CES 2026: Part Ten (Epilogue)

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
A Zone Media.

Speaker 2 (00:04):
Welcome to the Better Offline after party epilogue from CS.
It is like eleven am on the Saturday. We are
I actually slip pretty well weirdly, but we're all. This
is the thing we do at the end of the
show where the remaining people join us. We relax and
we have to my right, mister Philip Broughton. Hello, this

(00:27):
is our bartender for the week. Phil, You've been so
I want to give Phil immense credit for what he's
been doing all week. So the way this works, we
have the We've got the main suite, which is where
people come and they come sit down. It's got the
big daddy bedroom where I sleep, where I just kind
of like sleep or like talk to myself.

Speaker 1 (00:44):
Roll around the lot, I roll around on the floor.

Speaker 2 (00:47):
But then in the main room we have the bar
that Phil is set up and during the recordings, Phil
will come in and ferry and usually a diet coke
or a little thing of stool just close to mens cow.
Jesus crist my voice just broke down, I'm of course,
said Zi Tromp. By the way, the host of Better Offline,
and Phil has been bringing me drinks all week and
bringing everyone drinks, just kind of ferrying around the recording.

(01:10):
You wouldn't know what to hear it, but he's been
an incredible bartender.

Speaker 1 (01:13):
I finally learned how to not walk into things after
last year.

Speaker 2 (01:16):
You were pretty good. You give yourself more credit to
our left. Of course is mister Corey, doctor, activist, author, journalist. Hello,
and of course mister Edward and Grayso Junior, Hello, my friends,
my man, another year another day. Ye yeah, oh yeah,
I should really have my book written by next year. No,

(01:36):
it's we were just talking about games and relaxing after it,
because you'd think after a week long podcast we'd go
completely ape shit crazy, by which I mean I think
all of us were in bed by eleven oh yeah,
Junior and I got to go out to scheming twelve
oh one.

Speaker 3 (01:54):
Am is the plan. We're gonna We're gonna go really crazy.

Speaker 4 (01:58):
I've got I feel like I gave me a just
together people from different walks of life to party with
you tonight.

Speaker 3 (02:04):
I did see there's Avengers Doomsday.

Speaker 2 (02:07):
Now they're doing three hour, forty five minute one and
they got they got the X Men in it and
the real just ty jangling.

Speaker 4 (02:15):
Yeah, it's either gonna be okay or horrible.

Speaker 2 (02:17):
Yeah, it's going to be amazing in the sense that,
like Patrick Stewart, if Patrick Stewart does just does X
Men ship, I'm fine. But yeah, this is this is
what happens at the end of CESR. Brains are reduced
to a fine simmer.

Speaker 1 (02:32):
You're gonna do a courtesy sniff on me for Doomsday,
aren't you.

Speaker 2 (02:35):
I'm going to if I managed to watch that fucking movie,
I will actually.

Speaker 4 (02:41):
Courtesy sniff at me for the Avatar three Way fire
and ass right now, I've not seen any of the Avatar.

Speaker 3 (02:48):
Let's got a Pandora if it was.

Speaker 1 (02:51):
Literally watch it.

Speaker 3 (02:52):
It's got a Pandora.

Speaker 2 (02:53):
But no, the history of the suite is such that
Phil has been so when we first do This Week
Phil fifteen, twenty fifteen, we would have it. It was from
a PR firm. We'd all sit around, we'd have the
journalists without drinks. But died in twenty twenty because of
actually not because of the pandemic, just because we were
I think it was like there was something weird that

(03:14):
cees and then then COVID happened.

Speaker 1 (03:17):
We people were already scared of COVID at.

Speaker 3 (03:20):
C well, people were just sick, like people were ambient.
I was sick.

Speaker 1 (03:24):
I was getting a lot of questions about is this okay?
And I went well.

Speaker 3 (03:30):
Well.

Speaker 1 (03:30):
The other part of the worry is parts of China
had already locked down at that point on January, so
there were missing parts of the show which were starting
people to worry about are we okay here?

Speaker 2 (03:42):
I was also just like I got I a knock
on wood. I have done pretty well not getting sick
at CES, largely because the first few days when the
show's the most crowded, I'm massed up immediately just to
just I have my big I put my Bain mask
on and yeah, that that was a weird one. But
we brought it back last year for the first time.

Speaker 3 (04:03):
It was good. I think this is the best one. Yeah,
m hmm.

Speaker 2 (04:06):
And we were already scheming for twenty twenty seven. We've
We've got Vice president JD.

Speaker 3 (04:12):
Vansner. I'm good and good. Do you even say please?
Do you even say please?

Speaker 5 (04:20):
No?

Speaker 2 (04:20):
I it's this year. The lesson I've learned is that
I could use a slug. I could use help. I
could use them not to say I didn't have it.
I could use like an organizing document person.

Speaker 1 (04:31):
So I have physics degrees, but I can't keep up
that is what you need to do for a show.

Speaker 2 (04:35):
Also, neither could I. I was kind of putting it
together as you went. But Corey, yes, this is your
first CS in what twenty.

Speaker 6 (04:43):
Twenty, so it's two thousand and three, so twenty three
years held Discordia.

Speaker 2 (04:48):
I'm really very grateful you came out here because it
was I know that we laughed about the Amazon the
Amazon thing where you like asked the simplest questions they
freaked out.

Speaker 3 (04:57):
But it was quite nice.

Speaker 2 (04:58):
Watching you bring me in front of stuff that I
otherwise wouldn't have got excited about, like the fulln animeter
microscope and.

Speaker 6 (05:06):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I love I love the the stuff
that's kind of makery. And and then the other end
of that, which is I think we were talking about
this yesterday, the hall where you know, Chinese designers have
taken a standard board that is for a point and
shoot camera and come up with seventy five form factors
for it, and like seventy three of them are garbage

(05:28):
and two of them are just really pretty. They looked
like something you know, you'd have gotten out of a
mid century designer or something. You know, it's very striking.
If you saw it in moment, you go, well, yeah,
I get why. That's a classic.

Speaker 2 (05:39):
Yeah yeah, I and I kind of you stopped at
one point in a wall of plugs as well.

Speaker 3 (05:46):
Yeah, that was no, it was that warmed my heart.
That's my friend, Matt.

Speaker 2 (05:50):
No.

Speaker 3 (05:51):
It was just like a wall.

Speaker 2 (05:51):
Of like data set level plugs with the ones that
you'd usually put in the back of the computer.

Speaker 3 (05:56):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (05:56):
Yeah, yeah, I think that that's the the unseen magic
of CS is the well, we can complain about a
lot of things, there are still little companies doing with
little shit the side.

Speaker 6 (06:06):
Well, this is like what I was saying about the
British charger adapter, the collapsible charger yah yesterday. Is that
the stuff that you interact with every day that has
like moving parts that you have to plug and unplug,
that you know, like so much of your quality of
life is in that stuff. And you know, there's a

(06:27):
really remarkable pair of books. There's a book called The
Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman that's a design classic,
and it's this very austere book.

Speaker 3 (06:35):
Norman's a designer, and it's very.

