Better Offline CES 2025: Day 3 - Pt. 2

26:24Shit, they barely brought anything that existed. That's happened, Phil. Yes. Turn the microphone. Okay. I'm going to go go bake more drinks now. Have fun, everyone. Thank you, Phil. Before you go, I'm just going to say that I mostly came here to see you. So, yes. I will say, though, Eureka Park 2, you do sometimes go and meet, like, two guys in a folding table. And then, like, next year, all of a sudden, they have some massive thing. And then the next year, like, they've, like, taken over, like, the biggest company in their space. like the year that you discover them as two guys in a folding team.

26:53And there's something interesting about that. That was the bit that – so I – it's funny that you mentioned dankness. Funny that you mentioned dankness. Well, everything that I had been sort of like – not just Ed either. Like I go on Tuesdays, I do like a little standing bit with an ESPN radio station in Las Vegas. And I mentioned that I was going to be at the Consumer Electronics Show. And they mentioned that it was going to be like sweaty and wet. everybody is always using words having to do with dampness to describe this shit in a very dry place it's a very and in a very dry place indeed and so the idea that there's like a sub basement that's basically just it's it's a part of um it's a part of the expo where the ceilings are too low yeah like basically like most of the action in the movie aliens is what i'm imagining like you're kind of walking around something comes up out of the floor and spits acid in your face or whatever See, that's the thing, though.

27:45It's better than it used to be, though. You weren't here during the Indiegogo glory days. Well, I was expecting that. Was that when Eureka Park was in the sands? Because it used to be... I have to assume... It is the sands. Oh, it's in the same place. But it was basically every company was crowdfunded and the shit people would say. So is Eureka Park the rookie ball of this? It's the cheapest. Okay. It's the unfiltered stuff. All right. I've had demos with companies that later graduated to Eureka Park. So I don't know what that means. It means they made more money. Where were you before? Just outside.

28:25Yeah, we're outside the Cromwell. We're partying outside of the Strat. I mean, there's a lot of big fraud. A lot of fraud, right? Getting a lot of money to do fraud is actually not that hard these days. And so actually in the big, like, you know, uh, North Holland stuff too, like, I mean, there've been plenty of companies that have these, in fact, a lot of times during certain periods of like, you know, big, uh, uh, you know, trends in investing in, you know, whether it's like LIDAR or this, or, you know, some of these other specific technologies, you would see sort of certain names in the space would have these huge things.

28:57And, you know, right. The point of this is to market, we're here, we're this big deal. But like, if you follow the space, you know, like the companies that invest in that stuff are the ones that don't have the good, right. A lot of times, not exclusively, but a lot of times the biggest, splashiest booth in the big thing is where the fraud is. And sometimes the smaller thing in the kind of jumble of startups is actually – That totally scans to me because that's like, again, from my sort of understanding of this as somebody who's interested in the space but not covering it or not like he doesn't have a professional interest.

29:28I'm just kind of like fascinated by everything that's kind of scammy and scuzzy in our culture. this is the thing it's so emblematic of this industry that we're just like yeah no the big frauds are the ones with the big right the big scare but it's like that there's so many lies here and that's what i think what it is i think this is why by saturday i'm going to be like i'm just gonna wake up and the joker make up is because i've never talked about ces this much and i realize that i say this putting on an actual like pop-up radio show during ces that that would be inevitable talking about it i'm like joker-fying again jared and i talk about the joker a lot for many reasons but like i thought i had fully become the joker but now just like as i fresh new ces people they have the exact same and it's just like this place is just very strange well it's strange but i what i was saying is i expected because i've only been to the so we are recording in the venetian like i've been to the big open exhibition space in the venetian right but i haven't been to the convention center yet i got in here today at like 3 p.m so what i saw i expected to go down there and it was just going to be carnage yeah it was just going to be like a super soaker that yells at you in the voice of sir peter o'toole and has an ai aspect for some reason you know and what it was instead was like there were like you were saying it that there's like people down there there was like a dog door that like yeah jesse and i were very taken by and the people were like yeah we were here last year and like we'd been you know we'd set up this thing and if you hit it with a sledgehammer once it got all screwed up so like we went back and we changed the metal and now we've had you know it's like 650 blows from this like you pull a rope and a sledgehammer swings into the door and we haven't even dented it it's like a good product if i had a dog and a house and i have neither of those things but if i had both i'd be like you know what like this might be worth$399.

31:26And I didn't expect to see a single thing like that. The great paradox of CES is that it's kind of it's like a place to get cynical, but yeah, joker-fied. Yes. But also de-joker-fied at the same time. It pulls your brain in these two opposing directions because there is a lot of that. And then there's also the stuff that reminds you why you like technology in the first place. And it's hard to balance those two things. That was like pulling for a lot of people. Not all of them. The ones that, when we were talking about like the things that you saw that like fucked you up or made you want to like ask Phil to call the, you know, enforcement.

32:03Yeah, yeah, yeah. There was one that Edward flagged. I just saw he had posted it earlier that was like a germ detection thing with very strange vibes. Was this the - Germ pass? Oh, yeah, yeah. So - Chosen by God, perfected by science or something like that? Yeah, that's me. So, yeah. That's all. Hey, you know what? Yeah. I think it's all of us. But before we go any further, we're now going to do an ad break. So, David, where can people find you? Defector.com is the website. The Distraction is the podcast I do with Defector, and I do a podcast about Hallmark movies called It's Christmas Town that is not affiliated with any other website because it's about Hallmark movies.

32:40Okay, is there a link they could go to? For those? I'll put them in there. Well, yeah, Defector.com is the thing. It's Christmas Town is like, I don't know, like do that. Look it up on the podcast. Libsyn or something. Yeah. Mr. Niedermeyer, where can people find you? Niedermeyer.io on the World Wide Web and Blue Sky. And Autonicast.com. The Autonicast is my upon-fist. Mr. Newman? I write for a bunch of websites, but you should sign up for my newsletters at jarednewman.com slash newsletters. And now, if you need to sign up for something else and you wish to help this show continue, if you, and I know many of you pray for me to fall victim to falling pianos and various carnage situations in which I suffer greatly, which you would love, of course.

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35:33Jan Marselech was a model of German corporate success. It seemed so damn simple for him. Also, it turned out, a fraudster. Where does the money come from? That was something that I always was questioning myself. But what if I told you that was the least interesting thing about him? His secret office was less than 500 meters down the road. I often ask myself now, did I know the true Jan at all? Certain things in my life since then have gone terribly wrong. I don't know if they followed me to my home. It looks like the ingredients of a really grand spy story. Because this ties together the Cold War with the new one.

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37:11And we're back. So I want to get back to something we were talking about earlier, which is the reason that CES grinds you down and then you have a new justification and you get your powers back is because if you're only here, the ideal amount to be here is like three or four days. And I don't mean this for General Vegas. I mean specifically for CES, because you get to see the show floor enough that you're like, I have a full concept of this. I couldn't have missed anything. You can then come to an opinion and then you meet the other people who are there too long. The other people who didn't live in two days.

