CES 2017 Day 2

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 Thursday, January 5th. 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

  Hey, I'm Dieter Bohn.

• 0:01Nilay Patel?

  And I'm Neelai Patel. We're the hosts of The Vergecast, the flagship podcast of Theverge.com.

• 0:05Speaker 00

  And this week, we are doing it on video, live on Twitter, because, you know, it's CES.

• 0:10Nilay Patel?

  It's Vegas. We're doing it. We're gonna check out a bunch of the stuff of the show, a bunch of tech. We're gonna have a bunch of friends come in. We're doing it right after this. It's The Vergecast. Cut through the night.

• 0:44Nilay Patel?

  Hey, everybody. Welcome back to The Vergecast Live at CES 2017 on Twitter, live streaming. I'm Neelai, that's Dieter.

• 0:49Speaker 00

  Hello, hello.

• 0:50Nilay Patel?

  We're on video, so the hype desk is back. Our friend Megan Frochman is sitting right there. Hey, Megan, how's it going?

• 0:54Speaker 02

  Hey. Pretty good. Got some good tweets to read today. Basically, I'll be reading more Twitter polls today. If you guys have questions, tweet at The Verge, use the hashtag #CES2017, and we'll talk.

• 1:04Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. You got a Twitter poll going already, or are you doing one later in the show?

• 1:07Speaker 02

  Oh, we've got one. We're gonna talk about it a little bit later in the show, so I'm looking forward to it.

• 1:10Nilay Patel?

  All right. It's Bother Megan, hashtag #CES2017.

• 1:13Speaker 02

  Always Bother Megan, hashtag.

• 1:14Nilay Patel?

  Bother Megan is like my favorite part of CES 2017, I gotta be honest with you. All right, we gotta get right into it, Dieter.

• 1:19Speaker 00

  Yeah, let's do headlines. So I want to do a whole big section on self-driving cars, because it's one of the big things at CES. And this year is a big year for concept cars.

• 1:30Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:31Speaker 00

  And the first one I want to talk about is the Toyota Concept i.

• 1:36Nilay Patel?

  Oh, boy.

• 1:36Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's what it's called, the Concept i. It's a concept. A little lowercase i, just FYI.

• 1:42Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, Apple gave up on the i branding, so Toyota's like, "Put a slot in there."

• 1:45Speaker 00

  So let me tell you about this thing. It has an artificial intelligence in it called Yui.

• 1:50Nilay Patel?

  Oh, boy.

• 1:53Speaker 00

  And it wants to have a relationship with you.

• 1:56Nilay Patel?

  It wants to tell me all.

• 1:57Speaker 00

  It wants to get up close and personal. So it will watch how you drive and it will learn from how you drive. And before I get more into UE, I just want to point out, it's on the screen now. And the concept is adorable. It looks like a giant Tamagotchi.

• 2:15Nilay Patel?

  It really does.

• 2:16Speaker 00

  It's just like, just all the curves.

• 2:18Speaker 02

  When was the last time you guys saw a Tamagotchi? I do not agree with that at all.

• 2:20Speaker 00

  I don't know, it's just like, this is the most concept-y concept car that it ever did concept.

• 2:25Speaker 02

  It looks like a Twitter egg that's come to life.

• 2:27Nilay Patel?

  What's interesting is Toyota's regular cars right now look super mean.

• 2:31Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:31Nilay Patel?

  They look like they came out of the Matrix to eat you and that one's really cute.

• 2:34Speaker 00

  So this one, it like displays text in random places on the inside and the outside of the car.

• 2:39Nilay Patel?

  That's what I want.

• 2:39Speaker 00

  It does all kinds of crazy stuff. So, okay, UE, it has two modes. Guardian mode, where you drive, but it watches how you drive and gives you little tips and like protects you if you screw up and want to like, you know, drive into a pedestrian or something. And then it has chauffeur mode, which is the proper self-driving mode. And the idea is that it will, you know, use machine learning to watch and learn how you do it in guardian mode and then you can switch over to chauffeur mode.

• 3:07Nilay Patel?

  It sounds like Bioshock.

• 3:08Speaker 00

  Guardian chauffeur.

• 3:10Speaker 02

  It sounds like a really good future buddy cop movie.

• 3:13Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 3:13Nilay Patel?

  Guardian chauffeur.

• 3:14Speaker 02

  Exactly, yeah.

• 3:15Nilay Patel?

  In the future, when there's no humor left in the world, then we just use extremely proper nouns. So this is a big trend, right? Proper self-driving is really hard, there's much regulation.

• 3:25Speaker 00

  Right.

• 3:26Nilay Patel?

  We talk in the Verchass all the time, like, what if the robot kills somebody who's liable?

• 3:31Speaker 00

  The trolley problem.

• 3:32Nilay Patel?

  The trolley problem. Look at the trolley problem. It's a Wikipedia hole that will make you lose all faith in humanity.

• 3:37Speaker 00

  And incredibly sad.

• 3:38Nilay Patel?

  Anyway, but assisted driving is not simpler, right? The car's just going to help you drive better.

• 3:42Speaker 00

  I mean, my car does that right now, like the steering wheel jiggles when I go in the lane or it will brake if I don't brake it soon enough.

• 3:47Nilay Patel?

  Last night Nvidia had a keynote.

• 3:49Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 3:50Nilay Patel?

  Very fun Nvidia style ramble of a keynote.

• 3:54Speaker 00

  Nvidia always has a ramble of a keynote, but this year they had the main keynote and so we thought they would like lock it up.

• 4:01Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 4:01Speaker 00

  No. Just not at all.

• 4:04Nilay Patel?

  I mean, they went with the you do you philosophy of being a big company. Anyway, but their big thing, they're really into self-driving too. They're gonna mount cameras in the cars and look at you.

• 4:12Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 4:13Nilay Patel?

  Jordan Gilson, our reporter there, said the camera will know if you've had too good of a time, which I thought I totally misread. He just meant if you've been drinking.

• 4:20Speaker 00

  So the camera will look at you and it can tell if you're drunk?

• 4:22Speaker 02

  How could it tell if you're drunk?

• 4:24Nilay Patel?

  You know, AI.

• 4:25Speaker 00

  No.

• 4:26Nilay Patel?

  Whatever buzzwords are appropriate.

• 4:27Speaker 00

  A bunch of Nvidia engineers started out as bartenders and so they just have a lot of experience. And then they use machine learning to code that experience into the self-driving car.

• 4:37Nilay Patel?

  There's a glass AI algorithm. But I think the big question for the concept AI, for the Nvidia stuff, is if you have more cameras looking at you in the car, are you... There's already devices where you plug them in your car and the insurance company will charge you less. You drive safer, you drive more dangerously. Now you have a camera looking at you while you drive. You have a car saying, "Don't do this."

• 4:54Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 4:54Nilay Patel?

  You might do it anyway. There's a lot, there's more privacy stuff around assisted driving than I think we're giving anyone credit for.

• 4:59Speaker 00

  But there's another car company that's basically doing the same thing, watching you drive, right?

• 5:02Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Oh, Honda has a car too.

• 5:03Speaker 00

  Right.

• 5:03Nilay Patel?

  Oh, boy. Well, you have a Honda that watches you drive.

• 5:06Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 5:07Nilay Patel?

  This new car from Honda is the Electric Urban Vehicle.

• 5:11Speaker 00

  It's the new Electric Urban Vehicle. Which means...

• 5:14Nilay Patel?

  It's pronounced the new V, which makes me personally want to die. This one is much more of the ride-sharing. You'll have a fleet of them in a basement.

• 5:24Speaker 00

  Oh, man, look at that thing.

• 5:24Nilay Patel?

  All through cities. It looks insane.

• 5:26Speaker 00

  It looks insane.

• 5:27Nilay Patel?

  It looks like they're like, you know, Scion's over. What if we just call it Maximum Scion?

• 5:30Speaker 00

  It's a little two-seater.

• 5:31Nilay Patel?

  It's a little two-seater. It's got a steering wheel, but you're not supposed to use it. The whole dash is a screen.

• 5:35Speaker 00

  Right.

• 5:36Nilay Patel?

  It's supposed to like, basically be a car for ride-sharing. It has inductive charging, so when you're done, you send it back and like wireless charging. It's a concept, all the fun concept stuff. It comes with an electric skateboard.

• 5:46Speaker 00

  What?

• 5:46Nilay Patel?

  So when you arrive at your destination in your ridiculous Honda, you can then sort of like roll away and everyone can think to themselves, "The future is terrible."

• 5:56Speaker 02

  You shoot out the back, right? You shoot at the back that way.

• 5:59Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, you just shoot. It just launches you from the seat. Here's the thing. So it also has an AI that helps you drive.

• 6:03Speaker 00

  Uh huh.

• 6:04Nilay Patel?

  It's from SoftBank.

• 6:05Speaker 00

  Uh huh.

• 6:06Nilay Patel?

  It's called... The emotion engine.

• 6:08Speaker 00

  No.

• 6:10Nilay Patel?

  Which is very confusing.

• 6:11Speaker 00

  No.

• 6:11Nilay Patel?

  Especially because Sony's used that branding before for their TVs and PlayStation stuff.

• 6:15Speaker 00

  So the emotion engine isn't the engine, because it's a motor, because it's electric.

• 6:19Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 6:19Speaker 00

  It's...

• 6:20Nilay Patel?

  It's very AI.

• 6:21Speaker 00

  Is it powered by emotions? Are my feelings generating energy?

• 6:24Nilay Patel?

  It reads your emotions and helps you drive better.

• 6:27Speaker 02

  I think that's actually the name of the new Carly Rae Jepsen album. I'm not kidding.

• 6:30Nilay Patel?

  Emotion. That actually would be great. If that was like the remix record for emotions.

• 6:34Speaker 00

  I would listen to the hell out of that.

• 6:34Nilay Patel?

  It's like the super EDM Carly Rae Jepsen album. I don't know, two concepts from two big carmakers.

• 6:40Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 6:40Nilay Patel?

  They're both looking towards the future. But then there's other stuff happening here, too.

• 6:43Speaker 00

  Right.

• 6:44Nilay Patel?

  That's real.

• 6:44Speaker 00

  Right. Well, so the real thing is Ford is officially, officially the first carmaker with the official Amazon Alexa integration. So later this month, you will be able to talk to Alexa's and control stuff in your Ford car. So you'll be able to open the locks or start the car if it's freezing out.

• 7:03Nilay Patel?

  And so they're just flashing this onto Ford cars?

• 7:05Speaker 00

  I guess.

• 7:06Nilay Patel?

  Right. So they're just putting this software there?

• 7:07Speaker 00

  Right.

• 7:07Nilay Patel?

  Because I know people who have taken Echo Dots.

• 7:11Speaker 00

  Well, so that's coming this summer. This summer, inside the Ford car, you will be able to talk to Alexa and do Alexa stuff in the car.

• 7:18Nilay Patel?

  So the first one is you talk to the Echo in your house?

• 7:19Speaker 00

  The first stage is in the house, you ask the Dot or the Echo to do stuff, and then Alexa sends a command over to your car. Second stage is they're actually putting Alexa into the car, and Alexa going into things is like the big theme of the show.

• 7:32Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 7:32Speaker 00

  Right.

• 7:32Nilay Patel?

  But so I know people who have like taken Echo Dot.

• 7:34Speaker 00

  Uh huh.

• 7:35Nilay Patel?

  Because that's a USB device.

• 7:36Speaker 00

  Uh huh.

• 7:37Nilay Patel?

  So you like plug it into the car port, and you plug the aux in the aux, and you like ask it to play music. And you have a Wi-Fi hotspot. It's true.

• 7:44Speaker 00

  Sounds bad.

• 7:44Nilay Patel?

  I know at least...