Speaker 6 (06:37):
Steer book, a Steer book aimed at designers, saying stop
sacrificing functionality for aesthetics, and everyone read it and this
completely was it was It's impossible to overstate how important
this was in how people think about design. And like,
twenty five years later you wrote another book called Emotional Design,

(06:58):
where he's like, I.

Speaker 3 (06:59):
Was totally wrong.

Speaker 6 (07:01):
Nearly everything that you use in a high tech society
is nearly always broken, and the role of the user
is actually the troubleshooter. And to be a troubleshooter is
to be expansive. And to be expansive you can't be
frustrated and angry. When you're frustrated and angry, you tunnel
down and you just keep like clicking the button over
and over again and hoping it starts working.

Speaker 3 (07:21):
Just when you say a troubleshooter, exactly do you mame?

Speaker 6 (07:24):
Well, think about your average day right where you you
you know, plug in your computer and you try to
do a thing that you've done before, and it just
doesn't work the way it's supposed to work. You know,
the app doesn't load correctly, the little charge light doesn't
come on. Yeah, the plug doesn't work. The latch doesn't work,
something closes, something's broken, the app closes that you get

(07:45):
a weird cryptic timeout bug, you know, all kinds of thing.
I'm the last Tumbler user on Earth. But Tumblr changed
their HTML editor a few years ago, about a year ago,
and I only just figured out that the reason I
can't type in it unless I flip it to HTML
MO to write raw HTML is that the first character
you enter into it has to have style data. It

(08:06):
has to be like bold or italic, or have a
font size associated with it. So you have to copy
it out of an app that has style data, paste
it in and then and I don't know why, right,
but like now I can reliably type in the Tumblr compositor.
And that's a troubleshooting thing. Yeah, And we all do
this all day long with everything we use. And it's
not just gnarly Linux shit. It's like my LG not

(08:29):
electric stovetop, my induction stovetop.

Speaker 2 (08:32):
Exactly like the beginning of my book Why Everything Stopped Working,
coming out next year. It's I think I count to
one hundred and thirty one within the space of a
day of just shit that went wrong. Aha, Things like
I went on Reddit to try and look at someone,
but when I went to click it, the entire things
stopped responding to touch sure, or the many, the many

(08:52):
times that just my email just decides to reset itself
or Google Calendars lock me out of sorry, not just
gone like, yeah, I might look in again. And the
funniest one, by the way, I don't know any has
this happened to you? Have you logged into Google Calendar
as in like and it said log in place, you
look in and then you go to it and it
looks you out again.

Speaker 3 (09:13):
Yes, I had contysfunction instantly. Well, you don't use Google.

Speaker 6 (09:17):
I know, I use g kel because I have to
share a calendar with a bunch of heterogeny environments. But
the point being that everyone's a troubleshooter all the time. Yeah,
And if you're angry and frustrated and you're just like,
you know you've got the incipient aneurysm throbbing in your temple. Yeah,
and you know your fists are clenched and you're you've
got the you know, black halo contracting around your vision.
You can't fix stuff, Yeah, you need to be able

(09:38):
to kind of step back, Like, have you ever been
trying to cook something with a couple of friends.

Speaker 3 (09:42):
Do you cook? Yes? Yes, So you're cooking.

Speaker 6 (09:44):
Something with say a friend, and it's not quite gelling,
you know, maybe literally it's not gelling. Something's not right,
and you just like if you're kind of bopping around
the kitchen there's good music, you go taste this, What
does it need?

Speaker 3 (09:55):
Oh? Yeah, I know, maybe try a little salt. Yeah, right.

Speaker 6 (09:58):
But like if you're in a pan and you've got
ten people traveling what have you, You're trying to cook and
you're like, how do I get this to work? You're frustrated,
you're angry, it's hard to think creatively. So his point
is that beautiful things make you happy, and when you're happy,
you're a better troubleshooter. And so for things to work well,
they have to be beautiful.

Speaker 2 (10:18):
I love that because I lit my eyes immediately as
you said that. Drill to the road Coster pro too.
And I will definitely say there is a level of
like you look at it, you go, damn, I'll make
production me, mister broadcast.

Speaker 3 (10:33):
And it sounds silly, but yeah, it does kind of
make you.

Speaker 2 (10:35):
You kind of feel that you feel like a professional,
you feel like and so when shit's going well, you
kind of look at it and go, no, But I'm
a professional. I'm doing cool shit, and I know it
sounds silly, but every quote Calm mcgloughlin and twin Peaks,
every day give yourself a little present, which sometimes means
setting things up to make yourself feel a little bit.

Speaker 6 (10:54):
I love things that are quietly functional in my daily life,
so I travel a lot. So I found a cable
bag that I keep on my cables in and it
sits flat when you open it instead of tipping over.

Speaker 2 (11:07):
And I get you can just leave it on a
table and it just sits open. Lovely, Holy moly, is
that very nice?

Speaker 6 (11:14):
And obviously like a bag that sits flat is not
an innovation, right, It's like it's a thing that's existed
for someone made it into a cable bag that reminds
me so good.

Speaker 2 (11:22):
That reminds me of another one exactly like that, which
is a company called Packed Pakt.

Speaker 3 (11:27):
I love them.

Speaker 2 (11:28):
They have a slightly dodgy design in this bag, but
still it's a one that's slide It's a regular bag
that slips over your your suitcase, which, by the way,
is the worst part of it because if you pack
it too much, it's little hard to get on there.
But the killer instinct thing is it opens from the top,
not the side, so when you're when you're sliding it
under a you're on a Southwest flight like a Burbank

(11:50):
flight for example, and you need to get in there
instead of having to like get a backpack and looking
from the top the whole thing, the whole thing flips
open so you can delve into it and easily close. Again,
this sounds very minor, sure, this is the ability to
just take a gander in there and PLoP it back
in is immense.

Speaker 6 (12:10):
And it kind of explains like this is the this
is the non pathological version of everyday carry right. You
find a thing that you love that works perfectly well.
You you know, like I, I'm the kind of person
who's on the road like one hundred and hundred and
fifty days a year, and I have a fully set
up travel package, you know, with the duplicates of everything
I need to travel with and whatever, and when you

(12:33):
when you dial it all in perfectly, and the bag
is great and the accessories are great, and the way
it's organized is great, and you always you know, you
get somewhere and something's broken and you can fix it again.
I love I have a set of titanium chopsticks that
break down, and a number of times I've been able
to like eat food in a hotel room without having
to use the shitty plastic fork.

Speaker 3 (12:53):
Oh that's bloody good. I should get some I should
get some cutlery that.

Speaker 2 (12:58):
Yeah, this, yeah, this is the thing like it in
a somewhat like grim ces for not useful things, I
feel like I would. I would love a trade show
where it was just like useful shit. It's like a
bag that's great for this kind of traveler. If you
want to make the useful Shit convention, invite me. I'd
love to cover it because I would love it. They

(13:19):
need to start thinking that way with this show. I'd
love like battery Isle, I'd love it. I'd love Batteryville.

Speaker 1 (13:24):
That would be a problem with the fire Marshal.

Speaker 3 (13:28):
You would have to yes, yeah, you space map on
a plasma. Note.

