CES 2017 Day 1

This year, we hosted The Vergecast Live at CES 2017 as a Twitter Live video show. We've decided to share the full audio here, but you can see clips from the show on Twitter @Verge and catch our last show Friday at 4:30PT at ces.twitter.com. The following is from Wednesday, January 4th. 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.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Hi, this is Andrew Marino, the podcast producer at The Verge. This year, we hosted The Vergecast Live at CES 2017 as a Twitter Live video show, but we decided to share the full audio here. You can see the clips from the show on Twitter, @TheVerge, and you can catch our last show, which is Friday at 4:30 Pacific Time, at CES dot twitter dot com. Yeah, so without further ado, this is our show from Wednesday, January 4th. Enjoy.

• 0:25Nilay Patel?

  Hello, I'm Eli Patel.

• 0:26Speaker 02

  And I am Dieter Bohn. We host the flagship podcast of TheVerge.com.

• 0:31Nilay Patel?

  It's called The Vergecast.

• 0:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 0:33Nilay Patel?

  It's this show. Usually, it's a podcast, but because it's CES week here in Vegas, someone built us this set. We're going to do it live on video for the next three days. We're going to look at the hottest gadgets, we're going to have some cool guests, we're going to hold Verge family out with us. We're basically going to check everything out.

• 0:48Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's going to be great.

• 0:49Nilay Patel?

  You ready?

• 0:49Speaker 00

  We should get started.

• 0:50Nilay Patel?

  Let's get started.

• 1:18Nilay Patel?

  Hey, everybody. So I'm Eli, that's Dieter. This is The Vergecast Live at CES 2017 on Twitter. It's going to be a lot of fun. We're going to have a lot of stuff going on. Usually, this is a podcast. We've done that video before, and if you've watched that video before, you know there's this little thing we have called the Hype Desk. And if you've been listening recently, you know that Megan Ferkman has been on our show and has done a great job. So Megan, it's the Hype Desk. The Hype Desk is back. What's up, Megan?

• 1:39Speaker 03

  Hey. How's it going?

• 1:40Nilay Patel?

  It's going. What are you doing over there?

• 1:42Speaker 03

  So I am our lifeline to the outside world that exists beyond CES. I'm going to be reading tweets from people. If they tweet @TheVerge, use the hashtag #CES2017. And yeah, if your tweet's good enough, I just might read it.

• 1:54Nilay Patel?

  Oh.

• 1:55Speaker 03

  We're also, I know, very sassy.

• 1:57Nilay Patel?

  Wow, Megan.

• 1:58Speaker 03

  You've got to pass a certain standard. We're also going to have Twitter polls, which is super exciting. We sent one out this morning. We're going to read the results later, so vote, and it'll be great.

• 2:07Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, all right. Also, we're just going to be asking Megan for her input on everything. Is she? Great opinions. That's why you're in charge of Twitter. Well, duh, yeah. The home of opinions. Alright, so CES has already started. This is day zero?

• 2:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, day zero, because the show floor opens officially tomorrow.

• 2:24Nilay Patel?

  No one cares about this. There's been a lot of stuff.

• 2:26Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:27Nilay Patel?

  At CES. A lot of things already happening. In the middle of this show, actually, Sony is gonna start its keynote. Megan's gonna be keeping an eye on that.

• 2:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:35Nilay Patel?

  Get some news live, because you know the show is super live and terrifying. I won't just tell you. Hard to use, but anyway. But let's get right into some headlines.

• 2:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:43Nilay Patel?

  Samsung.

• 2:44Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 2:45Nilay Patel?

  Samsung did a lot of stuff.

• 2:46Speaker 02

  They had their keynote today.

• 2:47Nilay Patel?

  They had their keynote.

• 2:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:49Nilay Patel?

  They announced not one, but two Chromebooks.

• 2:51Speaker 02

  Right. Chromebook Plus and the Chromebook Pro.

• 2:53Nilay Patel?

  Right, and they're kind of in partnership with Google. These are Google's, like, big new Chromebooks. They run Android for real. It's not just in beta. The Plus has an ARM processor.

• 3:02Speaker 02

  Right.

• 3:03Nilay Patel?

  The Pro has an Intel M3.

• 3:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:05Nilay Patel?

  What do you think?

• 3:06Speaker 02

  I think that, I'm really interested, we're gonna like, look at them live here on the show a little bit later. I'm really excited to try it. I kinda, I don't know, I was hoping for a Pixel, but I'm betting that this, like, Chromebooks are all like, they don't have extra crap around them.

• 3:20Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 3:21Speaker 02

  And this shouldn't be any different, so it should be good.

• 3:22Nilay Patel?

  Shouldn't be extra Samsung.

• 3:23Speaker 02

  And there's a stylus.

• 3:24Nilay Patel?

  Alright. Samsung also invented a new acronym.

• 3:29Speaker 02

  No.

• 3:30Nilay Patel?

  How do you say it? QLED.

• 3:32Speaker 02

  What is that?

• 3:33Nilay Patel?

  I don't know. So their flagship TVs for 2017.

• 3:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:36Nilay Patel?

  QLED. My belief is they were just jealous that LG has OLEDs.

• 3:39Speaker 02

  OLED.

• 3:40Nilay Patel?

  Which is actually a different technology.

• 3:41Speaker 02

  Right.

• 3:42Nilay Patel?

  And Sony is rumored later today to be announcing some OLED TVs of their own.

• 3:45Speaker 02

  Right.

• 3:46Nilay Patel?

  What do you think of QLED?

• 3:47Speaker 02

  I think that, I'm actually really interested in the quantum dot technology in QLED, which is LCD with the quantum dots, blah, blah, blah.

• 3:56Nilay Patel?

  People have done this before.

• 3:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, they've done it before. But the fact that they gave it this acronym just ties it to Samsung's eternal history of making absurd four-letter acronyms.

• 4:06Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 4:07Speaker 02

  Remember SUHD?

• 4:08Nilay Patel?

  The SUHD is still real.

• 4:09Speaker 02

  Still real.

• 4:10Nilay Patel?

  These are SUHD QLEDs.

• 4:11Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 4:12Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 4:14Speaker 02

  They're just not having this at all.

• 4:16Speaker 03

  There's letters floating over here and I hate it.

• 4:17Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 4:18Nilay Patel?

  When's the last time you bought a TV?

• 4:20Speaker 03

  Uh, it's been about three years, three or four years.

• 4:22Nilay Patel?

  When's the next time you're gonna buy a TV?

• 4:24Speaker 03

  I don't, I don't need one. I have a computer.

• 4:26Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Ooh.

• 4:27Speaker 03

  Because I live in 2017.

• 4:29Nilay Patel?

  Are you a millennial?

• 4:30Speaker 03

  I might be a millennial.

• 4:31Nilay Patel?

  Millennials... We're coming to you for the millennial outlook. Yeah, there's gonna be... Oh my god. Lastly, every millennial wants this. Samsung announced a four-in-one washer and a four-in-one dryer. Very unclear what that means because fundamentally what it is is a washer with a little washer on top and a dryer with a little dryer on top.

• 4:48Speaker 03

  Wait, I get it. It's like you wash your lights and your darks at the same time. That makes sense.

• 4:51Nilay Patel?

  Right. Or you have like one thing and you wanna wash it. It's like ridiculous. So basically where it's CES, it's peak Samsung.

• 4:55Speaker 02

  Right. There, there's, uh, yeah, I don't know. It's peak Samsung. Uh, they, you don't get the little wash tub in it though. Whatever. The other thing that we were expecting to happen at Samsung's keynote was they would actually address the Galaxy Note 7, which, you know, exploded and then got badly recalled and then got recalled in an even more inept way. And then they just turned them all off. Uh, and so they did. Samsung did address the issue that everyone thinks of Samsung as things explode now. And I think we have a clip.

• 5:26Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 5:26Speaker 02

  So let's take a look at that.

• 5:30Speaker 04

  Good afternoon and welcome to CES 2017. You know, as you know, this year was a challenging year for Samsung. Some of you were directly impacted and certainly many saw the media coverage, especially about the Note 7. We continue our intensive efforts internally and with third-party experts to understand what happened and to make sure it does not happen again. And very soon, we will be sharing the root cause report on the Note 7.

• 6:03Speaker 04

  Now, despite our setbacks, we have not, nor will we, stop innovating.

• 6:10Speaker 02

  That, that's...

• 6:12Nilay Patel?

  I don't know what that was.

• 6:13Speaker 02

  That was, that was, we gotta do something.

• 6:15Nilay Patel?

  Many of you know that our products exploded. But despite this failure, we will continue making products.

• 6:21Speaker 02

  That was 100% insufficient.

• 6:23Nilay Patel?

  So here, okay, here's why I think this...

• 6:25Speaker 02

  Alright, alright.

• 6:25Nilay Patel?

  And you've said this several times.

• 6:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 6:27Nilay Patel?

  Samsung doesn't have a big face, right? They don't have Steve Jobs, or Larry Page, or whoever.

• 6:32Speaker 02

  Right.

• 6:33Nilay Patel?

  When Facebook explodes, Sheryl Sandberg is like, "We're very sorry, Mark just does whatever he wants." Right? So sorry.

• 6:39Speaker 02

  When all of Facebook just lights up on fire, the internet crashes.

• 6:41Nilay Patel?

  Uh, yeah, Sheryl's like, "Get Mark again." Um, anyway. So this was their first big moment out in front of the public, in front of the press...

• 6:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, at least it's like the US audience to a global audience.

• 6:52Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 6:53Speaker 02

  This is the moment.

• 6:54Nilay Patel?

  This is, well, this is, Samsung has like a handful of big events, and this is one of them every year. That was basically just an acknowledgement that their phones blew up.

• 7:00Speaker 02

  Right.

• 7:01Nilay Patel?

  Which is not a whole lot.

• 7:02Speaker 02

  Yeah. Well...

• 7:04Nilay Patel?

  And the big question is, can they recover? And their strategy seems to be like...

• 7:07Speaker 02

  We'll explain it later.

• 7:08Nilay Patel?

  We're just gonna do a little bit of that.

• 7:09Speaker 02

  They're promising a report, which...

• 7:12Nilay Patel?

  On the root cause.

• 7:13Speaker 02

  I don't know, I know that Samsung has apologized before.

• 7:15Nilay Patel?

  Huh?

• 7:16Speaker 03

  Okay, if somebody's like, "Hey, I got this report of why this phone explodes," like, who's gonna...

• 7:19Nilay Patel?

  Well, presumably, battery engineers, right? Like, you hope that there's like one group of people that reads this. It's like the people who make batteries.

• 7:25Speaker 03

  I don't care why it exploded, because it's, it doesn't, it doesn't change the fact that my phone exploded.

• 7:30Nilay Patel?

  Did you buy a Samsung?

• 7:31Speaker 03

  No.

• 7:32Speaker 02

  Really?

• 7:32Speaker 03

  I do...

• 7:33Speaker 02

  You're off.

• 7:33Speaker 03

  No, I'm done. Uh, but I do love that this happened, because I think in a couple of years, it's gonna be really hilarious, no matter what, always.

• 7:38Nilay Patel?

  And it was already, like, it was veering that way, and then like, they kept going?

• 7:42Speaker 03

  I think the best thing they can do is kind of get in on the joke, and feel like, "Hey, remember our exploding phone? This one doesn't, though, eh, eh?"

• 7:49Nilay Patel?

  I mean, they're gonna have to put in an S8, we'll see.

• 7:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 7:52Nilay Patel?

  Uh, other big news from yesterday, Faraday Future, which is a bit of a, bit of a chuckle as it is.

• 7:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 7:59Nilay Patel?

  Uh, they put up an enormous tent here in Vegas. They promised they were gonna actually reveal their car last year...

• 8:05Speaker 02

  The tent was like a half mile long.

• 8:06Nilay Patel?

  Quarter mile long. You live a quarter mile at a time.

• 8:08Speaker 02

  Right.

• 8:08Nilay Patel?

  A half mile is two at times.

• 8:10Speaker 02

  So if you're not familiar, this is a company that...

• 8:12Nilay Patel?

  You're just letting my Fast and Furious joke die out loud. That's terrible. Anyway, this company promised last year, they said, "We're gonna have a car."

• 8:18Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 8:18Nilay Patel?

  They didn't show a car, then a bunch of people left the company, there's like turmoil on the business side.

• 8:22Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 8:23Nilay Patel?

  They showed their car, it's called the FF91. I think it looks like, uh, like a, like a cyber Pontiac Aztec. Like, just not pretty, but they raced against a Bentley, they raced against a Ferrari, they raced against two Teslas, said it's the fastest production EV in the world, and then it parked itself.

• 8:39Speaker 02

  Once, not twice.

• 8:40Nilay Patel?

  But only 300 people can get them in the first launch edition, and it won't come out until 2018. I don't know that this car is actually real. Oh, you can reserve one for $5,000, that's the other important note here.

