Better Offline CES 2025: Day 5 - Pt. 1

29:16No, that's it. So as we approach the break here, is there anything else you're going to see on the show or are you just done? Okay, so I'm here for personal interest now. Last night I was supposed to already be done working, but I went to the Venetian Expo and I saw some like last minute accessibility related products. That's always been like a topic I pay attention to myself. We actually, I'm very proud to say this and Gadget's like best of CES winner, like the best in show, best of all the things we saw was a smart cane for the blind. So we talked about this and it's good. Like because my worry with it was A, it needs an internet connection if it's got a GPD thing, but it works.

29:54It's good. It worked, yeah. And in the busy wife, like convention floor where like you assume the wifi is like clogged as shit right and i did not clarify or verify what type of internet connection was using was it on device i bet it's not because it's a very thin like well-made device like they folded it up unfolded it showed me i held it in my hand and used it a bit it seems to work really well what's the weight like on it um it is slightly heavier than i think your conventional like folding cane for people who are visually impaired but um not too much heavier now to be clear this is like the second generation of an existing product the first one was a bit heavier so they've refined it they've made the handle a little easier to hold they've replaced like a touchscreen sort of button situation with tactile buttons which should have been in the first one right like why didn't you think of this um so they are they have made improvements continue to and they have a pretty legitimate partner in tdk who's like a bigger more established company to see this through look to your point zed zed zed that's what i'm going by now i'm zed zed zed baby maybe.

30:57To your point, this thing, at least if it dies, if it runs out of battery, it's still just a cane. This is what Carissa, I believe, said about it. It's like, it still functions as a device. It's just the Wi-Fi thing is what it's for. Because if the whole thing is a model... Well, but it's not entirely like a chat GPT only. I mean, the turn-by-turn navigation is something that is quite important to the concept here, and the fact that it will like, that has a speaker on board to like answer questions and stuff like that. So those are important things, but it's also got like a flashlight on board those sorts of things that don't require internet right for example so that's something we you know should definitely clarify we have the contact information of people we can get in touch and find out i would love to know yeah i i'll find out so as we come towards the break edward on grace of jr where can people find you uh newsletter the tech bubble dot substack.com podcast this machine kills and then big black jack have been on twitter and um blue sky Sherlyn where can people find you it feels like every social media app is closing so ch-e-r-l-y-n-n dot bsky dot social is the safest one to say and email ch-e-r at engadget dot com or just engadget dot com and of course engadget I'll be putting the links to the best show in the notes don't worry Mr.

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36:20And we're back. So, Sherlyn, Sherlyn, we talked just before this about this infrared mask. Now, I say this for both personal and professional reasons. What was this and what does the infrared mask thing do? Okay, so it's not just infrared. This is Shark's Cryo Glow, and it debuted at CES 2025. It is the latest in a string of like full face, like light based mask devices. You've probably maybe you've heard of their faces. Oh, no, I'm going to be completely honest. I've been targeted with these things. Yeah. Masks you put on the kind of do something to you. And just been so because I have like gaunt eyes.

36:58I look like I'm Polish British. It's not. You're too mean to yourself, but go on. I am, but that's part of the show. But for real though, what do these things actually, why do you use them as a person? Okay, so red light therapy, when used with effective components, is supposed to help like anti-aging, help reduce fine lines or signs of aging, fine lines, wrinkles. The blue light is supposed to help with antibacterial, so it's good for acne purportedly. Infrared is helping with some level of rejuvenation under the skin as well. It's penetrating the layers of the skin. I know this is because of the facials that I take and I include the light therapy in the salon.

37:33And do they actually work? I feel like they work, but I go for the salon grade ones. So that's probably going to work better than any of these home treatments. I've been very skeptical of devices like the Solar Wave, which is a smaller wand with smaller components. The LED bulbs don't seem as effective. And as a note, Phil, our bartender, who is a laser safety specialist, is currently, he's just got his head in his hands. so sheldon please keep talking yeah i'm not sure how effective right like it's so hard to tell with these things like when you have to use them for six months to like see any results phil is now walking away oh no no don't worry he doesn't deserve oh no your shame i i don't i mean i don't think they're completely unsafe or useless right he's not saying that he's just going he would come over and say something about how lasers work just sorry phil come over why are you complaining.

38:25Grab a chair. Grab a chair. Ed, please share your microphone with him so he can have his party. I wasn't complaining. You had your head in your hands, sir. Now he's taking a knee because he has a natural anthem. No, this is just when I, once again, would like to take a moment to really give thanks to the deeply overworked, put-upon, and underfunded folks at the Food and Drug Administration, specifically for the Center for Device and Radiologic Health. Yeah, I agree. For whom none of these products ever get to them, nor do they get approved. Are there not like home? I feel like there have to be like home versions of this stuff.

39:04Yeah, and that's kind of what you're looking at. There are, yes, exactly. And what did the cryo one do? So the cryo part of it were these two metallic plates under the eye, and they were just cold, and it was so comfortable. That felt great. And that's very useful for skin. Exactly, exactly. The important thing that having had products like this come through where I work at exceptional expense because they have successfully managed to sell them to NFL teams. I've had to stop people from spending hundreds of thousands of dollars for you have gotten an IR hot red light therapy unit. What it's doing is providing heat.

39:47How is that different than the hot lamp at McDonald's that's considerably cheaper? Or alternatively, the thing we have literally been using since time immemorial, hot water bottles. Now, in a face mask form, it's to get it where it needs to be. Right. That is valuable. Right. Putting an IR diode in it is not. Okay. So nothing wrong with the face mask then? No. Other than do not sell this as a medical product. Do not try. No one does that. Don't try to make a claim. do not allude to a claim, which many people on the floor are fine to let you make that assumption for them. And if they're feeling really good, they'll actually put a disclaimer on their product.

40:34So I don't have to report them to the FDA. No, no, no. You need to do that. I have some Sertul as well, please. Absolutely. Thank you for coming out. So this mask, so you have the cold bits. So is that to help with eye bags? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's just to help with like, yeah, exactly tightening the skin back up or just feeling fresher when you've had a rough night. And so the heat, and you use these. I've used it for like a minute, so don't. But you've used the masks in general though? Oh no, the other two, no actually. Well no, I mean just the infrared masks in general. I have used the salon grade ones, not the at-home ones.

41:07And what do they do? Like it's just the heat kind of eases the skin. Yeah, you're supposed to put them on your face and then turn on like a four minute, eight minute, six minute session. And then yeah, not heat necessarily. The IR ones do have heat. the red light therapy just shines the light on you there's the blue light depending on which treatment you selected and the cold for me was the only thing I could really walk away from the experience having felt but it sounds good though I was very pleased with it I will tell you I have come around on these devices I used to be hugely skeptical because I always thought they were ineffective like how can you get a tiny light bulb to do anything to the same point we're making everyone Yeah, exactly.

41:47Like it's heat. It's why do you need an expensive device? The Therabody like device is$600. The competing Dr. Dennis Gross device is$455. This is$349. And that's part of the reason I was intrigued. It's like, okay, you're bringing it down. You're doing something different with the cryo. There's a lot more, I think. I mean, I quoted the SVP of product development from Shark on this in my article, which is I was like the Terabody one vibrates and you know to massage your skin and I think the company probably touts some benefits to vibration and I was like well I think I know the answer to this but this is the Shark Cryo Glow Vibrate and they're like there is no vibration this is a skincare device vibration does nothing for the skin and I was like you tell me girl you tell me you know I was like I needed this that's all I needed yeah exactly and it's like I think as we see more competition in this space where hopefully we'll see more people focus on what's actually going to work in this sort of device where there's a lot of like junk science.

