 Hey, and welcome to the Vergecast at CES 2014, day whatever. I'm Josh Tapolsky. I'm Neil Ivetel. I'm Thomas Ricker. He is Thomas Ricker. We have the delightful, the illustrious, the sexual, the handsome, the manly, the feminine Thomas Ricker here with us. Thomas? Can I go now? You've come all the way from- Thomas has been very resistant. You've come all the way from the weed haze of Amsterdam. To the weed haze of Las Vegas. To the weed haze of- To the cocaine haze of Las Vegas. Speaking of which, do you have a bomb? You got a joint for us? Let's do it. Let's spark up right here. This is made out of hemp. Yeah, of course it is. It seriously is. It's called sativa too, which is amazing. Thomas wearing your Amsterdam- Why do you have a young woman's rave wallet from 1994? I know, really. Chain wallet? I took my children to the- Chain wallet? I'm not kidding. His weed chain wallet. That thing was the hottest seller at Hot Topic in 96. That is a sick, and also a true bird. You're really wearing your Amsterdam residency on your sleeve here. In your wallet. Thanks. In your pocket. Thanks. Anyhow, Thomas Ricker is of course our- It's nonstop. He cannot get over the fact that I live in Amsterdam. He's our man in Europe. How is it possible? How are you alive and not stoned? How are you here? Are you getting the shakes? You need to get the shakes. No, I'm okay. I'm cool. So anyhow, this is our- So first off, let's clear the air, because there's a huge haze of weed in here. Thanks, Thomas. This chair is just rolling out of the- It's fine. Everything is fine. This is actually an early after hours for us. On the East Coast, I would classify this as after hours. On the West Coast, this godforsaken show is still happening. And all around us- All around us, people are juggling. They're riding electronic skateboards. They're flying on drones. I just saw Rick Rubin float out of a window. And it's been- Too big for that? No, he's trimmed down a little bit. Has he? Okay. Yeah. So this is the Vergecast after hours, but we're still within hours. We're still in hours. It feels early to me. It is early. Are we really done with the show? No, this will be our final Vergecast for the show, because- Shocking. Because we have to break down the studio. Friday is like the breakdown day here. And we wouldn't have a place to do it. We would just be like, us Skyping. Awesome. A parking lot. Yeah, or Hot Boxing in the car. Yeah. Thanks to the sweet weed that Thomas brought over from Amsterdam. So we thought- So we're not going to talk about the show that much. We're going to talk about our experience. We have to talk about it a little bit. I mean, I feel like we got out to the floor today. Well, we're going to talk about a little bit. You haven't had a chance to talk about it. Tell me about- Thomas, bring a fresh perspective to what you've seen this week. It's kind of hard to give a fresh perspective. I mean, this is, what, my tenth year coming here? Is it really? I don't know. I'm longer than you, definitely longer than you. Yeah. Wow. Support of the show, everyone. You're longer than you, definitely longer than you. And we're both like, yep. That's true. That's true. I won't deny it. I don't know. To me, I'm trying to get excited about it. I mean, for me, the best part is just being here with the team. The entire team is here. I honestly think that's always the best part. But sometimes the stuff going on is more fun than other times. I mean, it's exciting. There's little things that we're finding. There's, weirdly, this little Polaroid cube camera that I saw. You like those. I like the design. It's a totally non-functioning prototype. It's a plastic shell. Yeah. And everybody freaked out about it because we took some really beautiful, beautiful photos. No, but my favorite product to see us last year was a non-functioning shell. It was Sony's Circle with a Light, Blu-ray era, HD. What happened to that? I didn't show that again this year. This year, it's a square. It's like, thanks, Sony. I had one dream, and you squared it off. It's the aspirational Sony. Show you what they're capable of. We could turn a circle into a square. So you actually, you did something that Josh and I didn't do. You went to all of the big vendor chaos shit show exhibits that they have. What's that? It's weird. That used to be the biggest part of the news cycle. Now we just don't go because we send so many other people. Those things are hugely stressful. Which camera? This one? You can just talk to us. Those are hugely stressful. I mean, you guys know. I think one year, we kind of took it a little haphazard, and we got behind on the coverage, and it wasn't so great. Then I somehow ended up taking over and running this massive team of writers and now video crew over to these events. It's insane. They line us up. It's like hundreds of journalists that are lined up in a shoot. Then they open the door and say, go. Then you have 100 vendors lined up around the corner, all showing off products, many for the first time. You have to go in there. You have to figure out, well, what's important, what's not. You have to quickly filter all that stuff out, of course, because we're racing other people. Then you have to do it in a quality way. Stern is just there with a vibrating fork, destroying the coverage. This goes on for three days in a row. You can imagine there are like 30 of these. You have somehow gotten the... I guess it's because you're so organized and so great at your job, but as a result, you're in charge of running the teams that go to these events. It becomes just a question of getting a battle plan. It's not even... In the moment, it's not like journalism. It's like suddenly things have been made available to you to look at. You have to decide on the spot, is this interesting? What is it? What does it do? Is it interesting? Have we covered it? Do we need to cover it? How much coverage do we need to do? Then it all happens minute to minute. You're competing with every other journalist in the world. Here we are working, is it unveiled? That's just the video. I don't know. It's a blur. Yeah, it's unveiled. It's a blur. It's a nightmare. It's a nightmare. It gets kind of weird every