Better Offline CES 2025: Day 3 - Pt. 1
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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.

When I was a young boy, my father, he took me to the Las Vegas-based Consumer Electronics Show and he left me here for days. Welcome to Better Offline. I'm your host, Ed Zitkin. And we are back talking about the Consumer Electronics Show.

I slept five hours yesterday, so I was a little low energy. Today, I am way higher energy. So this is what you have to expect today. But I'm joined by another dynamic coterie of guests. On my left here, I have Tom McKay, he's a senior reporter at IT. Tom, thank you so much for joining us. Awesome. It's great to be here. Oh, yeah. And across from me, I have Jesse Farrar of Your Kickstarter Sucks. Hello.

I have loved YKS for years, but also tell people a little bit about what YKS is because it's so germane to the show. Well, thank you. You know, I guess it has morphed into something that is a tech skeptic show, which you're familiar with. It wasn't supposed to be that. It was supposed to be about crowdfunding, but what happens when we get...

sucked into these worlds, you know, you often find, you know, maybe there's some more here than I really thought. And such is the way of crowdfunding because now it's mostly AI stuff or it's, you know, a little robot that spins around on a wheel and says, how you doing or whatever. So most of the time... That actually sounds great. Okay, that was a bad example because obviously that's awesome and we all want that. But so much of this, there's a big overlap, I guess, between

bad tech and what's on our show. And you got a lot of your start as well was talking about just the shit that people were promising on crowdfunding campaigns. Yeah, I think that's what that's like. It shares like a particular DNA with CES, which we were talking a little bit earlier before we got started, which is, hey, I remember the stuff from last year. And then you show up and it's not here, right? Yeah. And also, it's not anywhere. And that's what Kickstarter is, right? There's somebody who says, what if we did this? And you go,

Well, I don't know, man. I mean, I guess try it. And they go, okay. And then nothing happens after that at all. And the only record of it sometimes is our stupid show saying how much it sucks. So really doing pure journalism there. It's anthropology as well, Ed. I don't want to sell it short, but yeah.

All right, so on my right, I have Henry Casey, electronics writer at CNN underscore. Henry, thank you for being here. Thank you for having me. So a lot of your stuff is just... You have one of the more honest jobs, I would say, of the people that we've had on so far, which is not meant to sound like an insult, though it does. Okay. In the sense that you're just like, I'm going to look at stuff. It's not like you're doing a trend piece. It's like, I'm going to look at some stuff that sounds or looks a way. Is it something that is either...

going to be released and has a price or likely to be released and has a price, but well, we're all afraid of tariffs, so we're not going to give a price yet. Or is it really cool and you're going to want to click on it and I'm sorry that we're going to say this is a concept because we're going to tell you that up front. Those are the three categories of what I do. But for mostly, I'm a product reviews guy.

We have an audience that's like, oh, I want to get something that improves X, Y, or Z. And that's how I get to not cover stuff that isn't going to help anybody or anything. And how I got to avoid talking about the rabbit last year because it didn't have any germanness to anybody. And you made a point before we got on as well. So the Rabbit R1, for people that don't know, is this little box that promised you could be like, oh, I need a McDonald's and I need a chicken nugget from McDonald's.

and then you talked into it and the nugget would appear except by the way in the launch of the rabbit when he tried to do this it broke of all the shit to do like a live demo of your very broken thing and it turned out that behind the scenes all it was was triggering like these scripts nothing from rabbit this year but also nothing like rabbit this year no one has done a big

quasi-lie. No one's just come up with a fake thing that they're selling, which is very disappointing. I was looking for some dog shit. Yeah, you normally, in these times, I find, you know, we look to the helpers. And so, I looked for Will.i.am and I found him. And,

And I was able to take a creep shot of him from really far away. So if that helps anybody, I'd be happy to share. But it doesn't seem like even Will.i.am had something. It was like a speaker thing or some kind of headphones, right? Like seven speakers and a little bit of headphones with LG. They had an event. I didn't get a code of it last night. But yeah, they're doing a whole partnership.

That's great. I feel like maybe, I don't know, maybe this is too cynical. I almost feel like we're good on speakers. I think maybe I have enough ways to play music in my house, and I probably don't need to iterate on that anymore, but these guys didn't get the message on that for sure. So, Tom McKay. So...

IT bro, what are you doing here? What are you actually looking into? Because it seems like you might have a slightly different remit. So I mostly cover enterprise technology. So I'm here mostly to cover, you know, what there is of the B2B segment here and also cybersecurity stuff. I don't know. Yesterday I interviewed a guy, Brandon Lucha, who does his...

called Efficient Computing or Efficient Computer. It, you know, dramatically lowers the power requirements of processing stuff. Oh, that's actually useful. Yeah. That doesn't feel right. I mean, and I've spent a lot of time just wandering around the floor. The AI pavilion is baffling.

Is that in the LVCC? Yeah, that's the, that's a big LG one where they have, I forget if it's LG's brand name, but there's like one that's like, they're rebranding it as affectionate intelligence and it's just absolute dog shit. What does that mean? Uh,

Well, from what I can see, there's like a big board you go in there or a big TV when you go in there. And it's like playing CGI clips of like a family being like, it's cold today. What should I cook? And the fridge starts talking. It's like, wow. The fuck? I mean.

I know. And it's like, or like there's another clip that plays on it where it's like a girl like tossing a baseball and the dad's like, I need recommendations for TV. And lo and behold, the TV recommends baseball clips. What I love about this as well as the assumption that there are assumptions being made by people that have not talked to a person in some time.

They're just like, what the fuck do dads do with their daughters? They throw a ball, I guess. But it's also like the AI is like baby talking adults. It feels insane. I'm sure we all walk up to the fridge and go, well, there's one thing in there. It's a pack of ham. I don't know if it's...

10 days or 10 weeks old maybe I could make dinner with that but also I don't know who is walking up to fridge and going like man I wish someone would tell me what to make with all this food see I wish the fridge would tell me don't eat that it's been there for 7 days but none of this does that no because that's an actual problem there's no bachelor fridge I did however see a bachelor dishwasher a dish so this is really funny wait it's marketed as for bachelors it should be

it's a five second dishwasher so I walked up and this is this is very me I walked up and go all right how much that 400 bucks I'm like okay I'm like is it out here so only in China right now coming next year and I said all right can you show me and he puts a plate in there I'm like you put the dirty one he's like oh I'm already doing this one I'm like well it's pretty short and he just like stares there and goes okay well I'm gonna put this one in I'm like okay so the clean one and he goes so I'm like how long five seconds like great

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. And the guy's just like, oh, because no one's walked up and timed it. Yeah. And he just like looks at me like, just...

It's a dish. I'm like, no, this is great. It's for like, like sad guys, right? And he just, he goes, I, sure. He's like, this, this guy's already out-timed the machine. Wait, so it cleans a single plate at a time? No, you can do like a few, but it actually looked like genuinely, I was like, I could see using this, but the reason I choose the bachelor thing is who is cleaning like three plates? Like, it's like, but also absolutely. Yeah. Like, like this is like when you're making one sad meal for one sad gentleman talking about myself. And, uh, yeah, it,

But what's weird was that's arguably one of the most useful things I've seen. Appliances are useful. Yeah, we figured out, okay, it's good when you wash the dish or you make the food or whatever. So we're all on board with how to do that kind of stuff. So if they put a different screen on it, you're going to get me to stop. I'll look at the new screen on the fridge. I really do like all the AI screen stuff though. But also it's just like they haven't worked out why screens are useful either. Yeah, that's also a problem.

I do, in theory, like the idea of like, tell me what I could make with this because I make the same sheet pan dish a lot. And if I could have a thing that could tell me, here's a new thing you could make with some of these ingredients. Just get one new thing. But you're saying you already have the ingredients? Yeah. Or like, it could suggest, hey, half these ingredients –

Get this other thing. Make this other dish. Something that pushes you to be more creative with what you do because these things are all taking over our imagination, correct? That's what the whole gimmick is. AI is imagination that executives can buy and outsource human work to. Okay.

That's the message that nobody's saying about AI? That makes sense, yeah. Like, help me be a more adventurous cook. But it starts with telling you before you go to the store, though, right? You can't... There's no world where you have... Like, you don't have, like, leaks in your fridge. You're like, what am I going to do with all these leaks? Like, you fucking bought the leaks, right? Oh, no, yeah. There are leaks in the shoe can, I'll tell you. Okay, well, you know what? Leaks are good, so bad example by me. Well, I don't like them, so...

Okay. All right. Well, I'll see you later then. The tension in here is like palpable now. It's like leaks. Feels like there's a team leak and like a team anti-leak.

So I did see one thing I like, though. And I think it confused them because... So I found... So you know those golf simulators where you knock the ball into a screen and it has sensors? They had one for baseball. Oh. So it was all of these Korean guys. And I walk up and I'm like, how you doing? And they're already just like, British guy. This guy doesn't know anything about baseball. And I absolutely did. So I'm like, have you got partnerships with the KBO? And they're like, oh, uh...

Like, does this work? Is this like HitTrack? So to explain some baseball tech for you, it's actually fucking cool. If you go to like local batting cages, Z cages here in Vegas, just doing ads, they did not pay me. In fact, I pay them and they're very hard to schedule with sometimes. Anyway, what they have is a thing called HitTrack. So when you hit it, it sees the velocity of the ball and,

like where you hit it and such. And this stuff's fairly easily available. This thing, the thing is it requires an actual bat in case you build around this one. It's kind of like the golfing thing. It's like 15 grand. And they're like, Hey, you could buy one. I'm like, no, no, no. But I, and I was like, this is the only thing I'd like to see. Yes. And they seemed so happy. Yeah.