42:49There's a lot of like, and my brain is so not working, but like stuff that doesn't quite work. Yeah, it's pseudoscience stuff and it's they make these claims and they do it at the show where everyone's making some wobbly claims. It's such a challenge to parse through all of it. But also, can I ask just as an editorially? Yeah. Like how do you, I know that you, you know, The short answer is you work with a bunch of smart people that know their fields and stuff like that. How do you know? Because we saw multiple smart canes. I don't know if we saw the one that you all awarded. How can you tell if it's good or not?

43:25That's kind of a remedial way of phrasing it. My brain's also honestly not the best. Same with you, yeah. But we can just, whatever, make our little dolphin sounds back and forth. I'm there with you. I think it's partly because Engadget has had such a history of covering CES. We have the process down pat. We start the process the second we get the full exhibitor list for shows like Unveiled and Petcom. Can you actually walk us through the process? Yeah, of course. Yeah. So yeah, this was my first year like fully running the show for the team. And I started later than I wanted to. Like since July, I've been like, we need to start planning CES, right?

44:00And we at least get the travel and accommodation booked ahead of time. but this year we started like November which was late for us and it was very late. I was very nervous but the CTA also didn't have a lot of the directories ready for us to parse through until the week before Christmas. So we spent all two weeks I didn't take time off during the Christmas break and I just spent it looking at exhibitor lists and we Google every single name that is an exhibitor. We find out what they do and if we don't we'll reach out we'll find their PR email address we'll reach out and be like what are you showing at CES?

44:30then we'll do the research of like what is this? What is in the space? What else is already in the space? Is it new? Is it like expensive? Is it junk? And then the process actually happens before we fly off to Vegas. When we do get here then we make the assignments of like we're going to Unveil, we're going to Pepcom, we're going to these booths. These are the things that actually look interesting. We'll go and look at them. These are things that we don't know if they're good or not. We need to investigate them. We have a tag internally called investigate and so we go look at the thing on the show floor we have our reporters go out talk to the company and then also because we're in vegas the the research is going to be limited to what we can google within two minutes right to make a call on whether this is important but yes we then we try to match the people with expertise in the space to the product um so at least they have a wealth of information like billy steel is audio and oh my god he's so good right but that's the thing you have specialist we have so much yeah so billy steel is our specialist on audio i mean davindro was here he's our chip guy oh he was Nvidia all day and NPCs as well.

45:30I mean, we have a bunch of chip people too, which I'm so grateful for. And we have multiple experts on some categories and they can trade information. I wish you would get a chance to see the debates that happen in our room sometimes. Next year. Next year, I'm serious. We'll have you in here. It'll be amazing. This will be the Engadget podcast. Basically, we'll have the Engadget top experts. We've had three of you on. I'm happy to have more. I'm glad you've had so many. I mean, there's such a diversity of voices and opinions on the team too, which I really like. And when they fight it out, that's my favorite because I'm like, yeah, we can agree to disagree.

46:00But also I've been quite critical of some of the tech media on here. And I really, this show was not about like just CES. It's about kind of explaining how the tech media functions because it's very easy to, and I don't mean this as a specific insult to Engadget, you could put it at CNET or even The Verge, definitely TechCrunch. It's, you think, oh, they just turn up and then they go, it's the big company or go look at big company, wow, television, big, blah. when there is actually quite a refined decade or more process that's gone into it. And also covering the show is insane. That was the bit that was like interesting to hear.

46:34I mean, obviously it sucks that you had to spend your entire holiday season parsing a list of 2 ,500, 3 ,000, however many companies there are. But it seems like it's so patently unmanageable. Like it was unmanageable for us. I don't know. You probably did see everything ever because you were here longer than me or came close to me. No, you still never see anything. Today I discovered that there was a crypto pavilion that had been going on for the entire time. And I felt like I had, I didn't see it. I looked everywhere, you know? I accidentally stumbled on it because I was like, what are they doing in Germany?

47:06You do, you do, yeah. Yeah, and that is like, I don't know. I mean, I guess that's like sort of what happens with a show like this. The idea is that for them, I guess the business is, you said whatever it is,$5 ,000 a table for starters and then it's probably significantly more. Exactly, exactly. So you don't say no to anybody unless it's like a women's health sex thing. But then you're like, we don't do that. But the idea of trying to manage something this size, it's impressive. I have so much self-doubt. So I'm always like, did we cover everything? Did we miss something? And you're always going to.

47:42So that's why I had to like, I let the team pep talk with this. Like we're here. Number one, we made it here. Some people missed their flight. Some people were sick, right? number two something's gonna go wrong and we'll just have to accept it now that was the first thing i said to phil while good there you go yeah something will go wrong exactly so we cannot get hung up on like i missed this thing i'm saying i if i do that to myself at this show and to my team we will just never walk away from this feeling like we've done our job and your coverage has been great and i say this like truly as a reader of engadget from 15 plus years like like a long one time just turned 20 something 20 yeah that makes sense and it's like this is a mammoth show to cover and it's hard to and i've had the same thing running this is my first ces i've run better offline on and it's like yeah i'm like shit i missed this i'll see an article going i'll be like i'm the worst i have failed the show i've endangered the mission and it's just impossible to do yeah so i'm going to change tack because you actually and this is a miss of mine can you tell me what the samsung bailey what this robot is because i've seen the articles and i could i did not get a chance to look at it well i don't know that it's even here at ces 2025 well someone's been showing pictures of it yeah bali bali's actually been at ces 2024 well it was debuted at ces 2024 but the concept of this like rolling robot that samsung makes has been around for like what five years i want to say at least if not longer um and it's in its like most mature iteration the one that's going on sale it's uh this bowling ball sized yellow robot that rolls around your house it's got a built-in projector it's got speakers built in it listens to you speak you can talk to it and be like oh turn you know open the shades or like start a the oven or whatever it talks to your smart home appliances it can beam like your screen on the ceiling on the wall on the floor wherever makes sense for you um the pitch was like it's this ai fitness companion but it's also your home assistant all of these things the news this CES because last year was when they showed it off this CES is that it's supposedly going to be available in the first half of this year I will caveat that when they first announced Bali properly in CS 2024 they did say it will be available in 2024 so it's like Samsung are you are you really going to push this out this year you know more of that claims be cute I guess send vibes?

50:06I do that for free. I was going to say, seeing the pic, again, I don't... There's a part, every time somebody has talked about being like, yeah, it follows you around, it can project stuff. It's not a good question, but the thing that's in my head is just like, really? Are you sure? That sounds really hard. That said, it is a cute little guy, and if you think, this is something that I sort of picked up I guess also from Carissa, that does seem to be one of the themes of the CES, is cute little guys. So this fits. This is like, you know, it doesn't just blink at you and follows you around. It turns your stove on.

50:38I say this with my Bengal cat Babu, who is my familiar, and he follows me around and he meows at me. He wants to be on eye level. He's screaming at you. I really enjoy the videos. That's his sister, Pokey. I will post it. Go to my socials. Pokey's his little sister, my beautiful screaming queen who loves to scream at me. She just wants affection all the time, and who doesn't? Babu is the beautiful, svelte Bengal who's mostly just up and he has a meow. Anyway, I guess that's why I don't need this thing, because I already have something amazing to follow me. But at the same time, putting that aside, why do I need a robot following me?