• 8:52Speaker 02

  Uh, no, I don't know that it's real at all, uh, and after the last like three months of drama with the factory and like ECO, the company that like is a part owner and like strangely involved, and all the executives that have left, um, it's just like, you, the onus is on you not to show me a flashy demo? The onus is on you to prove that you're gonna ship cars.

• 9:14Nilay Patel?

  So it parked itself the first time, the second time they pushed the button, it didn't work, and the dude said, "She's a little finicky today," which is beautiful. You want that to happen. I don't know, I, it, it feels like this company, oh, they also said amazing things, just truly amazing things like, "Faraday is a company designed to reinvent the automotive industry the way it should have always been." Which is really tough because the automotive industry currently, uh, shipping cars.

• 9:45Nilay Patel?

  Faraday not doing that yet.

• 9:47Speaker 02

  They have the same CEO from year to year.

• 9:49Nilay Patel?

  What you want is like 200 years of no cars.

• 9:53Nilay Patel?

  I don't know, man, uh, Jordan and Andy from our team went to this event. The taco's remarkably small. Of all the, of all the thing. It's a funny guy, so, anyway.

• 10:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:04Nilay Patel?

  Speaking of cars.

• 10:05Speaker 02

  So, speaking of cars, uh, Chrysler unveiled the Portal, which is a self-driving concept car, uh, which they didn't want to call a minivan, but it, it's a minivan. Uh, it's got 250 miles of range, it's all-electric, of course, um, and it's got, you know, social media integration because it's designed...

• 10:27Speaker 02

  For millennials.

• 10:28Nilay Patel?

  By millennials.

• 10:29Speaker 02

  By millennials, for millennials.

• 10:31Nilay Patel?

  They said the word millennials 9,000 times while talking about a minivan.

• 10:35Speaker 02

  They never stopped talking. And, you know, it takes selfies.

• 10:37Nilay Patel?

  Here's some stereotypes about millennials.

• 10:38Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 10:39Nilay Patel?

  Selfies.

• 10:39Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 10:40Nilay Patel?

  Extreme sports.

• 10:41Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 10:42Nilay Patel?

  Sharing, sharing, sharing everything, not owning anything.

• 10:44Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 10:45Nilay Patel?

  I know, bad taste in music.

• 10:49Speaker 03

  Just go there. Don't say anything we regret, okay?

• 10:51Nilay Patel?

  But I'm not saying minivans is in, is in that zone.

• 10:54Speaker 02

  I'm saying I love the way this minivan looks.

• 10:57Nilay Patel?

  Megan, would you buy this? You're like token millennial.

• 11:00Speaker 03

  Okay, you know what millennials drove a minivan is the Scooby Doo gang? And that's kind of what this reminds me of.

• 11:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 11:05Speaker 03

  This is like the modern Scooby Doo gang from millennials.

• 11:08Nilay Patel?

  You're claiming that Scooby Doo, they were millennials. Are you defining millennials as just anyone who solves crimes? Anyone in their twenties?

• 11:17Speaker 02

  Smokes weed.

• 11:18Speaker 03

  I'm saying if you rebooted Scooby Doo today, they'd be millennials. They're like of that age. They're not really do that much. They don't have a real job.

• 11:26Speaker 02

  They think dogs talk.

• 11:27Nilay Patel?

  They don't have a real job. They solve crimes.

• 11:31Speaker 02

  It's not a job.

• 11:32Nilay Patel?

  It's a job for some people.

• 11:33Speaker 03

  Okay, where do they work?

• 11:34Speaker 02

  People are constantly complaining about them and saying, hey, you kids, if it weren't for those dang millennials.

• 11:39Nilay Patel?

  Oh, this all comes together. So Chrysler made a minivan for the Scooby Doo crew.

• 11:43Speaker 02

  Yep. And the doors open up like sliding doors, like where you're walking into a building.

• 11:47Nilay Patel?

  That's just concept car stuff. I think the real thing here is Chrysler's idea is the same idea that all self-driving car companies have, which is eventually the car is going to be a living room on wheels.

• 11:58Speaker 02

  Right.

• 11:58Nilay Patel?

  And you're going to get into it in whatever fancy door contraption they deign to give you. And you're going to watch a bunch of stuff while the car drives itself around and take, apparently, take selfies of you.

• 12:09Speaker 02

  Also, not for nothing, this is more interesting than other concept cars because Google is not really trying to make its own car and they have a really tight relationship with Fiat Chrysler.

• 12:19Nilay Patel?

  So this is a thing. So last CES, last year, the hot, hot rumor was that Google and Ford would team up in some way.

• 12:27Speaker 02

  Right.

• 12:27Nilay Patel?

  That never came to pass. Ford has been like out there basically saying it was too hard to work with Google. Like, not in so many words. They've said it. They said it on stage at the code conference. Mark Fields, we interviewed him on The Verge. CFO Ford, he basically said the same thing to us. Over the past year, Google has stopped trying to make a car. Apple, the rumors are, they've stopped trying to make a car.

• 12:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 12:49Nilay Patel?

  And now you see Google getting deep into a partnership with Fiat Chrysler. They're also doing Chrysler cars, Jeeps.

• 12:55Speaker 02

  Right.

• 12:56Nilay Patel?

  Whatever else Chrysler makes. I don't really care about Jeeps.

• 12:59Nilay Patel?

  They're gonna redo the whole center stack based on Android.

• 13:01Speaker 02

  Right.

• 13:01Nilay Patel?

  You see, Google is like, they're trying to pair up with a carmaker. And maybe this new minivan is like the next generation of Pacifica, which is what Google's using as self-driving cars right now.

• 13:11Speaker 02

  So we're gonna have a lot more time to talk about that, but we've got also a lot more CES to get through. The other thing that happened last night was CES Unveiled, where we see a ton of gadgets. And Paul Miller, Ashley Carmen went out there, and let's see what they saw.

• 13:26Speaker 05

  We are here at CES Unveiled, and it's a little crazy.

• 13:33Speaker 06

  I feel like you and I both picked up on the same trend of home products. Like, that's clearly where everyone is focusing their efforts.

• 13:40Speaker 05

  It's like, your home isn't convenient enough. If only it was more convenient by everything in your house being connected to the internet and involving an app.

• 13:51Speaker 06

  I saw a universal remote from Seven Hugs. This remote was super cool, though. So it's just like a computer screen, like it's a display. And you can point in at any object in the room, so long as it's on Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, or infrared, and it's open API or like open enough that the engineers can get into it and control any device by just pointing out.

• 14:14Speaker 05

  So one thing I was really excited about was these Helio lights by Sora.

• 14:20Speaker 06

  I mean, I'm very happy you can get excited about smart lights. So this must be good.

• 14:23Speaker 05

  My favorite part is you just screw these in. They work as lights. You can turn them on and off. If you add one thing to one of the lights, it's like a motion detector. And so if you walk in a room, they'll like, like turn on. That little device, that snap, synchronizes all these lights so that they do this color shift thing. But you never had to like do any app setup. And then if you want to get into the app life, then you can add functionality. But they actually work without the internet and without an app. And I think that's a milestone I'd like to see a few more companies hit.

• 15:01Speaker 06

  I saw an alarm clock called Bonjour, which uses your voice to do different alarm clock things, like wake you up. Like you could set your alarm and say, "Hi, bonjour," whatever the wake-up phrase was, and set your alarm like that.

• 15:18Speaker 05

  So that's CES unveiled. What'd you think, the first one?

• 15:22Speaker 06

  You know, it'll be interesting to see if in six months, any of these products show up in the market.

• 15:28Speaker 05

  If they're shit, if they're bad, if they work, and if they're worth buying. But at least they exist.

• 15:33Speaker 06

  CES is based on faith. We gotta have some faith in that.

• 15:36Speaker 05

  Gotta have some faith.

• 15:43Nilay Patel?

  All right, we're back. And guess what? The family's here. Paul Miller, Ashley Carmen.

• 15:46Speaker 05

  Hello.

• 15:47Nilay Patel?

  Hey, fam. All right, guys. So I wasn't unveiled for a hot second yesterday. It seemed totally chaotic. There was like a lot of weird junk science. There was a lot of like echo clones. But what were you seeing that you like loved?

• 16:01Speaker 05

  Well, the Internet of Things just keeps advancing because there are X number of things that exist in the universe. And all of them need to be connected to the Internet.

• 16:11Nilay Patel?

  Yes, or else.

• 16:13Speaker 05

  And or else.

• 16:13Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 16:14Speaker 05

  And or we'll, yeah. And then also Alexa. Almost everything talks to Alexa, or like Off the Record talks to Alexa. We're working on it.

• 16:25Nilay Patel?

  Wait, tell me what Off the Record talks to Alexa is.

• 16:26Speaker 05

  Yeah, because it's off the record. Please don't say this out loud. While describing my brand name. It will, it will talk to us. Also, Watson. I want to see more of that.

• 16:37Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Well, AI is like a trend, right? And Watson's like a cheap, like, you can just go plug it into your thing and like, get some AI stuff happening.

• 16:44Speaker 05

  Yeah, the Jeopardy! questions sound more exciting to me than... The Alexa skills, we've all seen that. But Watson could be the next hot thing to add to your Internet of Things.

• 16:54Nilay Patel?

  All right, well, all of us are like jaded CES jerks. Ashley, you've got some fresh eyes for us.

• 16:59Speaker 06

  Yeah, I was gonna say, this is my first CES.

• 17:00Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Wow.

• 17:01Speaker 06

  I'm here!

• 17:03Nilay Patel?

  It's Megan's first CES, too. And yesterday, like, all the cheesy CES stuff that's going on, we're just like, oh my God, who wants to see this dancing robot?

• 17:11Speaker 06

  Like the dancing robot!

• 17:12Nilay Patel?

  And Megan like flipped out.

• 17:13Speaker 06

  I was like, cry laughing.

• 17:14Speaker 03

  Shit, are you kidding? This is like techno Disneyland. It's incredible.

• 17:19Nilay Patel?

  Anyway, Ashley, what have you seen?

• 17:20Speaker 06

  Um, yeah, I mean, the smart home stuff. But what was interesting to me is I feel like, yeah, they're taking products we use every day, like a mug, a mirror, foreshadowing.

• 17:34Speaker 06

  And other products that we just use every day and turning it smart, which is like, OK, I guess we've reached that point.

• 17:40Nilay Patel?

  Do you, a thing that I noticed yesterday just walking around was some of the people were obviously like not convinced that they had done the right thing. And other people were very sincere that if they could just collect more data about you, they could make your pregnancy go better, or they could like monitor your heart rate in different ways, in different times.

• 17:59Speaker 06

  I don't know if CES is always like this, so tell me if it is. But everyone has the hardware down. They're like, look at me, I have like six cameras, all these lasers, sensors, da, da, da. And they're like, but the software.

• 18:09Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 18:10Speaker 06

  That's the thing.

• 18:11Speaker 02

  Well, hardware's simple. It's accelerometers and gyroscopes and cameras and...

• 18:16Speaker 06

  Yeah. None of them...

• 18:17Nilay Patel?

  A thousand hardware engineers just started crying.

• 18:25Nilay Patel?

  So, big trends outside of Alexa, what were your takeaways?

• 18:28Speaker 06

  Also, well, beyond Alexa, just gestures, different types of controls. I always tell Paul, I'm like, I hate screens. I don't want to look at screens anymore.

• 18:37Nilay Patel?

  You're anti-screen in a big way.

• 18:39Speaker 06

  Yeah, I have very strong views on very specific things, like flip phones. But, um, screens, yeah, I hate them.

• 18:46Nilay Patel?

  Do you see a flip phone here yet? We'll find you a flip phone. That should be a story that you do.

• 18:49Speaker 06

  Where is the flip phone?

• 18:50Nilay Patel?

  So, are you all voice all the time? Is that like your idea?

• 18:52Speaker 06

  No, I rarely use. I'm forced into screens because I don't really, I don't have an Echo. I don't use Siri or Cortana or any of that, so...

• 19:02Speaker 05

  I, that's the thing, I just don't think, nothing I saw made me think, man, gestures are... How was that, the 7 hugs remote? Best name?

• 19:12Speaker 06

  Oh, that was a Neilli gadget.

• 19:14Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 19:14Speaker 06

  Like, that remote is for you. Yeah, this thing blew my mind.

• 19:19Nilay Patel?

  All right, we gotta take a break. We're gonna come back. We're gonna have the Chromebook here, the new Samsung Chromebook. It's gonna be amazing. Uh, we're back right after this. All right, we're back. Vergecast Live, CS 2017. Look at this.

• 19:32Speaker 02

  This, my friend, is the Chromebook Plus.

• 19:36Nilay Patel?

  No, I think you have the Pro.

• 19:37Speaker 02

  I have the Pro.