Speaker 1 (13:31):
I have not had to call the fire marcial this year.

Speaker 3 (13:33):
You haven't had to call them in years. You didn't
call them last year.

Speaker 1 (13:37):
I didn't call them last year either, and for the
previous four years I didn't because we weren't here.

Speaker 3 (13:42):
Yes, yes, every year.

Speaker 2 (13:44):
Yeah, yeah, there was that prolonged period where it's like, hey, Phil,
we found a completely functional laser on that and you're
like which kind and they were like, well.

Speaker 1 (13:53):
MRI, the MRI in the middle of the electronics show
the worst.

Speaker 3 (13:57):
I think, that's how the fuck did they even get
that in.

Speaker 1 (13:59):
Because I never told anyone and then rolled it onto
the floor in good time.

Speaker 3 (14:02):
Yeah, the perfect crime.

Speaker 1 (14:05):
You know, unlicensed medical use on random passers bybe and
destroying of adjacent electronics.

Speaker 6 (14:12):
And it's a long tradition, right, the World's Fairy used
to be able to go and have your feet fluoroscoped,
and the shoe sales.

Speaker 1 (14:19):
You didn't have to wear the World's Fair.

Speaker 3 (14:20):
We just went to your local market. Quick question, what's
a florist scoop? It's an X ray, so you used.

Speaker 6 (14:25):
So it used to be very common to sell shoes
by putting your feet in a pair of shoes and
then putting your foot in an X ray.

Speaker 1 (14:31):
And then you can say, look how good your kid's
foot fits in there.

Speaker 6 (14:34):
Not for a brief exposure, right, you leave it running
like a radiographically guided injection. You would leave it running
for ten twenty seconds and the shoe fitting sales person
or longer. Yeah, would be just like continuously bombarded it.

Speaker 2 (14:49):
Right watching x ray TV, Phil as an expert in
this kind of thing, How bad was that and why so?

Speaker 1 (14:56):
It was a remarkable amount of dose to the foot,
primarily of children, so you don't really want to drop
dose on kids. But the worst and most exposed were
the workers in the shoe store who are continually doing it.
And also, more to the point, the way they had
built it is the X ray generator shut through your

(15:16):
foot to the developing screen towards the lens for your face,
so that you could see how good your shoes were instantly.
We still use fluoroscopes. They are medical and they are
the majority of the dose that doctors and nurses take.

Speaker 3 (15:36):
Getting radiographically guided injection.

Speaker 1 (15:38):
They it's so they don't stab you or put the
drugs where it shouldn't go.

Speaker 6 (15:44):
They are good into your face at joint or whatever
that has a person with a lot of medical things.
I've had a lot of radiographically guided procedures.

Speaker 1 (15:51):
They're useful, but you don't want to use them for
bullshit like shoes.

Speaker 2 (15:56):
Yeah, Yeah, that's that is some classic human that they
were just like, we're going to fit shoes on his X.

Speaker 3 (16:03):
Right. If it's hard.

Speaker 1 (16:05):
You can still find them in remote stores in Appalachia,
but if you want to see one in person, there
was one on display at the Bradbury Museum that they
have now equipped with digital cameras to simulate the effect
of what the floral unit for shoes used to be.
Like Jesus, it's one of those they seriously did this. Yeah, yeah,

(16:28):
they really.

Speaker 2 (16:28):
I'm not surprised anymore when I hit anything like that.
I'm I'm honestly, I'm shocked. They haven't had a ghost
gun problem here. I'm shocked. Okay, think about it.

Speaker 1 (16:38):
With the dad came to the floor in a prior year. Yep,
what really three D printing of firearms with oh.

Speaker 3 (16:45):
The three D printing. It also came to his name
got busted for Yeah, oh god what it's a deep
dark industry.

Speaker 2 (16:57):
Yeah, you've got you've got the horrifying billionairess who were
just talking about the fourteen words, and then you've got
the macers.

Speaker 1 (17:04):
Printing them on their three D gun.

Speaker 3 (17:06):
Yeah.

Speaker 6 (17:07):
I mean, this was a guy who heard the phrase
hard cases make bad law, and he was like, I've
got a hard case. I'll make it because we were
trying to figure out like our STL files, you know.
So there's this principle in law that we established in
nineteen ninety two when we sued the NSA for civilian
access to crypto, which is that code is a form
of expressive speech covered by the First Amendment right, and
so prior restraint on the publication of code is unconstitutional.

(17:28):
It was narrowed in another case about the magazine twenty
six hundred, but it's still a bedrock principle code of speech.
And then it's like, well, our STL file speech, I
mean their code right, and ideally what you'd want to
have it about is something that has some nexus with
privacy or political activity, like protected activity. And this guy

(17:49):
was like, no, I'm going to just start with guns
because I think Second Amend went weirdos will have my back,
which is probably true, but also like the court is
gonna go okay, but like, if we rule in favor
of this, you got you're making guns at home? Uh
that I feel like that's a I the judge feel

(18:11):
a little uncomfortable about it. So he was really he
was like, let's roll the dice on the entire idea
that code's speech on my folk theory about guns and
whether Second Amendment weirdos will be able to sway the court. Ah,
and it sort of all fell apart because he had
sex with a minor.

Speaker 3 (18:28):
Right, Yeah, that's the There was.

Speaker 1 (18:32):
A previous terrifying trip to Vegas where sit on the
floors of the floor of Caesars. We were playing craps.
You had wandered off to bed, and I ran into
a former student from one of my classes who was
so excited to see it was a hit Phil and
he was deck to the nines, heavy gold rings, clearly
doing way better than I've seen it when he'd been

(18:53):
laid off from.

Speaker 3 (18:54):
NU me and you're doing what is numi?

Speaker 1 (18:58):
Uh the it's now the Tesla plant in Fremont. Formerly
it was a cooperative between GM and Toyota that gave
birth to Saturn, Right, but it folded and now it's
Tesla and Elon bought it and that became their first factory.
But I saw that student who had been working in
all of the support machine shops that ring knew me

(19:23):
bad economics, but he was looked like he was doing good.
Linked out from green Land, and I asked, how you doing.
He said, you have no idea how great it is
to be able to just print lowers and uppers left
right center.

Speaker 3 (19:36):
So he was a gun.

Speaker 1 (19:37):
He reached out into his pocket and said here, I
got a fresh one, and just handed me a lower
No thanks, and on the floor of the casino, the state.

Speaker 2 (19:46):
Uninitiated and through my very low gun knowledge, the loa
is the part that actually makes a gun a gun, right, Like,
that's that's the part that that is the actual thing
that you require to make a gun shoot boom boom.

Speaker 1 (19:58):
And it absolutely serial numbers. And it was which he handed.

Speaker 2 (20:02):
Me a fo you were required to put a serial
number on a loa. Yeah, I'm saying this because I
know sometimes I get the occasional email saying hey, you
keep posting things out. The one thing, the one rule
Sophie and Robert gave me was to be like, yeah,
what's that mean?

Speaker 3 (20:18):
Say what this means? Say what this means?

Speaker 2 (20:20):
Because of wis no one knows anything, including me, But
that's fucking insane.

Speaker 7 (20:24):
This person was just Vegas baby.

