel?

  And I think people will happily buy that gift. I'm gonna buy one of those.

• 29:24Speaker 02

  If there was a way to make the nice camera on the back of my phone, be my selfie camera.

• 29:28Speaker 01

  Oh, there are, there's, well, there's phones that they flip around. It's got a motor on it.

• 29:33Speaker 02

  Oh, I'm seeing that. That's the, the Oppo?

• 29:35Speaker 01

  Oppo, yeah.

• 29:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 29:37Nilay Patel?

  My computer.

• 29:37Speaker 01

  Alright, so Samsung.

• 29:38Nilay Patel?

  So let's, let's do Samsung, because I think that's important.

• 29:41Speaker 01

  Suuuud.

• 29:42Nilay Patel?

  You, you watched the keynote. I was, I was out and about.

• 29:44Speaker 01

  It was, it was a standard Samsung CES keynote.

• 29:48Nilay Patel?

  Well, I mean, but Samsung had a crazy ass party last night with like girls in LED dresses floating in the pool.

• 29:52Speaker 01

  So they got their weird out there at the crazy ass party. What?

• 29:57Nilay Patel?

  I don't think Samsung ever gets its weird out.

• 29:58Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 30:00Nilay Patel?

  I don't think such a thing is possible.

• 30:02Speaker 02

  Never say that phrase again. I don't think Samsung ever gets weird out.

• 30:06Nilay Patel?

  Today, Samsung introduced a line of stoves to thunderous orchestral music.

• 30:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:11Nilay Patel?

  Like, that's just who they are.

• 30:13Speaker 01

  Yep. Actually, the stove's got this insane cool door where like you can open the top of it and there's like the top section of the stove, so it's efficient.

• 30:20Nilay Patel?

  Everything at CES has two doors.

• 30:21Speaker 01

  Or, no, no, but like, it's the same.

• 30:23Nilay Patel?

  Two doors are the biggest trend of appliances.

• 30:25Speaker 01

  It's the same door. You can hinge it here or you can open the whole door.

• 30:29Nilay Patel?

  Oh.

• 30:29Speaker 02

  And this is the door your cellphone controls.

• 30:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:32Speaker 02

  What?

• 30:33Nilay Patel?

  Alright, dude, so let's go through Samsung.

• 30:35Speaker 01

  Clearly, they had the new stove. They had the new washing machine.

• 30:38Nilay Patel?

  Just say the letters.

• 30:40Speaker 01

  S apostrophe UHD.

• 30:43Nilay Patel?

  Sud.

• 30:45Speaker 01

  Suud.

• 30:46Nilay Patel?

  Sud.

• 30:48Speaker 02

  What happens when you rub soap together in the bath?

• 30:50Nilay Patel?

  Really unclear. So we showed up.

• 30:51Speaker 01

  I tell you what, they look great.

• 30:53Nilay Patel?

  Sure. But Samsung, so we showed up and like.

• 30:58Nilay Patel?

  CS is not a coy environment. Like Vegas is not a, like, for a place where it's all about like hiding your cards, like Vegas is not about hiding your cards at all. So all the banners are up when we get here, all the whatever, the gigantic wall coverings are here. And Samsung just has like billboards everywhere that it's like, the most sedu-, they're like fake movie billboards. And they're like, "The most seductive TV in the world, starring 4K content from Netflix." And it's just like, what? And there's like a silhouette of a man, and it's like, you don't understand what the word seductive means.

• 31:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:32Nilay Patel?

  Just to first inform.

• 31:33Speaker 02

  They don't understand a few different words. We posted on our site, "Be mine." Well, what was it? Sh- sh- sh-?

• 31:40Nilay Patel?

  Shearing.

• 31:40Speaker 02

  Shearing.

• 31:41Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. S-H. So yeah, there's nine. Do you have that posted?

• 31:44Speaker 01

  I'm looking it up right now, actually.

• 31:45Speaker 02

  A method for preparing an egg.

• 31:47Nilay Patel?

  So S apostrophe Y, she, "The most seductive TV in the world," which is...

• 31:52Speaker 01

  But like, so it's UHD, ultra high.

• 31:54Nilay Patel?

  So my proposed headline, I'm just gonna say this, John, you might have to bleep this. My proposed headline for the post where we revealed that Samsung had these posters, was simply that... Okay, I'll tone it down for the kids. Cause we're also, there's...

• 32:08Speaker 01

  You want me to bleep it? No, no.

• 32:09Nilay Patel?

  No, I just realized like...

• 32:10Speaker 02

  There are microphones in the hallway.

• 32:11Speaker 01

  I'll bleep.

• 32:12Nilay Patel?

  No, it's not that, it's that there were in our space, and there are speakers.

• 32:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, and people can hear us.

• 32:17Nilay Patel?

  For our audience that isn't here. And so if I just said out loud...

• 32:21Speaker 02

  John is literally staring right through you.

• 32:23Nilay Patel?

  Samsung wants to fuck.

• 32:26Speaker 02

  Wait, you don't get to finish the sentence. You get to say Samsung wants to fuck.

• 32:29Nilay Patel?

  Look, Sam-

• 32:30Speaker 01

  You could've just, Samsung wants to, you, but you just had to say the word. You just really wanted to say the word.

• 32:36Nilay Patel?

  But I couldn't finish it. I couldn't, I didn't deliver.

• 32:39Speaker 02

  You didn't say the other words. The words after the words.

• 32:43Nilay Patel?

  There's only four words.

• 32:44Speaker 02

  I thought you said, I thought it was, Samsung wants to do your T-, wants you to do your TV.

• 32:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, no. It's not, yeah, you gotta back words.

• 32:50Nilay Patel?

  That's what I believe in my heart.

• 32:52Speaker 01

  Samsung wants you to bone the TV.

• 32:53Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, so it's unclear who is seducing whom in this, in this relationship, and also why the TV has the agency by which...

• 33:00Speaker 01

  You get seduced.