51:11To what end is it following me? Oh, it's going to project something. What is it going to project? Right. May I also ask, when did the shift to affectionate intelligence to cute devices happen? Yeah, that's actually a good point. I mean, has that been something you guys have detected over the past few years? So my opinion is, I mean, the AIBO has been around for a very long time. For a long, long time. And it's peaked everyone's interest, but it never really took off. Nobody really sold them. But robotics, if you really look at the space in the real world, where is robotics? Robotics is in manufacturing.

51:41Robotics is in warehouses. They don't need to be humanoid robots. None of them need to be. They just need to be arms that repeat an action over and over again and do it so well. And there's a great deal of value in that. Exactly. Do the things that we don't want to do. These things, you know, I think we are collectively learning that the humanoid robots don't quite make sense other than to impress people, to shock and awe. to remind people about the Terminator exactly and the actual helpful robot arms in those like manufacturing spaces are not as sexy and not as appealing visually so what else is appealing?

52:17for some they might be anyway for some they might be right? sure but then like what is the next space? they saw they looked to Aibo they looked to the cute ones they realized people weren't cute I mean I think they looked at Pepper as well there is I think function and use for some of them in specific spaces once again, which is, I think, in the hospice care space, there's room for telepresence robots. There's room for some sort of healthcare robots. I go to this place called Kura Revolving Sushi. Oh, a conveyor belt place? Yes, exactly. That was her number one shit all through our 20s. That was the forever, whatever her birthday.

52:53It was different places. I assume you did not say that. You just said her. Her. Don't worry about it. Scarlett Johansson's voice my long time companion do you remember Tommy Hackman my wife loves the you know like whatever a piece of nigiri slowly approaching you and you get to be like honestly that sounds great it's my favorite thing Kura Revolving Sushi has a robot that brings you your drinks when you request for it right all the servers have to do is place your drink on the tier and then yeah when I was in Korea at the beginning of last year there was a dish wash but a dish bar and it worked and it seemed to actually work.

53:32These, like, robotics is here but like many things at CES it's just not sexy I guess. It is not that exciting. Well this comes back to something that we were talking about yesterday where like if the actual applications for a lot of these robots are like like you said it's like either elder care or accessibility and stuff like that that seems like it's the case for a lot of this stuff a lot of the sort of like augmented reality if that's the term for it I don't know if it's AR or whatever the thing like the brain implant what do you call that? Neuralink? Oh, you mean the non-invasive one? Yeah, yeah.

54:01Oh, the dual one that was made up. Ah, so like gesture control of devices. Yeah, that sort of stuff. Gotcha, gotcha, yeah. It's like all of that seems to be about helping people who have these, and yet like it seems like with this robot, like you make it cute because, and you show when you're like demoing it for people, you don't want people to think about being sick. I guess that's not good for advertising. Yeah, yeah. But you show them instead this thing that like, I'm not sure that people really want to be like followed around their house. Like I'll turn my own stove on, honestly. I don't want anyone else to be.

54:29But there's something funny about the idea of inventing this thing that actually is useful actually could add value to people's lives but you can't sell it in a way that actually reflects its utility. Again, another thing I've ranted about for a couple years now is how much we're failing people in terms of elder care, long-term care for people in late stages of life. And the reason we do that as a society is because I think companies and corporations don't see value in providing this sort of care or more products in this space, right? And so that's why they don't want to tell you that this is better suited for like older care caregiver situations.

55:04Even though there are companies that will come out and say that, bigger companies won't want to do it because like a PR, I'm thinking this is a PR conversation. I don't know that they want to say that we're investing in this thing that serves a very niche audience that might die off in a few years. And there is a reason and that absolutely is it because you don't get a growth market. Exactly. And it's the growth mindset that sucks. Exactly. And you also don't get growth out of things with elderly people other than being a private equity firm that buys old people's homes. Yes, yes. I mean, this is one thing I think of with the care economy, which is like the growth of it has been decided largely by the consequences of private equity firms laying waste to infrastructure.

55:46And seeing services they can build into it. And then the evaporation of resources for facilities leading to these firms, these on-demand firms coming in and applying the Uber model to them and saying, look, we will create a marketplace where the nurses will bid each other to the lowest possible price. They'll come in without training. Training in the sense that because they're not employees, they're not told where things are, who to take care of, how to operate things. Yeah, like that itinerant nurse, like traveling nurse economy. And this makes me think of what we see sometimes with some of this technology that's being offered and that some of the things that we've seen would be very good and very useful and should be durable, sustainable businesses just offering care to help people who are not able-bodied, to help people who are in cognitive decline, to help people who need care.

56:43And yet, when we would talk with some of them, you could see that's not always the first way they think or talk about it. They're also talking about, oh, this firm would love this application that we have. And it's like, okay, but that's not real. The thing that is real is this care, this way you would have to be able to help people who need care. But you're kind of using it, some of these firms feel like they're using it to bootstrap into the growth. But you have to bang, it's such a bizarre thing for me too, especially when you consider for the ones that actually exist. Not everything that we saw exists in any sort of real stage yet.

57:20but like the idea that you have to like bang on the sort of fantastical growth possibilities instead of the actual service yeah that you have created a thing that can you know provide this very necessary service right with this remarkable bit of technology you did there's no no further ways to monetize the old person i'm not i like that it's funny whatever well not for me because i'm like the joker because i laugh at the sad things but it's this sense of well there's not why am I investing in these people? Why would I invest in the old person? They're going to die soon anyway. We live in a society.

57:56That's the part that's kind of weird about it. Because it's not wrong to say that this is like a niche marketplace. And yet it's like, it's also not. It is also like one of the least niche experiences possible is getting old and needing help. That's a pretty universal human. I mean, for those of us that are lucky to make it that far. Yeah, it's weird. I mean, I guess this is like sort of going to be a recurring theme anywhere that you go to like a trade show where people are trying to make a billion dollars? To that end, I was very encouraged to see this year. There has been quite a lot more attention in this space, right?

58:28We saw the AARP had a, I mean, I saw, I stopped by the H-Tech Pavilion on the show floor. Tell us about, we really haven't heard about this. Yeah, so I went there and the H-Tech Pavilion presented by AARP, I guess, is just a space in the show floor. They have so many of these like dedicated spaces carved out. They had a speech where they presented four special products. I believe, well, the one I saw and I tried on were this pair of pants by Arcterics and a company called Skip that they've worked with. This pair of pants is like a robotic powered pants situation where you put them on and they have sort of almost like an exoskeleton to help you move and climb better.

59:08and we're at the point with products that are designed for improving life for people with mobility issues where it's not, you don't have to be like, it's not binary, right? You don't have to be a full-on paraplegic and it's not crutches and wheelchairs. This is for people who have some pain, struggle with pain, that sort of thing. And often these people are maybe thinking of someone in my family and refuse to get any fucking help because they are like, I'm not, I'm not, nothing's wrong with me. I'm just in constant pain and have mobility issues. But these things sound kind of magical for that.

59:41These are going to be great. But these are because they're ArcDirect, they're an outdoor apparel brand and that sort of thing. They're designed for hiking and this. So it's more like if you're at a stage in life where you're so burdened by some leg pain or body pain that going outside seems like such a pipe dream anymore, like climbing a mountain, a hill, right? You can walk around, but you can't really be active. Exactly. Like challenges, like scaling, like elevation and whatnot. This is what this pair of pants is designed to do. Were they powered by anything or were they just... There was a battery pack in the back of the pants and in the waistband.

