In short
Better Offline: CES 2026 - Part Ten (Epilogue)
Podcast Overview Title: Better Offline Description: Better Offline explores the tech industry’s manipulation of society and its growth-at-all-costs mentality. Through storytelling, interviews, and discussions, it evaluates the schemes of tech elites. Hosted by Ed Zitron, it aims to clarify the actions of tech’s most powerful players.
Episode Details Episode Title: CES 2026: Part Ten (Epilogue) Description: This episode wraps up Better Offline's coverage of the 2026 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) with guests Cory Doctorow, Ed Ongweso Jr., and bartender Phil Broughton, discussing the event's highlights, the impending venture apocalypse, and expectations for 2026.
Key Highlights
Guests Introductions
- Ed Zitron: Host of Better Offline.
- Phil Broughton: Bartender who facilitated discussions throughout CES.
- Cory Doctorow: Author, activist, and journalist, attending CES after 20 years.
- Ed Ongweso Jr.: Tech bubble newsletter writer.
CES Reflections
- Atmosphere: The conversations took place in a relaxed setting with drinks, reflecting on the CES experience.
- Phil Broughton’s Role: Acknowledged for his efforts in providing drinks and creating a comfortable environment for discussions.
Discussion Topics
- Highlights from CES:
- Technological Innovations:
- Excitement over unique inventions, including a four-nanometer microscope and aesthetically pleasing designs from low-end manufacturers.
- Exploration of everyday items like data center plugs and functional travel accessories.
- Critique of CES Trends:
- The inclination of companies to present with the intention to attract investments rather than providing functional products.
- The prevalence of vaporware (products that don't exist but are promoted) at CES.
The Venture Apocalypse
- Upcoming Challenges:
- Predictions of a significant downturn in the tech landscape, particularly among AI startups that lack real utility and are primarily designed for investment appeal.
- Discussion on the "winner-take-all" market dynamics driven by venture capital, leading to a decline in innovation and competition.
Key Arguments
- Troubleshooting and User Experience:
- The importance of beautiful design and functionality in everyday tech to enhance user experience and troubleshooting capabilities.
- Reference to Don Norman’s work, emphasizing the need for aesthetic value in design to assist users in being effective troubleshooters.
- Impact of AI on Employment:
- Critical insights on the narrative that AI can replace human workers. Instead, the focus is on how companies leverage AI as a pretext to reduce headcounts.
- Discussion of the disconnect between tech executives and the actual work processes in various professions, particularly among those who could potentially be replaced by AI.
Future Forecasts
- Expectations for 2026:
- Anticipation of a reckoning in the tech industry as companies face the consequences of past decisions and current market dynamics.
- A call for a shift in focus towards practical innovations that genuinely serve user needs rather than speculative investment opportunities.
Conclusion
- The episode closes with acknowledgments of the team and audience, reflecting on the shared experience of CES and its implications for the future of technology and society.
Links and Resources
- Cory Doctorow: [ pluralistic.net](http://pluralistic.net/)
- Ed Ongweso Jr.: [Profile on Bluesky](https://bsky.app/profile/bigblackjacobin.bsky.social)
- Phil Broughton: [Profile on Bluesky](https://bsky.app/profile/funranium.bsky.social/)
- Ed Zitron’s Newsletter: [wheresyoured.at](https://www.wheresyoured.at/)
- Donate in Sean-Paul's Honor: [Pediatric Epilepsy Research Consortium](https://www.perc-epilepsy.org/)
Final Thoughts This episode serves as a reflective and critical summation of CES 2026, highlighting the ongoing tensions in the tech industry between innovation, aesthetic design, and the growth-at-all-costs mentality that characterizes contemporary capitalistic ventures.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Chapters
Tap a time to open that second in VOBetter Offline After Party Kickoff
2:25 to 5:50
The hosts introduce the after-party discussion and reflect on CES experiences.
“I mean, hey, there's, you know, tonight.”
CES 2026 Reflections
5:50 to 8:14
The hosts share their experiences and highlights from CES 2026.
“No, this year the lesson I've learned is that I could use help.”
Design and Functionality Discussion
8:14 to 11:11
A discussion on the importance of design and functionality in everyday products.
“And, you know, there's a really remarkable pair of books.”
Troubleshooting Everyday Tech
11:11 to 13:50
Exploration of common tech troubleshooting scenarios and user experiences.
“But the point being that everyone's a troubleshooter all the time.”
The Importance of Beautiful Design
13:50 to 14:00
Discussion on how beautiful design enhances user experience and happiness.
“The ability to just take a gander in there and plop it back in is immense.”
Everyday Carry Essentials
14:00 to 15:11
Learn about the concept of everyday carry and its practical applications.
“And it kind of explains like this is the non-pathological version of everyday carry.”
Historical Context of Fluoroscopes
15:12 to 16:39
Discover the history and risks of using fluoroscopes for shoe fitting.
“That would be a problem with the fire marshal.”
Radiation Exposure in Shoe Stores
16:40 to 17:53
Understand the dangers associated with shoe-fitting fluoroscopes and radiation exposure.
“Phil, as an expert in this kind of thing, how bad was that and why?”
3D Printing and Gun Legislation
17:54 to 20:18
Explore the intersection of 3D printing and gun legislation in the U.S.
“But if you want to see one in person, there was one on display at the Bradbury museum that they have now equipped with digital cameras to simulate the effect of what the fluoro unit for shoes used to be like.”
Guns and Casino Encounters
20:19 to 21:36
Hear a story about a surprising encounter involving guns in a casino.
“There was a previous terrifying trip to Vegas where on the floor of Caesars, we were playing craps, you had wandered off to bed.”
Show all 30 chapters
Cultural Commentary on Gun Lore
25:22 to 28:06
Delve into cultural discussions around guns and storytelling in fiction.
“And the weirder it is, the cleverer they'll think you are.”
Legality and Geometry in 3D Printing
28:06 to 29:40
Explore the challenges of policing 3D-printed geometries and the implications of making such designs illegal.
“I mean, I don't remember what happened to Defense Distributed.”
Challenges of Policing Hate Speech
29:40 to 31:38
Discuss the difficulties in legally defining and enforcing hate speech on digital platforms.
“Like, administrability is the single most important factor in policy design because…”
Data Portability and User Freedom
31:38 to 32:44
Learn how data portability can empower users to leave platforms without losing their connections.
“I go to the regulator and the regulator comes to you and says, look, I know you told me that you gave Corey his file.”
Political Landscape in the UK
32:44 to 34:29
Analyze the current political climate in the UK and the influence of protests against leaders like Keir Starmer.
“I just, I feel like with some of these platforms, I'm not talking about blue sky, but the original, the original Twitter problems of like slurs, for example, and it's like, I, you can't unilaterally ban them.”
Shifts in British Political Parties
34:29 to 36:26
Examine how shifts within political parties in the UK reflect changing voter sentiments and leadership dynamics.
“This came up on my feed today that the right and the left in the UK are having dueling protests about who hates Keir Starmer more.”
The Future of the Green Party
36:26 to 38:08
Discuss the potential rise of the Green Party in the UK led by new, charismatic leadership.
“They should have let my boy Corbyn win it.”
The State of Tech Startups and Market Dynamics
38:08 to 41:42
Investigate the implications of tech startups focusing solely on growth at the expense of substantive innovation.
“Sorry, they sent Scott Galloway there, I mean.”
Barriers to Market Entry and Innovation
41:42 to 42:01
Delve into how incumbents create barriers to market entry and restrict innovative competition in various industries.
Permissionless Innovation and Market Disruption
42:01 to 43:16
Explore how incumbents hinder innovation and examples of market disruption.
“So, you know, historically, if you're going to make something new, you would make it work with the thing that already existed.”
The Evolution of Social Media Platforms
43:17 to 44:44
Discuss the rise of Facebook over MySpace and the challenges of competition.