• 33:02Speaker 02

  Or the name, like, it sounds like a Batman villain.

• 33:05Nilay Patel?

  Like, it's just like you see it and you're like, "Sued."

• 33:08Speaker 01

  What's insane is that they don't, they can't decide what the S stands for.

• 33:11Nilay Patel?

  Right, so can you, so the S literally does not stand, it doesn't stand for Samsung.

• 33:16Speaker 02

  Nice.

• 33:17Nilay Patel?

  We confirmed that it's not Samsung.

• 33:20Speaker 01

  Floating around in pools with neon lights on them and just insanity, uh, and they had signposts and the S stands not for Samsung, but for special, or perhaps striking.

• 33:35Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, keep going.

• 33:35Speaker 01

  Or perhaps sensational, or seductive.

• 33:39Nilay Patel?

  And, still, just unclear.

• 33:41Speaker 01

  Smart, stylish, superb, spectacular.

• 33:48Speaker 02

  And?

• 33:51Nilay Patel?

  Shurring.

• 33:52Speaker 01

  Shurring.

• 33:53Nilay Patel?

  Read the definition of shurring.

• 33:54Speaker 01

  No, hang on. Confirm for me that the word shurring was actually somewhere, because I'm pretty sure they probably meant stirring, right?

• 34:03Nilay Patel?

  I'm pretty sure what they actually meant was Samsung.

• 34:06Speaker 02

  No, so there's an alternate definition to shurring other than the one we have here. So you say this one first, and I'll...

• 34:11Speaker 01

  Shurring, noun, baking shelled eggs.

• 34:17Speaker 02

  Now, I think, I think, and this is digging deep, this is high school clothing lab, but I believe there's a sewing technique, or a stitching technique, where it's two lines, uh, next to each other, is also shurring.

• 34:31Speaker 01

  Right.

• 34:32Speaker 02

  That does not justify it.

• 34:34Nilay Patel?

  No, maybe, maybe the TV's finished with like that, like, contrast stitching.

• 34:38Speaker 01

  Doesn't Occam's razor demand that it was supposed to be stirring and that they screwed it up when they printed it?

• 34:45Speaker 02

  I want to believe it's shurring.

• 34:46Nilay Patel?

  But if you're gonna, if you're gonna hire Eves Behar...

• 34:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:50Nilay Patel?

  To design your TV.

• 34:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:52Nilay Patel?

  And you're gonna name it "Sued."

• 34:54Speaker 01

  Dude.

• 34:55Nilay Patel?

  You don't, you don't copy edit the press release?

• 34:57Speaker 01

  I do not care what that TV is called.

• 35:01Nilay Patel?

  It does look nice.

• 35:02Speaker 01

  It looks really good. I...

• 35:04Nilay Patel?

  I would build that TV.

• 35:06Speaker 01

  I came into CES thinking that-

• 35:08Nilay Patel?

  I would just, I would see it across the room.

• 35:11Speaker 01

  Look, here it is.

• 35:11Speaker 02

  Make eyes at it?

• 35:12Nilay Patel?

  Make eyes at it?

• 35:13Speaker 01

  Here it is.

• 35:14Nilay Patel?

  Be like, are you running, you running tires?

• 35:15Speaker 02

  Is this me or are you seductors?

• 35:16Speaker 01

  Are you ready?

• 35:17Nilay Patel?

  Is that a 219 aspect ratio?

• 35:18Speaker 01

  I'm gonna make a bold statement.

• 35:20Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 35:20Nilay Patel?

  Is it bolder than me saying I would bone the TV?

• 35:23Speaker 01

  I believe in quantum pixels.

• 35:26Nilay Patel?

  I don't, that's, I don't, is that a-

• 35:28Speaker 01

  Yep, you're real mad.

• 35:30Nilay Patel?

  I prefer the skit Chris and I were doing about how I slowly walk across the room.

• 35:34Speaker 02

  Real kids in the hall over here.

• 35:36Nilay Patel?

  And then say, say to the TV-

• 35:38Speaker 01

  Josh Lunsen put up a really good post, like-

• 35:39Nilay Patel?

  This is true, this is happening all over CES.

• 35:41Speaker 01

  Nobody at CES is saying peep about 3D, and it's-

• 35:45Nilay Patel?

  That's like 2 years ago.

• 35:46Speaker 01

  Awesome. It was last year too. We had it last year, a little bit.

• 35:49Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, but I mean, it was, it was well in dead last year.

• 35:52Speaker 01

  And now it's all VR, whatever, whatever.

• 35:54Nilay Patel?

  Now it's like, what I've-

• 35:55Speaker 01

  They're just doing picture quality.

• 35:56Nilay Patel?

  Other dumb ways to look at stuff.

• 35:57Speaker 01

  They're just doing picture quality, and LG is doing OLED because they're dumb.

• 36:01Nilay Patel?

  What if the real theme of CES is dumb ways to look at stuff?

• 36:05Speaker 01

  But, so quantum pixels, they like do some chemically magical things to make LCDs like suck a little bit less and look a little bit more like plasma? And it kinda works, at least it works in like their controlled, look at how awesome our TV looks-

• 36:17Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 36:17Speaker 01

  -environment. Um, it looks good. I'm not sold on curved TVs.

• 36:21Nilay Patel?

  No, curved TVs are garbage.

• 36:23Speaker 01

  I am sold on area of improvements to LCDs until they just are better.

• 36:26Nilay Patel?

  No, and I think that's like, that's clearly the future, right?

• 36:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:30Nilay Patel?

  Only, the only company pushing OLED TVs here is LG.

• 36:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 36:34Nilay Patel?

  And that's because they own OLED factories.

• 36:36Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 36:36Nilay Patel?

  And they're like, what do we do with these? Like, we finally, we finally got there, guys. And like, let's just make the TVs, like, and then we can pack it up and go. But no, the quantum dots, like, they're, they're, they're figuring out how to make LCD do all the stuff that, like, their black levels of plasma. The other interesting thing that's happening here, it's not gonna get there, Chris, I feel your pain. But the other interesting that's happening here is last year we did a bunch of reports on high dynamic range TVs and Dolby Vision.