1:00:11And what did they do? Did they support the knees or the legs? Yeah. So the one I tried by Arcturix had three like braces, one around the ankle, one around the knee, and one around like the thigh. And then the robot arm would just kind of propel you in those... Well, as the joints moved around. Right. And it's designed... My demo, we had to go to like stairs because that's where you would demonstrate the effectiveness more. Yeah. It's supposed to push you up. I tried to do speed squats right in those. I'm not the target market, clearly. But I was like, yeah, I was like trying to see speed squats.

1:00:39And I think when I tried them, they weren't on, but they're supposed to help you get from like the bent knee position to the up position more easily, which is where I think a lot of people struggle with pain. Well, I, in the last few, in like the last year, I've really got into yoga. And I would say a year ago, I'd have trouble getting on and off the floor. And I'm decent, like I'm decently able-bodied, like I don't have something wrong other than the fact that I was deeply inflexible. Being able to do that now is magic, but that took a shit ton of effort to get. But also, I didn't have any mobility issues that would have precluded me from doing yoga.

1:01:09So this, do you know how expensive these are? It is expensive. How expensive we talking? I mean, you know the Octor X brand. I was going to say, the stuff that they have that doesn't have robot arms in it is still like expensive. So how much we talking? Yeah, I think, so they have no actual info yet, but the ballpark figure that I'm hearing is like$5 ,000. And I was like, are you going to talk to insurance providers to get this subsidized? they're like they want to consider it I don't think this is a product the insurance providers have to decide whether to cover it they barely cover medicine exactly there you go I don't want to get into it but but also I can't imagine you're like anybody's paying like you're not selling a lot of stuff at MSRP when it's$5 ,000 I will be honest though secretly this is the stuff I'm most excited about because like the idea of just putting on a suit that makes you able-bodied for anyone is kind of magical yeah like I don't know like I was a very heavy kid growing up.

1:02:05I was like 325 pounds. And that alone like didn't mean I was strong, which is very embarrassing when you're large, I will add. But nevertheless, like even when I got thin, I still felt quite weak. I still had like some joint issues even. And it's like the idea that we can kind of level the playing field other than the fact it's$5 ,000 is kind of cool. You want to hear something? Absolutely. After I saw this, I walked downstairs to the Kickstarter booth and the Kickstarter booth had a company from somewhere in Asia, I think Taiwan or China. I can't remember called HyperShell and they make like a non-pants version of this exoskeleton it is between $800 to$1 ,500 depending on the material when you say non-pants how does that yeah so it's this sort of brace that you strap on around your waist to start and then you strap like two things to your knees and they're basically an exoskeleton the reason it's not on Engadget.com because I haven't written it up yet I'm still technically working I guess but chilling and yeah and so they do the same thing the Arcturix pants do except for an exoskeleton that you strap around your clothes.

1:03:05This is so cool. I love this. Actually, I'll show you a video right now. I don't know if... When will you write up your story? Just send me the link. I'll get it. I will send you the link. Yes, I'm hoping to do it tomorrow and have it up over the weekend on our website. And I just, I think that this is what I wish CES all was. Because if you think about what makes technology actually magical, it's stuff that makes you stronger, connect with people quicker, allows you to explore who you are and who other people are in an honest way. And when it gets worse, it's when people interfere with that process.

1:03:36Or slap AI and everything. Or slap AI and everything. So as we go, as we sadly come to the end, we've got four minutes left. Was there anything you were like your favorite favorite thing? Is there anything you really missed that you truly liked or despised? Something that made me laugh, but I kind of liked it. Sold. What was it? So we started noticing a trend at CES 2025. Carissa might have talked about it, but Dan Cooper on our team was the first one to crystallize this idea with this term. I mean, I crystallized the idea without this fancy name that he came up with it. Classic Dan. Classic Dan.

1:04:09Great term. The Hawk Tour show. Oh, God, yes. What are you talking about? I want to know. There was so much like saliva sensing, saliva detecting tech. Oh boy, on that thing, huh? On that thing. I mean, look, when we walked into CES Unveiled, which is the first show on Sunday night, I already knew there were two saliva-based devices there. I was not expecting the most popular booth at CES Unveiled where crowds of people were around them the whole time. I couldn't even get into a demo. This thing called Salt Spoon. Have you heard of it? Yeah, yeah. everyone was licking it. It was like, everybody's putting things in their mouths at this show.

1:04:48I was like, I don't know. I got to, so I checked out the salt spoon. It's a cool idea. They were not letting people put it in their mouth at that point. There was like a video. They probably ran out. Maybe. They were giving away disposable ones at that field. Yeah, there were like a couple of them sitting on the counter and I like picked it up and I was like, I don't know, feels good. Like a spoon more or less, but stranger. But then there was like a video of a guy eating ramen with it. But you know, you had to guess. What is this? It's the one with the electromagnetic things to make you taste the saltiness.

1:05:17Yes, exactly. So think about it. If you're trying to consume less sodium in your life, but you still want to have salty foods, this food, if you use a spoon, it'll turn everything you put in your mouth by tricking your taste buds into something that's like thinking that something's salty or saltier than it is. So what I learned about this from Jesse Farrar, where I get all of my scientific information, this is apparently the same technology that people use for saltwater pools, that it's basically a way of like making something salty without like dumping a bunch of sodium into it. So the idea is you will shy away from things that have a certain level of salt because they'll taste even more salty?

1:05:56I can answer this because I've had a lot of emails. When we last mentioned it, I want to apologize to the people who kind of turned our nose up at this. It turns out there are people who have like real physical problems with salt. They have to, it's not like I should have less salt. It's if I have too much, I will be in physical. pain and this is magical for them it's like i i want to like as this show goes on as we approach the end anything i really mess up i will try and fix but apparently like this is a big deal for those people who can like have salt yeah it's not just like a diet thing too right it's like some people have irritation inflammation or i don't know if there's a salt allergy in the world but hypertension right hypertension so you want hypertension is a diet-based thing that i'm considering as an issue right like for healthy reasons you still want to be able to taste salty foods.

1:06:40It's not about making something taste so salty that you will avoid it. It's more drinking bland things that will then taste salty because of the using of the spoon. You can kind of dial in the experience to what you want. Isn't that right? That it's like you can go from one to four and how salty it is? I walked the periphery of the booth the whole time because I couldn't get inside. What was the other saliva based stuff? There's one thing you could spit on. There were two things you could. we call it the thing yeah i have no knowledge of this thing i uh here we are giggling about it um but it is weird it is this is there are two devices one is called the cortisans and the other is called hormometer we're not fans of the yeah hormon hormon hormometer like hormone meter sounds good no that's just a really funny and good name great great portmanteau i think um hormometer is slightly further along in my opinion of the process basically these are at home um tests that you can use your saliva that you can use on your saliva and they'll tell you how much like cortisol is in your okay so i think the problem is the labeling because everything you've described is wonderful and could also have not been described as saliva based well i that was to me the way it came off and that was my vibe there's a mean yeah that's that is saliva based some faint Theranos tasting notes I like it because I'm really into getting data about yourself but I don't want blood testing all the time I don't believe in the photo scanning of your face, it's how your face age I want you to actually use bodily fluids to know what is up with me and this seems smart it's non-invasive, it's an easy way And there are so many ways that we can avoid going to the doctor, I guess.

