CES 2026: Part Nine (Friday)

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
All zone media.

Speaker 2 (00:04):
Unstoppable, unbelievable, impeccable, unflappable, outrageous, stupendous, chosen by God and
perfected by science. I'm ed Zeitron and this is Better
Offlines coverage of the Consumer Electronics Show. That's right, we

(00:27):
are back for a final two hour stretch here in
the beautiful Palazzo Hotel in even more beautiful Las Vegas, Nevada.

Speaker 1 (00:34):
We've been here all week with.

Speaker 2 (00:35):
An open bor and tuckos for journalists to hang out
and chat shit about the world's largest technology conference. Thank
you all, Thank you all for joining me, Thank you
for being here as listeners, as guests. For everyone, this
has been the best CES yet. There's only been two,
but nevertheless, you don't know how the next one's going
to be. But in all seriousness, this has been an incredible,
incredible show. We've got four more thirty minute blocks and

(00:58):
then an epilogue tomorrow.

Speaker 1 (01:00):
Who it's been a lot.

Speaker 2 (01:01):
Our first quarter lineup is the incredible activist, journalist and
author Cory doctor Rowe hello ed, the fantastic writer of
the Tech Bubble newsletter, Edward on Graso Junior, and the
wonderful returning champion Kyle Shanad of the Las Vegas Sun
Local boy either, how you doing, Kyle?

Speaker 1 (01:18):
How's your show been pretty good?

Speaker 3 (01:20):
I started with a pre cees little conference between some
Korean companies and Nevada investors and businessmen.

Speaker 1 (01:29):
Okay, well, it.

Speaker 3 (01:31):
Was talking about how to bring their products, bring their
companies kind of to the American market, and kind of
the main point of it was, you know, CS has
been here in Las Vegas for so long at this point,
but Nevada itself, for Las Vegas itself, hasn't always seen
the fruits of that, right besides the actual of course,

(01:52):
you know, Las Vegas main market is in tourism and
bring people here, and conventions like this are a big
part of that. But actually creating a tech sector here
is a relatively newer concept, I think, probably following the
pandemic and what really to shut down the entire economy.

Speaker 2 (02:11):
That failed attempt with Old Vegas though with Tony she
and that long Yeah.

Speaker 3 (02:16):
I mean it's the recent iteration is newer, Ye'll say that.

Speaker 2 (02:21):
And also that that one was very kind of limp.
No copy on it, Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that one.

Speaker 4 (02:26):
That one whiskey bar next to the barbecue joint in
the mall made it of trail shipping containers, is pretty good.

Speaker 1 (02:32):
I didn't see that they talk about downtown.

Speaker 4 (02:35):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that was that there was there was
like one good thing that there's a good coffee shop
right there.

Speaker 2 (02:41):
You'd think, why is it that it's so hard to
attract companies. There's like no state tax is that is
like the local business taxes high?

Speaker 3 (02:47):
Like no, I mean they've they've been working on that
and kind of promoting the favorable tax regime. I think
it's probably the best way to put it for companies.
That's why a lot of people moved from California to
hear Nevada.

Speaker 1 (03:00):
Yeah, the same way that we've had that.

Speaker 3 (03:02):
I mean Nevada's legislature, there's a push for a dedicated
business court similar to what exists in Delaware, so we
can have companies incorporate here instead of there. Like we
recently had Friend of the Show and Rees and Horowitz
moved to Nevada. So there there's been a big push
there too, kind of because the pandemic so brazenly showed

(03:26):
that if there is an issue with travel, the economy
collapses here.

Speaker 4 (03:31):
Yeah, well that's got quite a race. It it feels
like the finish line is at the bottom though.

Speaker 2 (03:38):
Yeah, but wait, so this was a pre conference the
cees and what were they talks and such?

Speaker 1 (03:44):
It was actually it was kind of fun.

Speaker 3 (03:46):
It was like a shark tank style pitch session from
a bunch of these companies. There was one about incorporating
some technology into golf clubs that would analyze your swing.

Speaker 1 (03:59):
There was another. There was another on.

Speaker 3 (04:02):
Like it was a pool uh, contaminant analysis machine.

Speaker 1 (04:08):
Is this like a pee detector?

Speaker 2 (04:11):
No, because it's not that those are useless, but like
those very much exists.

Speaker 1 (04:17):
Yes, yes, So it was kind of.

Speaker 3 (04:18):
Like it's not like they were showing off like the
cutting edge of it was. It was it was people
trying to break into the American market from Asia.

Speaker 4 (04:27):
I mean, what Korea really needs to introduce to America
clearly is hidden cameras and dressing room. They are the
world leaders and incredibly vegic uses of hidden cameras.

Speaker 2 (04:38):
Yeah, Vegas needs more perverts and chicken and and also
like also like rising up in the face of fascism.

Speaker 1 (04:48):
Yeah, that was an export that we would welcome here.

Speaker 2 (04:52):
Well, just other than all that, have you walked around
CS atoll.

Speaker 1 (04:57):
A lot less actually than last year.

Speaker 3 (04:59):
I'd say I spent some more time off the showroom
before talking to people, but quite a bit. And I
mean it felt I think we talked about this last year.
I mean, this is my second sees oh and last year,
I mean you come into it and it's all this
cool stuff that you've never seen before, concentrate in on space.
And this year I remember people talking about like, this

(05:19):
feels a lot similar last year, and now that I'm
a returning guest, Yeah, I understand why that feeling existed.

Speaker 2 (05:26):
Yeah, it's this kind of echoing. It's very strange this year,
like it feels like last year, but with less stuff
like they were there at least felt like there was
some things to look at last year that we're like, oh,
that's fun.

Speaker 1 (05:38):
I do I remember them that.

Speaker 3 (05:39):
God, No, I saw a lot of smart picture frames.
That was a really big one.

Speaker 1 (05:42):
This year.

Speaker 2 (05:43):
Yeah, I saw one that was completely broken.

Speaker 1 (05:45):
It was with like eeing.

Speaker 5 (05:46):
No.

Speaker 1 (05:46):
I actually quite liked.

Speaker 2 (05:47):
The idea because I'd only seen them in pictures. And
then you see whenever they cycle kind of like a
kindle like all eating think they flash up the yeah,
and it's like just the static image I'd be okay with,
but the moment it's like be like, yeah, that's shit
off my wak.

Speaker 1 (06:03):
But I like the idea. I like the idea.

Speaker 4 (06:05):
I know what you can't see by looking at the
gadget itself is the back end. And that's the whole thing, right,
Like what is what is the experience of adding images
to it? And my wife just moved overseas. Uh, we're
living in two different continents right now. And our hustmate
gave her a smart camera for a picture frame for Christmas, right,
and we, you know, sort of together conspire to put

(06:29):
a bunch of photos in the camera's cloud accounts so
that when she set it up at home overseas that
she would get all these photos preloaded. And it sucked.
It just really sucked at importing photos. It wouldn't take
native resolution. We had to down res everything. God, it
just it's yeah, it was like, do you remember what
brand I do?

Speaker 6 (06:46):
Not?

Speaker 2 (06:47):
I got one from my parents a few years ago
and the app was like and it.

Speaker 4 (06:51):
Was all on an app, right, So like, which is
fine if you're out and about taking pictures and you
are sending the picture to the frame, But when you're
setting at the frame, de nova.

Speaker 1 (07:01):
I have ten thousand photos on my.

Speaker 4 (07:03):
Laptop and we're had to take a subset of them
and put them in the frame, and like phones are
very bad for that. Yeah, and I did this elaborate
thing where I plugged my phone in, moved seven hundred
photos from my laptop to my phone, then use the
app which only let me select one.

Speaker 1 (07:17):
Hundred photos at a time to upload the phone like
it was, and none of that is visible.

Speaker 2 (07:21):
Right.

Speaker 4 (07:21):
You can be on the trap floor and you can
be like, this is the most beautiful frame I've ever seen.
But if it's a giant pin in the ass to
get pictures into, who cares.

Speaker 3 (07:28):
I will say I was interviewing someone at their home
once and they had one in their living room and
it changed one point or it was either that or
they told me it was. I had no idea that
it was digital until you told me so. For the
people who are coming into your home who did not
see the hassle sure of getting it that works?

Speaker 1 (07:46):
Yeah, yeah, it's I don't know.

Speaker 2 (07:48):
It feels like a very easy to solve thing. Feels
like it should just be like an ftpiece of with
like a.

Speaker 4 (07:54):
As a fallback right. Yeah, here's here's a thing you
drag images into. Be easy, but it isn't welcome to
see you and have the app on my phone.

Speaker 2 (08:04):
Yeah yeah, let you find out one contrastition name and
shame boo.

Speaker 1 (08:09):
I don't know too many bring back shamed flander. No
it's not. It's not come back to me. It's Aura
A U R A or.

Speaker 2 (08:19):
I thought that was meant to be one of the
easy ones too.

Speaker 4 (08:21):
I'm sure it's very easy if you are sending off
photo to it.

Speaker 1 (08:24):
That one gets advertised on podcasts.

Speaker 4 (08:26):
Yeah, it's well, it means Casper mattresses have photo frames.

Speaker 1 (08:32):
We're anti stamps dot Com. We're inside the Aura frame.

Speaker 2 (08:35):
Don't try and sell me a fucking mattress unless you
give me one stepsot Com got a.

Speaker 1 (08:39):
Web interface yet because it was Windows only.

Speaker 2 (08:41):
I got no idea. Man, when I need stamps to
go to the post office, do.

Speaker 1 (08:44):
You know what?

Speaker 4 (08:45):
I have a private mail box where I get my
mail because I don't want to give my home address
to random right and uh, I gave them a credit
card number and they charge one hundred bucks credit at
a time. And I walk in with all my parcels
and I'm like, here's the parcels, and I wut again.

Speaker 1 (09:00):
I don't have to wait for them to weigh.

Speaker 4 (09:01):
Them, and I don't have to wait to all surprise them,
and they just I get an emailed receipt.

Speaker 1 (09:06):
It is so good Post office fucking rules. Yeah. Well
for a private mailboxes too.

Speaker 2 (09:10):
Okay, okay, well yeah, so ed have you been I've
been doing. How was your last day?

Speaker 1 (09:16):
It's good.

Speaker 7 (09:16):
I got to walk around o VCCC all the shit
gadgets with Corey and it was really interesting. I mean,
the stuff I think that interested us most was like
we talked about the devices that seem like, Okay, this
is a real thing. We want a manufacturer to integrate
it into their supply chain so they can scale it up,

(09:39):
but you can't get it. Well, you know, chargers you
talked you know, do you thought there were some chargers
that Corey pointed out that seemed nice, some cameras that
seemed nice, But otherwise there were just a bunch of
devices where it's like, I don't think i'd ever get
this hand massager.

Speaker 1 (09:54):
That was very fun.

Speaker 4 (09:55):
I think the weirdest advertising for that.

Speaker 7 (09:57):
Hand all was weird little sign that made it look
like it was going to eat your hand.

Speaker 1 (10:02):
So Massadi is your hands.

Speaker 4 (10:04):
Yeah, it was like that Benny jesserte y thing you
stick your hand. They did have a sound, so it
had a sign, right, They said like do you dare
to put your hand in it? And it had a
monster's mouth around the aperture your hand went into. And
then when you read the marketing more closely, it was
like the virtuous will feel delightful.

Speaker 1 (10:22):
Yeah, and you put your hand in.

Speaker 4 (10:24):
A sensor detected it and then it started inflating the
little Okay, I know, it feels like the first step
and like cultivating myself.

Speaker 2 (10:31):
I just want to be clear though the thing sucks,
but the virtuous will feel delightful. It is something I'm
going to be saying for the rest of my life.

Speaker 7 (10:38):
Apparently I'm not virtuous because I felt that. I was
like it kind of just feels like two things are.

Speaker 2 (10:45):
Grinding against my hand, virus.

Speaker 7 (10:48):
And it's like, hey, if I want to go. If
I want that, I'll to go to like some packed
conference or I'll come back on the first day.

Speaker 6 (10:53):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (10:54):
Like it's like if you need to give you a
hand a message, you have two of them. I guess
if you want to do both once, it might be
a chat.

Speaker 4 (11:00):
You know the amazing safety label that's the two gears
with the hand being squished. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's kind
of what I want.

Speaker 2 (11:05):
Yeah. Pleasant, you know, it's like an incredible machine situation,
but with just my hands, like a cat jumps on
the thing and it crushes it. Just a beg aanvil
would be great at the end of this week. Just
let me just fall under the end anyway, But nothing
impressive at the end of the day is same old shite.

Speaker 7 (11:22):
No, I mean, this is the thing. I mean, we
talked about this a little bit. Also, I feel like,
you know, I am of the group that is the
wrong group for it, because I come into it feeling
I think, disappointed broadly, because there's a lot that I
would like to see and I don't see it.

Speaker 2 (11:40):
Well, what would you'd like to say?

Speaker 1 (11:41):
I would I would like to see.

Speaker 7 (11:43):
I am listen if someone can make uh you know,
for example, there's a lot of pitches about AI assistance
that can be integrated into your home and make you know,
task management a bit easier, schedule management a bit easier.

Speaker 1 (11:55):
Things like this.

Speaker 7 (11:56):
You know, I would be open to something that seem
to be doing that. But a lot of the times,
you know, when we pressed them, it's more so like
what if you went on Chatchy bet yourself and chose
the third best answer for each thing and then integrated
that and organized your life around that. It's you know,
so it's just it's a lot of times I feel
like what I'm actually seeing is not even someone who

(12:18):
tried to solve a problem, but someone the I mean
they did. The problem they solved was how do I
how do I make money off of this?

Speaker 2 (12:24):
Right?

Speaker 1 (12:25):
Yeah, you know that's really what it was.

Speaker 3 (12:27):
I'm like, I'm not a tech person, I'm a a
local reporter here, but I mean, I feel like, and
this is kind of what I'm curious about, your guys
thoughts on it. How much of the things on the
showroom floor, just like repackaged CHATCHYPT models into other different package.

Speaker 4 (12:42):
Actually be easier to ask how many works?

Speaker 1 (12:44):
Yeah? Yeah, deadly.

Speaker 2 (12:45):
We need like a cat in the hat where it's
not a situation for this, I'm what's.

Speaker 1 (12:49):
Funny is generally surprised most were lost. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (12:52):
I remember being like, oh, I'm being a cynic whatever
and sleeping for hours every night, so I felt particularly spicy,
but people still came in, like journalists came in and like,
oh I saw some cool shit. Oh it made me laugh.
It was kind of weird, but you know, I enjoyed
it this year. Even the gadget reporters, even the gadget
reporters who were like, you know what, not gonna be cynical,
I'm gonna be excited to be here, we're kind of like, yeah,

(13:15):
you know, there's a lot of stuff that doesn't exist,
and then the stuff that does exist wasn't very good.
And even the companies that usually make stuff that are good,
well they didn't. And also LG was here with a robot.
And it's strange because long term listeners will know like, yeah,
I'm a cynic whatever, but I want to hear some
fun do that's some fun things, and it's like not

(13:36):
even this year like this is it feels like we're
in the depression. At CES, a lot of AI children's
toys very horrible.

Speaker 5 (13:43):
Yeah, a lot of aih evil, evil shit, Like Robert
found this one that was like an LLM horoscope Furby
creature that I want to hit with a baseball bat.

Speaker 7 (13:56):
I want to Finally enough, there's a demo for one
where you can hit it with a baseball.

Speaker 1 (14:00):
Yeah, but wasn't that the one where Robert had the
video and it's just like dancing like Michael Jackson.

Speaker 2 (14:05):
And then you just fucking hit it with sticks. I
want to put a bottle. I want to do free
boat on top of that, fuck out of it.

Speaker 4 (14:15):
There's an old American children's show called The Andy Devine Show,
and there was a character on that show called Froggy
who is like a frog, and he was a mischief
figure and he would as Andy Devine was speaking, he
would he would grunt, he would like growl out these uh,
subliminal suggestions.

Speaker 1 (14:32):
It's like, then you.

Speaker 4 (14:33):
Put the peanut butter in your hair, Yes, you do,
you do? And then Andy Devine would start putting peanut
butter in his hair. And every time I see an
LLM toy for children, I'm like, eventually, like you're gonna
leave the room and it's gonna.