They seemed genuinely happy. And then they really wanted to sell me one. I was like, and then they seemed less happy. Are they trying to sell it to people or to bars? They're trying to sell it to teams. And I assume dying looking British men. And

Sadly, that's a very small market there. But that was really cool. And it's like, I did get this feeling walking around. I've spent the day in the Venetian Expo Hall. So the one right connected to the Venetian. I did get this weird feeling that CES gets done dirty because most of CES is so fucking boring. But not in a bad way. It's like more efficiency driving battery technology, mobility for this, and urine sensors and such. Yeah.

And I wanted to make, I saw urine and naturally I'm just like, photo. I'm like, oh wait, this is useful. It's good to look at pee, yeah. I love to, I love looking at the piss. They gave me one of the pee test kits, I haven't used it yet. I gotta see how my phosphates are, I guess. I was walking out of a CES once and I saw like an AI semen thing. And I really went to a go and be like, hey, can I have a go?

There is actually, I saw a booth that's like selling like, I guess it's a machine that like measures your sperm motility or something. And, you know, I don't think they were doing product on site, but who knows? I didn't see if there's a little booth in the corner. Yeah. Can I just, I got some with me. Okay.

But also, I did see a few things that really bothered me. And there was one where they had this VR glasses thing and it said, a new hope for autism and dyslexia. I'm going to be talking about this a few times on this show. Mover VR. And I walk over. I'm like, hey, so have you talked to the FDA about this? And the woman goes, what's that? Which is a good start. And I'm like, okay, well...

They're the ones you'd have to work with to make this legal in America. Oh, we're not a medical device. I'm like, oh, okay. So how is this good for autism? Well, it's great for autism and dyslexia. I just pause and I go, so I have someone in my family with autism. So I started getting a little bit pissed off. And I was like, okay, do you think those are the same things? And she said, no, they're different. How? Pause again. I go, what clinical trials have you done? Well, we've done clinical trials. I'm like, where? France. I'm like, oh, France.

What are you talking about? And just to be clear, the classic thing that autistic people love is putting new things on and new experiences. And this thing was, by the way, you put the glasses on and you had to move a character through letters to like do something. Okay. And let me just be clear. This person who I talked to clearly had not been asked a single question in their life.

Because they were very confused. I kept saying, how does this help autistic people? And they're like, they play the game. And I just want to say, if you are on this floor and you have anything to do with autism, and I find you, I'm putting you on this fucking show and I'm putting your ass on fucking blast because it's disgusting. I have noticed, not through Kickstarter, well, some through Kickstarter, but the impulse to take it easy on...

devices or products or whatever that are ostensibly for people who need help in various areas is like, that's tempting, right? To say like, oh, cool, somebody's trying to figure something out. But a lot of times there's so much worse than just the normal jack-off tech that it feels bad to evaluate them at all. Wasn't this the thing that Lena Kahn and you were talking about, Ed, about how like, oh, we're in a new area of technology. We want less criticism. We want more protection, less scrutiny. And this one is just...

And you're right, Jesse, there is a lot of stuff here where it's just like, oh yeah, we're helping people, so give us a break, okay? Now, I talked with Ben Wolfe, who's a friend of the show, and he sent a quote through about this company. He said, where I think they're utterly full of shit is the other testimonial on the website, MoverVR. The principles of the experience offered by MoverVR.

is to address the visual constraints found according to the TVPS4 manual in diagnosed learning disorders such as dyslexia, ADHD and DCD. This is frankly crap. Dyslexia is enormously variable in immersive environments and nonsensical "treatment". He's doing little air quotes around that. ADHD has no reason to be mechanically vulnerable to this kind of intervention.

the point is that none of these people talk to any fucking scientists and the tech media needs to go and harass them because you should not be able to come onto this floor and feel safe okay I don't mean physically from criticism there we go um

Because it just really bothers me. And a lot of what's in the expo hall in the Venetian is this stuff. There's so much health stuff. We were talking about yesterday. It's disgusting. Oh, you guys love health. Yeah, I love... No, I want to die. Like... Just, we will kill you, Inc. Like,

Like, you've been asked, like, oh, talk about something you're excited and happy about with tech. The baseball thing. And the workout. I haven't seen any workout shit. But you post your, like, process. All the time. Get jacked. That stuff is the stuff. I'm, like, using the Supernatural VR thing. Right. That's actually getting my heart rate up. And I see the chart and whatever. Yeah. It's a suitable alternative to going to the gym. It's a...

To avoid the weirdos, there is good stuff out there to get healthy in tech, but the Venetian floor is really condensed and too tight to make any sense of unless you're a team of 25 people. And The Verge doesn't have a 25-person health team. They got Victoria Song, one of the best. She's great. She's one of the best. I love Victoria. Yeah, she's got one of the single best. She's like the remaining wearable reporter. She's so good.

And now here's the thing. I'm just going to read you what this company, Wishtails AI, had on there. Empowering creators and consumers with multimodal AI, the iPhone turned anyone into a photographer. Wishtails empowers everyone to be a creator. I could not make heads or tails of what this company did. I do not know. They just did music, art, automations, create multimodal AI videos in MINS in 28 languages.

And it just says, ignite multimodal creativity. Imagine if they had any quality control here. I mean, this just sounds like stuff the iPhone already does. Yeah, but also you create multimodal video. No, you don't. What model are you fucking talking about? These people. The iPhone is mostly single modal, right? So that's like a huge... Because if you do more of the modals...

then won't that be like better and stuff yeah like a hundred bottles going right now that's insane that's like really cool I'm spinning them up I don't believe that's possible anything is possible if you lie

So, Tom, you've been looking at enterprise stuff. Is there anything good? Is there any joys? I mean, for the most part, this is mostly consumer electronics. I've been going around. There's a lot of interesting drones that are intended for, I guess, the B2B market. Interesting how? For industrial scanning and stuff. That's interesting. I mean, the big themes this year are AI and robotics, I think. Yeah.

There's just a lot of... There's so many robots. I mean, it's funny. So I forget what it's called, but I saw this one drone that's like a... I don't know, tetrahedron. I don't know, the big sphere. I don't know a sphere. It's just a sphere. A sphere with like...

I can't remember the name of the shape, but yeah, it's like a sphere. And it rolls around, and then it can also fly. But I was talking with the guys that made this, and I was like, all right, so what's the application of this? And he's like, actually, we're here to get ideas as to what the potential applications are. And I'm like, you built this before coming up with a business plan? Yeah, we're pre-reason. I mean, the only thing they had was they gave me a brochure where it was like...

little diagram of a pile of rocks and it just said search and rescue and then it had a picture of a tube and it's like industrial inspection and I'm like okay I guess if you have a really big tube that you need inspected this would be great I love rolling down large tubes I hope there's not any corners old fellas tube guys are eating good at this year's CES

All my tube issues. I'm glad my tube's going to be sorted by the end of this trip. Ah, this is a bad location to be. I also got this. At every CES, I do look up names. I have a lot of fun looking up names. I found one called Skeeper, an AI smart stethoscope. And when I showed this to Phil, our resident safety expert, he made this noise.

Edge AI technology application primary screening by AI for heart and lung health abnormalities. So I'm going to stop there before I get angry. What everyone is doing is they're just like, we had an algorithm before.

And we are just saying AI because otherwise they will realize it's the same thing from four years ago. And in fact, I feel like the theme right now for CES is, dang, we did this a year ago. And a lot of it is we had an algorithm and now we're slapping an additional layer on top that's like chat GPT. So basically it does the exact same thing it did before except you have an inaccurate robot relaying what's happening. And that's the thing. You can find dumb guys to not understand stuff for free.

You just get a bloke who's just like, I think. What? Okay, all right. Yeah, I mean, I ran into one that was like an AI-enabled scuba diver kit with the dive watches and stuff. And it's like, yeah, I could just swim over in a panic to the other diver and point at the watch and be like, uh-oh, what does this mean? And I missed, I was really upset that I didn't hit the floor yesterday because there was apparently a speech in the Web3 tokenization fintech section just called Metaverse and Quantum AI.

Oh my god. I'm so mad I missed it. We're still using the word metaverse in 2025? Really? I never understood why anyone fell for that shit in the first place, but the fact that some people are still chasing it is wild to me. I am also going to give a shout out to the only good booth here.

The Hangzhou Huoshi Lighting Co. Ltd. Just a big sign that said "Wooden Lamp". Nice. I just love that because everyone else is just lying. Everyone's just making shit up. It's like, "Oh, we've got a fucking lamp again." Oh no, sorry, I finally found it, the thing that I love the most. So I walked up to a booth where the sign said "Bridging Massage and Purification for your pet".

And I walked up and I'm just showing everyone right now. It is an air purifier with what looks like a spike on the end. Oh, yeah. My dog would like that. That's what they told me. Yeah. Because I walked up and said, hi, so I just was reading your sign. What does that mean? She says, oh, of course. Very ready for the question. Alarmingly so. And goes, well, you see the pet will kind of massage themselves. I'm like, on the spike.

And they will just... So the dog just does this. And she's like, yeah. And we have a lower one for smaller dogs. I'm like... Right. So the dog just...

shoves itself. Well, have you ever seen that with cows? They have like the big brushes on the farms that the cows walk up to and scratch their backs on? I have never seen a dog do this. I've never seen a dog massage themselves. Do you attach spikes to your walls? Yes. Of course. Right. But I've never seen a dog... Well, no, those are for the impaling, but it's a Prince of Persia situation. We'll get to it later. But it's... I've never seen a dog massage themselves against something. Anyone seen...

uh my dog will come in and kind of rub his back on the couch but not on the spike if the couch had a spike you know but it's also the spike is coming down yeah i don't know and this is a big booth as well these people have spent tens of thousands of dollars being like well gotta get the dog spike air purifier is that i don't know have you have you talked about that a lot like the actual economics of putting on a booth like sponsoring something

I probably should have looked that up, yes. What does it take to show up? I mean, obviously... Tens of thousands of dollars. I would guess like $100,000, honestly. For main hall, yes, absolutely. Wow. And it's crazy. It's like there's so much stuff that's theoretical. Yeah. Or pre-idea. Like, I don't know. And it's just so strange. But, so, Tom, did you see anything you like yet? Did you see anything good yet?