• 37:02Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 37:02Nilay Patel?

  Where the brights are so much brighter than they usually are.

• 37:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 37:05Nilay Patel?

  And Netflix and Sony are partnering, uh, Netflix is gonna deliver HDR movies to Sony TVs-

• 37:11Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 37:12Nilay Patel?

  -sometime this year. Um, so that quantum, like, it gets us- To a place where you can see what's going to happen is that 4K TVs this year will be $1,000. David keeps telling me that 4K TVs are now table stakes. No one talks about their TVs being anything but 4K.

• 37:28Speaker 01

  Right.

• 37:28Nilay Patel?

  Everyone's that's like that's the TV you can buy now for $1,000. Next year, those TVs will be $200. Next year after that, whatever. So the next thing they're desperately searching for, the next 3D is HDR.

• 37:41Speaker 01

  And you know what? I am way happier about that than I was about 3D.

• 37:44Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 37:44Speaker 01

  I think HDR and quantum pixels?

• 37:47Nilay Patel?

  No, quantum pixels are like, like, that's like, you go from LED LCD to like, local dimming. Like, quantum pixels are just the next generation of that.

• 37:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:57Nilay Patel?

  HDR is the next 4K or the next 3D or whatever. Cause you're not, they have, they've, they've spent four years chasing their tails trying to deliver 4K content. And like, literally, what Sony came up with today was like, the Goldbergs will be in, be shot in 4K some episodes. It's like, Sony, you make the cameras and you own the studio.

• 38:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:18Nilay Patel?

  You should really be able to put this together.

• 38:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 38:21Nilay Patel?

  But like, they're, so that's finally happening. So they're, they're not going to go to another like, resolution boost soon. But they will definitely come to a place where they can do HDR because dynamic range is easier to control for.

• 38:31Speaker 02

  I'm just curious, the content is still the issue, and I know they're talking about all this up, upraising basically.

• 38:37Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 38:38Speaker 02

  For the content you have, and I want to see more of it. Obviously, that's not what they're going to want to show. They want to show you 4K content on 4K TVs.

• 38:45Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 38:46Speaker 02

  But if that uprising looks anything like basically uprising anywhere else, money is what I'm expecting. I want to see it before I like, give too much of a judgment, but I don't know that it, it sound, it doesn't sound appealing to me to have a 4K TV if I'm not watching mostly 4K content.

• 39:05Nilay Patel?

  Right, and I think that's the, you know, there's another thing that's happening here, which is like, Dish Network announced, finally, they're selling a cable subscription over the internet.

• 39:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:14Nilay Patel?

  With ESPN included. Although, Peter Kafka reported in Rico today, and I have every reason to believe him, that, that deal, so it's 20 bucks a month to get like...

• 39:25Speaker 01

  ESPN and a bunch of other channels, but like, the one that matters is ESPN.

• 39:28Nilay Patel?

  It's the first time you can just buy ESPN and have it to you delivered in an app. But the deal with Dish is that if you, if they get too many subscribers, ESPN can cancel the deal. It's capped.

• 39:41Nilay Patel?

  Right, so it's like inherently an experiment for ESPN to like figure out what that market looks like and how the streaming works and all this stuff. But if they get like too many subscribers, they can just be like, nope, we're done. Like, that is the number, we're not adding, you cannot have anymore. Because it's too much of a threat to their existing business model. But that's actually how

• 39:58Speaker 01

  Beeping.

• 40:00Nilay Patel?

  The terror fills my heart.

• 40:01Speaker 02

  The future is a threat to our business model.

• 40:05Nilay Patel?

  I mean, I'm just saying.

• 40:06Speaker 01

  Men at work, man, just.

• 40:08Nilay Patel?

  I, I, in the moments, I think Las Vegas causes you to really think about

• 40:16Speaker 02

  How you're all going to die one day?

• 40:18Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, like that, like just how small you are in your life.

• 40:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:22Nilay Patel?

  Cause like you fly over the mountains and it's like, here's thousands of years of nature formed all this stuff. And then it's like, here's a fake pyramid next to the Eiffel Tower. This took 50 years. I want to tear it down, bitches. Like, everything we've done is so small and so fleeting and like, it was so hard here. And then like you just hear this quiet beeping in this other totally artificial environment. You're like, that's the sound of my death. Is that, is it just me?

• 40:46Speaker 02

  No, I think that's fair.

• 40:48Nilay Patel?

  Like, my, look, our lives will be fleeting and inconsequential.

• 40:51Speaker 02

  It's a place that makes no sense.

• 40:52Nilay Patel?

  But in the middle, everything will connect to our cell phones.

• 40:55Speaker 02

  Thank God. That helps me forget.

• 40:59Speaker 01

  Are we gonna talk about IOT?

• 41:01Nilay Patel?

  We should talk about IOT and we should also talk about cars.

• 41:03Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. Two really topics. What do you want to do first? ADAS or IOT?

• 41:08Nilay Patel?

  Well, here's what I know.

• 41:09Speaker 01

  ADAS or IOT?

• 41:10Nilay Patel?

  No, you're, you're all fired up about IOT, but I got, I got scorn for ADAS.

• 41:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, I got, I got.

• 41:17Speaker 02

  ADAS.

• 41:17Nilay Patel?

  Let's do some IOT, that's more of a cell phone connection.

• 41:20Speaker 01

  IOT stands for Internet of Things.

• 41:25Speaker 02

  Makes it sound much more quaint.

• 41:26Nilay Patel?

  It's a John T. Irish.

• 41:28Speaker 01

  And.

• 41:30Nilay Patel?

  One of the biggest trends in the industry today was wrecked by St. Patrick's Day.

• 41:34Speaker 01

  If there were, if you are a company with more than I'm gonna say 30 employees and you're presenting at CES, you are talking about the Internet of Things.