Speaker 1 (14:45):
Say and then you put the knife in your parents?

Speaker 3 (14:47):
You do?

Speaker 1 (14:48):
You do?

Speaker 3 (14:48):
But that's already happening with like actual chat Have we not.

Speaker 4 (14:53):
Seen the hack horror movies that start with the doll
that says I'm chatty.

Speaker 1 (14:56):
Cathy and I want to be your friend. I'm Jeddy
Katy to kill you. The story is just going to
activate someone, you know.

Speaker 2 (15:03):
This time it's going to be like Taiwan is part
of China, like ever mentioned Winnie Pooh and Winnie that
poo in mysent to make you feel No, it's just
and it's just like it's I think what it might be,
and after thinking about this too much for too long,
it's just papering over the laziness that already existed at Yes,

(15:24):
I don't think like there's something exceptional about the activity
so much as they found it's the panacea panic. I
never know panacea. It's like a panacotta. The panakotta everyone's
using is just the Okay, we're looking for a quick
and easy thing. There was the IoT era, or there
was the metaverse, ere like a thing we could build
around that would get us funding. But this year it's

(15:45):
like we found the ultimate thing to staple ship too.
And I know it's sounded like a broken record, but
it's like, come the funk on, you haven't even got
a thinner light a laptop. There was like one new
thinner light a laptop one. It was like I think
it's maybe Chelgy, I don't funk know. Samsung wasn't even
on the floor where what what the hell? We don't
even get a weird Samsung booth with like a wall

(16:06):
of televisions. The LG transparent old was just a tiny
little one.

Speaker 1 (16:11):
I want one.

Speaker 2 (16:12):
That's large and obviously can never be purchased, she said,
like a monument. Now she just she mostly just says
it's okay, it's okay, it happens, but it's it's just
you don't need to. It's just kind of frustrating because
I'm not reflexible. I just want to see some dude,

(16:33):
ad give me a like Michael Fisher came in and
showed the clicks, the shell of the Clicks, the Android
phone that's got like it's basically like a new BlackBerry,
fucking lovely. Yeah, you have new things four hundred bucks something.

Speaker 1 (16:44):
Yeah, it's something.

Speaker 2 (16:45):
It's also you know what, it's using existing tools Android
and you can manufacture overseas.

Speaker 1 (16:50):
Wonderful.

Speaker 2 (16:51):
Cool. We built a new thingy this year. It's like
we didn't build anything.

Speaker 4 (16:55):
I think you're in the wrong part of the whole
because because when we were back in the crack Adge
its There was so much of that, but it's in
the so like the thing is that the stuff that
you use every single day, right, like your charter, Yeah,
is stuff that has an enormous bearing on your quality
of right, Like if your charger's fucked, you are fucked.

Speaker 1 (17:14):
Right. It's a low margin item and it has barely
been optimized. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (17:21):
And in this pro over Delta and around the Pacific
rim there are a lot of incredibly clever mechanical engineers
and product designers who are sort of turning their intellect
to this.

Speaker 2 (17:32):
I agree, And like ANKA for example, is a great company,
even like GPD who makes these really interesting devices for
one hundred people. It's like it'll be a PlayStation portable
sized gaming PC that costs two thousand dollars and superheats
in your hands, so it needs an external battery. Those
ones I didn't see having a prominent.

Speaker 4 (17:51):
But but you go back to the booths where that
we only do wholesale. We have a minimum ten thousand
unit order. So I was you were there earlier, but
we were off where I was talking about this thing
that I saw that was the British electrical adapter for
your charger that you carry around in your bag, and
so people who aren't familiar with it, the British Electrical
adapter that the plug is the world's ultimate cal drop.

Speaker 1 (18:15):
It's this incredibly It's.

Speaker 2 (18:16):
Just like a big spikey like gold yeah, big like chunky.

Speaker 1 (18:21):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (18:21):
And you know, I lived in London for thirteen years
and and I'm moving back there again. And like the chargers,
it's hard to carry around. It puts holes in your pockets, yeah,
snags on things of your back.

Speaker 2 (18:32):
It's a real thing and it's an actual quite easily.

Speaker 1 (18:34):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (18:35):
So these this charger was it had the three prongs
and when you fold it, they all folded down together
in unison. They were they hit some sort of mechanical linkage.
They made the most satisfying little when you snap them
down and when you snap them back up again. It
was a beautiful piece of mechanical engineering. If you owned

(18:55):
it and you lived in the UK every single day,
you would use this thing and your life would be better.

Speaker 1 (18:59):
Yeah. Right, that's that's like pure.

Speaker 4 (19:02):
We were asking on the last recording session, where were
the consumer gadgets that is a consumer gadget that would
see daily use and make a significant difference in your life.

Speaker 1 (19:11):
I agree, it's.

Speaker 2 (19:12):
Just that that is like one percent of this show. No,
I agree, yeah, And that's that's my principal thing is
not that those things aren't here. Though there are less
of them, there are remarkably less of them. Like last
year there were more of the year before that way
like there was tons of them.

Speaker 1 (19:28):
This year.

Speaker 2 (19:28):
I saw one booth and I wish I could remember
because it was just The problem is as well is
a lot of the ones I saw were just the
same old ship we've had for years. Anchor is doing
some cool stuff. Was gallium nitrite with making the plugs small?

Speaker 1 (19:39):
Oh yeah plugs.

Speaker 2 (19:40):
Yeah, they're fucking amazing. They're awesome. Didn't even see any
new interesting gang stuff. And like Anchor, I give too
much money because they always got some new, thinner, weird
one with a cable in it.

Speaker 1 (19:51):
I'm fucking do you know what.

Speaker 4 (19:53):
The downside of gan plugs is they draw so many watts.
They're such good chargers that they blow the breaker on
airplace seats on the mains on a plate. If you've
got like a hundred white wine in the Little Green
a meeting, I.

Speaker 2 (20:06):
Dropped my prime on that bitch all the time, and
it's fine. Anchor's got there.

Speaker 4 (20:10):
I've I've had I've got two different gang chargers in
my bag.

Speaker 1 (20:13):
Neither of them work.

Speaker 2 (20:14):
Reliable, explains No, I've been very lucky then, because I
is it a sixty five white though one hundred and
twenty five and fifty even you've gotten lucky that this well,
it's just also it does.

Speaker 1 (20:25):
Get very hot, right, but it is on right, and
I can chrut.

Speaker 2 (20:29):
I look like a real prick because I've just got
this thing on the side, just like sure, just balancing
barely on the side. Oh no, it's you're coming on
to talk about the local Vegas area, and like the
effect of CS even Vegas feels a little quieter, Like
we were just discussing earlier how there was like a
chunk of the plants or of Venetian and I can't

(20:50):
remember it was just closed, just like no tables. Yeah
that oh, no local residence of local resident. That fucking
terrifies me. If I ever see like an empty area
of a casino like no tables either, I'm always like,
unless there is a poka, a poka tournament or a
craps class to take tourists in and kind of con
them into believing they can beat the odds.

Speaker 1 (21:09):
Fuck yeah, yeah, they can. They can get it.

Speaker 2 (21:12):
Kind of well, I mean pastline. But it's just it
feels like everything. Maybe it's just the wide world. Yeah,
I mean, I think it's a mix of things. Las
Vegas has definitely had a decline in visitation.

Speaker 1 (21:24):
Throughout the year.

Speaker 3 (21:26):
I have I have notes next to me, please, So
through November of twenty twenty five compared to twenty twenty four,
it's a seven point four percent decline in visitation.

Speaker 1 (21:36):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (21:37):
To be fair, twenty twenty four is a record year.
Part of that is pent up interest from the pandemic
that got everyone going everywhere that was interested in travel.
But that's still a drop of two point eight million
people right going to media.

Speaker 4 (21:53):
And two point seven million other Canadian Well, I mean I.

Speaker 1 (21:57):
Got those numbers too.

Speaker 3 (21:59):
Yeah, I mean I think international travel definitely been affected.
I think it does surprise a lot of people when
they look at the numbers at Harrod International Airport that
the bigger client actually was in domestic really lights.

Speaker 2 (22:11):
Yeah, it's do you have any idea why?

Speaker 1 (22:14):
Well, I think there's a couple of things.

Speaker 3 (22:16):
One, I when you look at travel and the process
of it right the in my opinion, the most important
thing is consumer sentiment at that moment and forward, forward
looking sentiment. If you don't feel comfortable in your if
you don't feel comfortable in your position, you know, for

(22:37):
feeding your family or just paying the bills on time
you are not traveling. But at the same time, I
will say, I think this is an important note because
I think a lot of the narrative has been like
Las Vegas is dead, which it is. It really hasn't
beg No, I would I would push back on that
because when you actually look at the gaming revenue it.

Speaker 1 (22:56):
Is up this year. Is that because they're gouging more
though they.

Speaker 3 (23:01):
Well that Actually there's been some efforts to scale that
back because people were getting very angry, and there was
a large narrative online that, like the the destination marketing
organization here in Las Vegas has tried to push back against.

Speaker 1 (23:16):
But the sor I'm trying to think about those say
of phrases.

Speaker 3 (23:22):
The actual spend was higher, and I think, and I'm
not going to act like I have a definitive this
is why. But I think in all sectors you're seeing
an increasingly bifurcated economy right k shaped and what does
that mean for those of us suits that the really
rich are doing very very well and that the rest

(23:46):
of us are not.

Speaker 2 (23:48):
Of the consumption is the top death sile So that
coming at this, that is that I mean if you
look at when, if you look at other you know,
high end, I don't have the numbers.

Speaker 1 (23:58):
Those numbers right in front of me. They're doing okay.

Speaker 3 (24:02):
So I think there is like discussion of price gouging,
and I think that was a really big factor. You
mentioned Canadians I talked to at the beginning of the year.

Speaker 1 (24:11):
I went to a Winnipeg.

Speaker 3 (24:13):
Jets game here at Nice I stood outside and I
was just interviewing people who were coming in. This was
right after or right around when Trump took office, And
obviously when you're going to talk to Canadians who were
in Vegas, it's a big sampling bias.

Speaker 1 (24:29):
Of these are the people who didn't care.

Speaker 3 (24:32):
Most of them did and they said, you know, I
scheduled this month ago not coming back.

Speaker 1 (24:37):
And the November numbers those they do have a friend
of me. In November.

Speaker 3 (24:41):
Travel into Vegas from Air Canada compared to last year
fell twenty six percent.

Speaker 1 (24:46):
Jesus Christ.

Speaker 4 (24:47):
And the discount carriers are worse, right, Yeah, ultra low cost.

Speaker 3 (24:51):
Carriers are having a hard time. Spirits kind of its own.

Speaker 4 (24:54):
Thing, starving the Canadian discount, the Western Charter flights, West Chat,
and there's another one, I forget what they're called.

Speaker 2 (25:00):
Canadian Okay, west Jet was thirty three point two.

Speaker 1 (25:02):
Percent decline Jesus Christ.

Speaker 3 (25:05):
And that's just for Canes. There's actually have been uh
that's been made up in some other countries coming to
United States. But there's also all these policies coming down
the pipeline where I believe it was Customs and Border
Protection had a proposal of people coming into the country,
many of the folks who be coming into the country
having to share five years of social media activity. Yeah,

(25:26):
which I reached out to the Nevada Resort Association and
they're like, we are monitoring this because it's I mean,
I'm not going to speak for the country at all,
but I think when you look at all this intertality,
the United States is not being super welcoming to people

(25:47):
coming here. I mean, you know, mentioning the Korea event earlier,
I talked to one of the organizers and he was
talking to me about how after there was that ice
raid in.

Speaker 1 (26:00):
Was Georgia specifically against South South are.

Speaker 3 (26:04):
There are South Koreans, many of them were not all
that he had to be convincing people that it was
okay to come to the United States, that they should,
that they can still come to see.

Speaker 4 (26:14):
Sir to America. There is a class of migrant They're welcoming.
If you are the former dictator of Honduras who's been
convicted of multiple narco trafficking charges, white South Africans, you
will be Yeah.

Speaker 2 (26:29):
It's and I mean this is specifically a place that
attracts you based on being free and easy and quick
and simple. And it's all of these little roadblocks, these
little additions that you just make it like. You can't
treat this like adult Disneyland.

Speaker 4 (26:43):
What happens in Vegas gets imprisoned, definitely in Vegas.

Speaker 2 (26:46):
What happens in Vegas requires a long form Now it's
just like I don't know. And also the hotels are
not as cheap as they used to be. It used
to be you could you could roll your ass into
Ballys for forty five bucks a night if you felt.

Speaker 3 (26:59):
Like well, there's also a resort fees that people are.

Speaker 4 (27:01):
Very those are bug fee by the way, I was wondering,
I paid the extra bud okay, Uh, that's that you
get that one special.

Speaker 2 (27:09):
That's the Canadian special they call it. It's just frustrating
as well because this place. I love Vegas. I love
being here. It's a vending machine city. Uh. My addiction
is not coke. So that's been great for the Cocla corporation,
but it's like adding these roapebooks fucks up a place
like this so much, which is based on convenience.

Speaker 3 (27:26):
Yeah, I mean, I think when you look at the
different narratives people are putting out about Las Vegas. I
know local Democrats have labeled this the Trump slump that's there.
That's their big thing going into We have a governor's
race this year, and that is a big part is
tying the current governor, Joe Lombardo, to the policies of
the Trump administration. I'm skeptical about how well that's gonna

(27:49):
work because I think it's a lot more complicated than
just Trump. It's a larger administration thing. It's also this
idea that Las Vegas is price gouging people, regardless of
how true that is for a specific location. I mean,
there's like the infamous twenty six dollars water bottle that's
like I think was coming up from like a mini
barn someone's room that like Fox News is reporting on.

Speaker 2 (28:12):
But the thing is, we're in the plot someone I
like staying here. It's the fucking case here the resort
fee every night, and it's like these resort fees kill people.
Not literally, well the rest of Vegas does that maybe,
but not really. It's like the little needling things that
Vegas did. And it's not just post twenty twenty one,
but it's like, if you're gonna do this to a

(28:33):
place where it's about just kind of like frictionless entertainment.

Speaker 4 (28:37):
And they've waved through so many mergers too. Yeah, the
casinos aren't really competing anymore.

Speaker 3 (28:42):
Well, there's that, and also that some of them aren't
they don't own the property the property itself in some cases.

Speaker 2 (28:48):
But even downtown Vegas is more expensive now. Like I
am't being to Fremont Street much before Lost Year and
I went it's more expensive in some cases than the strip,
and it fucking sucks. I'm sorry. It's like genuinely like
it's a loud, hostile place that when you go it's
just like punishing and it's like, Oh, used to go
there because it was cheap. Now it's expensive and loud

(29:09):
and bad. If I wanted that, I got to fucking Charlotte.

Speaker 1 (29:11):
Yeah, what's happening in Reno?

Speaker 2 (29:13):
Is it just as bad as Phil was mentioning the
other day that Reno is actually trying to like not
reject the casinos but grow outside of them, which I
don't think.

Speaker 1 (29:21):
I think it's a state that's a statewide Is that sleep?

Speaker 2 (29:23):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (29:23):
I would say it's like pretty statewide.

Speaker 1 (29:27):
No, like housing and jobs.

Speaker 2 (29:29):
Oh wow, I hate that.

Speaker 1 (29:31):
That's crazy.

Speaker 2 (29:32):
I know what kind of a town runs on that.
When we have our big, beautiful casinos and our loud
slot machines, slot machines.

Speaker 1 (29:39):
They're so loud. We've got the Buffalo slot machines.

Speaker 4 (29:41):
You've got the Bullet Farm, You've got the water Castle,
the Gonsto Lives, You've got we have to discuss on stars.

Speaker 2 (29:49):
We have the most lifeless NFL team in the most
lifeless NFL stadium I have always made.

Speaker 3 (29:53):
Actually, I was at an event recently and Mark Davis
sat next down next to me, and I got I.

Speaker 2 (29:57):
Was, man, if he ever sat down next to me,
I've got some fuck questions, mate. I'm not gonna what
the fucking offensive line. They're all gonna play out a position?
Why do you think Pete Carroll's son do?

Speaker 3 (30:05):
Sorry, but it's crazy because, I mean, it's so emblematic
of the industry that you can have a successful in
air quotes NFL franchise without winning.