I like the massage chairs. I nearly fell asleep. Every year, the massage chairs fucking rock. They go, they scam guys who are going to CES for the first time. Like, oh yeah, it's $4,000. We'll do it for two. And it cost them $300. And yeah, it kind of like locked me into the chair. There was like panels that compressed me and I couldn't leave. I nearly fell asleep. That was great. Yeah. Anything else?

Can we get back to me on that? No, but it's fine if you don't have an answer. I saw some robots that were cool. There's this one company, I think BeatBot, that was working on a robotic turtle for environmental research. Sorry. That sounds really good. Sorry. I thought you meant a member of Entourage. And it actually looks like a turtle. I don't know.

I don't know why it needs to look like a turtle, but it apparently swims and everything, and you can launch it into the sea, and it does... It somehow does environmental research. Don't ask me how. When we kill all the turtles, due to global warming, we're just going to replace them with robots? Yeah, just in some post-apocalyptic future, those will be like level one enemies. Oh, no.

Just swarms of little robot turtles. Yeah, right now I have to kill the rats in the Vegas aqueducts to level up. Oh yeah, the Vegas sewers? Yeah, I go down there, I kill a few rats, then there's a giant one and I have to run out to the cops and they shoot me. Jesse, anything good?

Well, I was wondering. I was thinking maybe Tom would bring these guys up. I accidentally got sucked into the sole semiconductor booth. What? I didn't see that yet. Okay. So these guys basically make the most baller semiconductors you've ever seen in your life. I walked in. It's a pretty big booth. They did a cool thing where it was like...

They had some really post-apocalyptic messaging almost on the walls, but I think in a cool way, like an environmental type of way. The thing they had on the sign at the top was like, birth does not guarantee success. Opportunity must. Something like really, you saw this. It's almost a unity. It's a people empowerment. Yeah, yeah. And people are memeing the crowd.

I want to meet the guy you can swear. You can say fucking shit and balls and all the other ones. I love that as well because I want to meet the person who reads that and goes, damn. Other than Jesse. I thought it was great. So I walk immediately in and it's like a super serious guy and he's like, hey, how's it going? And I was like, hey, what's up?

up, you know, what are you guys doing and like immediately looking around and realizing there's nothing here that I know what it is so, but he was saying like hey, we make all the led backlights for like all of the tvs. I'm like hey, I like to be actually useful great, you know, or they do like you know most a lot of cars new cars now, especially have the the led headlights, tail lights and all that kind of stuff. So clearly they do that stuff too. That's great. I can't really make a joke about led headlights.

So I kind of got stuck in a conversation with him for about 10 or 15 minutes. But if you're just waiting to make a joke, I just truly trying to get out of there with yeah, anything at all, just trying to do something. I didn't. I almost said like, oh, so you're the guy should be mad at when I, you know, the lights are really bright on the road at night, but it looked like he wasn't even willing to like that wasn't going to go over at all. He would just be like, no, and then he scanned my badge. Ah,

And he's gonna send you an email. I had to run away really fast from the bad guy. The good thing is that with me, especially today, like, I'm fully energetic, so I'm just walking around with a black mask, and my eye's just fucking bulging out of my head, and I walk really fast, because I've done this show so many times that I just, I know exactly the route. So you just see this high-speed British man in a Jensen Huang-style leather jacket, just fucking making a beeline for you, taking three photos, going, what's this?

I actually apologize to anyone I've talked to. That sounds like a $2 horror game on Steam. But it becomes a hentai one later. Henry, is there anything you've liked? As much as I can be the negative person in any conversation, actually I have three things I want to say. That's three more than most. TCL, they have these Next Paper devices. They've had matte screens and stuff. Now they're doing something really actually great with it. I think

I expect Apple will have their own version of in two to three years. This thing is the next paper 11 plus tablet, which basically has a mode where it switches into basically an ink like screen mode, which will a incredibly good battery life. Probably. Oh yeah. B let your regular Android tablet become an e-reader looking thing. And it has a matte screen device. Sick. You know how Apple's got the iMac and the iPad now with matte screens, toss that technology onto an iPhone screen, uh,

put this mode on it and they're going to have battery life better than they've ever had. And then I'm not a huge fan of suitcase turntables. There's good reason that I think Crosley's sort of ruined the idea of a suitcase turntable, but Victrola has one that has hilariously, I think it's, it has lighting in the front that you can sync up to the music and it's 75 bucks.

It's called the Journey Glow, I believe. And it's like, if it's, Victrola is a trustable brand, I feel like, in sound. So it's like a suitcase here on the table that doesn't ruin your records. And they play Daft Punk on it. It sounds pretty good. And then I told you about this earlier. Lenovo's got a ThinkBook Plus Gen 16 laptop, mouthful of a name. But the laptop screen raises, it basically rolls up in size. So you can have a more vertical, but in the same size laptop.

It's your normal laptop. I didn't get to actually demo it because I had to run, but that's the laptop changing in a great way, which we don't say that often in this tech reviewer industry that I get to play in. Oh, hell yeah. It feels kind of strange having someone who remembered stuff they liked, though. I mean, actually, I'd be remiss not to bring this up, but some of the stuff I liked here isn't even electronics. Well, half the stuff here isn't even electronics. It's like the consumer product show at this point.

But there was this one company, they were the most popular booth at this event last night that was selling like little metal strips that you, or advertising little metal strips that you put on your nose to like sleep better at night. And they work fantastically better than I, like I've got sleep apnea. I assume 80% of people that go to CES have sleep apnea. So, I mean, it was wild. There's like 20 people lined up and this guy was like doing his like carny thing of like gluing these to people's noses. Well, this has been such a wonderful episode.

We'll start with you, Tom. Tom, where can people find you? People can find me on x.com at the Tom Zone, or they can find me at Blue Sky at, don't judge me, catterd2.bsky.social. He is catterd. Jesse, where can people find you? Your Kickstarter sucks is the podcast, and Go Off Kings is the Twitch stream. I think it's jesseferrar.com on Blue Sky. And yeah, all the links are from there.

And Henry? I write primarily for CNN underscore, which you can open instantly just by typing in underscore.com. I also have a newsletter and all sorts of stuff, which is accessible from henrytcasey.net. That's henrytcasey.net. And also that's my blue sky name too.

And as we close off this block of the episode, I just want to say something really quick before we go to an ad break. Just want to say Henry brought up Daft Punk. Daft Punk have not made a good album since Discovery. Human After All is dog shit. It is repeated. Like...

bits and I thought the soundtrack of Tron was kind of boring. Come at me. I'm sick of hearing about Daft Punk being good anytime recently. Human After All pissed me off so much. Anyway, coming up after this ad break, we're going to have even more wonderful people from CES. And if Daft Punk is listening, try not looping. Try doing something interesting with your electronic music. You and me, Daft Punk. I'm sick of it.

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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, does

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Two, three, four. I did four fingers up. My brain is coming out of my goddamn ears. I am dying. But I'm joined by amazing people, nevertheless. Edwin Gueso Jr. is to my right, of course. Hello. How's everyone doing? Jesse Farrar, of course, from Your Kickstarter Sucks. Hello. And we have the other one, Mike Hale from YKS, who is fresh from a tech company called Kohl's.

Tom McKay, of course, from IT Bro. And we're back talking about CES, but Ed Ongreso Jr., you've been on the main hall, the main floor. How was that? I mean, would you be surprised if I told you everything is powered by AI now? What? Every single thing. Please elaborate. You know, AI refrigerators. Okay, but...

To what end? Well, you know, you need something that recognizes what time of day you decide to have certain types of coffee.

And how much of that to keep. Morning, right? Morning? Right, morning. Okay. All the time for me. You might be a freaky chica and want to have it at lunch, you know? Whoa. I didn't know there was a legal tech. Right. But one that I was really interested in is this company that is saying, hey, look, the future of technology, it's minimalism. We want...

to reconnect you with human nature. And the way that we're going to do that, the way we're going to get you off your screen, we're going to give you a headset that you have to keep on for nine hours a day, and it will give you uninterrupted access to your artificial intelligence suite of...

Therapists, productivity assistants. So your connection with human is with AIs? Yes. But that's so that you can reconnect with human nature. And it will give you notifications by calling you. It will forward you to therapists that you talk to, friends that you talk to, powered by Claude, almost exclusively. That sounds like something you pick up in the tutorial level of like Bioshock. Yeah.

Yeah, you know, this is the tutorial. Was this a big company? No, they are connected with this other company. This is a side venture of another company. Because it was the main hall. So the LVCC, it's remarkable because it's so expensive to be there. Like we were talking about the economics earlier. You're talking 100 grand through the door, I'm sure. And it's like, so we're doing 100 grand for this thing that is just...

barely conceptual. Yeah, that's also the thing. As they emphasize most of these things

do not exist yet they have demos that the demo did not work when I was there what happened what happened couldn't just couldn't even hear me couldn't connect to the internet couldn't recognize any command whatsoever they were like well you know see actually the thing that happened is one of our guys took the mic home so it actually works really well and did work with it I have no idea they did not he's chewing on it he gets nervous you know he's playing with it you know um

But yeah, so this idea here is uninterrupted access to an AI so that you can reconnect to your human nature, which is to talk to a bunch of assistants. Did they explain why this reconnects to the human? Yeah, who, why would you do that? Because you don't, you look at your screen.