• 7:45Speaker 00

  You have to have a Wi-Fi hotspot.

• 7:46Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 7:47Speaker 00

  You have to, and then you have to plug the thing in, and you have to figure out how to play. Okay, I want to do it.

• 7:50Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it's like, those are all things, those are all things that some cars have. But here's, I think the big danger here for Ford

• 7:57Speaker 00

  Uh huh.

• 7:58Nilay Patel?

  is most voice assistants, CarPlay, Android Auto, and they still, they support CarPlay and Android Auto.

• 8:02Speaker 00

  Right.

• 8:02Nilay Patel?

  When you push them, what you're doing is you're getting another interface to your phone. If you're Google, you have Google Maps. For Apple, you have Apple Maps.

• 8:09Speaker 00

  Right.

• 8:10Nilay Patel?

  You have, you can make phone calls.

• 8:11Speaker 00

  No, that's, that's the thing is, with Google and Apple and CarPlay and Android Auto, like, they know, they know my stuff. They know my contacts, they get my texts. Alexa doesn't have any of that. So like, how are they going to square that up? Am I gonna have to give Alexa access to all that? That's gonna be like, you need to talk to the phone to be a successful car assistant, I think.

• 8:28Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. In my car, the first push of the voice assistant is like the bad garbage car assistant.

• 8:34Speaker 00

  Right.

• 8:34Nilay Patel?

  If you hold it down, it activates Siri on the phone.

• 8:37Speaker 00

  Right.

• 8:37Nilay Patel?

  So they do that, and Alexa's just the first cut, and it's like helping you do a bunch of stuff in the car. Eh, it could work.

• 8:42Speaker 00

  Alright, well, we got one more piece of news, I think.

• 8:44Nilay Patel?

  So this one, I like, I love this piece of news. T-Mobile had an event today. A classic T-Mobile event. John Ledger onstage doing shots, swearing, yelling at everyone.

• 8:53Speaker 00

  Everybody's the worst except for him.

• 8:55Nilay Patel?

  Took out an AT&T logo and just burned it with a lighter. He didn't do that. But he showed up.

• 8:59Speaker 00

  He would totally do that.

• 9:00Nilay Patel?

  It's so possible. But they did some rate plan stuff, which is really cool. I actually commend T-Mobile for being more transparent with their plans.

• 9:06Speaker 00

  Oh, they brought back neutrality?

• 9:08Nilay Patel?

  They didn't.

• 9:08Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 9:09Nilay Patel?

  I do not commend T-Mobile for that position. But they are now putting the taxes and fees right into the advertised price. No one does this.

• 9:14Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah, that's good.

• 9:15Nilay Patel?

  So it's more transparent, they're doing a thing, or if you don't use all your data, they give you credit.

• 9:19Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 9:19Nilay Patel?

  Nice. But the more interesting thing is our reporter, East reporter Chris Welch of The Verge, who tweeted yesterday that he is your traffic OG and will be respected as such. And I am super into that tweet.

• 9:30Speaker 00

  That's super good.

• 9:30Nilay Patel?

  He stood up at the Q&A and said, "Hey, John Ledger, are you gonna buy Sprint now that the regulatory environment in the United States is a little bit more open to business?" Ledger answered. Check it out.

• 9:40Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 9:41Speaker 03

  There are rumors that SoftBank wants to try again to merge with T-Mobile US. Can you just say whether T-Mobile US is open to a deal with any of its competitors, or do you think it's important to maintain the floor system?

• 9:51Speaker 04

  Yeah, let's list what we know. In the future of the structure of the industry, there are a number of people that think, "Well, it may make sense from a scale standpoint to consider the coming together of T-Mobile and Sprint, or Sprint may be acquired by a cable player as a way that they, you know, come in." What I've always been clear about for T-Mobile is we will focus the company on organic and inorganic growth. And there are multiple, multiple ways for us to continue to increase shareholder value.

• 10:23Speaker 00

  I gotta say, that is the most corporate I've ever heard. John Ledger sound.

• 10:28Nilay Patel?

  I mean.

• 10:29Speaker 00

  He has a history of like, he used to be like, like, deep in the telecom, like, corporate world, and then he turned into a crazy person.

• 10:35Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 10:35Speaker 00

  But like, that was a throwback of like, I'm gonna, I'm gonna parse some language, but he sounded like super reasonable there. He's like, yeah, maybe.

• 10:41Nilay Patel?

  I mean, I think his directness is his directness. The fact that he's not throwing bombs as he's saying, eh, maybe we'll buy Sprint. He's gotta tread a little carefully.

• 10:48Speaker 00

  Right.

• 10:49Nilay Patel?

  It's interesting, you know, obviously AT&T tried to buy T-Mobile once before, that got knocked down by the Obama administration. AT&T currently trying to buy Time Warner, seems like, who knows what's gonna happen? There's been big, big moves. Yahoo keeps buying defunct internet giants, or, sorry, Verizon keeps buying defunct internet giants at Yahoo, and Awell. I think Sprint's dying, right? Like, one of the things Ledger said was Sprint's like an exploding plan, planes, one of the things.

• 11:15Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 11:16Nilay Patel?

  If they're gonna fall apart, you might as well let T-Mobile, which seems like a much better run company,

• 11:19Speaker 00

  I mean, the context of his answer.

• 11:20Nilay Patel?

  Make a real competitor to the big giant.

• 11:21Speaker 00

  The context of his answer is like, he's expecting there to be a bunch of big changes in the telecom industry broadly in the next year, and I think he's fundamentally right.

• 11:29Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 11:29Speaker 00

  But we'll keep an eye out for that. But right now, Paul and Ashley were at PepCom, another one of these satellite events around CES, and they went and played with some gadgets. So let's see what they saw.

• 11:41Speaker 05

  Ashley, where are we at?

• 11:43Speaker 06

  We are at PepCom.

• 11:44Speaker 05

  PepCom made it. The digital experience, as I like to call it. It's a lot of quality stuff here, I would say. Everything I tried worked, which is wild. But there's one star of the show.

• 11:55Speaker 06

  There is definitely a star.

• 11:57Speaker 05

  And it's this chair.

• 12:07Speaker 06

  This is a quality situation right now.

• 12:09Speaker 05

  I would say, I would say quality.

• 12:11Speaker 06

  All right, Paul. I think I'm gonna go, I think I'm gonna go standing up.

• 12:16Speaker 05

  All right. I'm fine.

• 12:17Speaker 06

  Let's see. I don't know what's gonna happen.

• 12:19Speaker 05

  You have never in your life been safer, I would say.

• 12:23Speaker 06

  Really? I don't believe that, actually. I feel like my apartment's really safe. All right, we're going to stand. It's going up.

• 12:33Speaker 06

  Push it forward. All right, Paul. I'm free. See ya.

• 12:38Speaker 05

  I'm gonna be so productive.

• 12:39Speaker 06

  Bye.

• 12:40Speaker 05

  I got some blog posts to write.

• 12:45Speaker 05

  Did it really do it for you?

• 12:47Speaker 06

  It like just hit it home. Boom.

• 12:49Speaker 05

  I think it was a good show.

• 12:50Speaker 06

  No, it actually was a good show.

• 12:52Speaker 05

  And everything worked. What more could you want?

• 12:54Speaker 06

  Honestly.

• 12:55Speaker 05

  Good job.

• 13:02Speaker 00

  And we're back. And we have Paul Miller. And you don't look like Ashley.

• 13:06Speaker 07

  No, unfortunately, I did not have the fun experience of sitting in some type of reclining, you know, computer desk last night.

• 13:12Nilay Patel?

  That was amazing.

• 13:13Speaker 07

  That was amazing.

• 13:13Nilay Patel?

  Ashley looked the happiest.

• 13:14Speaker 05

  That's always been the dream. Reality, just as good as the dream.

• 13:18Nilay Patel?

  Yeah?

• 13:18Speaker 05

  No.

• 13:19Nilay Patel?

  I should get one of these in our new office for you.

• 13:21Speaker 05

  They're like relatively affordable.

• 13:23Speaker 00

  What do you think of these little, small satellite events at CES? Where you like get to go and be really up close with the stuff instead of in a huge conference hall?

• 13:30Speaker 05

  It makes sense why they do it. It's just it eats up your whole evening while you're at the show. And it keeps you away from, you know, we're going to another one tonight.

• 13:39Speaker 00

  Right.

• 13:39Speaker 05

  There's like three in a row. We don't get to spend as much time at the literal convention center because we're popping around.

• 13:45Speaker 00

  Right.

• 13:45Speaker 05

  But this was a good one. There was a lot of good companies. Everybody was nice. Almost everything worked, which was astonishing.

• 13:50Nilay Patel?

  That's great. And everything works.

• 13:52Speaker 05

  Like, people brought their A-game to Pip Town.

• 13:54Speaker 00

  There it is.

• 13:55Nilay Patel?

  Speaking of things that work, we don't have one of those.

• 14:00Nilay Patel?

  But Lauren's here because you have been running around looking at a bunch of Alexa stuff all show.

• 14:04Speaker 07

  Yes.

• 14:04Nilay Patel?

  We're gonna have a lot more from Lauren on that. But this is Lenovo's take on the Echo, basically.

• 14:09Speaker 07

  That's right. In fact, it looks so much like the Echo that when I was writing about it, I wrote Lenovo Echo and had to like...

• 14:15Nilay Patel?

  What's this actually?

• 14:16Speaker 07

  It's actually called the Smart Assistant.

• 14:18Nilay Patel?

  Of course.

• 14:19Speaker 07

  Yes. And it's kind of far... Should I grab it?

• 14:21Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, go grab it.

• 14:22Speaker 07

  I'm like, Alexa, come to me. Yeah, so this is the new Lenovo Smart Assistant. I think it's Lenovo's first speaker. I don't know if Lenovo, I mean, obviously the biggest PC maker in the world, they made this speaker. And it works just like an Echo. So it has Alexa built into it. And anything that you would ask Alexa on your Echo, you can ask this. So you can say like, "Read me the news. Play me some music. Set a timer," which is what I use my Echo for 90% of the time.

• 14:48Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 14:49Speaker 07

  Yeah, but they did do something a little bit different with it. First of all, the colors are different. You can see that. Its price is lower. It's the base model is $130. So you're already coming in lower than the Echo. But they're making a harming card in version too with better speakers. That one costs $180. But one of the biggest knocks on these like smart assistant speakers like the Echo and to some extent the Google Home is that they're speakers and those speakers aren't that good.

• 15:13Speaker 00

  Right.

• 15:14Speaker 07

  So this, you know, if you get the harming card in version of this, then presumably you're going to get a little bit better audio quality.

• 15:19Speaker 00

  I mean, it looks fine, I guess.

• 15:22Nilay Patel?

  It looks a little bit like a cigarette butt.

• 15:24Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 15:24Nilay Patel?

  I've seen, like, a number of people have told me it looks like a cigarette butt.

• 15:28Speaker 00

  I will say this volume spinner isn't as nice as the Echo's. The Echo's like...

• 15:32Nilay Patel?

  This is a prototype.

• 15:33Speaker 00

  It's a prototype. Yeah, they'll get there.

• 15:34Speaker 05

  I just realized this. It's the exact compromise between Google Home and Amazon Echo.

• 15:39Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah, right.

• 15:40Speaker 05

  It's got the cloth bottom.

• 15:41Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 15:42Nilay Patel?

  So here's my question. Why did Lenovo make this? Why didn't Amazon? I mean, if the big knock on the Echo is the speakers aren't very good, why did they have to go to Lenovo and say, put better speakers?

• 15:50Speaker 00

  Has Amazon ever made a good speaker?

• 15:52Nilay Patel?

  No, I think they've only made the one.

• 15:54Speaker 00

  Well, the answer is no.