37:44And you get a kind of like a trauma bonding experience, which is what this podcast is going to be for the next few days, by the way. Everyone who's left is just like, I just want to see my family again. And David, you're going to get, you're arriving at CES during this period. Yeah. So this is what I want to ask, just again from the perspective to bring an idiot's perspective to bear. Well, I'm here. Well, I know, but I mean, this is a different, it's more of an East Coast flavor. Like who are these people that you're talking about? Who's staying here? So what it is. Tomorrow it's like the general public can come in, right?

38:18I actually haven't. I don't know either. It's probably worth clarifying that like we're at the point of the show because it opened on Tuesday. Today's Wednesday. But people were here like Sunday. So when you go to booths tomorrow and talk to people, they're all going to hate you. Because they've been here. They've been here. They don't want to be here anymore and you're going to be asking them a lot of questions about their products and stuff and they're not going to like that. No, you get the unvarnished booth experience. You get the booth from Samsung who are just like, I don't fucking care.

38:45Also, I think tomorrow you do get the general public. Is it really? They allowed that? Yeah, so it's two days, I think, of media and controlled access and then it opens up to the public and then you get to see the technology fans. Yeah, the people who want to be at CES. It's a terrifying example. People whose identity is fans of technology and a lot of them. Just technology as a concept, like anything. Like the Rob Lowe NFL. Exactly. That's what I was going to say. It's just like, I love robots, all kinds of robots. Actually, no, robots are cool. If only that was what CES was. Well, like the version of robots here is just being like, it's a thing that it mows your lawn and it also cleans your pool.

39:22And it is$7 ,000. Right, yes. So this is the bit that I'm kind of excited. Because this felt like everyone I saw today and then also everyone I saw on the street when I was walking around, like they just leave the lanyard on. Yeah. Like it's not a thing. I mean, it's like no one wants to. I guess maybe they don't want to send the message like I'm here to party. They're like, no, I'm here. Yeah. So they want to send the message that they're at a conference. Right. No fun, please. I do like the people with the lanyard and then the people with the big plastic cups. Yes. Like that contrast is a beautiful thing.

39:55And so the idea of those people being together, that there's going to be like someone that's got like a thing on that's just like, you know, like Shenzhen Robotic Corp. And then there's also just another guy that's wearing like a Tebow Broncos jersey. Autistic and ready to bone or whatever. But what's great is you are actually describing what happens tomorrow, which is Thursday is the day when Vegas and CES truly combine. Because it's the general public, but it's also the people that come to Vegas on Thursdays. and they are a rich tapestry of people they are a beautiful creation sadly the football season is over because had this happened have we had like the chargers raiders game you've got like a team and i said this is raiders fan i don't know if there are raiders fans who listen to this podcast but it gets better for other teams now i wish the raiders fans and the various transient fan bases that come in greater number than raiders fans here i wish they'd have met but really just people coming to Vegas in like the first working week of January meeting with the people made to come here due to job is it's going to be great I you're going to see a very special kind of Vegas I can't wait to hear I had a nice experience of just kind of like drifting by the sports book earlier today and it's still one the patient one yeah just the one because I was you know wandering around the floor there's a lot of you know this is uh again hadn't eaten very much uh there's like a bunch of really name brand Italian restaurants in this hotel.

41:24Unfortunately, there's also 80 ,000 people attending this conference. So it wasn't like, you can't walk into Jelena and be like, I'd love to eat at the bar. Like you can tell them that and they'll be like, that's great. A lot of people would love to eat at the bar. So would I. Yeah. But the sports book area was like, that felt like a CES free zone because the only things that you can watch right now are like, it's Big Ten conference play basketball. It's like USC and Maryland. Yeah. And also, there is not a single person going to the Consumer Electronics Show who can do anything to any of the guys in the sports book who are there.

41:59Specific, like the day traders. The ones who are like, okay, NCAA men's volleyball. I've got my mortgage payment for this month on this one. You come and talk to him about the computer, he will punch through you. He'll do a fist at the North Star thing on you. He's like, a robot that cleans your pool, doesn't that beat all? unfortunately if bowling green doesn't score 71 points in this ohio valley conference game is it is it really possible for for a person to really fully be both a sports fan and a technology fan i feel like yes i am that yeah i love baseball you identify as a technology fan i'm doing a baseball prospectus column about the mets you don't know oh really yeah yeah i probably should have told you um getting a place in new york anyway we need to talk yeah no that i know okay But no, it is possible because they actually both have some similarities.

42:46Obsession with weird numbers, obsession with weird guys, and in general, a complete lack of progress, despite it seeming like there should be one. Right, the more sophisticated it gets, somehow also the dumber and worse it gets. Yeah, that makes sense. But also the problem is they start in very different neighborhoods. It's very rare that someone who's a big tech person, and you start that usually because you haven't got any other options. And then there's the sports people who usually get into that because they can move at speed or do things with their hands. Those are two different points. I only came there because I'm magnificent.

43:23But it is a very different thing. Nevertheless, one of the reasons I brought David here was I believe it's a similar... I think the skill set for sports journalism applies very well to tech for that reason. Well, certainly it depends on what kind of version. because I think that's an interesting question of like, can you be a fan of both? And I think that I am a sports fan. I don't know that I would say that I'm like a technology fan, but I find both of them interesting in the same sort of ways because they all sort of like point back to the same human aspirations and then also like frailties, bloopers, so on and so forth.

44:00But being interested in something and being a fan to the extent that that is the defining characteristic of your personality. Oh, okay. These are two different. And I think that's the bit that I wanted to kind of like try to figure out because I think there's people that are fans of like – What is a fan of technology? Go to the show tomorrow and people – you will see them. That's what I'm – You will hear the things that they say and they're not the things that normal people say. That's something that I've been kind of like struggling with again from my – like everybody that is online or that reads too much or cares too much about too many stupid things or whatever.

44:32Like I have had to think about technology a lot like everybody else. And yet like the thing that was interesting to me about the like the Adrian Dittman saga, for instance, is that there I know that there are people that are like not just, you know, that they think that Elon Musk is a cool guy or they like that he's, you know, dedicated to finally telling the truth about minorities. but I think that there's also something to it where there's people that like are fans of him the way that like people yelling like it's in the hole when like Tiger Woods hits the ball like people that are fans at that level where they basically are like they've removed a lot of the higher level stuff from their brain and they're just cavemen at this point just explain the Adrian Dittman thing if you don't know don't do it there is no explain there is a guy who sounds just like Elon Musk and appears to have all his beliefs and talk exactly like, and then occasionally say he is Elon Musk.

45:34Who is not Elon Musk? He is potentially a weird, strangely jacked German man. And this account is called Adrian Dittman. And I don't even know what to believe anymore. But nevertheless, it appears that it's just a strange man. Yeah, it's still up in the air. Like a Waluigi situation. Apparently Waluigi is not actually related to Wario. like he's just a weird guy that met Wario again I'm not saying Wario correctly someone's gonna fucking say that and I have to deal with the piss these are related things though what you're talking about Tesla fan right so I feel like a lot of people who are recently coming to this Elon Musk is a bad guy kind of coming in with the sort of political you know approach to it what you've missed was many many many years of this incredible online movement and like I followed it very closely because I had never seen anything like it in in cars like it just people are passionate about cars people like when the bailout was happening that was sort of my first story and people would be like you hate General Motors and we you know we're General Motors family and like there was some of that stuff but but this was totally different because it you know it was the the seed of the the personal cult of Elon Musk but then there were all of these sorts of like techno ideological sort of neo-modernist, you know, kind of ideology that was just sort of all wrapped into it.