Speaker 2 (30:17):
I mean, I mean even then, I don't even think
they're that successful. We're going to transition to the next part.
The next ad is for the Las Vegas Raiders. We
won three fucking times despite Pete Carroll Gino Smith. I
guess that's what happens when you don't have an offensive
line playing in position. This next ad is for the
Las Vegas Raiders. Any other is an error, and we're

(30:49):
back for the second quarter. We're back with, of course,
Carl Shnard of the Las Vegas Son Hello, mister Edwin
and Graso of the Take Bubble newsletter. Hello, Hello, activist
journalist and author Cory DOCTORA well, Hello. I was on
the radio earlier and they were like, I was like
Cory Doctor's book and they're like, you can say it
in shitification. Yeah, they allow you to your book has

(31:11):
allowed people to say on the radio. Now, oh no,
they just allowed me to. What do you say then?

Speaker 4 (31:16):
So it depends and Madrigal's show on MPR in San Francisco.
It's the largest MPR station in the country. Right after
Brandon car Chair, the FCC announced that he was going
to pull three years of their underwriting. Uh, and their
general counsel had said, you cannot even allude to the

(31:37):
title of the book. And through the entire segment we
called it the book whose title we cannot say?

Speaker 1 (31:43):
And when I did on the media, which is.

Speaker 4 (31:45):
Nationally syndicated, they called it in poopification?

Speaker 1 (31:48):
Was that with with a Brook? With Brook?

Speaker 4 (31:51):
Yeah, she's terrific, Gladstone fucking rocks. She is a national treasure.

Speaker 1 (31:56):
Uh. And yeah.

Speaker 4 (31:58):
Various other affiliates and radio stations have have dealt with
it in different ways. You know, the Daily Show their cable.
So they were like, it's fine, but anytime I'm on broadcast,
we can't do it.

Speaker 1 (32:12):
And weirdly, I was just on.

Speaker 4 (32:16):
Show in Toronto and they decided not to let me
say the title of the book, and so I was like,
it's in somethingification and the something is a word for
poop that rhymes with snit.

Speaker 1 (32:27):
Nice. That's the word they use, snit. I used it.
I was like, I mean.

Speaker 4 (32:32):
It's great, it's general counsel is having a Yeah, it
is always funny.

Speaker 2 (32:37):
Like when I went on on the media, I did
like half an hour of just like I managed it.
Because actually to Brooke Gladstone, older woman and genuinely, if
you can't explain something to her, she's very smart, but
like she's a regular person, older woman. So if you
if you can explain it to her, you can explain
to anyone. But if you can't, you can't explain. Normalis
won't understand you. I got so many emails, lovely emails,

(32:59):
good might pay us door my od wh who was listening?
It was great as well, but I heard so many
people just being like, wow, you sounded so nice. You
didn't say shit or fuck. I'm like, I can actually
have a conversation with someone without swearing.

Speaker 1 (33:12):
You know, you just don't need to take a nap afterwards.

Speaker 2 (33:15):
But sure, yeah, yeah, I have to enter like my
mind palace, like the stone will of the Buddha to
like just three hours point Gianggong in the back you
know I.

Speaker 1 (33:26):
Feel about Samone done.

Speaker 2 (33:29):
Just no I can I'm calm, I'm normal. Yeah, it's
I want Vegas to come roaring back. But I think
there is a degree of the post twenty twenty one
greed that came in. I think that everyone jacked stuff up.
I think so. I don't know how is Summolin being
received by tourism. Is it being a good tourism destination.
It's it's like twenty five minutes away from everything which

(33:50):
is in Vegas.

Speaker 1 (33:51):
Far Yeah, I mean, I would say.

Speaker 3 (33:54):
In my own experience, I don't even really see Summerlin
as it a specifically very tourist.

Speaker 1 (34:00):
Does it not try and appeal? What is it?

Speaker 2 (34:02):
It's like it's sitting twenty five minutes away, which anywhere
else would be like, oh you get that twenty five
minutes a way in Vgas You're like no, you You're
just like, oh, I'll come visit you in New York City.

Speaker 1 (34:11):
I guess.

Speaker 4 (34:12):
I mean, if they let you fire an automatic weapon,
maybe you'll go that far.

Speaker 2 (34:15):
But you can do ten minutes off the strip. There's
like full different places Wazooka. Then it's okay, there's a
place fifteen minutes you can blow up a car for
two grand here, Okay, Vegas rocks. It's an idea.

Speaker 3 (34:26):
It's a very wealthy area, and they got some really
nice shopping.

Speaker 2 (34:30):
I think the trip a baseball team as well. Yes, Aviators, No,
it's fucking great.

Speaker 1 (34:36):
As a person who doesn't like sports, I like that
Avia is brilliant.

Speaker 3 (34:39):
It is I would say, at least in my experience,
a place that's like more designed for locals, I would
say probably more affluent.

Speaker 2 (34:46):
Yes, yes, it's a master playing community.

Speaker 3 (34:49):
Yeah, which I've got a couple of times I had
to go to an event at the Aviators Stadium.

Speaker 1 (34:55):
It's really nice.

Speaker 3 (34:56):
I just never really saw it as I was tifically
like serving the tour risk.

Speaker 1 (35:00):
True.

Speaker 3 (35:00):
It's kind of interesting with that is that the locals
casinos actually had a really good year. What would be
what you mean, like Green Well all the Stations casinos.

Speaker 2 (35:10):
Yeah, yeahah, but also Green Valley as well. Is they
doing all right?

Speaker 1 (35:13):
I believe? So that's one pretty close to me.

Speaker 2 (35:16):
Yeah, I know, I like all the local casinos that
just like, yeah, stations overall had a very good year.
It's good is because there's the asmr of just the
slot machines they're always like somewhere between completely empty or
just a few people, but they somehow still make money.

Speaker 1 (35:29):
I love them, are the best.

Speaker 3 (35:30):
It's I also didn't realize before moving here that like
all of the movie theaters that.

Speaker 1 (35:34):
You would go to or in casinos.

Speaker 2 (35:36):
Yeah, there's one in the Orleans, and took my parents
there when they were in town. And there's just these
horrifying giant like chucky cheese looking animals, like a giant
statue to.

Speaker 1 (35:45):
Them when you well, that's my jam.

Speaker 2 (35:47):
I fucking love it. No, my parents thought it was one.

Speaker 1 (35:50):
I'm not committed robot sexual Sadly.

Speaker 2 (35:52):
They're not robots. They're just giant statues of rats.

Speaker 3 (35:57):
No, it's so strange key tournament there.

Speaker 1 (36:00):
I did not see that the right, I swear.

Speaker 2 (36:02):
Maybe I just like hallucinate it just these just like, oh, yeah,
my mum gave me pot or something.

Speaker 1 (36:08):
I don't know.

Speaker 4 (36:09):
But and that cab on the way down, Ed and
I were talking about ed ed On Gueslo and I
were talking about my new favorite podcast, which is No Gods,
No Mayors, which is a podcast about the oaths that
are mayors, And on that I learned that Las Vegas
UH is not a city. Yeah, the city of Las
Vegas is a suburb.

Speaker 2 (36:26):
On the other side, when you hear about the mayor
of Las Vegas, this is an unincorporated area, right, we.

Speaker 3 (36:31):
Have Paradise and then yeah, the when I first moved here,
I was like being explained all the different government structures,
like a lot of things in southern Nevada run through
Clark County.

Speaker 1 (36:44):
Uh huh, just because it's.

Speaker 3 (36:46):
Encompasses the tire or not entire but most of the
population that lives around this area. But Las Vegas itself
is not the Strip. And then you have North Las
Vegas and Henderson.

Speaker 4 (36:58):
It's but the part of Las Vegas you see as
a visitor to Las Vegas is an unincorporated county land
right largely.

Speaker 2 (37:05):
Yeah, so I also just want to be clear, it
wasn't rats. It was giant, kind of stoned looking crocodiles.
Like they're just like they all look like animated. What
is the point like these things look like, Yeah, they
look like they are just I don't want to know.

Speaker 4 (37:27):
They're very they're very uh splash mountain looking, yes, like
a little alligator minstrel city.

Speaker 2 (37:34):
Oh god, I wonder if they have their own shredder.
You know, what do you mean, like a shredded like
the yeah, yeah, like.

Speaker 7 (37:40):
Instead of you know, teenage Benja alligators and they've got
to like who's yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (37:47):
It's the people that collect unemployment taxes. Like they're just
constantly at war with them.

Speaker 7 (37:52):
It's like a dude who's just hanging in the sewer.

Speaker 2 (37:54):
One thing else say is like, I know this sounds strange,
but Vegas doesn't also seem that welcoming to see. Yes,
Like it's it's weird. They you'd think that they cater
to it more like when Raiders games are going on,
there's a shit on a pop up events with this,
it's like the only specific drinking specials or anything like
that are just Lenovo has brought a restaurant, right.

Speaker 3 (38:14):
I mean, it's it's pretty crazy to see though, as
you know, I come to the strip probably a lot
less than people would think. Yeah, but I mean cees
maybe not getting drink deals, but it is everywhere on
the strip.

Speaker 2 (38:29):
It is, but it's events where people have bought them.
It's not like they are. Vegas usually like opens their
arms to people in like a just a kind of
a can I have your money please?

Speaker 1 (38:39):
Thing?

Speaker 2 (38:39):
And I don't know whether it's just c Yes doesn't
treat them with respect or something.

Speaker 7 (38:43):
It's just something they haven't forgiven them from disaggregating from AVN.
I think, yeah, that's.

Speaker 2 (38:49):
The thing they should never have done. It's because of
fucking purity.

Speaker 7 (38:55):
I mean, yeah, you know that, I understand, but I
understand intellectually like they should.

Speaker 2 (38:59):
Have them in the same conference hall.

Speaker 3 (39:01):
Yes, actually yeah, it's now at Virgin Hotels, which I
kind of very funny.

Speaker 4 (39:06):
So the other event I come to in Vegas most
years is Defcon and talk about an event that Vegas does.

Speaker 1 (39:11):
Not roll out the red car.

Speaker 4 (39:12):
Yeah, we just keep getting turfed out of hotels and
conference centers.

Speaker 2 (39:15):
So yeah, it's just it's weird. There's this combatative relationship
with it as well as like, Okay, you'll hear you're
gonna spend a lot of money, but weirdly we don't
love It's I I feel like both sides need to
come together and do something. But I guess Vegas is
a city of honest cons and ces isn't. Ha No,
I mean like that's kind of what I love it here.

(39:36):
It's like everyone's weird, so no one's weird. And also
we're like very human labor focused.

Speaker 1 (39:41):
I mean there's that.

Speaker 3 (39:42):
I mean, I think, like we talked about last year,
there's a huge union culture and union participation here in Nevada.
That for a I think a state that has a
Republican governor and it was the first time in twenty
something years voted for Trump, very you didn't have it
that there is a big focus on the people who

(40:04):
make up the city, which I really have appreciated learning
about that and that kind of the culture around work.
I mean, just like there is a in my opinion,
like I don't know, growing up in New York, maybe
I people would look down on some like service jobs.
I don't think that's as much of a thing, at
least in my experience talking to people.

Speaker 2 (40:26):
I'm splitting time between both, I would say New York
has got a hell of a lot better at that,
like most people will talk to And also if you
have a disrespect for service people, chop your hands off
for thirty seven to a review a piece of shit.
But I like, yeah, this city is very pro labor,
and I guess the current state of the tech industry isn't.

Speaker 1 (40:42):
Yeah, well I was gonna yeah, I was gonna.

Speaker 2 (40:46):
Conference where it's like, what if we didn't have people?

Speaker 1 (40:49):
There is like a.

Speaker 3 (40:51):
This like overarching theme of feels almost like anti human. Yeah,
like we are trying to and I mean like tech innovation.
Forever I've been like, how do we minimize the labor
cost of whatever? But it feels like we're taking it
to such a degree.

Speaker 2 (41:07):
And everyone's so excited.

Speaker 1 (41:08):
Everyone's like, oh, I can't wait.

Speaker 3 (41:11):
I mean, yeah, there's people who are like excited to
see people lose their child.

Speaker 2 (41:15):
And the thing is as well, like Vegas, one of
the best things here is go and fucking talk to
the people working at the restaurants, at the door and
your cab. There's so many everyone in. No one comes
here by accident. Everyone like ends up here because they
had a few choices they needed to make.

Speaker 1 (41:28):
And it's like, I'm here.

Speaker 2 (41:29):
You talked to like one of my good mates, I know,
Arenstein used to work at Custiply Abs now in S
and P in New York, one of my dearest friends.
And it's because just Vegas, people fucking will talk to you.
And there's never a case I've never talked to anyone here.
And it just happened in New York, where there was
like the look up and down?

Speaker 1 (41:47):
Who were you? What do you do?

Speaker 2 (41:48):
No? One everyone started whatre you Like, Yeah, don't know,
there's a genuine every man culture here, And I don't
know if.

Speaker 1 (41:56):
This is the case.

Speaker 2 (41:56):
It probably isn't at a large scale, but yeah, I
can imagine if you're well here, there is a certain
degree of fuck off, Oh you want to replace me
and everyone I know and everything I do.

Speaker 1 (42:06):
Yeah. I'm not sure how.

Speaker 3 (42:09):
Ingrained or like supremely aware people are of that sentiment
with history for like people who are just like going
about their day.

Speaker 1 (42:17):
But I think, like.

Speaker 3 (42:20):
It's always funny to see how the ads change in
Vegas based on what conferences in town.

Speaker 1 (42:24):
Yeah, I think.

Speaker 3 (42:26):
I mean I've certainly picked up on when there's like
a tech show, like some of them are like the.

Speaker 1 (42:32):
Human need not apply.

Speaker 4 (42:34):
I mean not literally that, but no, it's yeah, I mean.

Speaker 3 (42:39):
There are literal I don't know if they ran them here,
But there's that one I saw in the Bay.

Speaker 1 (42:44):
I don't think I saw that one.

Speaker 4 (42:45):
And they did that specifically to drama about right, because
that if people are running around saying this AI company
is so good at what it does, that it's going
to replace humans that investors are like.

Speaker 2 (42:57):
Oh, that's the advertising campaign of llm's in general.

Speaker 3 (43:01):
Well, say, like the fear you're putting people into is
making them take your products seriously?

Speaker 1 (43:07):
Yeah, market even though work.

Speaker 3 (43:09):
I mean it's just another chat SHE'DBT rapper.

Speaker 2 (43:12):
Yeah exactly, it's just And I had this conversation with
the radio earlier about like, oh, the MGM's chat boys
replaced in concierge. Just no, it isn't. They just wanted
to lay some people off. Like also, I feel like
concierge culture he was kind of dead because I don't
interact with it enough. No, but it's like it used,
like ten to fifteen years ago you would talk to
the concierge and they'd be able to get you into
a show or a restaurant. Now there's so many people,

(43:34):
it's just like, can you get me a reservation?

Speaker 1 (43:36):
Just use open table mate.

Speaker 3 (43:38):
There was, Yeah, there was this story I did a
while back about this website called Restaurant Trader.

Speaker 8 (43:45):
Oh yeah, that was and one of the little nuggets
of information that I got out of it that I
wanted to make it into a bigger thing, but I
just wasn't able to was that there were concierge folks
who were getting reservations sound like through their job to
then put on restaurant trader that people would pay that

(44:07):
on the side, dhaustedly, Oh wow, where like I think
there was an option on the website where you could
like pretty much request to work with a concierge.

Speaker 3 (44:19):
Well, so, yeah, it's that that's a little anecdoti And
when trader like is like banned in multiple New York
restaurants New York City. Sorry, it was the New York
Assembly that passed a law. Fuck, yeah, that was I
think there was a there was a similar effort here
in Nevada. That's why I was writing about it.

Speaker 2 (44:40):
I genuinely think it should be an actual crime to
resell a poison.

Speaker 4 (44:44):
The most disgusting version of this was there was a
bro who was paying people to call the I r
S when the lines opened at eight in the morning
and sit in the hold queue and then sell their
positions in the I r S hold queue to people
who wanted to figure out how what's going on with her?

Speaker 2 (45:01):
That should be adjailable offense.

Speaker 4 (45:04):
Well, he was eventually shut down, but I don't think
he was ever put in jail much as he absolutely
holding your holding a place in line fans, that's right.

