Better Offline CES 2025: Day 5 - Pt. 1
01:41:20 Share

I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together, our mission on the Really Know Really podcast is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why the bathroom door doesn't go all the way to the floor, what's in the museum of failure, and does your dog truly love you? We have the answer. Go to reallyknowreally.com and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. The Really Know Really podcast. Follow us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hello and welcome to day five of the Better Offline Consumer Electronics Show saga. I'm your host Ed Zertron. I am well slept. I ate two meals yesterday.

My feet feel great. I look fantastic. I'm having a hell of a show, but it's the last day, sadly. But only the last day of the show we have today. And then we have tomorrow, kind of a positive masculinity day. We're getting massages. We're having brunch. We're going to have a wonderful podcast. We're going to talk about our feelings. It's going to be amazing. But today, we have an incredible cast with us. To my left is Edward Ongreso Jr., my wonderful correspondent. Hello. How's everyone doing?

I'm great as I just said. Clearly was thinking of something else. But over to my right, I have the wonderful Sherlyn Lowe, the deputy editor at Engadget. Sherlyn, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for having me. And to my right, David J. Roth. How are you doing, David? I'm good. How are you? Oh, wait. No, you already said. I'm the only one that didn't ask. Great. I wanted to know how everyone was doing. Oh, okay. Well, I didn't ask though. Anyway, until now.

Sherlyn. Yes. So how many CES is this for you? I've, well, few enough that I'm not like as seasoned as people who have done this 25 years. I think I'm under 10.

I think I'm nine or eight. That's still a lot. Yeah, that sort of still seems high to me. This is my first and Edward's first. Oh, how does it feel? Oh, surreal. Oh, yeah? Yeah. Is it everything you expected? And more. I want to know about and more. I want to know about and more. Most of what I got in terms of expectation setting was from Ed, and it was, like, I kind of expected it to suck more than it does. Okay. Like, because he was more or less, you know, trying to get me. I don't know if it was just that's how you get me motivated. I was just trying to...

It was like, you have no idea how depraved it is. Like, you're going to see things down there. It's a trade show. Like, I mean, it still kind of stinks, but there's... It was more normal for the most part, which made the stuff that was, like, ridiculous and dystopian pop that much harder for me. I enjoyed it pretty well. I wish it were more depraved. I'm sorry to say. Yeah. Go on. Was there a version of it that was? I feel like it...

Okay, this CES is like surprisingly, I feel like Las Vegas as a city has figured a lot of its shit out. Can I swear? Yes. Oh, crush it. Great. Fuck. Don't do all the swears. Oh, okay. Just some. All right. Low level. Okay. You can do the brown word. You can say damn, but not, you know, but no one. All right. No C words. No. Yeah, I think that's the one. Yeah. Okay. Gotcha. So,

Chicken. So how do you think that Vegas has assimilated this? Yeah, so I mean you can see all the construction happening, but they've managed to make it so the construction is not impeding a lot of the getting around, which they have done in previous years. The traffic, I'm sure you know, has been awful. Living here and being at CES is like a double punishment. Oh God, I don't know why you chose to do that to yourself, but you did choose to do this to yourself. I make many decisions.

The West Hall is beautiful. The fact that the weather is extremely beautiful this week makes everyone feel better when they're outside. I've been here when there was the rain and the snow. And then one year, everything, all the power went out in all of the booths at the same time. And I was on stage doing like a panel, hosting a panel, interviewing Sony's like...

head of hardware or something. And we were like vamping on stage for a minute there while the power came back on. So there's been like CES's past where like things haven't been as nice or I, to me, this has been nicely run and fairly smooth. The one thing I will say that worries me about Las Vegas is for like a solid decade, we lost the flappy guys, the guys who have the, the cards that they flip together to offer escorts. Those guys disappeared for a long time, but for the first time since like 2014, I would say, yeah,

they're back. There's not many of them. I saw them when I was last here. Really? When I saw you. The first time that we met. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But they were like outside of the insurance convention that Jathan had been. Yeah.

The right place to be. Yeah. Maybe they're just like looking at the people that are going to CES and are like, this is not an escort crowd. Yeah, they just, they have a meeting beforehand and they have like an Excel spreadsheet they all work through and like, well, really the odds are... Let's make it happen during AVN again. Oh, no. No, no, no, no. No. Maybe they're like, these guys can build their own escorts, you know, like the robots that we saw this year. Right. Oh, my goodness. Yeah. Yeah, they're...

There was a Time Hunter Washington Post had an article about that where it was like the conversation with the guys about that. And everyone's just like, I don't know, man. I'll link to it in the thing. But I do think the tech industry reporters do kind of need to look at AVM more and kind of broaden out from this stuff. Because as much, and I do apologize to female listeners who feels like we've said stuff about being gross a few times on this. But I will say...

sex, perversion, all that is a part of society and one can be puritanical about it, but that area needs more coverage. And we've kind of talked about seeing the various dildonics manufacturers around here. Sounds better when you use the technical term. Dildonics. Advanced dildonic functions. It's a lot more consonants than you'd expect, right? Yeah, plain dildonics.

But I feel like that is a weirdly left out part. A little jet age. I think... Suffix. I can't speak for all of the tech media, but for Engadget, it's like we've got to prioritize. CES is such a huge show. We've got the cars, the drones, the robots. We do cover sex tech. Like this year there was the Motor Bunny or Motor Fluffy. Motor Bunny Power... No, uh...

Something powered by Fluffer. I have it written down. Yeah, thank you. No, it's awesome. That was when I went back down to the floor for what I'm writing. It is Motor Bunny powered by Fluffy. Thank you. And then there's another, Low Vents is the one that's across from it. That was the one where they actually like... Yeah. It was there with a guy who's like a producer for other podcasts, like friends of ours that were also here and has like...

It's sort of like a running gag in those podcasts that this guy's life is just completely feral and he doesn't know how to take care of himself. And I saw him blush while getting just instructions on how this thing syncs with that at the events thing. I didn't go to the Motor Buddy powered by Fluffer bit just because... Do you know the news there, though? No. They're making, I believe, a duodonic that's

Powered by a game controller. I saw there was a game. The game is called Fappy Bunny. Yeah. Fappy Bunny. Yeah. So good. But it's the sort of thing like you...

There's a limit. No one expects me to do really rigorous journalism. I'm a sports writer and I'm here because there's a fold-out bed and everything. Great. Because I enjoy hanging out with my friends. Also for the podcast. Yeah, also for the podcast. But the idea of having to look someone in the face while he says, like, fappy bunny to me, just like it's a normal thing to say to a guy. Do you think it's odd because you're both men, presumably cis men?

hetero men in the same space because I cover this from the woman's angle to your point that like in tech especially a space that's not predominantly like friendly to women you know you know the CTA has been notorious for not wanting to showcase sex tech for women and has that been a consistent theme yeah so I mean since the big hoo-ha I think four or five years ago Laura DiCarlo really went out and said like why are they not allowing they rescinded our

And who is that? They made a smart vibrator, I believe, and were granted an innovation award in sort of the health category and then had it rescinded like weeks before the show started. I can't remember how many years ago this was. Yeah. And they like didn't let them display at the actual show floor area. I remember even before Laura DiCarlo did all of that, I was covering this company. And who is Laura DiCarlo? I'm sorry. Laura DiCarlo is a sex tech company that made a smart vibrator with a focus on women and women's sexual health and empowerment. Right.

I interviewed them for a piece back then and I haven't kept in touch as much. And so I've completely...

Like my brain's RAM has run out. But I remember very well another brand, Lioness, who makes also a smart vibrating dildo. And they had to like show at an off-site sort of non-official, non-sanctioned CES event in Vegas. Right. That they had made orgasm art. So they have a smart vibrator with sensors in it, right? And it would like tell you when you've had an orgasm based on the vibrations. That actually feels like that might be very useful.

It is actually useful because the pitch back then and, you know, men, when you have erectile dysfunction, for example, it could be an indicator that something's wrong with your heart health. It could be something that's wrong somewhere else in your body. It's like a check engine light. And for women, it could be similar. Like we don't have enough data. And that was step one on collecting the data. So the Lioness Smart Vibrator was very impressive to the point where like,

on the Engadget team, we gave it one of the... It was a nominee for an award in the health category that year that we were awarding the CTA's Best of CES Awards. And it does, to your point, Ed, we were just talking before the podcast started that we need people in this space who are aware and familiar. And the CTA was gatekeeping some of this or it was not...

open to because it was squeamish. I get it makes people squeamish to be like, you put this inside you. But I think that you raised something with David. Men in general do not discuss sex. Thank you. And men have a very hard time talking about arousal. They talk about lust. They're very good at discussing like, oh, I'm horny and all that. It's almost like, oh, sex is something we do in a dark room and we hide from it despite men also craving it. So the discussion with men about sex is,

It's actually quite rare. I've never talked about having sex with you guys, not literally doing it, but also having had sex in general, which is the one rule we have here. It does not happen at CES.

That's a choice. But nevertheless, it's like men don't have these discussions about sex in general. So the idea of a man being able to go up to... And it's a challenge, especially if it's outside of your coverage, to go up and be like, hey, so how do you use this? But also not feeling a little vulnerable. Because with men, especially with sex toys, at least in my experience of discussing with them, they're scared of the idea of using it with a partner. Like male or female. The idea is it's like giving up. Even though from my experience...

Whatever gets the job done, women tend to be pretty happy. But even then, even saying this out loud, I'm like...

Yeah, this is the conversation I wouldn't have with guys in general. Yeah, yeah. I think we should be talking more and more about it. Like I just, from you bringing that up, Ed, I was like, oh yeah, men probably don't even talk about it because I have for a large chunk of my life been like, we need to talk more about sex, just amongst women. I think we need to talk about what gets you off, what an orgasm feels like, like what is all this stuff? Because there's people that are not having it and that's just depressing. It's like, they're like, I don't know what does get me off or not, but have I had an orgasm?

or not like it's and there's joy in it there is so much joy like finding that and the intimacy you can have with someone with having a detailed meaningful conversation about what gets you both off it's something you can work with and you need to talk to your

talk to your partner about it. What are you going to do? Or talk to yourself about it. Figure yourself out and then talk to your partner or partners or whatever you want to do with people about it. You should be experiencing joy. And I get that as we're talking about this, people are already feeling squeamish. I'm sure listeners are uncomfortable with the topic. It's not like... They want to know how we're going to integrate AI into

The listeners are demanding. Did CS try to over-crack? Because I feel like when I looked at the Innovation Awards when I first, well, not over-crack, but has their response been like, oh, we don't want that backlash or oh, we are changing our mind about it? Because I didn't realize that they had given an Innovation Award and removed it. They had an Innovation Award to a vibrator, to a smart, I think, dolphin or vibrator toy in general, but that

That was the only one that I saw and most of it, I'm curious about whether it's like, okay, since they had this scandal, they're like, okay, we'll just do a sort of small carve out and that will be enough as a sort of superficial move, but we're not actually going to talk about it, change attitudes about it, integrate it more.

