Better Offline CES 2025: Day 1

31:13People are so surprised. It's like you're a heretic. It's insane. It's like you don't believe in the project of humanity. Two of these people. It's like you don't believe in Santa Claus. It's wild. When super rugged speakers were a massive product that you could find half a dozen booths selling them, I would just go there and I would ask, can I test them out? Can I drop them and stuff and then I would pick up the heaviest object because they usually have like logs or something to pose them on and I would just break stuff on the show floor and it worked every time did you actually break it? oh a bunch of stuff and I learned that from we went to see a demo where they were they were showing off like an indestructible smartphone and they were doing it by like they pulled out all the journalists I think we were in front of Caesar's Palace and they were driving a limousine over the phone and then they would do it and then the next group of journalists would come up and they would let a journalist set it down and i don't know who this was i wish i'd gotten his name because he taught me one of the best lessons i ever learned they were laying the phones flat and he just wedged it under the wheel on its side and they just drove over just the stopped in half that's that's being a journalist yeah but actually that's a very good metaphor for what's going on at the moment everyone's like well they say it works we'll be Why would they lie about it?

32:36Why would they possibly lie about ChatGPT becoming superintelligence? Did you hear that fucking Sam? That motherfucker, he's not here. He's not here. By comparison, this is pretty real stuff. Where's Sam Altman? He should be giving like a vacuous keynote about how this is going to replace Doctors. He's doing the real work. He's doing the real work. He's building superintelligence. By which he means trying to like leverage his startup capital. As I read today, we're just thousands of days away from AGI. Well, Robert, that was the days. That was set a few months ago, so we're actually about 970.

33:10That was set a few thousand days ago. I love that. Honestly, I need to set a calendar invite for that. Thousands of days from now? Because I have Sam Altman's number, and he is yet to text me back. I am bummed that we haven't seen Palantir here in recent years. Oh, they've seen you, though. I didn't show you. That is true. We showed up, I can say this now, we showed up with a flipper zero and we're just turning off all of the televisions at the Palantir booth while they were doing demos.

33:46Oh, someone probably got fired about it. Actually, no, someone was probably like, oh, I'll fix this. No. Someone did that one CES and they got in a lot of trouble. Oh, yeah. Because they videoed themselves doing it, which is the classic thing you do with crime. Yeah, I remember that, which is why I did not tweet about it from the show floor. Exactly. You put it on a podcast years later. They never proved you did it. One CES I did try a bit three or four times before I started getting anxious, which was I would just pick up something and ask if I could have it. And just like picked up the edge of a TV.

34:20Can I have this? And they look at you and they're like, no, you seem to be like, sometimes they say yes though, which is why you have to do it at every booth. You can get a lot of free shit. You actually can't surprisingly walk away with some really odd stuff. I bet they eventually a security person looked at me in a kind of like, should I memorize this guy's face? Well, it's good. And I thought, I don't want to be arrested at fucking CES. No, my lawyer will just be like, I had again, I'm not coming to your arraignment. Yeah. You're on your own bitch. I know you're paid up, but I'm not doing you fucking work this out.

34:55Smart guy. Yeah. Why don't you pick up the judge's gavel and ask if you can have this? Click. A fucking idiot. Well, speaking as a judge, that's very offensive. Are you a judge? Yes. What? No, this is not good. This is true. I'm a municipal judge for the state of New Mexico. I got sworn in. I'm good. What the fuck? Right next door. Right next door. Very close. You got to cross the border when you do a cross. A fan of mine is a judge and was like, did you know that judges can just make other judges? Like you have to read a little thing and then you're good. I got an idea You can make all of us judges No, again It's interview with the vampire rules So the youngest vampire Does not have the power to make other vampires And it's kind of unclear to me But your mate does Yes, she's the Lestat of this situation But I can't How do I become an older vampire though Because you realize that my goal here is not just to become a judge myself But start making more judges That I don't know because I have not looked up anything about what a judge is.

35:57This would be all I'd look up. We've got to ask the Deloitte people this. They have to know. I would get made a judge, and then the first thing I would be Googling is how to make more judge. And I would be making them. Who are your first five judges that you're making? I mean, all of you other than Robert, obviously. It would be like the entirety of Cool Zone Media. You make everyone judges. Yeah, and then we can all go to New Mexico and do a blood meridian. Fuck yeah. Yeah. not anymore well yeah there was actually a lot of child abuse in that guy's background so this is the format that you're going to have for the entire week with Better Offline because this is also something because after a year of doing this I'm just trying everything and I do think that tech also kind of needs a talk show and the reason I say that is tech has got everything it's got finance, it's got basically sports team shit, do you like Anthropic, do you like OpenAI and the thing is that really is like a, let's think Cowboys Jets situation and that's going to hurt someone's feelings.

36:55I'm very happy about that. Anyway, moving on from that. You've also got a bunch of gossip and you've got a bunch of shitheads that you can be pissed off at and actual real events. I just think that nails, this format nails it. And that's why I'm excited to start with all of you because at the end of the first day, everyone feels a certain way. Dread for the rest of the week, sad about the horrible things they saw or just wondering why they're doing the fucking job they're doing. They just, none of us in this room. It's just very, it's an interesting way when you talk to the tech media to see how they're doing but also people who work i wish i could get more people off the floor but i don't want fucking companies on here that would be so boring how did you feel your first ces when you're when you're going around so i was just a child back then i was 2011 i can't do math you don't work yeah i was a young boy um that one i have some stories i can't tell but i was a young i was a young pr person and i loved it because it It was like 2011, so before we realized tech had problems, we were just like ignoring them.