Speaker 1 (45:11):
He should be put in the books. They put Captain
Captain Jack her massage one. No, I'm talking about that.

Speaker 2 (45:17):
Anyone watched torch Wood torch Wood when they put Captain
Jack in the concrete box, Well go and watch that.

Speaker 1 (45:23):
Look, Yeah, that's where that guy should go.

Speaker 4 (45:26):
It's Can I tell you my best Vegas?

Speaker 1 (45:29):
Please please please? Story.

Speaker 4 (45:30):
So my sister in law's good friends started a guide
to places to romantic hotels called the Mister and Missus
Smith Guides.

Speaker 2 (45:39):
What was the romantic hotel in this case?

Speaker 4 (45:41):
So the we were asked to come and review a hotel,
and the way that it works is they ring up
ahead and they said, we're the mister Smith company. We're
thinking about putting you in the guide. We're going to
send some anonymous reviewers. What we would like is a
voucher for the manager to present at checkout that says
these people should be camped, but they will book the
reservation as per normal. The staff won't know until you
check out. So we stayed in the high roller suite

(46:03):
at the MGM Nice. So it was an eighteen hundred
dollars a night, fourteen hundred square foot two story suite
with a butler, and it was the first time we
ever interacted with a concierge.

Speaker 1 (46:13):
It was very good. This was in two thousand and five.

Speaker 4 (46:16):
It was the weekend we got engaged, so we came
here about engaging and we stayed in the hotel. I
was I was teaching in la and my wife would
come over and was working for BBC America, and it
was it was so great and like the concierge culture,
and they had lots of perks. The best thing they
had was they came in they gave us a menu
of newspapers and we were like, how do you get

(46:38):
these newspapers? Because it was the Singapore Straits Times and
mine Las Vegas Sun, the Las Vegas Sun as well,
but no international papers. And they would print it on
eleven but they had a facsimile newspaper service. They printed
on eleven by seventeen inch hot heavy stock and bind
it in silk ribbon and they would and so we

(46:59):
ordered like eleven newspapers and we would come out in
the morning and the butler would have laid them out
in a fan on the on the coffee table from
all over the world. That morning's paper, that's beautiful, International
Hair Tribune whatever on creamy eleven seventeen with a with
a like a sort of pinkish silver silk ribbon in

(47:21):
the corner.

Speaker 2 (47:22):
Was that additional cost?

Speaker 1 (47:23):
No, it was all bundled him with.

Speaker 2 (47:25):
I mean, was amazing the margins there when you're getting someone,
Oh yeah, of course twenty five ten grand at night. Yeah,
And that's the thing, Like Vegas is a service culture place.
Like shit, we're going to spego tonightbout Garcia. I've a
GM there, fantastic place. Look over the Blogio Fountain, I
mean formerly Bazomie. I don't I have my thoughts on that,
but like there are so many great restaurants here with

(47:47):
like lovely service. The Grecure Loto is brilliant, and even
like Main Street Station's fucking great too, Like they let's.

Speaker 1 (47:53):
Get a pretty good Pristami sandwich at New York, New York.

Speaker 3 (47:56):
There's a great margarita deal at the station's casinos.

Speaker 2 (47:59):
But the Street Station as a microbrewery, doesn't it.

Speaker 1 (48:02):
I'm just saying no.

Speaker 2 (48:03):
But that's the thing, Like you can go, you can
have a laugh, or if you want to do the
fancy stuff, you can go at any number of places.
I mean, like the whole thing about this city is
it's relatively accessible, affordable, and if you want to spend
some money, well you can spend some money and like
have a luxury experience and it's not as expensive as
doing it in the other cities. And I just it's weird,
how I will just fucking say this. I don't think

(48:24):
people who come to ces are grateful enough for how
accessible the city is, in part because CS fucks it up.

Speaker 3 (48:31):
Yeah, it's pretty difficult to get into that building like
the Center.

Speaker 2 (48:35):
I mean, you can go to the Renaissance Hotel and
then they ubers will be like, I'm being told to
go somewhere else and you're like, mate, I don't know
where to go because CEA doesn't know how to wipe
their asshole. At this point, how many CS has be
done with uber around fucking anyway, I'm.

Speaker 1 (48:50):
A big fan of the monorail for dirt.

Speaker 4 (48:54):
Monorail. Is there a chance the track could bend?

Speaker 2 (48:57):
I mean hopefully not, consider I don't on a diet
outside Harris, but it's like I will say also that
Harris was cheaper this year, even on like an expensive night.
It was three hundred bucks night, which doesn't sound cheap,
but it is for cees and which makes me wonder
if CES attendance was down.

Speaker 1 (49:15):
I so I'm mad at Caesar's harra for kicking deaf
Con out. I wouldn't stay there again.

Speaker 2 (49:19):
And that's the thing, Vegas. I'm not going to be romanding,
but it used to be. But it feels like that's
a that's a dollar to be made to work with
the people at deaf Cone and be like, Okay, we
have security concerns. What are some things that right deaf
Con could do to make you comfortable?

Speaker 1 (49:36):
And then we could make you comfortable too.

Speaker 4 (49:38):
The last also, the last time I stayed at Harrah's,
they gave me a room that not only didn't have
a desk, it didn't have a closet.

Speaker 1 (49:44):
Oh.

Speaker 4 (49:45):
I was like, where do I hang up my stuff?
And they're like, if you want a room with a closet,
that's an extra charge. Jesus Christ, what year was that?

Speaker 1 (49:51):
That was two years ago at deaf Con.

Speaker 2 (49:52):
That's supremely fucked.

Speaker 3 (49:54):
It was.

Speaker 4 (49:56):
Years ago, deaf three years ago deaf Con in Releiss.

Speaker 3 (49:59):
You what you're just saying, thought i'd pull this up.
The average daily room rate on the strip. This is,
you know, year to date comparing November twenty twenty five
to twenty twenty four, on the strip's actually falling four
point seven percent and downtown six point Interesting.

Speaker 2 (50:15):
Yeah, I just everything's out of sorts.

Speaker 4 (50:19):
This is but that's the room that's the rack rate,
and they're piling it up with junk fees. So the
rack rate is not the price, right, the one you
have to add in the junk fees together.

Speaker 1 (50:28):
I believe that's inclusive. Is that inclusive? I believe?

Speaker 3 (50:30):
I mean that's the average, that's the room rate itself. Okay,
you know that's a one to one comparison last year.

Speaker 1 (50:36):
I'm not positive, but yeah.

Speaker 2 (50:38):
I just feel like there is an ocean of opportunity
here for the CEA if they could do one thing
right and just like Gary Sparrow come on the show,
CTA CTA, CTA, is that CTA c ATA. I don't
know who fucking runs this shit. They centainly don't want
to talk to me, but it's like, so I have.

Speaker 4 (50:54):
To say, I've known Gary Shapiro for twenty years. I've
never had a bad interaction with him. I don't know
all the dealings of the CTA, yeah, but I've never
had a I get the impression that he is someone
who is in charge of an industry association with several large,
important members that like to throw their weight around, and
he is the peacemaker and coalition binder of this, this big,

(51:17):
desparate organization. I'm not going to like defend CA and
its members, but you know, I do think that Gary
Shapiro is holding together a very fractious group.

Speaker 2 (51:28):
Well, I've been saying CEA incorrectly for days, so I
apologize that. Also, Ben is not your son.

Speaker 4 (51:34):
I think they were. I think they were the CA. Okay,
his name to CTA because electronics sounds a little outmoded.

Speaker 2 (51:40):
I just feel like the CTA, now I'm saying it correctly,
could work directly with Vegas and do way more. There's
just it feels like they could streamline this whole thing
and they get a little bit better because it's been
here long enough that it's it's still too chaotic.

Speaker 3 (51:54):
Yeah, I'm not sure about the exact relationship they have,
but they do have a pretty close working relationship, especially
when it comes down to like construction and renovations within
the convention center.

Speaker 2 (52:05):
How about getting people to and from the convention I
think it.

Speaker 3 (52:08):
I mean there was there's another reporter, Alan Stell, who
had a uh.

Speaker 1 (52:13):
I'm just gonna call it a tweet. I don't care.

Speaker 3 (52:16):
That was about like the difficulty of biking to the
convention center.

Speaker 1 (52:20):
It's really really hard.

Speaker 2 (52:21):
I'm so sorry, you're a psychopath if you buy that
convention stead.

Speaker 4 (52:25):
You know, I was thinking about e bikes when we
were stuck in traffic today and thinking this would be fastest.

Speaker 2 (52:30):
I mean, biking throughout Vegas is quite hard.

Speaker 4 (52:33):
Yeah, I would never is that because bikes aren't allowed
on the.

Speaker 3 (52:37):
I mean there's no infrastructure. I mean there is instructure,
but there's not a lot of infrastructure for bikes.

Speaker 4 (52:42):
I mean, the way it was today, you would have
been moving five times faster than on the road.

Speaker 2 (52:46):
But it's like we've had this convention hip for a
while and it's still insanely difficult to get around. And
it's not And they will probably say, well, you know,
it's a big conventions.

Speaker 1 (52:58):
A lot of people.

Speaker 2 (52:59):
I can go around. I went to dinner Drew in
the f one. It was not that different.

Speaker 4 (53:04):
What if they had helicopters that came in and skyjacked
any car that moved into the junction when I didn't
have time to completely and block the grid. Yeah, just
just like take those cars and then dry and and
then like take them out to the Grand Canyon. Just
leave them at the bottom of the Grand or.

Speaker 1 (53:23):
A big arm that just took them.

Speaker 3 (53:25):
There was a there was a little viral clip of
the new Zooks.

Speaker 1 (53:31):
One get stuck like it was.

Speaker 3 (53:33):
It didn't get stuck, it moved eventually, but it was
like in the That's.

Speaker 1 (53:37):
Not your company.

Speaker 3 (53:40):
But they were just like in the middle of a
turn in a giant like strip intersection for like a
good little bit of time, and everyone around like what
are they doing?

Speaker 2 (53:48):
Like cab drivers are just saying the most ugly shit
of old time.

Speaker 3 (53:52):
Well, I just can't imagine being like the visitor and
freaking out transparent boxes.

Speaker 2 (53:59):
Everyone's is that you like the Homo sampsum thing where
he gets stuck and has to be craned out. Right,
I mean, this is a town bereft of shame, but
even that, that's a new kind of shame we invented
here in Las Vegas.

Speaker 1 (54:11):
It's your adults.

Speaker 4 (54:12):
I've fallen in love with weimos as an Angelino because
you can make a left turn into their path and
they'll just defer to you and they won't even hank
although yeah, and I'm just like, fuck you, right the
right roads for people, not robots, last yourself.

Speaker 1 (54:24):
It's my ship, my street.

Speaker 2 (54:25):
That last time, last time, I was in Santisco and
I took away Moo, I got out of it, watched
as a Waymo in front of it got stuck at
the inter I watched it gets stuck at the intersection.
Then another Weymo gets stuck behind it, and I checked
back half an hour it was still fucking sick, just
like beautiful, just like stare at like by the w
hotel and just staring out into nothing this as people

(54:45):
are like, yeah, this thing isn't fucking hearing you.

Speaker 1 (54:48):
It can only see.

Speaker 3 (54:50):
Was it ser Fantisco where a bunch of people just
kept calling weymos to one spot until it just.

Speaker 2 (54:54):
Can no sorry, yes, that was actually yeah yeah, and
people putting like traffic cones on top lender. I think
it was really funny when that was happening and people
were like, you can't deface way Moe.

Speaker 1 (55:05):
It's like, this is domestic terrorist.

Speaker 2 (55:09):
Do people fucking say that, okay damage? It is illegal
to smash up a car, so I will accept that
property damage is.

Speaker 1 (55:17):
A legal is it though?

Speaker 9 (55:18):
Yeah?

Speaker 7 (55:19):
Yeah, I don't know lost the cops or maybe I
don't think they'd have the answer.

Speaker 2 (55:25):
Yeah, cops are like, wow, obviously correct in forty percent
of cases Google forty cops. Yeah, I can see what
comes up, right, the truth, the truth about this specific situation. Yeah,
it's it's unfortunate. I feel like that everything feels out
of sync here. I feel like the CTA could work

(55:46):
with Vegas and make this a little bit easier. I
also think the CTA needs to fucking kick companies out
from renting restaurants in the Venetian. I think it's fucking stupid.
I don't think we should lose an entire restaurant because
Lenovo needs to do the slop hour where they're like,
we had it in LLLM to your fucking laptop, you
disgusting pig, you nasty pick. Yeah they did that. They

(56:07):
didn't call you a nasty pig though. If they did that,
I'd be fine if they were like, you nasty hogs
do you like your slop, you pigs, I'd be like fine.

Speaker 4 (56:14):
Is so what I want is for Lenovo to distribute
badge flair that's a little adhesive backed pointer, red pointer
nub oh yeah yeah, I think pad and that, Like
everyone can can go to the Lenova party and then
have the red Lenova pointer on their badge.

Speaker 2 (56:29):
Yeah, but if you have a green one, well then
you can do anything to them.

Speaker 1 (56:32):
I yeah, it's sorry. It's Vegas. Yeah, it's it's weird.
It's just weird. I don't know.

Speaker 2 (56:41):
I I love living in Vegas, and then this this week,
it's just all of the Vegas stuff that's fun kind
of turns off. We've had less fun off strip vent
like things. No one's blown up a car. There's not
been any like interesting stunts. It's like they everyone forgot
to have fun or make anything this year.

Speaker 1 (56:59):
It's it's really sad. It's sad.

Speaker 2 (57:01):
I'm upset that like CS is kind of not having fun,
and neither is Vegas rules kind of sitting is rolling
around in our filth at least I am yeah one
just staring at me. I'm not filthy. I've been showering
every day. We just send no when I was on
the show earlier. I felt bad for them, but they

(57:21):
were like, well, what about Lenovo's ai AS system. I'm like, yeah,
that's just an LM, and they're like yeah, but like,
what if it in the future. I'm like, what if
it did what in the future, And they're like, what
it would be?

Speaker 4 (57:33):
What if we breathe these horses to run so fast
that eventually one of the mayors gives birth to a locomotive.

Speaker 1 (57:40):
On something.

Speaker 2 (57:41):
Okay, what if we all ship ourselves enough and maybe
our asses all white themselves.

Speaker 3 (57:47):
We need more hay than it currently exists on the planet.

Speaker 2 (57:50):
That's right, We've thrown a ball so fast that it
now flies.

Speaker 7 (57:55):
That well covered unprecedented reserves of hey in other countries.

Speaker 1 (58:00):
That we're not. We're gonna We're gonna do it. We're
just gonna run down for a few years.

Speaker 2 (58:05):
Beautiful, big, beautiful, Hey, big beautiful, the big We love him.

Speaker 4 (58:11):
That's the sister town to hay on Why and whales beautiful?

Speaker 2 (58:16):
Oh God, Like the whole week my brain has been broken.
Someone sent me a video of someoneding Trump was going
I made a boom boom, I mean the biggest boom
boom i've ever seen.

Speaker 1 (58:23):
They're saying, it's quite beautiful. Yeah, and this specific week
is like even that.

Speaker 2 (58:29):
The Trump voice just I don't know if this is.

Speaker 1 (58:31):
The week to do it.

Speaker 2 (58:33):
Very sad, but you know yet Trump. Yeah, he's still alive, Chicken. Yeah,
I mean he's still going.

Speaker 4 (58:41):
Now.

Speaker 2 (58:41):
The upcoming ad you're gonna get is for nothing political,
nothing weird. Everything's normal here. We're all the most normal
people to ever do a podcast in history. And you
too can be the most normal person ever if you
buy and or listen to the following advertisement. Just throw
your fucking credit card, your phone, your pig. I'm sorry,
you're not a pig. I please don't stop listening to

(59:03):
my show. I desperately need the downloads.

Speaker 1 (59:17):
Diane.

Speaker 2 (59:17):
I'm once again finding myself in front of a microphone
and beautiful sunny Las Vegas, Nevada, even though it's nighttime
or i've been for what feels like weeks. I'm surrounded
by several wayward travelers that I adore, starting with another
journalist and activist. I think author.