• 41:44Nilay Patel?

  Or you're trying to sell your company to Samsung.

• 41:46Speaker 01

  Unfortunately, the way we say it now, IOT.

• 41:50Speaker 01

  I hate my job, IOT.

• 41:53Speaker 02

  IOT sounds better. Internet of Things doesn't sound like a real thing.

• 41:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, but IOT-

• 41:57Speaker 02

  It sounds like something in a coursebook.

• 41:59Speaker 01

  Capital I, lowercase o, capital T.

• 42:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, like, uh, capital G, lowercase o, capital T. They're associated with that Game of Thrones.

• 42:07Speaker 01

  Oh, capital W, lowercase o-

• 42:09Nilay Patel?

  Oh, that'd be amazing if it was, it was just to get closer to Game of Thrones.

• 42:13Speaker 02

  Two letters away.

• 42:15Nilay Patel?

  One letter away.

• 42:16Speaker 02

  No, G H I.

• 42:18Speaker 01

  The problem that I have with IOT-

• 42:20Speaker 02

  Don't worry about it.

• 42:20Speaker 01

  And with Internet of Things in general, is, everybody talks about it-

• 42:24Nilay Patel?

  Did you just win an argument by yelling letters?

• 42:26Speaker 02

  No, it's game, G, H I. That's a two-letter jump. I see what you're saying. This is the worst. I feel so bad for that person driving the car who didn't kill himself when he closed his eyes.

• 42:43Nilay Patel?

  You made it. We're still talking.

• 42:45Speaker 01

  I'm so sorry.

• 42:46Nilay Patel?

  Alright, tell, tell me.

• 42:47Speaker 01

  The worst part about everybody talking about Internet of Things all the time is, nobody says anything. It's all really vague, and you're, everything will talk to each other, and you'll be connected, and you'll always know everything, and everything will always work together, and it'll be great.

• 43:02Nilay Patel?

  Right, just all the people talking about it.

• 43:04Speaker 01

  Tell me what my coffee maker's gonna do. That's all you need to do. Tell me how my lock is gonna work.

• 43:08Nilay Patel?

  No, but here's, here's Sony's problem, and Samsung's problem, and anybody else trying to do this stuff. And I, to its credit, Samsung's making a big deal about smart things. They made that acquisition, and they're obviously fun, like funneling money into it. But what they're saying is, we're gonna make a bunch of hardware that's really cool, because we're hardware companies, and our hearts. When we, when we're in our cars, and we close our eyes, and we envision ourselves, it's a hardware company and a fast car.

• 43:34Speaker 02

  It's self-drives. Thank you, Nvidia.

• 43:38Speaker 01

  Oh, here it is.

• 43:40Nilay Patel?

  This is what I'm telling you, man. It doesn't fill you with dread.

• 43:43Speaker 01

  You know what? It doesn't, because I know they're doing it on purpose.

• 43:46Nilay Patel?

  That is the, that dude is trolling the shit out of us. You're asking me to palate on that forklift in like two hours.

• 43:54Nilay Patel?

  All right, uh, no, here's the thing. They're building all the hardware. They're ahead of the curve.

• 44:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, but they're-

• 44:00Nilay Patel?

  And what they're saying is what people who are shitty at so- People who are bad at software-

• 44:05Speaker 01

  Just-

• 44:06Nilay Patel?

  For the kids.

• 44:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:07Nilay Patel?

  People who are bad at software. You don't know this, but I just pointed to John emphatically.

• 44:12Speaker 02

  You do realize we're all some videotaping?

• 44:14Nilay Patel?

  Shh. No, most people are in their cars.

• 44:16Speaker 02

  No, no, sure, yeah, they're in their car.

• 44:17Nilay Patel?

  All these companies are hardware companies.

• 44:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:20Nilay Patel?

  And what hardware companies do when they're bad at software is they close their eyes and pretend they're good at software, and they come up with things that software could do. And that's all you're hearing. It's just vacuous nonsense-

• 44:30Speaker 01

  Right.

• 44:30Nilay Patel?

  About if Samsung was good at software, I bet when you walked into your house, it would know about your phone, I guess? And then turn on your computer? And then your computer would be like, "Yo, there's a Madonna video that I should play on the TV." And that Madonna video would then turn on all your lights. And it's like that-

• 44:46Speaker 02

  Maybe I stand so- Oh, that's how we got there.

• 44:50Nilay Patel?

  That's not what anyone wants.

• 44:51Speaker 02

  Long walk, small glass.

• 44:54Speaker 01

  So Samsung announces new smart things. There's a new hub. There's new little micro sensors to make your things smart that's- that are called smart things. Um, there's a subscription service. Um, and they've got a bunch of partnerships. They work with August Locks. They work with the Hue light bulb. They work with Honeywell. They work with, uh, something, something, something. But like, it's really obvious to me that Samsung is like, "Well, we've gotten as far as we can get with phones. Let's see if we can actually dominate something else the way that Apple dominated phones." And they're running at, uh-

• 45:24Nilay Patel?

  But that's- and that's what- but like, in Google, I had the same idea. That's why they bought Nest.

• 45:28Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 45:28Nilay Patel?

  And Nest had a bunch of partnerships announced here.

• 45:31Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 45:31Nilay Patel?

  Including Hue bulbs and August smart locks. And to its credit, Samsung said, "Everything we do will be an open standard."

• 45:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, they'll let anything talk to anything.

• 45:39Nilay Patel?

  To its great fault, what they did not say was, "And we have figured out a security model that will keep you fucking safe."

• 45:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:46Nilay Patel?

  Sorry, for the kids.

• 45:47Speaker 01

  For the kids.

• 45:48Nilay Patel?

  Well, I mean, I will say John just looks very angry at me.

• 45:51Speaker 01

  There's zero-

• 45:53Nilay Patel?

  Actually, John's just playing on his phone.