37:55Well, and this was back to when the porn industry trade show was at the same time. I didn't tell how I was terrified of women. I watched Steve Ballmer get out of a fucking elevator with two porn stars that were even taller than him, and he is massive. It was amazing. He just found the Amazonian ones. It was like watching Greek gods straight across the field. Yeah, the god of sweat. He did smell exactly like that. Yeah, yeah. You know it smells crazy. And I leaked that to another tech publisher. Very good. That's fucking journalism, right? You'll never guess what I saw. But CES used to be fun when I was stupid.

38:32When I was just like, oh, this will happen. And also 2011, there were still new lands to conquer. They still had new fun things to find, new things that they could make that they could actually make good on. I think it's been like five or six years of them just being like, we don't have it. There's nothing. We've got nothing else. I was so lucky that my first CES, the big thing was like crypto NFTs. And so like... So one of the lasting industries. I knew going into that, like everything I hear in this convention is complete bullshit. And then the next year I came, the big thing was the metaverse.

39:06So again, everything I hear here is bullshit. And you've just been able to like slowly watch the life drain from these people's eyes because they know every year there's this new thing that's supposed to be the new thing. This is what we have done as an industry. And it doesn't work. They're dry. And it's odd because this year is the first year where there hasn't really actually been anything new. It's the same as last year. It's just more AI stuff again. I actually think 2024 was pretty ahead of the pack. I was going to say, this year I keep seeing places be like, this is the year of agents. They're going to show agents.

39:44We're talking about that a lot in panels today. The one thing I've seen in the panel list is like, there's been a lot more integration for like content creators and like streamers. And you even saw this with the Golden Globes a few days ago, how like they let tons of streamers and influencers onto the carpet for like the first time. And there's way more panels this year. That's about like, how do we like get this whole like streaming ecosystem that's like separate from like legacy media and even like legacy, like tech media. like how do we how do we get that into our sphere and that was a big thing they talked about in my third panel AI cinematic spatial and XR the next level of creativity I am putting a gun in my mouth they were specifically talking about how you know nowadays like you know individual creators can be as big as studios and then someone on the panel was like well not really like not in any way that's actually meaningful I am excited to see the new movie from Destiny personally really excited to see that Mr.

40:42Beast, you know, I'm excited to see you. He is trying, though. He actually is trying. I would love a Destiny movie, just Wikipedia brought to life. There was a great moment in there, speaking of, like, failed CES's past, where they, like, because XR stands for extended reality, which is just metaverse. It's just the metaverse, but they can't say that anymore because they will get murdered. And they said that in the panel. They were like, you can't say metaverse at CES anymore. They'll kick you out. But we all know it's a real thing. Do they say Web3 at any point? Oh, so much. Why is that okay, but not the metaverse?

41:16I thought we arrested people. They are careful, though, NFT. That's what we need a Gulag for. They still do say, like, they still definitely say Web3. Which is insane. That's the more embarrassing one. Well, I'm just shocked they still say metaverse with a straight face, even, like, talking about this nonsense. But also, XR is a great term because it's been around for a while, And it usually just means, I don't know if this is mixed reality or virtual reality. I don't know what device I'm selling this on yet. The guy emceeing this panel was Charlie Fink, who's like the oldest of the metaverse guys.

41:53He's like a Forbes writer. He was like an old school. He wrote a metaverse book in 2017. Honestly, mad respect for actually like knowing stuff early. I don't know if I'd agree with all of the assumptions such as the metaverse existing. that was my big disagreement with him that it's a thing because they were just the metaverse is just you know attempts to extend the internet into everyday life and i was like no no that's that's just that's just the internet yeah that's just everyday life that's called the tech industry it's not the metaverse that i can now order food to be delivered to my house are you sure i do miss that period in the media though when it was just like anything anything they're like yeah they're gonna have houses in there now and we're gonna have families we're all gonna live in the metaverse we're gonna live in the metaverse and that was so funny people thought that for like a year spend money on nikes in the metaverse yeah and you'd have banks in the metaverse that would be better than our real banks oh sure absolutely i want to i don't have our own uh federal reserve didn't they have like an arby's in the metaverse that's the only thing that we're right about i The only way I'm getting into an Arby's is if I know I cannot make physical contact with the food.

43:10Oh, someone too good for the Arby's. For the beefs. The meats are not for you. But also what's important is I think we need to meet everyone who goes to the digital Arby's and then connect them with mental health personnel. Maybe a red flag. We'll put them on a list. Not necessarily for a list, but I think you've got like therapists could be met. Just do therapy in the metaverse. Problem solved. not doing it in the fucking real world if they're in the metaverse Arby's but it's so funny as well that everyone's like the metaverse is happening and then they're like oh how'd you get in there well it's very simple we have this expensive and uncomfortable stuff does it make you sick sometimes yes does it physically hurt yes but when you get in there it sucks Vision Pro dropped less than a year ago and they just did they discontinue it no no they just They can't have yet, did they?