Okay. So you talk to your microphone though. Yeah. And that's different. Yeah. It's very different. No dopamine loop. Okay. So you're not looking at a screen. Right. But you are talking to the microphone. Yeah. Are you just staring into the abyss during? No, you're just walking around daily life. Just like doing something else. But then they also admit that, oh yeah, also they'll ask you to get on your phone a lot. You know? Yeah.

Way ahead of you. Already on my phone. It's like that movie Her, except she's constantly reminding you to buy paper towels. It's like, hey, remember to go on this website and buy gifts. Hey, take a picture of this so I can analyze it and put it in a search engine. Hey, go on this Discord channel. Hey, talk to another. Always constant notifications to get back on your phone. But it's about getting off your phone. And that's the thing. Katie Notopoulos over at Business Insider said this last year. Very good thing. It's like, I love my phone.

It's where all my stuff is. Yeah. I'm on my phone because, I don't know, I have to look at the real world. Who wants to do that? The ultimate use case for the voice-activated technology has always been being in the car. Because we're in America, everyone drives a car. It's the most dangerous thing to do except for to try to put your drink on a side table. Okay, Jesse, unblast on my fucking podcast. Jesus Christ. I just party fouled. Oh.

And it went down like perfectly as well. So it's like a really like, it's a real sploot. Classic cartoon spill. Well, well, well. It's really not your fault because the side table has a slight rate. It's like a, there's a slight raised area in the middle of the side table. I mean, yeah, I'm like, I like have a knife out and I'm just pointing. Really? When you think about it, it's the table's fault.

Yeah, the table did this. Yeah, that's right. We're all mad at the table, obviously. Yeah, that's right. Okay. That's why you should have picked up a semen smart table. What's a smart table do? I wish that was real. There was a smart table a few years ago. Table? It was just the vessel. Vessel and table, of course. Thank you, the beautiful bartender Phil Broughton is here to clean up my mess. May I have another, please?

I'm drinking something called the Lahar, which is Phil's black blood of the earth with some vodka and Irish cream. Thank you, Phil. Anyway, what were we talking about? Ed, so... Oh, yeah, and the name of the thing is it's Italian for human nature. I'm forgetting this. Human natura. Natura umara. Jesus Christ. Do you see... What else? What else was it? I feel like coming home and finding my kid has fucked up a bunch of shit. What else did you see there?

I mean, that was the one that pulled me in because they had a giant banner that said AI people above it. Oh, good. And I was like, oh, okay. So, you know, I walked up and I was like, well, where are the AI people? And then it's like, you know, they have five phones on a table and then another five elsewhere, some iPads. And they're like, they're in here. And you just put this on and they talk to you. But they don't. Yeah. Yeah.

This is something I noticed, that all the AI this year seems to be marketed as AI for people. Because it's finally reaching a point where they're trying to create... It feels like they're trying to create the market for AI stuff by forcing it on people. And in doing so, they kind of have to reassure them that this is not as dog shit as you think it is. But it is, though. Yeah, it is. Some of it's really bad, yeah. It's so funny as well, because...

I'm really like the pig that they would sell slop to. Like, I love my gizmos and doodads and apps and such. If there was anyone to sell shit to, it's me.

And it's just not fun. It's boring. There's no use case. Yeah. There's still no use. It's like a fucking whole industry built around finding the use case for a technology. And it just doesn't exist. An entire show. I met with Kohl's and we're doing some great use cases for AI. Like if you want, say, like a larger than normal type of hoodie, sweatshirt, they might not have it. Yeah.

You can speak to an AI agent and it'll tell you to breathe. I did walk over to a booth earlier that said AI agent. And this is kind of me being a dickhead. But I just went, what kind of agent? He goes, I'm like, oh, good. So what model? Chat GPT. I'm like, great. So how is this agentic? He goes, you talk to him. I'm like, that just sounds like chat GPT. He goes, yeah, but it's an agent. I'm like, how?

And he just looks at me terrified. I don't understand how everybody's building these industries and businesses and stuff around chat GPT subscriptions. It's like you're hooked into the chat GPT API and you're building a business on top of that. I don't understand how it works. And then the magic of venture capital. I forget what economist I wrote about that said this, but it was the idea that AI is almost now a tax

on the rest of the tech industry. It's like a software tax where you need to pay to have it in your product because everybody else does. And all it really does is suck money out of everything else. And it's great, though. So, Ed, I'm going to assume you saw nothing useful. It's actually really funny because I was walking towards something that said AI agent, kind of like the promised land when you hit me up and you said, come back. We were recording. Did you guys see the toaster where you can print...

of your loved ones on pieces of toast. That is actually real. Did you really see that? I did not see that. So you can...

Fake news. Very unfair to Toaster Prince. I totally believe that, honestly. Yeah, you got me, too. It's in the menu. Well, those are tortillas. Do you remember that? We're going to do a few minutes. It's a miracle. Yeah, we're building up to the final episode where I'm going to do something called the menu. Hope everyone joins me. I'm going to lock the doors. I think also the thing with this Natura Umana, whatever the hell the Italian name is, for

Similar to your point about making markets, I feel like this one is trying, because they were like, the end goal is to be able to make it connect to apps for you. So you could go to your mom's house, you could order movies or order in. And it's like, okay, so I feel like they're trying to pretend as if, or they're trying to train people into accepting the disappointment that comes with insisting agents are around the corner. None of that is agents. Exactly. No, you're right. So AI agents are meant to be these autonomous things and they're never...

But that's what we talked about that other episode. They're not, but they keep misnaming things or presenting bullshit. So then...

I think this is part of the training process. But the training customers. It feels like they're basically just prepping people to have Netflix scream at you. This is pedantic, but this is the thing that really drives me nuts. It's like you were saying, training people to expect certain things or to hear words and actually imagine something else. Algorithm is something that now means a bunch of different things.

where it's like now people who I think for the most part share our mindset, sort of a skeptical mindset towards tech and all that kind of stuff. When we hear the word algorithm, our back gets up immediately because we think, well, that's bad. But it's like algorithm is not even bad. It's like a thought process. It's like saying database. Yeah, right, exactly. Everything has an algorithm in it. You're using an algorithm when you make a decision, but now it's got this tech stink grafted onto it

and now we have to turn away. So eventually we'll go away from AI, right? And it'll be like, there's no algorithms in this at all. And it's like, well, I don't even, how's that possible? It's smart. Well, what I like about that is it's also describing a bunch of things that are not problems. Mm-hmm.

Like, no one is like, oh, I had to go over to my fucking mom's house and I had to order a movie. That took forever. I was like, oh, fuck it. That took me several seconds. Like, that is a solved problem. I'm not, none of the things they just go, well, how are you going to order dinner? I don't know. I,

I've never done that before. Also the idea that like if you and your spouse, like let's say you and your spouse like take a long time to settle on a movie that a robot like interjecting in the middle of the conversation, it's going to speed this up. It reminds me of one of my favorite click hole pieces. Which of my garbage sons are you? And they're like, yeah, we named one of our sons Lance and Blake. And the reason they did that was because they picked two names they didn't like and

And named that for one son, which I think is kind of indicative of the Consumer Electronics Show entirely. It's like we can't come up with a good idea, so we chose five bad ones. So anything else you see over there? I saw something where they were scanning your face to present what your internal health looked like as an interactive city where organs... What?

What the hell? Your organs, the way that they interacted with each other, were depicted on the screen as if they were a city. Are there little cells walking around as computers? No, it's literally just a city. My doctor has been wanting me to do this. He keeps telling me I have to do it. He's like, hey, is that an abandoned part of town? You got to get that checked out. You're in a red state. It's like your leg's just fucking falling off. It just zooms in on the liver and it explodes. I'm dead.

It's okay to live in a red state. I'm not saying it's a problem other than the fact that the governance might not be so big on the social services side. We actually get vouchers for those, so it's not a big deal. Every time she asked to scan my face, I just felt like I was being asked to put my skull up to a measuring device. Can we get some of your blood? Get that shit away from me. I thought you were going to say that it scanned and it just went, no.

Every time I was like, please, no, no, no. Just added a bunch of please to the city. Oh, well, would you step to the side? You match the description. Wait here. But what else? Come on, there must be a thing. I spent some time trying to look at... There's a lot of virtual twin, digital twin stuff in manufacturing, in optimizing industrial operations. And this health system was...

was an offshoot of this virtual twin thing where, you know, there were two or three boots set up next to each other and the idea was if we can scan you and we set up your virtual twin, you can tweak with it, you can experiment with it, we'll give you more insight into the virtual twin.

And to you, there were AI medical assistants and AI caregivers kind of extending off what we were talking about the other day, where it's like, we are going to give you very colorful, detailed and graphically designed data and

convince you to... What kind of data? A lot of it seemed to be basic metabolic stuff. So stuff you could get and likely already have. Yes, right. But if you buy into this...

or this application, buy into the ecosystem again, then you'll be able to gain more insight into your stress or into concerning health. Next time you see one of these companies, can you just ask a very simple question? What am I meant to do with all this data? Mm-hmm.

Be healthy. Okay. So wait, it tries to guess your metabolic health by scanning your face? No, these ones are different. These ones, yeah. No, not that one. That's insane. That would never happen. Yeah, that's actually the tagline of CES. Isn't that basically phrenology? Yes.

In fact, I mean, you know, yesterday I saw... We invented digital calipers. That was like, oh, we are not a medical device. But if you let us scan your skin, not if you're black, because we don't have the technology for that. But if you let us scan your skin, we can tell what your blood sugar is.

We can tell what a host of other metabolic indices are for you, and we can determine what your stress is, whether you are eating correctly, what you need to do to rein it back in. Well, this is... That's... So, sorry. That's... What you said is a huge problem. I mean, that's like... That's... Our product currently does not support black people. That's insane. Microsoft Connect, baby. There was a Connect on the floor, which I don't know if you saw. Why? Well...