Speaker 1 (59:33):
Cory Doctor Well, Hello, edit, that nice to be here.

Speaker 2 (59:36):
That's him, and we've got Garrison Davis of it could
happen here, I apologize, we had a podcasting emergency. No,
it's fine, we are doing it now. And Carl Shnard
of the Las Vegas Sun, Hello, and of course Edward
and Graso Jr.

Speaker 1 (59:52):
Hello?

Speaker 2 (59:52):
Who is Who's Diane As?

Speaker 1 (59:56):
It's a Twin Peaks reference. I thought it was a
Cheers ference.

Speaker 2 (01:00:00):
And that's what I'm not. That's Robert Evans behind the
Bosto's Yeah, and famous Cheers fan, famous Cheers head. Yeah,
and he Robert is very excited because we have the
pieces to make what was it? We've got to cu
We've got we've got a CD.

Speaker 1 (01:00:18):
Cory doctor c D. You've got a Robert. We've got
us his last name, yeah, because there's not an first
name here. And then what's the end. The editor is
Matt Matt, so cd ROM also some other people's names
and some Yeah, sure you have to add other names.

Speaker 2 (01:00:33):
What's the cd ROM?

Speaker 1 (01:00:34):
Oh?

Speaker 4 (01:00:34):
Oh, it's what you when you have an ISO and
you want to convert it to optical media, you take
that ISO optic toast the one onto the other.

Speaker 2 (01:00:46):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:00:46):
When you've pirated Cyberpunk twenty seventy seven and you have
to you have to make your computer think that you've
put a CD, oh my daddy CD, and I've been
played with that with that in a minute.

Speaker 7 (01:00:56):
I miss I miss pirrating and the little isovern bringing
it off.

Speaker 1 (01:01:00):
I missed when the only way I had Microsoft Office
was a pirated version that never touched the Internet and
didn't ask me to use co pilot everything. Yeah, it
really is sick.

Speaker 4 (01:01:10):
I remember when I started reading classified ads and it
was like, uh, you know s w F, I s
O s w M. And I was like a straight
white female as an ISO frustrate white male.

Speaker 1 (01:01:21):
I don't understand.

Speaker 2 (01:01:23):
Yeah, Garrison, was that a legit question? No, I'm sorry,
that would have been No, Honestly, if it was honest,
that would have been fired.

Speaker 9 (01:01:31):
It was barely though, because like my dad used it
for the music he purchased legally on the Internet and
transferring it to CDs when I was a kid. But
like I just I got like the last bit of
CD rock like probably like my younger siblings don't know
what a CD.

Speaker 1 (01:01:45):
Meanwhile, I once owned a ZIP drive.

Speaker 2 (01:01:48):
I had the same I had a jazz drive. Yeah, no,
my dad, this is the kind of kid I was.

Speaker 9 (01:01:53):
My dad.

Speaker 4 (01:01:53):
I had a dwarfull of scuzzy terminators.

Speaker 2 (01:01:57):
Jesus Christ. They took me a minute for remember what
scuzzy referred to. So that was the one where you
screwed it into like it had literal screws.

Speaker 4 (01:02:04):
You had to set dip switches on the back. And
if you gave two scuzzy devices the same idea, all
of your drives would go south forever.

Speaker 2 (01:02:10):
Hell yeah, I love it.

Speaker 4 (01:02:11):
Computers used to be used to have to fight with
the computers and they administer a lethal shock.

Speaker 2 (01:02:17):
Used to be a proper country.

Speaker 1 (01:02:19):
Now we used to.

Speaker 2 (01:02:20):
We used to have jazz drives, zip drives now anyone.
Now you just drop box gives you a whole, a
whole terror bio to any all sorts and sundry.

Speaker 1 (01:02:30):
Unlimited access for the US government without a warrant, but
also unlimited access for the chat box that they signed
deals with.

Speaker 2 (01:02:36):
You know, be fair. I did see earlier that chat
GPT apparently is doing a Hippo compliant chat GPT, which
just is a lie. What again, it's a lie. I
thought it's a fucking lie.

Speaker 9 (01:02:48):
Imagine how many GPTs we've seen in health like like
like wearable products, just just like these past few days.

Speaker 1 (01:02:55):
Yeah again, we're talking about this on the other show.
But you can tell. One of the the things that
you can divide the people with AI products between is
the ninety percent for whom if you ask them what
happens if somebody like if there's a data breach with
all of this biometric data you've put in the cloud,
they go what or we're really concerned with safety, right.

(01:03:17):
They'll give you one of those two answers, but they
don't actually have an answer. And then there's the much
smaller ten to twenty percent of people bringing products who
will tell you right up front the second you come
to their booth. This does not touch the cloud. It
never goes online. It is entirely on device.

Speaker 2 (01:03:32):
I'm trying to work out how anything GPT can be
Hippo compliant, though it can't, I mean, based on my
understanding of Hippa, I'm sure they're working out a deal
with I mean now that the government's run by who's
run by?

Speaker 1 (01:03:45):
But like.

Speaker 4 (01:03:47):
You sketch out a way that it could be hippo compliant.
So HIPPA, although it's commonly called a consumer privacy law,
is not a consumer privacy law because it only affects
your rights as a patient and not as a consumer.

Speaker 1 (01:04:00):
And so if you.

Speaker 4 (01:04:00):
Were to construct a kind of matrioshka where the inside
doll is a consumer company that is providing you with
consumer medical services and the outside of the doll is
a medical company that does nothing except kind of exists

(01:04:21):
as a fig leaf like that, like the MD whose
name is on the private equity owned practice, then what
you could say is, well, you haven't given us any
medical data, You've only given us consumer data. Therefore it
is hipp A compliant, like we have structured Hippo compliance
through the compliance regime and not through the Hippa regime.

Speaker 2 (01:04:37):
Okay, okay, yeah, that makes sense. I just think if
you feed your healthcare that you're into this, you deserve
whatever comes out.

Speaker 1 (01:04:43):
Like It's just I would I would like it's easy
to take that attitude.

Speaker 2 (01:04:47):
People are being canned into it and claimed this morph.

Speaker 1 (01:04:50):
And it's going to be it's they're going to be
conduit into it. The same way a lot of people
were condon into getting addicted to pain killers, where they
will be in the doctor's office, their doctor will have
gotten flown out for a VAK or put on a
cruise where they were pitched on this and their doctor
will say there's a wearable that can help you keep
track of your cholesterol, And this sixty five year old
person will not immediately think, like people who professionally worry

(01:05:13):
about this stuff, is my data safe?

Speaker 2 (01:05:16):
What? What is it being safeguard?

Speaker 1 (01:05:18):
Can a prompt injection attack reveal all of my biomede?

Speaker 4 (01:05:22):
They'll think, They'll think, you know, I am not special enough, right.
I understand the nature of targets of opportunity, But the
thing I'm.

Speaker 2 (01:05:29):
Worried about is more than it will give you the
wrong advice more than anything.

Speaker 1 (01:05:34):
I mean that in terms of objective health realities, that
is the big concern. But also I mean, and that's
part of what I'm saying, is that when people, the
majority of people I suspect who come into these devices
will not have made a choice to go it into
the world and buy something. They will have been advised
by a medical professional. They trust that this is a
good product for them. And that's part of what worries

(01:05:55):
me in terms of it hallucinating, in terms of it
not being reliable, because the doctors probably will not be
competent to judge whether or not the AI is reliable, but.

Speaker 3 (01:06:03):
I also think it's that no one can afford healthcare anyway.

Speaker 2 (01:06:07):
Yeah, exactly. And that's the thing with like AI therapy
that I always say, It's like, it's obviously evil, obviously bad, terrible,
it's going to reinforce things. But at the same time,
therapy is extremely expensive. Yeah, and when it's covered by
health care plants, which it's often not. And I don't
even think therapy is covered under the NHS.

Speaker 6 (01:06:24):
There.

Speaker 2 (01:06:24):
If it is, it's extremely it is. When I was there,
I could not find a therapist.

Speaker 4 (01:06:28):
It was hard to find a therapist. But there it
is covered.

Speaker 2 (01:06:32):
Then it may is like the thing is, then it
may as well not be. And I say, this is
a big NHS defender and lover of the NHS mental health.
Is this weird bifurcated thing where everything's too expensive?

Speaker 1 (01:06:41):
So yeah, well, I mean, and that was I went
to a panel that was about AI in the Future
of mental health. And I went there hoping that it
or expecting it to be a normal panel where I
harass whoever is up there during the q and a.
But no, it was one very earnest clinical therapist who
was talking about people are already used AIS for therapy.
We have data on how often that's being done, and

(01:07:03):
we have data on the harms. And one of the
reasons why it's harmful is because the ais are programmed
to keep you using them as long as possible, and
that there's certain behaviors that they exhibit that are bad
for people. So we if we're going if it's possible
to make a healthy therapeutic AI, these are the things
that would need to do and not do. And one
of the things is it would not have it would
need to not work the way AI chatbots work in

(01:07:23):
terms of constantly. And my question for her after the
show was like, well, but like that seems like people
won't use it and will just keep using the chaos.

Speaker 2 (01:07:32):
They're true.

Speaker 4 (01:07:33):
I think people journaling is a well understood therapeutical modality.
Journaling with prompts is a well understood therapeutic modality. I
think those prompts don't have to be very sophisticated, uh,
And I think that there are lots of people who
would find it nice to have a thing where when
you type some stuff, gave you a response and said,
you know, tell me more.

Speaker 2 (01:07:53):
I think you've kind of like this rosebud or something
like there are ones like that as well. It's just
when it comes to therapeutics, I guess more.

Speaker 1 (01:08:01):
My My concern was that I don't deny that there
is a market and there are people who would get utility,
and you probably could make a device that could handle
that responsibly, but I don't see that as solving the
societal issue of huge numbers of people use it because
the chatbots are addicted, right, and that's what like that?
That was my and to be very clear to her,

(01:08:21):
I liked this person, and her answer was when I
brought that up, I have that concern too, and I
think it might not be really possible for this to
help them.

Speaker 2 (01:08:29):
Well, the good news is is that none of this
is remotely profitable in any way, and healthcare dates or
is extremely extremely token intensive, and so anyone using this
is just working on borrowed time.

Speaker 4 (01:08:42):
And in defense of chatbots and medical applications, they are
reliably good at upcoting things in EHR, so you can
rip off in sure.

Speaker 1 (01:08:49):
Which is great.

Speaker 2 (01:08:49):
And hey, no, I've heard that's the one that is
the one lllm use I have heard where it's just like, yeah,
find if you're being overcharged in this, which is you
know what the one oh.

Speaker 1 (01:08:59):
No, I mean overcharging.

Speaker 4 (01:09:01):
They're very good at like EPIC, which is the Electronic
Health Health Record monopolist, which is a cult. Basically, they
they've basically redesigned the chapbots in their EHR systems around
upcoding so that they can rip off insurres. So if
you go in and you say I have an X

(01:09:21):
and a Y and a Z, and they're like, well
that infers I can infer that you have an A, N,
A B in a c UH and also we can
treat X as a we can treat X as this
category of for reimbursement. In that category for reimbursement, I
will prompt the clinician to enter a few more details
that will allow us to This is why clinicians spend
two hours doing data entry for every hour they spend

(01:09:43):
doing clinical care.

Speaker 1 (01:09:45):
And that makes me think a product I might want
because there's a lot of agentic AI here and I
legitimately don't want an AI agent to handle stuff like
booking flights or booking to my car to get repaired
or whatever for me. But what could be useful is
if somebody coded an AI agent that you could have
call companies that you need to call on the phone

(01:10:05):
and fight through their chatbot, and like, this is an
optimized chatbot for fighting through other chatbots. We have that
getting you. It's a product.

Speaker 2 (01:10:12):
Yeah, Human dot Com they already hit they've had that
for a while.

Speaker 1 (01:10:15):
It's it's funny.

Speaker 2 (01:10:16):
It's like even the good idea, it's kind of already done. Also,
if you use wargreens, I think if you just type
seven seven to one the moment you call, you immediately
go to the pharmacist.

Speaker 1 (01:10:26):
Yep, just do that.

Speaker 2 (01:10:27):
That's a little tip for you all, just if you'd
work with wargreens. Fuck chatbots, Yeah, it's I also just
think that it's irresponsible to have a chatbot talk about
any healthcare thing, just because the nuance of what even
I might my further radicalization of that is I think
all the fitness stuff is unhealthy too, because you can
fuck yourself up over training so easily. And while we

(01:10:49):
were walking out Corey from the Venetian earlier today, there
were a bunch of these AI training things and it's like,
you'll fuck your shit and oh, we'll get your age
and your weight and that will tell us everything. Not
really h Oh, these fucking shows. Welleah I did.

Speaker 1 (01:11:04):
I went to a comedy smart I who they have
an optical recognition program and it worked in that they
had it read my eyes and then when I walked
in front of it in the future, it would identify
me by the name I gave it, and the other
people by the name they gave it. But the thing
that it was meant for is number one. Like several
products I saw at CES, if you were distracted, if

(01:11:26):
you're looking at your phone, or if you fall asleep
while driving, it will try to wake you up, or
it will say, hey, look away from your phone. And
I guess that could be useful. But the other side
of it was most of the products that I saw
were built into these huge smart dashboards that were like
giant screens in the front of the car. And we

(01:11:46):
know that when people are manipulating a big screen in
a car, they are as bad as a drunk driver,
right yeah, And so it's like, well, you you're offering
a solution to the problem that was created by cramming
a necessary crap cars. The other thing that they were
showing is that we can we can see if you're
drunk based on the way your eyes look which they

(01:12:06):
said they got a lady drunk on a closed track
and had it identify her. And I have no way
of evaluating whether this works. But people when I posted
a video of it, pointed out in the comments, I
have this issue right with my eyes. I wonder if
it's going to just point at call me drunk, And
I kind of wonder, are we going to also see
that certain people? They did not groups of people of

(01:12:30):
different ethnicities. They didn't test it widely enough, and so
it just decides everyone of this ethnicity is drying. Microsoft
American if you're a drunk American, right, yes I am.

Speaker 2 (01:12:42):
But also people drive on the different side of the
roads so that eyes would possibly look in different directions.
And I always think, and I mentioned it earlier, Microsoft
Connect which could not see black people quite literally batter
off ted anyone remember bat of great show, Literally we
see you.

Speaker 1 (01:12:59):
And that was the And I don't know that smart
Ie has this I have because I can't.

Speaker 2 (01:13:03):
I can't. Really I did show up.

Speaker 1 (01:13:05):
I had ripped a shipload of uh my my CBG joint,
which is like, himp, what is CBG? It's one of
the many different cannabinoids. They figured out how to extract
and that's federally legal for that doblement. So I was
high as hell and I'd taken a shipload of my
Credom pills and it didn't notify that I was fucked up,
but I wasn't drunk.

Speaker 2 (01:13:25):
So so you can drive on CBG and cradle. Yeah,
you know I should not have been driving.

Speaker 1 (01:13:31):
Yeah, driving high as fine, that's on this.

Speaker 4 (01:13:34):
I mean, if you if you take a little k
just get just get to the edge of the k
hole when.

Speaker 1 (01:13:43):
Best.

Speaker 3 (01:13:43):
Yeah, you can become the richest man in the world.

Speaker 9 (01:13:47):
It turns out you can use you can use nitrous
in multiple ways in your car.

Speaker 1 (01:13:51):
Look, some of us may have done car nitrous before,
and if so, as long as you don't do a double,
it's safe.

Speaker 2 (01:13:57):
Better or flying brow By Calmageddon like.

Speaker 1 (01:14:00):
Steve Jackson's Car Wars. Jesus Christ.

Speaker 2 (01:14:03):
That's a blast from the Pand oh my god, now
they're doing a newcom again.

Speaker 1 (01:14:07):
Now it's gonna be nice.

Speaker 2 (01:14:08):
Yeah, it's I can't stop thinking of the eye thing now.
It's really bothered me because that feels like this, How
would you possibly ever get enough data?

Speaker 1 (01:14:19):
I don't. That's the thing is they had a video
of it recognizing a drunk person, but nothing that they
had at the show.

Speaker 2 (01:14:25):
I cannot test. You should just get every journalist rip
ship and just to be like, yeah, this is there
used to.

