 Hello and welcome to a podcast in which most other people are capturing me. Are you still periscoping? Let it go for like three minutes and then I'll stop. Oh my God. I'm glad the camera is here. Hey everyone. Wow. Hey. Way to be the loudest person in history. Hi. All right. Hello and welcome to the Vergecast. It's day two, day three. Yeah, we're calling it, I don't forget. Whatever the hell day it is. It's a day. It's a day. The show floor is open. Wednesday. We are here at the Verge Lounge on the show floor. There's a crowd here. Walt is just staring at me. How's it going, buddy? Walt and I literally finished a podcast together like minutes ago and now he's just here to heckle me because this one is not as good as the one he is. But my friend Joanna Stern is here. Joanna is just using her phone. She's Snapchatting. I'm a special guest. Joanna's a special guest. Dieter Bohn is here. I'm just a regular old schlub. And I think you know that Sam is literally periscoping as we do this. I will say that the angle that you've got your camera at. Swangle, sir. This is why I fired you. It's not even true. It's literally not true. That's why you fired me. I mean, the angle makes Sam. Makes you look swaggy. Sam, I've noticed it since you left the Verge. Sam, do I need to get that? You've spent a lot of time figuring out ways to make cameras make you look cool. Like that right there is like that camera. This is literally a secret Santa gift that I requested. That's not a secret Santa gift. Anyway, it is day whatever it is. It's a day two of CS. Our second Vergecast here. The first day the show floor is open. Speak into the mic. Speak into the mic. Go closer to it. Right there. Okay. Guys, Walt is watching us. I'm going to probably do this for real. You don't work for Walt. Walt is like... You don't work for Walt. Who doesn't work for Walt? That's right. Walt is all of our Walt. Anyway, so Sam, let me just ask you a question. Yeah, please. Oh, God. What is your job now? My job is creative producer at Mashable. I put together the Snapchat Discover channel. So are you Snapchatting at CES? I am Snapchatting at CES for Mashable. What have you been snapping? I did three booth tours. I did Sony, I did LG, and I did Samsung. And it's basically all thin TVs. Yeah. Like cool 8K HDR. It's like, how is HDR now finally a thing in 2016? But it only came out like two years ago. Yeah. And then it started to be a thing. I'm not talking about for cameras. And now it's a thing. No, I know, but like... That's how TV works. No, but HDR has been around forever. Oh, because the technology to make the pixels get as bright as they need to in order to qualify for being HDR. This is the most uncomfortable thing. What? It wasn't around. I can't like look away from the mic. You can. Like you're like looking at the mic. I just... No, I have to sit like this. You just have to talk into it. I'm talking into it. Joanna, the two choices... Here. Joanna, the choices are not be far away from the mic playing with your phone and uncomfortably sit like you're in church. There's a middle choice. Oh, God. Here. The quality of the show right now, we should have some like morning zoo sound effects. Yeah, that's right. Sam has a morning zoo camera angle. That's what that is. What is morning zoo? What is morning zoo? Is it morning zoo? Morning zoo? It's just me. It's the... Yeah, it's the Z100 one. The wacky morning radio shows. Yes. I don't know how we got here. What's we... I don't even know what I'm doing here. Is it CES or... I actually have had no idea what I've been doing at CES. Yeah. I still feel like I have to be... How many years has it been, Joanna, for you? Can I move this? Can I move this? Oh, that would be the answer. That's like a cur to me till right now. Veteran technology journalist, Joanna Stern. I don't know what I've been doing here. What have you been doing here? Have you been looking at stuff? She's asking me for Snapchat tips. I don't know what I've been doing. Yeah. This is real. I've done things. I've seen some things. I've had some interesting conversations about some things. What have you seen? What have you seen? I've seen... Today, I made a VR painting. Yeah. I made two VR paintings. Oh, yeah. I saw you. You wore the HTC one and you wore the Oculus one, right? Yeah. I've done some VR paintings. Which one do you like better? And you put that epic selfie of yours. Wow. Did you see that? No. It was really very tight on my head. Oh, yeah. The sea goggle face. I had really bad sea goggle face, which we're all going to have in the future. Did you just make that up right now? No, that's fine. No. Yeah, like, or ski masks. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I don't think... Because you're not seeing them side by side, I don't... And I'm not really an expert in the kind of graphic fidelity of the images. I don't think I really noticed a difference that much in terms of experience, but I did like the controllers better on the HTC. Oh, that's really interesting. The touch pads. Yeah. And you don't have to move your hand to another... Because on Oculus, there's two buttons. Oh, yeah. But you just move your... Yeah, but it's like on the HTC, it's like a D-pad built into the touch pad. Oh, are you using the Oculus touch controllers? Yes. You just hold those in your hands. You're like... Yeah, no. But HTC's is like a touch pad. Oh, cool. Yeah. I liked that experience part of that better, but I had a lot more fun in the Oculus games. Yeah. Which I... The Oculus games are super cool. I don't know. Okay. So the coolest Oculus demo, did you do the one where you're holding virtual controllers in the air and the controllers you're holding? No. It was like that Star Wars thing we saw last year, right? They're showing this really cool toy box thing, which is not gonna be released, or I don't know when it's gonna be released, but it's all about using the controllers. And so you pick things up, you play like ping pong. Yeah, yeah. And then the last one, it's like you join us at a toy box and you pick things up in the toy box and knock blocks over. Yeah, yeah. And then you didn't get to the RC car. So the last thing that they let me pick up out of the toy box was the controller that I was holding. You were interacting with the objects? Like a virtual representation of the controller. No, the last thing I did was... Did you do this demo? No, I don't know this demo. I shot the little rabbit. It was like being in a carnival. I don't get to do the trailer, Sam. You're here now. Yeah. Yeah, but then the last one... No, that was the last one. So the last one is you pick up a virtual controller that is the controller you're holding and you use exactly the right size and everything. It's weird. Yeah, does it feel real? Yeah, no, it screws with your head, but it's probably don't have it here because I did it in Facebook. Yeah, yeah. But it's... And then you drive an RC car using the controller that's in your hand. Right. But it's just super weird because you've been in the virtual reality for so long. How long were you immersed for? I was immersed for... What is it? I was deeply immersed in the experience for 20 minutes. So Sam, what have you done here? What's the coolest thing you've seen? LG's roll-up display. That's been like a dream of mine because foldable... You can Google foldable displays and there's things from 1998, but I finally got to see one in person. It is nuts. Yeah. It's really... And there's barely any distortion. You know when you push an LCD, it has that rainbow effect? Does nothing. It was really cool, but I mean, it was connected to some weird, janky computer thing. There's a ribbon cable. Yeah, that's exactly what it was. Although, at least it wasn't under glass. Usually, those things are under glass. To keep people from Sam from poking into the... The LG representative had latex gloves on and he just very carefully was just like... Massaging. Yeah. But it's cool. It bends convexly and concavely, so you can roll it both ways, which is interesting. What's it connected to? Some ribbon cable on some PC that was covered with a piece of paper and they were like, don't film that. Yeah. So, yeah, that. And then I was just walking around the Samsung booth. I mentioned this to you before, Nilay. They have transparent TVs, which I've never seen before and apparently have been a thing or have not been a thing. So they're transparent displays. Well, no, but yeah, that's what I was saying. They've had transparent displays forever. Yeah. And now they're like, we made a TV out of it. I mean, what's a display as a TV? Yeah, a display as a TV. Right? Isn't that the same thing? But yeah, that was really cool. Right. And rideables. I've seen some really quirky, weird rideables. Someone finally made a $500 electric skateboard. The Acton Blink. It's like the size of a regular skateboard goes like 15 miles an hour. Only has a range of six miles with stuff. It's 500 bucks. Someone finally did it. Yeah. So I'll buy one and I'll never catch fire. Probably not. Am I going to buy one? I mean, I have an electric skateboard now. Yeah. I want a faster, better one, but they're really expensive. Once once those faster, like the 20 mile an hour ones come down under a thousand, that's when I think I'll take the plunge. But for now, they're too expensive. Yeah. So have you guys watched Sam's vlog? I'm watching Sam's vlogs all day. Well, they last all day. Yeah. Wow. Wow. Getting shade thrown at me. I've watched them and I'm like always amazed how like you're smoothly riding on this. That's when you're on your skateboard. That's right. That's right. No helmet. That's right. It's very, it seems very unsafe. Thanks, mom. By the way, Joanna is my mom. It seems very unsafe, but I'm very impressed that you're talking really well and you're holding that camera. And then I'm just. I learned from the best right here. Yeah, I taught Sam how to hold a camera while you were talking about your life. Patel's vlog school is not a business. What's the coolest thing that you've seen here? Is it anything? I've you're the person I brought. You're the person who hates CES. No, I was just telling Walt this. This is my ninth CES. Wow. Yes. What's yours? I think it's nine. Nine. Ten. Ten. Seven. You've done a decade of CES. I get a pen. You get a pen. I get a 3D printed urn to put my ashes in when I die at the end of the show. Wow. That's Dieter Dark right there. We like that. They have them here. Really? Yes. You get a 3D printed urn. So you're basically just like signing your death note for yourself. Yeah. But anyone with a 3D printer make a 3D printing urn? No, these are quality. As opposed to non-quality 3D printed urns. Well, because you want to keep an urn for a while. That's how you pass down from generation to generation. Anyway, what were you saying? I was asking Walt in his experience. He told me this is his 25th CES. Wow. If you count comdexes, it's like 30. What year did it happen for him that he wasn't so excited about being here? This is my first year where I'm just... I used to have this crazy adrenaline and just like feeling and you're just like you're excited. You're really excited to be here. I don't know if it's that I've been here for two... I don't know if it's time or if it's just that stuff is kind of boring and it just feels like what we saw last year and the year before and the year before that. Maybe it's consecutive years in a row, like you haven't taken a break and then... I'm sad about it. This year Samsung has a fridge with a 21.5 inch display. Yes. That's right. Think about that. What was last year's size? Probably like 17. Yeah. Bigger and bigger. They're like phones. Well, I thought your piece was great. I loved it and it made me excited to be here again because it made me excited about the industry and all that's changed and that this show is a marker of what happens in the industry and that's why all of us do what we do, but then I got up from my computer and I was here again and then I was excited about it. It's funny because I think 2015 was generally a super boring year in tech. Right. A lot of incremental things. It was so boring that the Apple news that leaked at CES this year was not about a new MacBook or the iPhone going to Verizon. The Apple news that leaked was they're cutting iPhone orders. Which is like a big deal. Who cares? No, it's a huge deal, right? It means people are satisfied with their phones. No, that means like a billion people have an iPhone. Yeah, and it means they're not getting new ones. Right. Because they don't want anything better. I think, so Sam representing the light and hope in this conversation means everyone's connected. That's what you're saying. I'm like they're stopping as much production on these current devices, right? Or they're saying that the new orders of the new iPhones are going to be cut down. I don't think they've started making the iPhone 7. You don't think? I think they're cutting these. Right, because they've sold a bazillion of them, right? The market is saturated with these. Haven't they sold more 6S's and 6S Pluses than all previous generations? Like doesn't every iPhone beat the previous generation? The report was that Holiday would slightly beat the previous Holiday, but they're cutting it because they don't think in the first quarter. I mean to me that just means that people are still on 5, 5S, 6, and their current 6S's. Right? Right. Right, so my only point here is that news has never come out of Apple before. I see. Right, and that's like negative. The thing that comes out of Apple during CES is the thing that distracts you from what is happening here because something cooler might be happening someplace else. My point is only... I heard there was a red watch ban. There's a... yeah. It's only Wednesday also. There's a black steel Milanese. We could have leaks tomorrow. That was a leak. Hot. Hot. But my point is like 2015 was a down year and you would hope that CES would pick it up and be like everybody waited, but instead what happened was like Samsung did a bunch of silly stuff. Sony announced literally nothing. A record player. Right. LG. Literally. They literally announced a record player. Answer this question. Why are record players so hard? I have checked record players. Okay, so I... in Jersey where I live there's a really, really good... He took that second to make up the answer. No, no, no. There's like a story that's involved with this. It's amazing. We all just experienced what Sam was like in high school. So there was a kid named Charlotte Maine I believe. This is what happens when I want to tell a story on the VirgChats. So my hometown in Jersey, the English town flea market is an amazing flea market. There are gems there. So both of my younger brothers, I have one brother that's turning 21 and my other brother's 22. They both have record players and they both... Your parents just like banged them out. They both... Thank you Joanna. They... I'm going to pretend that didn't happen. He's 25. Yeah, that's right. We're close in age. Yeah. Thank you mom. You're 25 or 24? There's a three year gap. It's the second to... Barely. Yeah. Anyway, so both my younger brothers have record players and they both prefer to listen to music on record players. It's 521 in Vegas and it's getting a little naughty. I think because of the sort of exclusivity of it and it's like a really cool feeling I think to have this like vinyl that you put down and it's the whole experience and then honestly the music quality listening to a vinyl record is unmatched. And so in my... I live with my next younger brother and his record player sits in my living room and we have a stereo and we prefer to listen to records. But I mean we have a Chromecast audio now so it's way easy to just link into the Chromecast audio. But I think it's just... That's crazy. It's really like the fact that these existed for like you guys when you were... No? You didn't use a record player? Did you use a record player? No. I bought a record player when I was in college. To be like... So when were record players? I think. Record players got disrupted. It was like record players. Is Walt around? Walt... Yeah. I sat on this stage today. Yeah. 70s and 80s, right? I mean my dad had a record player in our house but we didn't use it. Right. Because we had new formats. Oh, I had a record player. We all had like... What? We had tapes and then CDs. Yeah. We grew up with tapes. I grew up with tapes. Like tapes were the first and then CDs. I grew up with tapes but we had record players and we used them. Yeah. We used them. I mean Hype Check Record Players is the aesthetic of having this and the artwork and just like... But there's like a booming... There's like a vinyl sales boom. Yeah. And it was the most popular thing on Amazon over the holiday season, right? Yeah. It was record players. And the Sony record player was the number one post on the site and the second most popular post on the site yesterday was the Technics turntable. And it's like crazy too. It's cool. The president of Sony Electronics sat on the stage with me this morning and was like... Oh, I saw that. Record players are sexy. They're hot. And I was like, I don't know what... It's 2016. It's this appeal of us teens didn't have this and now we have access to it and it's relatively cheap. If you look at Polaroid and the film... It's not relatively cheap. It is. No. I mean, if you go... That's why I mentioned... Run into the flea market. That's right. I do that too. We'll go to the flea market and buy records. But very quickly run out of stuff you want and then you get to the point where you just... All right. You got to find this John Furgiante vinyl. It's like $300 on eBay. Yeah. Or if you want to buy new music on LP. Yeah. How do you buy new music on LP? You go to a record store and it's like 20 bucks. You don't listen to new music on records. Well, so that's the thing. I think. Right. Personally, I think the appeal is like... Is Taylor Swift available on a record? I imagine somewhere. Yeah. I think... Isn't everything printed to vinyl? No. No? No. No. Again, so... Pressed, I guess. I talked to Sony about this a lot yesterday and they were like, Sony Music had to go find old vinyl cutting machines and refurbish them because nobody makes this stuff. So the surge in interest is creating this another... So Sony is now getting back into... Did they have vinyl players back in the day? Was that a Sony? Yes. Yeah, they did? Okay. I mean, all these audio companies, it's just funny that they're back. I think it really goes down to every streaming music app kind of sucks. Oh, God. We're not doing this. We are. We are. We are. We are. Not doing this. It's true. $40. $40 for what? Taylor. Yeah. On vinyl? Vinyl LP pressing. Okay. Apple Music is literally garbage. Oh, my God. Just out of nowhere. Literally no one uses Apple Music. I want to talk about Venmo. I want to talk about Venmo for a second. No. What kind of content is going on? I love Venmo, but what does this have to do with music? You can listen to music on Venmo? Because we've talked about Venmo on the Vergecast before and they're like, oh, no one uses Venmo. Everyone uses Venmo. Everyone uses Venmo. Everyone uses Venmo. Guys, guys, guys. There's literally no reason to talk about Venmo at CS. None at all. That's true. Or Spotify. If you talk about Venmo at CS one more time, you have to Venmo me $5. Okay, fine. I will right now. Why is it so easy to use? It's so easy to use. Just send money to anyone. You guys want some money on Venmo? I got a list of stuff that happened here. Yeah, Steeder, do some news. What do you want? What do you want? You want to talk about Netflix? Yeah, talk about Netflix. Yeah. 130 more countries. 