46:56And, and what was interesting is, is that it really pulled together people from, from both sides of, that was really interesting to me, both sides of the, of the sort of culture war and sort of partisan divide in the country could find things about that that they liked. And it wasn't until Elon Musk decided to pick one side or the other that all of a sudden people were like, holy shit. And so if you go to Tesla subreddits, for example, now. Oh, God. Yeah, no, I know. One normal person would. But you don't see this old-time religion anymore. The only place you really see it online is the SpaceX ones.

47:29The space people are kind of insular. Right. Politics don't touch them. It doesn't matter to them. But with the Tesla one, we've just exited this really fascinating period where this cult, and again, it's not just a cult. it was a stock pumping thing and there's all these damage i won't go into all the details of it um but but the important thing was like there was this moment where people woke up and and realized wait holy holy shit like i have a trans kid and i just supported like one of the biggest trans people like not just supported went online every single day found anybody making any criticisms of tesla and and spending all day attacking them like i i endured like years and years and years of just this like relentless and like they would take shifts and they'll come in waves and a new guy would decide this was gonna be his thing and he'd build his little crew and and go out wreck it like a whole lot of stuff happened online and you know people shouldn't have paid attention to it but it's really important context because it shows that like the dynamics that people can point to as being bad in a partisan sense they they fall prey to them when you strip away that partisan framework that allows you that gives you that sort of like moral you know compass but the thing i've noticed about these kind of techno enthusiasts is they don't seem to enjoy the computer they don't like the computer they don't have any joy out of even a faster phone or a new graphics card these this is actually a problem i have with so what's the what's the the appeal then is it a stock price thing it is i think what it is is it's an identity thing it's like the game that's another type of sports fandom too is basically gm stan stuff i think it's where you're like excited when your team gets under the salary cap wait but is there a no no i think i think what it is is the it's an identity thing it's when gamergate and things of that nature happened what i know and i've i've been a gamer since i like way too like 10 i love gaming i fucking i in my darkest times i play like hades or something i just put a few hours and i genuinely feel better it like engages my mind it makes me feel some industry i think a lot of people listening to this feel the same way about games and then there are people who are just like well gaming was my fucking thing yeah and now the women's are in it and now the wokeness is in it because they don't really give a shit about the actual gaming it's just an identity thing for them it's just this is a thing that made me special and now someone else is weighing in i don't really believe in anything yep and so there are people who are tesla stands who i just think are just like wow it's my it's a sports team it's uh i don't even watch the games i go on espn and i click on the box score and then i actually there's a great tweet about this where it's just like going on espn and looking at the box score and arguing with people which is funny but i think these people are like well elon musk is the kind of guy i want to feel i want to be like that guy i want to stand for like nothing but be very angry and rich all the time and believe in nothing because elon musk seems completely fucking joyless yeah this is a half-formed thought and it may be bad but um this never stopped me mate So I guess you would think like fandom of a tech company.

50:33You're an Apple fanboy, a Tesla fanboy. And they've been around a while. Yeah, analogous to sports team fanboyism. But then there's Elon Musk fanboyism or Steve Jobs fanboyism. That's a person. Is there an equivalent to that in sports? Like are people fanboying out over a person? Yeah, I mean to a certain extent. Although I think that it depends. I mean, I think that like there's individual sports. Yes, there are people that like, I mean, one of the things that I remember being struck by when we go to the U.S. Open most summers when we can figure out how to do it. When Roger Federer was still playing, that there's like a hat that you can wear that just has RF on it, like an interlocking, like the Dodgers logo.

51:13And they're just like people that they're basically wearing like a Roger Federer, like just Roger Federer pajamas to the Roger Federer match. or he's not even playing, but they're wearing their Roger Federer hat because that's when they think of tennis, they think of Roger Federer. It's like I saw a guy in a Cowboys jersey at a Raiders game. Yeah. The Cowboys were not playing. Yes. And that is, I mean, that's a classic Cowboys fan move too. Well, I mean, not in the sense that like - They just kind of show up and lout? Yeah. You're correct in assessing that as being like a fucked up thing to do.

51:43But it is also, yeah, but it is also it's Cowboys fan stuff. But I think that that's an interesting distinction because the idea of being like, there's all these different ways to be stupid about sports right that there's like and a lot of it does sort of have its own political valence even if it doesn't fully land like you know that uh one of the things i've been thinking about this because the college football playoffs are going on that uh the sec conference which you don't you know like is in the southeast of the united states so it's like kind of these uh like super red states with a college football is a big part of their identity.

52:18Oftentimes these are states that don't have professional teams in them. And it was a thing for a while, less the case this year because the SEC weirdly had a super shit year and is basically like done for the college football season. Great. Sorry. If Alabama was beating Illinois, fans would not, and Alabama fans were there, they would not necessarily do a Bama related chant. They would chant SEC. Which is basically like their way of being like you're getting your asses kicked right now by a state that is like you know republican trifecta in the legislature like tommy tuberville is our senator like that's the bit that i feel like there is like an identity politics aspect of it where they're lording it over like and it's a regional thing is there a red versus blue like tech company divide oh that's a good one now it's red versus darker red i think so no there was a point when I think people thought Apple was the nice one and they are by comparison now which is not a good thing I think Facebook is the one that weirdly people thought was blue but was redder than all of them combined Google was the nice one for a while they did the it gets better thing and now they do it gets worse and I gather they were also all in their way culturally they were good employers they were inclusive and it really is were they were pretending I mean, I think so fandom, it gives you a sort of like personality prosthetic, right?

53:48Then a sense of community. And I think those are like universal across most fandoms. I think what tech offered, and I just used Tesla as the example of that. And it may not be as broadly, you know, but what it gave, what it added to that basic fandom package was two things. there was a growing social capital to be gained from being someone who could speak confidently about this is what the future is going to be. Elon Musk is the patron saint of that. He's shown how much power just doing that has. Even resembling it. Yeah. And people realized all they had to do was just repeat what he said and say it with the same confidence and people would be like, whoa, this guy knows what he's talking about.

54:34And Elon Musk says so and you get a couple of other little facile arguments to go along with that. The third thing, and I'm curious if this is maybe where these things are converging. The other thing is the stock thing, right? Where you could buy the stock and then now you have financial incentive to go out and proselytize. And attack people, critics, pump the thing, repeat the narrative. And I wonder if gambling and the rise of gambling is maybe starting to add that into the sports world. I think there's an aspect to that. I think the bit that is interesting to me about when you were talking about how like once you are a Tesla like stockholder that like the idea that that is functionally now like a meme stock with Elon as the load bearing meme at the center of it and the fact that the cars are you know decreasing in quality and maybe also decreasing in popularity and sales.