Speaker 1 (01:14:31):
Be bars at some of the Yeah, and that's what
they should have had. They should have been like, take
three shots and get in front of this thing. You
see if it can tell response.

Speaker 9 (01:14:39):
No, they should have like a driving simulator and they
should have like shots and you should be able to
go up do some shots, getting driving simulator and see
if it can tell if you're drunk driving.

Speaker 2 (01:14:49):
Again, this sounds great.

Speaker 1 (01:14:50):
This is why CEES needs to be moved to Minneapolis, right.

Speaker 2 (01:14:55):
No, no, absolutely not in January? Are you insane? That
mean drunk driving city in January it's gonna be ice everywhere.

Speaker 1 (01:15:05):
Well there's currently everywhere everywhere. Oh god, now.

Speaker 2 (01:15:12):
They should they should move it somewhere more punishing, though.
I agree it's Vegas is too nice. Let's send this
the fucking like Merced, California. There we go, black Rock Desert.

Speaker 1 (01:15:23):
There we No, No, no, that's too nice.

Speaker 2 (01:15:26):
Ce s Dallas, Yeah, Dallas, Dallas, joke about that. Yeah,
that would be to Orlando, Florida.

Speaker 1 (01:15:34):
The most the most.

Speaker 2 (01:15:36):
Painful place in the world, the most I'm I'm not
not super spiritual, but that place is.

Speaker 1 (01:15:42):
Bathed in evil. And I live in Las Vegas.

Speaker 9 (01:15:44):
Yeah, you live in Vegas. You can't see very little
room to stand up.

Speaker 4 (01:15:48):
I have a lot of experience. I mean, if we're
going to Florida London, how about clear Water right, the
world's headquarters for flexidisc manufacturing scientology.

Speaker 1 (01:15:59):
Yeah, and I you know, to be honest, a lot
of people don't like the culty aspects of flexi disc.
But I think, you know, there's a lot of what
is that I don't know you.

Speaker 4 (01:16:10):
Ever buy a magazine that had a floppy printed forty
five rpm record that you tore out of the magazine
and put on your turntable.

Speaker 1 (01:16:20):
No, that is a flexi disk?

Speaker 2 (01:16:22):
Well when when was this the thing?

Speaker 1 (01:16:24):
It was a thing from.

Speaker 4 (01:16:25):
Like the fifties through the early two thousands.

Speaker 1 (01:16:29):
Really, wow, Garrison, that's basically like a CD rom But
oh I got it that I woke one of It's
like a DVD for your ears. That might be what
finally broke me on this.

Speaker 4 (01:16:46):
I mentioned on an earlier installment of this that one
of my Christmas gifts was this Olivetti typewriter. But one
of my other Christmas gifts was a Mad magazine from
nineteen eighty one with a Flexi disc. It's the great, big,
beautiful day fly desk that had they recorded eight different
endings to the track and they had a in the
groove that has a hard stop that caused the needle

(01:17:09):
to pop up and it would land in one of
eight random tracks.

Speaker 1 (01:17:12):
That's cool. That's actually the coolest shit.

Speaker 2 (01:17:16):
Also, that's cooler than anything I've seen it. Yes, technically
based on the standards of ce S. That's AI enabled.

Speaker 4 (01:17:24):
That's a smart smart and actually quite literally more reliable
than any LM.

Speaker 2 (01:17:32):
It's all on device, doesn't connect to the cloud. It's
everything we've been looking for in products.

Speaker 4 (01:17:37):
And it's customizable and uh user centric.

Speaker 2 (01:17:41):
Yeah, wow, I love this. This is the only company
I respect. I heard about this week.

Speaker 1 (01:17:45):
I Wills in terms of good products. We saw Gary
and I we talked about this on our show. I
talked about in the first episode with you. There are
a lot of exoskeleton products out that are a mix
of and often they're meant for both, but a mix
of therapeutic for people who have different like disabilities where
they might need the extra assistance offered, and also for
like laborers, for people working, and I'm also like people

(01:18:07):
doing working like factories. The shoe one, I didn't get
to see shoe ones. There's some upper body ones, yeah,
the hip ones, and some they're now being also marketed
as like this is really useful for people who are hiking,
who are carrying, who are out in the way. Were
talking weights, and we got to test one. They they
sent me. They gave me hyper Shell gave me one
of their units that retailed for about two grand. They

(01:18:28):
range from about two grand or about one one thousand
dollars to a couple of thousand dollars, but the one
we've got is about a two grand unit.

Speaker 2 (01:18:34):
Gary and I both wore it.

Speaker 1 (01:18:36):
I have some data on it, by which I mean
I tracked how fast I was moving. I walked from
the Venetian to the LBCC, and normally when I am
just walking and on a particular hurry, it's about a
nineteen twenty minute mile if I'm just kind of like
walking and not going, which is more or less normal,
and my heart rates usually between like ninety five and
like one oh three or something like that. If I'm

(01:18:56):
like walking, and when I had the the exoskeleton on,
my pace was between fifteen thirty and like sixteen twenty as.
Oh and my heart rate was never more than like
one or two higher than normal amount of effort.

Speaker 2 (01:19:11):
Yeah yeah, same amount like again my heart rate.

Speaker 1 (01:19:13):
Yeah, like that's that's yeah, because you can feel it
like lifting your legs. Basically it is kind of moving you.
I didn't have any less foot pain, like by the
end of the day, fourteen thousand steps or so, like
my feet. You're sure because it doesn't do anything to
your feet, But my knees didn't feel strained, and my
lower back didn't feel strained. That's you know what.

Speaker 2 (01:19:31):
I found it pretty cool? Yeah, I like this. I
like this in a quite cynical CS. Yeah, I actually
really love the visa everywhere. These are actually future tech,
but fucking rocks.

Speaker 1 (01:19:43):
I actually I literally thanked the rep who had given
them to me, not forgiving me to them, but just like,
thank you guys for bringing a real thing to the show. Yes,
like when you went through the entrance metal detective, it
was fine.

Speaker 2 (01:19:54):
They didn't even notice it. Really, that's not good, no.

Speaker 1 (01:19:56):
No at all, Like carbon fiber or something.

Speaker 2 (01:19:58):
Yeah, yeah, oh wow, Hyper show should let me have one.

Speaker 1 (01:20:02):
I'm sure we can get you try and get used
to too similar response. Yeah, I know.

Speaker 2 (01:20:06):
We talked about it yesterday on the show. I think
it's really cool that, like, again I've been trashing this
show with good fucking reason, but I like that they're
doing this. I like that we finally see because that
I've seen like kind of like shreds off across the
ears and they're everywhere in a show that otherwise should
be shut down. Uh, maybe not the entire thing there is.

Speaker 1 (01:20:28):
That's part. Part of what's frustrating is there are people
doing innovative stuff. Like I've talked about the photonic muscles
right where it is like a device that replicates the
way physical muscles work. Yeah, that was interesting. Yeah, where
you like you shine a light and it causes to
constrict and you can use it as like a motor
and it takes up less space than a motor. But
they're not being like and this is going to be
in everything. They were like, we see this as having

(01:20:50):
applications and different like automotive things for small motors, and
it can make things lighter. And I was like, you
are You've made something that's cool, and you you're not
promising this is going to be the future of everything.
You're not trying to show me how this is a
three billion dollar industry. You're trying to be like, and
now your car will be a little lighter and this
motor will break less often than the previous kinds of

(01:21:11):
motors that we're used in this application.

Speaker 2 (01:21:12):
I'm like, that's the thing. Thank you, Garrett.

Speaker 4 (01:21:15):
You and Robert are different shapes to be, you know,
to broadly, we wearing different axos.

Speaker 9 (01:21:24):
Yeah, we are slightly slightly different in size. Ye hurtful
the same exim so it has the bad adjusted the
carbon fiber slides on both sides so it can get
wider for the hips. I did have it at the
smallest option, but I'm the kind of in terms of
my hips, I'm kind of the smallest adult size there is.

Speaker 2 (01:21:45):
Yes, I am.

Speaker 9 (01:21:46):
I am an examorphous And then the leg straps also
have like some pretty some pretty strong eylon, so you
can tighten in two cases for it to go above
your knee. I definitely if I was considerably smaller, it
may not have fit on as as well. But like
it's it's it's it's difficult because like I have like
a very like twinkish form like with some some people
who are like smaller than me, which which should be

(01:22:11):
which was.

Speaker 2 (01:22:11):
Going to be in really Scott's new alien film.

Speaker 9 (01:22:13):
Yeah, but no, Like if it's certain people who are
like smaller than me in a lot of ways might
have bigger hips, it would it would fit on them.

Speaker 1 (01:22:20):
Fine.

Speaker 9 (01:22:21):
If if someone's hips were considerably smaller than mine, then
they might have a child, then they might have a
problem and it but it it works, It worked for
my side.

Speaker 1 (01:22:31):
Yeah, And there is there is an app which gives
you more control over the device and the fit. You
can control it all in the fitness but you can
control it all with the button. But with the button
you're kind of like there's four levels, and with the
app you could be like I wanted it thirty one
percent or whatever, so you have a little more adjustment.

Speaker 2 (01:22:47):
And what does what does the power on it?

Speaker 1 (01:22:50):
You can feel it lifting your legs as you walk,
and it's like something lifting your body.

Speaker 4 (01:22:55):
Is it like just turning your e bike from three
to four?

Speaker 2 (01:22:58):
Yeah kind of.

Speaker 1 (01:22:59):
Yeah, it's your physical but it also when you install it,
you put in your weight and your height and it
will tell you this is probably where you.

Speaker 2 (01:23:06):
Want to adjust it.

Speaker 1 (01:23:06):
There's like numbers when you like white, probably what will
work best for your body. I like this. It's a
good product.

Speaker 2 (01:23:13):
Yeah, I wish more things will like that.

Speaker 1 (01:23:15):
I you know, it's not two thousand dollars is not
a casual purchase for most people. But it's not like
insanely out of reach for a normal person. And it's
a business for and it's certainly reasonable for a business.
And I think they do worth what they're charging. They
do have it, you need it.

Speaker 9 (01:23:29):
Their their last model from from last year is it's
like a thousand dollars like this is this is, this
is this is this is their new.

Speaker 2 (01:23:36):
Pro version and this is a weird thing. I know
that this is a weirdly optimistic thing. I can imagine
them being cheaper until three years.

Speaker 1 (01:23:42):
I'm sure they will be And I.

Speaker 2 (01:23:44):
Think, I see this is like two thousand dollars not
to be able to walk regularly when you conned.

Speaker 4 (01:23:49):
Yeah.

Speaker 6 (01:23:50):
Cool.

Speaker 1 (01:23:50):
Well, and the other thing that I'm working on and
I'm trying to get one of the companies that makes
a full body the upper body one too, because I
have an environment and putting on my body armor, like
my my, my my plate carrier and my helmet. And
I think that there's an opportunity to create your own
like Jerry rigged power armor out of this And like
every American boy, all I've ever wanted to do is

(01:24:12):
be a space marine. So I really do think I
think there's a potential. So you could be Matt Diamond
in Elysium. No, no, no, I love the Space Marine. Yeah,
Warhammer style. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:24:23):
Do you know they have a fucking trademark they took
out on Space Marine?

Speaker 1 (01:24:26):
They sure did. They shared it.

Speaker 10 (01:24:27):
I mean, I meanshop oh get they are there there.
This is a whole separate cop But like their their
attitude towards like intellectual property law has been crazy, Like
for the last thirty years, there hasn't been any movies
or TV despite the massive demand for it, and they
would sue anyone who created like fan ones.

Speaker 2 (01:24:48):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (01:24:48):
Like there was a German a full length fan movie
that they had scrubbed from the Internet because the argument
was that German intellectual property laws would mean that they
would not have full control of their IP if they
allowed this fan probab to exist.

Speaker 4 (01:25:00):
Which is I mean, this is the trademark argument. It's
a story that trademark lawyers tell their children when they're
worried about not having enough money to pay for college.

Speaker 1 (01:25:08):
It's nonsense.

Speaker 4 (01:25:09):
This trademark genericization generous bullshit.

Speaker 2 (01:25:13):
But Games Workshop is otherwise kind of a cool company,
I thought. I mean, they they pay people well.

Speaker 1 (01:25:19):
I think they've got good lore.

Speaker 2 (01:25:20):
Yeah, and they got more.

Speaker 1 (01:25:22):
They've got good minis also there.

Speaker 2 (01:25:23):
A weird company.

Speaker 1 (01:25:24):
I did that.

Speaker 2 (01:25:25):
I enjoy the fact also that they don't even try
and romanticize any of it. They're just like, no, they
fucking anyone.

Speaker 4 (01:25:31):
They bring enormous pleasure to Riley Quinn, who is a
force for good on that right.

Speaker 2 (01:25:35):
Coming up better offline, we're doing a thing with Trash Future.
It's coming up in the that's me announcing it. That's
all you're getting.

Speaker 1 (01:25:41):
No, I love Hams. We'll be doing it, launching a
Hams podcast has well, like the that's what the kids
call it, what what Hams?

Speaker 2 (01:25:49):
Well, just like the Warhammer warham Hams Sorry for a
certain British this is your culture.

Speaker 1 (01:25:54):
Yeah I did.

Speaker 2 (01:25:55):
I hung out like the one happy place in Hammersmith,
London where it was the local game workshop thing. I
found the space Marine game kind of shit.

Speaker 1 (01:26:03):
Though the new one. Yeah, it was just repetitive no orcs, no, no, no,
they went they went with tear nits and chaos.

Speaker 2 (01:26:10):
Or actually I wanted like Yobo orcs like so I
could feel at home, like being beset with men going.

Speaker 1 (01:26:18):
My favorite piece of warhammer lore is that Games Workshops orcs,
which started out in Fantasy and then when they created
forty k Mitigated that were initially largely created to be
a parody of the Diggers, as in the Anarchists. Yeah, yes, God.
One of their games was specifically based on the coal

(01:26:39):
mine protests during the Thatcher era, with orcs that were
standing in for the different sites, including an orc that
was like basically Margaret Thatcher. Like, there was a like
large parts of early warhammer lore were critiques of Thatcherism,
because it was a bunch of punks in the eighties
were angry about Margaret Thatcher. That's all been Jettison, Yeah, yeah, yeah,

(01:27:01):
but there is in early games, like Games Workshop games,
there's a lot of weird Margaret Thatcher references.

Speaker 2 (01:27:07):
Yeah, I mean an alternative uh huh Orkard Thatcher. I
love the idea that like New York, Oh, my god, no,
I I I really should have known that one. But no,
the Diggers would have been just before my time. So yeah,
ninet eighty six. I was born yep, so like just.

Speaker 1 (01:27:22):
Before that era. But I did grow up with two parents, which.

Speaker 2 (01:27:25):
Is like, yeah, Margaret Fletcher, fucking such fuck Margaret Thatcher. Well,
Neil Kinnock stands here. Well, we're gonna rotate to our
final rotation, our final half an hour. Whatever is coming up,
you must look at it, you must listen to it,
you must click it forever. Otherwise this show will suitly inspire.

Speaker 1 (01:27:42):
Please subscribe to the news letter.

Speaker 2 (01:27:44):
Two. We're going to an ad break and they'll be
back for the final quarter. Ladies and gentlemen, Mister Mattiski,

(01:28:20):
welcome back to Barre Offline for the final core of
I'll See Us Experience.

Speaker 1 (01:28:23):
That was the wonderful, mister. I mean, that was fine, ed.
But what if instead of a human being, a chat
bot has played guitar for you. That's not just music
and sound. They make my favorite holiday song, what is it?
The Coca Cola Holidays Are Coming song, which has lyrics
that really stick with me that include holidays are coming. Wow,

(01:28:45):
Holidays are coming, Holidays are coming, Holidays are coming.

Speaker 2 (01:28:51):
Threat whether you like it or not, literally threatened me
with a good time. Yeah. I love the Coca Cola
where the truck changes size several times.

Speaker 1 (01:29:03):
I see. I'm glad you said that because we are
going to make so much money by just cutting that
audio out and having like put throwing that in as
an ad of just Exitron saying I love the Coca Cola.
I love That's like the Homo Simpson thing. I love
Coca Cola. I love LLM. My voice is my passport.
Verify me.