1:08:32It's not like going to a doctor is a bad thing. It's that people want to know more about themselves. People have been strapping glucose monitors on themselves just to understand their blood sugar levels when they don't have diabetes, right? So there's so many reasons people could benefit from analyzing their saliva, in my opinion. For a hormometer, they do both cortisol and progesterone levels. And what would those be just for the listeners and myself? Yeah, cortisol is the stress hormone. So the levels of cortisol are higher and higher stress. And then progesterone is something that people can use to track, I guess, fertility-related things or cycle-related.

1:09:10I'm not well-versed enough in the science here to tell you what else progesterone is about. Well, that makes all of us. And sadly, we have to come to the end of this part of the show. Ed, where can people find you? The tackbubble.substack.com, This Machine Kills, and Big Black Jack have been on Twitter and Blue Sky. Sherlyn, where can people find you? I think I'll still be on the meta apps for a bit. So Sherlyn, Instagram, C-H-E-R-L-Y-N-N-S-T-H-E-R-A-M. Defector.com, The Distraction Podcast, The It's Christmastown Podcast, and DavidJRoth.BSKY.social. Though I realize many of you plot my end, and indeed when you hear I'm hurt, you cheer and laugh and squeal and oink.

1:09:50Nevertheless, if you don't want to cause me misery, you'll follow the following ads with your complete undivided attention.

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1:10:55Jan 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.

1:11:39Listen to Hot Money, Agent of Chaos on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

1:11:52Hey, this is Matt Jones. I'm Drew Franklin. And this is NFL Cover Zero. We're just here to try to give you an NFL perspective a little bit different. Did you see the Colts pretzel? That was my other big takeaway from that game. What was that? Oh, my. We think NFL coverage should be informative and entertaining. And twice a week, that is exactly what you're going to get. Listen to NFL Cover Zero with Matt Jones and Drew Franklin on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

1:12:48described 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. This is a podcast where I cut through the noise with sarcasm, satire, and hard truths. I'm not gonna fake it and force it. But would you force an orgasm? Because that's like a different layer. The car accident you didn't want to see but couldn't turn away from. In this episode, I discuss personal safety and self-defense tools, instincts, and strategies to protect yourself and your loved ones in everyday life and high-risk situations. Listen to Intentionally Disturbing on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

1:13:33And we're back. And we're just talking about the fact that each of us has two or three drinks at this point. We're not... All right, it's not to destruction. It's just a little bit. Triple fisting is a beautiful thing. Okay, well, we've already had complaints about the language, So let's just move on from that one. So we're once again joined by Mr. Phil Broughton, the health physicist. Just let's reintegrate that and reintroduce you to the show. Allow me to introduce myself. Okay. So I'm Phil Broughton. I'm a health physicist, which is a radiation safety professional. I'm also a laser safety officer.

1:14:08So I take care of the full electromagnetic spectrum of radiation. I also am the weird shit guy. And your bartender. Phil is here at CES showing the laser mask that he made that people can walk. It's not FDA approved. I hate that product. So you have seen that. Have you seen the laser bra as well? No, is that really down there? Is that real? That is real. What does it do? What are you talking about? You haven't been on the floor. No, this wasn't on the floor. This is just why the internet exists, my sons. So Phil is someone I torture. Yes. We've been friends for 15 years. Sorry, I also missed something out.

1:14:47Mr. Ed Ongueso Jr. is to my right. Wonderful. Hello. I'm Ed now. He's Zed. Yeah, so Sherlyn has been calling me Zed. You having a laugh. You taking a pitch, mate. You having a laugh. Mr. Zedtron. Cockles and muscles. I'm like searching my head. Can I do any accent? Do you have an island? Go ahead. Try it out. Beans on toast. Oh, one time I did have an English breakfast and I felt like I was going to die. That's just how it feels to be British. Okay, back to all of your British levels maxed out. Yeah, the British saliva test. All my Kenyan ancestors were like, what is this? Don't let them win. Oh, God.

1:15:32Oh, boy, there's so many directions. But back to Phil. So why does this show frustrate you so? We've gone over the fire marshal aspect, but just the general milieu of CES does appear to torture you. So a lot of what vendors are coming to CES with are not, despite the fact it says consumer electronic show, many of the things are not aimed for consumers, never meant for consumers. or these are not products that are actually on the market, not going to get to the market. And it's terrifying how many people who have come on the show have been talking to me separately at the bar have said that they've met people at the stalls who asked them, so what do you think our product should do?

1:16:20No, that's not what you do. If you have a product you're going to sell to someone, you really better know what it does so it can be sold legally and safely. Or so that it could do it. Oh, well, there's that too. Is that part of the, again, be asking an ignorant question. Okay, you are days in. You need to stop leading in with the I don't know stuff. You know plenty. No, I don't know a lot about CE. I mean, I know something about what this one is like and how it feels, maybe. That does strike me as strange, the idea of showing up with something that's like halfway done. Like the idea of me just publishing a draft with a bunch of TKs in it and being like, I'm really interested in anybody's feedback on how you think this story should conclude.

1:17:01Well, listen, brother, after this, we're going to drive out west to a little place I like to call Palo Alto, where you get to see a whole world that is built on stuff. Probably less developed. Shipping the prototype. It's like Pete Alonso just made an offer, a three-year deal to the Mets, which is news I'm giving to David Roth. You're allowed to do that? Yeah. It's much like that. What will you do, Peter? And that is actually a good question for the Mets at this point. but nevertheless happy to field that one if you want oh please should we do some Mets stuff lasers shoot them all with lasers handle the Mets real quick it couldn't hurt now the Alonzo thing I as sentimentally as a Mets fan I hope he returns I think he's declining right the Mets seem to think he's declining if he's making offers to them maybe he thinks he's declining but whatever he seems very happy to be on the Mets and I think that that is rare enough that I hope he stays that's a completely straight faced answer to a baseball question what apps do you think Pete Alonzo has For listeners who don't know, what are the Mets?

1:17:58The Mets are... That's a great question. That's such a me thing to say. Thank you. Obviously, you haven't been down to the Eureka level. It's an AI-enabled baseball team. The Mets are a private equity firm owned by a billionaire that ostensibly sells baseball-related services. They only recently updated their terms of services to allow for baseball-related success with the acquisition of a company called Juan Soto. They're on a subscription model like a lot of these guys. You got to keep paying if you want them to, well, whatever. We're not going to talk about the National League East. Yeah, I just realized we have gone fully into the Mets, so we need to move on.

1:18:36That was beautiful. I am so sorry. But Phil, we're putting the fire marshal stuff aside. What is it with lasers and these people? Why do they love to bring up lasers so much? What do you think it is? Okay. Okay, so this would be several decades of career experience and just watching people and what they do. There's something in the human psyche that gets very excited about whatever thing there is in the world. What if I put a laser on it? Right. That will make it better. Or alternatively, this thing that already does the thing it normally does, would a laser make it do it better? So do they know what a laser is also?

1:19:17Often not. Great. Keep going. What is a laser? Light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation. I didn't know it was an acronym. It is. Just like SCUBA. I thought it was just something that was cool. And I didn't realize it was an acronym until you asked that question. Yeah, that was amazing. I have an IQ of seven. But the more exciting thing, and the reason why I get excited about it, and products that happen, is how we regulate lasers in the United States of America. This is your important asterisk that goes in the post of these rules and regulations only apply in the United States of America.