44:01No, there was a... Oh, my God. I can't believe that review. There was one of the Apple products. No. They discontinued. Did they not? Did they discontinue something? That sounds like Apple eventually. Like, they just give up. We both checked that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, no, no. So, the Vision Pro, I know... Backchecking on this. People are very upset with me. No, fake news. Okay. People are very upset with me about my Vision Pro review. Very unfair. It was the second episode. Very... Still learning. But... Oh, Gare's got something. There is... Sorry. The most reputable outlet, Game Rant. Oh, yeah, I know Game Rant.

44:32Says that Apple has reportedly ceased production of the headset. Really? Wow. It is Game Rant. Well, and that's the New York Times of ranting about games. Ed, congratulations. You have won. You knocked it out of the park. You have won our first fact point. A very offline fact point system. I'm going to yield for a minute. Game Rant is citing an article in another website called TheInformation.com. Oh, no, TheInformation. more or less real it's real-ish you just have to climb up that very high paywall which they've improved crazy I used to be able to get around every single one now it's hard I feel like it was kind of that was more insane to me than crypto crypto is pretty insane but it's like how am I going to get in the metaverse this very shitty fucking headset that sucks Vision Pro was pretty good I know my review, I know people are upset that I liked the product there was potential there They just did not access it.

45:28Apple has the money for there to be potential there. But I still maintain that Steve – and I'm not a guy, as you know, Ed, having said it for four hours. I'm not a guy who worships Steve Jobs. I don't think he would have let that product out yet. No, it needs like two or three years. But it had potential. Even then, though, this is the biggest company in tech, the really only company capable of making consumer electronics that are actually good anymore. Everyone else is kind of like just mostly making it up and maybe putting shit together. Yes, there are companies like Framework. There are others, but like the biggest.

45:59And they're like, here is our best go at it. And when I tried to watch Dune on my Vision Pro on a flight back from London, I got the worst migraine of my life. And what sucked was I was really enjoying the film. And actually, the giant scream was super cool. But I was in so much pain, I took it off. And I was like sweating. Well, that was the extended reality of the Vision. I was too arachis. It was extending your reality, yeah. That is how it feels to read past the third book. Oh, no, no. We cannot slander the worst and best book. No, no, no. That's a compliment. That's a compliment. That is true.

46:36Okay. But what's important was I really watched too much of that movie and I had like a migraine for like a day or two. Could you see The Golden Path? No, and Tim Cook. That was your time at the pain box? I did not. I watched like the beginning of the film. I do not know the plot you didn't know that's gonna be you Robert on the first episode of Better Offline called me the shy hulud of content I'm like ha ha ha yeah great googling it as we go that has been proven completely true though I came from a different era in which all of my friends in high school none of us had sex but we all had very strong opinions about it well let me tell you I too come from a rich line of not fuckers and not having sex in high school at all but my thing was EverQuest one might say i was even cooler than you were yeah it was wow for me oh no i got into wow later it was like getting off of cocaine to do heroin yeah yeah barely worked on me i just gave up after a well turned to drinking anyway um it's just great that this is the tech industry now it's just the group hallucination where we all go yeah fuck it this as we sit here and talk and i know i'm grinding this act quite hard but we're hearing a lot about ai in this fucking conference and everyone's stapling chat GPT and Anthropik's clawed to everything.

47:54And it's like, okay, great. But we are sitting here and every major company is not making a single fucking dollar, actually losing money on this. And I feel a bit insane. I feel a bit crazy every day because every day I look out the window in tech and we're just like, our biggest thing is everyone burning money. I've now seen two stories in the last week from major publications going, what if AI is a bubble? Which is probably the most worrying. so it was like the economist had one that was like what if a bubble bursting was good what if it was good that the bubble burst which is insane because there is a david leonard story in the new york times saying that a housing bubble burst in uh the 0607 region would have been a good idea too and let me tell you i don't know history super well but i don't think the housing bubble bursting went well for anyone?

48:42No. It did go well for some people. You need to have the disruptor mindset. Right? And the problem with the bubbles is that as they get bigger and bigger, it stifles innovation in other areas because we're all focusing on this bubble. Right. So as soon as it bursts, now you have so many more opportunities to really disrupt who knows how many other industries. Well, as a kid during the housing bubble, we had to innovate by like eating 99 cent burritos and making$4 of those stretch three to five days. And now we have Airbnbs taking over half of entire neighborhoods. Innovation. So much better. That's good.

49:24Innovate sleeping. And people were really – they were innovating ways to top themselves when I moved to New York in 2008. That was great. That's the thing. You weren't really going to have people doing themselves in on this one. But I don't think people realize the bubble bursting is going to be very bad for two reasons. One, all the tech stocks are going to take a kind of a haircut. But also, I think CES is kind of a bad omen. The fact that this is basically 2004 CES, that kind of speaks to the larger problem I've talked about before, which is they don't seem to have a new thing. AI isn't new, and that's not working.

49:59And they're like, well, what if we put AI in a – we can laugh at the kind of like AI in the oven thing. but really beneath the surface here, and I look forward to seeing the show floor myself for this, there is this undercurrent of, what the fuck do we do now? What are we doing now? How do we make money now? Where money and where, please? I think Ed had a really good point, which is that obviously what they see is AI agents being the future. Oh my fucking God. And those kept getting brought up. And what's one of the things that's interesting to me, it's interesting to me is that, obviously there's a lot of potential value in being able to do something, like say, hey, I want to plan a trip to this and this location.