130 countries. That's a lot of countries. That was their big announcement. So Netflix had a big press conference today. Yep. And their thing is they're the first global TV network. Yep. Which is an interesting thing to say. I don't want your dirty money. I don't want your literally Venmo. What are you going to put as the message? Oh, my God. Just like right like. What else? The problem with this is I grew up in a time and place where you didn't talk about money. Yeah. You either you were poorer than everybody else and you felt awkward or you're richer than everybody else and you were a dick. Right. And so you just you don't. And so the idea that there would be a social network where I could watch money be exchanged between fans. That's weird. Is deeply creepy and weird to me. Yeah. The social part is a little odd. I find that it's all it's all public. One of a hundred other ways to send money. No, but it's just that it's so easy to use. It's so easy to use. People are there. Sam, I'm not talking about it anymore. They are. Why did you do this to the show? I love to talk about Venmo. OK, so Netflix is in one hundred thirty new countries. Yeah. They have said that they won't promise to not censor stuff. Yeah. Different places they will see. And they call themselves a global TV network. Yeah. Yeah. And like Reed Hastings on station is like, you are witnessing. It was like we had a conversation about whether like is he getting more evil? Yeah. And we realized that like primarily what his company does is like ship cartoons to children. And that inherently keeps you from being evil. But they also they also make like torture porn action TV shows, Marvel TV shows. What was the most the stream movie? What was the six? But it was it was it was it was a faster start. Most streamed in the first 30 days. It's not the most. Oh, OK. OK. I saw a headline and I was like, well, that's a little scary. OK, so fastest. What was the news that Netflix other than streaming to the world? I just got a Venmo notification. They're doing a bunch of new shows. They had like a bunch of trailers for new shows. Yeah. Ross was like freaking out in the live blog because the dude from the phone booth show, Dr. Who. Sorry. That's really interesting to me. Like if you think about who has traditionally been in it. Yes. Like Netflix is here because they're a tech company, but they're just they just shut off content today. Yeah. They don't shut off any technology. I mean, it is tech right there delivering billions of hours of streaming video instantly to billions of people. Why don't they go to a TV show or TV network conference? The world's greatest network TV network now. Right. That's how I think about Netflix. I'd say YouTube is close. I don't watch a lot of YouTube other than you, Sam. Oh, thank you. And you're like you're a little you know, there's like there's seriously like this this age demographic of like 12 to 25. That is just YouTube. So, yeah. If you guys like do you know the numbers of these Minecraft videos that are on YouTube? Yeah. There's like there's like a node of Minecraft YouTubers that all have like 10 million subscribers. They're doing billions of views on YouTube. And it's like literally three year olds. And it's just like voiceover. They're just playing games. It's crazy. All right. Anyway, should be bolt. What? I want to talk about what you guys want to talk about. I feel like you and Sam just run away with nonsense. Yeah. This is quality content. Well, I just want to know, did you go to the press conferences? No. She was drinking Starbucks in her hotel room. Are you just like opting out of CS this whole time? I wrote some stuff. Yeah. I wrote about my usual wacky connected health crap that's been here that I always. Anything good? What do you think of the new Fitbit? We talked about this yesterday. I saw it. I think it looks better actually in person than the picture. This is the faintest phrase. I didn't get to use it really. I didn't get to like. Is this a nice one that looks like a nice piece of. I put it on and I like page through the menus and that was really the extent of me using it. But I think it's a good move for them. I mean, five days of battery life with a color screen and being able to. Classic. Track your workouts and also hopefully get better heart rate monitoring. If they had probably email on there too, I would say that I have everything that I do. You have email? Texting? I don't have email. I see. I would say if they had email, it would probably do every single thing I do on my Apple Watch. I'm going to ask you, are the car companies coming after you? Yeah. There's a lot of car things here. But are they approaching you as a Wall Street Journal reviewer to play with stuff? What are they pitching you? A lot of the interface improvements, things that are going on, innovation at the companies. It's just like super broad topics. Yes. We want you to do a story about innovation. Last year I covered both CarPlay and Android Auto and I loved covering both of them. If I bought a car right now, I would not buy one without probably CarPlay, even though I like Android Auto better. But I'm not fully on an Android phone all the time. I think one of the stories of the show is that Samsung and LG actually know how to make interfaces as long as they're not doing it on a phone. As long as they're not skinning something. They are not skinning something. Where do these interfaces live? The webOS TV looks really nice. Yeah, that is that. Apparently LG was involved in creating the interface for the infotainment system on the Chevy Bolt. If you go watch the video, Chris tried it out. He actually really likes it. It's got a really obvious widget system for all the stuff you want to have showing on your car. It goes full screen. It's responsive and fast. It's not slow and crappy like every other car interface is. And you can still get Android Auto and CarPlay and Chevy's on the Bolt anyway, right? Right. And then Samsung's TV, I think it's great. I think the fridge has got a decent interface. Yeah. As long as they're not skinning Android, surprise, they know what they're doing. Well, Teeter wrote a thing about Tizen this morning I think is super interesting. Because I went and played with a bunch of Samsung stuff. It's like Samsung made Tizen and everyone thought it was for competing with phones and pulling away from Google. And maybe one day that will be true. But in the meantime, they control an operating system stack that they are using to make really smart other things. That's basically your thesis. Yeah. I have nothing else to say. It's what I thought of. Well, no, it's just really interesting because I don't know that I would want them to use Android for this. There's a lot of stuff Samsung makes where I'd prefer that it not be Android. Or I'd prefer that Google's ideas would be some other. The TV is a really good example. Do you want Samsung to just make an Android TV? Or do you want them to try something new? And because they tried something new, they've done more integration with TV stuff than anything Google's been able to do yet. I want to go check out the Samsung TV stuff now. It's cool. Yeah. But I bought a Samsung TV last year. Does that mean I'm not getting any of this? Why didn't you wait for HDR? I have HDR. Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah. Do you watch anything in HDR at home? Is there anything available to you in HDR? I think some Amazon content. Yeah. Do you have a real problem for all of these? Actually, no, I have. I think Transparent has HDR. Does it say available? They say it has Ultra HD. All I know is Transparent looks amazing. That just means it's 4K. Yeah, I know. So, but they would need HDR as well. Right. Did it shine like a... Content doesn't have to have HDR and 4K. Right, you can be 4K. You can be without HDR. Do you watch your TVs at max brightness? I'm going to look it up. Hell no. So, HDR primarily works by making stuff way brighter, right? And enhancing the color. Doesn't that kind of suck? It makes the darks darker, right? No. No. Hold on. Only relative to... Making the darks darker is a different technology. HDR is about the size of the gamut between light and dark, and it primarily does it by making it lighter. Have you seen Sonys? They have like direct comparison. They have like a TV that's split with SDR and HDR, and then they have them on top of each other. You really do see the difference. It's literally like when you take a photo on your phone and you turn on HDR and you look at the two of them, like when you take a picture of this guy, it's basically just like that. Yes. Transparent did have HDR enabled. All I know is that Transparent looked fucking amazing. I mean, like, it's an amazing show, but like, there's... You know, you don't... When you come to a show like this, you look at the display and you really appreciate it. And then when you first get your new TV, you're like, oh, wow, this looks amazing. Then you get used to it. And then there are times like you're watching a show and you're just like, wow, this looks fucking amazing. Yeah. You know, like you just like stop thinking about the content for a second and I'm just like, this is my TV. Your TV is UHD 4K, Joanna? I'm like, yeah, that's my TV, you know, but like... You got a Sud? Yeah. Sud? I did. I got a Sud. Yeah. The remote sucks. Yeah. Yeah, that's real bad. I'm in search for... I'm going to do a piece on this soon for like a... And you're going to end up recommending a stupid Logitech Harmony, and it's bad. That's the best one that I've had so far. I have like 10 in my apartment, and they all are so bad. I just keep replacing the battery when they explode. Which one? You have the one with the... Well, they have like 730, 950. No, this is the old one. The old Harmony one. It's like seven years old. You can't get that anymore. Yeah, but you can buy the batteries for it on Amazon because the rechargeable battery dies about once every three years. Peter and I play the same game. I will use that battery to control my TV. You guys prefer smart TVs? I mean, it sucks. Like, do you enjoy having all that... My Panasonic smart TV. If I had a smart TV that was good, I would definitely prefer it to a second-hand one. Right. But like, I love just you plugging an HDMI cable into the TV, you plug an HDMI cable into the Xbox, into your laptop, or into your Apple TV. Like, the TV, I really just think it should be as... Don't use the new ones. Yeah. Don't use the new ones. I haven't, like, yeah. Like, Samsung's new ones are fast. Oh, yeah, that was a huge problem was the interfaces were always super slow. Mine's not so slow. I mean, I use it for Amazon because now I don't have to use the Roku because it's built into that. Oh, that's right. And now I just use Apple TV and Samsung. I guess you do need some sort of hub, right? Yeah. Like, if you don't have Apple TV or Roku. And I don't like using Google Cast because when we're picking a show, we want to pick it together. Right. So you got to do that on the TV instead of on a phone. Yeah, you don't want to do that on your phone. Oh, we should talk about this. There's actually a huge trend here, which is Google Cast speakers are everywhere. Yes. I put it in the thing. I saw it. I transitioned. Wait. So what? It was a real alley-oop. What does that mean? So there's a bunch of Google Cast speakers built into the speaker. Well, I'll just set this up. So, for example, I've come to the show and looked for cool AirPlay things. Right? Oh, yeah. You always wrote about AirPlay. We were always coming here and finding AirPlay things, and they all suck. And the only AirPlay thing that's any good now is the Apple TV itself. Yep. And you can AirPlay video to the Apple TV. And even that's pretty flaky. I have one. It's not... Like, I used to think of AirPlay and iMessage as the two motes around the iPhone that nobody could cross. And AirPlay is kind of gone. Right? But Google Cast is really good. So, meaning you have speakers and you connect it to your Wi-Fi, and then you can just... Well, yeah. So you have Chromecast Audio. I have Chromecast Audio. I have the new Chromecast. Now you just have these new speakers. They have it built in directly. They're built into it. Yeah. And if you're on Spotify, the native... Yeah, it's like... It does the streams directly. Yeah, connected devices. It's way native, and it's really fast and really great. And it's cheap. So you could just, instead of buying the Chromecast Audio, if you already have a speaker system, you just buy these speakers. Yeah, now it's just built into these speakers. Who makes the speakers? Anyone good? They added a bunch of partners. Sonos? Romsfeld? Sonos is never gonna make it. Sonos is not gonna give up their technology. Fair. Who the... What the hell is Romsfeld? But actually, how... That's just the first one. There's a bunch more. How is linking multiple rooms and accounts to... I don't know. I like plugging shit in still. Accounts is not a problem. If it's on the Wi-Fi network, you can set it up so it'll allow anybody to stream to it from the Wi-Fi network. Yeah. The multi-room thing is more complicated. So I think the Google Cast Audio Puck supports multi-room audio. But the thing we're gonna need to see is if all these speakers are up to date with that multi-room stuff. The systems work with that. They ought to be. Yeah. But it's possible they might not because it might be a slightly different version of the Google Cast OS. Right. Which, by the way, I think is probably Chrome OS. Underneath? Underneath, yeah. Really? So you need the Google Cast app on your phone to set up the speakers then, right? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. You can do it on the web. B&O, Harman Kardon, Onkyo, Philips, Pioneer, Romsfeld, LG. Wow. Wow. Deanon, Sony. Yeah. How the hell did Apple not get AirPlay on all of those first? They did though, right? Didn't they have some AirPlay? They did. Yeah. I have a Pioneer AirPlay receiver and it kind of works. It just doesn't most of the time, right? It kind of works. Yeah. It sounds like you can match everything. It's fun. It's a little bit slow. Huh? That sounds like pretty much everything. I would agree that Google Cast is more reliable than Apple TVs and AirPlay. Yeah. For example, AirPlay works when you don't have an internet connection in a way that Cast is not as good at. Oh, interesting. Like direct streaming from the device to the thing you're streaming to with Google is terrible. Like when you try and stream a Chrome tab to Chromecast, it's bad. Yeah, that's bad. But when you're pulling it from the Chromecast itself. When you have internet, it's great. Right. Right. If you're like using, like when I cast something from my phone using the YouTube app, it like actually does it from the Chromecast itself, but when you're doing that with AirPlay. Did you know that if you AirPlay a YouTube video on your phone and you close, like you lock your phone, it stops? It's so stupid. Yeah. Like how? That's what I'm saying. It used to be this mode. And now it's like they just didn't pay a lot of attention to it. It's not great. Yeah. So I think that's really cool. And then the other big trend here, this is so silly. We talked about the retro stuff. So that's one big trend. The speakers, there's like USB-C stuff. Oh yeah. Yeah. It's not stupid. It blew out. It's a big trend. Oh yeah. Yeah. I didn't hear stupid. So this is like what I think. I said it was stupid. So I think about this show is like Vlad wrote this piece about how CS is just a mall. Oh yeah. Yeah. CS is a mall. But this is all the stuff that's going to be invested by this year. Right? Like what USB-C stuff? There's a bunch of monitors, some of which are like, I think one or two of which are like standalone. So you don't need to plug them in. They just power up over the USB. So you just carry around a monitor. It's like Duet on a tablet, but it's just the USB-C monitor. Doesn't that wreck the battery? Yeah. But if you're plugged in. Yeah, but how are you plugged in? No, but how much does charging an iPad wreck your battery? It's the same cable. So you plug the- No, but you go USB-C to the monitor. Right? But then how you can't charge the MacBook? You need the adapter, right? Some computers have more than one USB-C cable, it turns out. Yeah. They're not just MacBook accessories. HP and Dell announced that they're going to show USB-C type devices. Okay. They're going to show USB-C type C. I missed that. I missed that. Okay. Lots of- They're hard drives. They're sweet looking. I think it was a Lacy hard drive. The Chromebook Pixel has a USB-C. Yeah. You love that thing. My favorite computer. What? Yeah, they announced a bunch of hard drives that are USB type C. Yep. There's a MagSafe for the MacBook. Yeah, that thing looks cool. I saw that. I saw that, yeah. That thing looks- I mean, it had to happen, right? Everyone's been talking about USB-C for years. And it's like, it's finally happening. Right. Well, next month are we going to see like finally all these phones have USB-C too. Yeah. I know that the rumor this week is the Galaxy S7 is going to use USB-C. That's big. That doesn't surprise me at all. That's kind of where, like that's what will kick this off. The other thing that happened with the USB-C this week is it almost- I almost tried my laptop. Saw it. Yeah. I was using one of the knockoff USB-C cables that wasn't like official enough. Not that, not your Air. Didn't have the right resistor. This Air right here. I almost destroyed it because it overheated the MacBook when I was trying to charge my phone off of it. I have a USB-C phone. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh. And so when I was charging my phone off of it, it was pulling too much power. It's USB 2 to USB-C? Yeah. USB-A. USB-A. Okay. And what happened? It got hot? It got hot and then the, there was like a thermal protection thing built into the hardware of the USB that like shut off the USB for a while. So you could have lost your phone and laptop. Wait, you figured it out? Yeah. Some guy on Twitter, some very smart guy on Twitter figured it out. Steven Chownsmith. Whoa. Yeah. Just had to wait for the thermals to come back. That's crazy. I had to find the reviews from the guy from the Chrome team. I thought you bought a MacBook. Yeah, I thought you had one too. No, it was a review and I was going to, I'd been, I'd like, I'd borrow a review unit like once every three months. I was like, I'm going to do it. And then I like, no, I'm not. Yeah. I'm waiting for the processors. Well, I saw Thomas, Thomas Ricker with his MacBook and he had like. Yeah, he loves it. He loves that thing. Yeah. So we showed him that. He's carrying around that cute little thing. Oh, everything looks like that now. Yeah. Oh God, yeah. Those new Samsung laptops. The Samsung one, Dell made one. Dell made one. LG made one. Here's what, here's my, I have a belief about Samsung and LG that will probably get us not invited to every LG press conference. They are the same company. No, no, they're not. Samsung is like trying to do something new and LG remains the shameless one. Yeah. LG will just crazy do shameless crazy shit all the time. What Dan is just like, he's just staring at me like I'm crazy. All I'm saying is that LG did the gram before LG did it super like that. That's true. LG did do the gram. But like attitudeally, like Samsung is like the outperforming first child and LG is like the fucking drunk one. So where does that leave Sony? Huh? Sony is like the coolest step brother. Sony is the step brother from another family that shows up. He's like the uncle that you think is cool, but then you grow up and you realize he was just drunk. Everyone is drunk. I'm Sony. That's why I like Sony so much. Nelay, what's the coolest thing you've seen so far? What's the coolest thing you've seen so far? It's the coolest thing I've seen so far. I mean, it's literally only day one of the show floor. I'm leaving tomorrow morning. Are you enjoying the show over it? I need to get back to New York. I need to get back to my dad and my wife. I haven't seen that much. I will say I am kind of like really into drones. I think this is a thing that happens to you. You're approaching dad levels right now. I hear the dad in you. I just think it's a really fascinating thing. Did you buy a house upstate? No, but when I do, I will fly over it with a drone whenever I wish. I bought one for my father-in-law for Christmas and I have a float drone. If you buy a $2,000 drone, you're not actually using it to watch yourself mountain bike or check your crops or whatever. You're going to go out and- Yeah, I don't know how literally he's using it. Yeah, that's cool. Check his crops. But if you're just buying it as a toy, I can't- Right. What? You're going to get bored with that. What are you going to do with the footage you captured? I don't think drones are interesting for that. I think they're fat. The one I bought my father-in-law's Phantom 3 goes like 30 miles an hour. It's like super fun. Right. But what's interesting- I don't also like how it works is just insane. Right. When you're setting that thing up and it just knows where your phone is and the whole thing is kind of insane. What I think is really interesting about that, and this kind of goes to Sam and Rideables, is it's doing most of the work for you. Right? And then you can just be like, go here and do that. And so I looked around, I was at the Intel booth for a minute today. Did you see it? The Segway that follows you around the robot. Oh, and then they have the drone that now has a RealSense camera that can look around it and fly around stuff. Wait, Intel's RealSense is a drone? Intel is huge. No, it's in a production drone that's coming out this year. Who makes that? It's Yunkee. Yunkee. Sorry, Yunkee, the Typhoon. It's here, right? Oh, yes. And it has a RealSense camera and you can go and wave your hand at it and see the infrared version of your hand. Intel, going around a drone cage following a dude. Yeah, Intel has said even the drones, they just bought a drone company and they've invested heavily in a Yunkee. Yunkee is the electric skateboard I have, the Ego. That's the one I bought. Yeah. Wow. So what's interesting to me, what gets me at that stuff is you see the themes here where all these computers are helping you do stuff in ways that feel like you're still doing stuff. So you fly a drone and it's like, oh, I'm flying this drone. I'm doing all this work. You're doing minimal operation. Steering it and really you're just going up, left, and the computer is doing all of the work. Well, that Lilly drone is supposed to come out this year. That was the Kickstarter project. You just throw it. That just throw it and it follows you everywhere. Right? And so now they can see you, they can follow you, they can track you. Yeah, I saw that thing. So I don't have a use for them, so I haven't really been into it other than like, yeah, it's cool to get the video. I think we're in the first, like, I don't think Phantom knew that what people were going to use drones for in the beginning was like video. Yeah. Like the first Phantom's had no camera mounts. People were just strapping GoPros to them. And like they got to the point where they made the Phantom. That's Michael Jackson. Welcome to the show floor. Welcome to the CES. They got to the point where they're just making. It's probably not going to stop. It's definitely stopped. I got it. I got it. Somebody got it. I made a face. The face was responded to and then it was gone. Let's be clear. How is working for him? How has the power not gone to his head? The face was just do the thing that was previously agreed to. You know, Neilai. But if you just think about like the DJ, I didn't know that the Phantom would do anything. And then they made the Phantom two vision with a GoPro mount. And then the Phantom three, they're like, okay, we'll make our own cameras. Right. Like they didn't know. They just like iterated their way towards what the thing is. I don't and whatever. And they'll still make those forever. But if you just think about a world in which things are better at moving for you and by themselves, like it could be a car. Like it doesn't have to be a car first. Yeah. It could be this weird Intel robot thing that they have rolling around there. It could be skateboard. It could be telepresence things in the office that actually know. When I was in tells me if I went up to a meeting and there was just like random telepresence robots like driving themselves home. It was like crazy that people had been in meetings and then they like they disconnected from their laptops and the robot just like drove itself home. Yeah. It's why? Wow. So just imagining a world in which things are better at moving themselves is like that's actually really exciting. So that's like cars and drones and rideables. Well, cars and drones and rideables and like Amazon's got robots packing stuff up in factories. Think of stuff that has to move in like very small context all the way to very big context. So it could be down to like, yeah, I want a robot to get me a beer. Like that would be cool. But like it doesn't have to actually involve me as a human being. It could involve just robots talking to robots, robots talking to physical things. Are they going to talk to us? Yeah. Yeah. I like that piece today by Casey. I haven't finished the whole thing. That's the whole big thing about talking to robots. Yeah. Well, I mean, it's like you have to get beyond apps. Like how do you right? Beyond apps. Well, I mean, you can only you can't like if everybody has a phone, the average number of apps downloaded on a phone is zero. Like you kind of the average number of apps downloaded on a smartphone is zero. Is that true? What? Yeah. Like thousands of me all the time. What? All the time. Get a phone and don't download apps. Yeah. Don't download Facebook. People worldwide, worldwide, like across the. OK, all like Facebook is, I assume, like one of the first things the billion of people feel billion people on Facebook download on their phone. Yeah, but Facebook is preparing for a world in which it's not happening. That's the whole story. The information about getting ready to in case they don't have to have apps. And Facebook cares a lot about the performance of their app over HTML on really crappy connections because a lot of people just don't have access to it. I just wanted to look at the list. There's seven billion people on Earth, right? So like even if you start adding phones to all those other six billion people, like they might download Facebook. Right. Well, in in a lot of the places where they don't yet have phones, Facebook is strategically trying to be on those phones before they get them. So they're already on the phones. Right. And I think what's interesting is like maybe the kinds of technologies that actually go to those places or come to the rest of us aren't apps. Right. They're they're extensions of phones that do things that phones can't do. Right. And like moving is one of those things. Oh, right. And like having a conversation with you in through notifications. Hey, I like Zuckerberg's goal for the year. Right. Right. So he's building Jarvis and like you see that stuff starting to like take root here. Like it's I don't it's we should probably write the piece that connects the drones to the self-driving cars. I mean, those are the same objects. The drones are just smaller and fly and propellers. But it also it does. And I would just like to be in those so I could easily go about check. There was a did you not see that thing? Autonomous helicopter. Yeah. Yeah. What? Yeah. It's a quadrocopter. Yeah. It's big. It's so big it can have a person. Oh, it's called. It's got a perfect mode for a name for you. It's called the E hang. No, it's not. Yes, it is. It's called the Melenocopter. The Melenocopter. It's great. Yeah. Can I is there is there a working prototype? No. Well, you don't have natural scrolling on. Yeah. Natural scrolling is just stupid people. Not going to talk about. Wow. That's nuts. Yeah. It's a helicopter. Is this thing at CES? I don't know. We have to find it. Yeah. Let me see. Let me see the picture. There you go. There's a picture. It's about. Oh, wait. That's not the one that I think I saw. Then there's a. A different one. I think I saw then there's a. A drone with a seat. It's about the same thing. Are you thinking of the sea plane? No. Oh, OK. Well, so, yeah. So now the drones are going to fly people in them, which is crazy. That's awesome. Yeah, it's the best. I checked the autonomous helicopter. I want it. I really want that. Think about all the things that you do either moving or like dealing with corporations that require just lots and lots of like lizard brain wrote steps. Like if you have a fraud alert on your credit card and you need to call it, like you've got to find the number, you find the number, you dial the number, you press one. Yeah. Punch in the last four digits of your account number. You find that you punch in. So what what cuts it all out? Like think about all the amount of the amount of stuff in all the steps it takes to get you to talk to a person that says, oh, yeah, I'm cool. You're cool. Can you take that and apply that to like going to work? Yeah. Well, what I'm saying is like if you think about how much actual intellectual effort goes into most of the steps, it's actually not that much. It's nothing. And like if you could have a bot just do those steps. Right. And so what are the other things that don't take a bunch of intellectual work to do? Driving to work, going in, like, I don't know, cleaning my house, a robot vacuum. Like we're at a place now where we can just make stuff that does those things. Right. The work now is to actually put it together into products that can actually talk to each other and aren't too creepy and eventually don't kill us all. Right. Like that's that's the mission for the next. Can we talk about can we talk about like Uber and Lyft and all of these? GM is just right. But it's like are we are how how close are we to a world where I can call in self-driving Uber? Well, that depends on who you ask. If you ask Nvidia, we're very far because like the first ninety five percent of driving is super easy. And I've heard about this. Yeah. The last five percent. Yeah. But I mean, Geohot did it by himself. Tesla's rolling out over a software update, more or less. I think we're close. Yeah. Where where we can do it. But regulations are going to stop us. Yeah, that's right. I mean, the number is 20, 20, 20, 20. That's what I was saying. Twenty, twenty or twenty. Twenty. It's a question of like, what's our risk tolerance for those edge cases? Right. If we can get it from five percent of like things that it can't handle down to one percent and like we at that one percent, we know that self-driving cars will kill fewer people than even driving cars. Right. Will we be able to make the mental shift to be like, that's that's an acceptable risk of death. Will we be able as a society be like, we know who to blame when that. Right. Because these things have to be programmed to kill. Right. In one way or another. Right. Because if the car sees a pedestrian running into the road, do they run over that pedestrian or go and veer over the bridge? Right. See that whole that whole thing. Right. It's like you deal with ethics then, too. Right. But I don't know. I'm excited for a self-driving car future. Have you been have you been in a Tesla that has lane assist yet? No. It is unbelievable. It is so. Is it the lane assist or the auto drive? It's the same thing. Oh, yeah. No, it's not. Lots of cars have lane assist. Lane assist tells you that there's somebody else in the. No, but there are some cars that will steer for you. Yeah. Yeah, the Tesla. Tesla will drive itself. Yeah. Well, I thought it was I thought lane assist