“When Facebook launched, they had this problem that everyone who could have used Facebook had a MySpace account.”
The Challenges of Competing in AI
44:45 to 45:48
Understand the barriers for new entrants in the AI market and VC dynamics.
“The egregious version of that is large language models.”
Ethics and Professionalism in the Era of AI
45:49 to 47:18
Examine the impact of AI on professional jobs and the importance of ethics.
“if their boss asks them to do something that's not moral.”
Understanding the Layoff Dynamics in Tech
47:19 to 48:21
Delve into why companies like Microsoft continue to lay off employees amidst AI adoption.
“Like the people, the people they want to fire, they truly do not understand what it is they do.”
The Disconnect Between Management and Workers
50:48 to 52:36
Discuss the gap in understanding between executives and their employees in tech.
“They know what their headcount reduction for the year has to be.”
The Future of Venture Capital and Innovation
52:37 to 56:00
Analyze the potential end of the venture capital era and its implications for startups.
“Because I talk to people that I have a ton of my.”
Exploring Venture Capital Challenges
56:00 to 56:49
Discussion on the diminishing funds in venture capital and market anxieties.
“That's a big thing of theirs is that, you know, if you fuck up and you don't get in on the winner, then get in on the winner on the next round and crowd everyone out.”
The Recording Dilemma: Legal vs Illegal
56:50 to 58:18
Examination of the legalities surrounding recording shows and the evolution of technology.
“Who would not, like, I think you could sell every person in America a PVR for streaming.”
The State of Aqua Hires and Patents
58:19 to 1:00:07
Insights into the concept of aqua hires and challenges in patenting AI innovations.
“And so now if I ever need, I can order tap water.”
Patent Trolls and the Legal Landscape
1:00:08 to 1:01:55
Discussion on the rise of patent trolls and their impact on innovation and litigation.
“So the USPTO is not issuing a ton of bullshitty AI patents.”
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:00This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.
0:31This year, we're talking honestly about mental health, relationships, and the patterns we're ready to release. If you're looking for clarity, connection, and healthier ways to show up in your life, Sacred Lessons is here for you. Listen to Sacred Lessons with Mike Delaroche on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hola, I'm Jorge Ramos. This week on The Moment, we take a look at Venezuela's uncertain future in a conversation with two people who have directly advised U.S. presidents. Juan Gonzalez during the Obama and Biden administrations. We're really good at invading countries.
1:04We're very bad at nation building. And Carlos D. Rosillo during Trump's two terms. I can guarantee you that nobody in the Trump administration likes Delcy Rodriguez. Listen to The Moment with Jorge Ramos and Paola Ramos on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Dr. Priyanka Wally. And I'm Hurricane DeBowlo. It's a new year. And on the podcast Health Stuff, we're resetting the way we talk about our health. Which means being honest about what we know, what we don't know, and how messy it can all be. I like to sleep in late and sleep early. Is there a chronotype for that or am I just depressed?
1:40Health stuff is about learning, laughing, and feeling a little less alone. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. CallZone Media. welcome to the better offline after party epilogue from ces it is like 11 a.m on the saturday we are i actually slept pretty well weirdly but we're all this is the thing we do at the end of the show where the remaining people join us we relax and we have to my right mr philip broughton hello this is our bartender for the week phil you've been i don't so i want to give phil immense credit for what he's been doing all week so the way this works we have the we've got the main suite which is where people come they come sit down it's got the the big daddy bedroom where i sleep where i just kind of like sleep or like talk to myself roll around a lot i roll around on the floor going uh but then in the main room we have the bar that phil's set up and during the recordings phil will come in and ferry and usually a diet coke or a little thing of sutool just close to mezcal jesus christ my voice just broke there i'm of course ed zitrum by the way the host of better offline and phil has been bringing me drinks all week and bringing everyone drinks just kind of ferrying around the recording he wouldn't know it to hear it but he's been an incredible bartender i finally learned how to not walk into things after last year you were pretty good you you give yourself more credit to our left of course is mr cory doctor activist author the journalist hello and of course mr edward on grace jr hello my friends my my man another year another day another year another head oh yeah oh yeah i should really have my book written by next year no it's we were just talking about games and relaxing after it because you'd think after a week-long podcast we'd go completely ape shit crazy by which i mean i think all of us were in bed by 11.
3:37I mean, hey, there's, you know, tonight. Oh, yeah. Then Edward Nguesso Jr. and I got to go out until... I'm scheming. 12.01 a.m. is the plan. We're going to go really crazy. Raging. I feel like we're going to get the Avengers together. I'm getting people from different walks of life to come and party with you tonight. I did see there's Avengers Doomsday now. They're doing a three hour, 45 minute one, and they got the X-Men in it, and they're real just key jangling. Yeah, it's either going to be okay or horrible. Yeah, it's either going to be amazing in the sense that, like, Patrick Stewart... If Patrick Stewart just does X-Men shit, I'm fine.
4:15But yeah, this is what happens at the end of CES. Our brains are reduced to a fine simmer. You're going to do a courtesy sniff on me for Doomsday, aren't you? I'm going to, if I manage to watch that fucking movie, I will actually... Yeah, let's watch it. You'll courtesy sniff at me for... Let's go see Avatar three-way fire and ash right now. I've not seen any of the Avatar movies, man. I'll show you all. Let's go to Pandora. If it was on the sphere, I'd watch it. Let's go to Pandora. But no, the history of the suite is such that Phil has been... So when did we first do the suite, Phil? 2015. 2015, we would have it.
4:52It was from a PR firm. We'd all sit around. We'd have the journalists. We'd have drinks. But died in 2020 because of... Actually, not because of the pandemic. just because we were i think it was like there was something weird that ces and then then covid happened we people were already scared of covid at ces well people were just sick like people were ambient i was sick i was getting a lot of questions about is this okay and i went well what the other part of the worry is parts of china had already locked down at that point in january So there were missing parts of the show, which were starting people to worry about.
5:31Are we okay here? I was also just like, I got, I knock on wood. I have done pretty well not getting sick at CES, largely because the first few days when the show's the most crowded, I'm masked up immediately. Just to, just, I have my big, uh, put my Bane mask on. And yeah, that, that, that was a weird one, but we brought it back last year for the first time. It was good. I think this is the best one yet. and we were already scheming for 2027. We've got Vice President J.D. Vance. I'm going to go. Do you even say please? Do you even say please and thank you? No, this year the lesson I've learned is that I could use help.
6:16I could use, not to say I didn't have it. I could use like an organizing document person. I have physics degrees, but I can't keep up with what you need to do for a show. Also, neither could I. I was kind of putting it together as you went. But Corey. Yes. This is your first CES in what? 20 years? 20. So it's 2003. So 23 years. Hail Discordia. I'm really very grateful you came out here because it was, I know that we laughed about the Amazon, the Amazon thing where you like asked the simplest questions and they freaked out. But it was quite nice watching you bring me in front of stuff that I otherwise wouldn't have got excited about.
6:52like the four nanometer microscope and such. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I love the stuff that's kind of makery. And then the other end of that, which is, I think we were talking about this yesterday, the hall where Chinese designers have taken a standard board that is for a point and shoot camera and they've come up with 75 form factors for it. And like 73 of them are garbage and two of them are just really pretty. They look like something you'd have gotten out of a mid-century designer or something. You know, it's very striking. If you saw it in MoMA, you'd go, well, yeah, I get why that's a classic. Yeah.
7:29Yeah. And I kind of, you stopped at one point in a wall of plugs as well. Yeah. That was, no, it was, that warmed my heart. I was like, that's my friend, man. No, it was just like a wall of like data center level plugs with the ones that you'd usually put in the back of the computer. Yep. Yep. Yeah. I think that that's the unseen magic of CES is that while we can complain about a lot of things, there are still little companies doing weird little shit at the side. Well, this is like what I was saying about the British charger adapter, the collapsible charger adapter yesterday, is that the stuff that you interact with every day that has like moving parts that you have to plug and unplug, that, you know, like so much of your quality of life is in that stuff.