50:35And having a thing that can book it, that's not a multi-billion dollar industry, but there's utility there. Theoretical utility. Or to being able to plan out like five or six different meals that you want to repeat over the course of a week or two and then like plan out. There's some utility there. But the way people talk about AI agents isn't in that way. It's about another living thing that they like bounce ideas off of. and invite socially into their lives. There was a lady at the first panel today, which was about like AI and entertainment, who was like, and my agent, obviously, she just is growing every year or every day.

51:15And it was like talking about her like a person, like gendering her AI agent. I must be clear. What was she talking about? Her AI agent. Okay, but does this thing exist? No, no, no. Me and my rabbit have a very intimate relationship. Sure, sure. We all fuck our pets, man, believe it. No, no. She didn't say which product she was using, but there are a couple of them out right now. Just to be clear. Character AI was when people talked about it. That's not an agent. Oh, my fucking God, I have to do this. Okay. Yeah. An AI agent. No, no, no. That's what she was referencing because it might have been like her co-pilot or some shit.

51:48A co-pilot is also not an agent. No, no. An AI agent is meant to be. An autonomous AI that goes out and does shit and can do things and then respond to things based on how people act. A big part of it's like what Rabbit was trying to sell with the R1 last year. Rabbit wasn't even doing that. They were just doing like the very early stage agents, which is, okay, you're technically correct, which is the agents are meant to be, they take actions for you. That's the official definition. But what everyone's talking about with agents, and this is driving me fucking insane because no one really wants to talk about the reality here, is they're talking about I will staple a few fucking LLMs to each other.

52:23And then enough LLMs will talk to each other that things will just start happening. Kind of like the Incredible Machine. if you ever played there. Just like a Rube Goldberg situation, he says, not really knowing that reference. Pee-wee's Playhouse? I don't know. Nevertheless, these series of actions then allow theoretically this thing to do something at the end. The big common one right now is sales. Sales agents. These things are insanely expensive, and I have yet to hear of one that does more than send emails and answer emails, and I've yet to really see anyone explain how anything else is fucking possible and the thing is people will say agent about anything character.ai is just an llm company that like that got a kid to kill themselves yeah insane but also just like has like a denarius targaryen bot that will also be your therapist it's fucking insane of course but that's not an agent chat gpt not an agent they want to ed i'm so glad you brought this up because it's like this agentic thing is their next bullshit but i cannot be clear enough if you think regular llms are expensive.

53:22Imagine a bunch of LLMs playing dipshit tennis with each other. That is how agents work. You know, I think, you know, A16Z is really big on this. There's a, there's a manifesto, one of their many manifestos. They say every child will have an AI tutor that is infinitely patient, infinitely compassionate, infinitely knowledgeable, infinitely helpful, infinite. And then they say that every person will have an AI assistant slash coach slash mentor slash trainer slash advisor. How can I be a mentor? It doesn't know how to do things. Slash therapist. Slash therapist. That's good. That is infinitely patient, infinitely compassionate, infinitely knowledgeable, infinitely helpful.

54:00They want a friend without having to do any of the work that makes like having a friendship. Yeah. Not only makes it happen, but worth it. None of these fucking people need therapy. But also, on top of that, if everyone keeps talking about this idea, and I think they've been doing it for years of this of ai being your assistant why are there no ai assistants that work yes you can make your phone do reminders now yeah we're on like the 16th 17th iphone and we can now make siri most of the time understand sometimes like half the time for me but yeah i the british siri actually understands me unlike most people i have mine set to scottish theory but so maybe maybe that's the problem i like i like the way the voice i like the way one of the panels where they're like is voice the new operating system i am gonna kill myself on the panel was british and was like well usually they don't understand what i'm saying so i like all of the americans were like oh absolutely and the one person with an accent was like i probably not that makes me so angry because when fucking alexa came out we would we did this one already we've done this one already i've i have already done pitching for clients about voice being it wasn't guess what it was not the future because it turns out that talking is annoying

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58:58I've been seeing discussions about this. I saw someone online try to be like Scarlett Johansson, fumbled the bag. I saw that too, yes. And it's like, well... What bag? They were saying that if she had simply let OpenAI use her voice, she would have been the future of AI voice forever she would have achieved immortality being like the AI voice for generations I'm like yeah just like you know what happened with Alexa and the thing that happened with Siri I know the voice actors I know them personally what a bad business decision for an actress because now you'll have kids who grow up with Alexa machines in their house and then they'll watch a movie and be like oh wow the Alexa's in And more than that, casting directors will be right now.

59:41It's like you're being typecast as like a voice servant? It's Siri. Casting directors will be like, well, Scarlett Johansson? No, she's that lady who everybody has to talk to to get a dentist appointment. Nobody wants to see her in a movie. Like it's a terrible idea to be that. You mean Lost in Translation? And that's the only film I've seen her? I've watched her a little too many times. That's really one of the factors that keeps coming in here. this idea that the voice is going to be the transcendent thing there yeah i and also that it can do more than it can because i don't think people realize and i know this due to my accent how fucking bad voice is even in the best case it just does not sometimes the things it hears are truly insane and the more data you have in your phone the more numbers and names you have saved the more insane the idea is i don't need to text someone i know from north carolina 11 years ago and I certainly don't need to text them about the burger I'm ordering.