55:27Yeah. It kind of doesn't matter that like if the stock stays high, you're doing all right. But in that case, it's like you're actually – in some ways like when you're going out there and spending your leisure time being a fucking online shooter for Elon Musk, you're also advocating for yourself in some ways. Like that's your portfolio. In the really early days of what we were talking about, this Tesla online sort of phenomenon, there was really one website, a forum, an old school forum that we all know and love that was really – it was the main Tesla Motors Club. and it was like kind of the main one.

55:57There was a subreddit, but it started out really small. This was the place. And a lot of the website, you know, they were like, talk about the company, talk about Elon, you know, and then as cars came out, you know, and the ownership was sort of the main part of the thing, of the site, at least if you look at, you know, the list of all the sub forums. And so people were on there and they wanted an open exchange of information because they had problems with their cars and they wanted to understand them and what the fix was and what Tesla was doing about them. and that was the main activity of this community.

56:29It was helping each other out as consumers. Now, there was another sub-forum of this that was the Tesla investors sub-forum. And that was, it looked small. It looked like one little thing, but you went there and it was so, so, so active. And it had its own internal, like radicalizing culture. And then there was this key point where I and others started to write stories based on the other part of the, where it's owners wanting this free exchange of information and saying, we have this problem. Tesla's not really dealing with it. Did that bring them into conflict with the investors where they were like, can you just keep that in-house?

57:06Exactly what happened. Oh, man. And it's a fascinating thing because Tesla became this fandom that bridged not just like sort of political partisan, but like on a fundamental level, the divide between capital, like between management and consumer, right? As a consumer, you want certain things. If you're a fan of, you want the product to be good, you want certain things. As an investor, you want other things, right? You want the quality to be as low as possible and the margins as high, and that comes at the expense of the consumer. You don't necessarily mind if the product is good, but it's not as important to you as the others.

57:37So these two parts of the relationship of any company came into conflict because it had to be one community and Capital One. I think it's a really interesting thing. and this is why Tesla became, it went from a company, it's one of the reasons that it went from being a company that was sort of rooted in really trying to surprise and delight customers. Like that was a really fundamental thing. Over time, you've seen the cynical stock pumping part of it has just completely consumed. And like people who were like, who were fans of the company are like, wait, where is the stuff that I was a fan of?

58:12And it's because that relationship was, they want Capital One and the consumer loss. So this is why you have people whose cars have blown up and then they do the interview and they're like, I still love Elon Musk though. I still love Tesla. That's exactly right. That all goes back to that. And that's where they diverge from sports fans. Well, to a certain extent though because I think that that still is the kind of thing where there's like an element of that where like there's different ways to be a fan of a team, right? But I think that there is this aspect of where it's like Auburn loses by five touchdowns to Florida.

58:43Right. and it's like you want to fire the coach but at the same time you're not like I'm giving up like war eagle no more like no it's the sort of thing where that's when you do the super psychotic fan stuff where it's like well now I'm going to poison some plants on their canvas or like the Kobe Bryant like I'm willing to overlook some stuff can I say one bit though because you made an interesting point about the gambling aspect of it that I wanted to speak on because I think that that has both of you were talking about it I guess. But the idea of gambling as a type of fandom, I think, is way more...

59:22there's like a way for if you're a fan of a team, you're giving some bit of your leisure time as a person to this thing that you can't control. It's not a smart decision. Nobody does it because it's smart. You do it because it's fun and because it's kind of like a way to fill other spots in your life that might otherwise be quiet with noise, which is reasonable. What are any of us doing? Who is listening to this that is not doing that? But there is also this other part of it where it's an emotional commitment. It's like it's a thing about caring. And I think that gambling to me feels more like for one thing, you are the people that are doing that.

1:00:05I think it is more of like what you were talking about in terms of the like the Tesla investors part of the forum where it is basically like it. And everyone that gambles on sports, pretty much everybody loses the people that are professionals, the people that are down the sports book. Like if they're really, really, really good, they still lose 46 % of the time or whatever, you know? And the people that are just flushing$300 down the DraftKings app every Sunday are not good at it. But they're like, that aspect of it is not, it's the opposite of fandom to me. Of course, if you're ESPN or you're NFL executives, their money spends the same.

1:00:45It doesn't really matter. If they're watching, they're watching. If they care, they care. And the money that you're getting from your partnerships with DraftKings and stuff, that also spends the same. But I think it's the opposite of fandom in an emotional sense. That it is like, it's not just transactional, but that it is sort of taking all of the stuff that you would have cared about in this sort of more communal way and making it about yourself, your experience of it. And that goes, and I think there's a whole sort of new-ish thread of that in the culture that has been enabled by technology, not just in terms of being able to gamble on your phone, but to me, that's cryptocurrency speculation.

1:01:28It's the same mindset. I think they all come back to a fundamental point, which is a lack of control that we all feel over our lives. The idea that we can now gamble anywhere. And we're going to have Arif Hasan from 60 Minute Drill, my podcast on football, which I've never talked about. they love this so it's this thing of like oh i can have some control over my destiny i can now gamble like the gamblers in the same way that people use the trade and then lost a shit ton of money saying we go to sports books the idea of opening sports books up at this scale the only thing worse than it is the thing that robin hood did which was opening up the idea of options trading to everyone but i think it activates the same thing where it's this desperation for control in the least control, in a way, in a situation where you're being obviously controlled.

1:02:16In the same way, those odds are so precisely calculated in the same way that like whatever pricing you're getting on options is going to be calculated by the hedge funds that are extra millimeters closer to the stock exchange so that they can activate that trade. And it is like, it's the opposite of fandom. You don't give a shit about these companies. You give a shit about money and go up and you feel like you have control because you're smart. and you're allied with the right side. But they're not selling it as gamble because you like money. And this is a pretty critical thing. They're presenting it as a way to mind.

1:02:49I've been looking at ads actually around. There's so many sports gambling ads here. Yeah, I was going to say. And they're all sort of like, you're watching sports anyway. You enjoy this anyway. Enjoy it just a little more. Get in the game. Get closer to the experience. It's a little enhancement to your fan. And yeah, it's an enhancement to the core fan experience. And what I think is in common here with the Tesla thing is that Tesla's whole pitch was these contradictions can all work together. Not just the consumers and investors are both going to benefit at no cost to each other. There's no trade-off there.

1:03:22But then also venture capital can fund environmental transformation and there's no trade-offs there. Government doesn't have to get involved. I think you're getting too complex. I think it's just invest in the future. The lesson out of all of it is that people desperately want to believe that you can have your cake and eat it too, that fundamental trade-offs aren't. Do well and do good or whatever. And in both of these cases, the trade-off that always wins is the money. Whatever it is that you think you can reconcile with some kind of financial incentive, over time, it's like drugs or something else.

1:03:55Like over time, the financial incentive, not with everybody, but like over the aggregate, it wins. And that's what we're seeing with Tesla. And it's being framed as freedom though. It's like, you can do this, you're already doing sports watching, why not make sports money? Just make it a little better. Right, it's a hustle. and you won't lose anything that's what you identified I think you do lose something but I think the overarching theme of both is it is selling you the idea of a con that you will have industry over something that you are actively being controlled and you are being fucked with and you're like I'm fucking back and you're not you use the DraftKings code there is not a better offline one I'm terrified of gambling yeah well the aspect of it too that is like the other bit of it that seems like inimical to like the fun part of being a fan is that when you see people talk about it, or generally the discourse surrounding gambling is that it makes you like sports less because you're liking them in this different way, because you're participating in this.