• 19:37Nilay Patel?

  I have the Plus hidden away.

• 19:39Speaker 02

  You've got a Plus?

• 19:40Nilay Patel?

  I don't want to tell you.

• 19:41Speaker 02

  They look identical. So this is the new Chromebook from Samsung, running, of course, Chrome OS. And it's designed from the jump to run Android apps. So you can see I've got the Play Store open here. And you can also see it's got a touchscreen. It does...

• 19:56Nilay Patel?

  What laptop doesn't? Oh, the MacBook Pro.

• 19:59Speaker 02

  MacBook Pro doesn't do that so much. When you put it into the tablet mode, like, the apps start to go fullscreen. Like, on their own, it, like, sort of knows.

• 20:06Nilay Patel?

  It is really nice.

• 20:07Speaker 02

  So it's like Chrome OS is starting to feel a little bit more tablet-y, but it's not quite there all the way.

• 20:13Nilay Patel?

  We got some hints that that's like...

• 20:15Speaker 02

  They're thinking about it a lot.

• 20:17Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 20:18Speaker 02

  So the other thing that's important to know is... Because of the stylus.

• 20:22Nilay Patel?

  It looks exactly like a Note 7.

• 20:23Speaker 02

  I mean...

• 20:25Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 20:25Speaker 02

  They just had, like, a warehouse full of those. And I'm like, "Well, fuck it."

• 20:31Speaker 02

  I haven't had a chance to use it a ton, but, like, it seems good in terms of basic speed. And, you know, it runs the Android app. So, right now, it's running the beta of Android on Chrome.

• 20:43Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 20:44Speaker 02

  Which means that...

• 20:44Nilay Patel?

  It's marshmallow.

• 20:45Speaker 02

  Marshmallow. And so the apps can't be dynamically resized. You basically can choose between, like, fullscreen or phone screen. And that's kind of it, depending on the apps.

• 20:55Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 20:56Speaker 02

  When, later this year, when they take it out of beta, Android is going to be at N. And then the apps that support it will be able to be dynamically resized.

• 21:05Nilay Patel?

  If they're updated for N. So there's, like, a lot of steps here before we get to the thing that I really want.

• 21:11Speaker 02

  Right.

• 21:12Nilay Patel?

  Which is desktop class browser.

• 21:13Speaker 02

  Right.

• 21:14Nilay Patel?

  With a bunch of my phone apps next to it.

• 21:15Speaker 02

  Right.

• 21:16Nilay Patel?

  And they're all kind of interacting well.

• 21:17Speaker 02

  But you've got that now. You just can't make the phone apps whatever size you feel like.

• 21:20Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 21:20Speaker 02

  Right.

• 21:21Nilay Patel?

  You can make them, like, phone-sized.

• 21:22Speaker 02

  And we also need to see if enough Android developers, like Photoshop here, right? Like, it's Lightroom, but it's not like the same Lightroom you get on Windows. And like, will that ever... Like, it'll probably never get to parity with Windows, but it'll get closer, I think.

• 21:34Nilay Patel?

  So I've got here, this is the Plus.

• 21:36Speaker 02

  Uh-huh.

• 21:36Nilay Patel?

  It was a secret. But this is the Plus. It's running anomaly 2. This is the ARM processor version. I can hit resume game. And I'm instantly just grinding already.

• 21:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 21:47Nilay Patel?

  That's great. This is what games are all about, right? But you can see it's running really well. It's fullscreen. It's like a good framerate. And then I can just, like, pull it back out. And it'll go, "Ah!"

• 21:57Speaker 02

  Right.

• 21:58Nilay Patel?

  It'll be Chrome OS again, and I can just get out. So this is like, pretty neat, in terms of...

• 22:03Speaker 02

  I mean, in terms of hardware, like...

• 22:04Nilay Patel?

  But you could do this on a bunch of other Chromebooks now. Like, what... Why is this the flagship?

• 22:09Speaker 02

  I'm in Google Keep right now, and so I can make a little new note here. And I can draw, and I don't know why it's saying that. But I can draw on this thing. And you can see the latency here, but it's actually way better than it sort of has any right to be.

• 22:25Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 22:25Speaker 02

  And the reason is that apparently, Google's taken some machine learning, and it tries to predict where your pen is going to go before it gets there. So that's how they're reducing the feeling of latency.

• 22:36Nilay Patel?

  Right. That's like a very Google way of doing it.

• 22:39Speaker 02

  It's a super-Google way of doing it.

• 22:39Nilay Patel?

  Just send your pen to the cloud and go back and show you make it faster. So this is Google's pen tech.

• 22:44Speaker 02

  Yes, it's not like, this might be, this might be a very Samsung-looking stylus, but this is Google's pen tech. And other Chromebooks that include a stylus in the future will be able to do the same sort of thing.

• 22:54Nilay Patel?

  As long as the app's support the API. Because we were playing with it yesterday, and I was using some pen app that didn't have that machine learning handwriting API. And there was a bit of lag.

• 23:03Speaker 02

  Right.

• 23:03Nilay Patel?

  But then you're in Keep, and it's super fast.

• 23:05Speaker 02

  Right. So one more thing you can do here. So if I go to search, and search for the word "fun", and it found a note where somebody wrote out with a pen "fun", so it OCRs everything in Keep, and then you can search for the stuff. And you can even, I hear, copy and paste your handwritten notes, and it'll paste the text into another app.

• 23:24Nilay Patel?

  Very dangerous.

• 23:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 23:26Nilay Patel?

  Very Newton-esque danger.

• 23:27Speaker 02

  So, this thing is, what is it? Uh, I don't remember. It's $449 for the Plus.

• 23:32Nilay Patel?

  The Plus is over there.

• 23:33Speaker 02

  And the Pro is gonna be a little bit more expensive, come out a little bit later. But that guy's available in February.

• 23:38Nilay Patel?

  So here's what I'll tell you. For $449, just playing with this, it's a nice piece of hardware.

• 23:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 23:42Nilay Patel?

  It definitely feels like a $450 Chromebook.

• 23:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 23:45Nilay Patel?

  The keyboard isn't backlit.

• 23:46Speaker 02

  It's not like, "Oh my god, a Pixel." It's like, it's fine. It's good. It's better than a bunch of Chromebooks that aren't like Metal and blah, blah, blah.

• 23:52Nilay Patel?

  Are you buying this thing?

• 23:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, I've been waiting to buy a Chromebook, so I'm probably gonna buy it.

• 23:57Nilay Patel?

  I am holding out for a big, crazy Pixel.

• 24:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 24:01Nilay Patel?

  That's the thing I want. And I don't know, there were some whispers when we were talking yesterday.

• 24:07Speaker 02

  They're not giving up on the pixel line in this form factor, is what I hear.

• 24:10Nilay Patel?

  Whatever that means, it means that there's a rainbow, and at the end of that rainbow, there's me with a bag of money, just waiting for a town.

• 24:17Speaker 02

  You ready for a segue?

• 24:18Nilay Patel?

  I'm ready for a segue.

• 24:18Speaker 02

  Rainbows are made out of colors. You know what else is made out of colors? I'm so sorry.

• 24:22Nilay Patel?

  This is some of the worst television ever. I just want to be honest with you.

• 24:25Speaker 02

  Televisions! And CES is a huge TV show, and so Chris Welch is going to tell us, give us the lay of the land of what TVs at CES look like, and then we're going to talk about it a bit.

• 24:35Speaker 07

  CES is where TVs have their big moment every year. It's the destination where the world's biggest tech companies like Samsung, Sony, LG, and more put in their biggest, brightest, and most advanced new TV screens. It's a week of dazzling displays everywhere you turn. So this is CES 2017, but the two main themes you're going to see are the same ones as last year: 4K and HDR. And yeah, you've been hearing about 4K for years now, but it's finally easy to find stuff you actually like to watch on Amazon and Netflix. And HDR is about so much more than just a sharper picture. It improves on 4K in a big way with brighter, more punchy colors that make blockbusters pop off the screen. All these things together make sitting in front of your TV feel more like being at the actual movies.

• 25:18Speaker 07

  Now HDR, short for High Dynamic Range, was a pretty new feature last year, but this time, you're going to see it everywhere. And all of this tech is getting cheap fast. You can pay around $600 for a decent 4K HDR TV right now, but it won't compare to the TVs headlining CES this week. Stunning new OLED TVs from LG, maybe even Sony, more 4K from Samsung, Panasonic, TCL, Hysons, and others. Prototype TVs, Android TVs, Chromecast TVs, and Roku TVs. So all the big factors, price and content, they're pretty much solved. CES 2017 is the moment where all these TV companies have to prove, once and for all, that 4K is now essential. TVs are the true spectacle of CES, and The Verge is here in Las Vegas to tell you which

• 26:02Speaker 07

  ones are great, which ones aren't, and which one might be the best fit for your living room.

• 26:11Nilay Patel?

  Hey, we're back.

• 26:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 26:12Nilay Patel?

  Lauren Good is here. Hello.

• 26:13Speaker 08

  And I have a Twitter mug.

• 26:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 26:15Speaker 08

  It's a smart Twitter mug.

• 26:17Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it's measuring you right now.

• 26:19Speaker 08

  Will it tweet every time I take a sip?

• 26:20Nilay Patel?

  That's a nightmare.

• 26:21Speaker 08

  I'm gonna get on it.

• 26:23Nilay Patel?

  Okay, so Lauren.

• 26:24Speaker 08

  Yes.

• 26:25Nilay Patel?

  You have been on the TV beat for us for a little bit.

• 26:28Speaker 08

  A little bit.

• 26:28Nilay Patel?

  You've been doing a lot of streaming stuff.

• 26:30Speaker 08

  Capo'd Ray, specifically.

• 26:33Speaker 02

  CRT, where's the future?

• 26:35Nilay Patel?

  I bet there's one CRT TV here.

• 26:36Speaker 08

  There probably is.

• 26:37Nilay Patel?

  Like a giant one.

• 26:39Nilay Patel?

  Hi-Sense did a rear-projection TV, 100-inch rear-projection.

• 26:41Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 26:42Nilay Patel?

  Laser TV, they're bringing it back. Anyway, but you've been looking at some streaming stuff.

• 26:47Nilay Patel?

  Let's start with kind of the start. Amazon is basically putting a bunch of cheap TVs with FireOS in them.

• 26:53Speaker 08

  That is correct.

• 26:53Nilay Patel?

  And you think they're going straight at Roku?

• 26:56Speaker 08

  I don't know if they're going straight at Roku, but I think that's sort of a popular strategy for people that have OSs or have media services. They're not going to embed them in super-expensive, high-end TVs like Samsungs or LGs or any of that. They're gonna start at the low end and just say, "How many people can we get using ROS as quickly as possible and as cheaply as possible? Hey, here's a way to do it. Let's partner with some Chinese TV manufacturers." You know, people like Hi-Sense and Hi-R are working with Roku. People like Elements and Seiki and Westinghouse are working with Amazon. And how cheaply, inexpensively, and quickly can we get this out to people?

• 27:30Speaker 02

  So it's like, every year at CES, we're like, okay, is it gonna be 3D? Is it gonna be flat panels? Is it gonna be HDR? Is it gonna be 4K? It seems like this year, like, the HDR, the tech race is like, it's a talk. It's like a downbeat. And instead, the race is like, can we build smarts into the TVs?

• 27:50Speaker 08

  Kind of.

• 27:50Speaker 02

  I do see some weird, like, with that LG TV...

• 27:53Speaker 08

  I mean, you still have like, the super, super high, right. The super, super high-end stuff. Some stuff that's probably even better as a concept or maybe like, a really large display. I'm sure we'll talk about that a little bit, too. But, yeah, I'd say those are like, the two trends we're gonna see this year in TVs. It's going to be really, really high-end, really futuristic, really expensive, or it's going to be smart TVs.

• 28:13Nilay Patel?

  Right, well, it's like, the other guys are smart.

• 28:16Speaker 08

  There's like, WebOS.

• 28:17Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 28:18Speaker 02

  Well, no, it's LG. TVs are like, the smart TV apps, I feel, now are fine. Which is a weird thing because for years we'd say, "Don't use them. They're terrible. They're the worst."

• 28:26Speaker 08

  Yep.

• 28:27Speaker 02

  But now I think they're like, "They're good enough for the next couple of years. Don't worry about it." If they suck in two years, you can stop using them, but especially on 4K TVs, they're fine. I'm not gonna like, I'm not gonna berate you for using your smart TV app instead of a set-top box.

• 28:39Nilay Patel?

  Well, so what I think is interesting is you look at, Samsung obviously has its own OS on their TVs and ties in.

• 28:44Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 28:44Nilay Patel?

  LG has WebOS, rest in peace.

• 28:47Speaker 02

  It's still live?

• 28:48Nilay Patel?

  They actually put out a really cool TV, a super-thin TV with a soundbar.