Speaker 6 (20:37):
So as a Canadian, I have a piece of gun
lore for everyone. And I learned from John McDonald or
Jim McDonald rather is a science fiction writer ex military
writes military science fiction very well regarded, and he said,
when you write science fiction with a gun in it,
or any fiction with a gun in it, someone out
there who really cares about guns will find something that
you said that was wrong and they'll make fun of you.

(20:59):
If you to avoid this, you just need to know
one word modified And if you say he opened fire
with his modified whatever walter p PK, no matter what
it is, you then make the gun do The person
out there who's a you know, amosexual musket fucker is
going to be is going to be so interested in

(21:23):
figuring out what modification you thought of to make this gun?
Do this, And the weirder it is, the cleverer they'll
think you are going like, I figured out the cool
thing you thought of?

Speaker 3 (21:34):
Am I right? It's kind of like this is a
very specific reference.

Speaker 2 (21:39):
There's a show called Reapa where Ray Wise from Twin
Peaks was the devil and it's kind of like how
they play a game of coin flip I think it is,
and they use a reflection on the on the tabletop
to distract the devil because the devil is distracted by
his own reflection. You need a key jingle for the
musket fuckers, the homosexual musket fuckers. That's that's a good one,

(22:01):
but also that's so far.

Speaker 3 (22:02):
I know. I mean with my work.

Speaker 2 (22:04):
When I'm doing my AI stuff, my favorite thing is
like someone will take one of my shorter pieces so
they're like twenty nine thousand ones, and we'll say like,
this guy doesn't know shit, and they will find one
fucking line and they'll be like, look on that, and
it will be the weirdest, smallest thing. And I'll always
be like, so, can you be specific about what this changes?

(22:25):
They block me. They block me every time. And actually
there was a so there is a beer. This is
a random side.

Speaker 1 (22:31):
But this make rough lines, LARPers or sickos.

Speaker 3 (22:34):
Well, no, this is I got sent very fun one.

Speaker 2 (22:36):
So there's this guy on Twitter, real horrible website Buco
capital bloke who is like a weirdly popular guy, and
he deleted this tweet, but an egleo i'd reader caught it.
He said, conflict it because if the AI trade blows up,
then take Kim's head explodes, which would be very funny.
But then exitual will be right and that would not
be funny at all. And I just to be just

(22:58):
to be clear, this would be the funniest situation because
that guy deleted it and thinks I didn't get it.

Speaker 3 (23:03):
Sadly, I got the screen show it's going to be
a great it's going to be a great year for
stuff like that.

Speaker 2 (23:08):
I don't know about the rest of the world, but yeah,
this actually Corey back to the ghost gun stuff, what
happened with all that because I don't remember, yeah, I
mean it just that, yeah, I mean a specific guy,
but I mean.

Speaker 3 (23:22):
I don't remember what happened to Defense Distributed. I don't.

Speaker 6 (23:26):
Yeah, I don't think we've had a case that was
litigated to final judgment about the legality of shape files.
I mean the legality of the gun itself is pretty established, right,
but that's good shape files and and look, I just
I do think that making geometry illegal is dumb. Yes,
you know, as a like a person who would throw
all the guns into the sea or whatever. Yeah, yeah, yeah, right,

(23:48):
I still think making geometry illegal is dumb.

Speaker 2 (23:50):
And also yeah, at that point you can't build things, Yeah,
you can't three D print at all.

Speaker 6 (23:56):
And also impractical, right, because like what are you actually
going to do because there are so many ways to
express a file that will be that shape because STLs
can express logic, right, I think it'd be parametric. So
you can, like, for example, you can have a shape
file for a key, like a door key, and there
are variables you can set in the shape file for

(24:20):
where you want the teeth and how deep they're going
to go. So it's it's a it is a programmable
piece of descriptive code. And so there are like an
infinitude of ways you could write a program in the
STL description language that would that would emit the illegal geometry.
So how do you police the illegal geometry?

Speaker 3 (24:43):
You know?

Speaker 6 (24:44):
It just it just feels like if it's it's one
thing to make a law that says something is illegal,
it's another thing to make a law. And even if
that thing is bad and you want to extinguish it,
but if you have no way to administer that law,
you are setting yourself up either for heartbreak or for
something really bad where you just run around and you
ques everyone having broken the law, because no one can
ever tell who's broken the law and who hasn't. Like,

(25:04):
administerability is the single most important factor in policy design because.

Speaker 3 (25:11):
And just administability means being able to do can you
administer it? Can you figure out whether someone's violated it? Right?

Speaker 6 (25:17):
So to bring this to the internet, are there a
lot of people who are very angry and I think
rightfully so about harassment and hate speech on the platform.
But a hate speech regime is very hard to police
because you have a common definition of hate speech. You
have to evaluate whether a given piece of speech rises
to the definition. You have to make a technical determination
about whether the firm took reasonable technical steps to address

(25:38):
the hate speech. And you know, this is an offense
that occurs on the platform one hundred times a minute,
but it's a question that takes five years to adjudicate.
So this it's just not a good You know, there
are other fact intensive regimes in law, like like probate law, right,
but it's fine because the average person dies one or
fewer times, and so the fact that it takes a

(25:59):
minute to figure out what to do when they die
not a big deal.

Speaker 3 (26:03):
But I'm build different. You never say, but I'm going
to die three times.

Speaker 6 (26:07):
But you know, you could imagine another regime where like
if you I don't know, if you're a maskeet on user,
but in no so in mastet on, there's this feature.
It's a beautiful piece of design where if you want
to go from one masted on server to another, because
you can access mast it on from a lot of
different services run by lots of different people, you click
a link and it exports all of your data about
who you were following and who is following you, and

(26:29):
then you click another link on the news server and
it imports it and then just all that stuff moves over.
So we could say to Elon Musk, like, yeah, we're
still going to have some standards for a hate speech
and whatever, or we're going to worry about whether your
your chatbot is shitting out child pornography. But at the
same time, what we're going to do is create is
create a mandate that you give people the data they

(26:50):
need that if they leave Twitter and go to another server,
they can still talk to the people they left behind
on Twitter. Because that way, if you don't like the
way you're being treated on Twitter, you can leave one
second later. And then this is very easy to administer
because say you know you're running the server and I
leave the server and I don't get my file from you.
I go to the regulator, and the regulator comes to

(27:12):
you and says, look, I know you told me that
you gave Corey his file. He says, you didn't give
it to him. I don't care who's right who's wrong.
Give it to me and I'll give it to him right,
And then you just resolve the whole question. So you
could have like one person administering this policy for a
billion users, and then they could all just leave the
platforms where they're being abused without having to pay a
high switching cost. By exiting a community that means something

(27:33):
to them, customers or audience members or family members or
people are the same way disease as them that they're
in a support group with, they could continue to talk
with those people.

Speaker 3 (27:42):
Yeah.

Speaker 6 (27:43):
So this is a very administrable remedy. It's much more streamlined.
It actually solves a great deal of the problem. It's
not as good as eliminating hate speech. But I don't
think you can.