• 15:55Speaker 07

  Yeah, and then the second one's a little dot, which is even worse.

• 15:58Nilay Patel?

  The dot doesn't count, but like the tap is like a not a good speaker. The Echo's not a good speaker.

• 16:03Speaker 00

  Right.

• 16:03Speaker 07

  Well, I mean, the thing is that Amazon has made it really easy for a lot of other hardware manufacturers to do Alexa stuff. You can do it a couple of different ways. I mean, based on the people I've talked to, they say you can either just make a skill, which means you're just doing some software stuff. But then if someone happens to have an Echo or an Echo Dot in the home, they can access your skill, right? So like Whirlpool, for example, you can do something with Whirlpool appliances with Alexa now, but you have to have an Echo Dot in the home. But then you can also just build Alexa, or excuse me, Amazon Voice Services directly into your own product. And Amazon has just made that possible.

• 16:38Speaker 00

  Right.

• 16:38Speaker 07

  So that's just Lenovo did. Yeah, they just took, you know, Amazon's kit for these voice services and they built it into this thing.

• 16:45Nilay Patel?

  So what's interesting to me is like Lenovo, you said the world's biggest PC manufacturer.

• 16:49Speaker 07

  Yep.

• 16:50Nilay Patel?

  Usually they take Windows, they take out Intel reference platform, they screw with it, they load a bunch of their own software onto Windows and now it's a Lenovo product in their own design. They take Android, when, you know, they still make a bunch of phones overseas, they take Android, they load a bunch of their own software onto it and now it's a Lenovo product. You can't do that with Alexa, right? It is just kind of an Echo. There's no differentiation here for their, like...

• 17:10Speaker 07

  Yes, this is true. This is true. Like, it's not like you would say, you know, what's the weather today? And it's going to be like, you should buy a yoga book, I think.

• 17:19Nilay Patel?

  Right, if they did that like one out of 10 times.

• 17:21Speaker 07

  Have you seen the new Carbon X1 ThinkPad?

• 17:23Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it's like, your laptop sucks.

• 17:24Speaker 07

  Right, exactly. They get like, skin it like that, but you are required to use the Lenovo mobile app to activate this. So I guess they get you in that way.

• 17:34Nilay Patel?

  They get you a little bit. I guess Amazon's deal is like, they just want to be dominant before Google gets real, before Apple enters the market, right? Like, isn't that their move? Like, they just want all the stuff at every price point?

• 17:46Speaker 07

  Yes, and they are coming at it from the exact inverse position of what Apple and Google did. Like, Apple and Google started their artificial intelligent assistance mobile, and then they eventually made their way into the home. It's been a particularly slow rollout for Apple in the home. Amazon started in the home, and now they're trying to figure out, how do we get this in as many places as possible? And how do we get people to take this on the go?

• 18:06Speaker 00

  So, Paul.

• 18:07Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 18:08Speaker 00

  You got any gadgets for us later? Give us a tease. One small tease.

• 18:12Speaker 05

  There's gonna be hugs?

• 18:14Speaker 00

  Uh huh.

• 18:15Speaker 07

  Hugs.

• 18:15Nilay Patel?

  Hugs.

• 18:16Speaker 05

  There's gonna be typing.

• 18:17Speaker 00

  Uh huh.

• 18:18Speaker 05

  I don't want to give it all away. That's why you guys stick around. You guys stick around for the circuit breakers. Hugs and typing.

• 18:24Nilay Patel?

  There's no more compelling television.

• 18:25Speaker 05

  It's basically my job description.

• 18:26Speaker 07

  Paul, would you buy this?

• 18:28Speaker 05

  I, no. I think Amazon is due, I mean, I love that they're sharing, but they're due for another, like, hardware revision. Echo's getting a little old. But also, like, I'm gonna go to Target next week, buy some shoes, and they'll happen to have Alexa in them at this point. Everything is getting Alexa, so I could wait.

• 18:49Nilay Patel?

  There's rumors that the next Amazon one will have a screen.

• 18:52Speaker 05

  Yeah, I've seen that, I think it was Wall Street Journal said that, so, who knows? But, they're due for an upgrade. And everybody's beating them because it's so easy to just make better sound.

• 19:02Speaker 00

  Well, stay tuned for Alexa powered shoes after the break.

• 19:06Nilay Patel?

  And we're back. If you watched the show yesterday, you've been watching the coverage on The Verge, you know that Ben Popper is having

• 19:13Speaker 00

  Most insane.

• 19:14Nilay Patel?

  The time of his life at this show. He's just going on adventure after adventure. Every year at CES, there's a bit of a drone rodeo out in the desert where they can fly the things. Ben flew one that goes 100 miles an hour, check it out.

• 19:28Nilay Patel?

  Hey, everybody, it's Ben Popper here for CES 2017. I'm not actually at CES, I'm in

• 19:34Speaker 03

  In the desert, near Boulder City, just outside the restricted airspace for Las Vegas. That's because we're here for the CES of drones, a place where everybody can fly these aircraft without having to worry about cutting somebody's nose off. And the exciting thing today is we get to try out the Draco. In the past, when you wanted to have a racing drone, you had to build it yourself. You didn't know how to program and how to solder. This is the first racing drone you could just buy off the shelf and go 100 miles an hour. What are the pieces that make this a racing drone and differentiate it from the DJI Phantom that everybody knows?

• 20:05Speaker 07

  It's basically trying to compare a Ferrari to just like a general minivan or something like that. Like, in terms of the general idea is the same, but everything's just more powerful.

• 20:13Speaker 03

  Right.

• 20:14Speaker 07

  Obviously, you've got four motors, four props on this. Required to fly, you've also got a camera up the front here. So this is the HD version of the Draco.

• 20:20Speaker 03

  So this actually streams 720p with almost zero latency. So this system is very fast, and that's required for racing. So you have to be able to dodge gates, dodge whatever you're flying around. So I've flown a lot of drones during reviews, but these are camera quads for consumers. I feel like I would have no idea how to handle something that goes 100 miles an hour. I mean, is it safe to put this on the shelf at Best Buy where anybody can grab it? Yeah, I would say the nice thing about them is that you can tone them down so that if you're just learning, you can go beginner settings, and that kind of lowers it down. So you won't be able to go 100 miles per hour. Maybe you can go like 30, kind of around the backyard. If you break something or something is wrong, everything is modular on this device in some shape or form. If you break a motor arm, pop that out.

• 21:04Speaker 03

  All the electronics internally, well-protected.

• 21:06Speaker 07

  But if you still manage to break it, replaceable.

• 21:14Speaker 03

  I mean, I've flown many, many drones, but not a drone that goes 100 miles an hour and is full manual. And it's different when you have the FPV on because you don't have that situational awareness. So many ways this could go wrong for me or for the people around me.

• 21:35Speaker 03

  OK, so they brought me out here where I'm far away and maybe can't hurt anybody. And I'm going to do my best to fly this race drone, not crash or kill myself. Should be fun.

• 21:48Speaker 03

  All right, here we go. You ready?

• 21:54Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 22:00Speaker 00

  Too far. Okay. How's that? Better? Am I coming down?

• 22:06Speaker 00

  You're dropping. You just hit the ground. Oh, shit.

• 22:11Speaker 00

  Why?

• 22:14Speaker 00

  Let's go see what's left of this drone.

• 22:17Speaker 00

  They were gonna break it down for parts anyway. I was just helping disassemble it. Oh, man. Sorry about that, little guy. You're still in one piece.

• 22:29Nilay Patel?

  Hey, and we're back. And guess who's here? The pop himself.

• 22:32Speaker 00

  Drone guy.

• 22:33Nilay Patel?

  We call you the pop. We should not call you the pop.

• 22:36Speaker 00

  It's my hashtag.

• 22:37Nilay Patel?

  So Ben, drones are kind of your beat.

• 22:38Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 22:39Nilay Patel?

  You've been covering a lot of drones at CES.

• 22:40Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 22:41Nilay Patel?

  I love drones. I'm that nerd who loves drones. But you are just constantly telling me that this bubble's gonna pop. What's going on?

• 22:48Speaker 00

  It just feels crazy this year. I mean, the amount of space on the show floor that's dedicated to drones. And the crazy stuff that they're doing. I was supposed to go swimming in a tank with a fishing drone and a mermaid. And I showed up last night and they had built a tank and it like burst and exploded and they were like vacuuming the water frantically off the floor of their booth. And it just feels like...

• 23:07Nilay Patel?

  It's like, that's too much metaphor.

• 23:09Speaker 00

  Yeah, exactly. So like, I think the whole thing is about to kind of burst like that. Just feel like there's so many companies and there's no differentiation, you know? It's just like a million brands I've never heard of all doing new stuff with a device that's kind of dangerous inherently.

• 23:21Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. But you're saying DJI is just kind of the winner, right? Like, that's what's happening in this world.

• 23:27Speaker 00

  Yeah, I talked to Chris Anderson, you know, he used to be editor of Wired, and then he started 3D Robotics. And he said, you know, we knew it would be DIY, then consumer, then commercial, but we didn't know that consumer would be winner-take-all. And that's what it feels like it is right now. It's just winner-take-all, where DJI is just getting farther and farther ahead. I mean, the interesting opportunities are like, when I was at the drone rodeo, there's a company that's building a out-of-the-box racing drone. Before, you had to know how to solder and program. Now you can go to Best Buy and get a drone that goes 100 miles an hour.

• 23:50Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Which you crashed immediately.

• 23:54Nilay Patel?

  So I was like, watching this edit of the package, we were going, I was like, man, I wish we had more of the drone flying. And Tom, our director, was like, well, one, the drone goes 100 miles an hour, so it's really hard to shoot. Two, Ben crashed.

• 24:05Speaker 00

  Yeah. Yeah, so I've flown a lot of drones. Is it a good thing if a 12-year-old can go into Best Buy and buy this drone? I would say probably not. But, you know, those interesting little niche products, the racing drone. I played with the Dobby Pocket drone, which is like real small, real cheap. I don't think DJI is gonna go there. And it was cool. You throw it in the air and it does computer, you know, facial recognition and like follows you. So I think there's some stuff that is interesting on the periphery of not being that $1,000.

• 24:28Speaker 07

  ...camera drone.

• 24:28Nilay Patel?

  So what should we look for next? What's going to be the next turn of the screw of drones?

• 24:32Speaker 07

  Oh, man. I mean, I do think that because this computer vision stuff is becoming so commoditized, a lot of people are building really interesting small pocket drones. And I think the selfie drone is kind of more interesting because it's cheap and it like makes sense to anybody, you know?

• 24:45Nilay Patel?

  I love drones. I'm gonna buy them all. Anyway, we got more Vergecast coming up right after this. Hey, and we're back. Earlier, we talked a lot about self-driving cars and a lot of the concepts that were new here, but like, understanding what's going on with self-driving cars at CES can be a lot of work, so we put together this package to explain it to you. So CES is becoming the car electronics show. The sheer number of carmakers here is mind-boggling. Just a few years ago, Ford was making news as the first automaker to appear at CES, but now we have an entire convention hall filled with cars. There are two big trends to watch for this year. First up is self-driving cars. Automakers are spending billions to develop autonomous technology, and companies like Google and Uber are joining them. Hundreds or even thousands of self-driving cars will hit the streets for testing this

• 25:30Nilay Patel?

  year, and companies are eager to show off the hardware that could hit dealer showrooms in as little as four or five years. Self-driving cars could be the biggest and most important advancement of the next 20 years. They have the potential to save tens of thousands of lives from car accidents. Little else at CES can make that claim. The other trend will be connected cars, pulling information from everywhere. Your self-driving car will know everything from when to brake because of upcoming traffic to where patches of black ice are on the road, all thanks to information automatically provided by other cars. And, thanks to smart cities, your car will know when the traffic light will turn green or what roads to avoid because of congestion or construction. Oh, and expect always-on data connections to become commonplace. How else will you stream Netflix and Hulu while your car drives itself?