• 28:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm really excited about that TV.

• 28:52Nilay Patel?

  Speakers come up. And then you look at the low end of the market, and that's where Roku and Amazon now are in there.

• 28:58Speaker 08

  Yep.

• 28:58Nilay Patel?

  Sony uses Android TV, Vizio uses Chromecast. All the big platform players are involved in the TV space. Microsoft makes the Xbox.

• 29:06Speaker 02

  Right.

• 29:07Nilay Patel?

  Only one who's not there, not building the stuff into the TV, is Apple. Doesn't ship a 4K box.

• 29:13Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 29:13Nilay Patel?

  It's kind of that moment.

• 29:14Speaker 08

  I guess you'd call it a moment?

• 29:16Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 29:16Speaker 08

  I mean, I see, I listened to what Meghan said earlier about, you know, "Well, why do I need a TV? I have a computer screen, right?" And I think that a lot of the industry, especially the people that have services, see that that's the way things are going. The TV is actually kind of the least essential part of it. It's just a screen.

• 29:31Speaker 02

  Just a screen.

• 29:32Speaker 08

  It's just a screen. It happens to be bigger, so in some of your use cases, sitting around your living room, a bunch of people over, watching sports, it's still, that's still gonna be the screen, right? Ultimately, it's about how can we just get people to buy stuff on the little box or, you know, the OS that we need.

• 29:47Nilay Patel?

  Which is why Amazon wants to do that. Okay, we've gotta take another break. We're gonna be back with a robot. It's gonna be very strange. You're gonna love it. It's not gonna be terrifying at all, and no one's gonna die. Right after this.

• 29:58Speaker 02

  We're back. Welcome back. We are here with Kyle Weens and KK Klapp from iFixit, and we're gonna take apart a headset live on the air?

• 30:06Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 30:07Speaker 02

  I think?

• 30:07Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, that's a PSVR. It's gonna be amazing.

• 30:10Speaker 02

  PSVR, yeah. So tell me a little bit what CES is like for you. So actually, tell us a little bit about iFixit, just so if people don't know who you are, we can level you in the land.

• 30:17Speaker 09

  Sure. Our mission is to teach everybody how to fix all their stuff.

• 30:19Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 30:20Speaker 09

  So the moment new gizmos come out, we take it apart and show what's inside.

• 30:23Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 30:24Speaker 09

  And hopefully give people an idea, should you buy this? If you buy it, is it going to break? If it breaks, how expensive is it gonna be to fix?

• 30:30Speaker 02

  Right.

• 30:31Speaker 09

  And so CES is this...

• 30:33Speaker 02

  Screw flying.

• 30:35Nilay Patel?

  This is great.

• 30:36Speaker 09

  CES is this big tease for us because everybody announces things, but you can't actually have it.

• 30:40Speaker 02

  Right.

• 30:41Speaker 09

  So we were at CES unveiled yesterday, and we were going around all the booths saying, "Hey, that's a really cool hairbrush. Can I take it apart?"

• 30:48Speaker 09

  No, no, you can't take my hairbrush apart. We have one.

• 30:51Speaker 02

  Right, right.

• 30:53Nilay Patel?

  So you guys, I think everybody knows, if you're watching the show, you know this, you definitely know about iFixit. Every time there's a new product comes out, iFixit tears it down live, which is super fun. I think we all watch.

• 31:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 31:04Nilay Patel?

  You guys talk to your friends, you know, tear down chips and do x-rays of chips.

• 31:07Speaker 09

  Right.

• 31:07Nilay Patel?

  Tell us how it works, and you assign a repairability score.

• 31:10Speaker 09

  Right.

• 31:11Speaker 02

  Right.

• 31:12Nilay Patel?

  I come to this show, and what I'm thinking about is, the gadget like this, okay, fine, you can't repair it. It's a consumer VR headset. It's full of screen. It's basically a computer, self-contained. Okay, I can argue with you about whether you should be able to repair this.

• 31:25Speaker 09

  Sure.

• 31:26Nilay Patel?

  I look at all the smart home stuff, and I'm thinking, when my dishwasher breaks, normally,

• 31:31Speaker 09

  Right.

• 31:32Nilay Patel?

  a person shows up, it's a mechanical object that can mostly take it apart and fix it. The second that thing becomes an Android computer, now I've got all kinds of other problems. Do you see that?

• 31:42Speaker 09

  The moment you add electronics to these gadgets, or to these products that we have in our lives, it changes the ballgame. And all of the frustrations that we've had with repairing electronics, like, we're pretty good at repairing most electronics, but some of them, we have a real challenge. And then when you see those challenges introduced into something like a refrigerator that should last 10 or 20 or 30 years, and we're gonna take it to the lifecycle of a tablet by adding a tablet to a refrigerator. That's a challenge.

• 32:05Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. So what's the solve there? I mean, like, do you think your advocacy for, like, right to repair, which is a thing that actually in policy circles, like, people talk about, has that, have you seen forward momentum there? Have you seen it coming back?

• 32:17Speaker 09

  There's huge momentum around right to repair. There's four states going to be introducing legislation this year, where they're saying, hey, if you're gonna sell a product-

• 32:25Nilay Patel?

  She's just killing this PSVR.

• 32:28Speaker 09

  This is actually, this thing got a pretty high repairability score. We like this device a lot.

• 32:32Speaker 02

  Uh, why has it got a high repairability score?

• 32:34Speaker 09

  It's fairly modular and straightforward. Sony just has their shit together. They are so good at building hardware.

• 32:40Nilay Patel?

  I remember those pictures when the Xbox One came out, and the PS4 came out, and the Xbox One, you took it off, and it was like, it looked like the first Iron Man suit on the inside.

• 32:48Speaker 09

  And Sony is just minimalist and dialed in.

• 32:51Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 32:51Speaker 09

  Yeah.

• 32:52Nilay Patel?

  Also, Sony just opened their warehouse full of garbage old parts, and they're like, I don't know, these PlayStation move controllers, we'll use those. Okay, so we got this all pulled apart here.

• 33:01Speaker 09

  So this is inside, so the PlayStation VR uses one single LCD, or OLED, instead of two, like the Oculus does. But in general, it's interesting, look how much space is available inside this thing.

• 33:12Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, wow.

• 33:13Speaker 09

  They could have made this half the size if they'd wanted to.

• 33:15Nilay Patel?

  You think so?

• 33:16Speaker 09

  I think the industrial designers picked the form factor that was gonna look the best from the outside and designed the internals around it.

• 33:21Nilay Patel?

  Well, you gotta wear these on your face, you don't wanna get too hot, right?

• 33:24Speaker 09

  Yeah, I mean, how much heat does the OLED put off?

• 33:26Nilay Patel?

  Megan, have you put a PSVR on and used it?

• 33:29Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 33:29Nilay Patel?

  Do you think it's too big, too small?

• 33:32Speaker 03

  Eh, I have a small head, so my answer's maybe not most applicable in this situation. It fits me just fine.

• 33:38Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 33:39Speaker 09

  And it's the most balanced.

• 33:40Nilay Patel?

  Right. I mean, I think it's, for me, it's the simplest one that you can get, outside of a shell on a phone. When you think about, like, iFixit, and it's like, roll, obviously you help people fix their things, do you think you're gonna have a big set of how to repair all the smart home gadgets in your house?

• 33:58Speaker 09

  Yes, absolutely.

• 33:59Nilay Patel?

  Because right now, you do a lot of how to repair your iPhone, a lot of screen replacement kits.

• 34:02Speaker 09

  We have, it's shocking to me, oftentimes, how much is on iFixit. We're like Wikipedia, we cover, we have typewriter repair information, we have oscilloscope repair manuals, we've got appliance repair manuals, it's whatever the community is interested in. And the trick with these home appliances is generally that there aren't enough of them made to get enough distributed information, so we're working on solving that. But I think it's gonna be really critical. I have no fear at all going from the electronics repair realm into the appliance repair realm.

• 34:27Nilay Patel?

  You would never think that that is the road that you would be on, like, now I repair appliances as well. Okay, Kay is gonna keep breaking this down. Megan, tell us what's going on on Twitter.

• 34:36Speaker 03

  Okay, so I wanna talk about the Twitter poll we put up this morning.

• 34:39Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 34:39Speaker 03

  So we asked people, what are you looking forward to the most from CES 2017? So, answer, or the questions were next-gen wearables, more mainstream robots, smart home gadgets, or cars of the future? People said smart home gadgets.

• 34:51Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 34:51Speaker 03

  It's the wrong answer, the answer should actually be robots.

• 34:54Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 34:54Speaker 03

  But, the people have spoken, this is what they have to say.

• 34:58Nilay Patel?

  It's not overwhelming, I gotta say. Well, robots is solidly last.

• 35:02Speaker 03

  It's solidly the worst, yeah.

• 35:04Nilay Patel?

  But smart home gadgets has sort of been the lead. But you've got another poll going now as well?

• 35:07Speaker 03

  Um, yeah, so we're actually gonna have one up. We are going to talk about that a little bit later in the show. I actually do wanna shout out, we got a really good tweet earlier that I wanna highlight.

• 35:15Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 35:16Speaker 03

  So, someone asked, what is the one thing you've seen in CES? And just said, nope.

• 35:22Nilay Patel?

  I love this tweet. I want to talk about it. There's a lot at CES where you like look at stuff. Kyle, what's one thing you've seen where you've just been like, "I reject this idea out of hand"?

• 35:31Speaker 09

  Well, the Superman, the hyper seat.

• 35:35Nilay Patel?

  Oh yeah, the VR thing where you have to lie down.

• 35:36Speaker 09

  Which is not necessarily new, but it's, I mean...

• 35:39Nilay Patel?

  So what Kyle was talking about yesterday unveiled, there was a whole platform. Megan, I believe, I saw you on it. I tried that. You lie down on it, you hold some handles, basically. They're a controller. You wear a VR headset. And then they had like a $12 dime store fan blowing at you to make you feel like you were flying.

• 35:56Speaker 09

  And you want to reject that, but that could be the end of the future.

• 35:59Nilay Patel?

  No, I think that's like a little hint of where we could go. The one I'm gonna reject, and this is true, I saw it yesterday. It was a $2,000 umbrella for your patio. Okay, it was Bluetooth, it had speakers, it had light sensors, it follows the sun.

• 36:16Nilay Patel?

  I mean, it powers your phone. But $2,000 umbrella.

• 36:19Speaker 09

  And the umbrella's always the thing that breaks.

• 36:21Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 36:21Speaker 09

  You take the thing that breaks the most in your life and add all kinds of fancy gadgets on top of it.

• 36:25Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Alright, so we promised you a robot. Robots, Megan. I'm ready. I love robots. This is it. This is where we live. Promise you a robot. I promise you it won't kill you. Let's watch it right now.

• 36:38Speaker 06

  Hi there, it's Ashley Conroy from The Verge. Saber checking out a new smart home robot named Curry. Hey Curry. A company called Mayfield Robotics, which is a Bosch startup, designed Curry with personality in mind. So the first thing you'll probably notice is Curry's eyes and demeanor. Similarly to the Amazon Echo or Google Home, Curry can play music on command over Bluetooth. But there's no voice control just yet. The key difference between the Echo and the Google Home and Curry is that Curry is on wheels. So yes, in theory, you can have a robot Bluetooth speaker following you around. But during our demo, we weren't able to use Spotify or Apple Music to play music necessarily. Curry moves around your house relying on a depth sensor to figure out where obstacles are, navigate around them, and make sure it's in the right room.

• 37:23Speaker 06

  One of the ideas behind Curry is that when you're not at home, you can use it kind of like a surveillance robot. It has a camera behind its eyes and you can watch the live feed through its companion app. But it technically dies after two hours of constant use. So you probably won't get a complete live feed of the entire day.

• 37:44Speaker 06

  Curry knows when its battery is running low though, so it'll automatically return to its dock so that it's pretty much always charged. Honestly, during my demo with Curry, I thought the robot was super cute. Its eyes are expressive and it's adorable. You can't help but want to play with it. But with that said, Curry really didn't live up to its expectations. At least right now. It's super impressive that Curry can navigate around the house and avoid obstacles. That takes a lot of programming and it's cool that they're able to do that. But still, I feel like I didn't get to appreciate its full personality because I couldn't even use voice commands to talk to it. Curry isn't supposed to ship until the end of the year, so Mayfield has a lot of time to continue developing the robot. We're excited to see how Curry develops over the next year and who knows, maybe this will be the smart home robot that breaks through.

• 38:30Nilay Patel?

  We're back.

• 38:31Speaker 02

  Hey.

• 38:32Nilay Patel?

  Ms. Ashley Carmen is back as well.

• 38:33Speaker 06

  I'm back.

• 38:33Nilay Patel?

  So you played with this robot?

• 38:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 38:35Speaker 06

  I played with this robot as much as I could.