Speaker 2 (27:56):
I just I feel like with some of these platforms,
I'm not talking about Blue Scyt, but the original the
original Twitter problems of like slurs, for example, and it's
like you can't unilaterally ban them. Sure, other than the
fact you could kind of lean that way, I feel
like you could be like you will have to have
a little more nuanced than that. You will have to
but I feel like starting from there and working back,

(28:17):
I'm sure you'll push back on this is just they
usually go the other way. It's like, well, let people do,
everything will work out later. I just feel like it's
just a half fss attitude. I run the better offline
reddit with a dread hand. Yeah in the sense, but
I think the beautiful but the smaller communities you could
do that.

Speaker 3 (28:34):
With a large social network you can't.

Speaker 6 (28:36):
And you understand the context, right, like the understanding the
difference between and then I called him this slur and
made him really sad. Ha ha ha, and uh then
I got called the slur and I was sad, please
come and give me comfort. Requires a lot of context knowledge,
and you know, oftentimes the people using the slurs are
like that's their hobby and they're really good at, you know,

(28:58):
working the ref and so it's much more common that
they're figuring out how to use the slur in a
way that doesn't get them kicked off and getting the
people they're using the slur agains kicked off for complaining
about it.

Speaker 2 (29:09):
Yeah, and the classic one being like reporting people for
death threats, but it's it's friends being like I'm gonna
kill you man. That's not the classic. Like, I don't
know how social networks still fall for this shit, but
it's like they will be the the people doing lighthearted
stuff that get banned, and then the people with the
fourteen words and saying eighty eight gets get to keep around.

Speaker 3 (29:31):
I'm boasted, I really.

Speaker 2 (29:33):
I am excited to see though, how the world reacts
to Twitter becoming the c SAM generator, because if kiss
Starmer fucking bans X, that'd be the funniest thing I've
seen in my fucking He won't do it.

Speaker 3 (29:46):
It doesn't have a spine.

Speaker 4 (29:48):
Have you been seeing this came up on my V
today that the right and the left in the UK
having dueling protests about who hates Kiers Starmer more.

Speaker 3 (29:59):
Oh? Yeah, that that is you know.

Speaker 2 (30:01):
What, that's the most That's the most British thing I've
ever heard.

Speaker 3 (30:06):
We although we don't agree about.

Speaker 4 (30:08):
His humor is called we know we hate Kis Starmer
more than you, So British.

Speaker 2 (30:13):
That's the most British thing I've ever heard in my life.
But no, and then someone's gonna have a protest saying
that we shouldn't have a protest about.

Speaker 3 (30:21):
Anything that we need, like at least four more protests.

Speaker 2 (30:24):
It's the fucking bit for the People's Front of Judea
from Life of Brian. I love that, I don't love
kiss Darma. Not gonna lie doesn't seem to it. I
didn't know that we could get a conservative, labor conservative,
just the guy who's like, no one's happy.

Speaker 3 (30:41):
He doesn't really have policies.

Speaker 6 (30:42):
Yes, it's again lowest approval ratings of any prime minister
since measurement began. He has a lower approval rating than
Boris Johnson during the pandemic, after it was discovered that
he was having parties while everyone else was lockdown nine.

Speaker 3 (30:55):
He did it for funerals.

Speaker 6 (30:57):
We found the least popular, and Rachel Reeves is even
less popular than his.

Speaker 3 (31:02):
What about there's a May.

Speaker 6 (31:05):
Less popular than Theresa May, less popular than Liz Trust.

Speaker 2 (31:08):
Yeah, it was just about Oh my fucking goun Now
I'm gonna say I hate the Lettus thing.

Speaker 3 (31:13):
I hate the Lettus thing so much. It's the most.

Speaker 2 (31:16):
Boring, corny, wanky sh quirk youngus bullshit from the UK.
We're a country where we used to have when spitting
image used to have teeth and it wasn't just like
Boop and Bow doing home Homer Like that's actually that
really bothered me. I heard of a spitting image thing
the other day, which is this puppet show in England
where they do like political stuff, and all it is

(31:36):
now is just like outright homophobia.

Speaker 3 (31:38):
It's just like what is Trump? Was good? Who have true?
Did mere fucking laymark pieces as ship?

Speaker 1 (31:45):
We're a long way from the Land of Confusion video.

Speaker 2 (31:47):
Yeah, and god but it's I can't believe kissed is
that unpopular though? But actually the only thing that labor
does reliably is produced people that are less popular than
the conservative because it's just like, well the Conservatives, we'll
give a live in and they're like, right, historic fumble,
historic football every fucking when you watch like Gordon Brown

(32:09):
and you're like, god, I miss him, you know things.

Speaker 4 (32:12):
My boy Corbyn win in Oh yeah.

Speaker 6 (32:16):
He is also screwing up very badly. What's interesting, you know? Yeah,
all what the fuck is?

Speaker 5 (32:22):
What?

Speaker 3 (32:22):
You know? The Greens are circling.

Speaker 6 (32:25):
So after World War Two there was a there was
a reboot of British politics. The Liberal Party collapsed, so
a party that had been around forever, the Whigs, just
ceased to exist. Labor came into existence. That was happening
to the Conservatives as of the last election, and the
Reform Party we're about to basically scoop up all the
Conservative voters who didn't like the way that the party

(32:46):
was being run. But it looks like it's also happening
to Labor. Yeah, and there is there are two potential
places where the left is going to go. The Greens
have not been great historically. They've had a lot of
bad policies. They were into homeopathy for a while whatever.
But they have got a terrific new leader, Zak Polanski,
who is basically young, charismatic Corbin interesting, and Corbin himself is.

Speaker 3 (33:08):
Not charismatic Crown and.

Speaker 6 (33:12):
Just very bad at organizing, and Polanski's an organizer. I'm
very bullish on the British Greens.

Speaker 2 (33:18):
That'd be nice. I mean, we did lose Scott Galloway. Sorry,
we've got they sent Scott Galloway there. I mean like
they sent Scott Galloway to England. I thought or maybe
he moved from England to Florida. I can't remember which
direction they sent that piece to Florida. Yeah, that's okay.
By the way, just want to just a completely blunt statement,
if you move from England to Florida, they should put

(33:41):
you on the list.

Speaker 3 (33:42):
I know what you are.

Speaker 1 (33:43):
Yeah, as a Floridian, we have a very long tradition
of accepting the garbage of the world and making it
our own.

Speaker 2 (33:50):
It's like the Staten Island to Florida thing, except it's
not just because you're old and hate everyone. It's because
you're horny and a new way they haven't quite identified.

Speaker 3 (34:00):
Yeah, but you're welcome. Check that out.

Speaker 2 (34:02):
Yeah, the male loneliness crisis is solved in Palm Beach, Florida,
isn't it.

Speaker 1 (34:07):
No, it's Ebor City, is it.

Speaker 3 (34:09):
What's that?

Speaker 1 (34:10):
Because even Tampa and has a place they need to
make mistakes.

Speaker 3 (34:14):
I thought that that was just Tampa.

Speaker 1 (34:16):
Now even Tampa has the place to go to go
make life errors. Yeah, and that is Ebor City.

Speaker 3 (34:23):
God.