Kind of like lip service, kind of like just giving you your, here, have this and don't bother us anymore. I think it's thematically relevant as well because there's a real...

irony about it. Because the reason they're probably not putting it front and center is they're like, oh, it's just giving into iniquity. Oh, these people will just be talking about sex. So instead you do the thing that's well known with sex that you should do, which is repression. Yeah. When you just hide it all. Versus, and you talk about people being uncomfortable talking about this. We're not talking about the actual stuff. Actual acts of it, no. But also, there is joy and happiness within this. In the same way that not real problems are being solved all the time here, sex toys are actually solving them. I know. And I can't speak to how...

squeamish or not squeamish CES is because I don't know very much about it. But it feels like this is a dynamic that we've kept coming back to in these, which is like, this is a product that solves a problem that people experience. It's like a thing that enhances your life in some way. And it feels like much of...

for me, I guess like the balance of the stuff that you see here is not that it is either like it's doodad stuff to a certain extent. But then also there's this like pie in the sky shit about like, it's a house that like empathizes with you and helps you pick out your, you know, clothing for the week. Yeah. Whereas in this case, it's like the stuff that I was impressed with down there was stuff that was basically like, that felt like an invention. It felt like an invention that had become a product that could then be like marketed and sold. Yeah.

And it doesn't, I don't know to what extent, and this is something people that have been to more CESs than me could speak on, like, has the, was there a time when it was more of a, like, a place that sold products or has it always been a place where, like, LG promises to fix your life? I can't speak for, like, more than 10 years past, but yeah. That's a little low.

Yeah, I guess. I mentioned this recently, like it started as feeling like the home entertainment LG show along with some like laptops and Harry Buds sprinkled around, right? I gather there was an auto show era. Yeah, there was one year where it was the car show and then now it is the AI show. But then you still have like, I think South Hall has always been filled with like gadgets that feel like doodads from like other parts of the world. And then I think as CTA continues to expand its space and its scope, you've got more and

more of like people feeling like they can pay $5,000 get a table come here and show their can like what's that term for something that does something to like there's a term for it like the like something that does something that some other brand does anyway like a clone pretty much like yeah exactly so anyway it's clone substitutes like dupes of like oh my gosh I saw so many Dyson hairdryer dupes this year you know I saw so many different kinds of the same battery pack thank you yeah I also love battery packs so I

I saw so many smart rings I saw so many You know One year there was Massage chairs everywhere And now it's like They're transformer Massage chairs everywhere It is to an extent Always that kind of show Somewhat pivot here But

One of Peace Event Gadget's coverage was about these new vacuums, the RoboVacuums with the arms. Can you walk me through what the hell that is? Yeah, I mean, you had Carissa on your show recently. She's covered a lot of things for us. I know, and I thought you covered it. Carissa Bell, I've been very unfair to Miss Bell. Tell me about this. So, it started with Roborock. I'm going to paint a tale for you here. Roborock is one of the most well-known names in the RoboVac space. And

You know, those spinning robot vacuums that go and clean your floors for you. The innovation in them has in the past or in recent years been like combining the vacuum and mopping features. Now they're like, how else do we innovate? Well, Roborock builds a robotic arm into its disc of RoboVac and the arm can come up and it has obviously sensors and stuff like that that can detect obstacles in front of it and be like, oh, this is a sock. I need...

Like in the past, the robot vacuum would get tripped up and maybe not continue to vacuum. Would just give up. Right, or go somewhere else. And now if it can pick up the sock that's in its way or a toothbrush or a hairbrush or whatever is in its way, it can put it away and then continue to clean the path that it was on or put it somewhere else. So somehow everyone was like, hell yes, this is the thing that I...

that I wanted all my life, which makes sense. This is a real world application of something that- And does it work though? Well, in the limited demo, yes, right? Like it did work. It did seem to go up to a sock, pick it up and put it in the laundry basket. Pick up objects up to 300 grams, a little more than half a pound. Yeah. So Roborock's vacuum only has that weight limit. And then the funny thing is with CES, we were just talking about this, every other Robovac company was like, we also have arms. Yeah.

Here we go! Dreamy, for example, was supposed to only debut its stair climbing robot, which also is another obstacle in these homes. Decided to show off its arm, but it's a more solid looking clamp situation that seems to be able to handle way more weight. It's just curling. Yeah, exactly. I'm like, good for you, you go to the gym. I love my yoked out robot vacuum. Yeah.

I don't know what you would call that. The transformer of vacuums. The Optimus Prime of vacuums, maybe. But yeah, I mean, look, it's nice to see these companies innovate and then copy the heck out of each other. Yeah. But that's CES. That is CES. There's always a theme. Yeah. It's also has like a, you know, it's sort of reassuringly concrete relative to some of the area stuff. Yes. Not only can you see what problem they're aiming to solve, but you can like sort of watch the...

process of competition playing out in terms of that. Whereas the thing that I felt, and you saw like actual crypto guys talking today, like the maximum amount of abstraction allowable in the language, where you're just kind of like, I don't even understand what you're fixing for me here beyond like a comprehensive re-imagining of my life that removes any personal agency and replaces it with your proprietary algorithms or whatever. So on the subject of robots though, what else have you seen?

Yeah, a lot of the robots we saw and liked anyway, we did a roundup at Engadget. Mostly were these like cute emotional support robots. Everyone's talking about these and I've been mocking them, but it seems that everyone actually likes them. We like them because they're cute, right? And they're like, some of them are like 80 bucks. It's like 80 bucks. Yeah, why not? Like I would get, I'm a person who has some form of self-diagnosed OCD, which is I don't like pets because they mess up my place, right? Right.

And so I still want the warmth and tender love of a cute little furry creature that can do its own thing but not poop.

And the idea of a furry robot that has warmth that can simulate the same- Oh, so it generates warmth? One of them does. So the- Not the Yukai Engineering Mirumi. The Ropet. The Ropet does generate warmth. And so it sort of feels comforting, right? When you have it on you. The other one that we saw is the Yukai Engineering's Mirumi. It's something that stares at you. Yeah, that was one that Chris- I really don't- I have not seen this thing yet, but the idea of something staring at me really freaks me out. She seemed to do it, though. Like, I think-

I don't know. I think it's a character personality type thing. This is kind of like the Tombot that we saw. Yeah. What was that? There's a dog for people with dementia that...

I mean, at first glance, also did feel and look like a dog, right? It's kind of just programmed where it's like, you know, maybe you would benefit from having the companionship, but your dementias too have progressed for you to be able to take care of a dog. See, that's a really good use case. Did you talk to them at all? Because the only question I have there is if they're, if in the latter stages, and experiences I've had mostly through friends, is...

Wouldn't they forget about it? Would it not be jarring? But I honestly, I really am rooting for them because that sounds lovely. That sounds like something that actually solves a problem of you can't really do contiguous care when you yourself are kind of out of sync with the world due to your condition. See, this is the thing. As we roll to the end of this show, it is nice to have a conversation where it's not entirely just, yeah, I don't know what, a con man and another con man were conning each other in front of me.

It's just Vegas. Exactly. Yeah, there is that feeling of, that's like the bit of it that has, when I felt overwhelmed by this, beyond the volume, like the physical challenge of just like walking for whatever, 20 miles over this. There's the sense sometimes of like you're trying to take in the entire spectrum of

like free market fuckery in one bite, you know, like from like the white label cable manufacturers on the bottom of things to the, you know, whatever the like Amazon or like just literal, you know, globe bestriding giants on the other one that it's like you see the plankton and you see the whale sharks and like every single thing in between is like, it's a lot to sort of hold in your head. It makes the, to me at least, it makes the actual products that seem to have actual use cases feel like

that much more valuable and welcome because there's, you know, it's like I sort of know what it's about. There's a lot of this stuff that is impossible for me to parse. Yeah.

So how long have you been here as well? How many days? Oh yeah, I landed January 4th, Saturday and today is what, Friday? Yeah. And I'm leaving tomorrow. I have big plans to go explore the desert or something and I'm here. Like to go and get on an ATV or something and go like just because today officially everyone's flying home from my team and so. Yeah, not y'all. You ever been to a salt lake? Or a salt bed, I guess? A salt bed? Yeah.

Oh, the flat lake. Gotcha. No, I haven't. Go for a hike. Yeah, I want to do that after this, which is why when you asked me to stay for longer, I was like, Ed, not that long. I have to go visit a canyon. I have to do something more interesting. I have to get lost in the mountains. If you would never hear from me again. You want to be very lost, just be me. So, so far, what is your favorite thing you've seen? I say so far as we talk about the end.

Yeah, hard to choose. Can I say what is not the favorite thing I've seen? I've seen this video making the rounds now that I finally had some time to get back on my social media like binging habits. And on Reddit and on a lot of social media platforms, this video of this AI sex robot. Yeah, the $170,000. Yeah, the one with the dark hair, dark long hair looking like they're falling off a chair basically. What?

Yeah. We'll hit the break in like eight minutes and I'll show you a picture. But it is really funny because...

I love that there's always one company that does something like this where they just everyone experiences the uncanny valley at once and they're like but we got a ton of press out of it and every article is just like this horrifying thing a company has made these evil people they talk about them like one of the bad guys from Full Metal Alchemist like the monstrosities they have summoned and they're like nailed it

I saw something that kind of reminded me of this where it was this humanoid robot and it was very loudly, clearly saying, I'm a text-based alien.

AI do not have a body and it's fully embodied I think we saw that too yeah and I was just like okay that's like this is a good gimmick because that only comes up I stood there for about 10 minutes that only comes up like once every 7 minutes for a while the rest of the time you can do the little gimmick where you're talking to it and it's speaking and you just don't hear that it's like probably just literally a chatbot speaking out of the speakers but you

finely tuned it it looks human right and you get a chance to advertise whatever AI platform platform that it is that the company was connected to which is Waze it's like W-A-I-Z-E oh that's a tough one hey baby it's German how you doing turn left yeah

I somehow missed the haul of uncanny humanoids, which is like, thank goodness. I mean, still a couple hours left. I guess I could go down. I saw a robot with like a Donald Trump mask on, took a picture, then immediately deleted it. Because I know when someone's trying to get coverage. I know when someone's just being like, Donald Trump. Did you sense that was the case with the sex bot? That they were just basically like...