• 26:13Nilay Patel?

  Last year, GM introduced the first affordable long-range electric car, the Chevy Bolt, and we gave it our Best in Show award. Will a car beat out the TVs and tablets and steal the show again this year?

• 26:28Nilay Patel?

  And we're back, and we have a special guest here, Bridget Carlin, who's the Managing Director of the Internet of Things at Intel, is here joining us. How are you doing?

• 26:35Speaker 06

  Good. Excited to be here, as always.

• 26:37Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, so tell us, Intel's doing a ton of stuff at the show. I don't want you to give us the full rundown, but just give us sort of the lay of the land.

• 26:43Speaker 06

  I mean, CES is always a terrific show. We've got everything from our new VR technology, where we demonstrated for the first time live, we streamed an NCAA basketball game using our VR technology. Technology over an Oculus Rift headset. So that was super cool. All the way to our exciting news around automated driving and our Go platform.

• 27:03Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, so the Go platform is the big.

• 27:05Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 27:06Nilay Patel?

  That's your big push here.

• 27:07Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 27:07Nilay Patel?

  There's like a 5G modem involved into it. Kind of unpack that for us.

• 27:10Speaker 06

  Exactly. So when you think about automated driving, and there's all various levels of automated driving. Essentially, you've got three critical areas to automated driving. You've got the car, you've got the connectivity, and you have the cloud. So Intel announced our Go automotive platform solution that includes technologies across all those three critical areas. The three Cs of automated driving, you know, car, connectivity, cloud. So in our Go automotive solution, we have an in-vehicle compute platform for development, which is really key in terms of the processing speed and so forth that happens in the vehicle. We announced a 5G automotive connectivity platform for the high-speed, low-latency requirements for the connectivity.

• 27:54Speaker 06

  And then we included in that, we announced our Go automotive SDK, which has all the different tools you need for machine learning, deep learning, sample applications.

• 28:04Nilay Patel?

  Operating system layer? Are you operating system agnostic or neutral? Or are you actually trying to build an OS for the vendors?

• 28:09Speaker 06

  It's, it's, God, that's a good question. I'm not really sure. I, we're not trying to build an OS. We're trying to create the platform because all the different technologies that are going to be operating in the vehicle, we want to have a consistent platform for things to integrate into.

• 28:23Speaker 00

  So are you looking to sell this, like, partner and sell this thing to, like, giant automakers? Is this like little indie devs, "I want to make a self-driving car because I'm bored on the weekends"?

• 28:32Nilay Patel?

  That's my dream.

• 28:33Speaker 06

  Who is this for?

• 28:34Speaker 00

  Yeah, right.

• 28:35Speaker 06

  Who is this for? So the Intel Go automotive solutions are really for all of the above. It's for the developers, it's for the technology providers, it's for the car makers, right? Because you can think of the different types of technologies and the different scenarios automated vehicles are going to go into. Whether it's, you know, the content inside the car that's streaming for, you know, entertainment, or whether it's the functions in the vehicle itself. So the development platform is going to appeal to the entire automotive community, from, again, technology providers to the car makers themselves.

• 29:07Nilay Patel?

  So when I think about connected car, right, the line everyone uses, and I hate to even say this, the car is the ultimate mobile device, right?

• 29:14Speaker 00

  Oh, God.

• 29:15Speaker 06

  Beat me to it.

• 29:16Nilay Patel?

  It's there. It's just sitting there, and we all have to deal with it. It's together, it's a family.

• 29:20Speaker 00

  Actually, we should commend you for not saying the word millennial, so.

• 29:23Speaker 06

  Oh, okay.

• 29:25Nilay Patel?

  Millennials love mobile devices. Look, we got all that. But, obviously, Intel had a big shift happen without it, right? In mobile, and you had the ARM processor take off. You're talking now about, "We're gonna build modems in cars, we're gonna build a compute platform, we're gonna do services." Do you think this market is big enough? Is there enough richness there, even as there's so many other players coming out? Right at the show, there's tons of other solutions for cars.

• 29:52Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 29:52Nilay Patel?

  Do you think Intel can get in there and make a splash the way that it kinda wasn't able to in traditional mobile?

• 29:56Speaker 06

  Well, I'll tell ya, we are really excited. We can't, you know, overstate our excitement about automated driving. It is a huge market, it's a huge opportunity, and it's really gonna allow Intel to shine in terms of the technologies. And, you know, when you think about the car and all the processing that's gonna have to happen in the vehicle, you're gonna need high-performance, efficient processing. And we have proven our capability and leadership in that for years. The other thing in terms of high-speed connectivity, this is another area where Intel leads. And by, you know, announcing the 5G modem, the first global 5G modem today at the show is another example of that. The other thing is that in addition to the compute that happens in the car, the machine learning and the retraining and all those things that really, you know, deliver the

• 30:39Speaker 06

  self-driving experience, happens in the cloud. And we have something like a 97% share in the data center where all that processing is happening with our high-performance compute and our ZM processors. So we really feel like we have, we sort of uniquely bring all the technologies from the car to the connectivity to the cloud that's gonna make this vision a reality.

• 30:59Nilay Patel?

  All right. Bridget Carlin is Managing Director of Internet Things at Intel. We're talking about smart cars. But Sean O'Kane went and played a super-fast electric car. Let's look at that now, it's the Lucid prototype.

• 31:11Speaker 00

  Hey, it's Andy here at The Verge. We're here with Lucid Motors checking out their new air prototype electric vehicle. They hope to beat Tesla at their own game, and what better way to do it than by hiring a lot of their old engineers? So we're gonna go check it out and see how it works.

• 31:34Speaker 00

  The pickup on this car is really quite impressive. When you accelerated before, I felt myself being pressed back into my seat in a really tactile way.

• 31:45Speaker 04

  Lucid Motors is a small electric car startup based in Los Angeles, California. It's among the latest in a wave of electric car startups to spring up with sleek, dynamic, attractive sports car models. A couple of months ago, they released their first production car, the Air. Lucid thinks that the Air could be a Tesla killer, and they should know. The company's chief technology officer, Peter Rollinson, is the former lead engineer on the Model S. Lucid joins Karma, Next EV, and Faraday Future in their quest to steal some of Tesla's shine. As a result, the electric horsepower wars are heating up, and Lucid is a contender with its claim that the car will make 1,000 horsepower and race from 0 to 60 miles per hour in less than 3 seconds. And boy, was it fast. We took it for a spin down the Las Vegas Strip during CES,

• 32:30Speaker 04

  and suffice to say, this car could cook. It flew down straightaways and blazed around corners with torque to burn. A few times, I almost ended up in Peter Rollinson's lap. The Air is super roomy. Lucid says that was part of their goal, to make a larger-than-normal interior to put the driver at ease. Unlike their competitors, like Faraday Future, Lucid seems more grounded in reality, steering clear of making lavish promises about the future of mobility and how they're going to transform transportation. They just want to sell a car. And fortunately for them, it seems like they have a real winner on their hands. It was a sweet ride, and I can't wait to take another spin.

• 33:06Nilay Patel?

  Oh my god, that was Andy Hawkins. Toronto came through the photos.

• 33:08Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 33:08Nilay Patel?

  The photos are great. Go read that post on the site. Check it out. The car's amazing.

• 33:11Speaker 00

  The car's nuts.

• 33:12Nilay Patel?

  Andy's great. That was a great package. But, whatever. Cars are whatever. Twitter's the future.

• 33:17Speaker 02

  Twitter's the future.

• 33:18Nilay Patel?

  What on earth is happening on Twitter right now?

• 33:20Speaker 02

  Hey, I was just talking about the Twitter poll we put up this morning. So we asked you guys what kind of wearable you would actually wear. We had activity tracker, smart clothing, smart watch, health monitor. Overwhelmingly, people said smart watch.

• 33:31Nilay Patel?

  Really?

• 33:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean...

• 33:32Nilay Patel?

  Not what I would expect.

• 33:33Speaker 02

  Really, I think that's what I chose, so...

• 33:37Nilay Patel?

  Wait, you voted in a poll, biased?

• 33:39Speaker 02

  I always vote in a poll.

• 33:40Nilay Patel?

  If I'm on the scale?

• 33:41Speaker 02

  I believe in democracy.

• 33:43Nilay Patel?

  I believe in democracy.

• 33:44Speaker 00

  Everybody gets a vote.

• 33:44Speaker 02

  Everybody gets a vote. Speaking of which, we have another poll today that we're gonna release soon. So we wanna know, what will win in the end? CES 2017, virtual reality, augmented reality, mixed reality, or actual reality?

• 33:56Nilay Patel?

  Oh my god.

• 33:56Speaker 02

  Let us know.

• 33:57Nilay Patel?

  Pick actual reality.

• 33:58Speaker 00

  Yeah. There's also, I think, merged reality? But that's not on the poll, you can only choose from those.

• 34:04Speaker 02

  We're not gonna talk about merged reality, cuz I think that's really stupid.

• 34:07Nilay Patel?

  I will say that the Vergecast in the past has featured an hour-long argument about whether it should be called 360 video, spherical video, or virtual reality.

• 34:14Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 34:14Nilay Patel?

  No one knows the answer to that question. I pick spherical video.

• 34:17Speaker 00

  Uh, you're wrong.

• 34:20Nilay Patel?

  So, that's it.

• 34:22Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 34:23Nilay Patel?

  We'll be back right after this.

• 34:24Speaker 00

  There it is. Hey! We're back.

• 34:26Nilay Patel?

  You're taking this one?

• 34:27Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 34:28Nilay Patel?

  Scene stealer. We're back!

• 34:30Speaker 00

  What do you want?

• 34:30Nilay Patel?

  Let's just do some headlines.

• 34:31Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 34:31Nilay Patel?

  Tell each other about that.

• 34:32Speaker 00

  Fine. So, we need to talk about gaming PCs, cuz it's been...

• 34:38Nilay Patel?

  What?

• 34:38Speaker 02

  This is the second where I come under my desk, excuse me.

• 34:41Nilay Patel?

  Don't you love gaming PCs?

• 34:42Speaker 02

  I do.

• 34:43Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 34:43Speaker 02

  It's these particularly that like...

• 34:45Nilay Patel?

  Where, it's like, they're the ones that... Well, we should get into it. But it's, gaming PCs are the fish that live under the ocean at the deepest depths.

• 34:53Speaker 00

  Right.

• 34:54Nilay Patel?

  And they've evolved in a different direction than the rest of the ecosystem.

• 34:58Speaker 00

  The news is that both Samsung and Lenovo want a piece of that sweet, sweet, deep-sea-fish action.

• 35:06Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 35:07Speaker 00

  And they have created gaming laptop lines.

• 35:09Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 35:10Speaker 00

  That look ridiculous.

• 35:12Nilay Patel?

  Completely ridiculous.

• 35:13Speaker 00

  So Samsung's gaming lineup is called Odyssey. There's a 15-inch in February, and then a 17-inch, just monster, in April. And they kind of look bad. They look like low-rent razors.

• 35:25Nilay Patel?

  You guys want some, like, behind the scenes? My bullet point here, I'm pretty sure our friend Ross Miller wrote this bullet point, all it says about this laptop is "look awful, design reject."

• 35:37Nilay Patel?

  They don't look good.

• 35:38Speaker 02

  I don't think it's that they look awful, it's just they look like stereotypical gaming laptops. Like what you think like a gamer would use. It looks like you should be like DJing in your basement while you play like Dota or something.

• 35:49Nilay Patel?