• 38:37Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, you were really excited. We were really excited about this whole situation.

• 38:40Speaker 06

  Because it's so cute.

• 38:41Nilay Patel?

  It's so cute.

• 38:41Speaker 06

  It's the cutest robot.

• 38:42Speaker 02

  It's a little round on the face.

• 38:43Speaker 06

  Yeah, it looks like a little Wally or something.

• 38:45Nilay Patel?

  But you weren't able to actually do anything?

• 38:47Speaker 06

  No. So this robot can move around, as you saw, which is impressive, right? From a robotic standpoint, being able to avoid obstacles and move around is definitely impressive. But I was promised a robot that I can interact with, talk to, it might make me laugh or something. No.

• 39:05Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 39:05Speaker 06

  Didn't happen.

• 39:06Nilay Patel?

  I feel like there's a lot of these floating around CES this year.

• 39:08Speaker 02

  They all have the same mode of like a circular face with eyes, with little eyelids that go up into the bottom so they look really cute.

• 39:15Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 39:15Speaker 02

  Everybody's doing it. Everybody's making the little round, cute little, you know, Alexa-based robot that goes.

• 39:20Speaker 06

  Hmm.

• 39:20Nilay Patel?

  So I think the thing about that, there was the reason Alexa and Google Home and all that stuff is popular is because you don't have to think about them. They're just there and when you talk to them, they respond. This robot is like you have to babysit it.

• 39:31Speaker 02

  Right.

• 39:32Speaker 06

  Well, it's actually supposed to babysit your kids in the sense that it's partially a security bot that rolls around the house.

• 39:39Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 39:40Speaker 06

  And you can check in with it and watch over its camera like, is my kid doing his homework right now? And then spy on him.

• 39:46Nilay Patel?

  Least effective security device in the world. So adorable. Okay, so a couple of things are going on right now. Sony just started. Megan's gonna be watching it. Their tagline this year... I'm not, this is live, I can't make this up. The last one inch.

• 39:59Speaker 02

  No.

• 40:00Nilay Patel?

  I don't know what that means, but that's, that's what Sony-

• 40:03Speaker 03

  Wait.

• 40:03Speaker 02

  The last, the last miles of probably getting internet.

• 40:05Nilay Patel?

  Uh, LG also happened, we're gonna come back, have all the news from LG, we're gonna check in on whatever the hell's happening with Sony, uh, right after this. Alright, we're back, let's get right into some more news from CES.

• 40:16Speaker 02

  More headlines.

• 40:17Nilay Patel?

  More headlines. LG happened. Dieter, I'm just tossing, I'm just-

• 40:21Speaker 02

  Don't.

• 40:22Nilay Patel?

  I want you to react pure. LG made a fridge.

• 40:25Speaker 02

  It runs WebOS.

• 40:26Nilay Patel?

  It runs WebOS, it has Alexa in it.

• 40:28Speaker 02

  It has Alexa in it.

• 40:29Nilay Patel?

  Last year LG's fridge ran Windows 10.

• 40:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, so-

• 40:32Nilay Patel?

  This year, WebOS. So if you don't know, Dieter is the oldest school palm stand that has ever existed.

• 40:37Speaker 02

  Uh huh. Uh, it has a 29-inch touchscreen on it, it's called the Instaview, it's got a door-in-door, so you can like have a translucent door, so you can look at it without letting all the cold out. It tells you the weather.

• 40:50Nilay Patel?

  Why does it run WebOS? Does it have cards? Does it have just type?

• 40:53Speaker 02

  WebOS doesn't-

• 40:54Nilay Patel?

  Does it have a unified contact manager?

• 40:56Speaker 02

  Friends, friends, WebOS is dead. It's on LG TVs. It's on the fridge.

• 41:04Nilay Patel?

  It's alive and keeping your food cold.

• 41:05Speaker 02

  But it's not WebOS anymore, it's just Tizen, but it's LG's version of it. I, I, I wanna love this fridge, I'm gonna go check it out, I can't wait to go see it in person and experience the WebOS-ness. But, it's not WebOS, but they had something that was actually cute running Alexa though, right?

• 41:20Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 41:20Speaker 02

  They had another thing, they had a little robot, right?

• 41:22Nilay Patel?

  They had a little robot. The Hub Home.

• 41:24Speaker 02

  Hub Home. It's got that animated face.

• 41:26Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I mean, it, it looked like a, like a little bit, right? Like, this is another thing I'm saying, like, I like these robots, I see what's going on with Alexa and the voice assistants. Finally, there's a, there's a backend technology that you can talk to, that people like talking to.

• 41:40Speaker 02

  But do you need-

• 41:40Nilay Patel?

  So let's make it move around, and now we've made a robot.

• 41:42Speaker 02

  Do you need an Alexa to look at you and make the default robot face, which again is? Eeeeh.

• 41:48Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 41:48Speaker 02

  Like, do you need it to look at you and be cute?

• 41:50Nilay Patel?

  Megan, do you want?

• 41:50Speaker 02

  Do you need it?

• 41:51Speaker 03

  Okay, have you seen realistic robots, because they're extremely creepy? I want a robot that's cute and looks like an emoji.

• 41:56Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 41:57Nilay Patel?

  Fair. Um, how much will you spend on this robot?

• 42:01Speaker 03

  How much am I what?

• 42:02Nilay Patel?

  How much will you spend on this robot?

• 42:04Speaker 03

  Maybe like 300?

• 42:06Nilay Patel?

  Alright.

• 42:06Speaker 03

  That's not really...

• 42:08Nilay Patel?

  It's the price of two Echos.

• 42:11Nilay Patel?

  Anyway.

• 42:11Speaker 02

  We've buried the lead. Because the best thing that LG announced is a signature 4K OLED W Series TV.

• 42:19Nilay Patel?

  It's a lot of letters.

• 42:20Speaker 02

  W stands for wallpaper. It's in 65 inches. It's 2.57 millimeters thick.

• 42:29Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 42:29Speaker 02

  It is the most insane looking television I've ever seen in my life because it's less than 3 millimeters thick, you're just hanging on the wall.

• 42:37Nilay Patel?

  Okay.

• 42:37Speaker 02

  So it's a trick though, right? You know it's a trick because the actual TV stuff besides the screen is in the soundbar that sits underneath the TV.

• 42:45Nilay Patel?

  Years ago, I came to CES and I saw Sony's first OLED TV, which was like 10 inches, it cost $10,000, and they did the same trick. They buried all the internals in a box to make the panel look really thin.

• 42:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 42:55Nilay Patel?

  Samsung's TV has a breakout box. The breakout box is the thing. Samsung's TV's breakout box, uh, the cord lights up. Just to let you know that you have a breakout box.

• 43:03Speaker 02

  I am pro breakout box.

• 43:04Nilay Patel?

  Yeah?

• 43:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 43:05Nilay Patel?

  Well, this breakout box, also a soundbar.

• 43:07Speaker 02

  Right.

• 43:07Nilay Patel?

  Uh, and the speakers rise up when you're watching TV and then they go away and then they break and you gotta call Kyle and Kyle will fix it for you.

• 43:14Speaker 02

  And apparently, uh, they've also got, uh, or it's part of this thing, a 4K soundbar. The soundbar is 4K, which means nothing.

• 43:20Nilay Patel?

  That's a lie. I was very mad.

• 43:21Speaker 02

  What does that even mean?

• 43:24Nilay Patel?

  We also got LG's new Gram laptop.

• 43:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, so the last Gram laptop.

• 43:27Nilay Patel?

  Does not weigh 14 grams, maybe slightly over 2 pounds. Very misleading.

• 43:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 43:31Nilay Patel?

  But they did the thing that we always, always, always talk about on this show.

• 43:36Speaker 02

  Right.

• 43:37Nilay Patel?

  Uh, on the Verchass in general.

• 43:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 43:39Nilay Patel?

  Which is they made it slightly thicker and they put a bigger battery in it and now the battery lasts 3 hours longer.

• 43:44Speaker 02

  Thank you. Just put a decent...

• 43:46Nilay Patel?

  I think LG...

• 43:47Speaker 02

  That thing looks, looks a bit like a MacBook.

• 43:48Nilay Patel?

  It looks 100% like a MacBook. It is this computer. They made it slightly thicker.

• 43:53Speaker 02

  Not just a little bit.

• 43:54Nilay Patel?

  We also saw yesterday unveiled, uh, a bunch of news about USB-C docks for MacBooks. Uh, my favorite one, uh, Griffin or Belkin put out one that is just a huge battery slice that makes this computer as thick as a 2012 MacBook Pro.

• 44:07Speaker 02

  I know. Don't do that.

• 44:09Nilay Patel?

  Just a lot of nonsense here at CES.

• 44:11Speaker 02

  Okay. Uh, we're gonna take a break and we're gonna come right back and we're gonna talk to Mr. Casey Nevin about the magic of periscoping. It's gonna be great.

• 44:20Nilay Patel?

  We're back, and I have very exciting news. Casey Newton is here.

• 44:24Speaker 10

  How's it going?

• 44:25Nilay Patel?

  There he is.

• 44:25Speaker 10

  It's happening.

• 44:26Nilay Patel?

  The man, the legend, the budding improv star. Casey, that's true. That's just a fact. Yeah. Okay, Casey, you have been using an app called Periscope.

• 44:34Speaker 10

  I have.

• 44:34Nilay Patel?

  You're the, I would say you're the dominant Periscoper left in the field.

• 44:38Speaker 10

  Nice of you to say.

• 44:39Nilay Patel?

  But you got some silly hardware to go along this week at CES?

• 44:42Speaker 10

  Yeah, so something exciting is happening in the world of Periscope, which is if you liked it in 180 degrees, what if we multiply that by 2? So Periscope 360 is now in beta.

• 44:53Nilay Patel?

  I don't think I saw that. That didn't start at 180.

• 44:55Speaker 10

  Is that, did my math get wrong?

• 44:56Nilay Patel?

  Field of view is like...

• 44:57Speaker 10

  Well, I mean, you could sort of see, you know, this plane, but you could get every...

• 45:01Nilay Patel?

  Not like your greatest pitch for spherical video.

• 45:04Speaker 10

  Here's the deal.

• 45:05Nilay Patel?

  He's still workshopping.

• 45:06Speaker 10

  I've been going around, and I think you're seeing this on the video now.

• 45:09Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 45:10Speaker 10

  I've been sort of going around the show floor. I've been talking to people. I've been trying to get a sense of what gadgets here are exciting, and I've been doing it with a camera.

• 45:19Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, so I watched Casey's scope last night.

• 45:21Speaker 10

  Yeah.

• 45:21Nilay Patel?

  Literally, all anyone wants to know is what camera he's using.

• 45:24Speaker 10

  It's about the camera, and so I thought this would be a good time to talk about the camera.

• 45:27Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 45:28Speaker 10

  So this is the Insta 360 Nano.

• 45:31Nilay Patel?

  Okay.

• 45:31Speaker 10

  This is a $200 camera that you can buy right now from your favorite retailer, and all you do is snap it into the lightning port on your iPhone, and you turn it upside down.

• 45:45Nilay Patel?

  Oh, wow.

• 45:45Speaker 10

  I've actually put this on backwards.

• 45:47Nilay Patel?

  I was gonna say, yeah. Periscope Pro, Casey.

• 45:49Speaker 10

  Yeah, Periscope Pro, and then I walk around and I can see essentially 360 degrees.

• 45:55Nilay Patel?

  Does this work in every camera app or just Periscope? Or what's the support like?

• 45:59Speaker 10

  So I believe that it has support for other 360-degree video solutions, so YouTube and others, this will probably work. I've used it exclusively with Periscope so far, and we've been getting pretty good results. I've done a couple of them so far. People really enjoy being able to see all around.

• 46:15Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it's really small.

• 46:16Speaker 10

  Yeah, it's tiny. I mean, the thing weighs like, you know, less than a pound. I mean, probably just a few ounces.

• 46:22Nilay Patel?

  Does it have a headphone jack?

• 46:23Speaker 10

  Uh, no headphone jack. It's getting all the audio from...

• 46:26Nilay Patel?

  And so you gotta charge it's got its own battery?

• 46:28Speaker 10

  Yeah, so it charges a little micro SD card slot. Micro USB.

• 46:31Nilay Patel?

  So when you're recording, does it record to here? Does it record to the phone?

• 46:33Speaker 10

  It records to the phone.

• 46:34Nilay Patel?

  But this is just backup?

• 46:36Speaker 10

  The... yes.

• 46:38Nilay Patel?

  Okay.

• 46:38Speaker 10

  Yes.

• 46:39Nilay Patel?

  I'm with you. Because you're streaming live, who cares?

• 46:41Speaker 10

  Exactly!

• 46:42Nilay Patel?

  This is all a fun role.

• 46:43Speaker 10

  Yes, it's not about saving it.