I mean, this we got mentioned in the Wall Street Journal. They called us the embodiment of everything that's wrong with contemporary culture. Yeah, no, I think to your point, it's refreshing for me to see the PR angle of this that you're thinking of. And I'm just there like, oh, right. Yeah, this is a cheap method to employ. I didn't get that vibe. We didn't even cover it. It was not even on our radars. Good. Yeah. Because don't encourage them. But also back to the earlier theme, it's like,

a thing a thing made by someone who is not actually interested in people having sex or meaningful honest direct sexual relationships it's like what are these ugly pigs that never have sex want oh a horrible robot that looks like kind of like a woman so they can have their horrible sex in a locked room criminalizing sex treating it like this ugly thing that we should hide from the world while also kind of making fun of people who aren't that way making

fun of their target audience which is the irony of that is so strange versus empathy and joy and honesty about sex which is like a meaningful thing that people should explore it's part of life yeah disagree it's how we got here listen the Protestants were onto something okay

I love it. We seem to be 50-50 split on this. It's pretty normal about it before I came to Las Vegas. Now I'm taking a hard stance. We got to get this shit out. Sex is out in 2025. Before I came here, I was a freak and I'm leaving with some changed mouths. No more of an AI guy. I hear about crypto apparently. You're a convert now? Oh, yeah. I think sex should be on the blockchain. I think. Oh, gosh. Oh, God. You know someone's done it.

Yeah, I was going to say. Like, unutterable horrors that has, now that it's been uttered, who knows what's going on. Wall Street Journal's CES Abomination of the Year. Yeah, I bet money someone I know, like them or a friend, is making it right now. Oh, no. They should be making something else. They should. Like getting their affairs in order when I find, no, that's it. So as we approach the break here,

Is there anything else you're going to see on the show or are you just done? Okay, so I'm here for personal interest now. Last night, I was supposed to already be done working, but I went to the Venetian Expo and I saw some like last minute accessibility related products. That's always been like a topic I pay attention to myself. Cool.

We actually, I'm very proud to say this, Engadget's like best of CES winner, like the best in show, best of all the things we saw, was a smart cane for the blind. So we talked about this and it's good. Because my worry with it was, A, it needs an internet connection if it's got a GPD thing, but it works. It worked. Yeah. And in the busy wife, like convention floor where like you assume the wifi is like clogged as shit. Right. And I did not,

clarify or verify what type of internet connection was using was it on device I bet it's not because it's a very thin like well made device like they folded it up unfolded it showed me I held it in my hand and used it a bit it seems to work really well what's the weight like on it um it is slightly heavier than I think your conventional like folding cane for people who are visually impaired but um

not too much heavier. Now to be clear, this is like a second generation of an existing product. The first one was a bit heavier, so they've refined it. They've made the handle a little easier to hold. They replaced like a touchscreen sort of button situation with tactile buttons, which should have been in the first one, right? Like, why didn't you think of this? So they are, they have made improvements, continue to, and they have a pretty legitimate partner in TDK, who's like a bigger, more established company to see this through. Look,

To your point, Zed. Zed. Zed. That's what I'm going by now. Zed. Zed. Zed. Zed. Zed.

To your point, this thing, at least if it dies, if it runs out of battery, it's still just a cane. This is what Carissa, I believe, said about it. It's like it still functions as a device. It's just the Wi-Fi thing is what it's for. Because if the whole thing is a model... Well, but it's not entirely like a chat GPT only. I mean, the turn-by-turn navigations is something that is quite important to the concept here. And the fact that it will...

that has a speaker on board to answer questions and stuff like that. So those are important things, but it's also got a flashlight on board, those sorts of things that don't require internet, for example. So that's something we should definitely clarify. We have the contact information of the people. We can get in touch and find out. I would love to know. Yeah, I'll find out. So as we come towards the break, Edward Ongweso, where can people find you? Newsletter, thetechbubble.substack.com, podcast, This Machine Kills,

And then BigBlackJakobin on Twitter and BlueSky. Sherlyn, where can people find you? It feels like every social media app is closing. So cherylinn.bsky.social is the safest one to say. And email cherylinn at engadget.com or just engadget.com. And of course, Engadget. I'll be putting the links to the best show in the notes. Don't worry. Mr. Roth, where can people find you? Defector.com and The Distraction Podcast.

And also, it's Christmastown Podcast. I'm Ed Zittron. You can find me everywhere. I'm not allowed to add that. Everywhere. You just Google Tech's biggest, nastiest baby. And that's what I pop up as. Now, if you're a big, nasty baby and you love products because you're, where? I got all this money. I don't know where to put it. I don't know a podcast. Where? Then just follow the ads. After this, you'll have something.

I'm Jason Alexander and I'm Peter Tilden and together on the really no really podcast our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor we got the answer will space junk block your cell signal the astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer we talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you and the one bringing back the woolly mammoth plus is

Does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts? His stuntman reveals the answer. And you never know who's going to drop by. Mr. Bryan Cranston is with us today. How are you, too? Hello, my friend. Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park. Wayne Knight, welcome to Really Not Really, sir. Bless you all. Hello, Newman. And you never know when Howie Mandel might just stop by to talk about judging. Really? That?

And we're back. So Sherilyn, Sherilyn, we talked just

just before this about this infrared mask. Now, I say this for both personal and professional reasons. What was this and what does the infrared mask thing do? Okay, so it's not just infrared. This is Shark's Cryo Glow and it debuted at CES 2025. It is the latest in a string of full-face, light-based mask devices. Maybe you've heard of TheraFace. Oh no, I'm going to be completely honest. I've been targeted with these

things, these masks you put on that kind of do something to you. And just being so, because I have like gaunt eyes, I look like I'm Polish-British. It's not... You're too mean to yourself, but go on. I am, but that's part of the show. But for real though, what do these things actually, why do you use them as a person? Okay, so red light therapy, when used with effective components, is supposed to help like anti-aging, help reduce fine lines or signs of aging, fine lines, wrinkles. The blue light is supposed to help with antibacterial

So it's good for acne purportedly. Infrared is helping with some level of rejuvenation under the skin as well. It's penetrating the layers of the skin. I know this because of the facials that I take and I include the light therapy in the salon. And do they actually work? I feel like they work, but I go for the salon grade ones. So that's like...

probably going to work better than any of these home treatments. I've been very skeptical of devices like the Solar Wave, which is a smaller wand with smaller components. The LED bulbs don't seem as effective. And as a note, Phil, our bartender, who is a laser safety specialist, is currently, he's just got his head in his hands. So...

Sherlyn, please keep talking. Yeah, I'm not sure how effective, right? Like, it's so hard to tell with these things, like when you have to use them for six months to like, see any results. Phil is now walking away. Oh, no. No, don't worry. He doesn't deserve. Oh, no. I don't. I mean, I don't think they're completely unsafe or useless, right? He's not saying that he's just going to he would come over and say something about how lazy is what just sorry, Phil, come on. Why are you complaining?

Grab a chair. Grab a chair. Ed, please share your microphone with him so he can have his party. I wasn't complaining. You had your head in your hands, sir. Now he's taking a knee because he has a natural anthem. No, this is just when I once again would like to take a moment to really give thanks to the deeply overworked, put upon, and underfunded folks at the Food and Drug Administration, specifically for the Center for Device and Radiologic Health. Yeah, I agree.

For whom none of these products ever get to them, nor do they get approved. Are there not like home? I feel like there have to be like home versions of this stuff. Yeah, and that's kind of what you're looking at. There are, yes, exactly. And what did the cryo one do? So the cryo part of it were these two metallic plates under the eye, and they were just cold, and it was so comfortable. That felt great. And that's very useful for skin. Exactly, exactly. The important thing that...

Having had products like this come through where I work at exceptional expense, because they have successfully managed to sell them to NFL teams, I've had to stop people from spending hundreds of thousands of dollars for, you have gotten an IR hot red light therapy unit. What it's doing is providing heat. How is that different than...

the hot lamp at McDonald's is considerably cheaper or alternatively, the thing we have literally been using since time immemorial, hot water bottles. Now, in a face mask form, it's to get it where it needs to be. That is valuable. Putting

an IR diode in it is not. Okay. So nothing wrong with the face mask then? No. Other than do not sell this as a medical product. Do not try... Well, that's... No one does that here. Don't try to make a claim. Do not allude to a claim. Which...

Many people on the floor are fine to let you make that assumption for them. And if they're feeling really good, they'll actually put a disclaimer on their product. So I don't have to report them to the FDA. No, no, no. You need to do that. I have some Sotol as well, please. Absolutely. Bartending coming up.

So this mask, so you have the cold bits. So is that to help with eye bags? Yeah, it's just to help with like, yeah, exactly. Tightening the skin back up or just, you know, feeling fresher when you've had a rough night. And so the heat and you use these. I've used it for like a minute. So don't. But you've used the masks in general though. Oh no, the other two, no, actually. Well, no, I mean just the infrared masks in general. I have used the salon grade ones, not the at home ones. And what do they do? Like it's just the heat kind of.

Yeah, you're supposed to put them on your face and then turn on like a four minute, eight minute, six minute session. And then yeah, not heat necessarily. The IR1s do have heat. The red light therapy just shines the light on you. There's the blue light depending on which treatment you selected. And the cold for me was the only thing I could really walk away from the experience having felt.

But it sounds good though. It sounds, I was so, I was very pleased with it. I will tell you, I have come around on these devices. I used to be hugely skeptical because I always thought they were ineffective. Like how can you get a tiny light bulb to do anything? And to like the same point we're making everyone, yeah, exactly. Like it's, it's heat. It's, it's why do you need an expensive device that their body like the,

is $600. The competing Dennis Gross, Dr. Dennis Gross device is $455. This is $349. And that's part of the reason I was intrigued. It's like, okay, you're bringing it down. You're doing something different with the cryo. There's a lot more, I think, I mean, I quoted the SVP of product development from Shark on this in my article, which is, I was like,

the terabody one vibrates and you know to massage your skin and i think the company probably touts some benefits to vibration and i was like well i think i know the answer to this but this is the shark cryo glow vibrate uh and they're like there's no vibration this is a skin care device vibration does nothing for the skin and i was like you tell me girl you tell me you know i was like i needed this um that's all i needed yeah exactly and it's like

I think as we see more competition in this space where hopefully we'll see more people focus on what's actually going to work in this sort of device where there's a lot of like junk science, there's a lot of like...