will like speed you up or slow you down. Whatever, whatever. It depends on the car maker. Version 7.0. The Tesla that they rolled out over the air that whatever drives for you. It's cool. Did you do this with the. Yeah, it was really. Yeah. Yeah. It was it was really it's like really just weird being in a vehicle that's moving for you. But like like to your point, either these the we think we're moving toward that point. All right. So what else are you going to look at? It's yes. You got to put yourself in a fallout for excuse me. You got to put yourself in a fallout for Intel at the cool for the game. Yeah. So you go and sit in the stool and then a dude points a tablet at you for two minutes and then you wait a minute. Oh, oh, oh, oh, wow. For Intel. Yeah. Where is Intel's? I was like right. We were there. OK. Yeah. The giant man. So Sam, what else are you going to look at here? What else? What are you going for? What's on your list? I don't know. I kind of want to go back to South Hall. I saw like the Razors new camera. I haven't used that yet. I mean, you like there's the gadgets are back, right? So there's there I want to like they're back. They're always they were back. They went away for like a month when I said they were back. But now they came back after that month when they went away five years. But they came back last year. There's so many. And then they went away. Like I think they went away at the end of December for like maybe two days and then they came back for. Yeah, there was vacation, take a little vacation. So you like it. Right. I don't have any really annoying Instagram vacation spots. Sorry. I want to I want to ride. Who bought Segway? Who is it? What company? But they're right over there. I know. Yeah. Who bought them? It's someone bought nine nine nine. But I want to ride that little thing. Yeah, that seems cool. And then there's like all these just like electric scooters and like these little electric transport vehicles that are cool. I mean, you know, I ride electric skateboard to work. So it's like kind of just what I think about all the time. It's like rideables. But other than that, I fell off an electric scooter yesterday. Wait, tell me this. I'm sorry. How do we not spend the entire time talking about this story? I didn't really fall off. Jeff was driving it and I was on the back of it. And then. Yeah. Yeah. Was that the white one that's in the parking lot? No, it's the one that was at Pepcom. It's called the Urbie, I believe. Wow. Sam is literally vlogging right now. Sam is going to teach me how to do rideables. He puts up a vlog every day. No, I don't. Every day. You should vlog every day. He promises every day. What is the point of a vlog if you don't do it every day? Yeah, of course. We roast Sam. That's cool. Well, Sam right now is my life coach. That's right. Are you going to start vlogging? Maybe I'm literally teaching Joanna how to snap. I feel like Joanna needs, you need a mission. I feel like I need to give you like a reality show style quest. What's your mission this year? There's nothing this year. I tried to find it and there was nothing. You should have just brought the selfie stick back. I know. I have one in my book bag. I have one in my hotel room. Where it belongs. I don't know. I couldn't find anything that was like really got me or something that was like super wacky. It just, I couldn't find it. That new Keurig machine is interesting. Keurig is doing. That's not wacky though. No, I know. I kind of want one of those. Yeah. The soda machine. Yeah. The thing is a huge rip off. Yeah, they're all rip offs. It's a massive rip off. A rip off of your money. Now we're going to end this show. Also there's like two bartending machines too. Here's what I want the people to do. With like little things. And this will only start to happen later in the day because we're taping, we're not live. Just tweet at Joanna Stern. Do not tweet at me. Do it. With what you think her CES gimmick should be. Do not. I'm leaving. Should it be the selfie stick again? Should Joanna just be the girl? She's going to get off the plane. For whatever reason has a huge flashlight in her hands at all times. Flashlight. She has flashlights. I saw a lot of crazy weird stuff. I think also part of my disillusionment is that I've been now to enough CES shows where when you see things and you're just like, yeah, there's no way that's coming out. Yeah, like the Faraday future. And it's so sad because they're these awesome sneakers that you can control with your phone. I don't know. What? The sneakers. Talk about the sneakers. I got pitched on like five different pairs of sneakers and there's one that's really cool. You can control the temperature in the sneakers. You can adjust them. You can count your steps. All of these cool things in the sneakers. And then I went to go see it and I was like, yeah, this thing's definitely never coming out. Yeah. Because you saw like a prototype. Yeah. And I was like, oh God. But isn't that what CES is? It's like hopes and dreams and promises. It is. I want to take it home. Here's what we can do. Just wait two years. Yeah. Yes. And sometimes we see that. And another really good example is like I'm really obsessed with wireless charging right now. And I remember coming to the show seven years ago, I think it was Engadget and I wrote about Wattricity. Oh man. And Wattricity doesn't feel like they're any further along even though I know they are. I wrote a story for Engadget called like this is wireless charging's either. Do you know how much I regret that story? When did you write that story? It was like seriously 2008. Was it at the Intel booth? No. No. I thought wireless charging was so deep going to happen. I went and had them. It's always going to happen. They had a wireless Foreman grill and I made them make me a burger on it because I didn't believe it was. What the hell is a wireless Foreman grill? Let me tell you what I did yesterday. I met with two- It was an inductive, like it was a Foreman grill but instead of plugging in the wall, they like set it on a pad and the pad provided enough power to the thing. Grilling with fire is probably the way to go with a grill. And it made you a really great grilled cheese without wires. Yeah. Except for the wires that were clearly connected to the gigantic metal table that I was standing over. Yeah. I was like, I'm going to take a Foreman grill and walk away and then that would be useless unless I had another giant metal table. But you see where it's going. You need the- Yesterday I had two meetings with wireless charging companies and it's like, I saw this five years ago and yes, it's awesome. I want to be able to charge my phone sitting on my couch from a router that's in the garage. So you're saying you don't want that Apple case on there? No. I love this Apple case, Sam. We're not talking about the Apple case. Type check the Apple case. We're not. It's the major boss. I need to have this Apple case on all day and Venmo all day to Nealight. How much did Venmo pay you to? I just want to know. Is it a big number? How much did Venmo Venmo you? You realize I can look on Venmo and see- No ads. No ads. Not today. Tomorrow. Tomorrow. Squarespace. You want to come back for ads tomorrow? I want to be back for Squarespace. You want to read the ads tomorrow? Yes. I was on Gruber's podcast too and also did about 20 minutes of Squarespace talking. You just read a Squarespace ad. I just did. Which you have paid now. But I mean, my main point is like, I do love CES. I love seeing these things and I'm like, this is going to be amazing. We're going to watch it happen. I guess I'm getting very frustrated year after year not seeing some of these things happen or they just don't get better. And it gets better. You know? It gets better. Can I just, for the people that are listening to this at home or like in your car on the way to work or something. CES or on your rideable. Or on your rideable. I just want to make it really clear. I just want to make it really clear that CES is very cool. And I think we're all a little bit jaded after being here. Seriously, for like eight, nine, ten years in a row, it feels like the same thing every year. But if you've never been to CES, it will seem very glorious. And it is. It's very tiring. But really, this is where you come to see all the cool stuff. Like, we are definitely like, oh, it's all the same every year. But you don't get to see an 8K 98 inch TV every day. Just like, I think it's the little things. Like just walking into a thing and seeing, you know, LG's booth has like 80 TVs. Like it's creating this massive display. And it's like VR is like 10 years ago, nine years ago. Eli, remember when I came to my first CES with you and you made me go to the Vuzix booth? And you made me put on that terrible headset? Yes. And now look at how far it's come. And I was right that day. I'm just saying like, remember that? But like now VR is, I mean, yes, it's not here for everybody. You have to set your expectations and understand that there are iterative updates here that happen. Right. And that's okay. So for example, like last year, one of our reporters Sean McCain was on a desperate, desperate hunt for true wireless earbuds. You put one in your ear. Sean, right? Yeah. And like he found a couple and they were garbage and they weren't ever going to come out. You just knew in his heart they weren't ever going to come out. There's like three or four pairs here this year. Yeah, I know. And they're actually really good. So it went from like Impossible Dream to garbage prototype to retail product. Yeah. In three years. Like that's like two years from now. Those you wear those sneakers. Yeah, we're in the sneakers wireless charging. VR headset. Oh, my God. Basically a baby. Your shoes will tie themselves for you while you live in a virtual world and a helicopter flies. Have you guys seen these VR headsets now that maybe the vibe does this? I'm not sure because I have somehow yet to play with that thing. I also have never tried to Morpheus. Let's go after this. It's here. Morpheus is here. Sony has it. Cool. Have you guys seen these VR headsets with the cameras now? So it's like VR and AR combined. So you put on the headset, you're in virtual world, but you like see your hands. There was one. Yeah, like pass through cameras. Yeah. Yeah. I haven't done anything like that. Like Oculus doesn't do that. Right. That's what's going to be great about getting these. Gear VR does. Gear VR does do that. It doesn't do like AR. No, Gear VR is like you put the phone in. Right. And it's like doing that. You can flip on the camera. Yeah. It's super weird. It's mostly like so you don't. I don't know. I think that's like a really weird, interesting. That's like the cross section. That's like you're so deep in your VR sesh you can't take off the headset. Right. So you just like click the switch and you're like, oh, my hands are here, but I'm still in outer space. I just need to get drink. I need to get drink. Have you guys done the Samsung 4D Oculus experience thing where you sit in the chair and it's like you're going to, I really want to try that too. All right. Well, it sounds like we have a bunch of stuff to run around and try. Joanna, we're going to find you a gimmick. We're going home. Again, at Joanna's turn. Yep. For her next. Going home. I wish we had done this two days ago. Well, maybe next week. We don't anyway. Dieter is at Backlawn. I have to spend the week with Sam. He's helping me snack. Sam is at Sam Sheffer. I'm at Reckless. This, I would say, has been an emotional Vergecast journey. So it's a good one. I mean, I love having you two here. Thank you. I think you two are tired. Yes. A little tired? We're tired and you, we got to bring you up. We got to lift your spirits. Yeah. I'm going home. I'm going home. And that, I think, is where the show ends. We'll be back every day from CS. See you in New York. Tomorrow, I'm just going to take a whole bunch of drugs before being on the show. With David Pierce. So I'm lit up for David. David Pierce left us today. Yeah. You're saying. Oh, well, I, you know. Subscribe to our YouTube channel. Subscribe to our YouTube channel. Youtube.com slash the Verge. Yeah. Follow us on Snapchat. Oh, and Nicola Fuma will be on the show tomorrow. Oh, follow me on Snapchat, please. Joanna Stern. Cut it. Cut the mic. Mute her. Please do follow me on Snapchat. Nobody watches my Snapchat. That's your gimmick. I'm just using Sam. Everyone knows now. Thanks, everybody. Sam is secretly teaching me how to Snapchat. Rock and roll. Goodbye. He's my tutor.
 Hello and welcome to a podcast in which most other people are capturing me.
 Are you still periscoping?
 Let it go for like three minutes and then I'll stop.
 Oh my God.
 I'm glad the camera is here.
 Hey everyone.
 Wow.
 Hey.
 Way to be the loudest person in history.
 Hi.
 All right.
 Hello and welcome to the Vergecast.
 It's day two, day three.
 Yeah, we're calling it, I don't forget.
 Whatever the hell day it is.
 It's a day.
 It's a day.
 The show floor is open.
 Wednesday.
 We are here at the Verge Lounge on the show floor.
 There's a crowd here.
 Walt is just staring at me.
 How's it going, buddy?
 Walt and I literally finished a podcast together like minutes ago and now he's just here to
 heckle me because this one is not as good as the one he is.
 But my friend Joanna Stern is here.
 Joanna is just using her phone.
 She's Snapchatting.
 I'm a special guest.
 Joanna's a special guest.
 Dieter Bohn is here.
 I'm just a regular old schlub.
 And I think you know that Sam is literally periscoping as we do this.
 I will say that the angle that you've got your camera at.
 Swangle, sir.
 This is why I fired you.
 It's not even true.
 It's literally not true.
 That's why you fired me.
 I mean, the angle makes Sam.
 Makes you look swaggy.
 Sam, I've noticed it since you left the Verge.
 Sam, do I need to get that?
 You've spent a lot of time figuring out ways to make cameras make you look cool.
 Like that right there is like that camera.
 This is literally a secret Santa gift that I requested.
 That's not a secret Santa gift.
 Anyway, it is day whatever it is.
 It's a day two of CS.
 Our second Vergecast here.
 The first day the show floor is open.
 Speak into the mic.
 Speak into the mic.
 Go closer to it.
 Right there.
 Okay.
 Guys, Walt is watching us.
 I'm going to probably do this for real.
 You don't work for Walt.
 Walt is like...
 You don't work for Walt.
 Who doesn't work for Walt?
 That's right.
 Walt is all of our Walt.
 Anyway, so Sam, let me just ask you a question.
 Yeah, please.
 Oh, God.
 What is your job now?
 My job is creative producer at Mashable.
 I put together the Snapchat Discover channel.
 So are you Snapchatting at CES?
 I am Snapchatting at CES for Mashable.
 What have you been snapping?
 I did three booth tours.
 I did Sony, I did LG, and I did Samsung.
 And it's basically all thin TVs.
 Yeah.
 Like cool 8K HDR.
 It's like, how is HDR now finally a thing in 2016?
 But it only came out like two years ago.
 Yeah.
 And then it started to be a thing.
 I'm not talking about for cameras.
 And now it's a thing.
 No, I know, but like...
 That's how TV works.
 No, but HDR has been around forever.
 Oh, because the technology to make the pixels get as bright as they need to in order to
 qualify for being HDR.
 This is the most uncomfortable thing.
 What?
 It wasn't around.
 I can't like look away from the mic.
 You can.
 Like you're like looking at the mic.
 I just...
 No, I have to sit like this.
 You just have to talk into it.
 I'm talking into it.
 Joanna, the two choices...
 Here.
 Joanna, the choices are not be far away from the mic playing with your phone and uncomfortably
 sit like you're in church.
 There's a middle choice.
 Oh, God.
 Here.
 The quality of the show right now, we should have some like morning zoo sound effects.
 Yeah, that's right.
 Sam has a morning zoo camera angle.
 That's what that is.
 What is morning zoo?
 What is morning zoo?
 Is it morning zoo?
 Morning zoo?
 It's just me.
 It's the...
 Yeah, it's the Z100 one.
 The wacky morning radio shows.
 Yes.
 I don't know how we got here.
 What's we...
 I don't even know what I'm doing here.
 Is it CES or...
 I actually have had no idea what I've been doing at CES.
 Yeah.
 I still feel like I have to be...
 How many years has it been, Joanna, for you?
 Can I move this?
 Can I move this?
 Oh, that would be the answer.
 That's like a cur to me till right now.
 Veteran technology journalist, Joanna Stern.
 I don't know what I've been doing here.
 What have you been doing here?
 Have you been looking at stuff?
 She's asking me for Snapchat tips.
 I don't know what I've been doing.
 Yeah.
 This is real.
 I've done things.
 I've seen some things.
 I've had some interesting conversations about some things.
 What have you seen?
 What have you seen?
 I've seen...
 Today, I made a VR painting.
 Yeah.
 I made two VR paintings.
 Oh, yeah.
 I saw you.
 You wore the HTC one and you wore the Oculus one, right?
 Yeah.
 I've done some VR paintings.
 Which one do you like better?
 And you put that epic selfie of yours.
 Wow.
 Did you see that?
 No.
 It was really very tight on my head.
 Oh, yeah.