Speaker 2 (34:24):
Yeah, I'm And as we look into this year, I
gotta admit I realized things are quite bad and things
are going to get a lot more chaotic. But I
think the chaos is necessary. Coming out of this week.
All I can feel in my gut is like destruction
from this show. Not literally, but this feels like a

(34:46):
reckoning of Like, Corey, you'll have some good historical knowledge
of like twenty years of hubris in the tech industry,
of moving away from we made a thing that people
could use towards Actually, random question, Corey, you ever read
the case for the Startup by Ben Horwitz? It was
a PC roade actually before software is eating the world,
Horrowitz even it was basically saying the worst thing hell

(35:11):
was having a startup that was not the leader in
the market.

Speaker 3 (35:13):
I know this. I've not read the paper, but I've
heard it described.

Speaker 2 (35:17):
It's just it's a it's a guy one of the
Horowitz of Andres and Horowitz early on twenty ten, I think,
and I think ever since then, we have been leading
to this point where you chase out the companies that
are like, Okay, we'll build something cool and we'll compete
in a market, and you'll chase them out in favor

(35:37):
of companies like we will win the market, even if
it means changing the market materially, even if it means
using means such as and to monopolistic tendencies, or just
race to the bottom, or using funding to chase people
out uber to your point ed, and I think what
we're seeing this CEES is what happens when you just
chase growth. Because the thing about all these companies is, yeah,

(36:00):
you can judge them, and you should judge them, and
they fucking suck. And I think all of these LLM
rappers deserve gone the trash along with their founders. But
at the same time, it's like scorpion the frog. It's
when you incentivize bringing things to a show that do
not exist, when you give them awards, when you write
them up and act like they're real year after year,

(36:21):
regardless of whether the fucking thing actually exists. Of course
you're going to get a CES predominantly made of things
that don't and that things that exist only to get
invested in from the normally people who came here like
Chloe Redgcliff to the extremely technical people like Corey. It's
the same thing of like, this is just a company
that's here to jingle the keys in front of the
investors or the not even the buyers, just investors invest

(36:44):
in me or in front of the press. And I
think in this next year, we're going to see what
happens when you do that everywhere, and we're going to
see the collapse of these AI startups that never had
a point and we're never built for anything other than
selling to someone else or dumping onto the public markets.

Speaker 3 (37:00):
Except none of them can chase that, all the smart
people in favor of people you can't count.

Speaker 6 (37:06):
So I think if you want to identify something over
twenty years that's monotonically increased, it's the way that it
comments are able to block new market entry. So you know, historically,
if you're going to make something new, you would make
it work with the thing that already existed. You know,
canonical example, like when we opened up AT and T

(37:27):
after the breakup in nineteen eighty two, the modem just
plugged into their shit, right. You didn't need to make
a phone network, You just needed to make a modem, right,
and that everything exploded and that happened, right. It's sometimes
called permissionless innovation. Sometimes it's called disruption. Both of those
terms have got into bad odor. But you know this

(37:47):
idea that you don't create a market denovo, you raid
the high margin lines of sclerotic you know, legacy companies
that are dominating the market. And you you, you know,
this is what Jeff Bezos said to the publishers when
he launched Amazon. Infamously, he went to a boardroom full
of publishers and he said, your margin is my opportunity, right,

(38:10):
so you take those high margins, you make them your opportunity.
And so when AT and T gets broken up and
they lose the ability to control what you plug into
the phone jack, we see modems, we see an explosion
of answering machines PBX. It's just all this stuff that
is just like built layered on top of the existing stuff.
But you can't do that anymore, you know. In Facebook launch,
they had this problem that everyone who could have used

(38:31):
Facebook had a MySpace account, and so he gave you know,
Zuck gave everyone who had a MySpace account a bot
that you fed your MySpace credentials to and it would
go to MySpace several times a day and impersonate you,
scrape everything waiting for you and put it into your
Facebook feed. It then you could reply to it, right,
so you didn't have to choose between your friends and
superior service. Facebook's initial pitch was We're like Myspaceboar were

(38:54):
not run by an evil billionaire and we never spy
on you.

Speaker 3 (38:56):
Thank god.

Speaker 6 (38:57):
Yeah, uh and thank god. And so you could have this.
You could eat your cake and have a two. And
you know, you do this to Facebook, they will nuke
you till you glow. It's not technically challenging, and it's
not hard to think of cool things to do, so
you know. Twenty twenty four, there was a startup from
two teenagers called og app say almost the same thing.
You gave it your Insta credentials. It logged in as you,

(39:20):
It grabbed everything Insta had waiting for you. It discarded
all the suggestions, all the ads, all the recommendations, all
the boosted content, and all the clickbait, and showed you
things from people you followed from in reverse chronological order.
Right and oh the Facebook I want Yeah, And that
day it hit the top ten of both app markets
and that night met us at a takedown notice to

(39:41):
Apple and Google and they removed it.

Speaker 3 (39:43):
Nice, and that's that's they won't remove x though. Sure no,
but that's no.

Speaker 6 (39:49):
But there's honor among thieves exactly, yeah, yeah, no, No,
these guys are not really competitors they all sat behind
Donald Trump.

Speaker 2 (39:56):
On the dayas But that's the thing though, the egregious
of that is large language models, hear me out. So
none of these companies can be run on cash flow
doing the bit. But you can't compete with open AI.
You can't compete with Anthropic. You can't because the train
these models requires that at best, millions and millions and

(40:16):
millions and millions of dollars and access to infrastructure at
a scale. What I mean, if you want to compete
with them, you need hundreds of millions of dollars, and
you need the talent a big capital mote, well the
capital mote, but also the talent mode sure, and the
RSU mode.

Speaker 3 (40:31):
They can just offer stock. So it's impossible to enter there.

Speaker 2 (40:34):
But even as an AI startup, you can't compete with
the venture capital industry.

Speaker 3 (40:38):
There is no scrappy AI startup.

Speaker 2 (40:41):
Sure you can say, oh, well we've got you know,
we scrape by with how much hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Speaker 3 (40:46):
I think you're right.

Speaker 6 (40:47):
I think AI has got formal characteristics that make it
attractive to VC, and one of them is that it
looks like it tends towards a winner. Take all market,
which is the thing VC's very obviously loved. This is,
you know, zero to one, all of those all the
VC nonsense.

Speaker 3 (41:02):
I think.

Speaker 6 (41:02):
The other one is that the jobs that they think
AI will take our capital p professional jobs in the
sense that a professional is someone, yeah, a professional, someone
who's bound to a code of ethics that not only
permits them but requires them to tell their boss to
fuck off if their boss asks them to do something
that's not moral. And so you have this whole class

(41:22):
of people teachers, nurses, rad techs, you know whatever, who
are like obliged to say fuck off to their bosses.
And no wonder they're having such an easy time selling
this otherwise vaporous technology because bosses have been furiously fantasizing
about firing everyone who's allowed to tell them to fuck
off since the idea of a profession emerged. And so,

(41:45):
you know, you have all these different formal characteristics. The
winner take all dynamic, we fire all the people who
get to tell us to fuck off dynamic, you know,
like it's very exciting.