And my brain is so not working, but like stuff that doesn't quite work. It's pseudoscience stuff and it's, they make these claims and they do it at the show where everyone's making some wobbly claims. It's such a challenge to parse through all of it. But also, how does, can I ask just as a editorially? Yeah. Like how do you, I know that you, you know, the short answer is you work with a bunch of smart people that know their fields and stuff like that.

How do you know, like, because we saw multiple smart canes. I don't know if we saw the one that you all awarded. Like, how can you tell if it's good or not? That's kind of a remedial way of phrasing it. My brain's also not, honestly, not the best. Same with you, yeah. But we can just, whatever, make our little dolphin sounds back and forth. We're there. Trying to communicate. I'm there with you. I think it's partly because Engadget has had such a history of covering CES. We have the process down pat. We start the process.

the process the second we get the full exhibitor list for shows like Unveiled and Petcon. Can you actually walk us through the process? Yeah, of course. Yeah. So yeah, this was my first year like fully running the show for the team. And I started later than I wanted to. Like since July, I've been like, we need to start planning CES, right? And we at least get the travel and accommodation booked ahead of time. But this year we started like November, which was late for us. And it was very late. I was very nervous. But

The CTA also didn't have a lot of the directories ready for us to parse through until the week before Christmas. So we spent all two weeks... I didn't take time off during the Christmas break. And I just spent it looking at exhibitor lists. And we Google every single name that is an exhibitor. We find out what they do. And if we don't, we'll reach out. We'll find their PR email address. We'll reach out and be like, what are you showing at CES? Then we'll do the research of like, what is this...

what is in the space, what else is already in the space? Is it new? Is it like expensive? Is it junk? Right. And then the process actually happens before we fly off to Vegas. When we do get here, then we make the assignments of like, we're going to unveil, we're going to Pepcom, we're going to these booths. These are the things that actually look interesting. We'll go and look at them. These are things that we don't know if they're good or not. We need to investigate them. We have a tag internally called investigate. And so we go look at the

the thing on the show floor we have our reporters go out talk to the company and then also because we're in Vegas the research is going to be limited to what we can Google within two minutes right to make a call on whether this is important but yes we then we try to match the people with expertise in the space to the product so at least they have a wealth of

of information to draw on. Like Billy Steele's audio and... Oh my God, he's so good, right? But that's the thing, you have specialist people. Yes, we have so much. Yeah, so Billy Steele is our specialist on audio. I mean, Davindra was here. He's our chip guy. Oh, he was talking NVIDIA. Oh yeah, all NVIDIA all day and PCs as well. I mean, NVIDIA, I mean, we have a bunch of chip people too, which I'm so grateful for. And we have multiple experts on some...

and they can trade information. I wish you would get a chance to see the debates that happen in our room sometimes. Next year. Next year, I'm serious. We'll have you in here. Next year, this will be the Engadget podcast. We will have the Engadget topic experts. We've had three of you on. I'm happy to have more. I'm glad you've had so many. I mean, there is such a diversity of voices and opinions on the team, too, which I really like. And when they fight it out, that's my favorite because I'm like, yeah, we can agree to disagree. But also, I've been quite critical of some of the tech media on here. And I really... This show was not about...

Like just CES, it's about kind of explaining how the tech media functions because it's very easy to, and I don't mean this as a specific insult to Engadget, you could put it at CNET or even The Verge, definitely TechCrunch. You think, oh, they just turn up and then they go, oh, it's the big company or go look at big company, wow, television, big. When there is actually quite a refined decade or more process that's gone into it.

And also covering the show is insane. That was the bit that was like interesting to hear. I mean, obviously it sucks that you had to spend your entire holiday season parsing a list of 2,500, 3,000, however many companies there are. But it seems like it's so patently unmanageable. Like it was unmanageable for us to, I don't know, you probably did see everything ever because you were here longer than me or came close to me. No, you still never see anything. Today I discovered the,

that there was a Crypto Pavilion that had been going on for the entire time. Yeah. And I felt like I had, I didn't see it. I looked everywhere, you know? I accidentally stumbled on it because I was like, what are they doing in Germany? You do. You do, yeah. Yeah, and that is like, I don't know. I mean, I guess that's like sort of what,

what happens with a show like this. The idea is that for them, I guess the business is, you said whatever it is, $5,000 a table for starters and then probably significantly more. So you don't say no to anybody unless it's like a women's health sex thing. Then you're like, we don't do that. But the idea of...

trying to manage something this size. It's impressive. Like, that's like a, you know... I have so much self-doubt. So I'm always like, did we cover everything? Did we miss something? And it's, you're always going to. So that's why I had to like, I led the team pep talk with this. Like, we're here. Number one, we made it here. Some people missed their flight. Some people were sick, right? Number two...

something's going to go wrong. And we'll just have to accept it now. That was the first thing I said to Phil while planning this. There you go. Something will go wrong. Exactly. So we cannot get hung up on like, I missed this thing. If I do that to myself at this show and to my team, we will just never walk away from this feeling like we've done our jobs. And your coverage has been great. And I say this truly as a reader of Engadget for...

15 plus years like a long long time we just turned 20 something 20? yeah that makes sense and it's like this is a mammoth show to cover and it's hard to and I've had the same thing running this is my first CES I've run better offline on and it's like yeah I'm like shit I miss this I'll see an article going I'll be like

I'm the worst. I have failed the show. I've endangered the mission. And it's just impossible to do. So I'm going to change tack because you actually, and this is a miss of mine. Can you tell me what the Samsung Bally, what this robot is? Because I've seen the articles and I did not get a chance to look at it.

Well, I don't know that it's even here at CES 2025. Well, someone's been showing pictures of it. Yeah, Bali has actually been at CES 2024. Well, it was debuted at CES 2024, but the concept of this like rolling robot that Samsung makes has been around for like...

what, five years, I want to say at least, if not longer. And it's in its like most mature iteration, the one that's going on sale. It's this bowling ball sized yellow robot that rolls around your house. It's got a built-in projector. It's got speakers built in. It listens to you speak. You can talk to it and be like,

oh turn you know open the shades or like start a the oven or whatever it talks to your smart home appliances it can beam like your screen on the ceiling on the wall on the floor wherever makes sense for you um the pitch was like it's this ai fitness companion but it's also your home assistant all of these things the news this ces because last year was when they showed it off this ces is that it's

supposedly going to be available in the first half of this year. I will caveat that when they first announced Bolly properly in CS 2024, they did say it will be available in 2024. So it's like Samsung, are you really going to push this out this year? More of that claims. What's it meant to do though?

Be cute, I guess. Send vibes. I'd do that for free. I was going to say, seeing the pic, like, again, I don't... There's a part... Every time somebody has talked about, like, being like, yeah, it follows you around. It can project stuff. It's not a good question, but the thing that's in my head is just like, really? Like, are you sure? Like, that sounds really hard. That said, it is a cute little guy. And if you think... This is, like, something that I...

sort of picked up, I guess also from Chris, that does seem to be like one of the themes of the CES is cute little guys. So this fits. This is like, you know, it doesn't just blink at you. It follows you around. It turns your stove on. I say this with my Bengal cat, Babu, who is my familiar, and he follows me around and he meows at me. He wants to be on eye level. He's screaming at you.

I really enjoy the videos. That's his sister, Poki. I will post it. Go to my socials. Poki's his little sister, my beautiful screaming queen who loves to scream at me. She just wants affection all the time. And who doesn't? Babu is the beautiful svelte Bengal who's mostly just up and he has a meow. Anyway, I guess that's why I don't need this thing because I already have something amazing to follow me. But at the same time, putting that aside...

Why do I need a robot following me? To what end is it following me? Oh, it's going to project something. What is it going to project? Right. May I also ask, when did the shift to affectionate intelligence to Q-devices happen? Yeah, that's actually a good point. I mean, has that been something you guys have detected over the past few years? So, my opinion is, I mean, the AIBO has been around for a very long time. For a long, long, long time. And it's piqued everyone's interest, but it never really took off. Nobody really sold them. But robotics, if you really look at the space of...

in the real world. Where is robotics? Robotics is in manufacturing. Robotics is in warehouses. They don't need to be humanoid robots. None of them need to be. They just need to be arms that repeat an action over and over again and do it so well. And there's a great deal of value in that. Exactly. Do the things that we don't want to do. These things...

I think we are collectively learning that the humanoid robots don't quite make sense other than to impress people, to shock and awe. Created movies. Remind people about the Terminator, exactly. And

the actual helpful robot arms in those like manufacturing spaces are not as sexy and not as appealing visually. So what else is appealing? For some they might be. Anyway. For some they might be, right? Sure. But then like, what is the next space? They saw, they looked to Aibo, they looked to the cute ones, they realized people want cute. I mean, I think they looked at Pepper as well. There is...

I think function and use for some of them in specific spaces once again, which is I think in the hospice care space, there's room for like telepresence robots. There's room for like sort of some sort of healthcare like robots. I go to this place called Kura Revolving Sushi. Oh, a conveyor belt place? Yes, exactly. That was her number one shit all through our 20s. That was the forever, like whatever her birthday. Yeah. It was different places. You did not say that.