8:14Yeah. And, you know, there's a really remarkable pair of books. There's a book called The Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman. That's a design classic. And it's this very austere book. Norman's a designer. And it's a very austere book. A austere book aimed at designers saying, stop sacrificing functionality for aesthetics. Right. And everyone read it. And this completely was, it's impossible to overstate how important this was in how people think about design. And like 25 years later, he wrote another book called Emotional Design, where he was like, I was totally wrong. Nearly everything that you use in a high-tech society is nearly always broken.
8:55And the role of the user is actually the troubleshooter. And to be a troubleshooter is to be expansive. And to be expansive, you can't be frustrated and angry. When you're frustrated and angry, you tunnel down and you just keep like clicking the button over and over again and hoping it starts working. Sorry, just when you say a troubleshooter, what exactly do you mean? Well, think about your average day, right? Where you plug in your computer and you try to do a thing that you've done before and it just doesn't work the way it's supposed to work. You know, the app doesn't load correctly. The little charge light doesn't come on.
9:28The plug doesn't work. The latch doesn't work. Something's broken. The app closes. You get a weird cryptic timeout bug. You know, all kinds of things. I'm the last Tumblr user on earth, but Tumblr changed their HTML editor a few years ago, about a year ago. And I only just figured out that the reason I can't type in it unless I flip it to HTML mode and write raw HTML is that the first character you enter into it has to have style data. It has to be like bold or italic or have a font size associated with it. So you have to copy it out of an app that has style data. Jesus Christ. Paste it in and then it, and I don't know why, right?
10:05But like now I can reliably type in the Tumblr compositor and that's a troubleshooting thing, right? And we all do this all day long with everything we use and it's not just gnarly Linux shit. It's like my LG electric stovetop, my induction stovetop. Exactly. Like the beginning of my book, Why Everything Stopped Working, coming out next year. I think I counted 131 within the space of a day of just shit that went wrong. Things like I went on Reddit to try and look at someone, but when I went to click it, the entire thing stopped responding to touch. Sure. Or the many times that just my email just decides to reset itself or Google Calendar has locked me out.
10:48I'm sorry, not just gone like, yeah, mate, log in again. And the funniest one, by the way, I've done it. Has this happened to you? Have you logged into Google Calendar? As in like, and it said log in place, you log in. And then you go to edit it and it logs you out again. Yes, I have Google dysfunction. Instantly. Well, you don't use Google at all. No, I use GCal because I have to share a calendar with a bunch of heterogeneous. Yeah, that would be. But the point being that everyone's a troubleshooter all the time. Yes. And if you're angry and frustrated and you're just like, you know, you've got the incipient aneurysm throbbing in your temple and, you know, your fists are clenched and you've got the, you know, black halo contracting around your vision, you can't fix stuff.
11:27Yeah. You need to be able to kind of step back. Like, have you ever been trying to cook something with a couple of friends? Do you cook? Yes. Yes. So you're cooking something with, say, a friend and it's not quite gelling, you know, maybe literally it's not gelling. Something's not right. And you just like, if you're kind of bopping around the kitchen, there's good music and you go taste this, what does it need? Oh yeah, I know. Maybe try a little salt. Yeah, yeah. Right? But like if you're in a panic and you've got 10 people coming over there. You're traveling, what have you. And you're trying to cook and you're like, how do I get this to work?
11:57You're frustrated, you're angry. It's hard to think creatively. So his point is that beautiful things make you happy. And when you're happy, you're a better troubleshooter. And so for things to work well, they have to be beautiful. I love that. Because my eyes immediately, as you said that, draw to the Rodecaster Pro 2. And I will definitely say there is a level of like, you look at it and you go, damn, I'll make production. Me, Mr. Broadcast. And it sounds silly, but yeah, it does kind of make you. You kind of feel like, you feel like a professional. You feel like, and so when shit's going on, you kind of look at it and go, no, but I'm a professional.
12:32I'm doing cool shit. And I know I sound silly, but to quote Karl McLachlan in Twin Peaks, every day give yourself a little present which sometimes means setting things up to make yourself feel a little important i love things that are quietly functional in my daily life so i travel a lot so i found a cable bag that uh that i keep all my cables in and it sits flat when you open it instead of tipping over and i get oh so you could just leave it on a table and it just sits open lovely holy moly is that very nice and obviously like a bag that sits flat is not an innovation right it's like it's a thing that's existed forever but someone made it into a cable bag that reminds me so good that reminds me of another one exactly like that which is a company called packed p-a-k-t i love them they have a slightly dodgy design in this bag but still it's a one that's like it's a regular bag that slips over your um your suitcase which by the way is the worst part of it because if you pack it too much it's a little hard to get on there but the killer instinct thing is it opens from the top not the side so when you're when you're sliding it under a you're on a southwest flight you plug a burbank flight for example and you need to get in there instead of having to like get a backpack and looking from the top the whole thing the whole thing flips open so you can delve into it and easily close it again this sounds very minor Sure.
13:55The ability to just take a gander in there and plop it back in is immense. And it kind of explains like this is the non-pathological version of everyday carry. Right? You find a thing that you love that works perfectly well. You know, like I'm the kind of person who's on the road like 100, 150 days a year. And I have a fully set up travel package. Yeah. You know, with duplicates of everything I need to travel with and whatever. And when you dial it all in perfectly and the bag is great and the accessories are great and the way it's organized is great and you always, you know, you get somewhere and something's broken and you can fix it again.
14:34I love, I have a set of titanium chopsticks that break down. Oh, that rocks. And a number of times I've been able to like eat food in a hotel room without having to use the shitty plastic fork. Oh, that's bloody good. I should get some cutlery. We've ran out of forks. Yeah. Yeah, this is the thing, like, in a somewhat, like, grim CES for not useful things, I feel like I would love a trade show where it was just, like, useful shit. It's like a bag that's great for this kind of traveler. If you want to make the useful shit convention, invite me. I'd love to cover it. Because I would love it. They need to start thinking that way with this show.
15:11I'd love, like, Battery Isle. I'd love Batteryville. That would be a problem with the fire marshal. Okay, but you space him out a little. you would have to yes yeah you space them out on a positive note i have not had to call the fire marshal this year you haven't had to call them in years you didn't call them last year i didn't call them last year either and for the previous four years i didn't because we weren't here yes yes every year yeah yeah there was that prolonged period where it was like hey phil we found a a completely functional laser on the and you're like which kind and they were like well MRI.
15:43The MRI in the middle of the electronics showed the worst fucking idea. How the fuck did they even get that in there? Because they never told anyone and then rolled it onto the floor and good to go. The perfect crime. You know, unlicensed medical use on random passersby and destroying adjacent electronics in your neighborhood. But it's a long tradition, right? The World's Fair used to be able to go and have your feet fluoroscoped in the shoe sales stall. You didn't have to go to the World's Fair, you just went to your local market. Quick question. What's a floor scoop? It's an x-ray. So it used to be very common to sell shoes by putting your feet in a pair of shoes and then putting your foot in an x-ray.
16:21And then you can say, look how good your kid's foot fits in there. And not for a brief exposure, right? You leave it running like a radiographically guided injection. You would leave it running for 10, 20 seconds, and the shoe-fitting salesperson— Or longer. Yeah, would be just like continuously bombarded. It's watching x-ray TV. Phil, as an expert in this kind of thing, how bad was that and why? So it was a remarkable amount of dose to the foot, primarily of children. So you don't really want to drop dose on kids. But the worst and most exposed were the workers in the shoe store who are continually doing it.