  Samsung's has like chrome surrounds around the trackpad and there's like LED. And it's like there's a part of me that like really respects that. Right? Like maybe every time I use my touchpad, it should be a disco.

• 36:02Speaker 00

  So here's what I'll say. I will grant that you can make a completely insane, ostentatious, light-up, multi-colored, bonkers gaming laptop and it's cool or it's fine. Like I will grant that. But if you make one of those badly, you've just, you cannot come back.

• 36:19Nilay Patel?

  Well, so I think the flip side of this is Razer, for example.

• 36:23Speaker 00

  Razer.

• 36:23Nilay Patel?

  Razer put out like a 3 display.

• 36:25Speaker 00

  Yes, it's called Project Valerie.

• 36:26Nilay Patel?

  We're jumping ahead. We'll get to Razer in a second.

• 36:28Speaker 00

  No, no, we can just do it. It's called Project Valerie. It weighs 12 pounds. But the thing, like it, under its own power, you flip it open and

• 36:37Speaker 00

  and you have a massive giant screen.

• 36:39Nilay Patel?

  This is a concept that we've seen at CS for years and years and years. And so the point that all of our team is making is it's great to make gaming laptops. It's great to make gaming routers. Every year at CS we like find the silliest looking router. But this stereotypical...

• 36:55Speaker 00

  Here it is, spanning out. I mean, that's just, that's awesome.

• 36:58Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, so I think Razer kinda like does it right. If there's a way to do this thing right, to make the craziest ostentatious, wild laptop. Razer traditionally is, they're the ones who are unchained, but they have like a design sensibility. Their products feel really good. Samsung and Lenovo...

• 37:15Speaker 00

  Yeah, Lenovo's also here with, they're calling it the Legion line, which is... They just picked the name, Legion.

• 37:21Nilay Patel?

  They just went for it.

• 37:22Speaker 02

  It's a cool gaming name, guys.

• 37:23Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, Legion. Every time we talk about this, I think about you at Polygon for the longest time. I'm like, we're just killing making right now. So are you a PC gamer at all?

• 37:33Speaker 00

  They're gonna make a really thin version of a Legion.

• 37:36Nilay Patel?

  So you play a little bit of PC games? Did you ever get a straight up gaming laptop?

• 37:40Speaker 02

  No, because if I'm gonna actually invest in a PC thing, I want like a PC setup. Like, I have a laptop. I use it because I have to like go places and I need a quick, easy thing. I don't want to take that to like a coffee shop. What am I gonna do with that? I'm trying to work and it's like blinding people with its rainbows.

• 37:53Nilay Patel?

  Dude, you're gonna play games. Our first year at CS, our first year The Verge ever came to CS, Addie Robertson, our great VR reporter, brought a gaming laptop and a netbook. And neither one of those things was the right device to have here. "Vlad" wrote a great piece for us that you should definitely go read. Basically, this is our own fault. Like, it's like supply and demand is broken. Like, if you want a gaming laptop, you have to buy one that looks like this. So all of these companies are convinced that this is the thing people want. But it's like you don't have another choice. So I think PCs are really interesting again.

• 38:26Speaker 00

  Yeah. Can I make my dad joke before you get there?

• 38:28Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, please.

• 38:29Speaker 00

  So Lenovo has the Legion line, and what I want them to do is fix it and make the next one, make it really, really thin and just make it sick as hell. And then it could be the Legionnaires' disease.

• 38:41Speaker 02

  Oh, Dieter, stop it. Stop it.

• 38:44Nilay Patel?

  We were just...

• 38:45Speaker 00

  I asked permission. You gave me permission.

• 38:48Nilay Patel?

  So, speaking of PCs being super interesting again, Dell put out a bunch of laptops. The 5850, or I'm sorry, the XPS is first is what we got. It's got a 5.2mm border. It's the smallest 13-inch laptop in the world. Of course, of course, compromised on ports. So it's only as USB type C. One of them is Thunderbolt 3 that can charge and power 2K4 monitors. Comes with a little adapter in the box, little shot at Apple there. Doesn't give you the adapter. It's got a micro SD slot, no full SD slot. Shipping later this month at just $1,000. So, good on the price.

• 39:25Speaker 00

  Yeah. It's the Core i7 that's not the real Core i7, it's the M47. But they took everybody's favorite Windows laptop.

• 39:33Nilay Patel?

  Look how happy Jake looks.

• 39:34Speaker 00

  Yeah, they took everybody's favorite Windows laptop and let you spin it around. Like, good job.

• 39:37Nilay Patel?

  And then Dell also put out the Latitude 5285, which, I'm just gonna say it, full-on clone of the Surface Pro.

• 39:43Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 39:44Nilay Patel?

  12.3-inch display, 15 gigs of RAM, core processor. It's basically a Surface. Only 1080p processor, so it's... Not as good as Pro 4, 899 in February, late February. So we were hanging out with Microsoft.

• 39:57Speaker 00

  And we asked them, like, doesn't this make you mad?

• 40:00Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, like, everyone's copying you. And their answer, very directly, was, no, this is what we want. Right? We want to push the PC forward. They called it category creation. And we hope that these OEMs start copying from us. They also told us that they're sharing some of the hardware technology. So they put out the Surface Studio, they invent some new hinges. Maybe they're going to share some of that stuff out in the world. Dell put out a Surface Studio-looking thing called the Canvas. It's basically, Microsoft is saying, okay, we're not in mobile. We can push ahead on the PC. People still really like these. Interest in laptops at this show for us, just from a current coverage standpoint, through the roof. People want to know about laptops here. And Microsoft's saying, well, we're going to invent a whole bunch of new kinds of laptop.

• 40:43Nilay Patel?

  And I hope that Lenovo, Dell, HP just copy that stuff as fast as they can.

• 40:47Speaker 00

  So I'm really happy about, like, how, like, Microsoft has quietly had one of the best years in tech. And this Surface strategy of let's show everybody else how to do it, worked really well for them. Because I remember coming to CES three, four years ago. And we were all, you know, it was Windows 8.

• 41:03Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 41:06Speaker 00

  But when Windows 8 came out, it was supposed to all be all about tablets. And so all of these PC makers started, like, making crazy form factors. And we were all excited to go see all the crazy form factors, and they were all awful.

• 41:17Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 41:17Speaker 00

  None of them worked. And it took until now, after Microsoft basically taught everybody how to make the damn things, that we're starting to see some really good PCs. Like, Nick Stat wrote a piece, you should go read it, that's like, it's like, now is one of the best times to go out and buy a PC. Because, like, the processors are pretty good. I wish they were better, but they're pretty good. And, like, the form factors are right. And here's something that's interesting to know. The battery life is turning around. One of the big themes at CES is here is there are a bunch of laptops that said, you know what? We're not going to try and make the thinnest damn thing on Earth. We're just going to make a good laptop, and we're going to let it be a little bit thicker, and it's going to have good battery life. So HP is like the, at the top of this list. They made a Spectre, a 15.6-inch laptop. And they went from 15.6...

• 41:59Speaker 00

  9 millimeters to 17.8, so they just added a couple of millimeters.

• 42:03Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 42:03Speaker 00

  And that gave them 23% more battery life.

• 42:06Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, and that's basically last year's BlackBerry.

• 42:07Speaker 00

  Right, yeah, so that's great. Uh, there's the LGgram and that battery life thing is a different.

• 42:13Nilay Patel?

  We should get into that, that's like crazy.

• 42:14Speaker 00

  Weird, and, uh, yeah.

• 42:17Nilay Patel?

  I mean, they cheated on a battery life test.

• 42:20Speaker 00

  They said we have an ancient sort of benchmark, so yeah, we have a better battery and we're benching it on this old test.

• 42:26Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 42:27Speaker 00

  I don't know.

• 42:27Nilay Patel?

  I'm just gonna read this headline that Vlad wrote.

• 42:30Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 42:30Nilay Patel?

  Samsung found the courage to put a full-size HDMI port on its 13-inch UltraBook.

• 42:34Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 42:35Nilay Patel?

  Uh, so, whatever, it's peak Vlad. Anyway.

• 42:39Speaker 00

  Hey!

• 42:39Nilay Patel?

  We could just roll it up on set.

• 42:41Speaker 00

  Look at that!

• 42:41Nilay Patel?

  Just doing whatever she wants.

• 42:42Speaker 07

  Am I on the camera?

• 42:43Nilay Patel?

  Uh, Joanna Stern is here. Bridge founder, Wall Street Journal founder.

• 42:46Speaker 07

  It actually says on the rundown columnist, WSJ columnist.

• 42:49Speaker 00

  What do you prefer?

• 42:50Speaker 07

  That's what I'm, the topic, I'm the topic that we're gonna discuss right now.

• 42:53Nilay Patel?

  Tell me how you write your column.

• 42:55Speaker 07

  Um...

• 42:55Nilay Patel?

  No, don't tell me anything, I don't wanna know. You know how Joanna writes her column?

• 42:58Speaker 07

  I go to the verge.

• 42:59Nilay Patel?

  She texts me angry questions about this.

• 43:02Speaker 07

  Is this a good idea? And then I give 2% of my salary to Neelai.

• 43:08Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it's a good, it's a good arrangement, I, if you can line it up, I highly encourage it. Anyway, there's a reason you're here.

• 43:13Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 43:14Nilay Patel?

  Uh, it's because here's a new BlackBerry.

• 43:16Speaker 07

  Guys, I got a new phone.

• 43:17Nilay Patel?

  And I literally could not think of anyone who gets excited about BlackBerrys.

• 43:21Speaker 00

  I get excited about BlackBerrys.

• 43:22Speaker 07

  What do you think about my new phone?

• 43:23Nilay Patel?

  The way that Jay Stern gets excited about BlackBerrys.

• 43:24Speaker 07

  Let me turn my phone to the audience, what do you guys think of my new phone?

• 43:26Speaker 02

  Looking real good.

• 43:27Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 43:28Speaker 02

  Perfect.

• 43:28Speaker 07

  This is, this is a phone from 2017, not 2007.

• 43:31Nilay Patel?

  Right, so that's, it's a prototype.

• 43:33Speaker 07

  This is a prototype of the phone that is, that is, it is a BlackBerry, but it's gonna be the first phone that TCL puts out after acquiring the BlackBerry brand.

• 43:44Nilay Patel?

  They license the name.

• 43:44Speaker 07

  Yes.

• 43:45Speaker 00

  They have the exclusive license to make BlackBerry phones.

• 43:47Speaker 07

  Yes, it works too. So yeah, this is not final, they haven't announced the final name of it yet.

• 43:52Speaker 00

  Yeah, so it runs...

• 43:54Nilay Patel?

  Runs Android.

• 43:54Speaker 07

  It runs Android.

• 43:55Nilay Patel?

  It's getting new yet, right?

• 43:56Speaker 07

  And people who are like, are familiar with the Priv, which is the BlackBerry phone.

• 43:59Speaker 00

  Oh, the Priv.

• 44:00Speaker 07

  Right, a great name, the great-named BlackBerry Priv. It, it looks and feels the same way, the software looks and feels the same.

• 44:07Nilay Patel?

  Wait, can I just say, it looks insane. You probably can't say... See it on the camera, but the antenna lines are gloss black. The USB-C port is lined in gloss black and has like a character line.

• 44:17Speaker 00

  It's got a curve on the bottom and it's flat across the top on the corners.

• 44:20Nilay Patel?

  I'm pretty sure this is a camera at the top and this is a proximity sensor. The back has like this carbon fiber weave. This phone is feeling itself like most a phone.

• 44:30Speaker 00

  Don't care.

• 44:31Speaker 07

  It's having an identity crisis.

• 44:32Speaker 00

  No, I think it's totally comfortable in its own identity.

• 44:35Speaker 07

  But what is cool is actually they put the fingerprint sensor in the spacebar.