• 45:54Speaker 01

  And I mean, zero recognition that these things not only are like privacy problems, but they're also just creepy. I'm like, there's- it's one thing like someone breaks into- My Internet of Things mesh network and can like look at the cameras that are trained on my bedroom. Like that's one level of scary, but there's a whole.

• 46:11Nilay Patel?

  Is there another level of scary?

• 46:13Speaker 01

  There's a whole other level of scary, which is that there's a giant computer and a giant corporation using it to figure out when I'm going to die because it knows my sleeping patterns and therefore my insurance rates go up. Like that's.

• 46:26Nilay Patel?

  I actually think this.

• 46:27Speaker 02

  Dear robot actuary, I love you.

• 46:29Nilay Patel?

  I'm just saying, I think that looking at me while I sleep is way scarier than the insurance thing.

• 46:34Speaker 01

  But it's that's like one guy. It's not like the system. I'm really worried about the system, man.

• 46:39Nilay Patel?

  I don't, I don't worry about the system.

• 46:40Speaker 01

  Samsung today.

• 46:41Nilay Patel?

  Man can't get me down.

• 46:42Speaker 01

  Unironically.

• 46:44Nilay Patel?

  I live by my own rules.

• 46:45Speaker 01

  A couple of times.

• 46:46Nilay Patel?

  I stole this booze from Sony and I poured it in my own cup.

• 46:48Speaker 01

  A slide that said, "The Rise of the IOT."

• 46:53Nilay Patel?

  That's true. They did. They did say that.

• 46:55Speaker 01

  If you're a company that one doesn't, does a two hour keynote about the Internet of Things and everything in your house, watching you and tracking you and doesn't talk about about privacy in a really deep way. And then on top of that, you make a Terminator reference and don't even know it. I don't want you running the future of computing.

• 47:12Speaker 02

  That was what made me uncomfortable about that entire speech. And we talked about this a little bit beforehand. Was it felt like a politician trying to sell me on something that was actually bad for me, but they wanted to get through legislature. Like it's like, this is a great thing.

• 47:26Nilay Patel?

  Thanks Obama.

• 47:27Speaker 02

  Connect to everything and your life will be so much easier.

• 47:31Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 47:32Speaker 02

  Once the IOT comes in and kidnaps your wife and children. And it's like, wait, wait, wait, sorry. What was the last thing? Oh, nothing. Light bulbs. They turn on whenever your music comes on. You're like, oh, okay, cool.

• 47:43Nilay Patel?

  Forklift one more time. No pallets.

• 47:46Speaker 01

  Nope.

• 47:46Nilay Patel?

  Conspiracy.

• 47:47Speaker 01

  All right. One more topic. One more topic.

• 47:49Nilay Patel?

  Let's talk about this. Uh, so Internet of Things is, I will say, one big trend. So there's like many audiences for CES keynotes. Chris Grant and I were talking about this yesterday. There are many audiences for CNS keynotes. There's like the, and you and I were talking about it a little bit too yesterday. Um, but Chris made a particular point about cars, which I thought was great. Um.

• 48:14Nilay Patel?

  There's us, right, the press, and we're gonna communicate with the audience, consumers. In the modern era with, you know, your live streams or whatnot, there's the consumers themselves, so you gotta put on a big show. Then there's like, your stock analysts, I guess. Yep. They're important, they might move some share prices around, I don't know what they do. Again, ethics in video games journalism prevents me from investing in these companies, so I will be poor forever, but your stock analysts are here in some way. Then there are like, potential partners, wanna impress them, put on a big show. And then like, very like, last, at the, at the end of all of that, uh, it's like that you put on the show for yourself, right? Right. And not only yourself, but like, the one guy, the one company who holds your fate

• 48:59Nilay Patel?

  in his hands. And that person could work at your company, right? It could be like, a guy in your board of directors, or he could be like, for example, the head of engineering at Audi, who's kinda like, "Man, maybe I should buy some cameras for my new smart cars." And so, every single company at CES has talked about the Internet of Things, which is their big consumer play, and then they've said some crazy shit about smart cars for like, the seven peo- this guy's just honking now. (laughing) Thank you. It's like, it's like a murderous duck, just rolling by us. (laughing) We're done.

• 49:44Nilay Patel?

  That was the Vergecast. Our lives ended as they began.

• 49:48Speaker 02

  That's the noise I hear before I die. Bozo the Clown honking. You missed the final bucket, boy. It's time to die. Okay, Bozo.

• 49:57Nilay Patel?

  Oh man, that was good, that was, I was really building there, and now...

• 50:01Speaker 02

  No, no, 8S.

• 50:02Nilay Patel?

  8S. What does 8S stand for? So, all these companies are talking, literally to like, the seven CTOs of every car company, or engineering chiefs, or like, advanced car information officer, whatever that title is, at Ford and Chevy and Toyota and Audi. Nvidia is like, "We built it for you, the connected car."

• 50:21Speaker 01

  You, John Jones.

• 50:23Nilay Patel?

  And they just went on and on and on.

• 50:25Speaker 01

  He's staring directly at you.

• 50:26Nilay Patel?

  And the-

• 50:26Speaker 02

  Terry, Scott, Sarah.

• 50:28Nilay Patel?

  And the acronym-

• 50:31Speaker 02

  No one else.

• 50:32Nilay Patel?

  That this industry has chosen, without any consultation to any of the many branding experts, or social media gurus, or even just neighbors, who have kind of a frat boy sense of humor, is ADAS.

• 50:46Speaker 01

  And it stands for-

• 50:47Nilay Patel?

  Advanced Driver Assistance Systems.

• 50:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:51Nilay Patel?

  That's ADAS. And everyone, every single keynote, has featured like a CEO, like a master of the universe CEO, standing up there being like, "We're so excited about ADAS." And it's like, "Why?"

• 51:04Speaker 02

  And supplicating.

• 51:05Nilay Patel?