1:19:52In your jurisdiction, they may be different. When lasers became a thing that weren't just stuff nerds played with in the national laboratory, the very first market they hit, the first consumer, consumer is very relative, product was for ophthalmological treatments. where you're doing laser cautery zapping to fix... In the eye. In the eye to cauterize off new veins growing in the retina to save people who are losing their vision from glaucoma or other diabetic retinopathy. Because the first application of lasers that really hit the consumer market was a medical application, is the reason why lasers are regulated by the Food and Drug Administration's Center for Device and Radiologic Health, which means any consumer product that incorporates a laser is supposed to have been vetted and compliant with the federal laser product performance standard that the FDA promulgates.

1:20:58And they only get one chance to catch you. It's when you release your product into commerce. And that has a very specific regulatory meaning. Which is? Oh, God. You actually want to know. Yeah. Okay. Yes. Well, I'm assuming for our purposes here, the stuff that's downstairs, a lot of the places have, as you pointed out, they'll be like a little tagline where this has not been shown to the FDA yet. No, no. They do not. Not approved by the FDA. Yeah, all right. Or is being used under basically the funsies code of the regulation. But when you have something at CBS, even if you have a prototype on it, it has not been released into commerce.

1:21:34Is that correct? Correct. Okay. So commerce's specific meaning is you have a laser product that you have made more than one of and or is being used somewhere other than the place where it was initially built and or by someone who was not the person who originally built it. Which means, if you listen to those three statements, at no point does money have to exchange hands. So they only have to build two. The moment you hit two, you have made a laser product. Versus people reading this as commerce, meaning it's on Amazon. Which is what most people think it means. Sweet. That's how the regulation covers it.

1:22:17To try to cover tricks like people think, oh, well, just you're a friend. I'll make you a second one of these setups, and I'll ship everything that I just did over to you at your other laboratory. You have no idea how the very specific quirk of, I have duct tape sitting right here on this setup, to protect that beam from going out that will blind me. Also, it takes so very little laser power to actually be blinding. But also, that feels like a valuable point to this, which is just because they've made two doesn't mean they've made two safe ones. Like, if there are little workarounds, like when you release something under these regulations you're discussing, I imagine you probably want to think of a more rigorous housing than tape.

1:23:01Correct. That's when I mentioned the Federal Laser Project Performance Standard, a.k.a. the FLPS. It specifies the components that your laser should have to be a legal laser product that could be sold into commerce. They're not just, you have to be eye-safe levels of power, which is defined as less than one milliwatt per square centimeter on the retina. It also has things like you have interlocks, so that if you pop open the housing, it turns off. or it drops a shutter. And these are things that people don't classically put in the first version? Not classically, no. Good. Also, other things like there's indicator lights, there's switches, there's key interlocks.

1:23:43All the things that sound like buttons, things that vanish from the design of products the moment you catch Apple disease and decide that every single product should be a smooth tablet of silicon that you wave your hands at and they do magic. rather than what is my product doing. The way God slash Steve Jobs intended. So how does this manifest into problems at CES? Well, first, you have handed products often to sales people on the floor to go set up and talk about and try to make a sale. Well, most certainly not. The engineers who built it. Or laser safety officers. Correct. The other thing is bringing a laser onto the floor, and let's take this back to the fire marshal chat, That constitutes one of the hazards you actually have to let the CTA know about so they can tell the fire marshals because that changes the occupancy of the room.

1:24:38Also, they have safety personnel they call to come evaluate setups. So if you say you're bringing a laser to the floor, a laser safety officer will come. Oh, you should put an enclosure around that product you brought because you don't actually have one. now this defeats the purpose of you're trying to show your product now they can't see it through the enclosure that protects people from it that should indicate that maybe your product is not great yeah but I want to see the product you won't not see at all you won't see anything at the end that's disturbing and that's where that's the hand of Big Brother in a lot of ways trying to keep you from being blinded by a laser yeah big vision got you under a hotel what is it move fast blind quick Yes, that's right.

1:25:25So, but I just want to actually, here's a really good thing for the listeners. What are the consequences of not following these things? What do these products do to you as a person in the event these regulations are not followed? Blinding. Fires. And is that bad? Yeah. Fair question. That is a good question. I'm glad that we have a balanced group here. So just a quick rundown. if you go look at your product that has a laser in it, odds on favor you have one. It's probably a printer in your home. If you go look on it, there will be a little yellow sticker on the box that says Class 1 Laser Device.

1:26:05Right. That means it is safe for use under any viewing conditions. You have no access to a hazardous laser beam. You don't need eye protection or anything like that. You do not. Because the housing that's in there will protect you. Mind you, most laser printers are actually class 4 lasers, which are absolutely blinding and capable of setting fires if you took all of the housing that makes the printer off of it. So there is a much more powerful laser that is dangerous to you hiding inside of it. One of the other things that happens at CES and other shows like Photonics West, where I will be in a couple of weeks, is people try to get around some of the consumer protection standards by rather than selling you a finished product, they sell you parts as original equipment manufacturers.

1:26:57If you go buy OEM parts, which you are free to do because America, everyone salute. He is saluting. I'm saluting right now, of course. Thank you, everyone. Thank you, everyone.

1:27:10If you go buy a OEM laser product and integrate it into your system because you thought this stuff is great. This bangs. All it needs is a laser. Yeah. The moment you add a laser to it, you just turned the thing you made into a laser product. A finished one is subject to all of those rules like enclosures, lights, housings, interlocks. You just became a laser manufacturer and you didn't want to be. And at that point - And shouldn't we be supporting entrepreneurs with that sort of initiative? I agree with Edwin's question. It does feel weird. This is like the, it's like a 3D printer-y type scenario where there's like, it seems like the, the 3D printers.

1:27:57But like the distance between reach and grasp here is like actually a matter of life and death. Like the idea that like I could, by doing a few different things that more or less involve following instructions, become a laser manufacturer. Like I don't even like brush my teeth before 11 in the morning a lot of days. Like I shouldn't be trusted with being able to do stuff like that. No, and that actually was a very good point, which is what Phil is describing is how easy it is to do this insane shit. Very. And to bring it back to the FDA, their control point is releasing a product into commerce, after which the FDA doesn't really have control of it anymore because it's now in.

1:28:37The only other thing that a laser manufacturer is required to do, as far as the FDA is concerned, is maintain a log of injuries associated with their product and recalls. I have to do that with the podcast. Yeah. Several listeners have already asked. Just to my heart. Recalling bits. Recalling bits or entire systems. We, after close examination, we've realized that bit number 76C from episode 253 was problematic. Could cause emotional injury to listeners. So, Phil, on the floor over the years, what are the manifestations specifically of this thing? What are the things that you have seen and heard of that you can terrorize my good friends, Mr.

1:29:22Roth and Mr. Angueso with? So let's go back to the laser bra. Okay. Please. This was actually a club item where the idea was you could be your own laser light show. Not just you put out the laser emitting product to go with the music, but it will actually react to your dancing and will change the brightness, change the color as you dance. Why do they need lasers though? Because lasers make everything better. Also LED also can stand for laser emitting diode. They don't sense things, they do things. They can also emit. Right, but... Are you saying that they use lasers to emit light? Yes. On the fucking...

1:30:08Dozens of them per cup. We have lights! No, but they could be lasers to shine in very visible beams across the entire room. Okay, I'm not the lazy... Lazy Jesus Christ. This slip of the tongue happens constantly. Laser safety expert here, but I think the idea of shooting a bunch of lasers out of one's breasts where people might be looking... Is fun. It may be, but it also might. Fun and flirty. A great look for the season. 30, flirty, and thriving. That feels dangerous. You have all very pain looks on your faces at the very idea. Not me. I feel no pain like the Zohan. I'm thinking about whether it would be worth it.