Speaker 2 (01:29:22):
You're real good at turning me. Uh yeah, this is CS.
We're here for the final It's it's fine CS. This
year has been so strange and I mean this even
the metaverse CS, which was kind of like weird. I
missed the metaverse C. I missed the meta US in general.

Speaker 9 (01:29:39):
The good old days, Grey simple back then, NFTs, Oh
my god that but the.

Speaker 2 (01:29:45):
Weird That was a weird CS because there was like
not one in twenty twenty one. No there, and it wasn't.

Speaker 1 (01:29:50):
I did the virtual one. Twenty two was their first CS,
and Gary and I, thanks to the metaverse, made a
lifelong a lifelong friend. For the last four years. Every
year we go to Moromotos and MGM, which is sorry,
We'll go to more Motives and MGM which is a
really good restaurant with our friend Andrew, who is the
CEO of Alcat Games Nice which ischem Alchemy Labs is

(01:30:13):
part of I think ol Wait sorry, yeah, you're out
shit is it alchemy?

Speaker 2 (01:30:18):
It's alchemy?

Speaker 1 (01:30:18):
Okay?

Speaker 2 (01:30:19):
Sorry.

Speaker 1 (01:30:21):
Anyway, we go and we eat and we hang out
because in twenty twenty two.

Speaker 2 (01:30:26):
We are in the metaverse.

Speaker 1 (01:30:28):
Yeah, there was a metaverse party on the side the
Belagio where everyone showed up outside the Bolagio and then
at a certain time there was like a QR code
that you scanned and you went into a braw. It
wasn't even an app, it was an in browser metaverse
metaverse experience. It crashed immediately and no one fountain.

Speaker 9 (01:30:49):
It was supposed to sync up to the fountain, and
nobody could get it to work, and the whole thing
completely crashed.

Speaker 2 (01:30:55):
It was a massive dud, and there.

Speaker 1 (01:30:56):
Were guys who were worked for the company there who fled.
They see they ran away.

Speaker 9 (01:31:01):
Because people, the friends you made along tally was it
quite So we went to the beer Garden which was
across the street. And then we met Andrew, who now
we have Yeah, yeah, now we hang out and now
we hang out every year.

Speaker 1 (01:31:13):
The metaverse brings people together. This was Mark Zuckerberg's beautiful
vision all along. This This was my first CES miracle,
like the first of many.

Speaker 2 (01:31:22):
But I love the idea of going outside the Belagio Fountain.
It's like a very analog thing full of pistons.

Speaker 1 (01:31:28):
That works beautiful. You're just gonna say pissed, but yeah,
probably pistons too. Yeah, I wonder. I don't think you
can piss in that.

Speaker 2 (01:31:34):
Oh you can piss in anything. Oh I could, Yes,
let me rephrase this. I don't think you could piss
in it without getting arrested. No, No, you pee in
a bottle and you just toss the bottle.

Speaker 1 (01:31:45):
You would get arrested for that.

Speaker 2 (01:31:46):
They would absolutely. One time, I was watching those fountains
and watching them kill a bird.

Speaker 1 (01:31:51):
They've got one of those Amazon surveillance masks.

Speaker 9 (01:31:54):
We we had dinner outside of the Bolagio Fountain a
few years ago and we talked about all.

Speaker 2 (01:31:59):
The words, who are flying just get yeah, just like
just like because the fountains are fucking huge, yeah, like
they look like you see him on the video the
giant and they had just pistons and just a book,
just a fucking endangered But that.

Speaker 1 (01:32:15):
I taught a special ed one of my because you know,
there were a bunch of different kids, and like one
of my kids who I worked with was this kid
who was like seventeen years old, so who's got to graduate? Uh.
He had at the time what they called Asperger sentrum.
Obviously that's not a diagnostic term now, but that's how
I was introduced to him. And he was obsessed with pumps,
with like water pumps, fountains and stuff, and incredibly knowledgeable.

(01:32:36):
He had self trot himself and had gotten so good
that he had just mailed to whatever company built the
Bolagio fountains and builds a lot of fountains. They're a
fountain company. He had sent them schematics to designs that
he had and they were good enough that they flew
the VP of the company out to tell him, like,
when you graduate, apply to work with us and they
will hire you. I don't, I mean, I have not.

(01:32:58):
This was eighteen years ago, I hope so well, he
was not. He was in high school when I knew.

Speaker 2 (01:33:02):
Him well as an artist with all these specific likes
and dislikes. I fucking love that.

Speaker 1 (01:33:07):
It's a beautiful story. He was a great kid. Yeah,
but no, you're right, this is this is still a
great kid. I don't know.

Speaker 2 (01:33:13):
This is the weirdest see us since the Meta versus Sety.

Speaker 1 (01:33:15):
It's so strange because.

Speaker 9 (01:33:19):
No, I they're they're they're both, they're both they have
but they both have this hollowness to them because at
least last year, AI was still like ascendant exactly, it
was still going to you, and now it ascended, and
now it's going it's going down, and you can you
can tell because the only thing they can imagine as
like a new thing is combining these models, which haven't

(01:33:41):
really improved the last year, really really combining them with
like kind of years old robotics ring. This is the
only new thing they have, is combining two old technologies
in a way that kind of makes it look new,
but it really isn't.

Speaker 2 (01:33:54):
One kind of felt like lost.

Speaker 9 (01:33:56):
No, it's like absent and hollow in a way that
I only felt before while inside the medaw verse, which
is also absent in hollow, which it's it's you.

Speaker 4 (01:34:07):
Know, what it needs, though, it needs to be appreciated
on a segway, because that was the truly transformative technology
of two thousand and all of you were.

Speaker 1 (01:34:16):
Going to change the world with all this. Don't even
remember the last time I walked around without using a segment?

Speaker 2 (01:34:21):
Do you remember life before the second I was born
in two thousand and two. I only ever known a
time without segus.

Speaker 1 (01:34:28):
Garrison's feet have never touched the ground.

Speaker 2 (01:34:31):
Yeah, it's just to segue. I've never been on a segue.
I'm gonna be honest. Oh man, it's like being on
a segue. It's like standing but different. I see the
tools and I'm just like, I ready look like a
bell end. I don't need to need to.

Speaker 4 (01:34:48):
Steve Wozniak used to play segue polo, which is apparently
of the sport of kings.

Speaker 2 (01:34:54):
My man, I am a British Polish guy. Do you
understand how difficult it is to fight away to be more.

Speaker 1 (01:35:00):
White than me? Jesus Christ segway polo polo?

Speaker 2 (01:35:05):
I did mean?

Speaker 4 (01:35:05):
I mean was is also Polish? I am also I
am also Polish and also technically British.

Speaker 2 (01:35:11):
So racquetball, sea pickleball, Jesus Christ kill me.

Speaker 1 (01:35:17):
I say technical, I what sea technical? That's on that
some bit oh someone has.

Speaker 9 (01:35:25):
That's just when you're open carrying on a segways the
only way I red that's just Texas man.

Speaker 4 (01:35:30):
My wife gave me a Tabasco holster for Christmas last year,
and that is my open carry Nice.

Speaker 2 (01:35:36):
Yeah. I I met was once, and you know what,
he's one of the few tech people I've met who
I wasn't just like revolted by. I sat down and
I talked to him, and we talked for half an
hour and he was like, you know, you've got trye cab.
But I'm like, all right, what's he talking about. No,
it's a share where it's a sharewear run by a
single German developer. It's completely secure, and it was you

(01:35:58):
can just give this random develop a twenty five euro
and I what else does the No, it's just a
fucking working browser. Okay, it just works, which is unusual
for browser, doesn't that?

Speaker 1 (01:36:10):
And I used it.

Speaker 2 (01:36:12):
I'm like, oh, I need to ask a question. I
emailed the developer. Think immediate response like very sternly telling
me that I wasn't using it correctly, But what the fuck?
Is the Internet for and that browser is more useful
than anything I've seen here. I do Garson, You've you've given.
I've been trying to find the words for this. But yeah,
it's like last year it was we're gonna do AI, folks,

(01:36:34):
you're excited about all the AI.

Speaker 1 (01:36:35):
We're gonna do, but you know it's not there. But
we're all excited.

Speaker 2 (01:36:39):
This year it's ah, fuck, you know, God, do you
want to chat? But in your in the physical world.

Speaker 4 (01:36:47):
It's that potential is always more interesting than the real thing.
This is why the right is only interested in potential babies, but.

Speaker 1 (01:36:53):
Not actually because they're full of fucking.

Speaker 4 (01:36:58):
Babies like want things and have agency, whereas babies that
don't exist, imaginary babies in pizza parlor restaurants or women's
uteruses are are are worthy and important.

Speaker 1 (01:37:09):
No, And it's the mix of AI is entering the
physical world. This is going to be in everyone's house.
Everyone is always going to be communicating with and listen
to by one or more chatbots. That is the vision,
and that is the vision that every time I talk
to one of the people who works at these companies,
especially the engineers and the c suite people. Every time

(01:37:31):
I listen to them in a panel, the default assumption
is you will never not be connected to some form
of AI. You will always be listening. And everyone wants
a chat pot that is always listening, that they can
always talk to. And people do not want to use browsers.
They do not want to use the Internet. They do
they want to have the digital world be entirely and

(01:37:53):
that was the There were a couple of different points
in the different panels I went to where people would
express their belief that the the Internet now we are
making contents specifically to be scraped by bots. Websites are
to be visited by bots because people the most bots.

Speaker 9 (01:38:11):
Yeah, the most important thing is getting your article to
get summarized in an AI because no one's the actual
article anymore. They're just reading the either the Google summary
or the reading the chat GPT summary. And so trying
to like like like engineer for for ai for for
for for ai to grab and use.

Speaker 1 (01:38:28):
Your contentive four hours on Monday, just doing marketing panels
about AI and advertising Jesus correct, And.

Speaker 9 (01:38:35):
What was the term that they used for this? Which
one for for trying to trying to do like search
engine optimizations.

Speaker 1 (01:38:43):
No, no, no, no, no. It was the term that
they used was model hacking. Model hack because in the
again four hours of listening to people who were like
cour Suites, the CMO of into it right, people who
in like one of Google's heads of marketing. The only
specific and there was one in all of these panels
specific of this is an AI augmented marketing plan that

(01:39:06):
we executed. There was one specific example given in all
of these and it was the people who make Allegra
wanted to really push the non drowsy aspect of Allegra,
so they used model hacking to ensure that whenever AIS
were asked what allergy medicine should I get, they were
more likely to pull up Allegra and would always say
that it's a non non drowsy Allegra is a nondra

(01:39:28):
and also would would insinuate this is the other part
of it. Via model hacking, they got the chatbots to
start insinuating that other allergy.

Speaker 2 (01:39:37):
Meds would make you drowsy. And that was like, that's
the one example.

Speaker 1 (01:39:41):
Have we replaced SEO with model?

Speaker 2 (01:39:45):
That is?

Speaker 6 (01:39:45):
My take?

Speaker 1 (01:39:46):
Is this all me?

Speaker 2 (01:39:47):
Ow? Jesus fucking God fucked. There's another term. But now
calling it me ow.

Speaker 1 (01:39:54):
And it's model engine optimization for the web right now? Nice?
I mean, that's a very cless And that was when
I got to what is the actual because everyone would
say AI is supercharging the way that we do advertising
and marketing. It's completely changed the game. That was the
actual specific is that we are basically replacing SEO with
model hacking, right with me? The thing is that's it,

(01:40:17):
that's that's the idea they've got.

Speaker 2 (01:40:18):
And people do say about this loot, but it's like, oh, no,
we're going to start changing articles to appeal to a
shadowy algorithm.

Speaker 1 (01:40:24):
What could possibly happen?

Speaker 6 (01:40:26):
Oh, it's like we're in a regression. It's like, oh,
what is the big new hot thing chatbots? What were
knowledge management systems doing this crap ten years ago?

Speaker 4 (01:40:36):
More?

Speaker 1 (01:40:36):
They've got data, and I some of the data I
can say is very inconsistent and not they're not representing
it accurately. Some of the data. I don't know fully
how viable those studies are, but the data does suggest that,
especially gen Z, people are very commonly using chat GPT
when they're trying to make purchases. Right, it's just new

(01:40:58):
SEM right, And so at the moment, it does seem
as if there is value for advertisers and you can
in fact drive sales this way, right, But.

Speaker 2 (01:41:09):
That's my question, is it driving sales or clicks? Because
as many years out, let's find those are not the same.
They are convinced that it's driving sales.

Speaker 1 (01:41:18):
Do we all know Gresham's law? I don't.

Speaker 4 (01:41:21):
So bad currency drives out good So Gresham's law dates
back to when Newton was the exchequer and there was
enormous debasement of the currency, and so people would like
shave down coins, they would sweat them, they would.

Speaker 1 (01:41:38):
Clip them, and that's where you literally clip a piece
off the coin. Pieces of eight you were literally break
could break into eight what is cool.

Speaker 4 (01:41:48):
So, so you have this debased currency in the in
the stream of commerce, and if you are past a
bad note, the thing that you want to do is
or a bad coin rather is pass it on to
someone else, because if you're holding onto it, then it's worthless.
And so people preferentially spend bad money and they hoard
good money, and so the bad money eventually takes over

(01:42:11):
the economy.

Speaker 2 (01:42:11):
But what does this manifest in this one?

Speaker 1 (01:42:13):
So in this in this case, what you have is
the bad driving of the good.

Speaker 4 (01:42:17):
So if you are if you have a good product
that you just list and you put on your website,
or if you have factual information. I mean, one way
that we express it more recently is the truth is
paywalled and the lies are free, right right, the bad
drives out the good over and over again. On Amazon's

(01:42:38):
so called advertising network where they So you know, when
I wrote the chapter in Incentification about Amazon advertising, which
is where they auction off search results, that was a
thirty two billion dollars a year business. It went to
a fifty eight billion dollar business. It is on target
to be over a seventy billion dollar business. It is
worth three times the annual revenue of all newspapers in

(01:43:00):
the world.

Speaker 2 (01:43:01):
And the.

Speaker 4 (01:43:04):
Winner of the auction for Amazon search results is the
company that spends the most on search result placement, which
means that they have less money to spend on either
fair pricing or product quality or both. So the top
results on Amazon are always going to be the worst products,
either the most expensive or the worst quality, or both.

(01:43:26):
And we are living through an era of Gresham's law. Right,
the bad drives out the good over and over and
over again.

Speaker 2 (01:43:33):
I think what's funny is you'll completely right. Does sound
like a hell then that.

Speaker 1 (01:43:38):
But it's like no, but and I'm very smart for
saying it. You'll not just right, you'll smum.

Speaker 2 (01:43:44):
But it's and that snazzy blazer makes you look powerful.

Speaker 1 (01:43:48):
And it's also have you considered having a Coca cola
with vanilla? I think that you might really benefit from
some Coca cola with vanilla?

Speaker 2 (01:43:55):
Right you sniffle it's non drowsy Kyle Colin I both
there in the same moment. But it's also it's the
ultimate point of that. With these llms, it's like we've
reached the precipice where it's like we can control the
search engine, the results, the everything, except they attached it
to the one thing that you're not meant to do
with a search engine, which is make it expensive.

Speaker 1 (01:44:17):
It's just a fucking well, I mean, but what they're
going what they see as the utility here. Like I've
talked a bit about Soundhounds Booth. The company makes AI
agents that are largely meant to drive sales for other people.
But one of the things I didn't bring up that
the representative very excitedly told me is that they will
be making. They are making deals with different manufacturers, with

(01:44:37):
different companies with you know, hotels, with restaurants, and they
are putting for their like in app car Assistant, they
have their own map instead of Google Maps or instead
of Apple Maps, and it will direct you to like
you can. Basically, the way it will be said is
it will only direct you to places they have a
financial relationship with. Right. So if you want a restaurant,
it will send It will put forward restaurants that have

(01:44:59):
paid them and will suggest restaurants or a mechanic that
has paid them. It will suggest when you go if
you say, oh, what is this problem with my car,
and it'll tell you, oh, you need to replace this belt,
I'll book you an appointment at the dealership. Right, would
you like to do a test drive of a new car?
And like So, there's no that that is the what

(01:45:21):
they That is what they want. They want a world
where every time anyone uses a map app, it's owned
by somebody who is Basically, if you say I need
to go to the nearest gas station, it is instead
of marketing you just the gas station, we have a
deal with the company.