  "Has anyone heard?" "Please, please, Richard, buy my ADAS." And it's like, all of them, every single one of them. Like Sony today, Sony's like, Kaz Rai, who I think has done a job-

• 51:20Speaker 02

  He's the best.

• 51:21Nilay Patel?

  Since 2012.

• 51:22Speaker 02

  I think he has survived pretty confidently, despite having people who apparently just don't know security every step of the way. I mean, that's-

• 51:31Nilay Patel?

  Fair. Yeah, but his, his, his great skill might be survival. Anyway, I say this with my voice booming over the Sony booth, like in the distance. Like, literally, the Sony people are gonna come over the walls now and take our small Ford.

• 51:44Speaker 02

  Don't worry, if you punch at them, it hits them every time, because they have no security.

• 51:48Nilay Patel?

  All I'm saying is, Kaz Rai, who runs Sony, big, big concern, right? The man who can summon Tony Hawk at just the, the call of a hand, which he did today. Anyway, he was like, super excited about advancements in imaging, you know, Sony makes the best cameras, and we were thinking, "Where can we put those cameras?" ADAS. Cars are gonna have cameras. What if we put our cameras in these places? And then put up an outline of a car with arrows to like, places in a car where you might wanna put cameras? He was like- Ate ass. We're pretty excited about it. And that was it. That was just like, man.

• 52:26Speaker 02

  That's much better, though, than Nvidia, which...

• 52:28Nilay Patel?

  Oh, god.

• 52:29Speaker 02

  I mean, I want... So, there was, uh, there's this thing that I shouldn't have been managing too, because we have work to do. Uh, but, uh, it's called Games Done Quickly, or something like that.

• 52:37Nilay Patel?

  Sure.

• 52:37Speaker 02

  And people, speedrun games for like, five days. It's one after another, after another. And right when Nvidia started, somebody was like, "I'm gonna do a speedrun of Uncharted." And the way they do it is they break through the walls. It's amazing. Everybody should go watch it on the internet. It's a charity, too, so, go do that. Uh, but what happened was, they beat Uncharted before that video.

• 52:57Nilay Patel?

  Nvidia, Nvidia, I will say Nvidia, like, legendarily long, bad keynotes.

• 53:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:02Speaker 02

  But this was...

• 53:02Nilay Patel?

  And like, Jensen Huang is like, a great CEO, right? He's done an admirable job leading Nvidia. He's clearly very smart. But, and he, just, taste in jackets.

• 53:13Speaker 01

  Very good.

• 53:14Nilay Patel?

  Here's what I'm gonna say. If you're a man...

• 53:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:16Nilay Patel?

  And I'm guessing that you probably are, because you're listening to our show. I wanna change, I wanna change that. I wanna open up. I wanna be broader.

• 53:24Speaker 01

  Oh, here we go.

• 53:24Nilay Patel?

  They want us to leave.

• 53:25Speaker 01

  That's one, too.

• 53:27Nilay Patel?

  And I have some troubling news, which is that a forklift has killed Chris Plant.

• 53:32Speaker 02

  I'm a ghost.

• 53:33Speaker 01

  Zombie.

• 53:34Nilay Patel?

  Ghost Plant is here. Gives less of an F than before.

• 53:39Speaker 02

  That's not possible.

• 53:40Nilay Patel?

  Alright. Now, here's what I know about Jensen Huang. If you're a man, and you're a nerd, and you're a graphics card nerd, and you have reached like, the pinnacle of your industry, you too, I'm guessing, would dress like you were always about to get on a Ducati.

• 53:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:56Nilay Patel?

  Cause that's how that dude dresses.

• 53:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:58Nilay Patel?

  And it's dope.

• 53:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:59Nilay Patel?

  And then he gives the most boring keynotes of all time. I mean, like, here's what they demoed yesterday.

• 54:05Speaker 01

  Dude, kid mansplained some processor chips.

• 54:07Nilay Patel?

  But here's what they demoed yesterday. And he did, he did, I mean, many, many floating point units were killed in the making of that keynote. Uh, but they, Nvidia built a system. I'll just give you one small example of how crazy this keynote was. They built an entire fake dashboard.

• 54:27Nilay Patel?

  Like, a fake dashboard of a car, right? Like, speedometer, tachometer, big, and, they kept saying the word infotainment.

• 54:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 54:33Nilay Patel?

  In a way that just made me think like, at any point, like, a CD-ROM of like, world capitals would be inserted into the car.

• 54:39Speaker 02

  Wait, there's Carmen Sandiego.

• 54:41Nilay Patel?

  There she is. Get her! And like, uh... My entire career has been building up to this. Slowly beeping at Carmen Sandiego. In terms of jokes, that might be the most complicated joke of all time.

• 55:01Speaker 02

  Anyway, he, yes, they showed that.

• 55:04Nilay Patel?

  So they were showing this thing and playing this thing and they had like.

• 55:06Speaker 02

  They added textures.

• 55:07Nilay Patel?

  They added textures.

• 55:08Speaker 02

  Bamboo.

• 55:08Speaker 01

  To the graphics on the thing.

• 55:09Speaker 02

  And then with real time lighting.

• 55:11Nilay Patel?

  Like in a world where the dominant design aesthetic is to get as flat and minimal, they're like, we can, I'm holding a chunk of carbon fiber. It's so sparkly and I can just make this render it. I just put it here and it'll just render it up. And then like the entire dashboard turned into sparky carbon fiber.

• 55:28Speaker 01

  And then instead of like pushing a button to say, make it look like carbon fiber, they like had a piece of carbon fiber with an NFC chip on it or something. And they like sent it on the dashboard.

• 55:36Nilay Patel?

  It was, it was something. It was, but the whole time.

• 55:39Speaker 02

  That wasn't the craziest thing.

• 55:40Nilay Patel?

  The whole time they're doing this, the fake speedometer on their fake carbon fiber car just kept flooring it to like 140 miles an hour. And it would just stay there for a while and then like give up. And it's like, dude, your fake car is trying to escape. It's just trying to run away from you.