 The sea goggle face.
 I had really bad sea goggle face, which we're all going to have in the future.
 Did you just make that up right now?
 No, that's fine.
 No.
 Yeah, like, or ski masks.
 Yeah.
 Okay.
 Yeah.
 I don't think...
 Because you're not seeing them side by side, I don't...
 And I'm not really an expert in the kind of graphic fidelity of the images.
 I don't think I really noticed a difference that much in terms of experience, but I did
 like the controllers better on the HTC.
 Oh, that's really interesting.
 The touch pads.
 Yeah.
 And you don't have to move your hand to another...
 Because on Oculus, there's two buttons.
 Oh, yeah.
 But you just move your...
 Yeah, but it's like on the HTC, it's like a D-pad built into the touch pad.
 Oh, are you using the Oculus touch controllers?
 Yes.
 You just hold those in your hands.
 You're like...
 Yeah, no.
 But HTC's is like a touch pad.
 Oh, cool.
 Yeah.
 I liked that experience part of that better, but I had a lot more fun in the Oculus games.
 Yeah.
 Which I...
 The Oculus games are super cool.
 I don't know.
 Okay.
 So the coolest Oculus demo, did you do the one where you're holding virtual controllers
 in the air and the controllers you're holding?
 No.
 It was like that Star Wars thing we saw last year, right?
 They're showing this really cool toy box thing, which is not gonna be released, or I don't
 know when it's gonna be released, but it's all about using the controllers.
 And so you pick things up, you play like ping pong.
 Yeah, yeah.
 And then the last one, it's like you join us at a toy box and you pick things up in
 the toy box and knock blocks over.
 Yeah, yeah.
 And then you didn't get to the RC car.
 So the last thing that they let me pick up out of the toy box was the controller that
 I was holding.
 You were interacting with the objects?
 Like a virtual representation of the controller.
 No, the last thing I did was...
 Did you do this demo?
 No, I don't know this demo.
 I shot the little rabbit.
 It was like being in a carnival.
 I don't get to do the trailer, Sam.
 You're here now.
 Yeah.
 Yeah, but then the last one...
 No, that was the last one.
 So the last one is you pick up a virtual controller that is the controller you're holding and
 you use exactly the right size and everything.
 It's weird.
 Yeah, does it feel real?
 Yeah, no, it screws with your head, but it's probably don't have it here because I did
 it in Facebook.
 Yeah, yeah.
 But it's...
 And then you drive an RC car using the controller that's in your hand.
 Right.
 But it's just super weird because you've been in the virtual reality for so long.
 How long were you immersed for?
 I was immersed for...
 What is it?
 I was deeply immersed in the experience for 20 minutes.
 So Sam, what have you done here?
 What's the coolest thing you've seen?
 LG's roll-up display.
 That's been like a dream of mine because foldable...
 You can Google foldable displays and there's things from 1998, but I finally got to see
 one in person.
 It is nuts.
 Yeah.
 It's really...
 And there's barely any distortion.
 You know when you push an LCD, it has that rainbow effect?
 Does nothing.
 It was really cool, but I mean, it was connected to some weird, janky computer thing.
 There's a ribbon cable.
 Yeah, that's exactly what it was.
 Although, at least it wasn't under glass.
 Usually, those things are under glass.
 To keep people from Sam from poking into the...
 The LG representative had latex gloves on and he just very carefully was just like...
 Massaging.
 Yeah.
 But it's cool.
 It bends convexly and concavely, so you can roll it both ways, which is interesting.
 What's it connected to?
 Some ribbon cable on some PC that was covered with a piece of paper and they were like,
 don't film that.
 Yeah.
 So, yeah, that.
 And then I was just walking around the Samsung booth.
 I mentioned this to you before, Nilay.
 They have transparent TVs, which I've never seen before and apparently have been a thing
 or have not been a thing.
 So they're transparent displays.
 Well, no, but yeah, that's what I was saying.
 They've had transparent displays forever.
 Yeah.
 And now they're like, we made a TV out of it.
 I mean, what's a display as a TV?
 Yeah, a display as a TV.
 Right?
 Isn't that the same thing?
 But yeah, that was really cool.
 Right.
 And rideables.
 I've seen some really quirky, weird rideables.
 Someone finally made a $500 electric skateboard.
 The Acton Blink.
 It's like the size of a regular skateboard goes like 15 miles an hour.
 Only has a range of six miles with stuff.
 It's 500 bucks.
 Someone finally did it.
 Yeah.
 So I'll buy one and I'll never catch fire.
 Probably not.
 Am I going to buy one?
 I mean, I have an electric skateboard now.
 Yeah.
 I want a faster, better one, but they're really expensive.
 Once once those faster, like the 20 mile an hour ones come down under a thousand, that's
 when I think I'll take the plunge.
 But for now, they're too expensive.
 Yeah.
 So have you guys watched Sam's vlog?
 I'm watching Sam's vlogs all day.
 Well, they last all day.
 Yeah.
 Wow.
 Wow.
 Getting shade thrown at me.
 I've watched them and I'm like always amazed how like you're smoothly riding on this.
 That's when you're on your skateboard.
 That's right.
 That's right.
 No helmet.
 That's right.
 It's very, it seems very unsafe.
 Thanks, mom.
 By the way, Joanna is my mom.
 It seems very unsafe, but I'm very impressed that you're talking really well and you're
 holding that camera.
 And then I'm just.
 I learned from the best right here.
 Yeah, I taught Sam how to hold a camera while you were talking about your life.
 Patel's vlog school is not a business.
 What's the coolest thing that you've seen here?
 Is it anything?
 I've you're the person I brought.
 You're the person who hates CES.
 No, I was just telling Walt this.
 This is my ninth CES.
 Wow.
 Yes.
 What's yours?
 I think it's nine.
 Nine.
 Ten.
 Ten.
 Seven.
 You've done a decade of CES.
 I get a pen.
 You get a pen.
 I get a 3D printed urn to put my ashes in when I die at the end of the show.
 Wow.
 That's Dieter Dark right there.
 We like that.
 They have them here.
 Really?
 Yes.
 You get a 3D printed urn.
 So you're basically just like signing your death note for yourself.
 Yeah.
 But anyone with a 3D printer make a 3D printing urn?
 No, these are quality.
 As opposed to non-quality 3D printed urns.
 Well, because you want to keep an urn for a while.
 That's how you pass down from generation to generation.
 Anyway, what were you saying?
 I was asking Walt in his experience.
 He told me this is his 25th CES.
 Wow.
 If you count comdexes, it's like 30.
 What year did it happen for him that he wasn't so excited about being here?
 This is my first year where I'm just... I used to have this crazy adrenaline and just
 like feeling and you're just like you're excited.
 You're really excited to be here.
 I don't know if it's that I've been here for two... I don't know if it's time or if it's
 just that stuff is kind of boring and it just feels like what we saw last year and the year
 before and the year before that.
 Maybe it's consecutive years in a row, like you haven't taken a break and then...
 I'm sad about it.
 This year Samsung has a fridge with a 21.5 inch display.
 Yes.
 That's right.
 Think about that.
 What was last year's size?
 Probably like 17.
 Yeah.
 Bigger and bigger.
 They're like phones.
 Well, I thought your piece was great.
 I loved it and it made me excited to be here again because it made me excited about the
 industry and all that's changed and that this show is a marker of what happens in the industry
 and that's why all of us do what we do, but then I got up from my computer and I was here
 again and then I was excited about it.
 It's funny because I think 2015 was generally a super boring year in tech.
 Right.
 A lot of incremental things.
 It was so boring that the Apple news that leaked at CES this year was not about a new
 MacBook or the iPhone going to Verizon.
 The Apple news that leaked was they're cutting iPhone orders.
 Which is like a big deal.
 Who cares?
 No, it's a huge deal, right?
 It means people are satisfied with their phones.
 No, that means like a billion people have an iPhone.
 Yeah, and it means they're not getting new ones.
 Right.
 Because they don't want anything better.
 I think, so Sam representing the light and hope in this conversation means everyone's
 connected.
 That's what you're saying.
 I'm like they're stopping as much production on these current devices, right?
 Or they're saying that the new orders of the new iPhones are going to be cut down.
 I don't think they've started making the iPhone 7.
 You don't think?
 I think they're cutting these.
 Right, because they've sold a bazillion of them, right?
 The market is saturated with these.
 Haven't they sold more 6S's and 6S Pluses than all previous generations?
 Like doesn't every iPhone beat the previous generation?
 The report was that Holiday would slightly beat the previous Holiday, but they're cutting
 it because they don't think in the first quarter.
 I mean to me that just means that people are still on 5, 5S, 6, and their current 6S's.
 Right?
 Right.
 Right, so my only point here is that news has never come out of Apple before.
 I see.
 Right, and that's like negative.
 The thing that comes out of Apple during CES is the thing that distracts you from what
 is happening here because something cooler might be happening someplace else.
 My point is only...
 I heard there was a red watch ban.
 There's a... yeah.
 It's only Wednesday also.
 There's a black steel Milanese.
 We could have leaks tomorrow.
 That was a leak.
 Hot.
 Hot.
 But my point is like 2015 was a down year and you would hope that CES would pick it
 up and be like everybody waited, but instead what happened was like Samsung did a bunch
 of silly stuff.
 Sony announced literally nothing.
 A record player.
 Right.
 LG.
 Literally.
 They literally announced a record player.
 Answer this question.
 Why are record players so hard?
 I have checked record players.
 Okay, so I... in Jersey where I live there's a really, really good...
 He took that second to make up the answer.
 No, no, no.
 There's like a story that's involved with this.
 It's amazing.
 We all just experienced what Sam was like in high school.
 So there was a kid named Charlotte Maine I believe.
 This is what happens when I want to tell a story on the VirgChats.
 So my hometown in Jersey, the English town flea market is an amazing flea market.
 There are gems there.
 So both of my younger brothers, I have one brother that's turning 21 and my other brother's
 22.
 They both have record players and they both...
 Your parents just like banged them out.
 They both...
 Thank you Joanna.
 They...
 I'm going to pretend that didn't happen.
 He's 25.
 Yeah, that's right.
 We're close in age.
 Yeah.
 Thank you mom.
 You're 25 or 24?
 There's a three year gap.
 It's the second to...
 Barely.
 Yeah.
 Anyway, so both my younger brothers have record players and they both prefer to listen to
 music on record players.
 It's 521 in Vegas and it's getting a little naughty.
 I think because of the sort of exclusivity of it and it's like a really cool feeling
 I think to have this like vinyl that you put down and it's the whole experience and then
 honestly the music quality listening to a vinyl record is unmatched.
 And so in my...
 I live with my next younger brother and his record player sits in my living room and we
 have a stereo and we prefer to listen to records.
 But I mean we have a Chromecast audio now so it's way easy to just link into the Chromecast
 audio.
 But I think it's just...
 That's crazy.
 It's really like the fact that these existed for like you guys when you were...
 No?
 You didn't use a record player?
 Did you use a record player?
 No.
 I bought a record player when I was in college.
 To be like...
 So when were record players?
 I think.
 Record players got disrupted.
 It was like record players.
 Is Walt around?
 Walt...
 Yeah.
 I sat on this stage today.
 Yeah.
 70s and 80s, right?
 I mean my dad had a record player in our house but we didn't use it.
 Right.
 Because we had new formats.
 Oh, I had a record player.
 We all had like...
 What?
 We had tapes and then CDs.
 Yeah.
 We grew up with tapes.
 I grew up with tapes.
 Like tapes were the first and then CDs.
 I grew up with tapes but we had record players and we used them.
 Yeah.
 We used them.
 I mean Hype Check Record Players is the aesthetic of having this and the artwork and just like...
 But there's like a booming...
 There's like a vinyl sales boom.
 Yeah.
 And it was the most popular thing on Amazon over the holiday season, right?
 Yeah.
 It was record players.
 And the Sony record player was the number one post on the site and the second most popular
 post on the site yesterday was the Technics turntable.
 And it's like crazy too.
 It's cool.
 The president of Sony Electronics sat on the stage with me this morning and was like...
 Oh, I saw that.
 Record players are sexy.
 They're hot.
 And I was like, I don't know what...
 It's 2016.
 It's this appeal of us teens didn't have this and now we have access to it and it's relatively
 cheap.
 If you look at Polaroid and the film...
 It's not relatively cheap.
 It is.
 No.
 I mean, if you go...
 That's why I mentioned...
 Run into the flea market.
 That's right.
 I do that too.
 We'll go to the flea market and buy records.
 But very quickly run out of stuff you want and then you get to the point where you just...
 All right.
 You got to find this John Furgiante vinyl.
 It's like $300 on eBay.
 Yeah.
 Or if you want to buy new music on LP.
 Yeah.
 How do you buy new music on LP?
 You go to a record store and it's like 20 bucks.
 You don't listen to new music on records.
 Well, so that's the thing.
 I think.
 Right.
 Personally, I think the appeal is like...
 Is Taylor Swift available on a record?
 I imagine somewhere.
 Yeah.
 I think...
 Isn't everything printed to vinyl?
 No.
 No?
 No.
 No.
 Again, so...
 Pressed, I guess.
 I talked to Sony about this a lot yesterday and they were like, Sony Music had to go find
 old vinyl cutting machines and refurbish them because nobody makes this stuff.
 So the surge in interest is creating this another...
 So Sony is now getting back into...
 Did they have vinyl players back in the day?
 Was that a Sony?
 Yes.
 Yeah, they did?
 Okay.
 I mean, all these audio companies, it's just funny that they're back.
 I think it really goes down to every streaming music app kind of sucks.
 Oh, God.
 We're not doing this.
 We are.
 We are.
 We are.
 We are.
 Not doing this.
 It's true.
 $40.
 $40 for what?
 Taylor.
 Yeah.
 On vinyl?
 Vinyl LP pressing.
 Okay.
 Apple Music is literally garbage.
 Oh, my God.
 Just out of nowhere.
 Literally no one uses Apple Music.
 I want to talk about Venmo.
 I want to talk about Venmo for a second.
 No.
 What kind of content is going on?
 I love Venmo, but what does this have to do with music?
 You can listen to music on Venmo?
 Because we've talked about Venmo on the Vergecast before and they're like, oh, no one uses Venmo.
 Everyone uses Venmo.
 Everyone uses Venmo.
 Everyone uses Venmo.
 Guys, guys, guys.
 There's literally no reason to talk about Venmo at CS.
 None at all.
 That's true.
 Or Spotify.
 If you talk about Venmo at CS one more time, you have to Venmo me $5.
 Okay, fine.
 I will right now.