17:00And also, more to the point, the way they had built it is the X-ray generator shot through your foot to the developing screen towards the lens for your face so that you could see how good your shoes were. Incidentally, we still use fluoroscopes. They are medical. Yeah. And they are the majority of the dose that doctors and nurses take. Yeah, yeah. If you ever get a radiographically guided injection. It's so they don't stab you or put the drugs where it shouldn't go. Get the steroid into your fasci joint or whatever. It has a person with a lot of medical things. I've had a lot of radiographically guided procedures.
17:41They're useful, but you don't want to use them for bullshit like shoes. Yeah, that is some classic humanity there. They were just like, how the fuck are we going to fit shoes on? Is this an x-ray? If you try hard, you can still find them in remote stores in Appalachia. But if you want to see one in person, there was one on display at the Bradbury museum that they have now equipped with digital cameras to simulate the effect of what the fluoro unit for shoes used to be like. Jesus. It's one of those. They seriously did this. Yeah. Yeah. They really did. I'm not surprised anymore when I hear anything like that.
18:21I'm, I'm honestly, these i'm shocked they haven't had a ghost gun problem here i'm shocked okay think about it that came to the floor in a prior year yeah well really uh 3d printing of firearms with oh the 3d printing era arms that was before cody what's his name got busted for that is correct yeah oh god what oh it's a deep dark industry oh yeah you've got you've got the horrifying You're playing billionaires who are just talking about the 14 words, and then you've got the makers. Printing them on their 3D gun. Yeah. I mean, this was a guy who heard the phrase, hard cases make bad law. And he was like, I've got a hard case.
19:01I'll make it. Because we were trying to figure out, like, our STL files. So there's this principle in law that we established in 1992 when we sued the NSA for civilian access to crypto, which is that code is a form of expressive speech covered by the First Amendment. Right. And so prior restraint on the publication of code is unconstitutional. It was narrowed in another case about the magazine 2600, but it's still a bedrock principle, code speech. And then it's like, well, our STL file speech. I mean, they're code, right? And ideally what you'd want to have it about is something that has some nexus with privacy or political activity, like protected activity.
19:38And this guy was like, no, I'm going to just start with guns because I think Second Amendment weirdos will have my back, which is probably true. But also like the court is going to go, okay, but like if we rule in favor of this, you're making guns at home. I feel like that's a – I, the judge, feel a little uncomfortable about it. So he was really – he was like let's roll the dice on the entire idea that Coda's speech on my folk theory about guns and whether Second Amendment weirdos will be able to sway the court. And it sort of all fell apart because he had sex with a minor. Right. Yeah, that's...
20:21There was a previous terrifying trip to Vegas where on the floor of Caesars, we were playing craps, you had wandered off to bed. Of course. And I ran into a former student from one of my classes who was so excited to see me. He said, hey, Phil! And he was decked to the nines, heavy gold rings, clearly doing way better than I had seen him when he'd been laid off from new me. And you're doing great. What is NUMI? It's now the Tesla plant in Fremont. Formerly, it was a cooperative between GM and Toyota that gave birth to Saturn. Yeah, right. But it folded, and now it's Tesla, and Elon bought it, and that became their first factory.
21:05But I saw that student who had been working in all of the support machine shops that ring NUMI. Bad economics. But he looked like he was doing good. Parallax from Greenland. I asked, how are you doing? He said, you have no idea how great it is to be able to just print lowers and uppers left, right, center all day long. Oh, so he was a gun runner. He reached out into his pocket and said, here, I got a fresh one and just handed me a lower. No, thanks. On the floor of the casino with the craft stable. And for the uninitiated and through my very low gun knowledge, the lower is the part that actually makes a gun a gun, right?
21:42Like that's, that's the part that the, that is the actual thing that you require to make a gun shoot. Boom, boom. And it absolutely had no serial numbers. And it was, he handed me a ghost gun on the floor of a casino. You were required to put a serial number on a lower. Yeah. Yeah, you are. I'm saying this because I know sometimes I get the occasional email saying, how do you keep passing things out? The one thing, the one rule Sophie and Robert gave me was to be like, yeah, what's that mean? Say what this means. Say what this means. because otherwise no one knows anything, including me. But that's fucking insane.
22:14This person was just walking - Vegas, baby.
22:24Run a business and not thinking about podcasting? Think again. More Americans listen to podcasts than ad-supported streaming music from Spotify and Pandora. And as the number one podcaster, iHeart's twice as large as the next two combined. So whatever your customers listen to, they'll hear your message. Plus, only iHeart can extend your message to audiences across broadcast radio. Think podcasting can help your business? Think iHeart. Streaming, radio, and podcasting. Let us show you at iHeartAdvertising.com. That's iHeartAdvertising.com. A new year doesn't mean erasing who you were. It means honoring what you've survived and choosing how you want to grow.
23:01It means giving ourselves permission to feel what we've been holding and knowing that it's okay to ask for help. I'm Mike Dallarocha, host of Sacred Lessons. This podcast is a space for men to talk openly about mental health, grief, relationships, and the patterns we inherit, but don't have to repeat. Here, we slow down. We listen. We learn how vulnerability becomes strength and how healing happens in community, not in isolation. If you're ready to let go of what no longer serves you and step into the year with clarity, compassion, and purpose, Sacred Lessons is your companion on your healing journey.
23:44Listen to Sacred Lessons with Mike De La Rocha on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow Sacred Lessons with Mike De La Rocha and start listening on the free iHeart radio app today. Hola, I'm Jorge Ramos. This week on The Moment, we take a look at Venezuela's uncertain future in a conversation with two people who have directly advised U.S. presidents. Juan Gonzalez, during the Obama and Biden administrations. We're really good at invading countries. We're very bad at nation building. And Carlos D. Rosillo, during Trump's two terms. I can guarantee you that nobody in the Trump administration likes Delcy Rodriguez.
24:18Listen to The Moment with Jorge Ramos and Paola Ramos on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Dr. Priyanka Wally. And I'm Hari Kondabolu. It's a new year. And on the podcast Health Stuff, we're resetting the way we talk about our health. Which means being honest about what we know, what we don't know, and how messy it can all be. I like to sleep in late and sleep early. Is there a chronotype for that or am I just depressed? We talk to experts who share real experiences and insight. You just really need to find where it is that you can have an impact in your own life and just start doing that.
24:55We break down the topics you want to know more about. Sleep, stress, mental health, and how the world around us affects our overall health. We talk about all the ways to keep your body and mind inside and out healthy. We human beings, all we want is connection. We just want to connect with each other. Health stuff is about learning, laughing, and feeling a little less alone. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
25:25so as a canadian i have a piece of gun lore for everyone that i learned from john mcdonald or jim mcdonald rather is a science fiction writer um ex-military writes military science fiction very well regarded and he said when you write science fiction with a gun in it or any fiction with a gun in it someone out there who really cares about guns will find something that you said that was wrong and they'll make fun of you yeah if you want to avoid this you just need to know one word, modified. And if you say he opened fire with his modified, whatever, Walter PPK, no matter what it is, you then make the gun do, the person out there who's a, you know, ammo, ammo, sexual musket fucker is going to be, is going to be so interested in figuring out what modification you thought of to make this gun do this.
26:16And the weirder it is, the cleverer they'll think you are. And you'll just get emails going like, I figured out the cool thing you thought of. Am I right? Yeah, definitely. This is a very specific reference. There's a show called Reaper, where Ray Wise from Twin Peaks was the devil. And it's kind of like how they play a game of coin flip, I think it is. And they use a reflection on the tabletop to distract the devil, because the devil is distracted by his own reflection. You just need to key jingle for the musket fuckers. The homosexual musket fuckers. That's a good one, but also that's so fun.