1:30:49Like literally risking it all. Risking your ability to proceed in the case. To look at a bra. What sort of party can I go to? and I'd be like, that was fine. Yeah, I got blinded. I pretty much got what I paid for. Philly's like desperate to actually. There's also totally been the laser butt plug that showed up at Defqon. Okay, no, no, no, no, no. But same thing, dropping trough. Much like. What's the name of the manufacturer? So we can. No, this actually was someone. Make fun of them more effectively. But the one that was most relevant that actually did show up at CES and it has shown up dozens of times on Hacker News and other interesting maker websites is someone who had made a laser-based bong.

1:31:28Now, this is a problem because, again, you've taken a concept of a totally workable product that already exists, bongs. We have known how these work for a very long time. And we have made them so that people who may be under the influence can operate them. Can even operate them. Maybe not safely with a torch, but, you know. So a certain kind of mind looks at that and goes, man, I can make that so much better with a laser. and the problem is lasers are not necessarily hot burning enough to actually properly combust your weed to then inhale incomplete combustion is a problem because okay, now what did I break down on my plant material to?

1:32:13Oh, it's every organic molecule you possibly could break it down to, some of which are carcinogens so you would, yeah So those are good? No. So your reefer becomes something even more dangerous. But you don't even really get the enjoyment of getting it out. I am genuinely asking, what is the consequences of the carcinogens? No dumb questions. You just said the word carcinogens. No, no, but explain, please. Cancer-causing agents, some of which are just straight-up toxic, not just carcinogenic. Do you get high at least? Yes, good question. So just to be clear, though, when you break away all this stuff, This part of the show is about you are also effectively wasting weed.

1:32:56You're not completely combusting. Okay, now I'm taking this very seriously. Not that I ever have. But the specific thing I'm saying here, though, is that the laser is not even efficient as a heating source. It's not a good answer for it. It's just, cool, I used a laser. Do you not regularly burn carcinogens when you do, like, weed that you smoke in a bong, for example? You often get full combustion. The goal is to get full combustion to get the THC out. Does that get the carcinogens out? You don't make them in the first place. Okay, so the idea of using a laser in this case creates new problems that makes weed less healthy.

1:33:33Again, it's time for another brand new acronym for you. LJAX, Laser Generated Airborne Contaminants, which is something we regulate under... Why don't lasers create those? so anytime you have a laser interacting with material they start burning things off of it sorry, if it has enough power to start burning things off it it will make fumes, it will do micro machining of surfaces and you start getting nanoscale particulates which are very exciting they sound cool but no so normally you put on a respirator to protect yourself from particulates when you're doing woodwork and savage which you already mentioned, the laser cutters and burners.

1:34:19When you use those on your wood, rather than just making simple smoke or sawdust, you are making nanoscale particulates that go right through your respirator. And rather than getting stuck in your sinuses with all your mucus there, some may, to your lungs, some may get stopped there. Suddenly, the target organ for smoke is your liver rather than your lungs. Christ. See, this is the thing. This is, and I'm so happy you put this down, man. It has been like eight years of doing this. We've never actually got you to run down where your actual expertise lies here, and it's wonderful to do. No, I fucking love it.

1:34:54It's wonderful. The show has been amazing. But the thing is, it's like a classic CES-style problem where it's like, ah, have we got the solution to something? But you have so many more problems. Yeah, we may have created some more problems, but did we create a solution? I don't know. Do you think we did? Did you come up? Did we? tell us if we, what do you think? Can you buy this and then give us an idea? Right, that's the bit that I kept waiting for you to get to because a lot of it is like, especially with the idea of a laser bong. It's a worse way to address a problem that has been pretty comprehensively solved.

1:35:29But it's cool. Sold in a way that Stoners would absolutely buy. Yeah, that somebody's like, maybe this is cool enough that we could sell it even if it's delivering just not even 25 % of the experience. You're getting all the carcinogens and none of the THC. I don't know what percentage. It feels like when I was in high school and we were out of weed and our plug was out of town and so we'd scrape our bowls together to smoke out of some PVC pipe. Okay, I was maxing out the dirt bag standards. I was going to say you were in good shape there right up until you said PVC. I'm trying to maximize the unhealthy, healthy, horrible, damaging, carcinogenic elements.

1:36:14And there you go, you know British culture. So to correct you though, David, it's not you get all of the carcinogens that were there. It's you made some that weren't there in the first place. Fantastic, yes, my bad. You made a new problem for your not solution. This is like the thing, I don't think this is like not a novel observation, but the ways in which a commercial consideration just the most basic commercial consideration like can i sell this can i make this thing and bring it to market that is the highest hurdle for any of these products the technological stuff the magic the shit that you need like advanced degrees to be able to do doesn't often seem to be a problem the bigger problem is trying to find some way to either invest in it or to find a way to sell it and that's how you that's like when these things get bad and then the fill destroying ones are where they fail both.

1:37:05Yes. Where they're just like, well, do we have a product that people want? No. Do we have a product that works? Absolutely not. However, we do have a name. We have science. And we technically do have science. That's one thing your wokeness can't take away, Phil. They do have science. Get them, Ed. Technically. Now, the problem is, do they understand the science? And that's the big one. And this is the thing, I think the - Or rather, they understand their specific, incredibly narrow niche and have never picked their head up to look and acknowledge there are other humans around them. Why would they do that unless they're consumers?

1:37:40Because some of them are customers. No, no, no, no, consumer. Oh, sorry. You are not there to be happy. You're there to consume. And this is CES, baby. It's just a series of people from the top of the people who actually release things all the way down to the people releasing the laser bomb. The other thing for CES is, sorry, they move in fads. Well, I said there's something in the human spirit that says you just got to attach lasers to things. Not according to the people who have gone to the floor, not this year. People were not excited to staple lasers onto stuff. But in past years, absolutely.

1:38:20And that first time we visited CES, well, together to CES in 2015, I actually did go to the floor. 2011 first time we went together which year was that DJ Woo Kid year nice you were we met in the Californian right but I didn't get to meet DJ Woo Kid you left me out that's one of my cool friends by which I mean a guy emailed like a year ago the first time we were here together and I went to the floor in 2015 there was a whole bunch of post disaster Fukushima tech where people were developing so many new apps for your phone for integration into the radiation monitoring networks. There was no radiation monitoring network to integrate into.

1:39:06Wait, they just made up a... Well, we're going to have some detectors that you can log into. Would you like to buy some detectors, by the way? For the inevitable future. For the full network that you want to be... Of course, the thing that will exist. Or a detector you can plug into your phone. No, your phone doesn't generate enough voltage to actually run that detector to do it. There was a whole lot of radiation-related, I am terrified of Fukushima in my backyard across the entire Pacific tech that got rolled out, which vanished the following year. There's cycles. We were talking about this this morning, too, and I think the thing that was kind of interesting about what you said about that, too, was that, and this, again, you know, I kept sort of having this feeling down there.

1:39:49You were describing it as basically, you know, people wanted this spectrometer or whatever the term is. You got it. I saw Craig Mazin's Chernobyl miniseries and I took copious notes during it so I know a lot I thought it was good actually people expected me to hate it I had a t-shirt on that seemed to be like Chernobyl day baby right here April 25th 1986 I think the time zones work out with Russia two disasters the same day you were alive for the last Mets World Series one that's beautiful the collapse of multiple dynasties what you were saying about this is that all of these things were not just flawed in the ways that you described, but they were successful products insofar as they would generate a number with a decimal point in it that you could then look at and be like, oh, that seems high, or that seems low and fine.