Speaker 1 (41:54):
And the fight to maintain the codes of ethics. It
also often t ching students that this is why I
demand this of them, and why they should demand it
for themselves may often be the first time they've ever
heard for the concept of a code of ethics, which

(42:15):
is depressing, but also it warms my heart for I
get to be the person who teaches you to care
about yourself.

Speaker 2 (42:23):
The thing is, though, I also think there's something quite simple,
which is all of that's true, and none of these
people know what their people actually do, like the people
they want to the people they want to fire, they
truly do not understand what it is they do. Like
I'm going to choose like a random public business inside
all of the layoffs they did there, and it's like, oh,
well replace them with AI.

Speaker 3 (42:44):
Well we won't. That didn't work.

Speaker 2 (42:48):
But you know we're going to say we're AI first.
What does that mean? Well, I can't really stop asking
so many fucking questions you ask everyone around here talking

(43:10):
about worker replacement and that This is the thing that
actually drives me the craziest all the time. It's the
people like, yeah, work a replacement, worker replacement, Have you
fucking used one of them? They don't work. They just
don't work. They don't work. Occasion, I'll see someone on
Twitter be like my my wife who's a special doctor
at the most genius Hospital New York City. She put

(43:32):
in a thing and it came up with a differential
diagnosis that usually and it's just fuck off, you fucking
lying second shit. Ah, And it's but everyone I've been
talking to this week outside of this room, of course,
who talks about worker replacements like yeah, and you know,
of course right now it's replacing workers where well, I
think coders are you need to.

Speaker 6 (43:54):
Differentiate between the AI can do your job and an
a salesman can convince your bastard fiery replace that's that
can't do your That's the point, that's exactly it.

Speaker 2 (44:02):
It's like they say, it's almost like they find actually
know that's it. They finally created an economy where you've
come out like efficacy or like what a thing does
to just like finally we create a thing for salespeople
to sell to CEOs.

Speaker 3 (44:16):
No one knows what's going on with.

Speaker 2 (44:18):
The actual product, whether it works, whether it's good or bad,
just like the vibes baby.

Speaker 4 (44:24):
But then also there are bosses who could give less
of a fuck about whether it works or not. They
know that what their headcount reduction for the year house
to be. Yeah, and they're just gonna be like, well, hey,
you know what, I yeah, I can do this. You
know Microsoft, for example, aren't they They're like rumored to
be doing a massive layoffs again, and then they keep
doing layoffs every single year.

Speaker 3 (44:45):
Why they do them? They just fucking the well.

Speaker 2 (44:49):
Actually, Microsoft I think has genuine brain madness though, because
I talk to people that I have a ton of mine.
If your work for Microsoft always reach out? Is it
a better off lining dot com?

Speaker 3 (44:57):
Is it fro?

Speaker 2 (44:58):
I'm not seventy six in the signal. It's funny every
time I hear from them. I never hear from anyone
who's like, I fucking love this. AI is actually huge.
It's always people being like my product manager, who does
not appear to do any work, has told me that
AI and Copilot must be used, and it's just it's
people again, senior people too, being like, I don't know

(45:18):
what the fuck is going on with Jay Perig's other
at Microsoft. Real Loser Guy went from a company called
move Works, which was famous for buying thirty thousand dollars
worth of Lululemon gift cards to give to people to
buy their software, went to Meta, then went to Microsoft
to run Ai. It's just like there are these business
idiots who bounce around and just go AI, baby, we're here,

(45:38):
it's time, And then the sales team goes out tries
to sell it, and they're like, yeah, it turns out
that people want something that works, that actually does the job,
and you keep saying it's digital labor, but that it
don't don't do that at all. And it gets back
to the point I was making. It's like, we're at
the natural end point when you start removing the product
from the sale.

Speaker 3 (45:58):
Sure.

Speaker 6 (45:59):
I have a bit of a little Lemon trivia for
the guy who found a little lemon giant piece of
shit Iron ran worshiping libertarian edge Lord.

Speaker 3 (46:06):
Yep.

Speaker 6 (46:06):
The reason he called it Lululemon. He thought it would
be fun to hear Japanese tourists in Vancouver try and
say lemon, so he picked a word with as many
l's in it as possible.

Speaker 3 (46:15):
I fucking hate that so much.

Speaker 6 (46:18):
He also had no fact checks policy for quite some time.
It's like, no, we don't do plus sizes, no fact
checks policy. What is this platform of the newsletter?

Speaker 1 (46:29):
Checks?

Speaker 3 (46:29):
Not fact checks? Fat checks?

Speaker 2 (46:31):
Oh my bad, Yes, I really misheard that one. It's
usually usually the other way around. I'll say something in
an America, Sorry Canadian won't understand.

Speaker 1 (46:41):
Do you like to go to the Pond Store?

Speaker 3 (46:43):
No, we're not talking about Bawn Stars. I would.

Speaker 2 (46:46):
I'm serious if I could get Chum Lee from that
show on this.

Speaker 3 (46:51):
Prison is he in jail?

Speaker 1 (46:54):
You may have had a teensy bit of a cum problem.

Speaker 2 (46:57):
I mean, I hate to say it, but look at him.
Then listen to every tour and look, yeah, yeah Jimmy, no, no, no, no, no,
none of that. Yeah, It's gonna be an interesting year
because I just think it's a reckoning of every like
the twenty years of dumb fuck decisions, the Iraq War,

(47:18):
the DHS, and then the venture capital era. I think
the venture capital era is coming to an end. I'm
not saying VC will go away, but I don't think
people add a six things.

Speaker 4 (47:27):
He just raised their biggest fun and they get their return.
They're gonna make the tech industry multiples larger.

Speaker 2 (47:33):
The funniest thing I saw though, was someone posting about, Wow,
look how great Andrew says. Look at these vintages and
they stop at twenty seventeen. I'm just like, ah, yeah,
look how good this is and as we was, we
all know the time stopped.

Speaker 3 (47:47):
Listen. I believe in cone Hen. I think he can
do anything he sets that point to. It's the thing like,
even he can be wrong.

Speaker 2 (47:54):
And the whole thing, the whole reason that vcs like
that have done well is not because of them being geniuses,
is because when the really obvious things that will obviously sell,
they just go to them first. They just go and
or at a later round or Yeah, they will always
know that they can get in there and that company
will help.

Speaker 4 (48:12):
That's a big thing of theirs is that you know,
if you fuck up and you don't get in on
the winner, then get in on the winner on the
next round and crowd everyone out.

Speaker 3 (48:19):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (48:20):
And the thing is, though venture capitals running out of money,
fifteen billion dollars go to Andresen Horowitz.

Speaker 3 (48:27):
That's going to drain it from all the other people
that need it. The thing is is why the fuck
they're going to sell these stops to Aquaman? Like what's
going on?

Speaker 6 (48:34):
See, I think there's so much money to be made
out there if we can.

Speaker 3 (48:37):
Unlock the silos.

Speaker 6 (48:40):
Right, So, like just think about some of those fast
adopted technologies in the history of the world like the VCR, right,
people love home recording. We don't have VCRs anymore because
it's illegal to break DRM. So it's still legal to
record shows. It's just every show that arrives in your house,
either rise by streaming, cable or satellite. They're all encrypted.
It's against the law of break the encryption. Because of
the DMCA, the recording is legal, the breaking the encryption

(49:01):
to do the recording isn't.