 Why is it so easy to use?
 It's so easy to use.
 Just send money to anyone.
 You guys want some money on Venmo?
 I got a list of stuff that happened here.
 Yeah, Steeder, do some news.
 What do you want?
 What do you want?
 You want to talk about Netflix?
 Yeah, talk about Netflix.
 Yeah.
 130 more countries.
 130 countries.
 That's a lot of countries.
 That was their big announcement.
 So Netflix had a big press conference today.
 Yep.
 And their thing is they're the first global TV network.
 Yep.
 Which is an interesting thing to say.
 I don't want your dirty money.
 I don't want your literally Venmo.
 What are you going to put as the message?
 Oh, my God.
 Just like right like.
 What else?
 The problem with this is I grew up in a time and place where you didn't talk about money.
 Yeah.
 You either you were poorer than everybody else and you felt awkward or you're richer
 than everybody else and you were a dick.
 Right.
 And so you just you don't.
 And so the idea that there would be a social network where I could watch money be exchanged
 between fans.
 That's weird.
 Is deeply creepy and weird to me.
 Yeah.
 The social part is a little odd.
 I find that it's all it's all public.
 One of a hundred other ways to send money.
 No, but it's just that it's so easy to use.
 It's so easy to use.
 People are there.
 Sam, I'm not talking about it anymore.
 They are.
 Why did you do this to the show?
 I love to talk about Venmo.
 OK, so Netflix is in one hundred thirty new countries.
 Yeah.
 They have said that they won't promise to not censor stuff.
 Yeah.
 Different places they will see.
 And they call themselves a global TV network.
 Yeah.
 Yeah.
 And like Reed Hastings on station is like, you are witnessing.
 It was like we had a conversation about whether like is he getting more evil?
 Yeah.
 And we realized that like primarily what his company does is like ship cartoons to children.
 And that inherently keeps you from being evil.
 But they also they also make like torture porn action TV shows, Marvel TV shows.
 What was the most the stream movie?
 What was the six?
 But it was it was it was it was a faster start.
 Most streamed in the first 30 days.
 It's not the most.
 Oh, OK.
 OK.
 I saw a headline and I was like, well, that's a little scary.
 OK, so fastest.
 What was the news that Netflix other than streaming to the world?
 I just got a Venmo notification.
 They're doing a bunch of new shows.
 They had like a bunch of trailers for new shows.
 Yeah.
 Ross was like freaking out in the live blog because the dude from the phone booth show, Dr.
 Who.
 Sorry.
 That's really interesting to me.
 Like if you think about who has traditionally been in it.
 Yes.
 Like Netflix is here because they're a tech company, but they're just they just shut off content today.
 Yeah.
 They don't shut off any technology.
 I mean, it is tech right there delivering billions of hours of streaming video instantly to billions of people.
 Why don't they go to a TV show or TV network conference?
 The world's greatest network TV network now.
 Right.
 That's how I think about Netflix.
 I'd say YouTube is close.
 I don't watch a lot of YouTube other than you, Sam.
 Oh, thank you.
 And you're like you're a little you know, there's like there's seriously like this this age demographic of like 12 to 25.
 That is just YouTube.
 So, yeah.
 If you guys like do you know the numbers of these Minecraft videos that are on YouTube?
 Yeah.
 There's like there's like a node of Minecraft YouTubers that all have like 10 million subscribers.
 They're doing billions of views on YouTube.
 And it's like literally three year olds.
 And it's just like voiceover.
 They're just playing games.
 It's crazy.
 All right.
 Anyway, should be bolt.
 What?
 I want to talk about what you guys want to talk about.
 I feel like you and Sam just run away with nonsense.
 Yeah.
 This is quality content.
 Well, I just want to know, did you go to the press conferences?
 No.
 She was drinking Starbucks in her hotel room.
 Are you just like opting out of CS this whole time?
 I wrote some stuff.
 Yeah.
 I wrote about my usual wacky connected health crap that's been here that I always.
 Anything good?
 What do you think of the new Fitbit?
 We talked about this yesterday.
 I saw it.
 I think it looks better actually in person than the picture.
 This is the faintest phrase.
 I didn't get to use it really.
 I didn't get to like.
 Is this a nice one that looks like a nice piece of.
 I put it on and I like page through the menus and that was really the extent of me using it.
 But I think it's a good move for them.
 I mean, five days of battery life with a color screen and being able to.
 Classic.
 Track your workouts and also hopefully get better heart rate monitoring.
 If they had probably email on there too, I would say that I have everything that I do.
 You have email?
 Texting?
 I don't have email.
 I see.
 I would say if they had email, it would probably do every single thing I do on my Apple Watch.
 I'm going to ask you, are the car companies coming after you?
 Yeah.
 There's a lot of car things here.
 But are they approaching you as a Wall Street Journal reviewer to play with stuff?
 What are they pitching you?
 A lot of the interface improvements, things that are going on, innovation at the companies.
 It's just like super broad topics.
 Yes.
 We want you to do a story about innovation.
 Last year I covered both CarPlay and Android Auto and I loved covering both of them.
 If I bought a car right now, I would not buy one without probably CarPlay, even though I like Android Auto better.
 But I'm not fully on an Android phone all the time.
 I think one of the stories of the show is that Samsung and LG actually know how to make interfaces as long as they're not doing it on a phone.
 As long as they're not skinning something.
 They are not skinning something.
 Where do these interfaces live?
 The webOS TV looks really nice.
 Yeah, that is that.
 Apparently LG was involved in creating the interface for the infotainment system on the Chevy Bolt.
 If you go watch the video, Chris tried it out.
 He actually really likes it.
 It's got a really obvious widget system for all the stuff you want to have showing on your car.
 It goes full screen.
 It's responsive and fast.
 It's not slow and crappy like every other car interface is.
 And you can still get Android Auto and CarPlay and Chevy's on the Bolt anyway, right?
 Right.
 And then Samsung's TV, I think it's great.
 I think the fridge has got a decent interface.
 Yeah.
 As long as they're not skinning Android, surprise, they know what they're doing.
 Well, Teeter wrote a thing about Tizen this morning I think is super interesting.
 Because I went and played with a bunch of Samsung stuff.
 It's like Samsung made Tizen and everyone thought it was for competing with phones and pulling away from Google.
 And maybe one day that will be true.
 But in the meantime, they control an operating system stack that they are using to make really smart other things.
 That's basically your thesis.
 Yeah.
 I have nothing else to say.
 It's what I thought of.
 Well, no, it's just really interesting because I don't know that I would want them to use Android for this.
 There's a lot of stuff Samsung makes where I'd prefer that it not be Android.
 Or I'd prefer that Google's ideas would be some other.
 The TV is a really good example.
 Do you want Samsung to just make an Android TV?
 Or do you want them to try something new?
 And because they tried something new, they've done more integration with TV stuff than anything Google's been able to do yet.
 I want to go check out the Samsung TV stuff now.
 It's cool.
 Yeah.
 But I bought a Samsung TV last year.
 Does that mean I'm not getting any of this?
 Why didn't you wait for HDR?
 I have HDR.
 Oh, okay.
 Yeah, yeah.
 Do you watch anything in HDR at home?
 Is there anything available to you in HDR?
 I think some Amazon content.
 Yeah.
 Do you have a real problem for all of these?
 Actually, no, I have.
 I think Transparent has HDR.
 Does it say available?
 They say it has Ultra HD.
 All I know is Transparent looks amazing.
 That just means it's 4K.
 Yeah, I know.
 So, but they would need HDR as well.
 Right.
 Did it shine like a...
 Content doesn't have to have HDR and 4K.
 Right, you can be 4K.
 You can be without HDR.
 Do you watch your TVs at max brightness?
 I'm going to look it up.
 Hell no.
 So, HDR primarily works by making stuff way brighter, right?
 And enhancing the color.
 Doesn't that kind of suck?
 It makes the darks darker, right?
 No.
 No.
 Hold on.
 Only relative to...
 Making the darks darker is a different technology.
 HDR is about the size of the gamut between light and dark,
 and it primarily does it by making it lighter.
 Have you seen Sonys?
 They have like direct comparison.
 They have like a TV that's split with SDR and HDR,
 and then they have them on top of each other.
 You really do see the difference.
 It's literally like when you take a photo on your phone
 and you turn on HDR and you look at the two of them,
 like when you take a picture of this guy,
 it's basically just like that.
 Yes.
 Transparent did have HDR enabled.
 All I know is that Transparent looked fucking amazing.
 I mean, like, it's an amazing show, but like, there's...
 You know, you don't...
 When you come to a show like this,
 you look at the display and you really appreciate it.
 And then when you first get your new TV, you're like,
 oh, wow, this looks amazing.
 Then you get used to it.
 And then there are times like you're watching a show
 and you're just like, wow, this looks fucking amazing.
 Yeah.
 You know, like you just like stop thinking about the content
 for a second and I'm just like, this is my TV.
 Your TV is UHD 4K, Joanna?
 I'm like, yeah, that's my TV, you know, but like...
 You got a Sud?
 Yeah.
 Sud?
 I did. I got a Sud.
 Yeah.
 The remote sucks.
 Yeah.
 Yeah, that's real bad.
 I'm in search for...
 I'm going to do a piece on this soon for like a...
 And you're going to end up recommending a stupid Logitech Harmony,
 and it's bad.
 That's the best one that I've had so far.
 I have like 10 in my apartment, and they all are so bad.
 I just keep replacing the battery when they explode.
 Which one?
 You have the one with the...
 Well, they have like 730, 950.
 No, this is the old one.
 The old Harmony one.
 It's like seven years old.
 You can't get that anymore.
 Yeah, but you can buy the batteries for it on Amazon
 because the rechargeable battery dies about once every three years.
 Peter and I play the same game.
 I will use that battery to control my TV.
 You guys prefer smart TVs?
 I mean, it sucks.
 Like, do you enjoy having all that...
 My Panasonic smart TV.
 If I had a smart TV that was good, I would definitely prefer it to a second-hand one.
 Right.
 But like, I love just you plugging an HDMI cable into the TV,
 you plug an HDMI cable into the Xbox, into your laptop, or into your Apple TV.
 Like, the TV, I really just think it should be as...
 Don't use the new ones.
 Yeah.
 Don't use the new ones.
 I haven't, like, yeah.
 Like, Samsung's new ones are fast.
 Oh, yeah, that was a huge problem was the interfaces were always super slow.
 Mine's not so slow.
 I mean, I use it for Amazon because now I don't have to use the Roku
 because it's built into that.
 Oh, that's right.
 And now I just use Apple TV and Samsung.
 I guess you do need some sort of hub, right?
 Yeah.
 Like, if you don't have Apple TV or Roku.
 And I don't like using Google Cast because when we're picking a show,
 we want to pick it together.
 Right.
 So you got to do that on the TV instead of on a phone.
 Yeah, you don't want to do that on your phone.
 Oh, we should talk about this.
 There's actually a huge trend here, which is Google Cast speakers are everywhere.
 Yes.
 I put it in the thing.
 I saw it.
 I transitioned.
 Wait.
 So what?
 It was a real alley-oop.
 What does that mean?
 So there's a bunch of Google Cast speakers built into the speaker.
 Well, I'll just set this up.
 So, for example, I've come to the show and looked for cool AirPlay things.
 Right?
 Oh, yeah.
 You always wrote about AirPlay.
 We were always coming here and finding AirPlay things, and they all suck.
 And the only AirPlay thing that's any good now is the Apple TV itself.
 Yep.
 And you can AirPlay video to the Apple TV.
 And even that's pretty flaky.
 I have one.
 It's not...
 Like, I used to think of AirPlay and iMessage as the two motes around the iPhone that nobody
 could cross.
 And AirPlay is kind of gone.
 Right?
 But Google Cast is really good.
 So, meaning you have speakers and you connect it to your Wi-Fi, and then you can just...
 Well, yeah.
 So you have Chromecast Audio.
 I have Chromecast Audio.
 I have the new Chromecast.
 Now you just have these new speakers.
 They have it built in directly.
 They're built into it.
 Yeah.
 And if you're on Spotify, the native...
 Yeah, it's like...
 It does the streams directly.
 Yeah, connected devices.
 It's way native, and it's really fast and really great.
 And it's cheap.
 So you could just, instead of buying the Chromecast Audio, if you already have a speaker system,
 you just buy these speakers.
 Yeah, now it's just built into these speakers.
 Who makes the speakers?
 Anyone good?
 They added a bunch of partners.
 Sonos?
 Romsfeld?
 Sonos is never gonna make it.
 Sonos is not gonna give up their technology.
 Fair.
 Who the...
 What the hell is Romsfeld?
 But actually, how...
 That's just the first one.
 There's a bunch more.
 How is linking multiple rooms and accounts to...
 I don't know.
 I like plugging shit in still.
 Accounts is not a problem.
 If it's on the Wi-Fi network, you can set it up so it'll allow anybody to stream to it
 from the Wi-Fi network.
 Yeah.
 The multi-room thing is more complicated.
 So I think the Google Cast Audio Puck supports multi-room audio.
 But the thing we're gonna need to see is if all these speakers are up to date with that
 multi-room stuff.
 The systems work with that.
 They ought to be.
 Yeah.
 But it's possible they might not because it might be a slightly different version of the
 Google Cast OS.
 Right.
 Which, by the way, I think is probably Chrome OS.
 Underneath?
 Underneath, yeah.
 Really?
 So you need the Google Cast app on your phone to set up the speakers then, right?
 Yeah.
 Yeah.
 Okay.
 You can do it on the web.
 B&O, Harman Kardon, Onkyo, Philips, Pioneer, Romsfeld, LG.
 Wow.
 Wow.
 Deanon, Sony.
 Yeah.
 How the hell did Apple not get AirPlay on all of those first?
 They did though, right?
 Didn't they have some AirPlay?
 They did.
 Yeah.
 I have a Pioneer AirPlay receiver and it kind of works.
 It just doesn't most of the time, right?
 It kind of works.
 Yeah.
 It sounds like you can match everything.
 It's fun.
 It's a little bit slow.
 Huh?
 That sounds like pretty much everything.
 I would agree that Google Cast is more reliable than Apple TVs and AirPlay.
 Yeah.
 For example, AirPlay works when you don't have an internet connection in a way that
 Cast is not as good at.
 Oh, interesting.
 Like direct streaming from the device to the thing you're streaming to with Google is terrible.
 Like when you try and stream a Chrome tab to Chromecast, it's bad.
 Yeah, that's bad.
 But when you're pulling it from the Chromecast itself.
 When you have internet, it's great.
 Right.