• 55:56Speaker 02

  ADAS can't take it.

• 55:57Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. And I mean, dude, it got deep into the ADAS game. Like.

• 56:01Speaker 02

  It was nice.

• 56:03Nilay Patel?

  This dude, yeah.

• 56:04Speaker 02

  Uh, they, no, can I say the craziest thing though that happened? The craziest thing is.

• 56:09Nilay Patel?

  Is anyone gonna disrupt the forklift ADAS game?

• 56:13Speaker 02

  The craziest thing they did was not make the speedometer because that looks like it took like two or three days for somebody. The craziest thing they did was design an entire video game driving simulation.

• 56:27Nilay Patel?

  Of their parking garage.

• 56:28Speaker 02

  Of a parking garage that looked beautiful.

• 56:31Nilay Patel?

  They were very clear. That's their parking garage.

• 56:33Speaker 02

  Yeah. It looks, and it looks really nice.

• 56:36Nilay Patel?

  Jeep just driving around the parking garage.

• 56:37Speaker 02

  It was using Maxwell software.

• 56:39Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. No, the Jeep was learning to drive in the fake garage.

• 56:42Speaker 01

  It was puttering.

• 56:43Nilay Patel?

  Well, yeah.

• 56:44Speaker 02

  Like, what does that prove to me?

• 56:45Nilay Patel?

  So, in terms of like Terminator references that like no one got, he's like, "We've built a neural net processor that learns as it goes."

• 56:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:51Nilay Patel?

  And it's like, first it sees part of a wheel, and then it learns it's a wheel, and then it sees part of a car, and then that learning accelerates...

• 56:58Speaker 02

  The oculated person.

• 56:59Nilay Patel?

  And the algorithms accelerate the learning logarithmically, and soon it will know everything, and like, "We can detect a crosswalk sign from farther away than you could possibly see." And it's like, dude, the next step is like, and then you see the pedestrians, and then you identify them as threats, and then you launch the missiles at them. Like, "That's where you're going, Nvidia. I don't think you see it." I mean, I will say the other ADAS thing about Nvidia, they kept on showing it how well they could detect people and bikes and things, but then the cars had, they never got to the next part, which was that, "And then the car does something."

• 57:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:33Nilay Patel?

  It's like, yeah.

• 57:35Speaker 02

  There it is.

• 57:35Nilay Patel?

  Many drivers on the road today can also detect pedestrians.

• 57:39Speaker 02

  Unfortunately, our cars can only go 160 miles per hour. Welcome to the hellscape. Looks like a human. Time to kill.

• 57:48Nilay Patel?

  And Qualcomm, so Qualcomm today, like, had like, I mean, just had the complete opposite of the Nvidia experience, which is like, the new CEO of Qualcomm is like, he realized that Paul Jacobs, like, gave the most epic, bad CES keynote of all time, so he's like, "I'm just gonna read numbers at you. Here are the number of field chips in my new chip line. Like, here are the number of FPGAs in your Snapdragon 8." And they just kept doing it. And then at the end, he's like, "We think there's a lot of ADAS applications." "You too? Come on, man." All right. Is there anything else? This is your first CES. Give me the wrap-up. It's been a couple days here now.

• 58:31Speaker 02

  I was like, I was like, a little not feeling it at first. It was a little, going to CES unveiled is truly a trial by fire.

• 58:39Nilay Patel?

  No, I would say is, we have a lot of new people on the Verge team with us this year. We have a bunch of people who've been with us for four years. Like, Brian Bishop literally left the Verge, went to go work for The Holly Reporter, and then came back and timed for CES.

• 58:48Speaker 02

  He's back, baby.

• 58:49Nilay Patel?

  He's never, he's never leaving, and he always has to go to CES. Um, so we have a lot of people who've been doing this with us for a long time. I was actually saying, this is my eighth CES, which is crazy. Um, the first one I ever did was, we weren't even staying near the convention center. We barely came here. It was strange. It was a long time ago. How many is this for you?

• 59:06Speaker 01

  I think it's eight.

• 59:07Nilay Patel?

  So like, it's weird to watch new people have their first experience at this. Cause to me, this is like, I understand it. I, I know how it's laid out. That.

• 59:18Speaker 01

  You think after eight, we'd figure out.

• 59:22Nilay Patel?

  Here's what I know.

• 59:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 59:25Speaker 02

  Not CS, no, go ahead.

• 59:28Speaker 01

  I was gonna just wrap it up. I was not even gonna let you finish.

• 59:30Nilay Patel?

  No, I wanna hear more about Chris's first experience. And I apologize for the messiness of this podcast. And the murderousness of this forklift driver.

• 59:37Speaker 02

  But no, I, I, I think I like, I think what was like disorienting and upsetting to me about it at first, was I come from where I thought were bad conferences. Like, I always thought GDC, well, GDC's pretty nice, but I thought E3 was like, a shambles of GDC, therefore, must be the worst conference in the world. I was very wrong. E3 is a masterpiece of organization. And this is, well, one, again, I saw CS Unveiled first, which is crazy town. It's a giant hall where people are like hiding underneath like little rafters.

• 1:00:12Nilay Patel?

  There was a part of CS Unveiled that Case and I just started referring to as Shame Alley. And we refused to wa, like, we were like, no, not walking there.

• 1:00:19Speaker 02

  Oh, you mean where I wrote.

• 1:00:20Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:20Speaker 02

  The sad little nest.

• 1:00:21Nilay Patel?

  That's where I met the people from a free app called Jigsy, who paid, who paid to be, who came to Las Vegas, they paid to be here, they paid to exhibit at CS. They paid the nice lady in what I will charitably refer to as a sexy Elvis impersonator costume to be there. And then they took a selfie with us. And we said, and they said, "We're gonna Jigsy this and send it right over to you." And we said, "What does it mean to Jigsy something?" And they said, "We're gonna turn this picture into a puzzle, so that when you send it to your friend, they have to download our app to put together the puzzle, to figure out what your selfie is." And I thought to myself, that's hope. What that is, what I, that, that's when shame looks in the mirror, what it sees is hope.