1:00:39Was I ordering a burger? No, I was trying to do a meeting-related thing. But did this fucking thing hear me? But also it just angers me that I have to hear this. It's been like a decade. I thought we got away from this fucking angle. Very foul-mouthed there. I apologize to the humorous. Well, at the very least, at least there's no crypto at CS, right? Oh. Oh. I'm sure we'll hit some crypto. I haven't run into it yet. I'm sniffing it out. No, I did. I did. because one of the women on one of the panels worked for republic which is an app that allows you to everyone to do in like venture capital investing with as little as 25 dollars sick great um and yeah and also invest in crypto at the same time why not um and the one review of it said like it's a great service if you want to diversify but it's extremely risky and everyone loses money that's not diversifying i i guess people are still reeling from hawk to a coin so maybe that might be more on the down low you know I hope Hailey Welch is here I love that she is probably in trouble with the SEC I love that the SEC is going to have to she should go somewhere with no extradition tweet a bit and then get extradited anyway that's the thing these people these people lack the moxie of the classic scam artist yeah you do that rug pull when you're in Costa Rica you fucking he was a real piece of shit but I miss McAfee now if he'd have just hung in there another year or two yeah my favorite john mcafee thing was if you looked at the champagne he was drinking oh yeah it's like the cheapest always shit he didn't have that much money like it was a shitty yacht they had terrible guns but he was eating like like uh like a walgreens cheese oh yeah like hell yeah he's drinking like corbell A real libertarian.

1:02:31But like, which is no one. He's living on the high seas. No one's sold. Until the Dominicans took his guns. Wait, did they really steal his guns? Yes, they did steal his. Well, they didn't steal his guns. He sailed into a foreign port with a boat full of illegal rifles. They did what any country would do. You can't do that. You're not allowed to do that. As usual, the fucking fun police, the woke mafia. Oh, I can't ride into another port with a bunch of guns. This is obviously just because the Dominican Republic is so corrupt. And it's like, man, any country would take your guns. You can't do that.

1:03:06But also, this is like one thing of a functioning democracy. If a very strange man on all sorts of substances turns up. Clearly on drugs. Possibly trafficking human beings. If a guy turns up just going, yeah, yeah. Sounds like Beavis, but looks like he's dying. It's like, yeah, you could do that on the boat, but no guns. Yo, yo. And like, hey, I have all of these guns out of there, like just fucking lying around. You're taking your boat, John Metcalf. Like you've killed a bunch of NPCs on there and they've dropped their loot. And he did, in fact. I mean, that's the thing none of these modern-day grifters can do.

1:03:38They don't live interesting, bold enough lives to have racked up the kind of body count John Mackenzie did. He was like a Blacklist character. He sure was. Raymond Reddington would come up. A lot of people in Grim and his nephew died. Because they were... His nephew died. His nephew died? They had like a paragliding thing that they did in the desert. They called themselves Sky Gypsies. And they traveled around like drifting from a little airport in the desert to a little airport in the desert. And like a 70-year-old man and his nephew both crashed and died doing this. And then he fled the country for Costa Rica because his whole family got angry at him.

1:04:22John McAfee, this is why he left? yes that's why he went to costa rica oh my god my god first of all insane yeah second of all none of the tech people are this interesting no absolutely not sam altman has never fled a country no ever he might though no he won't that that's the thing it's gonna be this is like zuckerberg dressing like stan you know from the i love i love that he dresses like kevin fedel yeah yeah Yeah, but even all of that's just a Peter Thiel bit. It wasn't even his idea. No, this is one of the many consultants that have crawled up Mark Zuckerberg's asshole now, being like, what you should do is you should dress like you've just done a Zen pic, but you're also a 90s rapper.

1:05:07And he's like, uh. Huh? Yeah. Will we ever get him rapping? You know, there's pictures of him with rappers. I would love him to rap. He should try. we really do need a Howard Hughes era and a crazy crone era of tech I wonder what Mark Zuckerberg is going to be like when he's like 80 like an Al Davis style just wretch yeah just like a lich just floating he won't quit I think he may Al Davis matter and for the listeners who don't know the NFL Al Davis was the owner of the Oakland Raiders and now the Las Vegas Raiders and he held onto the team until he looked like he was physically dying And I really do mean like bits were falling off of him on air.

1:05:49Like it was fucking insane. This is actually what I hope for meta more than anything. I actually don't think meta lasts another 10 years. But if it has to last decades, I hope it's Mark Zuckerberg just crazy and all like, we're not putting photos on there anymore. Nothing but the entire website is nothing but AIs of your dead grandparents and like elderly loved ones and Mark Zuckerberg running it alone. If you believe in me, you can make your pop-pop come back. You can bring your beautiful wives back. That's what he's going to run for president. Yeah, and that is what he's finally... And you know what?

1:06:25That's what I'll vote for. Oh, yeah. Well, I can't vote, of course, as a resident. Just want to really put my government... No, you can't vote once, but you can vote twice. No, no. People need to stop saying things that make it sound like I am committing a crime. Now, don't joke about the title of our signal loop in here. no we will not be saying that nor will we be saying it's blowing up like a cyber truck either i thought that was a pretty good post yeah i'm sure that was a great post for you sending it to my lawyer being like it's a bit look he's already dead it's a bit uh yeah i i was i was planning a bit to bring my gray hoodie and my green jacket and my neck gator and just walk and just walk around all of the CEO booths.