Oh, did I? You just said her. Her. Don't worry about it. Sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Scarlett Johansson's voice. My longtime companion. Do you remember Tommy Hackman? My wife loves the, you know, like whatever, a piece of nigiri slowly approaching you and you get to be like, I don't mind if I

Honestly, that sounds great. It's my favorite thing. Kura Revolving Sushi has a robot that brings you your drinks when you request for it, right? All the servers have to do is place your drink on the tier. When I was in Korea at the beginning of last year, there was a dish bot, and it worked. And it seemed to actually work. Robotics is here, but like many things at CES, it is not that exciting. This comes back to something that we were talking about yesterday, where the

if the actual applications for a lot of these robots are like like you said it's like either elder care or accessibility and stuff like that that seems like it's the case for a lot of this stuff a lot of this sort of like augmented reality if that's the term for it I don't know if it's AR or whatever not the thing like the brain implant what do you call that? Neuralink? Oh you mean the non-invasive one? Oh the jaw one that was made up

So like gesture control of devices. Yeah, that sort of stuff. Gotcha, gotcha. It's like all of that seems to be about helping people who have these. And yet like it seems like with this robot, like you make it cute because and you show when you're like demoing it for people, you don't want people to think about being sick. I guess that's not good for advertising. But you show them instead this thing that like, I'm not sure that people really want to be like followed around their house. Like I'll turn my own stove on.

honestly. Like, I don't want anyone else to be. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. But the, it's, there's something funny about the idea of like, inventing this thing that actually is useful, actually could add value to people's lives, but you can't sell it in a way that actually reflects its utility. Uh,

I, again, another thing I've ranted about for a couple of years now is how much we're failing people in terms of elder care, long-term care for people in like late stages of life. And the reason we do that as a society is because I think companies and corporations don't see value in providing this sort of care or more products in this space, right? And so that's why they don't want to tell you that this is better suited for like

older care caregiver situations even though there are companies that will come out and say that bigger companies won't want to do it because like a pr i'm thinking this is a pr conversation i don't know that they want to say that we're investing in this thing that serves a very niche audience that might die off in a few years and there is a reason and that absolutely is it because you don't get a growth market exactly the only growth mindset that sucks exactly and you also don't get growth out of things with elderly people other than being a private ticket

equity firm that buys old people's homes. Yes, yes. I mean, this is one thing I think of with the care economy, which is like the growth of it has been decided largely by the consequences of private equity firms laying waste to infrastructure that allow nurses. And seeing services they can build into it. And then the evaporation of resources for facilities leading to these firms, these on-demand firms coming in and

the Uber model to them and saying, look, we will create a marketplace where the nurses will bid each other to the lowest possible price. They'll come in without training. I mean, training in the sense that because they're not employees, they're not told where things are, who to take care of, how to operate. Yeah, like that itinerant nurse, like traveling nurse economy. And this makes me think of what we see sometimes with some of this technology that's being offered to

And that, you know, some of the things that we've seen would be very good and very useful and should be durable, sustainable businesses just offering care to help people who are not able-bodied, to help people who are in cognitive decline, to help people who need care. And yet, when we would talk with some of them, you could see, like...

That's not always the first way they think or talk about it. They're also talking about like, oh, this firm would love this application that we have. And it's like, okay, but that's not real. The thing that is real is this care, this way you would have to be able to help people who need care. But you're kind of using it. Some of these firms feel like they're using it to bootstrap into the growth. But you have to like bang. It's such a bizarre thing for me too, especially when you consider like what,

I mean, for the ones that actually exist. Like, not everything that we saw, you know, exists in any sort of real stage yet. But, like, the idea that you have to, like, bang on the sort of fantastical growth possibilities instead of the actual... Service. Yeah, that you have created a thing that can, you know, provide this very necessary service with this remarkable bit of technology you did. There's no further ways to monetize the old person. I'm not... Like, that is funny. Whatever. What?

Not for me because I'm like the joker because I laugh at the sad things. But it's this sense of, well, there's not... Why am I investing in these people? Why would I invest in the old person? They're going to die soon anyway. We need to get aside. We live in a society. That's the part that's kind of weird about it. Because it's not wrong to say that this is like a niche marketplace. And yet it's also not. It is also like one of the least niche experiences possible is getting old and needing help. That's a pretty universal...

I mean, for those of us that are lucky to make it that far, like, yeah, it's weird. I mean, I guess this is like sort of a, going to be a recurring theme anywhere that you go to like a trade show where people are trying to make a billion dollars. To that end, I was very encouraged to see this year. There has been quite a lot more attention in this space, right? We saw the AARP header. I mean, I saw, I stopped by the H-Tech pavilion on the show floor. Tell us about, we really haven't heard about this. Yeah. So I went there and the H-Tech pavilion presented by AARP, I guess, is, is,

just a space in the show floor. They have so many of these like dedicated spaces carved out. They had a speech that where they presented four special products. I believe, well, the one I saw and I tried on were this pair of pants by Arcteryx and a company called Skip that they've worked with to provide

this pair of pants is like a robotic powered pants situation where you put them on and they have sort of almost like an exoskeleton to help you move and climb better. And we're at the point with products that are designed for in

improving life for people with mobility issues where it's not you don't have to be it's not binary right you don't have to be a full on paraplegic and it's not crutches and wheelchairs this is for people who have some pain struggle with pain that sort of thing and often these people are maybe thinking of someone in my family refuse to get any fucking help because they are like I'm not

nothing's wrong with me I'm just in constant pain and have mobility issues but these things sound kind of magical for that these are going to be great but these are because they're art director and outdoor like apparel brand and that sort of thing they're designed for like hiking and that sort of so it's more like if you're at a stage in life where you're so burdened by some like leg pain or body pain that like

going outside seems like such a pipe dream anymore, like climbing a mountain, well, a hill, right? You can walk around, but you can't really be active. Exactly. Like challenges, like scaling, like elevation and whatnot. This is what this pair of pants is designed to do. And were they powered by anything or were they just this? There was a battery pack in the back of the pants and in the waistband. And what did they do? Did they support the knees or the legs? Yeah. So the one I tried by ArcDirects had three like braces, one around the ankle, one around the knee and one around like the thigh. And then the robot arm would just kind of propel

you in those as the joints moved around right and it's designed my demo we had to go to like stairs because that's where you would demonstrate the effectiveness more yeah it's supposed to push you up I tried to do speed squats right in those I don't I'm not the target market clearly but I was like yeah I was like trying to see speed squats and I think when I tried them they weren't on but they're supposed to help you get from like the bent knee position to the

up position more easily, which is where I think a lot of people struggle with pain. Well, I, in the last few, in like the last year, I've really got into yoga and I would say a year ago, I'd have trouble getting on and off the floor. Right. And I'm decent, like I'm decently able-bodied, like I don't have

something wrong other than the fact that I was deeply inflexible. Being able to do that now is magic, but that took a shit ton of effort to get. But also, I didn't have any mobility issues that would have precluded me from doing yoga. So this, do you know how expensive these are? It is expensive. How expensive are we talking? I mean, you know the OctoExp

I was going to say, the stuff that they have that doesn't have robot arms in it is still like expensive. So how much are we talking? Yeah, I think, so they have no like actual info yet, but the ballpark figure that I'm hearing is like 5,000. Ooh.

And I was like, are you going to talk to insurance providers to get this subsidized? They were like, they want to consider it. I don't think this is a product. The insurance providers have to decide whether to cover it. They barely cover medicine. Exactly. There you go. I don't want to get into it. But also, I can't imagine you're like anybody's paying. You're not selling a lot of stuff at MSRP when it's $5,000. Exactly.

I will be honest though, secretly, this is the stuff I'm most excited about. Because like the idea of just putting on a suit that makes you able-bodied for anyone is kind of magical. Like, I don't know, like I was a very heavy kid growing up, I was like 325 pounds and that alone like didn't mean I was strong, which is very embarrassing when you're large, I will add. But

But nevertheless, like even when I got thin, I still felt quite weak. I still had like some joint issues even. And it's like the idea that we can kind of level the playing field other than the fact it's $5,000 is kind of cool. You want to hear something? Absolutely. After I saw those, I walked downstairs to the Kickstarter booth and the Kickstarter booth had a company from...

somewhere in Asia I think Taiwan or China I can't remember um called HyperShell and they make like a non-pants version of this exoskeleton it is between 800 to 1500 dollars depending on the material when you say non-pants how does that yes so it's this um sort of brace that you strap on around your um waist to start and then you strap like two things to your knees and they're basically an exoskeleton the reason it's not on Engadget.com is I haven't written it up yet that's not

I'm still technically working, I guess. But chilling. And so they do the same thing the Arcturus expands do, except for an exoskeleton that you strap around your clothes. This is so cool. I love this. Actually, I'll show you a video right now. When will you write up your story?

Just send me the link. I'll get it. I will send you the link. Yes, I'm hoping to do it tomorrow and have it up over the weekend on our website. And I just, I think that this is what I wish CES all was. Because if you think about what makes technology actually magical, it's

stuff that makes you stronger connect with people quicker allows you to explore who you are and who other people are in an honest way and when it gets worse it's when people interfere with that process or slap ai and everything or slap ai and everything so as we go as we sadly come to the end we've got four minutes left was there anything you were like your favorite favorite thing was there something you miss is there anything you really missed that you truly liked or despised

I can't, something that made me laugh, but I kind of liked it. Sold. What was it? So we started noticing a trend at CES 2025. Carissa might've talked about it, but Dan Cooper on our team was the first one to crystallize this idea with this term. I mean, I crystallized the idea without this fancy name that he came up with it. Classic Dan. Classic Dan. Great term. The Hawk Tour show. Oh God, yes. What are you talking about? I want to know. There was so much like,

saliva sensing, saliva detecting tech. Oh boy, on that thing, huh? On that thing. I mean, look, when we walked into CES Unveiled, which is the first show on Sunday night, I already knew there were two saliva-based devices there. I was not expecting the most popular booth at CES Unveiled where crowds of people were around them the whole time. I couldn't even get into a demo. This thing called Salt Spoon.

Have you heard of it? Everyone was licking it. It was like, everybody's putting things in their mouths at this show. I was like, I don't know. I got to check out the salt spoon. It's a cool idea. They were not letting people put it in their mouth at that point. There was like a video. They probably ran out. Maybe. They were giving away disposable ones at Unveiled. Yeah, there were like a couple of them sitting on the counter. I like picked it up and I was like, I don't know, feels good. Like a spoon more or less, but stranger. But then there was like a video of a guy eating salt.

Like ramen with it. Yeah. But you know, you had to guess. What is this? It's the one with the electromagnetic things to make you taste the saltiness, right? Yes, exactly. So think about it. If you're trying to consume like less sodium in your life, but you still want to have salty foods, this food suppose, if you use the spoon, it'll turn everything you put in your mouth by tricking your taste buds into something that's like,

thinking that something's salty or saltier than it is. So what I learned about this from Jesse Farrar, where I get all of my scientific information, this is apparently the same technology that people use for saltwater pools. That it's basically a way of like making something salty without like dumping a bunch of sodium into it. So the idea is you will...

shy away from things that have a certain level of salt because they'll taste even more salty? I can answer this because I've had a lot of emails when we last mentioned it. I want to apologize to the people who kind of turn their nose up at this. It turns out there are people who have like real physical problems with salt. They have to, it's not like I should have less salt. It's,

if I have too much, I will be in physical pain. And this is magical for them. It's like, I want to, like, as this show goes on, as we approach the end, anything I really mess up, I will try and fix. But apparently, like, this is a big deal for those people who can, like, have salt. Yeah, it's not just, like, a diet thing too, right? It's like, some people have irritation, inflammation, or...