Because... Why not? We demoed a... Well, so this...

snowboard game or something like that. Oh, is that the court one? There was like an Abbott court thing where you could ball up with some people in Wii Sports. It actually wasn't that good. I thought as an outsider, I always thought, see... You do a snowboard game and it tests your depression level or something. She said, we've never had readings this high before. Your score is wellness check.

We are calling your mother. So it's just a big TV. Well, it was a big gaming monitor. So already we're... I thought CES was like, this is where the newest, biggest TVs are. And that's true. I don't know where they are, but they're probably somewhere. I see them. I mean, they're in the Las Vegas convention center. Yeah, there were some big-ass TVs there. There's some big TVs. So instead of being a TV, this was an 85-inch gaming monitor. Okay. Ooh. Yeah, yeah. Big-ass.

crazy positive reaction to what I assumed was basically an impossible thing to use because even like a 40 inch TV in front of your face on the desk is like crazy. Yeah, yeah. This is not a desktop. This is like, but why would you? I'm sorry. I use a 50 inch screen. That's like a foot and a half in front of my face. You are crazed.

I have to have windows at like 150% zoom. - I got my X videos corner. I got my steam. - Tom is laying down on the floor with the microphone dangling over him. So it's really huge for a monitor, but also if you want an 85 inch thing, just get a TV. If you're going to play console stuff on it, just get a TV. You don't need the super high refresh rate and it's 5K, it's not 8K. If you're going to do something stupid, make it 8K. It makes no sense. Anyways, they seem like perfectly nice people, but it's a 5K, 85 inch monitor.

And they had, to demo it, they had like these little skis on the ground that I stepped on too dutifully. And I played an Xbox Kinect game modded to run off of like a little Toshiba laptop that was plugged. It wasn't a fucking little... First of all, it was hard. My guy kept getting messed up because they put the wood on the ski slopes, which is like, why would there be wood on those downslopes, dude? This is a double diamond. Really high on the depression score, but...

But why would you have that? Can we talk about the thing, though? So you were bad at the ski game. We've established that. I don't think that's like that's what he said. He's saying it's the worst. It's debated. It's a narrative. I don't know if I believe it. But it was, yeah, it was the demo of this gaming monitor, but using technology that's like 15 years old. Why didn't they just play an Xbox game? I don't know. In the same...

kind of area there was like a I tried on like an eyeglass thing or whatever and it was like an Android app or something that was like 9 by 16 on like a display it was cropped vertically and stuff it looked very bad but it was just like

To Ed's point, why would you... Okay, you're going to spend a ton of money and it's a slush fund for the executives. Okay, that's fine. Have a good time or whatever. Why would it not be... Why wouldn't it not be like a finished product at any point in the thing? I just don't... It feels like... But also, if you're demoing a monitor, why not get something that looks good and is fun to play? I don't know. I think one thing I've been realizing and I didn't actually...

realize is the case, most of these things do not seem to be finished and everyone's fine with that. I actually loved standing next to people and listening to them as they dealt with a fully unfinished product and being like, oh, wow. It feels like a lot of this stuff is ostensibly supposed to be a preview of what's coming, but the what's coming depends on whether anybody pays attention to their booth. Pardon me for interrupting here on my podcast. Yeah.

I was looking through my pictures of things I'd taken pictures of today, otherwise known as the Photos app on my phone, and I found this thing called Alize, your choice, your companion. And just showing everyone, it appears to be like some sort of horrifying metal face you put, and it has some sort of AI companion. But I didn't read any of the highlighted characteristics, which, by the way, is what it says.

And you go, it says, speaks your way, instantly mimics and plays any voice you love. Big promise. Expressive and natural, syncs facial expressions perfectly with her speech. And based on this image, no, it does not. I want to fuck her. I was just going to say, I already predict the primary market. Well, Jesse, you're about to regret saying that.

Behaves different personalities. Yes, behaves different personalities. There is a surprising lack of attention to detail on the stuff that's written, right? Well, there is some detail you wouldn't love. From a playful lolly to a confident boss lady. Confident boss lady, I could see myself doing. Yeah, well, the lolly part. How much? Smart with a memory. Powered by advanced AI that remembers and adapts more customized service in replaceable silicon facial masks.

Oh, so it's a physical mass too? Yeah, but... Wait, is this just like a head that sits on your desk? We're bringing back Sophia. We're bringing back the Saudi... We're bringing back body horror. So for people who are at CES, I think I mentioned this before, the best shit you can find is on the fringes. You need to go to the back. You need to go to the back and find the guy who's like wooden lamp. Like the only honest guy at CES is the guy with... And there was one that just said, Felix is hot.

That's true. It is true. And I also love the names like Power Cube, Semi Inc., Potential Convergence, Smart. Oh, I need that. I need that shit. And there's a whole Kyrgyzstan thing. Empower your innovations with electroactive polymers. Actually, that sounds real. Manage your neck, shoulders, and back through acupressure, massage, and moxibustion. Every time I walk around the show, I just see shit. Did you see the portable air conditioner you wear around your neck?

It just like... Otherwise known as a fan? It blasts air at your ears. Yeah. That's a fan. We have those. But can you wear a fan around your neck? Yes. Hey, a fan is not going to give you tinnitus. I have that already. I have that. I've had that since I was a child. Every moment is pain for me. So that's why we're here though. So...

Within this AI stuff, did you find the same thing as me where it's just no one really knows what they're talking about? And when you ask them questions, they go chat GPT. And if you ask them another question, they start having a panic attack. Or it seems a little frustration with asking why the AI. And I'm like, well, it's because I'm trying to figure out if it's generative bullshit or if it's an actual thing underneath.

And when I'm talking to industry experts, analysts, or people that have trade associations and stuff, I get the strong sense that it's frustrating for them, too, because they're being asked to weigh in on this market that's so nebulous. And it's impossible to tell whether any of this is actually going to pay off. It's just insane to me. We're hours into this shit. My soul is being ripped away. Yeah.

There's something for that. If you go to the convention center, they put the soul back into you. Yeah, actually, you should check out the demo for this human nature thing I was talking about. You can talk to Athena, which is like the wellness AI people. Her boons are terrible. I like the soul cube idea. The thing that CES hasn't really gotten into yet is like crystals and crystal energies. We need to bring that.

I actually wonder how far you could go just making up shit. You should get credits for how clean your soul is. You can exchange those credits for... Yeah, soul-based social credit system. I just think that that's what pisses me off. There's obviously some quasi-fraudulent thing. Where is the real fraud? Where are the people who are just like, yep, it's the soul cube? Do you ever see those guys who make those devices that are like...

like just measurers for like various body shit it's like this the pseudoscience right right right yeah yeah and they sell like the e-meters or whatever yeah yeah why aren't they here I actually yeah Scientology booth or it fits yeah ghost hunting technology like you see a whole ghost thing there's no probably don't insist that CES is haunted right honestly I want to do that one yeah that's what the

product demo fails they're like actually this is a good thing right the ghost is telling me you should invest 40 million dollars right now it's never done that before you just like Tom a Tim a Tim Tam Tom give me your phone right now the ghost needs to see your ID what's your what's your what's your mother's maiden name the ghost wants to scan your badge get your email address maybe yeah it's

that's the thing like I don't mind if someone's just obviously scamming like yeah I'm a ghostbuster I'm a ghostbuster I'm here with the ghostbusters and that's what I do here at CES we spend $150,000 on ghostbusting and if it breaks you just go you kind of ghost that's why you need us yeah I think the

In reality, the real answer, I think, maybe you know more about this than me. Maybe somebody knows more than I do about something, although it's hard to imagine. I feel like the reason that there's not like the level one gimmick grift guy on the floor is because, like with everything else, there's so many levels of detachment. Like you have a problem and you want to call somebody and yell at them about it.

or get it fixed, I guess, if you want. But you can't, because the person you talk to is not empowered to do anything for you, and that's on purpose. And now there's an extra layer of AI stuck in between you and even that person. But the people who show up on the floor are just like, when you ask, what is this chat GPT? That's literally all they know, because the guy who makes the decision is so far away. And also, it does not work. It doesn't work either, right. But I think, actually, what I'm going to start doing is anytime I see AI now, I'm just going to replace the word with ghost. Yeah.

Okay. Yeah. Ghost. Just like, oh, we have ghosts. There is a ghost in the machine. I might actually just stop asking people about it. And they'll be like, what's the ghost do? What's the ghost do? That's chat GPT. Yeah, the ghost. The spirit. How do you get the spirit out? What? What?

Why would you want the spirit out? The spirit does all the thinking for you. Just walk over. I'm very haunted. How are you going to help? I generally don't do bits with any of the people here because just to be clear, the reason that no one should, and some listeners have brought this up, like, oh, you should go and yell at them.

The poor fuckers who are on the floor. These are PR people, sometimes external PR people. Or they're just like a marketing person who, to Jesse's point, is not empowered to answer a real question. And they have to deal with everyone at CES. And 50% of the people at CES are trying to make partnerships with other people that can't tell you what their products do. And it's like, oh, these...

I admit with the company that claimed to be a new hope for autism and dyslexia, I got a little heated, which is why I walked away. And if you weren't here for this, they claimed that their smart glasses would help both dyslexia and autism. And my experience with that is that's bullshit. But yeah, there's a reason that you can't really put the boots to these people. And I actually think it's deliberate. They want to put a layer of it.

abstraction between them and the responsibility for their thing actually doing anything. So they've got a fucking marketing person and these people are there and they're working like 10 hour days doing like just standing there. And if it's a bad show, you're just standing alone. Well, the marketers are the real heroes, aren't they? Don't you find? Yeah, yeah. They're basically troops. Yeah, that's what I...