1:07:13Yeah, cosplay as Luigi. That's the thing, though. The show's got big enough now that people are responding to me with stuff like that. Like, oh, Luigi, Sunday. I'm like, shut the fuck up, man. People love posting about crimes on the internet. People love to tell me the crimes they wish I'd commit. Yeah. Wouldn't it be cool if you did? That's always true. Yeah, yeah. I am a coward. I'm not hitting anyone. I'm terrified of violence, both happening to me and committing it. The only drugs I do are the ones I legally buy at stores on the street. Yeah, like that weird mushroom gummy where they don't tell you what kind of mushroom is in the gummy.

1:07:49Yes, but we're on. That's another introduction to the Consumer Electronics Show and this beautiful show I'm putting on. My boss, Robert Evans, sat down at the table and then produced a mysterious bag, I think is the fairest description, saying, these are mushrooms I bought at a corner store. There's a mushroom vape. there is also a mushroom vape. Everyone has been letting me know about the mushroom vape as well. Hit the rig, hit the rig. We do not know what kind of mushrooms. None of them tell you what kind of mushrooms. I'm not doing them. Also, we would never vape in this hotel suite. Yes, thank you.

1:08:23That would be illegal. $250 I will not get back. Anyway, this is my boss, the mushroom man. And this is what the week is going to be like because we refuse to be held by the norms of tech coverage in the sense that we actually want to have a good time. and I believe and I've done a lot of things about the tech media recently and this is not the fault of the individual writers but the outlets themselves I believe we have all lost the fun in tech I don't think people enjoy their gizmos anywhere near as much as I do I want to enjoy my shit I love my phone it's got problems with it but I love technology it's great the funnest thing at this show can't be the LG giant screen exactly and that's why I'm so I'm so thankful that you put this thing together because yeah usually covering this is like kind of like brain breaking and I love having something to look forward to that's not just the big screen and also drinking as many cocktails at Showstoppers as I can which we will be doing tomorrow night every year and the people of Showstoppers have been very unfair to me very nasty they said that I'm a public relations executive and they will not have me there will they still not let you into Showstoppers?

1:09:29no they won't make me pay and I'm not paying they should pay me don't worry i will i will oh no i will drink show stop for you maybe it's pepcom they didn't let me into either way if it showed it was pepcom i think nevertheless many mean people at pepcom if you don't let me in your show i will find a way in there in spirit this is a threat which is mostly not that kind of threat you're gonna blow down the door no no someone is going to be there that will tell me what happened and then i will talk about it. I will not be doing any crimes. No crimes. Thank you. This is going to be the entire goddamn week, isn't it?

1:10:09This is going to be my entire week is Robert and Gare and Ed now. And Ed. Ed has joined in. Saying, Ed, why don't you do crime? And I will be saying, I won't. I've never committed. Of course. Which is great. But this week is, I think it's going to be a special week because I think over the course of the week we're really going to realize how fucked the tech industry is. I think that there is some life in the hardware side, but I think there's a genuine fucking hole in the consumer electronics side that is just bleeding. And I think people need to wake the fuck up about it. Maybe the reason CES is fucking miserable is because there's nothing here that's cool.

1:10:43Like, maybe that was why I liked it in 2011. 2011, there was still, I don't remember very much from that trip. Google had a slide. Maybe there was the Mobile World Congress that year. Either way, there was a slide at one point. But also there was stuff that actually got made that was interesting that solved needs. And indeed, it might be that they've solved a lot of the needs already, but it's like fucking hell tech was evolving so much back then there was like genuine massive changes and improvements on the availability of having a supercomputer in your hand at all times and I've had the same iPhone for four years but that's actually the problem nothing's better maybe we're at the end of time have we considered this?

1:11:26I have a buddy named Francis okay explain the joke for those of us who get it but need the audience oh he i mean he wrote a paper that was largely misinterpreted about uh at the end of the cold war um about the end of history right really wasn't saying what it sounds like he was saying but yeah sounds like a thing i should have read yeah but did not it's okay no one actually read francis fukuyama we all just joked about like a real shoshana zuboff situation i don't know who the fuck that is the surveillance capitalism person she wrote a 700 page book if you read the first 100 page like god damn i use it to keep my door open so my cats can get in my room it's a very long it's a very long book and i say this as someone who does very long podcasts but the first 100 pages like damn you're really on something in the next 600 you're like maybe an editor would have been helpful oh maybe definitely but also the larger point is that capitalism is simply sick that we must just fix the obvious problems because otherwise the tech companies would run well if capitalism worked well and the answer is shut the fuck um anyway i'm gonna have cory doctor out to talk about that book at some point because he has some fucking views oh yeah he wrote he wrote his own book about the book oh yeah but it is interesting and i kind of want to i think i'm going to try and ask everyone what they were excited about this because i need to find out first of all who's a liar and then second of all I need to find out if someone truly believes that something is exciting here.

1:12:52Why? I don't remember a single thing I've ever seen at CES other than one year where I saw a sign for a semen analysis thing with AI. Oh, yeah. All the come products are great. I was heading out at the time because I was not in a great mood because otherwise I would have gone in and be like, can I try it? What do you think? Nah. You like what you see? Oh, the AI says it's bad, huh? I don't know about you. I'm pretty excited about that folding laundry robot that you guys were talking about. You're right this year? It'd be really funny to go over there and be like, where's my fucking shirt? I gave it to you two years ago.