I don't know if there's a salt allergy in the world, but... Hypertension. Right, hypertension. So you want... Hypertension is a diet-based thing that I'm considering as an issue, right? Like for healthy reasons, you still want to be able to taste salty foods. It's not about making something taste so salty that you will avoid it. It's more drinking bland things that will then taste salty because of the using of the spoon. This makes sense. It was like you also get the... You can kind of like dial in

the experience to like what you want I think because there's isn't that right that it's like you can go from like one to four and how salty it is I have no idea I walked the periphery of the booth the whole time because I couldn't get inside to test what was the other saliva based stuff yeah let's find out there's like one thing you could spit on yeah there were two things you could fang we call it the fang we call it the fang yeah I have no knowledge of this fang

Here we are giggling about it. But it is weird. It is. There are two devices. One is called the cortisense and the other is called a thermometer. We're not fans of the... Sorry, hormones? Hormometer, like hormone meter. Mm-hmm.

Sounds good. No, that's just a really funny and good name. It's a grape portmanteau, I think. Hormometer is slightly further along, in my opinion, of the process. Basically, these are at-home tests that you can use on your saliva, and they'll tell you how much cortisol is in your system. Okay, so I think the problem is the labeling.

Because everything you've described is wonderful. Exactly. And could also have not been described as saliva-based. Well, that was to me the way it came off. And that was my vibe. I mean, yeah, that is saliva-based. Yeah, I get some faint Theranos tasting notes on this. Interesting, interesting. I like it because I'm really into like…

getting data about yourself. But I don't want blood testing all the time. I don't believe in the photo scanning of your face to tell your face age. I want you to actually use, I guess, bodily fluids to know what is up with me. And this seems smart, right? Like it's non-invasive. It's an easy way. And there are so many ways that we can avoid going to the doctor, I guess. It's not like...

going to a doctor is a bad thing. It's that like people want to know more about themselves. People have been strapping glucose monitors on themselves just to understand their blood sugar levels when they don't have diabetes, right? So there's so many reasons people could benefit from analyzing their saliva, in my opinion. For a thermometer, they do both cortisol and progesterone levels. And what would those be just...

Just for the listeners and myself. Yeah, cortisol is the stress hormone. So the levels of cortisol are higher and higher stress. And then progesterone is something that people can use to track, I guess, fertility related things or cycle related. I'm not well versed enough in the science here to tell you what else progesterone is about. That makes all of us. And sadly, we have to come to the end of this part of the show.

Ed, where can people find you? The techbubble.substack.com, This Machine Kills, and BigBlackJakobin on Twitter and Blue Sky. Sherlyn, where can people find you? I think I'll still be on the meta apps for a bit. So, Sherlyn, Instagram, C-H-E-R-L-Y-N-N-S-T-H-E-R-A-M.

Defector.com, The Distraction Podcast, It's Christmastown Podcast, and davidjroth.bsky.social. Though I realize many of you plot my end, and indeed when you hear I'm hurt, you cheer and laugh and squeal and oink. Nevertheless, if you don't want to cause me misery, you'll follow the following ads with your complete undivided attention.

I'm Jason Alexander and I'm Peter Tilden and together on the really no really podcast our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor we got the answer will space junk block your cell signal the astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer we talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you and the one bringing back the woolly mammoth plus is

Does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts? His stuntman reveals the answer. And you never know who's going to drop by. Mr. Bryan Cranston is with us today. How are you, too? Hello, my friend. Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park. Wayne Knight, welcome to Really, No Really, sir. Bless you all. Hello, Newman. And you never know when Howie Mandel might just stop by to talk about judging. Really? That's what I'm talking about.

It's the opening? Really, no really. Yeah, really. No really. Go to reallynoreally.com. And register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. It's called Really, No Really, and you can find it on the iHeartRadio app, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

And we're back. And we're just talking about the fact that each of us has two or three drinks at this point. We're not... All right, it's not to destruction. It's just a little bit. Triple fisting is a beautiful thing. Okay. Well, we've already had complaints about the language. So let's just move on from that one. So we're once again joined by Mr. Phil Broughton. Hello. The health physicist. Just let's re...

reintegrate that and reintroduce you to the show. Allow me to introduce myself. Okay. So I'm Phil Brodden. I'm a health physicist, which is a radiation safety professional. I'm also a laser safety officer. So I take care of the full electromagnetic spectrum of radiation in

I also am the weird shit guy. And your bartender. Phil is here at CES showing the laser mask that he made that people can walk. It's not FDA approved. I hate that product. So you have seen that. Have you seen the laser bra as well? No, is that really down there? Is that real? That is real. What does it do? What are you talking about? You haven't been on the floor. No, this wasn't on the floor. This is just why the internet exists, my sons.

So Phil is someone I torture. Yes. We've been friends for 15 years. Sorry, I also missed something out. Mr. Ed Ongueso Jr. is to my right. Wonderful. Hello. I'm Ed now. He's Zed. Yeah. So Sherlyn has been calling me Zed. You having a laugh? You taking a piss, mate? Yeah.

Mr. Zitron. I'm like searching my head. Can I do any accent? Try it out. Beans on toast. Oh, one time I did have an English breakfast and I felt like I was going to die. That's just how it feels to be British. Yeah.

Okay, back to the technology. Get all of your British levels maxed out. Yeah, the British saliva tester. I know, yeah. All my Kenyan ancestors were like, what is this? Don't let them win. Oh, God. Oh, boy, there's so many directions. But back to Phil. So why does this show frustrate you so? We've gone over the fire marshal aspect, but just the general milieu of CES does appear to torture you so. Yeah.

So a lot of what vendors are coming to CES with are not, despite the fact it says consumer electronic show, many of the things are not aimed for consumers, never meant for consumers. Or these are not products that are actually on the market, not going to get to the market. And it's terrifying how many people who have come on the show say,

have been talking to me separately at the bar have said that they've met people at the stalls who asked them, so what do you think our product should do?

No, that's not what you do. If you have a product you're going to sell to someone, you really better know what it does so it can be sold legally and safely. Or so that it could do it. Oh, well, there's that too. Is that part of the... Again, asking an ignorant question. Okay, you are days in. You need to stop leading in with the I don't know stuff. You know plenty. No, I don't know a lot about CE. I mean, I know something about what this one is like and how it feels maybe.

That does strike me as strange, the idea of showing up with something that's halfway done. The idea of me just publishing a draft with a bunch of TKs in it and being like, I'm really interested in anybody's feedback on how you think this story should conclude. Well, listen, brother. After this, we're going to drive out west to a little place I like to call Palo Alto where you get to see...

whole world that is built on stuff probably less developed. Shipping the prototype. It's like Pete Alonzo just made an offer, a three-year deal to the Mets, which is news I'm giving to David Roth. You're allowed to do that? Yeah. It's much like that. What will you do, Peter? And that is actually a good question for the Mets at this point. But nevertheless... I'm happy to field that one if you want. Oh, please. Should we do some Mets stuff? Lasers? Shoot them all with lasers? Handle the Mets real quick. It couldn't hurt. No, the Alonzo thing, sentimentally as a Mets fan, I hope he

returns, I think he's declining. The Mets seem to think he's declining. If he's making offers to them, maybe he thinks he's declining, but whatever. He seems very happy to be on the Mets, and I think that that is rare enough that I hope he stays. That's a completely straight-faced answer to a baseball question. For listeners who don't know, what are the Mets? The Mets are...

That's a great question. That's such a me thing to say. Thank you. Obviously, you haven't been down to the Eureka level. They are a... It's an AI-enabled baseball team. No, the Mets are a private equity firm owned by a billionaire that ostensibly sells baseball-related services. They only recently updated their terms of services to allow for baseball-related success with the acquisition of a company called Juan Soto. They're on a subscription model like a lot of these guys.

You got to keep paying if you want them to, well, whatever. We're not going to talk about the National League East. Yeah. I just realized we have gone fully into the Mets, so we need to move on. That was beautiful, man. I am so sorry. But Phil, putting the fire marshal stuff aside, what is it with lasers and these people? Like, what is it? Why do they love to bring up lasers so much? Like, what do you think it is? Okay. So this would be several decades of career experience and just watching people and what they do.

There's something in the human psyche that gets very excited about whatever thing there is in the world. What if I put a laser on it? Right. That will make it better. Or alternatively, this thing that already does the thing it normally does, would a laser make it do it better? So do they know what a laser is also? Often not. Great. Keep going. What is a laser?

Light amplification by simulated emission of radiation. I didn't know it was an acronym. It is, just like SCUBA. I thought it was just something that was cool. And I didn't realize it was an acronym until you asked that question. Yeah, this is amazing. I have an IQ of seven. But the more exciting thing, and the reason why I get excited about it,

and products that happen is how we regulate lasers in the United States of America. This is your important asterisk that goes in the post of these rules and regulations only apply in the United States of America. In your jurisdiction, they may be different. When lasers became a thing that weren't just stuff nerds played with in the national laboratory,

The very first market they hit, the first consumer, consumer is very relative, product was for ophthalmological treatments where you're doing laser cautery zapping to fix. In the eye. In the eye to cauterize off new veins growing in the retina to save people who are losing their vision from glaucoma or other diabetic retinopathy treatments.

Because the first application of lasers that really hit the consumer market was a medical application is the reason why lasers are regulated by the Food and Drug Administration's Center for Device and Radiologic Health, which means any consumer product that incorporates a laser is supposed to have been vetted and compliant with the federal laser product performance standard that the FDA promulgates,

And they only get one chance to catch you. It's when you release your product into commerce. And that has a very specific regulatory meeting. Which is? Oh, God. You actually want to know. Yeah. Yes. Well, I'm assuming for our purposes here, the stuff that's downstairs, a lot of the places have, as you pointed out, they'll be like a little tagline where they're like, this has not been shown to the FDA yet. No, not approved by the FDA. Or is being used under...

basically the funsies code of the regulation. But when you have something at CVS, even if you have a prototype on it, it has not been released into commerce. Is that correct? Correct. Okay. So commerce's specific meaning is you have a laser product that you have made more than one of and or is being used somewhere other than the place where it was initially built and or

by someone who was not the person who originally built it. Which means, if you listen to those three statements, at no point does money have to exchange hands. So they only have to build two. The moment you hit two, you have made a laser product. Versus people reading this as commerce, meaning it's on Amazon. Which is what most people think it means. Sweet. That's how the regulation covers it. To try to cover tricks like people think, oh, well...