Except their job's more dangerous than the troops. Okay, as we trundle towards the end, Edward Ongreso Jr., where can people find you? You can find me on Twitter and Blue Sky, BigBlackJacobin. You can find me, my newsletter, thetechbubble.substack.com and my podcast, This Machine Kills, where we talk about tech. Jesse Verah, Michael Hale, where can people find you? Mike and myself host Your Kickstarter Sucks. And Mike, did we get the custom domain on Blue Sky, yourkickstartersucks.com?

I believe we did, yeah. You can also find me at coles.com slash about slash people dot html. No, I think Coles took down the about page because of the stuff that's going on, so you're not going to... They don't want people to find you. Just to be clear, Michael's name is commonly Dog Boner. Tom, where can people find you? You can find me at itbrew.com or on Twitter at twitter.com slash the Tom Zone or on Blue Sky at...

catcher2.bsky.social. It's an embarrassing name. That's an embarrassing name. He joined Blue Sky and was posting about how there's a scammer about warning his people before immediately getting banned.

And as the listeners know, I am your cult leader. And you can find me, if there's an Ed Zitron, it's probably me, unless it isn't. And if you choose the wrong one, well, that means you're not chosen. But if you need to spend your money from your hog slop job, where you go out and you smash windows and you steal things from cars and you con people and you're walking around the street thinking, where's my next victim? How will I extract value from them? Well, when you get your ill-gotten gains, the next ads will probably...

be for something you can spend them on. Ideally, you want to operate in cash. If these are digital, you need a prepaid debit card. Email me at, what is it, tom.mckay at, no, sorry, ed at, no, no, no, just google crime and that's where you'll find my email.

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...

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And we're back, and I assume you have bought or downloaded whatever it was they just sent. If you didn't, that's a real personal insult to me, and you know how I feel about that. So we've had a slight rotation. To my right is Tom McKay of IT Brew, of course. Hey, how's it going? And actually, over across from me is Max Cherney of Reuters. Hello, internet! And...

Thank you. Glad someone respects the computer. And Jesse Farrar of your Kickstarter sucks, of course he's back. Well now I'll be on the left. He's on the left as he has not been. No, okay. Come on now, hey, come on. Whoa. So Max, I'm actually really excited to have you here because we have spent like several hours just like dunking on this. Just like making fun of stuff and being annoyed at stuff. But you are here covering chips and silicon and such.

What have you seen? What has Nvidia done? Actually, that's a great point. What has Nvidia covered this trip? Sure, absolutely. I mean, they've unveiled a few new things. In terms of silicon specifically, they launched a computer called Digits, which is essentially one of their supercomputers compressed in something even smaller than a Mac Mini. And that's like the $3,000 one, right? That's the $3,000 one. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

And so that was kind of an interesting thing. We've reported that they're going to make PC chips themselves. So this is potentially on the road to producing some kind of laptop or desktop PC chip themselves. So when you say, what is this machine for, this $3,000 NVIDIA computer? Because I've seen a ton of coverage, but no one will actually tell me what it's for.

Well, it looks like mostly it's for researchers and people that want to do experiments with AI or code with AI or essentially just research.

do things that require giant computers on a small scale. So is it generative AI focused? Well, I mean, of course you can run generative AI apps with it, but they sort of pitched it as something that was geared for researchers and developers. Interesting. Because the way it's being reported is...

by other people is that it's some sort of replacement for the large-scale GPUs that are being used for like inference for, so inference being the thing when you make a request from ChatGPT, for example, and it generates an answer. So it's not really for that. That's not the business use case.

It didn't look like it to me. It looked like, I mean, maybe you can run, of course, I'm sure you can probably run out on it, but of course, but it, but it looks like it's set up the design for, you know, somebody who wants a computer in their office or I don't know, at their university or whatever, just given the price point. And it, you know, the setup it showed was with a monitor and a keyboard and a mouse. And so it's, it's definitely like a, it's like a,

personal computer, effectively. It runs Linux, so that also means it's probably not a consumer machine. Right. Because most consumers are not willing to learn how to use Linux or won't do it or whatever. So it should be able to run like 11 Chrome tabs on it. So, also I hate to do this, Max, if you wouldn't mind turning your microphone just slightly. We've had a late entrant. We have the wonderful Matt Binder who made his way up here. Thank you, Matt. Thanks for having me, Ed. It's finally...

I finally met you in person. Matt Binder and I have been on this podcast like three or four times, of course, Scam Economy. Yes, yes. And we've never met in person. We've never met in person. Now we have, he's on my podcast. So, Max, back to you for a question. So, what else was announced in general with Silicon on this, with the hardware in general? Absolutely. I mean, the...

As always with the big chip makers, they announce new PC, usually gaming stuff. NVIDIA announced a bunch of new line of gaming chips, the RTX 50 series.

They're claiming the low end on that series is able to deliver performance that's capable of what the high end of the current RTX series is. Yeah, they use a technique called DLSS, which is just a fancy way of saying they use AI to predict what the next frame in the game is going to look like. At the moment, they're rendering two frames at once. This one can render four frames at once. But it's on the hardware side, not... On the hardware side. Right. Yeah, yeah. This is all hardware.

And this is differentiated from, when you say AI, this is separate to generative AI. I don't know exactly how it works, just to be clear. DLSS has been around for longer than the current boom, though. Yeah, oh yeah, DLSS has been around for, I don't know, four or five years, I want to say, but don't quote me on that particular word. We don't know things here, don't worry.

But, okay, let's move you up to Matt Binder, of course. Matt, what have you seen so far? What have you been cursed with on this eternal trip? I've been covering a lot of, like, weird stuff. And I did a lot of AR glasses. How are those? You know, I have yet to find one that I could actually, would actually use. Like, sure, you put them on and they're cool to, like, see because some of them have different ways of doing things. But, like, there was one, for example, that, like,

There's no lens. And usually it's the holiday glasses. What is a holiday glass? Holiday. So they're basically air glasses where the... Oh, you mean holiday like a name? Holiday, yes. That's what I'm trying to say. Yeah, I'm just British. That's my problem. Yes.

So basically the AR part isn't built into the lens. It's built into the rim. Okay. So it's a little like a circular screen where basically you put the glasses on and your eye is meant to look at the circular screen above the lens. Oh, that's where I generally look. Yeah, of course. And I couldn't use it without going cross-eyed. I immediately was going... Sick. Sick.

I love the experience of being hurt by things. Right, right. So, I mean, the idea is interesting, but, you know, I think for me, though, the thing at CES is always, what's not here anymore? How do you mean? Like, you can see where the tech industry thinks it's going based on what has just disappeared from the previous years. Like, what buzzwords...

are companies staying away from that they used to proudly say they were back, you know, last year or the year before. Like what? Like I came here two years ago for the first time and every company had to say they were doing something in the metaverse. Hell yeah. Every company was a metaverse company.

And this year, I don't think you can even find the word. Well, I did. I found a Metaverse and Quantum AI panel that I missed. A panel though? Was there actually any Metaverse product? I don't know because I missed it, which makes the trip a failure. So did you see anything you enjoyed or was it mostly pain? I mean, there's stuff that I've seen that worked, but...

Again, I don't think I'd ever use it. I love that quality level with this show. It functioned. The weirdest thing I saw is hands down that, I don't know if you've seen it, the electric salt spoon thing.

No. Okay. It's by this Japanese company named Kirin. Okay. And it's actually available in Japan. So that's already ticking off a rarity at a CES. That exists. Something that's actually in stores and available. Right, right, right. So basically, their goal is to have people eat less salt. And they want to make your low-sodium foods taste saltier without actually adding salt. So how do they make it taste better? They send an electric current through the spoon to your tongue. Okay.

So just so we're clear, just so we're clear as I begin to disassociate live on air,

It's a special spoon. It's a special spoon. Oh, good. And I mean, listen, it worked. Wow. Like the food did taste a bit saltier. And I know because I thought at first I thought it was like a placebo effect. Like, oh, they told me it tastes saltier. So my brain now thinks it's saltier. But then I fucked up the usage of it. Some Merovingian shit. Yeah. But then I messed up while using it and it turned off mid sip of the soup they provided. Yeah.

And then my spoon broke. Right. So the soup actually did taste less saltier as I'm drinking it when the machine shut off. So I was like, oh, wow, it works. But also, I would never buy this $130 spoon. Waiter, my spoon's uncharged. But actually, yeah. So did it have a battery? It was like, yeah, it was a battery-powered spoon. Yeah.

So assuming you have multiple people eating in your house. Right. So the spoon handle and the actual ladle or whatever you'd call it, they're separate parts. So you can replace. Oh, good. I love my spoon to be multiple parts. Yes. Yes. Thankfully, only two, though. They could have went really crazy with it. So you'd need like these. Was it actually one hundred thirty dollars? I believe it was like one hundred in Japan, though. They're not selling it in the US yet. Yeah, they got money there. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, to me, it's like the idea is noble. I must find the spoon. Where's the spoon? It was at the first night, the media night unveiled. I don't know where it was on the show floor. They're going to hide it from me. They want me to look at that spoon. So you need to buy multiple ones of these ostensibly. You're right.

Some rich-ass guy who's like, yeah, now you don't need much salt at all. I mean, you could, I guess, you know, eat your food one at a time and just wash the spoon after every juice and invite a bunch of people over and pass the spoon around. Combined with so not... Does it work with not soup? They just had soup there to try. It's a good question.

And I'm assuming it's got to work with things that are not soup. But otherwise, well, okay. No, no, no, no, no, no. I mean, what if you pick up the spoon by accident? What else are you eating where you would reduce the salt that wasn't soup? A lot of things. But what is the thing? Fried rice? I don't know. Yeah, but like, wait, are you...