• 46:44Speaker 02

  Like, doing a hands-on with it, like, I could look at you, or just...

• 46:47Nilay Patel?

  No, I enjoy looking straight down and seeing your little robot disembodied hand. Which is a true, a true joy of all 360 video.

• 46:55Speaker 10

  I was, I got more comments on my shoes than I ever got before, on a Periscope 360.

• 47:00Nilay Patel?

  So let me ask you, 360 in general.

• 47:02Speaker 10

  Yeah.

• 47:02Nilay Patel?

  Obviously, there's VR all over this show.

• 47:04Speaker 10

  Yeah.

• 47:05Nilay Patel?

  What's your sense of whether it's mainstream, or whether we're just screwing around because we're The Verge? Or like...

• 47:10Speaker 10

  Yeah.

• 47:10Nilay Patel?

  What do you think the audience for this stuff is?

• 47:12Speaker 10

  So to me, I think, I think like live video itself, it's another tool in the toolkit. There are gonna be a handful of times where it's amazing, and then there's gonna be a lot of times where you probably don't want to bother. But if you think about the CES show floor, where you're surrounded by people, you're surrounded by gadgets, it's a perfect time to go 360, because different people are going to want to see different things. And, you know, even if they're not able to sort of perfectly zoom in on every gadget that is around me, they can at least get a sense of what it's like to be there. And for me, my favorite comments that I was getting yesterday and today were just from people saying, "I feel like I'm there." It's a little cheesy, but, you know, if you're in India right now, or you're in Germany, and you've always wanted to know what it's like to be at a show like this, 360 degree video gets you closer than you've been able to get before.

• 47:52Nilay Patel?

  I enjoy the people who are looking around you and being like, "Go talk to that guy."

• 47:55Speaker 10

  Yeah.

• 47:56Nilay Patel?

  Because they could see what you were prioritizing.

• 47:58Speaker 10

  That guy's cute. What's his story? Is he seeing anyone?

• 48:01Nilay Patel?

  The true story of CES. Casey just cruising, got failed. No. Uh, Megan, have you been watching a lot of 360 video? Have you, does this, does this appeal to you?

• 48:11Speaker 03

  Um, yes, because I have really bad ADD, so I like, people will be talking, I like the chance to move around and see what else is happening. Um, I like it. I, I think you have really nice shoes too, Casey. Really enjoyable to watch you walk around.

• 48:24Nilay Patel?

  This is the most positive The Verge has has been in like five years.

• 48:26Speaker 03

  Just here to bring in the hugs and the good deals.

• 48:28Speaker 02

  It's your first CES, and so you're like...

• 48:30Speaker 03

  Exactly. I'm not jaded yet.

• 48:31Speaker 02

  There it is.

• 48:31Speaker 03

  I think everything is wonderful and magical still.

• 48:34Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Alright, Megan, uh, tell us what's going on over there on the socials.

• 48:37Speaker 03

  Um, well, one, I have another Twitter poll. Um, so, question is, will Faraday Future ever actually release the FF91?

• 48:44Nilay Patel?

  I also know the answer to this question.

• 48:46Speaker 03

  I feel like a lot of people maybe do, but I just want everybody to go vote.

• 48:49Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 48:50Speaker 03

  Uh, so yeah, go to Twitter, @TheVerge, and let us know. Um, also, we got a really good tweet that I want to give a shout out to. Um, here's there, asked, "Why does Dieter look like he could be in the next Bond film?"

• 49:00Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. I mean, you do.

• 49:02Speaker 02

  I, I, it's fair.

• 49:04Nilay Patel?

  Dieter just got a new promo picture for The Verge and you look super evil. Someone also insulted the way I look, so we're doing well.

• 49:11Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 49:11Nilay Patel?

  I'm not gonna shout that one out.

• 49:12Speaker 03

  That's a nice jacket, though.

• 49:13Speaker 02

  I am gonna wear a Morbon Villainess jacket tomorrow, so stay tuned.

• 49:18Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 49:18Speaker 02

  Tomorrow at 7:30 Eastern.

• 49:19Nilay Patel?

  Dieter's gonna get more and more dramatic as the week goes on.

• 49:23Speaker 02

  By the end of the week, I'm gonna look exactly like Christoph Waltz. It's gonna be great.

• 49:27Nilay Patel?

  All right. Megan, anything else going on Twitter? Any other action?

• 49:31Speaker 03

  Yeah, I guess, I'm curious what you guys think. We have Zach Pagano asking, what do you think the biggest tech surprise has been so far of CES?

• 49:39Nilay Patel?

  So I, I wanna say it's just Alexa. That's kind of, but it's not surprising, right? It's, Amazon wants this to happen. This is how they want to win. I think Lauren Good is gonna do a segment for us this week on the show, just looking deeply into how integrated Amazon is everywhere. So I wanna say that it's a surprise, but it feels like it's a surprise it was well on its way. That the idea of Amazon touching all the smart objects in your house and controlling them, I don't think that's what they thought the Echo was gonna do when they put it out.

• 50:10Speaker 02

  Right.

• 50:10Nilay Patel?

  They realized that's what it should do, and they quickly got there faster than anybody else. And I think the big, the big question for me, the big surprise, is whether they're gonna be so dominant, just based on this show, that anyone else will be able to catch up.

• 50:23Speaker 10

  And, I mean, we saw a dozen clones last night or more, but, you know, I think it's always a surprise when a trend lands for real, right? It's easy for people like us to make a prediction that voice control is gonna be the next big thing. But then you come to a show like CES, and it's kind of the next big thing, and you start to see it moving more quickly than you anticipated. So for me, that was just the sort of surprise. It's like, okay, this is mainstream now.

• 50:45Nilay Patel?

  Megan, were you surprised by anything?

• 50:47Speaker 03

  I mean, everything surprises me, because it's all still new, so it's all wonderful.

• 50:52Nilay Patel?

  All right, Dieter.

• 50:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, so...

• 50:53Nilay Patel?

  You're gonna make this happen.

• 50:54Speaker 02

  This is, this is gonna be awkward. I have a thing.

• 50:56Nilay Patel?

  Dieter has a toy.

• 50:57Speaker 02

  I have a toy.

• 50:57Speaker 03

  This is so exciting.

• 50:58Nilay Patel?

  It's really cool.

• 50:59Speaker 02

  Lift it up off the ground.

• 51:00Nilay Patel?

  Oh, my God.

• 51:01Speaker 03

  It's so awkward-looking.

• 51:02Speaker 02

  This is the Spud. Is it, is it broad? Because it's playing?

• 51:06Nilay Patel?

  Yep. I want you to know that Dieter's been hiding this from the best, the whole time.

• 51:09Speaker 02

  So, if you're seeing this on camera, don't be, it's, it's a display, and you probably, it's, you know, it's not designed to be shown under studio lights.

• 51:17Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. But phone it up. Show the people what it does.

• 51:19Speaker 02

  It's called the Spud because it stands for spontaneous pop-up display.

• 51:23Nilay Patel?

  That's pretty good.

• 51:24Speaker 02

  And so, you can just... Collapse it down.

• 51:29Speaker 02

  Fold it up.

• 51:30Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 51:30Speaker 10

  You know, I was in a car accident once and that came flying out of the steering wheel.

• 51:34Nilay Patel?

  So they were, so they were here, they were telling us about it.

• 51:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 51:37Nilay Patel?

  They actually developed this wrinkle-free projection screen themselves. They have a patent on it.

• 51:42Speaker 02

  It's a, it's a special.

• 51:43Nilay Patel?

  It's a whole thing and they've developed these optics themselves.

• 51:45Speaker 02

  Good colors.

• 51:46Nilay Patel?

  This is like the good side of Kickstarter.

• 51:47Speaker 02

  Right.

• 51:48Nilay Patel?

  Ashley and Paul cover the bad side of Kickstarter all day long.

• 51:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 51:52Nilay Patel?

  It's my punishment to Paul Miller for quitting the internet.

• 51:54Speaker 02

  It's a 24-inch screen. It's 1280 by 720.

• 51:57Nilay Patel?

  1280 by 720, it's a short throw projector. You can get it on Kickstarter now, but, I mean, it's just one of those silly CES things.

• 52:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 52:05Nilay Patel?

  It actually.

• 52:06Speaker 02

  I just love.

• 52:07Speaker 10

  Can we, can we, like, describe? Describe a, a single use case for this device?

• 52:12Nilay Patel?

  Uh, you're that guy in a coffee shop.

• 52:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 52:14Nilay Patel?

  Okay. Uh, that's number one.

• 52:15Speaker 02

  No, camping.

• 52:17Speaker 10

  Camping?

• 52:17Speaker 02

  Camping.

• 52:18Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. That's good. You go outside, you watch a movie.

• 52:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 52:20Speaker 10

  You pitch a tent and then you pitch your TV.

• 52:23Speaker 02

  I don't think I'm folding it upright. I'm sorry.

• 52:25Nilay Patel?

  I mean, you're old for two.

• 52:26Speaker 02

  Arobia who makes the spuds.

• 52:28Nilay Patel?

  I'm just letting you know.

• 52:29Speaker 10

  Darn.

• 52:30Speaker 02

  Also, it, it takes a certain amount of hootspud to just call your product spud.

• 52:33Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 52:33Speaker 02

  Yeah?

• 52:34Nilay Patel?

  I think it's really good.

• 52:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 52:35Nilay Patel?

  This is the sort of thing where, okay, here, here's the truth. CES is full of gadgets that, that won't hit. CES is full of silly Samsung events where they like line up letters and acronyms and they take shots at LG.

• 52:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 52:49Nilay Patel?

  You know, like the big corporate stuff, the big bets, this is gonna change the world. Everyone focuses on that and then is naturally disappointed by that stuff. These kinds of little gadgets where they actually made it, they did the, they did the work. They didn't just like buy a bunch of components.

• 53:03Speaker 02

  No, they like, they did engineering, they created a new kind of screen.

• 53:06Nilay Patel?

  Like, this is the sort of thing where, look, maybe we won't blow up the world, but like, you don't see them anywhere else.

• 53:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 53:12Nilay Patel?

  There's very rare that we get to go look at a bunch of like little companies inventing things.

• 53:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, like, I've got this whole rant, which I can get into later, but like, just because every single CES tech event doesn't change the world, doesn't mean that it's not fun and cool to go look at this thing.

• 53:24Nilay Patel?

  Also, it's called a spud.

• 53:25Speaker 02

  It's also called a spud.

• 53:26Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. We're gonna watch the movies outside later, okay? So you and me, it's gonna be great.

• 53:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 53:30Nilay Patel?

  Uh, we gotta take a break, uh, and then we'll be right back. We're back.

• 53:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 53:35Nilay Patel?

  It happened again.

• 53:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 53:36Nilay Patel?

  It just keeps happening.

• 53:38Speaker 02

  It keeps happening.

• 53:39Nilay Patel?

  Uh, oh, Paul and Ashley here, but we gotta do some headlines.

• 53:41Speaker 02

  We got a couple more headlines we wanna talk about.

• 53:42Nilay Patel?

  And then we're gonna play with some toys.

• 53:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think the first one is this Predator 21X gaming laptop. It is $9,000.

• 53:52Nilay Patel?

  Here's what I'm gonna tell people. I'm gonna offer you not a subjective stat or an opinion. I'm gonna offer you an objective statistic.

• 53:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 54:00Nilay Patel?

  We put up a video of this laptop when it was first out. If we re-reputed it here, because they did the pricing announcement, CES. 21 million views on the video of this laptop. It is the amount of interest in a $9,000 gaming laptop. Uh, that has a curved display, that is literally...

• 54:18Speaker 02

  21-inch curved display.

• 54:19Nilay Patel?

  You saw the video with Sam Byford. It's four times the size of an average British human.

• 54:23Speaker 02

  It's so amazing. Do people ask, "How much did it cost to build the Eiffel Tower?"

• 54:27Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 54:28Speaker 02

  No, it's a monument for humankind.

• 54:31Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. It's just like this laptop.

• 54:33Speaker 02

  It's like the Predator.

• 54:34Nilay Patel?

  This one makes period. Uh, you know, Nick Stat wrote a great piece for The Verge today.

• 54:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 54:38Nilay Patel?

  PCs are interesting again. Uh, and I think it's really true. I think there's actually a bunch of really interesting PCs at the show. Um, I mean, I've just taken my MacBook and thrown it off the set, because I'm over it.

• 54:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 54:50Nilay Patel?

  That's not why. Maybe you'll find out one day. Um, but I think Apple had a moment with the new MacBook Pro. Where interest has waned, and people are really interested in new Windows hardware.

• 54:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 55:00Nilay Patel?

  And actually, there's a bunch of new Windows hardware available to capitalize on interest. I don't know if the $9,000 gaming PC is that thing.

• 55:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 55:06Nilay Patel?

  I'm gonna get one.