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26:51I know, I mean, with my work, when I'm doing my AI stuff, my favorite thing is like, someone will take one of my shorter pieces, so they're like 29 ,000 ones, and we'll say like, this guy doesn't know shit. And they will find one fucking line. And they'll be like, look on that. And it will be the weirdest, smallest thing. And I'll always be like, so can you be specific about what this changes? They block me. They block me every time. And actually there was a, So there is a, this is a random aside. The better offline LARPers are sickos. Well, no, this is, I got sent a very final one. So there's this guy on Twitter, real horrible website, Buko Capital Bloke, who is like a weirdly popular guy.
27:32And he deleted this tweet, but an eagle-eyed reader caught it. He said, conflicted because if the AI trade blows up, then Tay Kim's head explodes, which would be very funny. But then Ed Zich won't be right, and that would not be funny at all. and uh i just to be just to be clear this would be the funniest possible situation because that guy deleted it and thinks i didn't get it sadly i got the screenshot it's gonna be a great it's gonna be a great year for stuff like that i don't know about the rest of the world but yeah this actually cory back to the ghost gun stuff what happened with all that because i don't remember yeah i mean it just the prison prison happened yeah not for that specific guy but i I mean, I don't remember what happened to Defense Distributed.
28:13It just went quiet. Yeah, I don't think we've had a case that was litigated to final judgment about the legality of shape files. I mean, the legality of the gun itself is pretty established. That's good. Shape files. And look, I do think that making geometry illegal is dumb. Yes. As a person who would throw all the guns into the sea or whatever. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I still think making geometry illegal is dumb. And also, yeah, at that point, you can't build things. Yeah. You can't 3D print at all. And also impractical, right? Because like, what are you actually going to do? Because there are so many ways to express a file that will be that shape.
28:54Because STLs can express logic, right? They can be parametric. So you can, like, for example, you can have a shapefile for a key, like a door key. and there are variables you can set in the shapefile for where you want the teeth and how deep they're going to go. So it is a programmable piece of descriptive code. And so there are like an infinitude of ways you could write a program in the STL description language that would emit the illegal geometry. So how do you police the illegal geometry? You can't. You know, it just feels like it's one thing to make a law that says something is illegal. It's another thing to make a law.
29:38And even if that thing is bad and you want to extinguish it, but if you have no way to administer that law, you are setting yourself up either for heartbreak or for something really bad where you just run around and you accuse everyone of having broken the law because no one can ever tell who's broken the law and who hasn't. Like, administrability is the single most important factor in policy design because… And just administability means being able to do so. Can you administer it? Right, right. Can you figure out whether someone's violated it? Right, so to bring this to the internet, there are a lot of people who are very angry, and I think rightfully so, about harassment and hate speech on the platforms.
30:12Yeah. But a hate speech regime is very hard to police because you have a common definition of hate speech. You have to evaluate whether a given piece of speech rises to the definition. You have to make a technical determination about whether the firm took reasonable technical steps to address the hate speech. And this is an offense that occurs on the platform 100 times a minute, but it's a question that takes five years to adjudicate. Yeah. So it's just not a good, there are other fact intensive regimes in law, like probate law, right? But it's fine because the average person dies one or fewer times.
30:45And so the fact that it takes a minute to figure out what to do when they die, not a big deal. I'm Bill Differ. You never die. Say you'll never die. I'm gonna die three times. But, you know, you could imagine another regime where like if you I don't know if you're a Mastodon user, but in no. So in Mastodon, there's this feature. It's a beautiful piece of design where if you want to go from one Mastodon server to another, because you can access Mastodon from a lot of different servers run by lots of different people. You click a link and it exports all of your data about who you were following and who is following you.
31:17And then you click another link on the new server and it imports it. And then just all that stuff moves over. so we could say to elon musk uh like yeah we're still going to have some standards for hate speech and whatever we're going to worry about whether your your chatbot is shitting out child pornography but it at the same time what we're going to do is create a mandate that you give people the data they need that if they leave twitter and go to another server they can still talk to the people they left behind on twitter because that way if you don't like the way you're being treated on twitter you can leave one second later and then this is very easy to administer because say you You're running the server and I leave the server and I don't get my file from you.
31:58I go to the regulator and the regulator comes to you and says, look, I know you told me that you gave Corey his file. He says you didn't give it to him. I don't care who's right or who's wrong. Give it to me and I'll give it to him. And then you just resolve the whole question. So you could have like one person administering this policy for a billion users. and then they could all just leave the platforms where they're being abused without having to pay a high switching cost by exiting a community that means something to them, leave behind customers or audience members or family members or people who have the same rare disease as them that they're in a support group with.
32:29They could continue to talk with those people. So this is a very administrable remedy. It's much more streamlined. It actually solves a great deal of the problem. It's not as good as eliminating hate speech, but I don't think you can. I just, I feel like with some of these platforms, I'm not talking about blue sky, but the original, the original Twitter problems of like slurs, for example, and it's like, I, you can't unilaterally ban them. Sure. Other than the fact you could kind of lean that way. I feel like you could be like, you will have to have a little more nuance than that. You will have to, but I feel like starting from there and working back, I'm sure you'll push back on this.
33:07It's just, they usually go the other way. It's like, well, let people do everything. We'll work out later. I just feel like it's just a half-arse attitude. I run the better offline Reddit with a dread hand. Yeah. In the same, but I think - The iron law of the mods is a beautiful thing. But the smaller communities you could do that with, but a large social network, you can't. And you understand the context, right? Like the understanding the difference between, and then I called him this slur and made him really sad, ha ha ha, and then I got called this slur and I was sad, please come and give me comfort, requires a lot of context knowledge.
33:40Yeah. And, you know, oftentimes the people using the slurs are like, that's their hobby. And they're really good at, you know, working the ref. And so it's much more common that they're figuring out how to use the slur in a way that doesn't get them kicked off and getting the people they're using the slur against kicked off for complaining about it. Yeah. And the classic one being like reporting people for death threats, but it's, it's friends being like, I'm gonna kill you, man. That's not the classic. like i i don't know how social networks still fall for this year but it's like they will be the the people doing light-hearted stuff that get banned and then the people with the 14 words and saying 88 gets get to keep around i i'm boosted i really i am excited to see though how the world reacts to twitter becoming the c sam generator because if kia starmer fucking bans x that'd be the funniest thing I've seen in my fucking...
34:34He's never going to do it. He won't do it. But that man doesn't have a spine. Have you been seeing... This came up on my feed today that the right and the left in the UK are having dueling protests about who hates Keir Starmer more. Oh, yeah. That is... You know what? Finally brought together. That's the most British thing I've ever heard. We all don't agree about who's human. The protest is called... No, we hate Keir Starmer more than you. That's so British. that's the most British thing I've ever heard in my life like no well and then someone's gonna have a protest saying that we shouldn't have a protest about anything that we need like at least four more protests it's the fucking bit for the people's front of Judea from life of Brian I I love that I don't love Keir Starmer not gonna lie doesn't seem to it I didn't know that we could get a conservative labor conservative just the guy who's like no one's happy he doesn't really have policies.
35:31He has the lowest approval ratings of any prime minister since measurement began. He has a lower approval rating than Boris Johnson during the pandemic after it was discovered that he was having parties while everyone else was locked down. We found the least popular. And Rachel Reeves is even less popular than he is. What about Theresa May? Less popular than Theresa May. Less popular than Liz Truss. Yeah, I was just about to ask. Oh my fucking god. I'm going to say I hate the lettuce thing. I hate the lettuce thing so much. It's the most boring, corny, wanky, quirk chungus bullshit from the UK.
36:09We're a country where we used to have, when spitting image used to have teeth and it wasn't just like poop and bum doing homophobia. Like that's actually, that really bothered me. I heard of a spitting image thing the other day, which is this puppet show in England where they do like political stuff. And all it is now is just like outright homophobia. It's just like, what if Trump was gay? we just we've tried to suck the beaters me a fucking lame-ass pieces of shit we're a long way from the land of confusion video yeah and it oh god but it's i can't believe kiss number's that unpopular though but actually i can the only thing that labor does reliably is produce people that are less popular than the conservative there because it's just like well the conservatives are super we'll give a labor party and they're like right historic fumble historic fumble every fucking When you watch like Gordon Brown and you're like, God, I miss him.