1:13:26Where's my fucking shirt, man? You never gave me that shit back. Like KG yelling, where's my money? I am a sicko laptop pervert, so I always look forward to Lenovo's weird, twisting, folding laptops. I've got their folding 13-inch laptop now, and I love it. I like their sick little laptops. A weird little laptop. and I wish it was all that weird little fucking laptop. Yeah, give me a weird laptop. Put four screens on the son of a bitch and have it fold down to the size of a napkin. That's what I want from CBS. I don't mind if you don't make it. I just mind that it's fun. If it's like, hey, here's something that's plausible and we are not building it, that's so boring.

1:14:00I don't get angry at the folding 100-inch television. I would never buy one, but I am like, that is a TV that's folding. That's pretty cool. And I could see that would be delayed due to the fact that you're doing the thing unassociated. and no one wants one. Mostly associated with clothes. And also there is no market of any kind. But even then they still make them. You still get like the $50 ,000 LG TV that can run on a battery. It's like that$3 million glasses free 3D television they used to bring around where it's like this fucker works. You got to stand in one specific area but by God it works in that area.

1:14:33This is basically a giant 3DS but it works. It does work. Well last year they had, I think their biggest TV thing was like a transparent. Transparent TVs yeah yeah yeah i love that that was so stupid i love that because they were like even like the tech journalists just trying they weren't trying they were just reading off the fucking press and it's like i don't fucking know what i don't fucking know why we have no more horizon no there's no more lands that got the rock con bubble in july i fucking said it there's nothing left we're at the end and i will narrate it because and that really it does feel like i'm narrating the end of the world at times and this show does not fucking help it doesn't give me hope I don't get I don't see anything at CES where I'm like finally no but I think it's so crucial because the whole thing about AI right now the thing everyone says is like it's only going to get better right this is this is the worst it's going to get and the thing that you've been so good on like specifically for your beat is is showing how things don't actually like infinitely improve like uh like Google search is such a good is such a good example that like no sometimes things actually can get worse like we we can't assume everything will just get better well it hasn't though i think that that's the real thing and this show kind of shows it in the nothing has got better they don't show us stuff here i'm like other than tv stuff tvs are cool i love tvs whatever big big computer fast computer whatever but like of actual things we've seen at ces i first of all cannot remember a single fucking thing i've seen at c i just i go in i look at them for hours and then my brain just leaves and i leave and my brain's like it's gone okay that's going with where spanish french german and latin went so who are the winners it's it's gamers gooners investors the thing is i don't even think those that always right those are the three groups that always keep winning that's the guy fieri show um gamers gooners and tech enthusiasts but there's not even stuff for gooners anymore oh no oh no oh no if you know if you know a true gooners they're always DTG as the kids don't say we have been reporting on like the Cumbie every CES love to introduce my listeners to this especially the ones that came in through the very serious podcast the Lena Kahn interview the people hearing this from the Lena Kahn interview Lena Kahn come on let's talk about the FCC no no she said she'd come back on theoretically you know what you just said Ed market you know

1:17:112025 is the year that we are all that we are all going to have sex with robots I'm excited for some kind of you guys aren't going to have sex with robots I'm waiting for the right one champagne room of sexology no I'm waiting for some some insane like AI power like masturbation tool because I know there's going to be a new one on the floor they did but there's going to be a new one on the floor this year They only sent us the sheaths They didn't send us the actual device Like a fucking samurai We're handing out Sheaths and lube You have to earn this You have to forge this one yourself It's like a Booner Ronin It's so good It's like the most sex averse group of people Walking the show floor And you have these PR people Enthusiastically trying to give people lube and you're like, these people aren't from countries where you're not allowed to come.

1:18:13Yeah, there are ads that tell me I can't. Anyway, moving on from that one. I'm so sorry to the respectable take. We got awards this year from real business publications. There's some person who's like, I can't wait to hear what's asked. What's gooning? This is actually a pretty big part of CES. How the fuck did we get gooning into the first episode of this goddamn show? Because it's CES. What else are you going to do with all of those curved TVs? And the humanoid robots. What do you think they do with them after they don't fold the laundry? You know, they put them on the line. On the goon line.

1:18:51Maybe the show was a mistake. This is also like one of the biggest uses of all of these LLMs. It's just people using them as sex spots And actually you know what I don't mind what people do with that But I will say I don't think that they've got anything else other than that I don't think there's any other sticky That's the thing I could have chosen another one You really walked into that Fucking hell No I actually can't come at sticky I learned a lot socially By meeting other weird freaks on World of Warcraft Right And doing role play sex with them That was the way you grew up as a 17 year old What race were you and what race were they?