• 55:09Nilay Patel?

  Because, you know, I don't have a kid yet, but when I do have a kid, I don't want that kid to go to college.

• 55:13Speaker 02

  I will say that I'm...

• 55:14Nilay Patel?

  I want them to be wrapped in immersive gaming fireballs.

• 55:18Speaker 02

  You want them to be crushed. You want to literally crush their tiny child legs so they can never leave the house.

• 55:22Nilay Patel?

  Look, you're from Minnesota, Dieter.

• 55:23Speaker 02

  I am.

• 55:24Nilay Patel?

  You know the story of Babe the Blue Ox.

• 55:25Speaker 02

  I need to keep warm.

• 55:26Nilay Patel?

  If you make the kid lift the laptop every day.

• 55:32Nilay Patel?

  Your kid's gonna love you.

• 55:33Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 55:33Nilay Patel?

  It's gonna be great. What else we got?

• 55:35Speaker 02

  Uh, there's also the Air TV player. So this is a set-top box from Dish. Uh, 4K Android TV, which, don't laugh.

• 55:44Speaker 02

  It combines Sling TV service, it's got Netflix, and it comes with an OTA antenna.

• 55:49Nilay Patel?

  On paper, this is amazing. What's particularly amazing about it is they're basically saying, we know Sling TV doesn't have all the channels, but if you plug in an antenna, you can just get the channels for free from the air, which is interesting. The problem is, it looks great on paper.

• 56:04Speaker 02

  It also looks great in person.

• 56:05Nilay Patel?

  In person, it looks like a Smurf vomited onto a jacket.

• 56:09Speaker 02

  The remote is like white, and then it's got this blue line down the side.

• 56:11Nilay Patel?

  It's so confusingly ugly. Dish Network, as a company, and I'm sure they have well-meaning designers. I've never seen a company that is so bad at producing attractive hardware. It's like they're going...

• 56:25Speaker 02

  It's in their DNA.

• 56:26Nilay Patel?

  It's in their DNA. They're like, you know, Apple really set this trend for minimalism, for sleekness, for refining, and like someone at Dish Network is like drinking a Coors Light, and they're like, "Fuck you, Johnny Ive." It's just like, we're going the other way. Like, that guy's got it wrong.

• 56:41Speaker 02

  Whatever, man. I think it looks great. You can get it for 99 bucks if you don't want the... It's 129 with the antenna, or 99 without the antenna. So, I guess we gotta talk about the BlackBerry?

• 56:53Nilay Patel?

  We gotta talk about the BlackBerry. And then we gotta check in with Megan on Sony. Oh, I got some news for you.

• 56:56Speaker 02

  Oh, what's going on with Sony?

• 56:57Nilay Patel?

  Wait, wait, wait. Let's do the BlackBerry real quick.

• 57:00Speaker 02

  Okay, BlackBerry. So, there's a new BlackBerry. We don't know a ton about it because it's like an alpha device. But TCL makes it. They've owned the exclusive rights to...

• 57:08Nilay Patel?

  What else do they own?

• 57:08Speaker 02

  Do it.

• 57:10Nilay Patel?

  Palm.

• 57:10Speaker 02

  They also own the Palm brand, and they have a... They put out a poll saying, "What should we do with it?" And then they never followed up on what they would do with it.

• 57:17Nilay Patel?

  If you've been watching the show and you've seen like Dieter acting excited, what you're not seeing is just the death in his eyes.

• 57:24Speaker 02

  We brought up Palm so much, like, we talked about WebOS a bunch, now this thing. So, the cool thing about the BlackBerry, I guess, is the thumbprint reader on it is on the spacebar on the physical keyboard.

• 57:35Nilay Patel?

  This product is doomed. Megan, what's going on with Sony?

• 57:37Speaker 03

  Okay, Sony has a lot of 4K news. I'm just gonna read you guys a happy list real quick.

• 57:41Nilay Patel?

  Okay.

• 57:42Speaker 03

  So we've got a 4K OLED TV.

• 57:45Nilay Patel?

  So they did it, they put it on OLED?

• 57:47Speaker 03

  Yeah, they did, in OLED.

• 57:48Nilay Patel?

  And it's an O and not a Q or any other circular letter?

• 57:51Speaker 03

  It's letters we are familiar with, yes.

• 57:53Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 57:53Speaker 03

  Hold on, we got more though. So they've got a 4K projector, which I'll come back to. New 4K cameras and a 4K Blu-ray player. But I want to talk about the projector. I'm just gonna read this beautiful headline from Paul Miller. Sony's new short throw 4K projector is $25,000 and brutally beautiful.

• 58:09Nilay Patel?

  Brutally beautiful. What's brutal about it?

• 58:11Speaker 05

  77 pounds. It's a monolith, so it's like 3 feet wide. And it's got these like heat fins in the back.

• 58:21Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 58:21Speaker 05

  It's just, it's like, we could barely contain the power. Like, we had to find space materials to contain the power of this 4K projector.

• 58:31Nilay Patel?

  I guess, my question, you say $20,000?

• 58:34Speaker 05

  $25,000.

• 58:35Nilay Patel?

  $25,000?

• 58:36Speaker 05

  Oh my god.

• 58:36Nilay Patel?

  So you have a space in your house to put a monolithic projector with heat fins. You have $25,000, but you don't have quite enough room for the full throw of the projector.

• 58:49Speaker 05

  There's a lot of short throw projectors. It's kind of a thing.

• 58:52Nilay Patel?

  Short throw projectors are actually a trend here.

• 58:54Speaker 05

  If you think, compare this to the LG wallpaper TV, right?

• 58:58Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 58:58Speaker 05

  There's a bar below it that has the brains, and then there's a screen.

• 59:02Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 59:02Speaker 05

  This is just like a projector below the screen. Like, I like this idea of just...

• 59:07Nilay Patel?

  Wait, how short is short throw?

• 59:09Speaker 05

  6 inches. So it can be 6 inches away from the wall and project a 100-inch image.

• 59:14Nilay Patel?

  Wow. Okay, I mean, this is classic Sony. Did you do anything else, any other wild? What does the final inch mean? What was it, 1 more inch? Did they clear that up for us?

• 59:23Speaker 02

  Someone needs to let us know what story is there.

• 59:25Speaker 03

  I don't, I don't think I've got that yet.

• 59:28Nilay Patel?

  All right. We'll check in on Sony.

• 59:30Speaker 03

  There's gonna be an instant report from me on the merch.com on what that 1 inch is, what that means.

• 59:35Speaker 02

  I am happy that they're making OLED TVs. That LG's not sort of, you know, the one thing where everyone thinks of for OLED.

• 59:41Nilay Patel?

  So I was buying a TV...

• 59:42Speaker 02

  And also, it's like, I don't know, I feel like the Bravia brand is sort of... It was the thing, and then it like sort of fell in her times.

• 59:49Nilay Patel?

  I mean, that's the story of Sony, right? They had all of the brands in the 80s and 90s, and then they're like, what if we blow it?

• 59:56Nilay Patel?

  What if we did that? Like, my favorite is, I think I've told Ashley to go chase this story around CES. Giant speakers, like, there's giant Bluetooth speakers all over the show.

• 1:00:06Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:00:07Nilay Patel?

  Sony had the Mega Bass brand. Let that slide into oblivion. They've come back with extra bass.

• 1:00:13Speaker 05

  No.

• 1:00:14Nilay Patel?

  It's like, you had it. Like, what if we had a little bit more bass? But they had Bravia, they had Trenatron before that.

• 1:00:21Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:00:21Nilay Patel?

  They've been out of the high-end TV game for a long time.

• 1:00:24Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:00:25Nilay Patel?

  Sony's been rumored to make OLEDs forever. I think since we've come to CES...

• 1:00:29Speaker 05

  Isn't the OLED thing, it's all just like buddy-buddy, it's still basically one company making OLEDs?

• 1:00:34Nilay Patel?

  One company makes every panel for everyone, right? But I think Sony trying to get back into that high-end audio-video game is good for them. Last year they put out, two years ago they did, what, the $1,000 Walkman or whatever? Then they did a bunch of high-end audio stuff. This is what CES is all about for Sony. It's like really high-end audio-video gear.

• 1:00:53Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:00:53Nilay Patel?

  And then you buy the cheap one instead.

• 1:00:55Speaker 05

  They should have put out another Walkman.

• 1:00:57Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Alright. I think these people have some gadgets for us.

• 1:01:01Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:01:02Speaker 06

  Gadgets?

• 1:01:03Speaker 05

  Absolutely correct.

• 1:01:05Nilay Patel?

  Alright, let's see some stuff.

• 1:01:06Speaker 05

  Do you want to see some gadgets?

• 1:01:07Nilay Patel?

  What do you got?

• 1:01:07Speaker 06

  Should we just like pull things out?

• 1:01:09Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, the Sugar Bagger Crew, what are you here for? You have gadgets.

• 1:01:11Speaker 05

  Here we go. Okay, what's this?

• 1:01:14Nilay Patel?

  That's an iPod.

• 1:01:16Speaker 05

  Have you guys heard of the iPod?

• 1:01:21Speaker 05

  Apple, I think? Okay, so this is a smart toothbrush. This is actually ours second... Oh my gosh. This is the second toothbrush.

• 1:01:32Nilay Patel?

  And that's a hairbrush?

• 1:01:32Speaker 05

  I got my notes.

• 1:01:33Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:34Speaker 05

  Oh, spoilers.

• 1:01:36Nilay Patel?

  Wow.

• 1:01:36Speaker 05

  So this is Colibri makes this smart toothbrush, right?

• 1:01:39Nilay Patel?

  And they've made it before.

• 1:01:40Speaker 05

  They've been, here's the thing, they've begun tracking how everybody's been doing this. They used all that data, and now they can detect exactly where you are in your mouth.

• 1:01:49Nilay Patel?

  What?

• 1:01:50Speaker 05

  And they made a pretty great game out of it. So like, here's, this has been tracking how well I've been doing. Here's a checkup. See, this is how well I did last time. Like, I was really up on the left side, but I didn't get the right side as much.

• 1:02:03Nilay Patel?

  Are you or are you not gonna brush your teeth?

• 1:02:05Speaker 05

  I'm gonna brush my teeth right now.

• 1:02:06Nilay Patel?

  Okay. That's all, that's all the people want.

• 1:02:08Speaker 05

  Okay, fine, I'll just brush my teeth.

• 1:02:10Nilay Patel?

  But you gotta tell us the stuff while you brush your teeth.

• 1:02:12Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So this is called Go Pirate, it's like an endless runner.

• 1:02:17Nilay Patel?

  Is that the music from Go Pirate that the people are hearing? We're gonna, we're gonna turn that off.

• 1:02:20Speaker 05

  It's a real adventure. You don't wanna go on an adventure?

• 1:02:22Nilay Patel?

  No. No, okay. This is amazing.

• 1:02:25Speaker 05

  Alright.

• 1:02:26Nilay Patel?

  How much does this toothbrush cost?

• 1:02:27Speaker 05

  It's, uh, let me look at my notes. A hundred and thirty bucks, but you can preorder it now and get it for eighty bucks.

• 1:02:32Nilay Patel?

  Of course.

• 1:02:33Speaker 05

  And it's gonna ship in March.

• 1:02:34Nilay Patel?

  True Kickstarter fashion, yeah.

• 1:02:35Speaker 05

  Alright, here we go, here we go.

• 1:02:37Nilay Patel?

  Alright. The moment you've all been waiting for.

• 1:02:39Speaker 05

  So you just push this button. Okay, so now I'm supposed to be on my right side, alright? I'm getting all those coins.

• 1:02:44Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:45Speaker 05

  Now, it's gonna tell me I gotta shift over and go on the left outside.

• 1:02:49Nilay Patel?

  Is that the sound of the toothbrush? Yeah.

• 1:02:51Speaker 05

  Yeah, the whole toothbrush is... I-I'm supposed to be kinda doing this, but you can kinda game the system and just hold it one place. And I go up here.

• 1:03:00Nilay Patel?

  Cheating and brushing your teeth?

• 1:03:03Speaker 05

  Look, so what do you think the kids are gonna do? You think they're gonna like really go for it?

• 1:03:06Nilay Patel?

  This is like when little kids go to the bathroom and instead of washing their hands, they turn on the water.

• 1:03:09Speaker 05

  The great thing about it, we had, we made a profile for myself, but I couldn't do it too many times, because it cuts you off after three brushes in one day.

• 1:03:17Nilay Patel?

  Oh.

• 1:03:18Speaker 05

  So the kids don't like-

• 1:03:19Nilay Patel?

  Overbrush.

• 1:03:19Speaker 05

  -destroy their mouths.

• 1:03:20Nilay Patel?

  Wow.

• 1:03:21Speaker 05

  Because it's so much fun to brush your teeth.

• 1:03:22Nilay Patel?