36:59You know things are right. They should have let my boy Corbyn win it. Oh, yeah. Jeremy's Corbyn. He is also screwing up very badly. What's interesting, you know. With that new party of his. Yeah, with our party. Oh, what the fuck is. But, you know, the Greens are circling. So after World War II. Oh, God. There was a reboot of British politics. The Liberal Party collapsed. So a party that had been around forever, the Whigs, just ceased to exist. Labor came into existence. that was happening to the conservatives as of the last election and the reform party were about to basically scoop up all the conservative voters who didn't like the way that the party was being run but it looks like it's also happening to labor yeah and there is there are two potential places where the left is going to go the greens have not been great historically they've had a lot of bad policies they were into homeopathy for a while whatever but they have got a terrific new leader Zach Polanski, who is basically young, charismatic Corbyn.
37:54Interesting. And Corbyn himself is not charismatic Corbyn. No, never has been. That's a shame. And just very bad at organizing. And Polanski's an organizer. I'm very bullish on the British Greens. That'd be nice. I mean, we did lose Scott Galloway. Sorry, they sent Scott Galloway there, I mean. Like, they sent Scott Galloway to England, I thought. Or maybe he moved from England to Florida. I can't remember which direction they sent that piece. He came to Florida. Yeah, that's okay. By the way, just a completely blunt statement. If you move from England to Florida, they should put you on a list.
38:31I know what you are. Yeah. As a Floridian, we have a very long tradition of accepting the garbage of the world and making it our own. It's like the Staten Island to Florida thing, except it's not just because you're old and hate everyone. It's because you're horny in a new way. they haven't quite identified yet. But we welcome you. Check that out. Yeah, the male loneliness crisis is solved in Palm Beach, Florida, isn't it? No, it's Ybor City. What's that? Because even Tampa has a place they need to make mistakes. I thought that was just Tampa. No, even Tampa has a place to go to go make life errors.
39:10Yeah. And that is Ybor City. Oh, God. Yeah, and as we look into this year, I got to admit, I realize things are quite bad and things are going to get a lot more chaotic, but I think the chaos is necessary. Coming out of this week, all I can feel in my gut is like destruction from this show. Not literally, but this feels like a reckoning of like, and Corey, you'll have some good historical knowledge, of like 20 years of hubris in the tech industry of moving away from. we made a thing that people could use towards actually random question corey ever read uh the case for the fat startup by ben horowitz it was a piece he wrote actually before software is eating the world the horowitz even it was basically saying the the worst thing hell was having a startup that was not the leader in the market i know this this yeah this i i've not read the paper but i've heard it described it's just it's a it's a guy of one of the horowitz of Andreessen Horowitz early on 2010, I think.
40:14And I think ever since then, we have been leading to this point where you chase out the companies that are like, okay, we'll build something cool and we'll compete in a market. And you'll chase them out in favor of companies like we will win the market. Even if it means changing the market materially, even if it means using means such as monopolistic tendencies or just race to the bottom or using funding to chase people out. uber to your point ed and i think what we're seeing this ces is what happens when you just chase growth because the thing about all these companies is yeah you can judge them and you should judge them and they fucking suck and i think all of these llm rappers deserve going the trash along with their founders but at the same time it's like scorpion the frog it's when you incentivize bringing things to a show that do not exist when you give them awards when you write them up and act like they're real year after year, regardless of whether the fucking thing actually exists, of course, you're going to get a CES predominantly made of things that don't and the things that exist only to get invested in from the normie people who came here like Chloe Radcliffe to the extreme technical people like Corey.
41:24It's the same thing of like, this is just a company that's here to jingle the keys in front of the investors or the, not even the buyers, just investors invest in me and or in front of the press and i think in this next year we're going to see what happens when you do that everywhere and we're going to see the collapse of these ai startups that never had a point were never built for anything other than selling to someone else or dumping onto the public markets except none of them can chase that all the smart people in favor in favor of people who can't count so i i think if you want to identify something over 20 the years that's monotonically increased.
42:00It's the way that incumbents are able to block new market entry. So, you know, historically, if you're going to make something new, you would make it work with the thing that already existed. You know, canonical example, like when we opened up AT &T after the breakup in 1982, the modem just plugged into their shit, right? You didn't need to make a phone network. You just needed to make a modem. And everything exploded when that happened. It's sometimes called permissionless innovation. Sometimes it's called disruption. Both of those terms have got into bad odor. But this idea that you don't create a market de novo, you raid the high margin lines of sclerotic legacy companies that are dominating the market.
42:49and you, you, you know, this is what Jeff Bezos said to the publishers when he launched Amazon infamously, he went to a boardroom full of publishers and he said, your margin is my opportunity, right? So you take those high margins, you make them your opportunity. And so when AT &T gets broken up and they lose the ability to control what you plug into the phone jack, we see modems, we see an explosion of answering machines, PBX, it's just all this stuff that is just like built, layered on top of the existing stuff, but you can't do that anymore. You know, When Facebook launched, they had this problem that everyone who could have used Facebook had a MySpace account.
43:22And so Zuck gave everyone who had a MySpace account a bot that you fed your MySpace credentials to, and it would go to MySpace several times a day and impersonate you, scrape everything waiting for you, and put it in your Facebook feed, and you could reply to it. So you didn't have to choose between your friends and a superior service. Facebook's initial pitch was, we're like MySpace, but we're not run by an evil billionaire, and we never spy on you. Thank God. Yeah. And so you could have this, you could eat your cake and have a two. And, you know, you do this to Facebook, they will nuke you till you glow.
43:54It's not technically challenging and it's not hard to think of cool things to do. So, you know, 2024, there was a startup from two teenagers called OG app. Almost the same thing. You gave it your Insta credentials. It logged in as you. It grabbed everything Insta had waiting for you. It discarded all the suggestions, all the ads, all the recommendations, all the boosted content and all the clickbait. and showed you things from people you followed in reverse chronological order. Right. Oh, the Facebook I want. Yeah, and that day, it hit the top 10 of both app markets, and that night, Meta sent a takedown notice to Apple and Google, and they removed it.
44:32Nice. Right. They won't remove X, though. Sure. No, but that's the thing. Yeah, there's honor among thieves. Exactly. Yeah, yeah. No, no. The cabal. These guys are not really competitors. They all sat behind Donald Trump on the dais. But that's the thing, though. The egregious version of that is large language models. Hear me out. So none of these companies can be run on cash flow. I'm doing the bit, but you can't compete with OpenAI. You can't compete with Anthropic. You can't because to train these models requires the, at best, millions and millions and millions and millions of dollars and access to infrastructure.
45:08At a scale, I mean, if you want to compete with them, you need hundreds of millions of dollars. Sure. And you need the talent. They have a big capital moat. Well, the capital moat, but also the talent moat. Sure. And the RSU moat. They can just offer stock. So it's impossible to enter there. But even as an AI startup, you can't compete with the venture capital industry. There is no scrappy AI startup. Sure. You can say, oh, well, we've got, you know, we scraped by with how much? Hundreds of thousands of dollars. I think you're right. I think AI has got formal characteristics that make it attractive to VC.
45:40And one of them is that it looks like it tends towards a winner-take-all market, which is a thing VC is obviously love. This is zero to one, all of those, all the VC nonsense. I think the other one is that the jobs that they think AI will take are capital P professional jobs in the sense that a professional is someone – yeah, a professional is someone who is bound to a code of ethics that not only permits them but requires them to tell their boss to fuck off. if their boss asks them to do something that's not moral. And so you have this whole class of people, teachers, nurses, rad techs, you know, whatever, who are like obliged to say fuck off to their bosses.