 Right.
 If you're like using, like when I cast something from my phone using the YouTube app, it like
 actually does it from the Chromecast itself, but when you're doing that with AirPlay.
 Did you know that if you AirPlay a YouTube video on your phone and you close, like you
 lock your phone, it stops?
 It's so stupid.
 Yeah.
 Like how?
 That's what I'm saying.
 It used to be this mode.
 And now it's like they just didn't pay a lot of attention to it.
 It's not great.
 Yeah.
 So I think that's really cool.
 And then the other big trend here, this is so silly.
 We talked about the retro stuff.
 So that's one big trend.
 The speakers, there's like USB-C stuff.
 Oh yeah.
 Yeah.
 It's not stupid.
 It blew out.
 It's a big trend.
 Oh yeah.
 Yeah.
 I didn't hear stupid.
 So this is like what I think.
 I said it was stupid.
 So I think about this show is like Vlad wrote this piece about how CS is just a mall.
 Oh yeah.
 Yeah.
 CS is a mall.
 But this is all the stuff that's going to be invested by this year.
 Right?
 Like what USB-C stuff?
 There's a bunch of monitors, some of which are like, I think one or two of which are
 like standalone.
 So you don't need to plug them in.
 They just power up over the USB.
 So you just carry around a monitor.
 It's like Duet on a tablet, but it's just the USB-C monitor.
 Doesn't that wreck the battery?
 Yeah.
 But if you're plugged in.
 Yeah, but how are you plugged in?
 No, but how much does charging an iPad wreck your battery?
 It's the same cable.
 So you plug the- No, but you go USB-C to the monitor.
 Right?
 But then how you can't charge the MacBook?
 You need the adapter, right?
 Some computers have more than one USB-C cable, it turns out.
 Yeah.
 They're not just MacBook accessories.
 HP and Dell announced that they're going to show USB-C type devices.
 Okay.
 They're going to show USB-C type C.
 I missed that.
 I missed that.
 Okay.
 Lots of- They're hard drives.
 They're sweet looking.
 I think it was a Lacy hard drive.
 The Chromebook Pixel has a USB-C.
 Yeah.
 You love that thing.
 My favorite computer.
 What?
 Yeah, they announced a bunch of hard drives that are USB type C.
 Yep.
 There's a MagSafe for the MacBook.
 Yeah, that thing looks cool.
 I saw that.
 I saw that, yeah.
 That thing looks- I mean, it had to happen, right?
 Everyone's been talking about USB-C for years.
 And it's like, it's finally happening.
 Right.
 Well, next month are we going to see like finally all these phones have USB-C too.
 Yeah.
 I know that the rumor this week is the Galaxy S7 is going to use USB-C.
 That's big.
 That doesn't surprise me at all.
 That's kind of where, like that's what will kick this off.
 The other thing that happened with the USB-C this week is it almost- I almost tried my
 laptop.
 Saw it.
 Yeah.
 I was using one of the knockoff USB-C cables that wasn't like official enough.
 Not that, not your Air.
 Didn't have the right resistor.
 This Air right here.
 I almost destroyed it because it overheated the MacBook when I was trying to charge my
 phone off of it.
 I have a USB-C phone.
 Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh.
 And so when I was charging my phone off of it, it was pulling too much power.
 It's USB 2 to USB-C?
 Yeah.
 USB-A.
 USB-A.
 Okay.
 And what happened?
 It got hot?
 It got hot and then the, there was like a thermal protection thing built into the hardware
 of the USB that like shut off the USB for a while.
 So you could have lost your phone and laptop.
 Wait, you figured it out?
 Yeah.
 Some guy on Twitter, some very smart guy on Twitter figured it out.
 Steven Chownsmith.
 Whoa.
 Yeah.
 Just had to wait for the thermals to come back.
 That's crazy.
 I had to find the reviews from the guy from the Chrome team.
 I thought you bought a MacBook.
 Yeah, I thought you had one too.
 No, it was a review and I was going to, I'd been, I'd like, I'd borrow a review unit like
 once every three months.
 I was like, I'm going to do it.
 And then I like, no, I'm not.
 Yeah.
 I'm waiting for the processors.
 Well, I saw Thomas, Thomas Ricker with his MacBook and he had like.
 Yeah, he loves it.
 He loves that thing.
 Yeah.
 So we showed him that.
 He's carrying around that cute little thing.
 Oh, everything looks like that now.
 Yeah.
 Oh God, yeah.
 Those new Samsung laptops.
 The Samsung one, Dell made one.
 Dell made one.
 LG made one.
 Here's what, here's my, I have a belief about Samsung and LG that will probably get us not
 invited to every LG press conference.
 They are the same company.
 No, no, they're not.
 Samsung is like trying to do something new and LG remains the shameless one.
 Yeah.
 LG will just crazy do shameless crazy shit all the time.
 What Dan is just like, he's just staring at me like I'm crazy.
 All I'm saying is that LG did the gram before LG did it super like that.
 That's true.
 LG did do the gram.
 But like attitudeally, like Samsung is like the outperforming first child and LG is like
 the fucking drunk one.
 So where does that leave Sony?
 Huh?
 Sony is like the coolest step brother.
 Sony is the step brother from another family that shows up.
 He's like the uncle that you think is cool, but then you grow up and you realize he was
 just drunk.
 Everyone is drunk.
 I'm Sony.
 That's why I like Sony so much.
 Nelay, what's the coolest thing you've seen so far?
 What's the coolest thing you've seen so far?
 It's the coolest thing I've seen so far.
 I mean, it's literally only day one of the show floor.
 I'm leaving tomorrow morning.
 Are you enjoying the show over it?
 I need to get back to New York.
 I need to get back to my dad and my wife.
 I haven't seen that much.
 I will say I am kind of like really into drones.
 I think this is a thing that happens to you.
 You're approaching dad levels right now.
 I hear the dad in you.
 I just think it's a really fascinating thing.
 Did you buy a house upstate?
 No, but when I do, I will fly over it with a drone whenever I wish.
 I bought one for my father-in-law for Christmas and I have a float drone.
 If you buy a $2,000 drone, you're not actually using it to watch yourself mountain bike or
 check your crops or whatever.
 You're going to go out and-
 Yeah, I don't know how literally he's using it.
 Yeah, that's cool.
 Check his crops.
 But if you're just buying it as a toy, I can't-
 Right.
 What?
 You're going to get bored with that.
 What are you going to do with the footage you captured?
 I don't think drones are interesting for that.
 I think they're fat.
 The one I bought my father-in-law's Phantom 3 goes like 30 miles an hour.
 It's like super fun.
 Right.
 But what's interesting-
 I don't also like how it works is just insane.
 Right.
 When you're setting that thing up and it just knows where your phone is and the whole thing
 is kind of insane.
 What I think is really interesting about that, and this kind of goes to Sam and Rideables,
 is it's doing most of the work for you.
 Right?
 And then you can just be like, go here and do that.
 And so I looked around, I was at the Intel booth for a minute today.
 Did you see it?
 The Segway that follows you around the robot.
 Oh, and then they have the drone that now has a RealSense camera that can look around
 it and fly around stuff.
 Wait, Intel's RealSense is a drone?
 Intel is huge.
 No, it's in a production drone that's coming out this year.
 Who makes that?
 It's Yunkee.
 Yunkee.
 Sorry, Yunkee, the Typhoon.
 It's here, right?
 Oh, yes.
 And it has a RealSense camera and you can go and wave your hand at it and see the infrared
 version of your hand.
 Intel, going around a drone cage following a dude.
 Yeah, Intel has said even the drones, they just bought a drone company and they've invested
 heavily in a Yunkee.
 Yunkee is the electric skateboard I have, the Ego.
 That's the one I bought.
 Yeah.
 Wow.
 So what's interesting to me, what gets me at that stuff is you see the themes here where
 all these computers are helping you do stuff in ways that feel like you're still doing
 stuff.
 So you fly a drone and it's like, oh, I'm flying this drone.
 I'm doing all this work.
 You're doing minimal operation.
 Steering it and really you're just going up, left, and the computer is doing all of the
 work.
 Well, that Lilly drone is supposed to come out this year.
 That was the Kickstarter project.
 You just throw it.
 That just throw it and it follows you everywhere.
 Right?
 And so now they can see you, they can follow you, they can track you.
 Yeah, I saw that thing.
 So I don't have a use for them, so I haven't really been into it other than like, yeah,
 it's cool to get the video.
 I think we're in the first, like, I don't think Phantom knew that what people were going
 to use drones for in the beginning was like video.
 Yeah.
 Like the first Phantom's had no camera mounts.
 People were just strapping GoPros to them.
 And like they got to the point where they made the Phantom.
 That's Michael Jackson.
 Welcome to the show floor.
 Welcome to the CES.
 They got to the point where they're just making.
 It's probably not going to stop.
 It's definitely stopped.
 I got it.
 I got it.
 Somebody got it.
 I made a face.
 The face was responded to and then it was gone.
 Let's be clear.
 How is working for him?
 How has the power not gone to his head?
 The face was just do the thing that was previously agreed to.
 You know, Neilai.
 But if you just think about like the DJ, I didn't know that the Phantom would do anything.
 And then they made the Phantom two vision with a GoPro mount.
 And then the Phantom three, they're like, okay, we'll make our own cameras.
 Right.
 Like they didn't know.
 They just like iterated their way towards what the thing is.
 I don't and whatever.
 And they'll still make those forever.
 But if you just think about a world in which things are better at moving for you and by
 themselves, like it could be a car.
 Like it doesn't have to be a car first.
 Yeah.
 It could be this weird Intel robot thing that they have rolling around there.
 It could be skateboard.
 It could be telepresence things in the office that actually know.
 When I was in tells me if I went up to a meeting and there was just like random telepresence
 robots like driving themselves home.
 It was like crazy that people had been in meetings and then they like they disconnected
 from their laptops and the robot just like drove itself home.
 Yeah.
 It's why?
 Wow.
 So just imagining a world in which things are better at moving themselves is like that's
 actually really exciting.
 So that's like cars and drones and rideables.
 Well, cars and drones and rideables and like Amazon's got robots packing stuff up in factories.
 Think of stuff that has to move in like very small context all the way to very big context.
 So it could be down to like, yeah, I want a robot to get me a beer.
 Like that would be cool.
 But like it doesn't have to actually involve me as a human being.
 It could involve just robots talking to robots, robots talking to physical things.
 Are they going to talk to us?
 Yeah.
 Yeah.
 I like that piece today by Casey.
 I haven't finished the whole thing.
 That's the whole big thing about talking to robots.
 Yeah.
 Well, I mean, it's like you have to get beyond apps.
 Like how do you right?
 Beyond apps.
 Well, I mean, you can only you can't like if everybody has a phone, the average number
 of apps downloaded on a phone is zero.
 Like you kind of the average number of apps downloaded on a smartphone is zero.
 Is that true?
 What?
 Yeah.
 Like thousands of me all the time.
 What?
 All the time.
 Get a phone and don't download apps.
 Yeah.
 Don't download Facebook.
 People worldwide, worldwide, like across the.
 OK, all like Facebook is, I assume, like one of the first things the billion of people
 feel billion people on Facebook download on their phone.
 Yeah, but Facebook is preparing for a world in which it's not happening.
 That's the whole story.
 The information about getting ready to in case they don't have to have apps.
 And Facebook cares a lot about the performance of their app over HTML on really crappy connections
 because a lot of people just don't have access to it.
 I just wanted to look at the list.
 There's seven billion people on Earth, right?
 So like even if you start adding phones to all those other six billion people, like they
 might download Facebook.
 Right.
 Well, in in a lot of the places where they don't yet have phones, Facebook is strategically
 trying to be on those phones before they get them.
 So they're already on the phones.
 Right.
 And I think what's interesting is like maybe the kinds of technologies that actually go
 to those places or come to the rest of us aren't apps.
 Right.
 They're they're extensions of phones that do things that phones can't do.
 Right.
 And like moving is one of those things.
 Oh, right.
 And like having a conversation with you in through notifications.
 Hey, I like Zuckerberg's goal for the year.
 Right.
 Right.
 So he's building Jarvis and like you see that stuff starting to like take root here.
 Like it's I don't it's we should probably write the piece that connects the drones to
 the self-driving cars.
 I mean, those are the same objects.
 The drones are just smaller and fly and propellers.
 But it also it does.
 And I would just like to be in those so I could easily go about check.
 There was a did you not see that thing?
 Autonomous helicopter.
 Yeah.
 Yeah.
 What?
 Yeah.
 It's a quadrocopter.
 Yeah.
 It's big.
 It's so big it can have a person.
 Oh, it's called.
 It's got a perfect mode for a name for you.
 It's called the E hang.
 No, it's not.
 Yes, it is.
 It's called the Melenocopter.
 The Melenocopter.
 It's great.
 Yeah.
 Can I is there is there a working prototype?
 No.
 Well, you don't have natural scrolling on.
 Yeah.
 Natural scrolling is just stupid people.
 Not going to talk about.
 Wow.
 That's nuts.
 Yeah.
 It's a helicopter.
 Is this thing at CES?
 I don't know.
 We have to find it.
 Yeah.
 Let me see.
 Let me see the picture.
 There you go.
 There's a picture.
 It's about.
 Oh, wait.
 That's not the one that I think I saw.
 Then there's a.
 A different one.
 I think I saw then there's a.
 A drone with a seat.
 It's about the same thing.
 Are you thinking of the sea plane?
 No.
 Oh, OK.
 Well, so, yeah.
 So now the drones are going to fly people in them, which is crazy.
 That's awesome.
 Yeah, it's the best.
 I checked the autonomous helicopter.
 I want it.
 I really want that.
 Think about all the things that you do either moving or like dealing with corporations that
 require just lots and lots of like lizard brain wrote steps.
 Like if you have a fraud alert on your credit card and you need to call it, like you've
 got to find the number, you find the number, you dial the number, you press one.
 Yeah.
 Punch in the last four digits of your account number.
 You find that you punch in.
 So what what cuts it all out?
 Like think about all the amount of the amount of stuff in all the steps it takes to get
 you to talk to a person that says, oh, yeah, I'm cool.
 You're cool.
 Can you take that and apply that to like going to work?
 Yeah.
 Well, what I'm saying is like if you think about how much actual intellectual effort
 goes into most of the steps, it's actually not that much.
 It's nothing.
 And like if you could have a bot just do those steps.
 Right.
 And so what are the other things that don't take a bunch of intellectual work to do?
 Driving to work, going in, like, I don't know, cleaning my house, a robot vacuum.
 Like we're at a place now where we can just make stuff that does those things.