Just, you're a friend. I'll make you a second one of these setups and I'll ship everything that I just did over to you at your other laboratory. You have no idea how the very specific quirk of, I have duct tape sitting right here on this setup to protect that beam from going out that will blind me.

Also, it takes so very little laser power to actually be blinding. But also, that feels like a valuable point to this, which is just because they've made two doesn't mean they've made two safe ones. Like, if there are little workarounds, like when you release something under these regulations you're discussing, I imagine you probably want to think of a more...

rigorous housing than tape. Correct. That's when I mentioned the Federal Laser Project Performance Standard, aka the FLPS. It specifies the components that your laser should have to be a legal laser product that could be sold into commerce. Right. They're not just, you have to be eye-safe levels of power, which is defined as less than one milliwatt per square centimeter on the retina.

It also has things like you have interlocks so that if you pop open the housing, it turns off or it drops a shutter. And these are things that people don't classically put in the first version? Not classically, no. Good. Also other things like there's indicator lights, there's switches, there's key interlocks.

All the things that sound like buttons, things that vanish from the design of products the moment you catch Apple disease and decide that every single product should be a smooth tablet of silicon that you wave your hands at and they do magic, rather than what is my product doing? The way God slash Steve Jobs intended. So how does this manifest into problems at CES? Yeah.

Well, first, you have handed products often to sales people on the floor to go set up and talk about and try to make a sale. Well, most certainly not. The engineers who built it. Or laser safety officers. Correct. The other thing is bringing a laser onto the floor, and let's take this back to the fire marshal chat, that constitutes one of the hazards you actually have to let the CTA know about so they can tell the fire marshals because that changes the occupancy of the room. Also...

They have safety personnel they call to come evaluate setups. So if you say you're bringing a laser to the floor, a laser safety officer will come. Oh, you should put an enclosure around that product you brought because you don't actually have one. Now, this defeats the purpose of you're trying to show your product. Now, they can't see it through the enclosure that protects people from it. That should indicate that maybe your product is not great. Yeah, but...

I want to see the product. You won't not see at all. You won't see anything at the end. That's disturbing. And that's where the, that's the hand of a big brother in a lot of ways, trying to keep you from being blinded by a laser. Yeah. Big vision. Gotcha. Under a hotel. What is it? Move fast, blind, quick. Yes, that's right. Yep. So, but I just want to actually, here's a really good thing for the listeners. What are the consequences of not following these things? What do these products do to you as a person in the event these regulations are not followed?

Blinding. Fires. And is that bad? Fair question. That is a good question. I'm glad that we have a balanced group here. So just a quick rundown. If you go look at your product that has a laser in it, odds on favor you have one. It's probably a printer in your home. Right. If you go look on it, there will be a little yellow sticker on the box that says Class 1 Laser Device. Right.

That means it is safe for use under any viewing conditions. You have no access to a hazardous laser beam. You don't need eye protection or anything like that? You do not, because the housing that's in there will protect you. Mind you, most laser printers are actually class 4 lasers, which are absolutely blinding and capable of setting fires if you took all of the housing that makes the printer off of it.

So there is a much more powerful laser that is dangerous to you hiding inside of it. One of the other things that happens at CES and other shows like Photonics West, where I will be in a couple of weeks, is people try to get around some of the consumer protection standards by rather than selling you a finished product...

They sell you parts as original equipment manufacturers. If you go buy OEM parts, which you are free to do because America, everyone salute. He is saluting. I'm saluting right now, of course. Thank you, everyone. Thank you, everyone. If you go buy a laser, OEM laser product and integrate it into your system because you thought...

This stuff is great. This bangs. All it needs is a laser. Yeah. The moment you add a laser to it, you just turned the thing you made into a laser product. A finished one is subject to all of those rules like enclosures, lights, housings, interlocks, etc.

You just became a laser manufacturer and you didn't want to be. And at that point... But shouldn't we be supporting entrepreneurs with that sort of initiative? I agree with Edwin's question. It does feel weird. This is like the... It's like a 3D printer-y type scenario where there's like... It seems like the... Oh, God, the 3D printers. But like the distance between reach and grasp here is like actually a matter of life and death. Like the idea that like I could...

by doing a few different things that more or less involve following instructions become a laser manufacturer. Like, I don't even brush my teeth before 11 in the morning a lot of days. Like, I shouldn't be trusted with being able to do stuff like that. No, and that's actually was a very good point, which is what Phil is describing is how easy it is to do this insane shit. Very. And to bring it back to the FDA, their control point is releasing a product into commerce, after which...

The FDA doesn't really have control of it anymore because it's now in. The only other thing that a laser manufacturer is required to do as far as the FDA is concerned is maintain a log of injuries associated with their product and recalls. I have to do that with the podcast. Yeah, you do.

Several listeners have already... Just to my heart. Recalling bits. Recalling bits or entire systems. We, after close examination, we've realized that bit number 76C from episode 253 was problematic. The thing about the wussy could cause emotional injury to listeners. So, Phil...

On the floor over the years, what are the manifestations specifically of this thing? What are the things that you have seen and heard of that you can terrorize my good friends, Mr. Roth and Mr. Ongueso with? So let's go back to the laser bra. Okay. Please. This was actually a club item where the idea was you could be your own laser light show. Not just you put out the laser...

emitting product to go with the music, but it will actually react to your dancing and will change the brightness, change the color as you dance. Why do they need lasers, though, if it's an LED situation? Because lasers make everything better. Also, LED also can stand for laser emitting diode. Lasers aren't a sensing thing, are they? They don't sense things. They do things. They can also emit. Right, but are you saying that they use lasers to emit light? Yes. On the fucking bro-

dozens of them we have lights yeah no but they could be lasers to shine in very visible beams across the entire room okay i'm not the lazy set lazy jesus this slip of the tongue happens constantly laser safety expert here but i think the idea of shooting a bunch of lasers out of one's breasts where people might be looking is fun it may be but it also might fun and flirty a great look for the season 30 flirty and thriving um

That feels dangerous. You have all very pain looks on your faces at the very idea. Not me. I feel no pain like the Zohan. I'm thinking about whether it would be worth it. Like literally risking it all. Risking your ability to proceed. To look at a bra. What sort of...

What sort of party could I go to and I'd be like, that was fine. Yeah, I got blinded. I pretty much got what I paid for. Philly's like desperate to actually... There's also totally been the laser butt plug that showed up at DEF CON. No, no, no. But same thing, dropping trowel to... Much like... What's the name of the manufacturer so we can... No, this actually was someone's show. So we can make fun of them more effectively? But the one that was most relevant that actually did show up at CES...

and it has shown up dozens of times on Hacker News and other interesting maker websites, is someone who had made a laser-based bong. Now, this is a problem, because again, you've taken a concept of a totally workable product that already exists, bongs. We have known how these work.

For a very long time. And we have made them so that people who may be under the influence can operate them. Maybe not safely with a torch, but you know. So a certain kind of mind looks at it and goes, man, I can make that so much better with a laser. And the problem is lasers are not necessarily hot burning enough to actually properly combust your weed to then inhale. Incomplete combustion...

Is a problem because, okay, now what did I break down on my plant material to? Oh, it's every organic molecule you possibly could break it down to, some of which are carcinogens. So those are good? No. So urefer becomes something even more dangerous, but you don't even really get the enjoyment of doing that. I am genuinely asking.

What is the consequences of the carcinogens? No dumb questions. You just said the word carcinogens. No, no, but explain, please. Cancer-causing agents, some of which are just straight-up toxic, not just carcinogenic. Do you get high at least? Yes, good question. So just to be clear, though, when you break away all this stuff, but you're also... This part of the show is about... You're also effectively wasting weed. You're not completely combusting it. Okay, now I'm taking this very seriously.

Not that I ever have. But the specific thing I'm saying here, though, is so the laser is not even efficient as a heating source. It's not a good answer for it. It's just, cool, I used a laser. Do you not regularly burn carcinogens when you do, like, weed that you smoke in a bong, for example?

You often get full combustion. The goal is to get full combustion to get the THC out. Does that get the carcinogens out? You don't make them in the first place. Okay, so the idea of using a laser in this case creates new problems that makes weed less healthy. Again, it's time for another brand new acronym for you. LJACs. Laser Generated Airborne Contaminants. Which is something we regulate under... Why don't lasers create those?

So anytime you have a laser interacting with material, they start burning things off of it. Sorry, if it has enough power to start burning things off it, it will make fumes. It will do micro machining of surfaces.

And you start getting nanoscale particulates, which are very exciting. They sound cool. But no. So normally you put on a respirator to protect yourself from particulates when you're doing woodwork and savage, which you already mentioned, the laser cutters and burners. When you use those...

...on your wood... ...rather than just making... ...simple smoke or sawdust... ...you were making... ...nanoscale particulates... ...that go right... ...through your respirator... ...and rather than getting stuck... ...in your... ...your sinuses... ...with all your mucus there... ...some may... ...to your lungs... ...some may get stopped there... ...suddenly... ...the target organ for... ...smoke...

is your liver rather than your lungs. See, this is the thing. I'm so happy you put this down. It has been like eight years of doing this. We've never actually got you to run down where your actual expertise lies here, and it's wonderful to do. No, I fucking love it. It's wonderful. The show has been amazing.

But the thing is, it's like a classic CES-style problem where it's like, ah, we got the solution to something. But you have so many more problems. Yeah, we may have created some more problems, but did we create a solution? I don't know. Do you think we did? Did you come up... Did we... Can you tell us if we...

What do you think? Can you buy this and then give us an idea? Right, that's the bit that I kept waiting for you to get to. Because a lot of it is like, especially with the idea of a laser bomb. It's the worst way to address a problem that has been pretty comprehensively solved. But it's cool. Sold in a way that stoners would absolutely buy. Yeah, that somebody's like, well, maybe this is cool enough that we could sell it even if it's delivering like...

Just of not even 25% of the experience. You're getting all the carcinogens and none of the THC. You're getting an extra 100%. I don't know what percentage. It feels like when I was in high school and we were out of weed and our plug was out of town and so we'd scrape our bowls together to smoke out of some PVC pipe. Okay, I was maxing out the dirt bag standards. I was going to say you were in good shape there right up until you said PVC.