Where are you adding the salt with fried rice? Okay, that's a good point. I don't know. And why are you eating with a spoon? Yeah. You don't need fried rice with a spoon? That's fork-coated. You don't need this one to eat ice cream. So this is just a very expensive soup-related technology. I mean, again, Japanese company, they eat a lot of soup over there. They do.

I'm just thinking about this spoon and I really feel there's always a point at CES where I begin to go insane when I begin to just like think of the special salt spoon and then I call my therapist and I say, "I'm thinking of the spoon." Anyway, did you see anything you liked though? Everyone has the same answer. It's a sigh and then a space of time. Right. Well, hey, wait a second. I mean, some of the chips look pretty cool. Actually, yeah. Max, you take this question before so Matt can try and think of something he liked.

I mean, I don't chill for any of these companies, but AMD... But if you like something, please tell us. Well, AMD, Intel, and NVIDIA did all announce new chips. Arguably, they all look pretty interesting for different reasons. AMD did something pretty unique. They added this technology called unified memory to their latest gaming processors. What does that do?

Apple did it a few years ago. It basically just makes the chip faster. It means that the memory and the CPU can talk to each other much more quickly, which allows more speedy graphics and more speedy computing power. But it is actually an interesting thing. I haven't tried it. I don't have any benchmarks, so I have no earthly idea how it performs in the real world. But theoretically, the technology is pretty good. So as I'm speaking for the listeners that don't know stuff and myself...

How does that manifest into something good? Is it just that the hardware and the software, the hardware parts talk to each other? Max, I think I can take this one. Basically, he's trying to say basically is it goes like so the chip goes into... More tabs. Yeah, well, it's more... More browser tabs. And to be clear, this is for computers. 90s.

Oh, okay. Yeah, so if you just think about whenever you... You probably have a computer at home right now, right? I don't right now, but... Well, a lot of people may have computers, and these chips basically can go in them. So from there, it's just pretty cool stuff, actually. Damn, I love logging on. Okay, Matt, anything enjoyable? I mean, the TVs are cool. Okay, yeah. I mean, how can you... And the gaming monitors, the really big curved monitors. Like, I would never...

buy these things because they cost like thousands of dollars. Well, yeah, you're in journalism. Right, right, right. I mean, one thing I like is that coming to CES, it is now clear that at least as a technology product, crypto is dead. There is no cryptocurrency. No blockchain bullshit. Nothing.

absent completely. Now I mentioned Metaverse and like, you know, Metaverse is just like silly, but like it is actually a breath of fresh air to finally see that the tech industry, at least that represented by CES has seemed to move on, moved on completely from crypto blockchain. I remember two years ago, every company, whether it doesn't matter if they were like a, a special electronic dental floss company, whatever, they all wanted to give you a free NFT. If you come to their booths,

There is not a single, I don't think the words NF or T are even here at CES. If you find them, please email me easy at betteroffline.com. I want to find them and ask them some questions. I want to know what they're doing here. Right. You know, I think people realize like this is, if anything, it's like it's a financial day trading scam. It's not a tech product. But it's pretty cool though.

It is really cool. Jesse, would you like to show for Crypto right now? As a crypto guy. As the crypto expert for the show. I think it's just kind of cool because they're like little pitchers or something. So it's like, I don't know. I just think that's like, I hear what you're saying. It's like, okay, the tech companies have moved on from the little pitchers, but it's like, we're always going to have little pitchers. You know what I'm saying? Deguerreotypes? You know what I'm saying? Icons? It's been forever we've had these little pitchers. So I just think like, okay, maybe it's waned right now, but...

There's going to be a time where we come back to CES and we see the little pictures again. And I think that's going to be really cool. I think it is funny as well that Max is probably the only person who has been at CES who has found the real stuff.

Because you can't really fake silicon. No, you can't. I mean, you can fake it up until a certain point. You can brag about how good it's going to be or whatever, what your startup's doing, and you can claim performance. But at a certain point, you have to send a chip to the fab and make it. And if it doesn't do what you say it will, well, then that's

That's that. And the thing is that's really important. It's actually good education for the listeners as well. Give him back the microphone. Come on, man. Matthew Bender. No, go ahead. All right. But it's actually important foundation people to know.

With a lot of these companies talking about ASICs, so specialist chips, and like, oh, OpenAI or whomever will simply build a chip, it is not that easy, right? It is not that easy. So what is the process of a chip getting done? And you know a lot more about this than I think you're letting on. I mean, you know what an ASIC is. Yes, I just don't know what it stands for, candidly. Application-specific integrated circuit. Thank you. Woo! Hell yeah. Someone knows stuff.

No, you're right, but you're really right. It's super complicated and expensive to make even a basic AI chip. And we're talking a couple of years from scratch, a couple of years minimum, at least half a billion dollars if you're lucky, another half a billion to build the hardware around it, because that's something people forget often. When you make a chip, you make the actual piece of silicon. If you look at any NVIDIA product,

or many others, they've got a whole board around it with a bunch of other chips and other stuff. And that, to make that, is probably another half a billion dollars. So these are not inexpensive ideas. And then when it comes to the actual integration and putting these into servers, you have to do a bunch more cooling and actual, and there's,

there is a failure rate as well. Absolutely. And you have to write the software on top of it. I mean, the whole, like having the idea to make a chip is like, it's a multi-year. And if you only make one, you've just wasted your time and money. So you have to, as a company, you generally have to do multiples. Absolutely. Yeah. You want to, you want a roadmap.

Because that's the whole, I mean, anybody that's buying AI chips for any reason, they're not buying the current generation. They're buying Gen 2, Gen 3, and maybe Gen 4. Interesting. So they're buying ahead. Absolutely, yeah. Absolutely. I'm really glad you're here for many reasons, but...

But I like putting this stuff down because the reason that there is like the real and the fake parts of CES is, as I said, you can't really fake chips. You can be like, oh yeah, we're doing an AI stethoscope or we're going to claim to cure autism with VR or whatever. But you can't really be like, we're going to do a chip because the actual chips people will just be like, no, you're not. There is like very clear boundaries with what you can actually do, which is what's so interesting because you have this chunk of CES was just the no bullshit zone because you really...

You cannot be making, like, NVIDIA pumps themselves up and says all this stuff, but ultimately is what it does. It does have to deliver. It actually has to exist. At a certain point. I mean, people will buy them, put them in the field, try all the hardware, try the software, and the claims have to, at a certain point, live up to the, whatever they're, you know, saying. So, forgive me for a very direct question, but how realistic is it for someone like Sam Altman to build out an AI chip? Like, how, it's years ahead, right? Yeah.

It's years ahead. I mean, it's more of a talent question than a money question, I think. How so? There are only maybe 10 to 12 teams of people around the world that can build cutting-edge products.

world-class chips and all of the people that lead those teams have jobs that they probably like or enjoy um and so you have to find the right people in order to do that find disgruntled people or whatever the whatever the reason why is why they're leaving but you have to assemble the right group of people to be able to build a chip and even if you get the right group of people with the amount of money that you need there's still just risks with building a chip like what

You could think the design works. For example, you could virtually verify that it works. You could test it. You could do all the computer simulations and other simulations that you want. When you send it to the fab, to the factory to print, it might not come out exactly how you think it will. And that will mean it doesn't work as well? It doesn't cool as efficiently? It might not work at all. Oh. It might not. Yeah, there might be... So you can get like billions into this and like... And you might not. I mean, it does happen...

frequently with the first generation of chips. Most companies that tried them for the first time, the

the first version will not be amazing. It'll do certain things effectively and well, but it probably won't be able to achieve... Just for example, NVIDIA spent 20 years, 30 years, whatever it is, working on its designs. So to expect that a company can come in and in two years replicate the performance or whatever of somebody who's been doing it for a long time is kind of unrealistic. So it usually takes several generations to get right. And NVIDIA has their own software, CUDA, for making GPUs do stuff.

It took quite a while for that to kind of scale, right? I mean, they started in 95, I want to say. Yeah, building CUDA. And they've been working on it ever since. I mean, it used to be centered around their GeForce graphics cards. And now it's obviously... A little bigger. A little bigger, yeah. I mean, maybe not as big as the electric soup spoon, but, you know, potentially...

One day, maybe, they'll have that success. And they can do more than just soup. That's for sure. So, Matt, bringing it back to you. But the chips you're talking about, you can't even taste. So, I mean, come on. There are probably chips in the spoon, though. And there are chips that are salty. So, anything hurt you?

Anything on the, you just saw it and it upset you? Oh, I thought you meant physically. I mean, just walking is pretty rough, mate. I'm not going to lie, I'm in pain, but. Oh, geez, I need a second. I'm trying to think. Anything just upsetting or annoying? Yeah, I mean, it does pain me to see the AI integration in everything.

Like, I don't need AI to be, like, the most random things. Like, I was actually surprised that the spoon didn't say claim AI integration or anything. You know, the smart glasses, I mean, I guess I could see with the glasses, like, the AI integration for, like, translations is a use case if you're someone who would wear AR glasses to begin with.

But I mean, do you really need like generative AI and things like that? Like, no. I find the Ray-Bans disgusting. I think if you're walking around looking at things and trying to work out using the computer, you're a pervert. Like, what are

What are you doing? Right, right. Perverts buy stuff too, though. No, no, perverts are a huge, accessible market. Perverts are a great market. Many of them listen to this show. Speaking of which, I think this might be the first CES where the sex toy industry is here. That's the thing. Wait, they weren't here before? There was a huge thing a year or two ago where some company applied for CES and they were told we do not deal with this industry here. And...

they smartly, I mean, used it to their advantage like with press and they were like, got tons of coverage. They're keeping the dildos out of CES. I think on top of this, this was like a sex positive woman owned business. There's nothing wrong with it. Yeah. No, nothing wrong at all. But like that company used that to their advantage and said like, CES tells, you know, woman owned sex positive companies. At least perversion is honest. Yeah.