Speaker 4 (01:45:35):
So I published a story where this was the plot.
In two thousand and five, it was called Human Readable.
It was publishing an anthology Byron Slowly called Future Washington's.
It's been reprinted many times since. Like, cyberpunk is a
warning and not a suggestion. Yeah, the tolment in Nexus
for bringing you say that, But I mean the cyberpunk

(01:45:56):
I was raised on but was shadow run. And I
do feel like if I had a troll friend with
a machine gun, a lot of my problems would go away.

Speaker 1 (01:46:03):
I also agree, but I will say none of this works.
Like this is the thing I understand you completely separately
from a troll with a machine gun. The troll of
the machine gun would work flawlessly.

Speaker 2 (01:46:14):
I actually think it would solve many of the problems
I have with this current absolutely, yeah, almost immediately. But
the important thing to say is these are necessary fears
and discussions that do not exist and cannot exist with
l M technology.

Speaker 1 (01:46:28):
They don't work, they do not want, and there's there's
so little thought about the seams right Like when I
was talking to that guy about their map that sends
you to places, I was like, well, what if I'm
in like a country, because he talked about it'll work
in other countries, Like what if I'm in a country
that you have no deals with any of the businesses there, right,
like because there's a lot of countries and that's like home.

(01:46:48):
Or what if I'm in the middle I live out
in the sticks. What if I'm in the middle of nowhere? Right?
And he he was confused, and it took him a
while to like figure out an answer because because he
kept saying, like, well, again, like we partner with I
was like, what if you're in partnered with anyone in
this town because it's a small town. And his answer was,
I'm sure it'll be able to like pull up companies
that we don't haven't like set up an arrangement with.

Speaker 2 (01:47:09):
And I was like, out of your base.

Speaker 1 (01:47:12):
Clearly, no one And it became clear to me no
one at SoundHound had ever thought about that.

Speaker 2 (01:47:18):
But that's because like, yes, like my mom's it's a
map app like it.

Speaker 1 (01:47:23):
Feels like it should just do that.

Speaker 2 (01:47:25):
It's forging places.

Speaker 9 (01:47:26):
Like my mother is from, like a very small town
in like rural Canada, in the middle of like Saskatchewan,
where it's it's just like prairies and farm towns and
there's not like there's not like big companies, so it's
all like locally owned, like.

Speaker 1 (01:47:39):
Snow Saskatchewan is like Canadian Texas.

Speaker 9 (01:47:42):
Yeah, it's like, is it just not gonna be able
to help me navigate anywhere from like driving to go
see my family for Christmas, and I need to like
find like a gas station.

Speaker 1 (01:47:51):
There's a crazy gas station that we have an arrangement
with sixteen hundred miles away. Yeah, the gas is what
it's worth. The tree.

Speaker 2 (01:47:57):
It's just this fly home, fly back to leave immediately.
But that's the funny thing. This is like a classic
CS theme as well. It's just like the Chloe Radcliffe. Yeah,
but why or why does this matter? Or who cares?
And they look at you like they are experiencing latency.
I went to the way they do they it looks

(01:48:17):
it looks like they're like loading.

Speaker 6 (01:48:19):
They're not.

Speaker 2 (01:48:20):
They're not expecting anyone to not want this.

Speaker 1 (01:48:23):
This is the fucking the tech press.

Speaker 9 (01:48:25):
Sorry, this is this is the funniest part about walking
through with you, Corey. You ask like very basic like
data privacy questions, and they'll just like look at you
kind of confused.

Speaker 2 (01:48:35):
They are not ready for Corey, doctor swag.

Speaker 1 (01:48:39):
I mean my questions are pretty basic. It's like where's
the data held? Where's that?

Speaker 2 (01:48:44):
Like?

Speaker 1 (01:48:44):
Can I change the battery? Computers?

Speaker 9 (01:48:46):
Very simple, like all of all of all, all of
like the battery questions, and then they'll like eventually say no,
you can't change the battery, and they'll look kind of
disappointed in themselves and it's like, oh, well.

Speaker 2 (01:48:58):
I like we talked to this woman who who had
a dog companion for old folks, which was a relatively
It was fine, it was an innocent product.

Speaker 1 (01:49:07):
Yeah, but like Jenny, it.

Speaker 2 (01:49:08):
Was she sat there and was donned they even and
was like, yeah, you know, I just think that if
I see a doll on the ground, I pick it up.
We need to just show we need to train people
to respect these things.

Speaker 4 (01:49:18):
It was a little merry condo ish, like you should
apologize to your sock.

Speaker 2 (01:49:21):
She was suggesting that, like, we need to start treating
AI better, and I would like to start this year
by saying we need to start treating AI worse. We
need to You see a fucking AI thing wants me
to anthropomorphise it. I'm gonna show h.

Speaker 4 (01:49:34):
The waimo is waiting to go straight and you're waiting
to make a left turn. Fuck the way I am
deferred to you.

Speaker 1 (01:49:40):
I am updating the Herman Garin quote to when I
hear the word chatbot, I reach for my gun.

Speaker 2 (01:49:46):
Yeah, like that's that's that's where I know what I.

Speaker 4 (01:49:49):
Had had a funny event where we were walking along
as the trade floor was shutting down, and we passed
by this booth and I saw the on their on
their very weird sign the phrase differential privacy, which is
a subject I'm very interested in. It's an obstruse mathematical
way of making uh, making data that might be non

(01:50:13):
private more private. And so I stopped and said, tell
me about your differential privacy. And then I was like,
you know about differential privacy, And I'm like, I know
a lot about differential privacy. And then he'd be proceeded
to explain his product, which was the most incoherent nonsense
I've ever heard. And they were doing so called federated learning,
so there's no federal and eventually, like it, it transpired

(01:50:35):
they want to take robot dogs and use it for
facial recognition to find people who are brawling in public.

Speaker 1 (01:50:41):
This is just mad. This is just madly that's the
definition of it. Differential privacy, though, it was. It was
genuinely nuts. Just this a bit.

Speaker 2 (01:50:51):
What does differential privacy mean?

Speaker 4 (01:50:53):
So there's this problem with data sets that you've de identified.
So say you've got like a record of everyone in
a territory who's had interacted with the hospital system, and
you replace their names with a number, and you give
it to medical researchers, and you say, go find like correlates.
Go find out what two factors correlate, Like people who

(01:51:15):
get pneumonia are more likely to have had a fall
or something. And the problem with that is that it's
very easy to reidentify these de identified data sets. So
Ben Goldacre, who has done the most important work on
this in the United Kingdom, always points out that Tony
Blair had two heart surgeries while he was in office.
We know what dates he had those heart surgeries, we

(01:51:37):
know how he.

Speaker 1 (01:51:37):
Was when he had them.

Speaker 4 (01:51:38):
So if you have a data set of a de
identified data set of all of the NHS data, you
can find Tony Blair. You just find the person who
is this age who had these two heart procedures on
these days, and that's Tony Blair, and you can follow
them through history right up to this moment. Nice and
differential privacy in ject's noise into these data sets, and
there's a kind of very elegant set of mathematic that

(01:52:00):
I do not understand that can allow you to quantify
how hard it will be to re identify someone based
on how much false information you've injected into the data set.
The more false information you inject, the less useful that
information is, but the more so it's.

Speaker 2 (01:52:16):
Like a balancing act between injective size.

Speaker 4 (01:52:21):
And so I'm I mean, it's the thing I'm interested in.
As I was saying to Ed, oh, uh, you know this,
there's a lot of wish casting here. People would really
like the identification to work because then you could do
a lot of things that would otherwise be really shitty
and make people angry to just say, oh no, we're
respecting your privacy. It probably doesn't like that. It's probably

(01:52:43):
the case that in most applications the identification uh doesn't
work even with differential privacy.

Speaker 1 (01:52:49):
But it's like when I see the words differential privacy,
you know, like I.

Speaker 2 (01:52:53):
Just feel like a very specific thing to not be doing.
And you're like, oh, yeah, what you actually.

Speaker 1 (01:53:01):
A robot could see a personally chase.

Speaker 2 (01:53:05):
Yeah, that's really where it was, it's like, how do
we chase down people of color? Yeah? This is this
is why I prefer the booths.

Speaker 9 (01:53:11):
That's that's in the same section, maybe a few booths
over in central Hall, which is I think it's a
South Korean company called dreamy Okay, oh yeah, with two weeks.
But their motto is all dreams in one dream.

Speaker 1 (01:53:24):
Hell yeah, that's beautiful.

Speaker 2 (01:53:27):
This actually reminds me I've got some really good like
names miss the Cool, doctor, Boss Astrositus, pet Goo Goo
planned Emoji Yangaroo. Uh fucking just f k I was
I was a legitimate fan of a company uh something
and fucking fucking tapo. Uh. Let's see, I've got That's

(01:53:49):
there's more. I think it.

Speaker 9 (01:53:51):
What's so representative over this? Like, I think it's so
representative of this whole cees and the whole like current
like AI smart moment is all dreams in one dream,
dream all.

Speaker 1 (01:54:04):
Dreams in one You want to go to ring, But
what if your wedding ring could tell you how to
make thermite? Here's a good one. Also tell you if
you're stressed or called, Yeah, you want someone to watch
your kid, what if that person could tell your kid
how to hang themselves.

Speaker 2 (01:54:19):
So here's a nice one that is foreign app but
could be for Lockheed Martin make your inside outside. Oh
hey good, Well that's a company called Wow.

Speaker 6 (01:54:30):
Good.

Speaker 1 (01:54:31):
I love I love the And they're usually foreign companies
who did not think about some of the implications of
their of their branding or their American name. There was
one booth I saw, and I don't know what the
company did, but I took a picture of it because
it just said making it easier to edge with AI.

Speaker 2 (01:54:50):
And there was another and I talked to him. They
had a legitimately good.

Speaker 1 (01:54:54):
Case enabled cave.

Speaker 2 (01:54:56):
I mean that exists here by the way, No, I
I wrote down in the phrase sexlesschoon cave.

Speaker 1 (01:55:01):
Well, I'm not now we're gonna have a and they're gonna.

Speaker 2 (01:55:05):
Be but I feel likes is the sexless goon cave.
It's just a bunch of activity. Oh, people are fucking
the cees. The robot with the with the with the model.

Speaker 1 (01:55:16):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:55:17):
No, there's a robot with a flesh light attack.

Speaker 1 (01:55:19):
That's nice.

Speaker 2 (01:55:20):
And so the chat bottle talk to you as you
have sex.

Speaker 4 (01:55:22):
With One of the best bits I ever saw burning
Man was this someone the bits you're gonna have to
be someone hung a hanged a flesh light from a
signpost that said public flesh light.

Speaker 1 (01:55:35):
Yeah, this dusty kind of clang and.

Speaker 4 (01:55:41):
Pendulous flashlight, just waving back and forth the wind in
the dust storm.

Speaker 2 (01:55:47):
If I saw anyone walking up, I'd be like, Oh,
you gonna go, You're gonna go. You want to get
you want to wait.

Speaker 1 (01:55:52):
Just to see if they do.

Speaker 4 (01:55:53):
It would have been that would have been a better bit,
would have been fucking the flesh the public flashlight. But
the public flashlight, it's unto itself.

Speaker 1 (01:56:00):
Was a photo op of all photo ops. I just
like the idea.

Speaker 2 (01:56:03):
If you see anyone walk up to it, you're like,
oh can I do you want to go?

Speaker 1 (01:56:06):
Yeah? No, you first, I insist.

Speaker 2 (01:56:08):
I was.

Speaker 1 (01:56:09):
I was gonna send this episode to my grandma.

Speaker 4 (01:56:12):
I talked about you fired from your talking about fleshlight
on a podcast job.

Speaker 2 (01:56:16):
I just want to be clear that the level the
one of them where it's about my dad's horny level
from last year. I mentioned it again and it was
the episode my father listened to. That's good and he
has not brought it up. He just said he liked
the episode, So that's gonna Dad very rarely on podcasts.
Do we talk about your your libido? No, privately a lot.
I honestly text me almost daily about it. Just as

(01:56:39):
nothing weird, nothing to date, Robert, just no feelings, just
completely empty.

Speaker 1 (01:56:44):
No, that's my favorite bern Art project. Corey was at
the Regional Texas burn flip side. Someone built a giant
bug zapper that was like a big like like a
like rectangular prism and they had a bunch of so
it was all metal and it was all electric, and
there were a bunch of like different little alcoves in
it that had like whippets or joints or little bags

(01:57:05):
of drugs. So in order to get drugs you had
to like navigate your way in and get electric.

Speaker 2 (01:57:10):
Kid. That is actually that is kind of what it
feels like to be a see yeah. Yeah, well like
trying to get to like anything worthwhile, but it's just
like exactly this LLM thing. Oh god, Well, as we
wrap this up, I have to thank everyone in this room.
Robert Garrison from It Could Happen Here Behind the Bastards,

(01:57:30):
You've been incredible to support of everyone here. Caul Schernad
from the Las Vegas Sun. I was about to say
the new York Sun, which is the newspaper that collapsed
when I was moving to this country.

Speaker 4 (01:57:41):
At one point claimed that they had found life on
the moon.

Speaker 1 (01:57:45):
And that's why they got shut down.

Speaker 2 (01:57:48):
They got shut down for fired for truth. I think, no,
that's that's a different guy.

Speaker 1 (01:57:53):
No, we've we've been doing so well.

Speaker 2 (01:57:54):
Of course, Edward and Guaiso Junior, thank you so much, sir,
thank you for having me.

Speaker 1 (01:57:59):
I truly love you all.

Speaker 2 (01:58:00):
You've done an incredible job, and all of you listeners
have done one to and thank you to Manasowski, the
producer of the hour, the guitarist Philip Broughton are incredible bartender.
He will be here for our epilogue tomorrow. Thank you
to every single guest we've ever had. We're also dedicating
these episodes to Sean Paul Adams, friend of the show,
past Sadley. Last year, please donate to the Pediatric Epeleepsy

(01:58:24):
Research Consortium and Corey Doctor. Of course, thank you for
joining us with you they you've been awesome. Thank you
for helping us terrorize people dunk. Yeah, it's been really great.
We'll be back next year, and of course we'll be
back next week. Got Steve Burke coming on talking about
some CS stuff and games Nexus. This is an incredible
show and we've changed the definition of what a tech
podcast could be. Almost said cod past just gonna move

(01:58:45):
right past that, wading the definition again.

Speaker 1 (01:58:47):
Yeah, there we go.

Speaker 2 (01:58:48):
Oh god, I love doing this show. Thank you all
so much. You'll get an epilogue tomorrow will be a
little more chill, but we are out. Thanks to the
City of Las Vegas.

Speaker 1 (01:58:56):
Thank with you with this. We're not in the city
of Last Vegas.

Speaker 4 (01:58:59):
We're at the Las Vegas for County, well Clark County, right,
we've established the city of Las Vegas is a are
you've never been to. On the other side of the
airport full of houses.

Speaker 1 (01:59:08):
Well, this is not a city. This is unincorporated La
County to.

Speaker 2 (01:59:12):
The Las Vegas Strip.

Speaker 1 (01:59:13):
There go, as I would say, less vomiting trash cans
than last year.

Speaker 2 (01:59:17):
Yeah you know, and you were fewer, and yes I
would I'm truly out of thanks to Gear, but thank
you to the listeners. It will come with us for
this twenty hour adventure. We will be back next week
and we'll be back next.

Speaker 1 (01:59:31):
Year as well. Thank you. Thank you for listening to
Better Offline.

Speaker 2 (01:59:43):
The editor and composer of the Better Offline theme song
is Matosowski. You can check out more of his music
and audio projects at Mattasowski dot com m A.

Speaker 1 (01:59:51):
T T O S O W s ki dot com.

Speaker 2 (01:59:56):
You can email me at easy at Better offline dot com,
or visit Better Offline find more podcast links, and of
course my newsletter. I also really recommend you go to
chat dot Where's youread dot at to visit the discord,
and go to our slash Better Offline to check out
our reddit.

Speaker 1 (02:00:11):
Thank you so much for listening.

Speaker 2 (02:00:13):
Better Offline is a production of cool Zone Media.

Speaker 7 (02:00:16):
For more from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool
Zonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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Episode Transcript

Host

Ed Zitron

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