Speaker 3 (49:04):
Who who would not like?

Speaker 6 (49:06):
I think you could sell every person in America a
PVR for streaming, Well, just like recording.

Speaker 3 (49:12):
Recording the stuff you watch.

Speaker 6 (49:15):
So you know everyone's like, oh, I hate streaming because
they take away the shows I love. You should just
record them. You should just record them the way you
did off your television. It is legal and exactly the
same way it was legal.

Speaker 3 (49:25):
To record it off your TV.

Speaker 2 (49:26):
Seeing this company called play On I worked with like
fifteen years ago, so it's okay, likes I just I
can say that does that they seem to exist?

Speaker 3 (49:34):
Were they using the analog outputs? I got no idea.

Speaker 6 (49:37):
You're now seeing downsampling on the There's a thing called
selectable output control that we fought really hard in cable
card and lost on where they downsample the analog outputs
and so the analog outputs are just garbage. So what
you record off of it is like a postage stamp.
And so you know, that was like there were the
Elgado did this for a long time. There were a

(49:58):
bunch of companies that had that had analog stuff. There's
actually a name for what they wanted to do about this.
They called it plugging the analog hole, which is like
the people who ride themselves and their ability to communicate
with the public. Coming up with we will now plug
everyone's analog holes was just a moment.

Speaker 3 (50:18):
Of just incredible ice.

Speaker 6 (50:20):
Yeah, And I wrote something about it that got translated
into German. I learned my most useful German UH phrase,
which is plugging the analog hole in German, which is
dust analogy lostoffen. And so now if I ever need,
I can order tap water, I can ask if there
are any hotel rooms, and I can tell you I
want to plug your analog hole in German.

Speaker 3 (50:40):
That's which is a very common German conversation.

Speaker 1 (50:44):
Clubs all the time.

Speaker 3 (50:45):
I just think.

Speaker 8 (50:51):
That, oh my god, we're gonna and I just think
entering this year I'm just I'm excited for because I
live in cash.

Speaker 2 (51:01):
But it's I will say, every day I keep seeing
people increasingly more frantic about this market and about VC.
And also we can't sell any AI companies. No one's
buying them. They have to do these weird like deals
where it's like, yeah, we're not hiring you, we're signing
a license and we're not going to pay all the

(51:22):
people off. We're going to play the top brass off
who will then join our company the IP.

Speaker 3 (51:26):
Yeah, we're going to license it. We don't really care,
We're just getting the talent. Yeah, it's just acquhirer. Yes.
The thing is aquahias traditionally.

Speaker 2 (51:34):
I don't know, I'm old enough to remember back in
like twenty thirteen when an aquhi was you losing?

Speaker 6 (51:40):
Yeah, it was like when we sort of I mean,
there were a lot of startups that were effectively just
like there were a lot of vcs who said, really
what I am as a headhunter? And I go out
and I get a bunch of promising people, maybe people
who are already working a big tech I give them
some money to build what amounts to a postgraduate project,
and then they get high. You're back at either their

(52:01):
former employer or a new employer, and they get a
hiring bonus in the form of their stock being bought
by the company. I get a finder's fee in the
forum of my stock being bought by the company. Was
just the shittiest way to run an executive recruiting.

Speaker 1 (52:12):
The thing is, the company gets the patent.

Speaker 2 (52:14):
But the thing is, though, that's not even happening anymore
because there are no patents. Yeah no, what you can't
patent prompt engineering. You can't patent the fuck it because
that's all it is.

Speaker 3 (52:24):
I haven't looked into it.

Speaker 6 (52:25):
So the USPTO is not issuing a ton of it's
a shitty AI patents.

Speaker 1 (52:30):
Also, they damaged deeply the USPTO with doge.

Speaker 3 (52:34):
Oh that's funny.

Speaker 2 (52:35):
And it's also just I don't think you can patent Yeah,
I mean maybe you can try, but I haven't seen
people patenting prompts.

Speaker 6 (52:42):
Well, the USPTO has historically been very bad about granting
bullshitty patents. You know, we fought and killed a patent
that effectively would have allowed one company to control all podcasting.
So like, the reason this podcast is on the air
is that we we we killed this patent. The trumpetman
is now moving to make it harder to get patent

(53:04):
re examination. So if a bullshit patent issues, it's harder
to challenge the patent. So I think we're going to
see a lot more garbagee patterns, more patent trolling. There's
a town in East Texas, yeah, where they have a
made judge and all of the all the patent cases
go there to die. There's like seven hundred companies that
are headquartered in like one dusty building and it's just
a bunch of mailboxes with you know, brass keys. And

(53:27):
then all the big companies that get sued by patent
trolls try to sweeten the jury by putting money into
public work. So Samsung built them a year round outdoor
ice skating rink in I think it's West Texas. In
like it's one hundred and fifteen degrees in the summer
and they have a year round outdoor ice skating rink
that Samsung pays for.

Speaker 3 (53:47):
This is like a capitalist libertarian paradise.

Speaker 2 (53:50):
This is just like what if actually, like this is
the world that the libertarians think that they could build.

Speaker 3 (53:56):
But you'll never beat Samsung.

Speaker 2 (53:58):
Samsung. Samsung will fuck thank you what big time? All right,
I think we're gonna wrap this up. It has been
such a wonderful show. It's been fun, great enjoyed having
all of you here. Thank you Cory for making the
trip out.

Speaker 3 (54:11):
Thanks Ed, Thanks Phil, thank you, thank you, Thank you Mattasowski,
our incredible producer, mister Longuso Junior, Thank you for joining
me once more. Thank you for having me. Mister Philip Broughton,
Thank you so much.

Speaker 1 (54:24):
I do my thing.

Speaker 2 (54:25):
Thank you for bartending, and thank you for everyone who
came through these doors. And thank you to the incredible
listeners have stuck with us on an incredible show. We
have done incredibly well. It's a great show. We will
be back next week with mister Stephen Burke of Gamers.
Next is going to have a post yes show with
him said not in personal beil, but it will be remote.

Speaker 3 (54:45):
I can speak flawlessly.

Speaker 2 (54:47):
Please subscribe to my newsletter and of course, in dedication
to Sean Paul Adams, we will have a link to
the Pediatric Epilepsy Research Consortium. Remember that for the first
time in the show notes. Thanks thank you all, it's
beat incredible.

Speaker 5 (55:02):
Later, thank you for listening to Better Offline The editor
and composer of the Better Offline theme song is Matasowski.
You can check out more of his music and audio
projects at Matasowski dot com, M A T T O

(55:24):
S O W s ki dot com. You can email
me at easy at Better offline dot com or visit
Better Offline dot com to find more podcast links and
of course, my newsletter. I also really recommend you go
to chat dot Where's youreaed dot at to visit the discord,
and go to our slash Better Offline to check out
our reddit.

Speaker 3 (55:42):
Thank you so much for listening.

Speaker 6 (55:45):
Better Offline is a production of cool Zone Media. 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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Host

Ed Zitron

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