1:04:53And this is something that we have a couple of stories out at Defector, being written, not written yet, that are basically about the way that athletes absorb this new sort of obsession with gambling. opening that up has you know and by making it possible for people to you know whatever put money on whatever like somebody getting more or less than one and a half assists in an nba game like just a building a parlay around the performances of bench players in some ways like you know like obviously technologically i suppose it's a feat to make this possible because you used to have to literally come to las vegas to do that sort of thing traditionally call those boundaries Yes.

1:05:33And then, but what's weird about it now is that like by sort of putting in play everybody in every game in all of these different ways, there's a lot of people that, you know, like you're a professional athlete, like you're a public figure anyway. Like people are going to recognize you just because you're like taller and more buff than anybody else in the restaurant that you're in. but there's a lot of these dudes that like otherwise would be more or less getting left alone that are just sort of like when you miss that free throw you fuck me out of twenty five hundred dollars and i'm coming to your house and i'm gonna push your kids around and like that's happening to like people in like minor leaguers tom hackamer you were on the staff cast recently like told me he had friends that had that experience happen to him in spring in spring training games in baseball because you get like the real degenerates can bet on stuff like that and there's probably like a shame barrier when you had to come, even if you could come to the casino, like you wouldn't roll up and be like, yeah put this parlay with Blake Corham and Samaj P.

1:06:32Ryan what are you doing? somebody knows bull but then you're like googling where does Samaj P. Ryan live? like how fine? you know like at this point you can find them online you place the bet online you can do like three or four totally sociopathic things from your couch. And if you are looking to do one of those, we will have some advertisers after this. But David, where can people find you? Defector.com, the website, the Distraction Podcast, also affiliated with Defector. Mate, you're going to be saying that a lot on this trip, so I would not get exhausted. You were just at the beginning. Ed Niedermeyer, where can they find you?

1:07:12Niedermeyer.io and theautonicass.com. Mr. Newman. Go to jarednewman.com and sign up for my newsletters. Go to Google, type in ways to give Ed Zitron money, and then click every link. There isn't actually anything. Type in Blake Corum house photos. I want to see the AI summary of that one. Okay, so just to be clear, playing Madden, I've been feeding the draft classes in. I always take Blake Corum. But also Trey Benson was way better. Anyway, I need to stop this right now. If you want to spend some money or some shit, listen to a podcast, I guess. Follow the following and click it. Listen. I don't know how you listen to these things.

1:07:48I don't listen to podcasts. I'm Ed Zittra and you can find me on the internet.

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1:11:29Okay, so we've now returned to the third section of this part of the podcast, and it's important to add I have started to experience CES brain myself, which means that I'm just thinking because Jared said it the phrase Google juice so just think and say that for a while we're of course enjoying Jesus Christ we're once again joined we're joined just keep it Matt I'm sorry by Edward Ongreso Jr. we now have three ads on one podcast not good we're growing more powerful by the minute any other ads any other ads at CES you want to just join us let's Voltron let's go Ed Voltron? Jesus fuck. You should do an Oops All Ed segment.

1:12:13Is that a reference to something? Oh, you know, like in Crunch Berries. I know what you're talking about. It's okay. Someone's going to email this to me. I'm going to look bad. David Roth of Defecto is joining us. And of course, Ed Niedermeyer, the car expert. Hello. My man loves wheels. Jared Newman, freelance journalist, tech journalist. I love being here. Oh, thank you for calling that out. Yeah, you could have also when I asked you what you do. Sorry. I mean, I'm sorry for you. Let's be honest. But the reason I bring up CES Brain is because there is something very concussive about the Consumer Electronics Show.

1:12:52And part of the reasons I did this, other than the fact that I love podcasting, is because there is a defined effect of this show. and it doesn't matter whether you've been here a hundred times or two times or no times you experience the same thing because there is just something about this place where you come in and you're there ostensibly for something real and then you go on to a show floor where most of it isn't or might be and you think wow all that latent potential but if you've been here enough times you know that isn't potential it's just lies this this may not be what you're talking about it all but it's fine but like you know uh in in swimming there's like the thing where you like uh you know you train with like heavy stuff on right right like broccoli in the room yeah and then you like you like sheer all that and like shave all your don't ask me how you know this uh you know and you feel like you're like in the in the clear okay but when i um on this podcast and when we've hung out after you know later in cs and previous years right right um you know i i'm not really a big partier or i don't even drink caffeine during the show and then i come here and i have a a drink that phil has made with black blood of the earth right and it's like the i guess it's like the opposite the opposite of what of like of like preparing for a meet and like tapering down and and being ready to yeah i it's like making yourself feel worse i know no okay this actually leads does this make sense i don't know no no it does there is also something very like self-harmy about CES in the sense that like last year last time I was at CES I always find a playlist to like drive myself insane now this year was just like trapped headstrong but there was one year where I went and all I listened to for hours on the LVCC floor was Party Rock Anthem by LMFAO and Otherworld from the Final Fantasy 10 soundtrack that's when you fight Jekt anyone any listeners you love Final Fantasy 10 you are trying to dissociate I yeah I don't really tend to associate when I get here so just like it's just the pain begins but I think that there's just something weird about the show and I realize I've now described at length just the way I terrorize myself we're just coming here you're not like you're there for a job but you're surrounded by shit where like people are like my job is kind of lying my job is kind of suggesting I might do something but so I actually what I like about CES I'll put the positive spin on this.

1:15:21What I like about CES, the value I get out of it is that like, when you do, if what you're trying to do is discern between what might be real and what might not be in technology, right? In emerging tech, you don't have a lot to go on. You're dealing with companies that control information like crazy. And that's what you need to go on. On the internet, they have so much control over that. It's what, you know, when you come here, you have an opportunity to exercise like your human faculties of like in person, right? You get the vibe of like companies and people and things. And to me, because a lot of times that's all you have to go on.

1:15:59Like that's a dirty secret. Yeah. And you have to like develop this skill of just like, does this, do these people, how they talk about the product, how they talk about the company, how they talk about their plans. Is this feel like something that's like real smart people? And like the more you talk to people, the more you engage with stuff, the more you talk to you, again, both the smart people and the frauds, you have to talk to the frauds. you have to engage with them you have to look at them and you and in a lot of ways coming here for me is the only way to actually exercise and develop this this ability to like kind of intuitively discern and again it's horrifying that journalism kind of depends on that in a fundamental way in this but i don't feel like ces covers this in that way though the coverage so rarely reflects that that kind of situation there's just like here's the 10 fucking things i saw at ces there's the ai fridge and the other AI fridge and the bachelor dishwasher.

1:16:49But it's basically, what I'm saying is it's basically impossible to just show up, look at this thing and say, yeah, like you have to really develop the skill over time, right? It's, it's, uh, it's training data. When you're collecting training data, it doesn't mean you can immediately say this is real, this isn't, you have to build it up over time. There's a weird thing where, you know, especially if you're a press and you're, you're going to see, you know, an exhibit or something and somebody will, will talk to you about the product. And there's always this like moment where you're trying to figure out like, okay, was this a person that was paid to be at the booth and was told a bunch of stuff?