• 44:37Speaker 00

  This phone is the guy who walks in the bar with a funny hat and doesn't care what you think.

• 44:41Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it's Dieter. It's Dieter DeFenora.

• 44:44Speaker 00

  No, not Adora.

• 44:47Speaker 07

  That's totally me.

• 44:48Nilay Patel?

  So you have been wanting a BlackBerry since the day I've met you.

• 44:53Speaker 07

  Since the day I met you, I had a BlackBerry. So actually, this is interesting. This is my 10th CES.

• 44:57Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 44:58Speaker 07

  And I was...

• 44:58Speaker 00

  Congratulations.

• 44:59Speaker 07

  I got a ribbon.

• 45:00Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 45:00Nilay Patel?

  I didn't get a ribbon.

• 45:01Speaker 07

  Is this like nine for you?

• 45:02Nilay Patel?

  It's nine. It's ten. I think it's ten too.

• 45:04Speaker 07

  Yeah?

• 45:04Nilay Patel?

  Anyway.

• 45:05Speaker 07

  Did you not get a ribbon?

• 45:06Nilay Patel?

  I didn't get a ribbon.

• 45:06Speaker 07

  Can we get a ribbon?

• 45:07Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, what are we doing? We have a TV show.

• 45:09Speaker 07

  Is this whole staff, no one has a ribbon?

• 45:10Nilay Patel?

  Anyway.

• 45:12Speaker 07

  Yeah, so I came to CES 10 years ago with a BlackBerry and a Vista notebook.

• 45:18Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 45:19Speaker 07

  Okay?

• 45:19Speaker 00

  And you were...

• 45:20Nilay Patel?

  And you're leaving here with a BlackBerry and a Vista notebook.

• 45:23Speaker 07

  With a BlackBerry, one of those new PCs that Dieter was just talking about. Totally awesome, but I'm putting Vista on it.

• 45:29Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 45:29Speaker 07

  And a stylus. Those are the three things I'm leaving with, but...

• 45:33Speaker 00

  Fingerprint sensor on the spacebar.

• 45:34Speaker 07

  I miss the... Who doesn't miss the physical keyboard? I mean, how I have... Who doesn't miss the physical keyboard? That matters.

• 45:41Nilay Patel?

  She's waiting for Dieter.

• 45:42Speaker 00

  She's looking at me because she knows that I'm...

• 45:43Nilay Patel?

  Sean Hallister comes running in from offstage.

• 45:45Speaker 00

  I mean, here's my take on the physical keyboard. I desperately miss a physical keyboard. I feel like I am better and faster, more accurate on it. I know that's a lie and that I'm not better, faster, and more accurate with it. But it just feels better.

• 45:58Speaker 07

  It does feel better.

• 45:58Speaker 00

  It just makes you feel like you're doing work.

• 46:01Nilay Patel?

  I mean, I think there's still that market of like people who live in DC who have a BlackBerry and iPhone and like, I wish I could just have one phone.

• 46:06Speaker 07

  I was just talking to the wonderful makeup artist here and she also wants a BlackBerry.

• 46:10Nilay Patel?

  Everybody...

• 46:10Speaker 07

  I was just talking to Kim Kardashian and she also wants a BlackBerry.

• 46:13Nilay Patel?

  Kim Kardashian wants like an old school classic. You were just talking to Kim Kardashian?

• 46:16Speaker 07

  No.

• 46:17Nilay Patel?

  What'd she say? She say anything about Kanye?

• 46:18Speaker 07

  She loves this Twitter show. Yeah, of course. She's tweeting right now. She's grabbing it from the offstage. Yeah.

• 46:23Nilay Patel?

  But this is not BlackBerry, right? It's TCL.

• 46:26Speaker 07

  Right. And they are going to revive the brand. They're going to make it happen.

• 46:31Nilay Patel?

  BlackBerry supports it.

• 46:32Speaker 07

  They're going to make BlackBerry great again, is what I heard their catchphrase.

• 46:35Nilay Patel?

  And that's Joanna Stern, everybody.

• 46:38Nilay Patel?

  No, but if the phone breaks, you go to TCL. But there's software backend that BlackBerry does.

• 46:43Speaker 07

  Yes, they're still going to do the security and privacy, I believe, is still done.

• 46:47Speaker 00

  That's their differentiating thing. It's like, we keep things safe.

• 46:50Nilay Patel?

  This is a prototype.

• 46:51Speaker 00

  Yeah, so you can't judge about that.

• 46:52Speaker 07

  And so they're going to have all these details at Mobile World Congress next month.

• 46:55Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 46:56Speaker 07

  They say it's going to come to the US, and I assume it'll be unlocked.

• 47:02Speaker 07

  I think it's, you know, I think it's good news.

• 47:04Nilay Patel?

  It's all about your phones. I will say it's the only exciting...

• 47:07Speaker 07

  I can't say I'm definitely going to buy it, but I'm going to buy it.

• 47:08Nilay Patel?

  It's the only exciting phone at the show.

• 47:09Speaker 00

  I think I'm going to get it.

• 47:11Speaker 07

  I think the Huawei announcement was pretty interesting.

• 47:13Nilay Patel?

  Because they're doing Alexa on their phone.

• 47:14Speaker 07

  They're doing Alexa, and they're coming to the US. And they, I mean Huawei makes some really good hardware. I think if more people in the US know about Huawei, maybe they'll do some more stuff in the US about it.

• 47:23Nilay Patel?

  It starts with a booth here in Las Vegas and a press conference.

• 47:27Speaker 07

  And some big billboards.

• 47:29Nilay Patel?

  I'm confident the video and pictures don't do this phone justice. You should go, when it comes out, you should go find it and look at it. It looks crazy.

• 47:38Speaker 00

  I love it.

• 47:39Nilay Patel?

  It's so confident about the way it looks. Anyway, Joanna, it's just, it's nuts. Like, we don't, you don't see film.

• 47:46Speaker 07

  I love it.

• 47:47Nilay Patel?

  Anyway, that's Joanna Stern. We'll be back right after this. More Vergecast Live, CS 2017.

• 47:52Speaker 00

  Hey, it's Ben Popper here at the Drone Rodeo, CS 2017, and I'm wearing some AR glasses made by Epson. These augmented reality glasses are something they've had for about five years, but they didn't have a killer use case. Then drone pilots started picking them up. I can see what the drone sees,

• 48:10Speaker 00

  and I can see the world around me. So I can pilot and walk, keep my situational awareness. Plus, I look kind of cool.

• 48:17Nilay Patel?

  And we're back.

• 48:18Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 48:19Nilay Patel?

  Guess who's here? Paul Miller. Or as his badge, Miss Print says, Paul Millier.

• 48:24Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 48:25Nilay Patel?

  Just to make that name a little bit harder to pronounce.

• 48:27Speaker 00

  Just rubbing it in.

• 48:28Nilay Patel?

  Ashley Carman's here.

• 48:29Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 48:29Nilay Patel?

  Sucker Breaker Crew, representing.

• 48:31Speaker 06

  We're here.

• 48:31Nilay Patel?

  I'm excited to play with some toys. So what, what, what's happening? What you got for us?

• 48:35Speaker 00

  Well, we got all the cool toys.

• 48:36Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 48:36Speaker 00

  Like I promised, typing and hugs.

• 48:39Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 48:40Speaker 00

  But I think Ashley should go first.

• 48:41Speaker 06

  Yeah, so I'm doing like e-ink today. That's my thing right now. So I have, first I'll show you guys this backpack. I showed you the tags. Everyone can see this. It is a backpack that has an e-ink display in the front.

• 48:57Nilay Patel?

  Oh my god.

• 48:57Speaker 06

  And you can literally display whatever you want. Connects to your phone over Bluetooth.

• 49:02Nilay Patel?

  It's a backpack with a screen.

• 49:03Speaker 06

  It is a backpack with a screen.

• 49:04Speaker 00

  It's got an e-ink screen, so it doesn't take a ton of battery.

• 49:06Speaker 06

  Right. It can last for 30 days without a charge. I hate that you still have to charge it, because like, ugh.

• 49:10Nilay Patel?

  You can't just like register your motion.

• 49:12Speaker 06

  Yeah, exactly.

• 49:13Nilay Patel?

  Oh yeah, totally, yeah.

• 49:14Speaker 06

  So I'm gonna show off. I'm gonna take a little selfie.

• 49:17Nilay Patel?

  Oh hey, you've got way better selfie style than I do.

• 49:21Speaker 06

  I'm a professional.

• 49:22Nilay Patel?

  You're a professional male.

• 49:24Speaker 06

  Okay. Just, just wait. It's gonna be great. So we're gonna display it now. Hopefully this works. Oh, Megan, you're in the background of this.

• 49:32Speaker 07

  It's a good selfie.

• 49:33Speaker 06

  You're like, what?

• 49:34Speaker 07

  Oh my, like, ugh.

• 49:34Speaker 06

  Yeah, don't do it, girl.

• 49:36Nilay Patel?

  Tomorrow on the Roach House Live from Twitter, selfie text for Ashley and Megan.

• 49:39Speaker 06

  Woah.

• 49:39Nilay Patel?

  That's awesome.

• 49:40Speaker 00

  Oh my god.

• 49:41Nilay Patel?

  Oh, and Megan was...

• 49:41Speaker 06

  Wait, wait, let me see.

• 49:42Speaker 07

  Look at your face.

• 49:43Speaker 06

  There you go, creepin'. There you go. Yeah, so that is the thing. Would you guys wear your faces on a backpack?

• 49:50Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 49:50Nilay Patel?

  Yes.

• 49:50Speaker 00

  How much does it cost to wear my face on a backpack?

• 49:52Speaker 06

  It starts at $99, depending on the size of the screen and whether you get canvas or weather.

• 49:56Nilay Patel?

  Can you pull the screen out?

• 49:58Speaker 06

  Yeah, so I have one, actually. This is under the table. Oh man, sorry guys.

• 50:02Speaker 00

  Bye.

• 50:04Speaker 06

  But here it is. And it's a frozen display.

• 50:06Speaker 00

  Why is this just...

• 50:07Nilay Patel?

  No, no, it's frozen.

• 50:10Speaker 00

  It's not frozen. It's a display of line.

• 50:13Speaker 06

  The Disney movie Frozen.

• 50:14Nilay Patel?

  No, it's a frozen display.

• 50:15Speaker 00

  It doesn't weigh anything. Doesn't have any weight.

• 50:16Nilay Patel?

  It's basically just a gigantic Kindle. Can you put books on it? Can you like put text on it?

• 50:20Speaker 06

  You know, maybe.

• 50:21Nilay Patel?

  Like, you know, for years and years on the subway, you would like advertise your interests by like having a hardcover book.

• 50:26Speaker 06

  Oh man, this is gonna turn into billboards, isn't it?

• 50:28Nilay Patel?

  Now it's like you've got like the first page of like The Road.

• 50:33Speaker 06

  My personal brand. Just follow me on Twitter.

• 50:36Nilay Patel?

  Follow us better. It's like a QR code for your Tinder profile.

• 50:41Speaker 06

  Oh my god.

• 50:43Nilay Patel?

  That's the worst. This is great. I love this. $99.

• 50:45Speaker 05

  Dieter had a great idea where you take a picture of what's in front of you.

• 50:48Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 50:49Speaker 05

  And then you're like see-through.

• 50:50Speaker 00

  You become invisible.

• 50:53Nilay Patel?

  It's not as good of a joke as the frozen display joke. Just to let you know.

• 50:56Speaker 05

  This is cool.

• 50:57Nilay Patel?

  Paul, what black and white object do you have?

• 51:00Speaker 05

  This is remarkably similar. It's called a mnemonic.

• 51:05Nilay Patel?

  Okay.