1:40:40But as in the miniseries, but I think just in general, this was the point that you made, is generating a number for somebody by way of an app or by way of some sort of device that is chargeable via USB-C or something is not the same thing as informing them of anything. It's just producing a number. It's an outcome, but that's that. Every time someone comes to, I have this new detector, is this good, Phil? Or is this worth the money? I go, okay. You have to know how to use it, right? I ask the questions, what are you trying to detect? Does the detector actually detect that? Do you know how to use it?

1:41:19And a lot of the consumer products in spaces like this related to environmental health and safety, emergency response. No. Most people buying stuff on Amazon have no idea how to fucking use it, much less what it actually sees or how it works. And that's why I get angry constantly. As we wrap up, more things to upset you. We'll go into more of this tomorrow, I think. So you can just buy illegal shit on Amazon just to wrap us up? As I regularly send it. as I regularly send you, it is the largest gray or black market in America. There was a really sad time. The other show I come to Las Vegas to go to is DEF CON.

1:42:05COVID Central. I describe coming to CES as a chance to see the things I'm going to have to contend with when cheap professors buy stuff and bring it to me. Going to DEF CON, I describe as a vacation to other people's problems. because InfoSec problems are analogous to radiation and laser safety ones, but not actually mine to need to fix, but the stuff I can learn. One time I was there, I caught three senior Amazon engineers at a bar and I was aimed at them by a friend who said, those are the Amazon people, talk to them. And I went over and at angry cocktail point, laid down, you are the largest black market and illegal importer of dangerous laser products and other things in the world, specifically America.

1:42:59Were they like, yes, do you want our card or something? To which, to their credit, Thank you. to their credit, they looked ashamed at their shoes and said to me, I could fix this with a code push at midnight if anyone, with the very heavily implied a certain bald owner, cared. Professor Charles Xavier That's him Very nasty and unfair He doesn't listen to Magneto anymore Cerebro It's gotten to his head Get out of my mind Having shared this story with contacts at the FDA The FDA, they haven't quite Surrendered to Amazon But they do not have The staff, they don't have the bandwidth They don't have the funding To try to deal with a problem like Amazon And instead are doing their best to work with Amazon, which is something you've written about and talked about.

1:43:54It's just regulatory capture. What would happen if we gave guns to the non-police regulations? I was going to say anything that Ed is about to say is not reflective. It's Ed, not the other Ed. Some of you who cannot tell the difference between our voices. Yeah, because we sound so fucking similar. I'm seeing double. For the price of one. Shit, that's actually two, yes. In a way, we are the same. You know, Britain, Kenya, we are connected by... Ed is also wonderful, and I'm so happy he's been here. Anyway, please stop saying the thing that is legally actionable, if you could. Well, it's not legally actionable, because I'm actually asking a really good question.

1:44:44What I'm asking is what would things look like if regulatory agencies actually had the ability to enforce and not just to like litigate? You know, like, you know, I think one example just being, you know, if they were able to enforce in the way that an ETF or a DA might when it comes to illegal, harmful goods and services proliferating in an open air black market like this. So that was a funny question you asked me the other day of, do I think any government agencies are working well? And I had to take a long, sad pause and go, the problem is I know how they're supposed to work. I also know how they are working.

1:45:32The DEA and ATF don't work nearly as well as we would like them to. But I feel like they're much more robustly funded. There's nothing else than like that Federal Trade Commission. It's like six guys in an office with a leak in the ceiling. I'm sure if we gave like Lena Kahn and her advisors, you know, like a Ruger, like we could get some things to happen. Actually, the people that we would be most excited to have work to do this in association with the FDA, because the FDA, they don't get guns. they review things to see if it's safe for people to use and consume the interdiction point is the United States Postal Inspection Service which are the mail cops shout out to the mail cops and the Comstack Act do not fuck with them what's their conviction rate?

1:46:24it's like 99 % they're just the rest in packages stop resisting like a padded envelope but again there's not many people, many of them to do interdiction and investigation. Similarly for customs which got stapled together to customs and border patrol under the Department of Homeland Security, when it was an independent agency, they inspected everything. They were looking for illegally transported crew. They were looking for illegal cloth because specific weaves and contents are trademarked. They were looking for that. They were looking for fake tech. an iPhone that actually just has a piece of cardboard in the middle rather than chips Customs used to look at all of this we got no support time for anything other than drugs so on that note I'm afraid we have to come to the end of this 90 plus minutes show David J.

1:47:22Roth where can people find you? Defector.com is the website I do a podcast there that's the distraction I'm on Blue Sky David J. Roth is the handle there and that is all I have to say for that Mr. Broughton. So you can find me on Blue Sky at Funranium. You can find me on my blog, funraniumlabs.com. If you would like to learn more about me being angry about laser products, go to the adventure and radiation part of the blog or reference rants. Yo, tell them about your coffee product. Yeah, go on. The other thing I do is I make a concentrated coffee called Black Blood of the Earth. that is what I had to make in order to drink coffee again without adding sugar and cream to it.

1:48:05We're going to talk more about this tomorrow. Folks, it rocks. It does and it's actually a wholehearted endorsement. How Phil and I met and by the way, tomorrow's episode, which I'm about to talk up and we'll talk about more later, is going to involve Phil a lot in talking about that. Mr. Anguesso Jr. I was debating whether to do a Nelson Mandela accent. I've been thinking about it all week. To find out, you must go to the tech bubble yeah that's what i was afraid of dot com uh uh that's my newsletter my podcast is uh that uh that this machine kills um and i'm on twitter and blue sky at big black jacobin and you can catch me outside how about that that's what i wrote down in my notes there i'm ed Zitron, you have been so generous with your time.

1:48:56Thank you for listening. I am so grateful and love all of you. And we'll say that a few more times as we go. We're approaching the first episode, at the end of the first episode, of the last day of CES proper. You'll have another one after this. I have been joined by so many wonderful people. I want to thank everyone who's been on so far. This has been an incredible trip. Please listen to the totally canned message. After that, I'll get one of you little pigs emailing me and being like, Anthony, you need to update it. I've done like 10 and a half flipping hours of audio on this. What more could you want from me?

1:49:28I'm online. You can email me. I always email you back. Jesus Christ. I'm just kidding. I adore you. Let's get you home. Okay. I am home. I'm in a Venetian hotel room. This is where I live. Let's get you a drink.

1:49:48Thank 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.

1:50:46Thank you so much for listening.

1:51:11Did 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. Do 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.

1:51:57We 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. Let's start with a quick puzzle. The answer is Ken Jennings' appearance on The Puzzler with A.J. Jacobs. The question is, what is the most entertaining listening experience in podcast land? Jeopardy truthers believe in... I guess they would be Ken-spiracy theorists. That's right. They gave you the answers and you still blew it. The Puzzler.

1:52:35Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Dr. Scott Barry Kaufman, host of the Psychology Podcast. Here's a clip from an upcoming conversation about how to be a better you. When you think about emotion regulation, you're not going to choose an adaptive strategy which is more effortful to use unless you think there's a good outcome. Avoidance is easier. Ignoring is easier. Denial is easier. Complex problem solving takes effort. Listen to the Psychology Podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart Podcast.