1:17:21Or is it a marketing person? Or is it a product person? And you're on the spectrum of like, how much does this person actually know about the product? And can we have a real conversation versus like you're feeding me bullshit for 15 minutes? I'm also curious for you guys who have been here times before, do you feel like there's any correlation between the boundaries of hype and technical capabilities? Do you think that if you're coming in here expecting and seeing a lot of it is hype, a lot of it is bullshit, that a lot of that is inspired by people looking at tech that we have now and hoping that they can have some sort of application later?

1:18:02and then the boundaries of that hype grow as the technical capacity you could conceivably fib grows? Or are these delusions or hyper narratives that persist independent of what actually is developing? Yeah. Oh, boy. I think it kind of gets to what I was saying earlier about being pulled in both directions, right? Because it's like my job being here is to like try to ignore that stuff, which there's a ton of. We didn't really talk about this, but like I feel like it's like AI gaslighting here. Please elaborate. Yeah, because like everybody is like saying AI, but then you go and like look at the demonstrations and it's nothing.

1:18:49Like it's just it's stuff that hasn't been delivered. Like, okay, I'll give a specific example. like Intel, right? They had a big thing last year about AIPC. AIPC, we're putting natural language process or natural processing units in PCs. We're going to have all these like local on-device AI. It's going to enable all these like low latency, amazing private applications that you couldn't do with AI in the cloud. It's going to be amazing. That was last year. And now I come back this year and they're like still talking about AIPC, but nothing has changed. It's all the same. Like there's no applications yet.

1:19:22And I was like, what, what, what have you been doing. And it's like that when you go everywhere, like you go to Samsung's booth and they're talking about AI and TVs and AI and this and that. And it's like not really anything. And it's definitely not like half of it is not like LLM generative AI, which is supposed to be the big thing. It's just AI slapped onto regular algorithms that they've been using. And so it's just like very disorienting to try to figure out what is real AI. And there's just really hasn't been that much of it when you get down to it. That's been my experience of AI in general from the outside of it, where there's like, it just, because you do hear it a lot.

1:19:59Like AI gaslighting, I think is like the condition of the American consumer in this particular moment. And yet at the same time, there's something about like when you see it in, like in an ad, you know, where they're telling you that it's like, also it has AI or it's like, you know, common walking around like telling you about like, you know, it's at our fingertips now, AI is. So that's great. We got that going for us. whatever any of that shit like i discount it because i don't think that i've seen an application of it that works or does anything cool but then i've also never been in a position where someone has to like like another person who's like in a human body that's in the same space as me has to like look me in the face and be like and it has ai in it and that makes it better like and so that part of it is like i'm kind of looking forward to that aspect of it tomorrow please talk to everyone Much of what I saw on the floor here was like inventions, you know, or it was somebody just being like, it's a COVID test, but it only takes 10 minutes to tell you the results instead of 15 or whatever, you know, all which is like, to me, that shit's cool.

1:21:04Like, I think it's great to invent. It's not exciting, but... I mean, it's exciting to me in the sense, but it's like, just in, you know, like, again, like, I'm far enough outside of it that it's like, it feels less like tech and more like you made a thing and you try to sell it, which, you know, that's neat. But then the, but I haven't been to like the Intel room or like the big like Amazon hall or whatever. The Amazon goo, like. I'll give you another example. Well, one thing, I must say something that happened to me. So regular listeners might know about something called the smiling man. If you look up Google.

1:21:34It's not real. He can't hurt you. So I, when I got my CES badge done, I put the smiling man on it because they'll let you put anything on it. And while walking into the Amazon room, the woman who's doing the security goes, wow, so hot. Which if you look up this image is not an appropriate reaction. Was that not what you were going for? Yep. I don't know what the hell I was going for that image, mate. Anyway, that happened to me. I had a PR person tell me out is extremely fancy. I don't even understand how to parse that. I'm wearing what I'm wearing now. You're asking them a bunch of questions.

1:22:13They're like, hey, you are fancy. I didn't know I was talking to a fancy guy. This tech is not elegant. You get these weird otherworldly interactions. Jared, you look great, but you're also in a light blue button down and blue jeans. You're wearing the blogger uniform. That's how I dress. That's what it was. It was the blogger. And I don't think it was even like a remark on my clothes. I think it was, I don't even know what it was. You're like twirling a cigarette in your fingers. What was the example you were going to give them? Yeah, sorry. Oh, yeah. Okay. So like Lenovo, right? Like every other PC vendor, all their stuff is like AI.

1:22:53And you go to their booth and like they're showing you their new computers, but on the new computers is like these half baked like on-device AI applications that are not cool. But the computers are cool as hell. They have a laptop where the screen rolls out to become a larger... Which is so much cooler than AI. That's cool. Then you're talking about AI, but talk about how cool your screen is. That should be the focus. That's a totally reasonable conflict for me. Obviously, you're much more expert in this stuff than me. But to me, it's like you made a thing that is cool that didn't exist before.

1:23:29Why do you feel compelled also, or even to lead with this thing that is like, it's not vaporware because it like is, you know, you burn an acre of old growth forest every time you generate an image of like Wario's pussy. Like, it's like that's real, you know, like, but Wario's pussy is real. It's very real. It can hurt you. I didn't try it at the booth, so I don't know if that's what they're letting you do. To me, though, it's like that bit of it. We're moving on We're moving on from wussy No one's saying wussy This is a serious podcast And I have a serious question Put that into the problem So we've been talking about CES brain And I think one of the things that we have to make sure That we let people know Because clearly there's some symptoms I've done eight CESs I've never broken like this before The thing that's important for people to understand It's not just we've been talking about the absurdity and the weirdness and trying to figure out what's real and what's not.

1:24:32But a fundamental part that colors all of that is just the physical exhaustion bit. That's what makes that stuff also part of it. Yeah, and I'll tell you, you get a unique perspective on this that I think is really an interesting way to think about the whole show if you cover mobility. Because you come here every year and you hear all these the brand new things about how the way we get around is all going to fundamentally change. And those things are different all the time. Sometimes, you know, little electric bikes are the thing. And sometimes it's autonomous cars. And sometimes it's driver assistance.

1:25:02And, you know, it's always different. It's all these different things. Everyone is promising that this technology is going to fundamentally change how you get around. And every time you come here, it's getting around Vegas periods. On the Vegas Strip, there are three separate rail lines, none of which are connected. Yeah. Just on the Vegas, just on a few blocks of the Vegas Strip. And really for me, like the lesson, and it's a really important one, I think, for CES is that like this whole thing is this festival of stuff that's promising to fix things. And yet the structural issues are what matter.

1:25:36This is all stuff that doesn't address the structural issue. The only way to make getting around Las Vegas easier is to fix how it is on a structural level. It is a car place. You go to the city center. I love the city center on the Vegas Strip. They built this thing that's supposed to look like a little downtown. and there is no way as a pedestrian to engage with it. Go check it out. It's where like the Aria and the Cosmopolitan are. It's this amazing like American symbol of a city where visually it's there and it looks cool, but it's all these like things so cars can go down to the parking lot.