• 51:05Speaker 05

  And it's a thermal printer. But prints sticky notes.

• 51:11Nilay Patel?

  Alright.

• 51:11Speaker 05

  You can see there's a little bit adhesive up here. So you can just, um, just keep printing. It's not a problem to just keep printing.

• 51:22Speaker 00

  So it's a thermal printer, right? So it just prints black and white?

• 51:24Speaker 05

  But with sticky notes.

• 51:25Nilay Patel?

  I will say it's a little too fast for this guy.

• 51:28Speaker 05

  It's also got an app. I drew a nice smiley face. But you could also, you could, you could draw anything you want. Like you could draw like Kick Me, for instance. Something that someone could write on a note.

• 51:41Speaker 06

  Paul wants to get into bully people.

• 51:42Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 51:44Nilay Patel?

  With the thermal printer.

• 51:46Speaker 05

  I think the idea is that, because it will like print, like when it was printed and who printed it. And you could put like shopping lists on it or something like that.

• 51:54Nilay Patel?

  I really don't.

• 51:55Speaker 05

  But same thing, we could do a selfie. How's our?

• 51:59Nilay Patel?

  I don't know what Ashley just made up.

• 52:01Speaker 06

  You gotta get a little angle.

• 52:02Speaker 05

  I think our selfie game is not quite as strong as Ashley's. But we'll keep, we'll keep practicing.

• 52:09Speaker 05

  So yeah, this is about $120. It's gonna launch in like April or May.

• 52:14Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 52:15Speaker 05

  The paper is pretty cheap. It's like four bucks for 200 sticky notes.

• 52:19Speaker 00

  You gotta buy the special paper though, right?

• 52:20Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's thermal paper like.

• 52:22Nilay Patel?

  So it's like there, it's thermal paper where there's sticky stuff on it?

• 52:25Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 52:25Nilay Patel?

  Why did they say, what's their pitch for it? Like why do you need this in your life?

• 52:31Speaker 05

  I don't know. You guys ask so many questions. I think, I imagine this would be relatively either in the kitchen or kitchen adjacent.

• 52:41Nilay Patel?

  Oh, good. Oh, the photo of me says, "Kick me on it." Just in case you're standing behind me and you want to know who you're bullying.

• 52:47Speaker 05

  And so you'd put your shopping list on here, you'd put some reminders, stick them to the fridge, stick them to whatever.

• 52:52Nilay Patel?

  Okay.

• 52:53Speaker 05

  Sticky notes. What do you got?

• 52:55Speaker 06

  Okay, I gotta do another under-table review. Oh, it's so shiny. Boiler alert, it's shiny.

• 53:00Speaker 05

  It's shiny? Here, I'll get the backpack out of your way.

• 53:03Speaker 06

  Thank you, Dieter. Alright, guys, I'll show it for you first.

• 53:06Speaker 05

  What is that?

• 53:07Nilay Patel?

  What is happening?

• 53:08Speaker 06

  Show this to the camera, once I put it down.

• 53:11Nilay Patel?

  I gotta say, going from

• 53:11Speaker 06

  Hopefully I'm not blinding anyone.

• 53:12Nilay Patel?

  Thermal printer to solid gold keyboard. We're really having a

• 53:16Speaker 05

  Real tone shift.

• 53:18Nilay Patel?

  So what is this thing?

• 53:19Speaker 06

  Okay, so this is the Free Write, which is an older device that we've covered. It has a mechanical keyboard and e-ink screen. It's a distraction-free typewriter, so it connects over Wi-Fi to the cloud.

• 53:29Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 53:30Speaker 06

  So you're kind of using a computer in the sense of your work is saved, you have a backspace, but you don't have the internet to distract you. And then for CES, they plated it in gold.

• 53:40Nilay Patel?

  Of course.

• 53:41Speaker 06

  Because the CES, like why not?

• 53:43Nilay Patel?

  If you're gonna go to the coffee shop with your steampunk typewriter, you might as well be as flashy as possible. And you can leave your copy of The Road sitting out right next to it, and your Tinder QR code on your backpack.

• 53:53Speaker 06

  Hey, this is luxurious upstairs.

• 53:55Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, okay.

• 53:56Speaker 06

  Do you guys want to try typing?

• 53:57Nilay Patel?

  Yes.

• 53:59Speaker 06

  I know you guys are into the keyboard.

• 54:00Speaker 05

  Oh, it's heavy.

• 54:00Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 54:01Speaker 05

  It's because it's plated in gold.

• 54:03Nilay Patel?

  Dieter, you know, write that novel, buddy. This is right here, right now, before work.

• 54:07Speaker 05

  Oh, man.

• 54:08Speaker 06

  There's a slight delay.

• 54:09Nilay Patel?

  How much is this thing? Is gold is available for sale?

• 54:12Speaker 06

  No, gold is just, you know, a special item.

• 54:15Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 54:16Speaker 06

  But it's expensive. It's $500.

• 54:18Nilay Patel?

  $500?

• 54:19Speaker 06

  It's $500.

• 54:20Nilay Patel?

  That's crazy.

• 54:21Speaker 05

  That's too much. Your novel's worth it, though.

• 54:23Speaker 06

  Yeah, imagine how rich you could be.

• 54:24Nilay Patel?

  Invest in yourself, Dieter.

• 54:26Speaker 05

  What's the last product? What do you got? Alright, we got, I told you there'd be hugs. I told you there'd be typing. Ashley came through. Told you there'd be hugs.

• 54:34Nilay Patel?

  This looks, what is happening?

• 54:36Speaker 05

  What?

• 54:36Speaker 06

  Oh, my god.

• 54:38Speaker 05

  This is Perry hug.

• 54:39Speaker 06

  Oh, my god.

• 54:40Speaker 05

  They're not pears.

• 54:41Speaker 06

  I'm gonna need you to move, please.

• 54:44Nilay Patel?

  I guess I'm going to the heist now. Super Megan Mutiny on the show.

• 54:51Speaker 02

  What is this?

• 54:52Nilay Patel?

  I don't know.

• 54:52Speaker 05

  This is Perry Hug. This wire is just for demonstration purposes here at the show. They're actually gonna be wireless. They'll connect over Wi-Fi or Bluetooth. And it's for tele intimacy. This is a new term that Addie and I coined. We're gonna trademark it. Tele intimacy.

• 55:11Nilay Patel?

  Like if, for example, if you were kicked off your chair and you feel really far away from your friends.

• 55:15Speaker 05

  Nilay, I wish I could hug you right now, but I'll just have to hug Perry.

• 55:19Nilay Patel?

  And then hug Megan. Oh, she's starting to noise.

• 55:23Speaker 02

  What is, is this the hug feeling?

• 55:25Speaker 05

  Yeah, this is the feeling of hugs.

• 55:26Speaker 00

  So when you hug it, the other one vibrates?

• 55:29Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 55:29Speaker 02

  Wait, hug me again.

• 55:34Speaker 02

  It's just like, I never thought like being hugged would feel so much like being farted on. What is it? Is this like a vibration? Hold on, we're gonna try.

• 55:45Nilay Patel?

  Ball hug sounds way deeper than Megan's.

• 55:48Speaker 02

  Our love is much deeper. Wait, what if we hug at the same time?

• 55:51Speaker 05

  Okay, one, two, three, hug.

• 55:53Speaker 02

  They just explode.

• 55:55Speaker 05

  I'm feeling the hug. And it doesn't as long as you hug. And so the idea is like, you're like away on business and your kid has one of these, you have one of these, and then you can like tell or hug them.

• 56:06Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 56:07Speaker 00

  If I'm away in business, I'm not carrying this thing with me in my carryout. I travel very efficiently. Does it have like an app that I can like fake hug my kid?

• 56:14Speaker 05

  For bad parents, there is an app, you could just push the, or if you forgot Perry or whatever, there's an app, you can push a button to tell or hug.

• 56:23Speaker 02

  So you can pay your assistant to hug your child. This is like the most like, sorry I couldn't make it to your soccer game, but my sister can hug you.

• 56:30Speaker 05

  There was some debate, hot debate earlier, whether this is a bear or not.

• 56:34Speaker 02

  This is not a bear. It's not a bear. This is like an aardvark.

• 56:37Speaker 05

  Here's the thing, they told me this nose design, so when you cuddle it, see?

• 56:42Nilay Patel?

  Oh, very nice.

• 56:43Speaker 02

  Hey, Nilay.

• 56:44Nilay Patel?

  Twitter's great.

• 56:45Speaker 02

  How's Twitter going, eh?

• 56:46Nilay Patel?

  I gotta say, super hype over here, really connecting with the community. Got some great tweets that I won't share with you.

• 56:51Speaker 00

  What?

• 56:52Nilay Patel?

  Because you kicked me out of my chair. That sucks. I hope you enjoy hugging your robot.

• 56:56Speaker 05

  75 bucks pre-orders soon, and then they're gonna crack one.

• 57:00Nilay Patel?

  All right, we gotta take a break. I gotta fire Megan from Mutiny. I'll be back right after this.

• 57:07Speaker 00

  You need to buckle up for something that's gonna be a pretty rough ride. And I want to tell you what you're in for in a segment that we're calling "Let's Be Clear."

• 57:17Speaker 00

  If you've been paying attention to the news out of CES this year, you can't help but notice that Amazon's Alexa Digital Assistant is everywhere. It's in LG's refrigerators and Lenovo's speakers. It's in neckbuds and systems designed to help you watch your children. It's in Ford's cars and Huawei's phones. But as far ahead as Amazon seems, it doesn't yet own the entire market yet. Google's assistant is showing up in TVs and watches and cars. And even though Apple famously sits CES out, you have to assume that Siri is waiting in the wings. Oh, and Microsoft isn't doing nothing either. Cortana is coming to cars and speakers, too. So, let's be clear.

• 57:57Speaker 00

  We are staring down the barrel of a good old-fashioned, knock-down, drag-out platform war. And the prize is nothing less than all of your personal data and a cut of everything that you buy and everything you ask about on the internet. The most important thing that happened to the internet in the past 15 years was Google. You could ask a question, and the internet would give you a bunch of answers. It's what we think of as the 10 Blue Links. You might not trust all of them, but you'd trust that one of them would be the right answer. But now, with these smart assistants, you only get one answer. And who determines that answer turns out to matter a lot. Say you're in your car. Do you talk to your Android phone that talks to Google? Or to your dashboard head unit that talks to Bing?

• 58:41Speaker 00

  Or maybe it talks to Amazon? Who knows? Whatever it is, owning that one answer equals real power and real money for the company that provides it. So, when you see that you can talk to a gadget now, it isn't just a neat add-on feature. It's a battle for the future of the internet. And yes, these platform wars are super annoying for consumers. But at least that competition is a little bit better than a single company just picking the answers for everybody. We'll be right back.

• 59:12Nilay Patel?

  We're back.

• 59:13Speaker 00

  Hey.

• 59:13Nilay Patel?

  You know what? We do this a lot.

• 59:15Speaker 00

  Yeah, every week in fact. A little thing we call The Vergecast.

• 59:18Nilay Patel?

  Vergecast, we host it. Deter and I host this podcast, you can find it on iTunes.

• 59:21Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 59:21Nilay Patel?

  You should listen to it. It's, I would say, it does not have quite the productive value there.

• 59:25Speaker 00

  No.

• 59:26Nilay Patel?

  Deter and I drink a lot more on The Vergecast. But we talk about tech every week.

• 59:28Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 59:29Nilay Patel?

  Run down, have some friends on.

• 59:30Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 59:31Nilay Patel?

  iTunes, go find it, it'll be there. Speaking of things that people like from us, people love Casey Newton.

• 59:37Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 59:38Nilay Patel?

  And we had to get more Casey on the show. So Casey and I ran around CES Unveiled, got in some trouble. Casey asked everybody a certain question that I'm dying to find the answer to. We'll check it out.