 Right.
 The work now is to actually put it together into products that can actually talk to each
 other and aren't too creepy and eventually don't kill us all.
 Right.
 Like that's that's the mission for the next.
 Can we talk about can we talk about like Uber and Lyft and all of these?
 GM is just right.
 But it's like are we are how how close are we to a world where I can call in self-driving
 Uber?
 Well, that depends on who you ask.
 If you ask Nvidia, we're very far because like the first ninety five percent of driving
 is super easy.
 And I've heard about this.
 Yeah.
 The last five percent.
 Yeah.
 But I mean, Geohot did it by himself.
 Tesla's rolling out over a software update, more or less.
 I think we're close.
 Yeah.
 Where where we can do it.
 But regulations are going to stop us.
 Yeah, that's right.
 I mean, the number is 20, 20, 20, 20.
 That's what I was saying.
 Twenty, twenty or twenty.
 Twenty.
 It's a question of like, what's our risk tolerance for those edge cases?
 Right.
 If we can get it from five percent of like things that it can't handle down to one percent
 and like we at that one percent, we know that self-driving cars will kill fewer people
 than even driving cars.
 Right.
 Will we be able to make the mental shift to be like, that's that's an acceptable risk
 of death.
 Will we be able as a society be like, we know who to blame when that.
 Right.
 Because these things have to be programmed to kill.
 Right.
 In one way or another.
 Right.
 Because if the car sees a pedestrian running into the road, do they run over that pedestrian
 or go and veer over the bridge?
 Right.
 See that whole that whole thing.
 Right.
 It's like you deal with ethics then, too.
 Right.
 But I don't know.
 I'm excited for a self-driving car future.
 Have you been have you been in a Tesla that has lane assist yet?
 No.
 It is unbelievable.
 It is so.
 Is it the lane assist or the auto drive?
 It's the same thing.
 Oh, yeah.
 No, it's not.
 Lots of cars have lane assist.
 Lane assist tells you that there's somebody else in the.
 No, but there are some cars that will steer for you.
 Yeah.
 Yeah, the Tesla.
 Tesla will drive itself.
 Yeah.
 Well, I thought it was I thought lane assist will like speed you up or slow you down.
 Whatever, whatever.
 It depends on the car maker.
 Version 7.0.
 The Tesla that they rolled out over the air that whatever drives for you.
 It's cool.
 Did you do this with the.
 Yeah, it was really.
 Yeah.
 Yeah.
 It was it was really it's like really just weird being in a vehicle that's moving for
 you.
 But like like to your point, either these the we think we're moving toward that point.
 All right.
 So what else are you going to look at?
 It's yes.
 You got to put yourself in a fallout for excuse me.
 You got to put yourself in a fallout for Intel at the cool for the game.
 Yeah.
 So you go and sit in the stool and then a dude points a tablet at you for two minutes
 and then you wait a minute.
 Oh, oh, oh, oh, wow.
 For Intel.
 Yeah.
 Where is Intel's?
 I was like right.
 We were there.
 OK.
 Yeah.
 The giant man.
 So Sam, what else are you going to look at here?
 What else?
 What are you going for?
 What's on your list?
 I don't know.
 I kind of want to go back to South Hall.
 I saw like the Razors new camera.
 I haven't used that yet.
 I mean, you like there's the gadgets are back, right?
 So there's there I want to like they're back.
 They're always they were back.
 They went away for like a month when I said they were back.
 But now they came back after that month when they went away five years.
 But they came back last year.
 There's so many.
 And then they went away.
 Like I think they went away at the end of December for like maybe two days and then
 they came back for.
 Yeah, there was vacation, take a little vacation.
 So you like it.
 Right.
 I don't have any really annoying Instagram vacation spots.
 Sorry.
 I want to I want to ride.
 Who bought Segway?
 Who is it?
 What company?
 But they're right over there.
 I know.
 Yeah.
 Who bought them?
 It's someone bought nine nine nine.
 But I want to ride that little thing.
 Yeah, that seems cool.
 And then there's like all these just like electric scooters and like these little electric
 transport vehicles that are cool.
 I mean, you know, I ride electric skateboard to work.
 So it's like kind of just what I think about all the time.
 It's like rideables.
 But other than that, I fell off an electric scooter yesterday.
 Wait, tell me this.
 I'm sorry.
 How do we not spend the entire time talking about this story?
 I didn't really fall off.
 Jeff was driving it and I was on the back of it.
 And then.
 Yeah.
 Yeah.
 Was that the white one that's in the parking lot?
 No, it's the one that was at Pepcom.
 It's called the Urbie, I believe.
 Wow.
 Sam is literally vlogging right now.
 Sam is going to teach me how to do rideables.
 He puts up a vlog every day.
 No, I don't.
 Every day.
 You should vlog every day.
 He promises every day.
 What is the point of a vlog if you don't do it every day?
 Yeah, of course.
 We roast Sam.
 That's cool.
 Well, Sam right now is my life coach.
 That's right.
 Are you going to start vlogging?
 Maybe I'm literally teaching Joanna how to snap.
 I feel like Joanna needs, you need a mission.
 I feel like I need to give you like a reality show style quest.
 What's your mission this year?
 There's nothing this year.
 I tried to find it and there was nothing.
 You should have just brought the selfie stick back.
 I know.
 I have one in my book bag.
 I have one in my hotel room.
 Where it belongs.
 I don't know.
 I couldn't find anything that was like really got me or something that was like super wacky.
 It just, I couldn't find it.
 That new Keurig machine is interesting.
 Keurig is doing.
 That's not wacky though.
 No, I know.
 I kind of want one of those.
 Yeah.
 The soda machine.
 Yeah.
 The thing is a huge rip off.
 Yeah, they're all rip offs.
 It's a massive rip off.
 A rip off of your money.
 Now we're going to end this show.
 Also there's like two bartending machines too.
 Here's what I want the people to do.
 With like little things.
 And this will only start to happen later in the day because we're taping, we're not live.
 Just tweet at Joanna Stern.
 Do not tweet at me.
 Do it.
 With what you think her CES gimmick should be.
 Do not.
 I'm leaving.
 Should it be the selfie stick again?
 Should Joanna just be the girl?
 She's going to get off the plane.
 For whatever reason has a huge flashlight in her hands at all times.
 Flashlight.
 She has flashlights.
 I saw a lot of crazy weird stuff.
 I think also part of my disillusionment is that I've been now to enough CES shows where
 when you see things and you're just like, yeah, there's no way that's coming out.
 Yeah, like the Faraday future.
 And it's so sad because they're these awesome sneakers that you can control with your phone.
 I don't know.
 What?
 The sneakers.
 Talk about the sneakers.
 I got pitched on like five different pairs of sneakers and there's one that's really
 cool.
 You can control the temperature in the sneakers.
 You can adjust them.
 You can count your steps.
 All of these cool things in the sneakers.
 And then I went to go see it and I was like, yeah, this thing's definitely never coming
 out.
 Yeah.
 Because you saw like a prototype.
 Yeah.
 And I was like, oh God.
 But isn't that what CES is?
 It's like hopes and dreams and promises.
 It is.
 I want to take it home.
 Here's what we can do.
 Just wait two years.
 Yeah.
 Yes.
 And sometimes we see that.
 And another really good example is like I'm really obsessed with wireless charging right
 now.
 And I remember coming to the show seven years ago, I think it was Engadget and I wrote about
 Wattricity.
 Oh man.
 And Wattricity doesn't feel like they're any further along even though I know they are.
 I wrote a story for Engadget called like this is wireless charging's either.
 Do you know how much I regret that story?
 When did you write that story?
 It was like seriously 2008.
 Was it at the Intel booth?
 No.
 No.
 I thought wireless charging was so deep going to happen.
 I went and had them.
 It's always going to happen.
 They had a wireless Foreman grill and I made them make me a burger on it because I didn't
 believe it was.
 What the hell is a wireless Foreman grill?
 Let me tell you what I did yesterday.
 I met with two- It was an inductive, like it was a Foreman
 grill but instead of plugging in the wall, they like set it on a pad and the pad provided
 enough power to the thing.
 Grilling with fire is probably the way to go with a grill.
 And it made you a really great grilled cheese without wires.
 Yeah.
 Except for the wires that were clearly connected to the gigantic metal table that I was standing
 over.
 Yeah.
 I was like, I'm going to take a Foreman grill and walk away and then that would be useless
 unless I had another giant metal table.
 But you see where it's going.
 You need the- Yesterday I had two meetings with wireless
 charging companies and it's like, I saw this five years ago and yes, it's awesome.
 I want to be able to charge my phone sitting on my couch from a router that's in the garage.
 So you're saying you don't want that Apple case on there?
 No.
 I love this Apple case, Sam.
 We're not talking about the Apple case.
 Type check the Apple case.
 We're not.
 It's the major boss.
 I need to have this Apple case on all day and Venmo all day to Nealight.
 How much did Venmo pay you to?
 I just want to know.
 Is it a big number?
 How much did Venmo Venmo you?
 You realize I can look on Venmo and see- No ads.
 No ads.
 Not today.
 Tomorrow.
 Tomorrow.
 Squarespace.
 You want to come back for ads tomorrow?
 I want to be back for Squarespace.
 You want to read the ads tomorrow?
 Yes.
 I was on Gruber's podcast too and also did about 20 minutes of Squarespace talking.
 You just read a Squarespace ad.
 I just did.
 Which you have paid now.
 But I mean, my main point is like, I do love CES.
 I love seeing these things and I'm like, this is going to be amazing.
 We're going to watch it happen.
 I guess I'm getting very frustrated year after year not seeing some of these things happen
 or they just don't get better.
 And it gets better.
 You know?
 It gets better.
 Can I just, for the people that are listening to this at home or like in your car on the
 way to work or something.
 CES or on your rideable.
 Or on your rideable.
 I just want to make it really clear.
 I just want to make it really clear that CES is very cool.
 And I think we're all a little bit jaded after being here.
 Seriously, for like eight, nine, ten years in a row, it feels like the same thing every
 year.
 But if you've never been to CES, it will seem very glorious.
 And it is.
 It's very tiring.
 But really, this is where you come to see all the cool stuff.
 Like, we are definitely like, oh, it's all the same every year.
 But you don't get to see an 8K 98 inch TV every day.
 Just like, I think it's the little things.
 Like just walking into a thing and seeing, you know, LG's booth has like 80 TVs.
 Like it's creating this massive display.
 And it's like VR is like 10 years ago, nine years ago.
 Eli, remember when I came to my first CES with you and you made me go to the Vuzix booth?
 And you made me put on that terrible headset?
 Yes.
 And now look at how far it's come.
 And I was right that day.
 I'm just saying like, remember that?
 But like now VR is, I mean, yes, it's not here for everybody.
 You have to set your expectations and understand that there are iterative updates here that
 happen.
 Right.
 And that's okay.
 So for example, like last year, one of our reporters Sean McCain was on a desperate,
 desperate hunt for true wireless earbuds.
 You put one in your ear.
 Sean, right?
 Yeah.
 And like he found a couple and they were garbage and they weren't ever going to come out.
 You just knew in his heart they weren't ever going to come out.
 There's like three or four pairs here this year.
 Yeah, I know.
 And they're actually really good.
 So it went from like Impossible Dream to garbage prototype to retail product.
 Yeah.
 In three years.
 Like that's like two years from now.
 Those you wear those sneakers.
 Yeah, we're in the sneakers wireless charging.
 VR headset.
 Oh, my God.
 Basically a baby.
 Your shoes will tie themselves for you while you live in a virtual world and a helicopter
 flies.
 Have you guys seen these VR headsets now that maybe the vibe does this?
 I'm not sure because I have somehow yet to play with that thing.
 I also have never tried to Morpheus.
 Let's go after this.
 It's here.
 Morpheus is here.
 Sony has it.
 Cool.
 Have you guys seen these VR headsets with the cameras now?
 So it's like VR and AR combined.
 So you put on the headset, you're in virtual world, but you like see your hands.
 There was one.
 Yeah, like pass through cameras.
 Yeah.
 Yeah.
 I haven't done anything like that.
 Like Oculus doesn't do that.
 Right.
 That's what's going to be great about getting these.
 Gear VR does.
 Gear VR does do that.
 It doesn't do like AR.
 No, Gear VR is like you put the phone in.
 Right.
 And it's like doing that.
 You can flip on the camera.
 Yeah.
 It's super weird.
 It's mostly like so you don't.
 I don't know.
 I think that's like a really weird, interesting.
 That's like the cross section.
 That's like you're so deep in your VR sesh you can't take off the headset.
 Right.
 So you just like click the switch and you're like, oh, my hands are here, but I'm still
 in outer space.
 I just need to get drink.
 I need to get drink.
 Have you guys done the Samsung 4D Oculus experience thing where you sit in the chair and it's
 like you're going to, I really want to try that too.
 All right.
 Well, it sounds like we have a bunch of stuff to run around and try.
 Joanna, we're going to find you a gimmick.
 We're going home.
 Again, at Joanna's turn.
 Yep.
 For her next.
 Going home.
 I wish we had done this two days ago.
 Well, maybe next week.
 We don't anyway.
 Dieter is at Backlawn.
 I have to spend the week with Sam.
 He's helping me snack.
 Sam is at Sam Sheffer.
 I'm at Reckless.
 This, I would say, has been an emotional Vergecast journey.
 So it's a good one.
 I mean, I love having you two here.
 Thank you.
 I think you two are tired.
 Yes.
 A little tired?
 We're tired and you, we got to bring you up.
 We got to lift your spirits.
 Yeah.
 I'm going home.
 I'm going home.
 And that, I think, is where the show ends.
 We'll be back every day from CS.
 See you in New York.
 Tomorrow, I'm just going to take a whole bunch of drugs before being on the show.
 With David Pierce.
 So I'm lit up for David.
 David Pierce left us today.
 Yeah.
 You're saying.
 Oh, well, I, you know.
 Subscribe to our YouTube channel.
 Subscribe to our YouTube channel.
 Youtube.com slash the Verge.
 Yeah.
 Follow us on Snapchat.
 Oh, and Nicola Fuma will be on the show tomorrow.
 Oh, follow me on Snapchat, please.
 Joanna Stern.
 Cut it.
 Cut the mic.
 Mute her.
 Please do follow me on Snapchat.
 Nobody watches my Snapchat.
 That's your gimmick.
 I'm just using Sam.
 Everyone knows now.
 Thanks, everybody.
 Sam is secretly teaching me how to Snapchat.
 Rock and roll.
 Goodbye.
 He's my tutor.