1:26:06It's a city for cars. And again, like we were talking about what's real and what's bullshit and that's all fascinating. At the end of the day, like it's kind of all bullshit compared to like how we really experience things comes down to structural things that tech, a lot of times, sometimes it can change it in fundamental ways, but 99.9 % of the time, it's just some little layer on top of these. Well, it can't be like enough individual product experiences and engagements that suddenly makes a city, you know, like pedestrian friendly or capable of, or makes it possible for you to get around a city without a car or whatever.

1:26:42Like that's a state level intervention. That's not the sort of thing where like, if you give everybody an e-bike, suddenly Las Vegas makes sense if you're not in a car. But also, none of this matters because Vegas is functioning exactly as it needs to, which is much like the tech industry. You're trapped within the product and you'll follow its fucking rules. Which is why this is the place where we've pioneered the most innovative and transformative form of public mass transit, which is human-driven Teslas in a tunnel. Yeah. Where you need to have like three people at the station to make sure that when the drivers pull up, they're not running over people.

1:27:17My car when I was in that. Have you guys, if you haven't experienced that, go. Oh, no, no, no. Do 100%. Absolutely. Just go. I actually need you both to go, please. Yeah. How do you, can you do it from here? It's for free. Yeah. No, it's like Resorts World or like around the, but look for the stations and go anywhere, go anywhere and then come back. But just experience it because it's so stupid. And it's, it's such a classic example of like, of technology for, you know what I mean? And, and, and just. I think what you're kind of like hitting on is in technology, like this fundamental frustration that I have and probably other people knows as well is like, you know, everybody's going after like the flashy, like AI, for example, like the thing that attracts shareholder excitement or whatever.

1:28:01But there's all these like structural things like I want to pay less for cloud storage. Like I don't want every photo I take to hold me hostage. Somebody should figure out how to like compete with Google Photos or whatever. Or even have like hardware storage. Yeah, like nobody's doing the unglamorous shit that needs to be fixed because there's this other shiny thing in the corner. Well, it's because of the rock-com bubble. It's the fact that they need everything to grow at all costs and they're running out of them, so they're getting crazier. And for many years, you would come here and people, the pitch from a lot of these mobility technology kind of companies would be, we are going to move past the car.

1:28:37We're going to unlock, it was this weird moment where tech and sort of progressive urbanist aspirations, that there seems to be some alignment around it. And the reality is, is cars are a structural thing. And that, again, like when the more tech solutionism, right, tries to tackle structural things, the more it's sort of revealed to the lack of power. Like we're surrounded by so much technological power, but you see sometimes the limits of that. But this is actually the principal dichotomy of better offline itself, which is that you have companies that ostensibly sell the idea that they're fixing problems, but fixing actual problems might make them less profitable.

1:29:16And they certainly won't, if they start fixing those problems, grow forever. So CES, yeah, CES is selling the hype. And I think for, and I say this, first CES was 2011. So back then, you could kind of with a straight face believe it. You could think the tech industry was going to fix some shit, right? Maybe there were more cynical people back then, but back then, at least in the media, I was a bit of PR baby at the time. You just were like, oh, no, the tech industry will work it out. It was the early days of Facebook. You're like, they're not completely evil. You just didn't know at that point.

1:29:49And I think that CES has never really graduated from it. It hasn't really tried to adjust to the fact that I think more people are like, I don't know about the tech people. And I have to wonder how CES changes as a result. Yeah, there's a weird disconnect between the image that CES puts forth and what you have to then go and try to find as a journalist covering it. So what it's putting forth is basically like, here's the future. This is what it's going to look like. Is that the idea? Ideally. Do you remember, well, I don't know if you're going to last year or not, the CES slogan was all on. I don't remember that.

1:30:29Okay, so the CES slogan last year was all on, which I guess is a play on all in. and like all the imagery that they had was like extremely obvious AI faces. Oh, yeah. That's so fun. All of the things now AI. And so like that set the tone, right? Like there's this obviously like unhinged thing that they're putting forth and then you have to go and find things to actually be maybe excited about but that are not that. I don't know. It's over the years just dodging just the made up shit and before you would just accept more of it. I'm trying to sort of figure out how, because again, I haven't been to Edward, you went to the convention center today, right?

1:31:08Yeah. So you saw like the weird stuff. I mean, yeah, it was. Is this your first go around too? This is my first one too. And the convention center was filled with a lot of things that exist already without AI, but you had people assuring you that they've reached a new level because of the AI. There's more. Yeah. You've unlocked its potential. And I think, like you were saying, I was actually kind of struck by that because when I was in the expo, like you said, there were a lot of gizmos and they were talking about AI, but they wouldn't actually focus on AI like they were in the convention center.

1:31:44They would actually be like, here's a problem. Even that CGM thing, which we talked about, which doesn't work. Which was that one? This was the, well, they said it was not a CGM, it was a healthcare management device. Continuous glucose monitor. Continuous glucose monitor. I cannot say a word. Great stuff. So it monitors glucose. It's also supposed to monitor other metabolic indexes for you based off shining infrared on your skin. Right. And here, that's an interesting development because it's not invasive. And you can use it ostensibly to monitor things that might, you know, you might actually have to get a medical device, you might have to get something more invasive to monitor.

1:32:33But then you, you know, you dig a little bit and then you get the other problematic features. Oh, we're gonna, you know, we're gonna, we're privacy oriented and we're rewards oriented. So we're gonna put it on the blockchain and we're gonna tell your insurance company everything. And how does that differ from the main show though, the main LVCC? So at the LVCC, it just, it felt like it was less like here is a bit of an improvement or an issue that we want to offer an innovative fix for, whether or not you agree with the fix. And here is this thing that you have that probably works, but with AI you can access ostensibly more potential.

1:33:08It's a more craving. That's a function of LVCC, especially Central Hall, being like that's where the big companies are, right? LG, Samsung, whatever. Whereas Venetian is kind of these smaller companies. And South Hall, even to some extent, this is very CES-y, I'm sorry. No, it's true. It's useful for me, man. I should be writing this down. And I should explain this hours into the CES coverage. So there are two areas. There's the Venetian Expo, which is connected to the Venetian and Las Vegas Convention Hall. And there is the Central, North, and South Hall. Excellent time to explain that at the end of like the fourth hour.

1:33:47Anyway, Tara, please continue. Yeah. So, you know, you have big companies like Samsung and LG that are trying to show that they are, doing something big and flashy. Because what they really have is like our OLED display is like a bit brighter than it was last year. Which, again, I think is cool. Like that makes more difference to me than this like AI stuff that they're throwing on top. But that's the stuff that they have to you know, focus on to get people a little different. So why is that? I guess. Like maybe that's a naive question. But is that like basically, because I feel like if you are pointing this at consumers and you're basically like, we solved the dog door.