• 59:48Speaker 04

  It's like regret. You know, I have a recurring nightmare that I show up to CES and I'm not wearing any pants. And we found a man who's living it. I want you to meet Arthur Minard. What are these boxers doing? Those Spartan boxers are the boxers of the future. And they're high-tech boxers which protects your manhood from cellphone and Wi-Fi radiation. You know what, I think this business takes a lot of balls, so I congratulate.

• 1:00:15Nilay Patel?

  We're looking at a hovering selfie cam. It's basically a drone for selfies in bars. It's everything I've ever dreamed of.

• 1:00:20Speaker 04

  It takes the guesswork out of taking a selfie. Is it safe? Yeah, it's very safe. So when I launched it, it was just spinning around and I tried to find him.

• 1:00:29Nilay Patel?

  I'm sure we have a good room.

• 1:00:30Speaker 04

  It's okay. All right, he loves him. Does he know him?

• 1:00:35Nilay Patel?

  I've heard a story that is a perfect CES story. An exhibitor of intelligent underpants was not allowed to be exhibiting. And so he got kicked out. Meanwhile, intrepid reporter Ben Popper of Theverge.com has his own pair on. And he's just wandering around and the guy who owns the pair is gone. He's literally an underpants bandit. Ben! Ben! You stole the underpants, man!

• 1:00:59Speaker 05

  I'm trying to give him back and they got kicked out.

• 1:01:01Nilay Patel?

  So you've just got illegal pants?

• 1:01:03Speaker 05

  I've got electromagnetic pants, my friends.

• 1:01:05Nilay Patel?

  All right. Always an adventure at CES Unveiled.

• 1:01:08Speaker 04

  Aiding and abetting a felony here at CES 2017.

• 1:01:11Speaker 00

  All right, great.

• 1:01:13Nilay Patel?

  And we're back.

• 1:01:14Speaker 04

  Test pattern.

• 1:01:14Nilay Patel?

  I mean, I will say.

• 1:01:15Speaker 00

  Taking it back.

• 1:01:18Nilay Patel?

  Ben stole underpants. Like, I don't know what else to say.

• 1:01:20Speaker 00

  Casey Newton, everybody.

• 1:01:21Nilay Patel?

  Casey's here, Lauren's here. How you guys doing?

• 1:01:23Speaker 04

  We're great.

• 1:01:25Nilay Patel?

  Yeah?

• 1:01:25Speaker 04

  We're here to bring some energy to the last segment of the show.

• 1:01:28Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:28Speaker 04

  And give you guys the emotional support.

• 1:01:31Nilay Patel?

  What have you been doing all day?

• 1:01:32Speaker 04

  I've been talking to celebrities. While you guys are here at your country club, some of us have been working for a living.

• 1:01:40Nilay Patel?

  Are we gonna see some of this tomorrow?

• 1:01:41Speaker 00

  Did you just permit sip your tea?

• 1:01:43Speaker 04

  I did.

• 1:01:45Speaker 04

  It's none of my business, it's what you guys do here, but me, I work. So yeah, so tomorrow on the show, you'll see me interacting with a number of celebrities, asking them about the technology in their homes.

• 1:01:55Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:56Speaker 04

  And posing for selfies.

• 1:01:57Speaker 02

  Can you give us a clue or a hint?

• 1:02:00Speaker 04

  One of them was on television.

• 1:02:04Speaker 02

  Like, real television or Twitter television?

• 1:02:06Speaker 04

  Yes, a non-live branded Twitter property.

• 1:02:10Nilay Patel?

  As you've been wandering the floor, talking to famous people.

• 1:02:13Speaker 04

  And millennials.

• 1:02:16Nilay Patel?

  The worst people. Two of my favorite groups, celebrities and millennials. What have you been seeing? What's like catching up? I saw you standing outside a giant Amazon Echo.

• 1:02:24Speaker 04

  Yep, there's a giant Amazon Echo here, which you knock and can enter, and I don't know what's inside because they didn't let me in when I knocked.

• 1:02:32Nilay Patel?

  Do you just act as Alexa, like, other people walk by and scream at you?

• 1:02:35Speaker 02

  No, you know what the best thing is, is that the tall Echo actually works as an Echo. It's like 14 feet tall, but when you open the door, there's this tiny little dot inside of it that's powering the whole thing. Yes, it's kind of nuts.

• 1:02:47Speaker 04

  It's amazing. But yeah, I mean, like, isn't that the whole theme of CES? Is just like, put a tiny sensor in it and magic happens, right? I mean, like, yes, you know, what are we seeing? I mean, I think it's kind of a continuation of sensors and internet coming to everything. Anything that's already in your house now has smart in front of it, and of course, of course, voice control just everywhere and everything now.

• 1:03:06Nilay Patel?

  So, your beat for the past, I don't know, year or so has been kind of the failure of the app economy.

• 1:03:11Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:03:11Nilay Patel?

  Right? Are you seeing, like, a renewed interest in, like, make smart stuff instead of make iPhone apps?

• 1:03:16Speaker 04

  Yeah, well, I think there are a lot of good reasons to make hardware or not. Not apps, but at the same time, almost every piece of hardware that we're seeing has a companion app with it, right? Every single person I've talked to today has pulled out their phone and said, "And see, we've added a gamification layer to the thermostat." Which is deeply disturbing.

• 1:03:35Nilay Patel?

  Millennials love it, though.

• 1:03:36Speaker 04

  But the millennials can't get away from it. So, yeah, smartphone apps have their challenges, but if you're making smart hardware, you're probably gonna have an app that goes along with it.

• 1:03:47Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, Lauren, what do you see in that's interesting you hear?

• 1:03:49Speaker 02

  TVs.

• 1:03:50Nilay Patel?

  Just TVs?

• 1:03:51Speaker 02

  Pathode red.

• 1:03:53Nilay Patel?

  That'd be great. Like, you could see Sony doing it, be like, "You know what? Trintron is great."

• 1:03:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:03:57Nilay Patel?

  Uh, here's a 500-pound, 7-inch TRT TV.

• 1:03:59Speaker 02

  Like, last year, we saw the Kodak Super 8. Let's bring back big butt TVs. Let's just do it.

• 1:04:05Nilay Patel?

  Let's just have it.

• 1:04:06Speaker 02

  No, um, I think, to what Casey's saying, like, a lot of it is about just... I hate using this phrase. I hate, "The IoT."

• 1:04:13Nilay Patel?

  There it is.

• 1:04:13Speaker 02

  The IoT. But it's true, like, you see, I've seen everything from, like, smart hairbrushes to smart high heels, to smart underwear, to the... And all those things, like, just happen to be clothing or things that you use, you know, close to the body, right? But it's this whole idea of taking stuff that was previously dumb, maybe didn't really need a Wi-Fi connection, but now all of a sudden has Wi-Fi capabilities. It's gonna get to the point where I think, like, it's not even an announcement anymore that something has this package of sensors that can do this thing. Everything's just gonna do it. You know, it's gonna be very low power consumption, things are gonna last forever on, like, a single charge, and it's just gonna happen to have Wi-Fi.

• 1:04:47Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. I mean, I've seen a lot of that stuff, and it's just... Where's it all gonna come together? And if the answer is only Alexa, that's not good.

• 1:04:55Speaker 02

  Yeah. Well, there's always the fragmentation, too. But, yeah.

• 1:04:58Nilay Patel?

  Megan, speaking of apps, what's happening on that Twitter account?

• 1:05:01Speaker 07

  Oh, Twitter app. So, we have our poll results. So, earlier, we asked you guys, what will win in the end? Virtual reality, augmented reality, mixed reality, or actual reality? The answer is actual reality. There is hope for us all yet.

• 1:05:11Nilay Patel?

  Thank you, Virg people.

• 1:05:12Speaker 07

  There is hope for us all yet.

• 1:05:13Nilay Patel?

  Casey, you played with some crazy HTC Vive stuff, right?

• 1:05:16Speaker 04

  Yeah, so I was in a mixed-reality chamber today.

• 1:05:20Nilay Patel?

  What? When I said, "What have you been up to?" And your answer was dismissing me. You did answer, "I was in a mixed reality..." Fine.

• 1:05:30Speaker 00

  You have to explain what a mixed reality chamber is.

• 1:05:32Nilay Patel?

  I will not dismissively drink it, you.

• 1:05:33Speaker 04

  Fair.

• 1:05:34Speaker 00

  What is a mixed reality chamber?

• 1:05:35Speaker 04

  So, a mixed reality chamber is essentially a green screen room, where I am wearing an HTC Vive headset, and I'm having the same experience that you would have if you were wearing an HTC Vive.

• 1:05:48Speaker 00

  Why does the room need to be green screen if you can't see it because you're wearing a VR headset?

• 1:05:53Speaker 04

  Because the mixed reality chamber is actually for other people. And what happens is, after I had my experience, which involved shooting a bunch of aliens, I was projected, or rather, the environment was projected onto the green screen, and then it created a movie. So, for everyone watching, they could see exactly what I was seeing. So, this has some interesting applications. You could, for example, make a trailer about the VR video game that you just made, or you could have a VR arcade, and people could actually see what the player was seeing. So, there's some kind of interesting commercial applications for it. But, you know, for me, it was just a good time shooting up some aliens.

• 1:06:23Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Does that grab you? Is that the thing that's gonna make you buy a Vive?

• 1:06:27Speaker 04

  I actually think it might, right? Like, there's a huge marketing challenge around VR, which is until somebody puts it on your head, you don't really understand what's remotely cool about it. A mixed reality chamber is a way of creating a visual that at least begins to tell that story. And I, I mean, I've been excited for VR arcades, like, for years. Like, it's just been like a thing that I think will happen, that I think will be really fun to do. And a mixed reality chamber is a good way of starting to get toward arcades.

• 1:06:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, it sounds like what you're saying is just, in general, less isolating. The idea of people coming home and watching movies together, but wearing a headset is so awful. And like, this dystopian future that... Right, you did it with the Glimpse, or whatever it was called.

• 1:07:07Speaker 00

  Yeah, Glyph.

• 1:07:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, the Glyph. And, and so, like, this merged and mixed thing we're hearing about actually means, like, you might be wearing a headset, but you could stick your hand out in front of you and still see your physical hand. Or, in your case, the people, the human beings around you can see what you're doing, which is like, it's kinda cool.

• 1:07:21Speaker 00

  You've done more augment... ...reality stuff like you've tried out there's a bunch of low rent augmented reality stuff

• 1:07:26Nilay Patel?

  There's a bunch of low rent VR happening here but then on the component side there's all the inside out tracking you're seeing that stuff get better and better and better to place people in VR into real reality I mean we talk when we go talk to industry everyone's making a bigger bet on AR than VR it seems like but the VR stuff is out there in the world

• 1:07:44Speaker 02

  Yeah it seems like people are more comfortable in general with AR because they've already been using it on their phones for a long time and Pokemon Go is probably the best expression of that on the inside out tracking it's funny because I was talking to Addie Robertson from our team earlier today and then Vlad wrote a piece for us too about their AR experience their what is it called those experiences not being great yet

• 1:08:04Speaker 00

  So we will have more on AR VR and a whole lot of other stuff plus the best of CES tomorrow

• 1:08:09Nilay Patel?

  Casey with celebrities

• 1:08:10Speaker 00

  Casey with slubs You should check it all out

• 1:08:14Nilay Patel?

  Yeah

• 1:08:14Speaker 00

  There's new Legos

• 1:08:15Nilay Patel?

  Yeah

• 1:08:16Speaker 00

  We're going to talk about Alexa It's gonna be crazy

• 1:08:18Nilay Patel?

  That's it see you tomorrow