  Alright, Megan, in your previous life, you were an editor at the video game website, Polygon.

• 1:03:28Speaker 03

  Uh-huh.

• 1:03:29Nilay Patel?

  Is this the future of video games?

• 1:03:30Speaker 03

  God, I hope not. I do love Paul's broadcast, though. It's your boy Paul, broadcasting live from his mouth.

• 1:03:37Nilay Patel?

  That's pretty good.

• 1:03:40Speaker 03

  Real quick, though, I have the results of our Faraday Future Twitter poll.

• 1:03:44Nilay Patel?

  Okay.

• 1:03:44Speaker 03

  This is gonna be a huge shock right now.

• 1:03:46Nilay Patel?

  Uh-huh.

• 1:03:46Speaker 03

  So we asked, will Faraday Future ever actually release its FF91 electric car? Seventy-two percent overwhelmingly says no.

• 1:03:53Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:53Speaker 03

  It's not looking good. It's not looking good, yes.

• 1:03:55Nilay Patel?

  Seventy-two percent.

• 1:03:56Speaker 03

  Seventy-two percent.

• 1:03:57Nilay Patel?

  That's actually kinda lower than I thought. Nearly thirty percent of people believe. I'm with you thirty percent of people.

• 1:04:00Speaker 05

  Twitter, hope.

• 1:04:01Nilay Patel?

  Let's have the hope. Alright, Ashley.

• 1:04:02Speaker 05

  Hope.

• 1:04:02Nilay Patel?

  You have a circle.

• 1:04:04Speaker 06

  I have so many things. I have like a big thing under the table.

• 1:04:06Nilay Patel?

  No, let's do this one. We'll come back around.

• 1:04:09Speaker 06

  So this is my smart fridge cam.

• 1:04:12Nilay Patel?

  Oh my god, you love this thing.

• 1:04:14Speaker 06

  Uh, it was love at first sight for me. This is just one of those gadgets that... Okay, so it's a camera that goes inside your refrigerator. So if you can't afford those fancy schmancy Samsung fridges or whatever-

• 1:04:25Nilay Patel?

  Which break and then you can't fix them.

• 1:04:26Speaker 06

  Yeah, exactly. You have this camera that you can put inside your fridge, and every time you open and close the door, it takes a photo. So it's always logging what's in your fridge at all times.

• 1:04:37Nilay Patel?

  Okay.

• 1:04:38Speaker 06

  And also, okay, so then there's one... I was just giving you a second to let it sit in.

• 1:04:43Nilay Patel?

  You know, every time I'm in the fridge right now, I take a photo with my mind.

• 1:04:46Speaker 06

  Do you?

• 1:04:47Nilay Patel?

  I make the sound.

• 1:04:50Speaker 06

  Well, okay, so because it knows what's inside the fridge, it can recommend recipes.

• 1:04:54Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, okay.

• 1:04:54Speaker 06

  And also, the whole point of the gadget is that they don't want you to waste food. So it keeps track of expiration dates because every time you put something in the fridge, you scan its barcode.

• 1:05:03Nilay Patel?

  Whoa.

• 1:05:04Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:05:05Nilay Patel?

  So how does it know? Does it have a database?

• 1:05:07Speaker 06

  Yeah, they have a database that they've been working with partners.

• 1:05:09Nilay Patel?

  How much does that thing cost?

• 1:05:10Speaker 06

  This is $1.50.

• 1:05:13Nilay Patel?

  Okay. Why do you love it so much?

• 1:05:15Speaker 06

  Because this is something I would buy.

• 1:05:17Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:17Speaker 06

  Like, I like, I like weird, home, practical... This seems practical to me. I have no idea why it does. I think it's because I like food.

• 1:05:25Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:26Speaker 06

  Food things.

• 1:05:27Nilay Patel?

  All right.

• 1:05:27Speaker 06

  Easy win for me.

• 1:05:28Speaker 02

  You don't have to replace your entire fridge to use it.

• 1:05:31Speaker 06

  No, exactly. I live in a shitty apartment. Like, this is a thing I can do to make my apartment a little more, like, high-class.

• 1:05:37Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Do you check it on your phone? Like, how often are you supposed to check it?

• 1:05:40Speaker 06

  Yeah, so there's an app. You could check it whenever you want.

• 1:05:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, but how often?

• 1:05:43Nilay Patel?

  Whatever you want.

• 1:05:44Speaker 02

  How often do you think you would check it?

• 1:05:45Nilay Patel?

  Does it alert you when your milk is firing?

• 1:05:47Speaker 06

  Hey, if, uh... Yes.

• 1:05:49Speaker 02

  Okay. You know what I would do?

• 1:05:50Nilay Patel?

  The classic smart home story, right?

• 1:05:52Speaker 02

  If I had one of these cameras, I would, I would buy, like, a lemon meringue pie and just put it in my fridge and just, like, just look at it and know it's there.

• 1:05:59Nilay Patel?

  I would buy one and put it in the fridge at work.

• 1:06:01Speaker 02

  Oh, I have pie at home.

• 1:06:01Nilay Patel?

  This is what's gonna happen. It's a big brother at work.

• 1:06:03Speaker 02

  Imagine knowing you have pie at home all the time and being able to verify it with photographs.

• 1:06:06Nilay Patel?

  Imagine putting one of these in your work fridge and figuring out who the hell is stealing your shit.

• 1:06:10Speaker 02

  Ooh.

• 1:06:11Nilay Patel?

  Big brother comes to the workplace.

• 1:06:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:06:13Nilay Patel?

  It's time. All right. Do you have another thing?

• 1:06:15Speaker 02

  What do you got?

• 1:06:15Speaker 05

  Smart hairbrush.

• 1:06:16Nilay Patel?

  Oh, my god. This thing has been very controversial.

• 1:06:18Speaker 05

  This is a real big controversy. This is the Kerastase Hair Coach powered by Withings. There's a microphone in here. Um, well, there's actually, like, multiple microphones, and there's also an accelerometer. So you brush your hair, right?

• 1:06:35Nilay Patel?

  I like the practical dynamics you're doing today.

• 1:06:36Speaker 05

  People have been talking about the price. This is like a really high-quality brush. You could, you could buy a hairbrush for, like, $300. This is under $200. And, um, it's gonna tell you, like, it will vibrate at you if you're brushing too hard.

• 1:06:50Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:50Speaker 05

  But it also can detect, like, if your hair's, like, dry or brittle, it'll be like, "Hey, don't take a shower tomorrow, or don't wash your hair tomorrow."

• 1:06:57Nilay Patel?

  Don't take a shower. Paul's dream gadget.

• 1:07:00Speaker 05

  You're cool, man. Oh, no, it's great. You know, like, don't wash your hair tomorrow, like, get some more moisture in there. We'll also recommend that you buy Kerastase products.

• 1:07:09Nilay Patel?

  Of course.

• 1:07:10Speaker 05

  Which is part of the controversy. I think for some people, this might be like, ah, this is telling me to do more work. For other people, like me, like, I used to have long hair. I was really bad to my hair.

• 1:07:19Nilay Patel?

  This was luxurious.

• 1:07:20Speaker 05

  Yeah, it was nice, but I didn't do a good job. And I felt bad, and this maybe would help me be a little smarter about my hair. It's under $200, it's gonna be available mid-2017.

• 1:07:30Nilay Patel?

  Right, so I will say, you should read this on The Verge. This sparked a big debate amongst particularly female reporters. They wrote a great little conversation about it, you should check it out. It's a really interesting idea, I mean, to me, it's, it's, let's put sensors in things and see where they go. But I think some of the controversy around it has been really interesting as well, so you should definitely go check that out. Speaking of, wait, you got one more thing?

• 1:07:50Speaker 05

  No, I was just gonna brush Dita's hair for him real quick.

• 1:07:52Nilay Patel?

  It's gonna be that kind of show, huh? All right, Ashley, speaking of beauty, this is really happening right in front of me.

• 1:07:58Speaker 05

  That's quality, quality brush.

• 1:08:03Speaker 05

  Let me tell you about the quality.

• 1:08:06Speaker 05

  Please, please, Ashley. I'm done, I'm done.

• 1:08:08Nilay Patel?

  He's just gonna wheel himself away.

• 1:08:12Nilay Patel?

  Ashley, tell us about this mirror that you have in front of you.

• 1:08:14Speaker 06

  Okay, so, it has a lot of fingerprints right now. Sorry, that's all me.

• 1:08:21Speaker 06

  It scans your face and tells you, essentially, what's wrong with you.

• 1:08:26Nilay Patel?

  What?

• 1:08:27Speaker 06

  I mean, like, it's not a mean way, it's just a reality, we all have wrinkles, we all have pores and blemishes.

• 1:08:34Nilay Patel?

  And it, like, identifies them for you?

• 1:08:35Speaker 06

  Yes, so I can show.

• 1:08:37Nilay Patel?

  If you have the same one over time, will it eventually learn to not make you feel bad about it?

• 1:08:41Speaker 06

  Well, that's the idea, it's like, you set up.

• 1:08:42Nilay Patel?

  Is it ever gonna be like, "Stop drinking"?

• 1:08:45Speaker 06

  Good record, they should probably watch this.

• 1:08:48Nilay Patel?

  It's just gonna show a picture of cigarettes, and be like, "No, no more of these."

• 1:08:52Speaker 06

  So, I'm swiping right now.

• 1:08:57Speaker 06

  It's all gesture control.

• 1:08:58Speaker 02

  Oh, you don't even touch it?

• 1:08:59Speaker 06

  Well, yeah, so the idea is you never touch the mirror, but of course, we did to get it on here. So there's, in theory, no fingerprints.

• 1:09:04Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:09:05Speaker 06

  So you set a baseline. I just want to warn the viewers at home. My face is going to be very large on here and highlighting all of my flaws, which is awesome.

• 1:09:15Speaker 02

  What?

• 1:09:16Speaker 06

  I'm so excited.

• 1:09:16Nilay Patel?

  Cut to Paul brushing his hair again.

• 1:09:18Speaker 02

  So brave.

• 1:09:19Speaker 06

  Let's see if I can do it. If I can go.

• 1:09:21Speaker 02

  Does that see you? The lights are confusing it.

• 1:09:23Speaker 06

  Maybe, yeah.

• 1:09:24Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, the lights are probably confusing the sensor.

• 1:09:27Speaker 06

  Well, anyways, so the idea is that you set a baseline. And over time, it will keep track of how your skin is doing. So if you're really into beauty products, you want to know if it's making a difference.

• 1:09:39Nilay Patel?

  Right, so the argument here is that you buy the super expensive thing, and this will help you verify whether or not that works.

• 1:09:44Speaker 06

  Here's a previous one of someone. We could stop it there. But anyways, yeah, so there you have the mirror.

• 1:09:51Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. You gonna buy this mirror?

• 1:09:53Speaker 06

  It's expensive.

• 1:09:54Nilay Patel?

  Does the mirror make you feel like the fridge cam makes you feel?

• 1:09:57Speaker 06

  I'd be interested to try it out. Like, I'd want to put it in my house for a week, see how I do with it, and then go from there.

• 1:10:04Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. How do you feel about the controversy on these beauty products here? Because our staff has been talking about this all day.

• 1:10:09Speaker 06

  Yeah, I've been, you know, in CES madness, and then I heard some people were very upset about the hairbrush. I mean, the hairbrush is created by a brand, so that is a little like, they're only going to recommend L'Oréal products. So I get why that's bad, but I don't have a problem with beauty products.

• 1:10:24Nilay Patel?

  Megan, what's your take?

• 1:10:26Speaker 03

  I would probably use it. I would probably throw it in the trash after the first time, but I would try it.

• 1:10:29Nilay Patel?

  But that's like all smart devices.

• 1:10:31Speaker 03

  I mean, yeah, that's pretty accurate.

• 1:10:32Nilay Patel?

  Everyone has a drawer full of Fitbits. I've got a drawer full of fridge cams, that's why I've been so down on it. It's been a real, a real rocky road on me surveilling my food.

• 1:10:41Speaker 03

  I love the thought of like, looking in the mirror. I made this joke earlier, but it's like, I'm beautiful, I am confident, and then it's like, you have wrinkles. In the trash.

• 1:10:49Speaker 06

  Yeah, and there's some one you can't correct wrinkles, really. You'd have to get Botox, which is just like, how do you fix it?

• 1:10:55Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. All right, Sugar Breaker team, anything else? You know, toys to play with? These guys are gonna be out on the floor all this week looking at stuff. We're gonna try to go on some adventures ourselves, but mostly the family's gonna be out there. We are done for today, actually, the show went by lightning fast. Really happy we had everybody here. We'll be back tomorrow with more Vergecast Live from CS here on Twitter. The drone rodeo is back. Ben was gonna be wearing some pants, I believe, this time around. We've got some driverless cars. We've got lots of stuff, that's it. See you tomorrow.