1:19:33I mean, usually night elves, obviously. Like, of course. It was 2007. I mean, you could have been a gnome. A gnome. Sometimes they were gnome. You just tried things on the internet back then. Love is love. You grew as a person. But nevertheless, it is funny that that appears to be the one use case of LMS. Because people are just like millions of people getting into erotica for the first time. Now, our bartender Phil just walked in and that was the first thing he heard so very good stuff, Phil All the normals are happening here We're talking about how AI is helping people Come

1:20:13I'm so sorry, by the way There are people who listen to this podcast ostensibly to learn about the rot economy and the tech industry's collapse and now everyone's talking about their willies and hoo-hahs and such This is a core part of the industry, though like it is really like this is why we have always driven used to yeah yeah actually pornography has always driven tech which is why they pulled the avn away because then they'd have something to aspire to and also that's a profitable industry right yeah you can't remind people there's no money being actually made yeah like oh my god this is the thing i really i really didn't think about how likely it would be that someone would bring up gooning let alone on the first episode But I mean, this is still more fun I've had in any CEF.

1:20:59Because you go into these shows, and they are definitely sexless. And there are definitely guys in the tech industry who are like, if they had good sex, they'd be really happy, Elon Musk being one of them. But it is also weird how just joyless it is. Putting aside horniness deliberately, it does just feel very fucking joyless. No one seems to, I think this is probably the tech media as well, no one seems excited about anything. No one even is looking forward to it. It's like a group burden that we all share every year. I just refuse to have it that way anymore. Yeah, I think it's good. I'm excited for the rest of this.

1:21:31I think we probably should close things up. Oh, okay. Don't worry. I was just planning to. I'm the emcee, Robert. Because I've got to show you guys some weird AI videos after this. And I have to pee. So as we do our outro now, I'm going to talk you through the rest of the week. Robert and Gail will be joining us again on Friday for one of our two slots. But the way this is going to work is you're going to get this episode. You're listening to this around 12 a.m. ET. I assume that this is the one thing you do with your day. And then maybe about eight, ten hours later, you're going to get the second episode.

1:22:04Then we're going to have David Roth of Defectory. He's going to be joining us. My two elves are going to be here to look on the floor. I will be going to the floor. Yes, I will, but not until Wednesday, due to situations. We will have a gaggle of wonderful reporters. We'll have Jesse Farrar of Your Kickstarter Sucks. We will have a real-life priest, an actual Dominican monk. and we're going to have many more fun things in store. Robert, Gare, where can people find you? You can find our daily show, It Could Happen Here, where we'll be talking about some of the great AI-generated movies that I watched today during my panels.

1:22:36I do not look forward to seeing it. Oh, you're going to be really unhappy, Ed. And yeah, you can listen to us on It Could Happen Here. You've got social profiles? I am on the blue sky. The blue sky. That I write, okay, I don't want to tell you my Twitter. Get off Twitter. Don't go on Twitter. Am I not following you? No, you're following me now. You're not following me on Blue Sky, Robert. I responded to a post asking. But yes, I am on Blue Sky at hungrybowtie.bluesky.social Angueso, where can people find you? On Twitter and on Blue Sky, I am BigBlackJacobin and then I'm at the Tech Bubble at Substack.

1:23:20What's the address? Techbubble.substack.com Very good. And you can, of course, find me at Ed Zitron and Gab. Otherwise, no, I'm on I am not on Gab. You don't need to anymore because it's just Twitter now. I am on Gab, but it's a secret account. I mean, I do. Any of the people I'm following are about to do a mass shooting or have just... No, I'm not going to tell you shit because you can see the episode links and also Ed Zitron is on and who the fuck else is a dumbass name like this? This is, of course, the first episode of the Better Offline CS Extravaganza Saga, of course, mastered by the wonderful Matt Ossowski, who is here producing us in real time.

1:23:57Thank you so much for listening. Very excited for this week.

1:24:08Thank you for listening to Better Offline. The editor and composer of the Better Offline theme song is Matt Ossowski. You can check out more of his music and audio projects at matosowski.com. M-A-T-T-O-S-O-W-S-K-I.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.wheresyoured.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.

1:25:13Parking shouldn't slow you down. ParkWiz gives every driver a shortcut. Book ahead, save up to 50 % and skip the hassle of circling the block. Park smarter, park faster. ParkWiz. Download the ParkWiz app today and save every time you park. Did it occur to you that he'd charmed you in any way? Yes, it did. But he was a charming man. It looks like the ingredients of a really grand spy story. Because this ties together the Cold War with the new one. I often ask myself now, did I know the true Jan at all? Listen to Hot Money, Agent of Chaos on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

1:25:58Do you want to hear the secrets of psychopaths, murderers, sex offenders? In this episode, I offer tips from them. I'm Dr. Leslie, forensic psychologist. This is a podcast where I cut through the noise with real talk. When you were described to me as a forensic psychologist, I was like snooze. We ended up talking for hours and I was like, this girl is my best friend. Let's talk about safety and strategies to protect yourself and your loved ones. Listen to Intentionally Disturbing on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. It may look different, but native culture is alive.

1:26:32My name is Nicole Garcia and on Burn Sage Burn Bridges, we aim to explore that culture. Somewhere along the way, it turned into this full-fledged award-winning comic shop. That's Dr. Lee Francis IV, who opened the first Native comic bookshop. Explore his story along with many other Native stories on the show, Burn Sage Burn Bridges. Listen to Burn Sage Burn Bridges on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. December 29th, 1975. LaGuardia Airport. The holiday rush. Parents hauling luggage. Kids gripping their new Christmas toys. Then everything changed. There's been a bombing at the TWA terminal.

1:27:17Just a chaotic, chaotic scene. In its wake, a new kind of enemy emerged. Terrorism. Listen to the new season of Law & Order Criminal Justice System on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart Podcast.