• 1:01:03Speaker 02

  I'm gonna, I'll go off that, because I think, I think I have the same feeling, but not quite as sad. Is that, what I liked about even the end of Unveiled was,

• 1:01:14Speaker 02

  there are people here who made the product.

• 1:01:16Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:17Speaker 02

  Like, it's like a tangible thing, that I can like, touch. I mean, I wrote about the Stern pinball machine, and I've always loved pinball for that same reason, versus even video games, and it's like, wow, this is a thing.

• 1:01:27Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:27Speaker 02

  And like, you, like, you, made this thing, for me. And maybe, it's something like pinball, that's obvious and will sell, or maybe it's a beacon that somehow transmits to other beacons tied to cellphones, without using a cell service, like we saw briefly yesterday. And like, I'm never gonna buy that, I don't like, hike enough, I'm not healthy. But like, that's the thing that people like, I, I ima- I can see like, the story, even if it's not real, of like, them being out, and then getting lost, and being like, hey, let's make this thing. And they went and made that thing, and then they spent a ton of money to get here, and pray that that thing makes their life

• 1:02:03Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:04Speaker 02

  worth living, and that they have a happy life. And like, there's some like, inner warmth in that, that I don't always get at the other conferences that I go to, that like, that I can like, touch something, and see the person who made it, and like, see them being like, "Do you love it?" And, and for it to be sincere, not just like a PR person who's like, "Do you love it? Are you gonna write about it?"

• 1:02:24Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:25Speaker 02

  And it's like, "No, I don't, I don't know."

• 1:02:26Nilay Patel?

  And there's people are all over here. And what's funny about it is, at CES, unlike many other trade shows, the people who are at the booths and like, around, are the people who made the stuff.

• 1:02:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:02:39Nilay Patel?

  Like, the guy who makes Sony, like, he's here, he's somewhere beyond those walls. "And I will find you, Kaz. I will find you."

• 1:02:48Speaker 02

  He's lowering some Raptors like Sting, baseball bat, he's got this all in the head.

• 1:02:52Nilay Patel?

  I think it's gonna be good for us to do this show in the sad- in the shadow of the Sony booth.

• 1:02:56Speaker 01

  We're gonna, we're gonna have to move the booth around over here. We should do the next one in the shadow of the LG booth.

• 1:03:01Nilay Patel?

  So, we're just like, CES squat city outside of- no, it's Samsung city.

• 1:03:05Speaker 01

  We should troll a different company every time.

• 1:03:06Nilay Patel?

  Samsung city is like, over there.

• 1:03:07Speaker 01

  So, we also should wrap up.

• 1:03:09Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:03:10Speaker 01

  It's time.

• 1:03:11Nilay Patel?

  Is it?

• 1:03:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, sorry. We're gonna do it again tomorrow, and the day after that.

• 1:03:16Nilay Patel?

  And then we're gonna, then, finally, this man will have his revenge.

• 1:03:20Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 1:03:24Speaker 02

  I can hear him behind me if I don't want to turn around.

• 1:03:26Nilay Patel?

  He got out. He's coming to you. I'm not kidding. He got out. He's putting on gloves.

• 1:03:32Speaker 02

  I think we should have it up.

• 1:03:33Nilay Patel?

  That's the end of CS for today.

• 1:03:36Speaker 02

  We're gonna be here tomorrow and the day after that, you can see all of this fantastic CS news. We are gradually killing ourselves, bleeding out of our fingers for you, at theverge.com. You can watch our videos at youtube.com.

• 1:03:52Nilay Patel?

  And you should subscribe to that.

• 1:03:53Speaker 02

  And there's like, a billion already on there?

• 1:03:56Nilay Patel?

  We're doing about 20 a day.

• 1:03:57Speaker 02

  Yeah. Pretty much everything we've talked about today is in video form in some capacity.

• 1:04:02Nilay Patel?

  Actually, well better done on video on YouTube.

• 1:04:03Speaker 02

  And fantastic and beautiful. So go there. Follow us on Twitter @TheVerge. Snapchat something, like, I'mTheVerge or something. I don't know.

• 1:04:12Nilay Patel?

  Snapchat?

• 1:04:13Speaker 02

  Sam.

• 1:04:14Speaker 01

  You should just let me do this.

• 1:04:17Speaker 01

  I'm just saying.

• 1:04:18Nilay Patel?

  Engage.

• 1:04:18Speaker 02

  I was doing really well.

• 1:04:19Speaker 01

  You were. It's The Real Verge.

• 1:04:20Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:04:21Speaker 01

  Alright, keep going.

• 1:04:22Speaker 02

  Go on.

• 1:04:22Speaker 01

  No, no. I'm done.

• 1:04:22Speaker 02

  Instagram at...

• 1:04:24Speaker 01

  I have no idea.

• 1:04:25Speaker 02

  TheVerge. You can follow all of us on Twitter. And...

• 1:04:30Nilay Patel?

  There's actually a post on the site that you should go to.

• 1:04:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:04:33Nilay Patel?

  It's called Let's Be Social.

• 1:04:34Speaker 02

  Oh, sure. Just Google Let's Be Social. Because our search engine on our site is great. Um, let's see. What else? I'm here all night.

• 1:04:41Nilay Patel?

  That's it.

• 1:04:42Speaker 02

  Uh, you can find me at the Comedy Cellar at 3:30 on Wednesday afternoons. Uh, Steffi, I love you, I miss you. Uh, Ken, Kathy, great to have you here in my heart and spirit.

• 1:04:50Nilay Patel?

  Tip your servers, everybody.

• 1:04:52Speaker 02

  Tip your servers, everybody, and, uh, pull the raid. I'm out.

• 1:04:54Nilay Patel?

  Bye!

• 1:04:55Speaker 02

  Bye!