And so for the first time, I'm seeing these sex toy companies on the floor of CES. I feel like Vegas is... Something's economically breaking. I haven't seen the guys with the flappy cards. I didn't see the flappy guys either. No, they're back. So these guys who are... I think it's strip clubs. Personally, never. Oh, the guys heading out like the... And I haven't seen them for years. And they're back clapping. They're flipping. I saw them. They put... It was actually...

It's actually kind of nice. Oh, no, they're very industrious. They took all the nasty little cards and they put them like on a street sign and made like a little fan. Yeah, I saw that. Kind of cute. They have been gone for years. The fact they're back is probably not a great sign. But I must be clear, there's nothing wrong with being a pervert as long as you don't... I think there's something wrong with that industry particularly. No, that industry. I was referring to... Do these guys not know about QR codes? Like... Right.

You're supposed to scan the porno. Right, right. No, but that's the thing. Nothing wrong with being horny as long as it's not anyone else's problem. In fact, let's go around right now. Let's just say who's horny in the room. So Ed, are you? Nope. Not horny. Tom? This is great. I love this. This is really good for the show. Max, who's next? Reuters declines to comment. Reuters is off on this one. Okay. Matt, when you walked in, I was like, no, he's horny. Can we quote that? Can I write this up and quote that?

On the question of horniness, Reuters declined to comment. No, stop it. I'm sorry. Why did Dave? I just didn't say anything for a minute, so I wanted to say something. Well, we didn't get Matt on the record here, so. Well, I can quote Mashable here. Mashable, very horny. Wow. That's so nice. I'm so sorry, everyone. I had Robert Evans listing all the crimes I commit, like, every episode. I thought your listeners were the criminals.

I know. And I made a joke about stealing stuff once, and it's all that's in the Reddit. And even saying this, there's going to be another thread, and they're going to be like, oh, Ed did this crime. You're looking at your Reddit?

I run the Reddit, baby. Okay. I'm on top of that shit. Isn't that kind of a conflict of interest? No, no, no. Well, yes, but... No, the Reddit was created by someone called Comic-Con, and all it was for the first month was just like, this show fucking sucks. That's a good Reddit. So I went in there and just argued with everyone. And now it's great. They love me because they know I'll fucking respond. Yeah, culture of fear, baby. So...

Max, how long are you here for? How long are you suffering with this? I'm leaving tonight. That's probably for the best, mate. Pretty short trip. Just enough time to see the silicon and get out. Yeah, but the horny level's there. We don't even know what kind of silicon. I'm so sorry, Max. I'm sorry. But, so...

Do you like... Is this your first? How many of you... I've been twice now. Right. So... How does it feel? What's the vibe you're getting? Vegas is a city that I think you just have to accept. Yes. And when you do that, especially this part of Las Vegas, then...

then I think it's a lot more enjoyable personally because I don't visit Vegas very often, so it's kind of a novelty for me. I get to go see the crazy casinos and walk around the room, see all the different people who are here. Various degenerates. Me. Yeah, exactly. Most of you. There you go. I mean, and it is kind of cool to see all this technology sort of stuck into like 16 different convention centers or whatever the number is these days. Right.

But this is visit number two, I'm saying, for two days. So I don't have the tenure to be able to talk about it like I'm a 20-year veteran, as some people certainly have. No, I find it fascinating when people haven't got much experience, how they feel. But you also deal with the real things, which is fun because everyone else is just going and being like, yeah, I saw an AI dildo and I can't.

They wouldn't let me use it. Well, I mean, you know, the PC chips and so on are pretty exciting. But a lot of the stuff that we report on is the data center chips that power most of AI. And are they here as well? No, this is all consumer stuff. I mean, the biggest thing that tends to get talked about now, you know, we're talking about things that aren't discussed or weren't discussed before, Matt, are these AI PCs. This is like one of these things that the industry has been trying to make happen for

a little over a year now, and, you know, supposed to start lifting PC sales this year. And what are these chips meant to do, just to be clear? I wish I could have a good answer for you. I have a demo with HP later today. I'll let you know. It's unclear to me either. I mean, I'm saying that because I think the answer is that this is one of those situations where if you don't build the hardware to do the thing, then nobody can make the software to do the thing.

Right. Right? So if the capability doesn't exist, then nobody can code on top of it to make the cool application for whatever AI thing. Okay, I'll buy that. Right? Like, I mean, I have no idea if it'll succeed or not. I mean, I don't predict the future, but I think it is true with any generation of hardware. Like, for example, real-time ray tracing that NVIDIA made a few years ago when they launched it. And real-time ray tracing just makes light look better. Video game graphics look better.

So for when they launched it, there was like one. Yeah, I don't remember how many games, but it was like a small handful, you know, very, very few. And, you know, it was like cool, but not widely adopted. It took until I think the video game consoles, the Xbox Series X and the PS5 included the tech in their systems for it to become like very widely adopted by developers.

So this is, I think, with AI PC chips, it's kind of similar. Except how long will this bubble last? Right. I mean, I would give it a few years. I would give it two or three years for the software ecosystem to actually build out. But I mean, at the moment, arguably the most interesting thing that Microsoft talked about when they launched their Copilot Plus program was

And what is that, just so we're clear? It's their AI PC platform. The PCs that are part of it have to have a certain spec in order to run the applications. It was this thing called Recall, which allowed you to look back. Oh, everyone loved that. Everybody loved that. They killed it. They're relaunching it now, but I mean, you know, so...

Yeah, I just... Go ahead, Matt. But you see this blowback even from regular consumers, not just the disgruntled people in the room right here right now, like the five of us, but regular consumers are not upgrading to Windows 11, for example. They're choosing to stick with the non-AI operating system. And listen, I don't think they are aware that they're like, oh, I don't want AI for the most part. But also the AI has not been a draw for them to get them to upgrade. Like they don't...

care about it. And when it comes to enterprise stuff, especially like what you're talking about, like trying to sell business laptops with integrated, I think they call them NPUs, Neural Processing Unit, is okay, all this stuff is already running in the cloud. I can't think of any other sort of like

function where they offloaded it from the cloud to your local PC? What's the business value in running ChatGPT on your laptop? I can actually answer that one in the sense that it will kill ChatGPT because when you realize what you can run on your laptop, you'll fuck around with it and be like, oh, this doesn't do that.

There's all these like software as a service companies that are like speak and it'll text to voice right away for you. Well, there are models that you could just run off your computer. You don't have to pay a monthly fee to do that. You could just literally download the free like language model and there you go. You're set. It

They don't want people to know this, for real. Yeah, I mean, but in a lot of cases, you can already run this stuff on a sufficiently powerful computer that just has like a GPU. You could get right now like probably a $200, $300 M1 Mac Mini because they're now at M4 and even that's $500. $500.

And you're set. You could run all this stuff right off your silicon Mac chipset if you want. Yeah, I just haven't seen the use cases to justify these – like buying a new generation of AI PCs. It doesn't really stand out to me as to why you would do this. I mean I think what's really going to drive people to buy new computers is the fact that Windows 10 is –

end of life. Yeah. No, my dad has to buy a new laptop because of it. He loves his laptop. It's like he loves this weird Surface thing. It's unfortunately not very funny or interesting, the fact that that's the reason why people are going to upgrade. Also, my dad, Jeff. Hi, dad. You sometimes listen to these. Hi, Ed's dad. Hi, Ed's dad. Everyone say hi to my dad. And Jeff, let's get a horny check on you as well, if you don't mind. Do not...

Now I am going to have to talk to my father about that. On a scale of Chase to Randy... I'm going to tell the group chat I have with my siblings that...

I am shortly going to have to find out how horny that is. I could go down to the AI-powered dildo company and see if they can hook your dad up with one of these. I need you to send me the booth number on that. I'm going to FaceTime your dad right now. It's 10.42 p.m. in GMT. Just going for that. Okay, we've got to wrap up then. So...

Tom McKay, where can people find you? You can find me at itbrew.com. You can also find me on Twitter at twitter.com slash the Tom Zone or x.com, whatever. And on Blue Sky as...

catter2.bsky.social so good so I bet you're loving that you chose that name I am not it's so good I'm on a bunch of blacklists because everybody thinks that I'm the actual catter I remember when you picked it being like he is going to get blocked by people it's so good Max Cherney where can people find you?

anywhere where there's a chip uh but uh okay well that's not even factually true and what's great by the way my brother just responded to the thing of i am shortly my other brother responded with what the fuck i can't wait to explain why my dad is gonna have to do a horny check to my siblings max charny where can people find you sorry at churn and burn uh on x uh and blue sky and then on linkedin if you want just look look up my name

Very good. Matt Bender, where can people find you? First of all, I'm sorry for bringing up the sex toys being at CES this year. But yeah, you can find me. Well, my CES coverage will be at Mashable, mashable.com. And you can find me on all sorts of social media, Blue Sky, Instagram.

the everything app, threads at Matt Bender. Very good, Jesse Farrar. Yeah, Your Kickstarter Sucks is the podcast. Go Off Kings is my stream, yeah. And I'm not on the everything app, but yeah, I'm bluesky at jessefarrar.com. I probably need to change the episode links because I linked to you on X.

And I'm, of course, Ed Zitron. I am now going to have a very uncomfortable conversation with several of my siblings about this episode. Thank you for listening to the first part of the two-part Day 3 Better Offline CES experience. We're so grateful for you. We love you all. I'm Ed Zitron. You can find me everywhere where it says Ed Zitron, other than the parts that make me look bad. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you soon. ♪

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.whereisyoured.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.

♪

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