1:34:27It's better now. It's never going to let in like, you know, a raccoon or like whatever. Like, you know how you keep having like beavers from the neighborhood let themselves into your kitchen? You ever notice when Zytron just shows up in your house? No. Yeah. It's worth clarifying. Like this show, despite being called like consumer electronics show, it's not for consumers. That's what I was going to say. The primary purpose of the show historically, that's probably true now still, is for buyers of technology for retailers to go around and see what they want to put, how much they want to buy of a TV or whatever to figure out what they're going to stock this year.

1:35:10But even in that case, if it's for those people, wouldn't the selling point be the OLED screen is a little bit brighter? He's left one important detail out, which is it's also for conning journalists. Yes. No, I was going to get to that. Oh, sorry. Pardon me. Continue then. No, yeah. So I mean, I think in both cases, it's kind of like that's a more attractive story to tell, especially if you're not, you know, it's hard at CES and a lot of people aren't looking at stuff super deep, right? And so they want just the easy story. And so easy story is like, look at the AI we're putting into our TV versus like we made our TV a little brighter.

1:35:48it's just not as attractive if you're not really paying super attention. But also, it's very hard to write an exciting story about something getting slightly better. I think that's what I'm trying to say. That makes sense. Because if the idea is that you're trying to generate some sort of heat around a product, the idea of like, there's just something strange about that. I mean, I guess we're probably going to wind up returning to this often over the next few days. Because AI is not real, Yeah. Like in a meaningful way. Anyway, yeah. That like the idea that you have to, in order to make this an interesting story, you have to be like, not only is it a better screen than it was last year, something that we had like actual.

1:36:33Something that helps you. Yes. Something that like improves your experience. Not only is that, but also we added. It's a whole new way to consume television. Yes. When it's not. You get it in your home and you're like, I'm glad it's brighter. So there's two things. Your intuition that this stuff is not – like stuff that consumers are screaming for. So there's two factors. One is that post-Steve Jobs, everyone is obsessed with this idea of people don't know what they want until you show it to them. Right. That is a huge factor in a lot of these things. The other thing though, you're right. Like a lot of this stuff isn't for consumers in a fundamental way in that a lot of this is performance for investors.

1:37:12That's the bit that I was curious about. because I always feel like AI is for like, you're showing out for like the quarter zip, the V-sit. Yeah. Because they're the ones that care about that. Patagonia perverts. You're showing you're on trend. You're showing like, there's this almost like theater often of like how you position yourself relative to your competitors. They have a little booth, you have a big booth. Like there's all of these sorts of things and a lot of them are about, especially for the kind of earlier stage companies and like, which happened more in the hype cycles, right? So like you saw this a lot in like, you know, EVs and AVs and stuff.

1:37:44Like these tiny little companies that had no revenue, no business, but they had these massive, massive things. It wasn't for consumers because they didn't have anything to sell consumers. But they were there. And they were years away from having something. It's for investors. It makes sense with EVs too. It's fucking hard to make a car. It's also about attracting partners from the ecosystem. I think also like just to put a finer, maybe a little more specificity with AI, like AI tends to demo well. so if you're a buyer or investor or a journalist like you look at these things and they show you for two minutes the canned demos that they have and you're like oh wow this is really this is interesting the way that Elon's robot can like pop and lock it's only when you try to use it like in a regular way that you're like oh this doesn't actually work I feel like we're entering this like nexus of what happens when you spend 10 fucking years in the tech industry building it for people who won't use it by people who don't care.

1:38:43And so you're at this point where it's just like selling nothing to nothing. I always had this thing with Google Home, Google Nest, whatever devices, where I felt like nobody at Google was using it. No, the Google Home app is like an Escher painting. It's like, oh, I need to go... Like Sundar Pichai doesn't use those. No, he doesn't. None of these people do. I just... and it's funny, we keep, we've done hours of this now, and it really keeps coming back to this theme of just everyone going, what is this shit? You don't know what it is. As somebody who's like, really just, I read about it, but I don't consume a lot of this stuff.

1:39:20Our apartment is effectively in 2005 and probably always will be. But there's a lot of the, I remember this, especially with a lot of the, like the metaverse stuff on Facebook, where there's a part of it where, you know, like Zuck coming on with his fucking perm, being like, have you ever wanted to attend a meeting on your computer? I do it all the time, dude. It sucks ass. But also, yeah, it's totally possible. I don't need to be a plush bear when I do it. A legless bear. A legless, weirdly sad-looking, sorrowful eyes bear. 30 minutes at Freddy's. Yeah. But to me, with that, it's like, so where did you get this idea because like i don't know what like mark zuckerberg's life is very different from mine obviously no no it's someone making up what they think happens it really is that simple they're just like what the fucking people do people have jobs right they got cats so that means meetings when you have a job what happens at job if you're a ceo of a multi-trillion dollar company meetings right if you don't do any real work that's what you think work is but so you're jokerize on meetings as a ceo and then you're like what if i just became a bear yeah it's also important this is why it's important to pay like the the attendees are as much a part of the show as as exhibitors and and it's because they and again like listen to what people say listen to it's really fascinating because there is this core around you know people who around this tech business who are like conditioned and part of their identity is to assume that anything new that they see at CES is good and better and something that they can buy and then get social capital out of saying, I have this and you don't, I'm on the cutting edge, I'm more on the cutting edge than you are.

1:41:07This is a really important part of our culture now, is technology. And what's fascinating here is, we were talking earlier about how the vibe is changing around tech, right? Like 10 years ago, 15 years ago, attitudes towards this were very different. There still are these people who are stuck in that old sort of tech is all unconditionally good. It's all progress. It's all making things better. And that's the ones that are going to be there tomorrow. They're just going to be like, wow. You see a lot of Cybertrucks in the parking lot. So we're sadly at the end now. We're letting you go, listeners.

1:41:41Jared Newman, where can people find you? Go to jarednewman.com slash newsletters, and I will give you some great tech advice all the time. Mr. Niedermeyer, where can people find you? Niedermeyer.io and the Autonicast. Mr. Ron Grayso Jr. you uh tech tech bubble dot substack.com and then big blackjack have been on instagram i mean not on instagram on uh on blue sky and twitter mr roth uh defector.com is the website distraction is the podcast i do with that uh it's christmastown is the hallmark podcast and i i'm also uh david j roth on blue sky i should actually check how that's punctuated it's hang on everybody's gonna I love this.

1:42:23This is the good stuff. Hold on just a moment. I have to get my phone out. I have to think of like a slightly sardonic way to refer to myself. Yeah, davidjroth.bsky.social. That's how you can find it. I'm going to Google, take the biggest idiot in tech, and I pop up, not really. I'm the smartest man in tech. Ed Zitron, I'm the first person to wear aviators and cover technology. You've been listening to a podcast I'll be apologizing for for a while, but you'll be thanking me. Thanks for listening, everyone.

1:43:22to 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.

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1:45:47Learn more about the psychology of everyday life and, of course, your 20s this September. Listen to The Psychology of Your 20s on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. It's important that we just reassure people that they're not alone, and there is help out there. The Good Stuff Podcast Season 2 takes a deep look into One Tribe Foundation, a nonprofit fighting suicide in the veteran community. September is National Suicide Prevention Month, so join hosts Jacob and Ashley Schick as they bring you to the front lines of One Tribe's mission. One Tribe saved my life twice.

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