I mean, yeah, I'm trying to maximize the unhealthy, horrible, damaging, carcinogenic elements. And there you go, you know British culture. So to correct you though, David, it's not you get all of the carcinogens that were there, it's you made some that weren't there in the first place. Yes, my bad. You made a new problem for your not solution. This is like the thing where like, I don't think this is like not a novel observation, but they like,

The ways in which like a commercial consideration, just the most basic commercial consideration, like can I sell this? Can I make this thing and bring it to market? That is the highest hurdle for any of these products. The technological stuff, the magic, the shit that you need like advanced degrees to be able to do doesn't often seem to be a problem. The bigger problem is trying to find some way to either invest in it.

Or to find a way to sell it. And that's how you... That's like when these things get bad. And then the Phil destroying ones are where they fail both. Yes. Where they're just like, well, do we have a product that people want? No. Do we have a product that works? Absolutely not. However, we do have a name. We have science. And we technically do have science. That's one thing your wokeness can't take away, Phil. They do have science. Get them, Ed. Now, the problem is, do they understand the science? And that's...

Big one. And this is the thing, I think that- Or rather, they understand their specific incredibly narrow niche and have never picked their head up to look and acknowledge there are other humans around them. Why would they do that unless they're consumers? Because some of them are customers. Okay. No, no, no, no. Consumer. Oh, sorry. You are not there to be happy. You're there to consume. And-

This is CES, baby. It's just a series of people from the top of the people who actually release things all the way down to the people releasing the laser bomb. The other thing for CES is – sorry. They move in fads. Well, I said there's something in the human spirit that says you just got to attach lasers to things. Mm-hmm.

Not according to the people who have gone to the floor. Not this year. People were not excited to staple lasers onto stuff. But in past years, absolutely. And that first time we visited together to CES in 2015, I actually did go to the floor. 2011? First time we went together. Which year was that? First time we went together. The DJ Wicked year? No, I wasn't with you for that. Nice you were. We met in the Californian.

Right. But I didn't get to meet DJ Wukid. You left me out. That's one of my cool friends, by which I mean a guy I emailed like a year ago. The first time we were here together and I went to the floor in 2015, there was a whole bunch of post-disaster Fukushima tech going on.

Where people were developing so many new apps for your phone for integration into the radiation monitoring networks. There was no radiation monitoring network to integrate into yet. They just made up a... Well, we're going to have some detectors that you can log into. Would you like to buy some detectors, by the way? For the inevitable future. For the full network that you want to be... Of course, the thing that will exist. Or a detector you can plug into your phone. No, your phone doesn't generate enough voltage to actually run that detector to do it...

There was a whole lot of radiation-related, I am terrified of Fukushima in my backyard across the entire Pacific, tech that got rolled out, which vanished the following year. There's cycles. We were talking about this this morning, too, and I think the thing that was kind of interesting about what you said about that, too, was that, and this, again, you know, I kept sort of having this feeling down there. You were describing as basically, you know, people wanted...

this, you know, spectrometer or whatever the term is. You got it. Is it good? I saw Craig Madsen's Chernobyl miniseries and I took copious notes during it. So I know a lot. I love that. I thought it was good actually. But people expected me to hate it.

I do have like a t-shirt on that seems to be like Chernobyl. I was born on Chernobyl, by the way. Yes, Chernobyl day baby right here. Really? April 25th, 1986. I think the time zones work out with Russia. Two disasters the same day. You were alive for the last Mets World Series win. That's beautiful. Three disasters the same day. The collapse of multiple dynasties. Anyway, but what you were saying about this is that like all of these things were, you know, not just flawed in the ways that you described, but they were like successful products insofar as they would generate a number with a decimal point in it.

it that you could then look at and be like oh that seems high or that seems low and fine as we but as in the mini series but i think just in general like this was the point that you made is generating a number for somebody you know by way of an app or by way of you know some sort of device that you know it's chargeable via usbc or something is not the same thing as informing them of anything it's just

producing a number. It's an outcome, but that's that. Every time someone comes to you, I have this new detector. Is this good, Phil? Or is this worth the money? You have to know how to use it, right? I ask the questions, what are you trying to detect? Does the detector actually detect that? Do you know how to use it? And a lot of the consumer products in spaces like this related to environmental health and safety

Emergency response. No. Digital health. Most people buying stuff on Amazon have no idea how to fucking use it, much less what it actually sees or how it works. And that's why I get angry constantly. As we wrap up, more things to upset you. We'll go into more of this tomorrow, I think. So you can just buy illegal shit on Amazon, just to wrap us up.

As I regularly send you, it is the largest gray or black market in America. There was a really sad time. The other show I come to Las Vegas to go to is DEF CON. COVID Central. I describe coming to CES as a chance to see the things I'm going to have to contend with when cheap professors buy stuff and bring it to me.

Going to DEF CON, I describe as a vacation to other people's problems. Because InfoSec problems are analogous to radiation and laser safety ones, but not actually mine to need to fix, but the stuff I can learn. One time I was there, I caught three senior Amazon engineers at a bar, and I was aimed at them by a friend who said, those are the Amazon people. Talk to them.

And I went over and at angry cocktail point laid down, you are the largest black market and illegal importer of dangerous laser products and other things in the world, specifically America. Really like, yes, do you want our card or something? To which, to their credit. Thank you. To their credit, they looked ashamed at their shoes and said to me, I could fix this with a code push at midnight if anyone wants.

With the very heavily implied a certain bald owner cared. Professor Charles Xavier is being very unfair. Very nasty and unfair. He doesn't listen to Magneto anymore. Cerebro. It's gone to his head. But worse. Get out of my mind. Having shared this story with contacts at the FDA, the FDA, they haven't quite...

surrendered to Amazon, but they do not have the staff, they don't have the bandwidth, they don't have the funding to try to deal with a problem like Amazon and instead are doing their best to work with Amazon, which is something you've written about and talked about. It's just regulatory capture. What would happen if...

We gave guns to the non-police. I was going to say anything that Ed is about to say is not reflective. It's Ed, not the other Ed. Edward Ongueso Jr. Some of you who cannot tell the difference between our voices. Yeah, because we sound so fucking similar.

I'm seeing double. For Ed. For a price of one. Shit, I thought there was two, yes. In a way, we are the same. You know, Britain, Kenya. We're connected by... Ed is also wonderful and I'm so happy he's been here. Anyway, please stop saying the thing that is legally actionable if you could. Well, it's not legally actionable because I'm asking... I'm actually asking a really good question. What I'm asking is...

What would things look like if regulatory agencies actually had the ability to enforce and not just to litigate? I think one example just being if they were able to enforce in the way that an ETF or a DA might when it comes to illegal, harmful things.

goods and services proliferating in an open-air black market like this. So that was a funny question you asked me the other day of, do I think any government agencies are working well? And I had to take a long, sad pause and go, the problem is I know how they're supposed to work. I also know how they are working well.

The DEA and ATF don't work nearly as well as we would like them to. But I feel like they're much more robustly funded. There's nothing else. The Federal Trade Commission is like six guys in an office with a week in the ceiling. I'm sure if we gave Lena Kahn and her advisors a Ruger, we could get some things to happen. Actually, the...

The people that we would be most excited to have work to do this in association with the FDA, because the FDA, they don't get guns. They review things to see if it's safe for people to use and consume. The interdiction point is the United States Postal Inspection Service, which are the mail cops.

Shout out to the Mail Cups and the Comstack. And they are actual, like, please. Do not fuck with them. Yeah, what's their conviction rate? It's like 99%. Yeah, they're just arresting packages, though, mate. Stop resisting. Like a padded envelope. But again, there's not many people, many of them to do interdiction and investigation. Similarly, for customs...

which had got stapled together to Customs and Border Patrol under the Department of Homeland Security, when it was an independent agency, they inspected everything. They were looking for illegally transported crew. They were looking for illegal cloth because specific weaves and contents are trademarked. They were looking for that. They were looking for...

fake tech. So an iPhone that actually just has a piece of cardboard in the middle of rather than chips. Customs used to look at all of this. We got no support time for anything other than drugs. So on that note, I'm afraid we have to come to the end of this 90 plus minutes show. David J. Roth, where can people find you? Defector.com is the website. I do a podcast there. That's the distraction. I'm on blue sky.com.

David J. Roth is the handle there. And that is all I have to say for that. Mr. Broughton. So you can find me on Blue Sky at Funranium. You can find me on my blog, funraniumlabs.com. If you would like to learn more about me being angry about laser products, go to the adventure and radiation part of the blog or reference rants. Tell them about your coffee product. Yeah, go on. The other thing I do is I make a concentrated...

called Black Blood of the Earth. That is what I had to make in order to drink coffee again without adding sugar and cream to it. We're going to talk more about this tomorrow. Folks, it rocks. It does, and it's actually how Phil and I met. And by the way, tomorrow's episode, which I'm about to talk up and we'll talk about more later, is going to involve Phil a lot in talking about that. Mr. Ongueso Jr. I was debating whether to do a Nelson Mandela accent.

I've been thinking about it all week. Don't find out. You must go to the techbubble.com. Yeah, that's what I was afraid of. That's my newsletter. My podcast is This Machine Kills. And I'm on Twitter and Blue Sky at BigBlackJacobin.

And you can catch me outside. How about that? That's what I wrote down in my notes there. I'm Ed Zitron. You have been so generous with your time. Thank you for listening. I am so grateful and love all of you. And we'll say that a few more times as we go. We're approaching the first episode, at the end of the first episode, of the last day of CES proper. You'll have another one after this. I have been joined by so many wonderful people. I want to thank everyone who's been on so far.

This has been an incredible trip. Please listen to the totally canned message. After that, I'll get one of you little pigs emailing me and being like, Anthony, you need to update it. I've done like ten and a half flipping hours of audio on this. What more could you want from me? I'm online. You can email me. I always email you back. Jesus Christ. I'm just kidding. I adore you. Sir, let's get you home. Okay, I am home. I'm in a Venetian hotel room. This is where I live. Let's get you a drink.

Thank you for listening to Better Offline. The editor and composer of the Better Offline theme song is Matt Osowski. You can check out more of his music and audio projects at mattosowski.com. M-A-T-T-O-S-O-W-S-K-I dot com.

You can email me at ez at betteroffline.com or visit betteroffline.com to find more podcast links and, of course, my newsletter. I also really recommend you go to chat.where'syoured.at to visit the Discord and go to r slash betteroffline to check out our Reddit. Thank you so much for listening. Better Offline is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together, our mission on the Really Know Really podcast is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why the bathroom door doesn't go all the way to the floor, what's in the museum of failure, and does your dog truly love you? We have the answer. Go to reallyknowreally.com and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. The Really Know Really podcast. Follow us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.