46:20And no wonder they're having such an easy time selling this otherwise vaporous technology because bosses have been furiously fantasizing about firing everyone who's allowed to tell them to fuck off since the idea of a profession emerged. And so, you know, you have all these different formal characteristics, The winner take all dynamic, the we fire all the people who get to tell us to fuck off dynamic. You know, like it's very exciting. And the fight to maintain the codes of ethics. It also often teaching students that this is why I demand this of them and why they should demand it for themselves may often be the first time they've ever heard of the concept of a code of ethics, which is depressing.
47:05but also it warms my heart for I get to be the person who teaches you to care about yourself. The thing is, though, I also think there's something quite simple, which is all of that's true. And none of these people know what their people actually do. Like the people, the people they want to fire, they truly do not understand what it is they do. Like I'm going to choose like a random public business insider, all of the layoffs they did there. And it's like, oh, or replace them with AI. Well, we won't. That didn't work. But you know, we're going to say we're AI first. What does that mean? Well, I can't really.
47:44Stop asking so many fucking questions, you asshole.
47:54Run a business and not thinking about podcasting? Think again. More Americans listen to podcasts than ad-supported streaming music from Spotify and Pandora. And as the number one podcaster, iHeart's twice as large as the next two combined. So whatever your customers listen to, they'll hear your message. Plus, only iHeart can extend your message to audiences across broadcast radio. Think podcasting can help your business? Think iHeart. Streaming, radio, and podcasting. Call 844-844-iHeart to get started. That's 844-844-iHeart. A new year doesn't mean erasing who you were. It means honoring what you've survived, and choosing how you want to grow.
48:31It means giving ourselves permission to feel what we've been holding and knowing that it's okay to ask for help. I'm Mike Dallarocha, host of Sacred Lessons. This podcast is a space for men to talk openly about mental health, grief, relationships, and the patterns we inherit, but don't have to repeat. Here, we slow down, we listen, we learn how vulnerability becomes strength and how healing happens in community, not in isolation. If you're ready to let go of what no longer serves you and step into the year with clarity, compassion, and purpose, Sacred Lessons is your companion on your healing journey.
49:14Listen to Sacred Lessons with Mike De La Rocha on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow Sacred Lessons with Mike De La Rocha and start listening on the free iHeart radio app today. Hola, I'm Jorge Ramos. This week on The Moment, we take a look at Venezuela's uncertain future in a conversation with two people who have directly advised U.S. presidents. Juan Gonzalez, you're in the Obama and Biden administrations. We're really good at invading countries. We're very bad at nation building. And Carlos D. Rosillo, you're in Trump's two terms. I can guarantee you that nobody in the Trump administration likes Delcy Rodriguez.
49:49Listen to The Moment with Jorge Ramos and Paola Ramos on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Dr. Priyanka Wally. And I'm Hari Kondabolu. It's a new year. And on the podcast Health Stuff, we're resetting the way we talk about our health. Which means being honest about what we know, what we don't know, and how messy it can all be. I like to sleep in late and sleep early. Is there a chronotype for that or am I just depressed? We talk to experts who share real experiences and insight. You just really need to find where it is that you can have an impact in your own life and just start doing that.
50:25We break down the topics you want to know more about. Sleep, stress, mental health, and how the world around us affects our overall health. We talk about all the ways to keep your body and mind, inside and out, healthy. We human beings, all we want is connection. We just want to connect with each other. Health stuff is about learning, laughing, and feeling a little less alone. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
51:17genius hospital new york city uh she put in a thing and it came up with a differential diagnosis that usually and it's just fuck off you fucking lying sack of shit and it's but everyone i've been talking to this week outside of the this room of course who talks about worker replacement it's like yeah and you know of course right now it's replacing workers where well i think coders on you need to differentiate between the ai can do your job and an ai salesman can convince your boss to fire you replace you with the ai that can't do your job that's the point yeah that's exactly it it's like the say it's almost like they they actually no that's it they finally created an economy where you've cut out like efficacy or like what a thing does to just like finally we created a thing for sales people to sell to ceos no one knows what's going on with the actual product or whether it works whether it's good or bad just like the vibes baby but But then also there are bosses who could give less of a fuck about whether it works or not.
52:18They know what their headcount reduction for the year has to be. And they're just going to be like, well, hey, you know what I can do? This is a good excuse. Yeah. I can do this. You know, Microsoft, for example, aren't they rumored to be doing massive layoffs again? And they keep doing layoffs every single year. Why do they do them? Because they just fuck them off. Because they can. Well, actually, Microsoft, I think, has genuine brain madness, though. Because I talk to people that I have a ton of my. If you work for Microsoft, always reach out easy at betteroflying.com, easy at John.76 and signal.
52:47It's funny. Every time I hear from them, I never hear from anyone who's like, I fucking love this. AI is actually huge. It's always people being like, my product manager, who does not appear to do any work, has told me that AI and co-pilot must be used. And it's people, again, senior people too, being like, I don't know what the fuck is going on. Jay Parikh, who's over at Microsoft, real loser guy, went from a company called Moveworks, which was famous for buying$30 ,000 worth of Lululemon gift cards to give to people to buy their software, went to Meta, then went to Microsoft to run AI. It's just like there are these business idiots who bounce around and just go, AI, baby, we're here, it's time.
53:27And then the sales team goes out, tries to sell it. And they're like, yeah, it turns out that people want something that works, that actually does the job. And you keep saying it's digital labor, but that it don't do don't do that at all and it gets back to the point i was making it's like we're at the natural end point when you start removing the product from the sale sure uh i have a bit of lululemon trivia for you by all means the guy who founded lululemon giant piece of shit uh ayn rand worshiping libertarian edgelord yep the reason he called it lululemon he thought it'd be fun to hear japanese tourists in vancouver try and say lululemon so he picked a word with as many L's in it as possible.
54:03I fucking hate that so much. He also had a no fact checks policy for quite some time. It's like, no, we don't do plus sizes. No fact checks policy, huh? What is this, platformer, the newsletter? No, not fact checks. Not fact checks, fat checks. Oh, my bad. I'd say I really misheard that one. It's usually the other way around. I'll say something and an American, sorry, Canadian won't understand it. Would you like to go to the pawn store? no we're not talking about p-a-w-n stars i would i i'm serious if i could get chumlee from that show on this get him out of prison is he in jail he may have had a teensy bit of a problem i mean i'm i hate to say it but look at him then listen to how we talk and look yeah yeah jimmy jimmy jinkle jinkle no no no no none of that yeah it's gonna be an interesting year because Because I just think it's a reckoning of every, like the 20 years of dumbfuck decisions, the Iraq war, the DHS, and then the venture capital era.
55:09I think the venture capital era is coming to an end. I'm not saying VC will go away, but I don't think people - But Ed, A16Z just raised their biggest fund. And to get their return, they're going to make the tech industry multiples larger. The funniest thing I saw though, was someone posting about, wow, look how great Andreessen is. Look at these vintages. And they stop at 2017. It's just like, ah, yeah, look how good this is. And as we all know, time stopped. Listen, I believe in Clone Head. I think he can do anything. He sets that point, too. That's the thing. Even he can be wrong. And the whole reason that VCs like that have done well is not because of them being geniuses.
55:47It's because when the really obvious things that will obviously sell, they just go to them first. They just go. Or at a later round. Yeah, they will always know that they can get in there and that company will help. That's a big thing of theirs is that, you know, if you fuck up and you don't get in on the winner, then get in on the winner on the next round and crowd everyone out. Yeah. And the thing is, though, venture capital is running out of money. $15 billion going to Andreessen Horowitz. That's going to drain it from all the other people that need it. The other thing is, who the fuck are they going to sell these startups to, Aquaman?
56:20Like, what's going on? See, I think there's so much money to be made out there if we can unlock the silos, right? So just think about some of those fast adopted technologies in the history of the world, like the VCR, right? People love home recording. We don't have VCRs anymore because it's illegal to break DRM. So it's still legal to record shows. It's just every show that arrives in your house either arrives by streaming cable or satellite. They're all encrypted. It's against the law to break the encryption because of the DMCA. The recording is legal. The breaking the encryption to do the recording isn't.
56:50Not TiVo. Who would not, like, I think you could sell every person in America a PVR for streaming. What, just like recording? Recording the stuff you watch. Interesting. So, you know, everyone's like, oh, I hate streaming because they take away the shows I love. You should just record them. You should just record them the way you did off your television. It is legal in exactly the same way it was legal to record it off your TV. I think this company called PlayOn I worked with like 15 years ago, so it's okay. Like, I can say that does that. They seem to exist. Were they using the analog outputs?
57:23I got no idea. You're now seeing downsampling on the, there's a thing called selectable output control that we fought really hard in cable card and lost on where they downsample the analog outputs. And so the analog outputs are just garbage. So what you record off of it is like a postage stamp. And so, you know, that was like the, Elgato did this for a long time. There were a bunch of companies that had analog stuff. there's actually a name for what they wanted to do about this. They called it plugging the analog hole, which is like the people who pride themselves in their ability to communicate with the public coming up with, we will now plug everyone's analog holes was just a moment of just incredible.
58:07Yeah. And I wrote something about it that got translated into German. I learned my most useful German phrase, which is plugging the analog hole in German, which is das analogie Lochstopfen. And so now if I ever need, I can order tap water. I can ask if there are any hotel rooms and I can tell you I want to plug your analog hole in German. That's my German vocabulary. Which is a very common German conversation. Sex clubs all the time. I just think... Wo ist die uns uns? Wer ist unser KitKat? Oh my God. And I just think entering this year, I'm excited for it because I live in cash. But I will say, every day I keep seeing people increasingly more frantic about this market and about VC.
58:58And also, we can't sell any AI companies. No one's buying them. They have to do these weird deals where it's like, yeah, we're not hiring you. We're signing a license, and we're not going to pay all the people off. We're going to pay the top brass off who will then join our company. The IP, yeah, we're going to license it. we don't really care. We're just getting the talent. Yeah. It's just aqua hire. Yes. The thing is, aqua hires were traditionally, I don't know. I'm old enough to remember back in like 2013 when an aqua hire was you losing. Yeah. It was like when you sort of, I mean, there were a lot of startups that were effectively just like, um, there were a lot of VCs who said, really what I am is a head hunter.
59:38And I go out and I get a bunch of promising people, maybe people who are already working at big tech. I give them some money to build what amounts to a postgraduate project and then uh they get hired back at either their former employer or new employer and they get a hiring bonus in the form of uh their stock being bought by the company i get a finder's fee in the form of my stock being bought by the company it's just the shittiest way to run an executive recruiting but the thing is the company gets the patent but the thing is though that's not even happening anymore because there are no patents yeah no what you can't patent prompt engineering it's true like you can't patent the fuck it because that's all it is I haven't looked into it.
1:00:12So the USPTO is not issuing a ton of bullshitty AI patents. Also, they damaged deeply the USPTO with Doge. Oh, that's funny. And it's also just, I don't think you can patent. I mean, maybe you can try, but I haven't seen people patenting prompts. Well, the USPTO has historically been very bad about granting bullshitty patents. You know, we fought and killed a patent that effectively would have allowed one company to control all podcasting. So the reason this podcast is on the air is that we killed this patent. The Trump admin is now moving to make it harder to get patent reexamination. So if a bullshit patent issues, it's harder to challenge the patent.
1:00:56So I think we're gonna see a lot more garbagey patents, more patent trolling. There's a town in East Texas where they have a maid judge and all the patent cases go there to die. There's like 700 companies that are headquartered in like one dusty building. And it's just a bunch of mailboxes with brass keys. And then all the big companies that get sued by patent trolls try to sweeten the jury by putting money into public work. So Samsung built them a year-round outdoor ice skating rink in, I think it's West Texas. It's 115 degrees in the summer. And they have a year-round outdoor ice skating rink that Samsung pays for.
1:01:35This is like a capitalist libertarian paradise. This is just like, what if actually like, this is the world that the libertarians think that they could build, but you'll never beat Samsung. Yeah. Samsung will fuck you up big time. All right. I think we're going to wrap this up. It has been such a wonderful show. It's been fun. It's been really great. I've enjoyed having all of you here. Thank you, Corey, for making the trip out. Thanks, Ed. Thanks, Phil. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Matt Osowski, our incredible producer. Mr. Angueso Jr., Thank you for joining me once more. Thank you for having me.
1:02:10Mr. Philip Broughton, thank you so much. I do my thing. Thank you for bartending. And thank you for everyone who came through these doors. And thank you to the incredible listeners who've stuck with us. What an incredible show. We have done incredibly well. It's a great show. We will be back next week with Mr. Stephen Burke of Gamers Nexus. Going to have a post-CDS show with him. Sadly, not in person. It will be remote. I can speak flawlessly. Please subscribe to my newsletter. And of course, in dedication to Sean Paul Adams, we will have a link to the Pediatric Epilepsy Research Consortium. Remember that for the first time in the show notes.
1:02:47Thank you all. It's been incredible. Later. Bye-bye.
1:03:00Thank 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 matasowski.com. M-A-T-T-O-S-O-W-S-K-I dot com. You can email me at ez at betteroffline.com or visit betteroffline.com to find more podcast links and, of course, my newsletter. I also really recommend you go to chat.wheresyoured.at to visit the Discord and go to r slash betteroffline to check out our Reddit. Thank you so much for listening. Better Offline is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
1:04:05A new year doesn't ask us to become someone new. It invites us back home to ourselves. I'm Mike Della Rocha, host of Sacred Lessons, a space for men to pause, reflect, and heal. This year, we're talking honestly about mental health, relationships, and the patterns we're ready to release. If you're looking for clarity, connection, and healthier ways to show up in your life, Sacred Lessons is here for you. Listen to Sacred Lessons with Mike Della Rocha on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hola, I'm Jorge Ramos. This week on The Moment, we take a look at Venezuela's uncertain future in a conversation with two people who have directly advised U.S.
1:04:44presidents. Juan González, during the Obama and Biden administrations. We're really good at invading countries. We're very bad at nation building. And Carlos D. Arrocillo, during Trump's two terms. I can guarantee you that nobody in the Trump administration likes Delcy Rodriguez. Listen to The Moment with Jorge Ramos and Paola Ramos on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Dr. Priyanka Wally. And I'm Hari Kondabolu. It's a new year, and on the podcast Health Stuff, we're resetting the way we talk about our health. Which means being honest about what we know, what we don't know, and how messy it can all be.
1:05:17I like to sleep in late and sleep early. Is there a chronotype for that, or am I just depressed? health stuff is about learning laughing and feeling a little less alone listen on the iHeart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts hey everybody it's michelle williams host of checking in on the black effect podcast network you know we always say new year new me but real change starts on the inside it starts with giving your mind and your spirit the same attention you give your goals. And on my podcast, we talk mental health, healing, growth, and everything you need to step into your next season, whole and empowered.
1:06:00New year, real you. Listen to Checking In with Michelle Williams from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.
From the publisher
Welcome to Better Offline’s coverage of the 2026 Consumer Electronics Show - a standup radio station in the Palazzo Hotel with an attached open bar where reporters, experts and various other characters bring you the stories from the floor.
In our CES epilogue, Ed is joined by author, activist and journalist Cory Doctorow, tech bubble newsletter writer Ed Ongweso Jr. and CES bartender Phil Broughton to talk about this year’s coverage, the upcoming venture apocalypse, and what we expect from 2026.
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