year because this is where the first stories of CS break. Right. That's the first press-related event. I have to say, there weren't many stories this year that came out of those events. No, there were small things. Some small things. The Polaroid camera was in one of those, right? The Polaroid camera was there. There was a giant e-ink clock, which is three meters wide and hangs up on your clock. It sounds great. Normally, you would think e-ink, okay, that's really visible. I'm going to be able to see it, especially up on a white wall. When it's off, it's actually gray scale. When it's on, it's just a darker gray. You really can't even tell the time. It costs like 500 bucks. If they get the technology right, then I think it's going to be... I liked it. I think it was beautiful. I also want to be able to tell the time, so I don't think I'm going to be getting one. Time is very important to you. Time is relative. I actually never set my watch. It's actually really cool. Really? Are you joking? You're joking. I don't know the time. It's on East Coast time, but I can never... Oh, you didn't say. I actually have a rule. If I go somewhere for two days, I don't set it. I'm just going to stay on East Coast time. Like this, we're here a week. There's no way I can't change it. I can't believe you haven't changed yours. You don't look at it. I look at my phone. You don't look at it. You're all right. I'm always around clocks. I assume you don't wear a watch, do you? No. Just check my phone. You should have a chain wall and a pocket watch would be an appropriate addition. You've got two chains. Then I have to wear tweets, double breasted. Everything should be attached to you by a chain. You should have a chain laptop, chain tablet. By the way, do you remember- Like little tablets on chains. Oh, you don't remember this, but earlier today I made a joke about an Airbus A320, and I made up some fake thing that I had, like this dual hydraulic something or other. So somebody tweeted me, and apparently it actually has the thing that I made up. It was really weird. I was like, oh, it's a 320 with it. I was like, I knew a lot about planes, unrelated to everything that we're talking about right now. So what's your thing of the show? Is it the Polaroid Cube? No, definitely not. I mean, okay, let's talk about Polaroid for a little bit. I mean, it's a fascinating... First of all, it's not a company. You know that. It's a shell, right? It's a brand. It's a brand. Right. It's a name. It's a name, and the name gets licensed out to whoever wants it, which is fascinating because you pick up one Polaroid product, and you think, oh, this is a piece of shit, right? Yeah. In fact, most of them are. Yeah. But they actually have nothing to do with each other. You just license the name, and then you go off and you manufacture it with whoever you want. They have a Polaroid booth here. Yeah, they do. In fact, it seems like there are two of them. It's really sad. Can I... Is that the Shell Company? Yeah, I mean, it's the Shell Company. You know what's really weird with these... Great headline, by the way. Yeah. You read the post? Well, that's my headline. Is it? Inexpensive but cheap. Yeah. There's cheap crap everywhere. Yeah. But the Polaroid booth is particularly egregiously cheap crap. Yeah. And it's like somebody didn't get the... Whoever bought the brand- They had a nice looking booth last year. It's a nice looking- Yeah. They play up the nostalgia a lot. Right. So they have a lot of the old Instamatic cameras in the booth. Right. And like old Polaroids inside. Yeah. And then it's just like the most, absolutely the worst tablet just like- Right. Such a bummer. So they play up on that tradition, but what is there now is nothing, has absolutely nothing to do with that history. So this is the year where they're trying to reclaim from Instagram. From Instagram they're trying to reclaim their Polaroid-y-ness. Maybe. I mean, that was also a shell. The Instamatic. I think that's what it's called. Yeah. That was also a shell. A little square- There it is. No, that's the cube. So, so adorable. That's the little cube camera. But there's a bigger one that we've seen before. It was pre-announced I think two or three months ago. We see the Instagram camera. It's literally the Instagram icon. Yeah. It's called the Socialmatic. Yeah, Socialmatic. Oh, the Socialmatic. Yeah, that's it. It looks exactly like the Instagram icon if it were turned into a product. But you know what's weird about these? It's like whatever. You made it. It's great. It's got a Z-ink printer in it, or zinc or whatever they call it. Here it is. There it is. That's cool. It's insane. You know what it isn't though? If you scroll down you can see the old leather case. Now that, I've got an old Polaroid in a closet back home and it has that exact leather case. It flips over the top and comes off and then hangs there when you try to shoot. They're really preying upon that tradition. Now I don't know. Maybe it'll be phenomenal. Maybe it'll be amazing. No, it won't. It can't be. But the contract claims it's going to be manufacturing with Foxconn. Oh really? So let's like, you know. The manufacturers have the issue. It's the design. How much money do they have? Foxconn will be like, you pay us a little bit of money and we'll make a crappy product. The question is how much? Foxconn makes HP laptops and Macbooks. That's a great, very cogent point. Perfect example. I mean, it's like how much design was put into it. What are the optics like? Is it going to be a good camera? They're not listening to the details. Well, it's a crappy camera, but it does like, it develops the film weird. You know what people don't want to do is like, take a picture and print it, right? They want to share it to social networks. Does it have a screen on it? I don't think so. It definitely doesn't in this iteration. I don't know. That doesn't. Which is a plastic box, remember. That doesn't feel like a win. So what did you really like? I guess there is a nostalgic hit for me and that was the webOS TV. I finally went into LG's booth, which is magnificent, by the way. You come in off the main concourse and there's this enormous multi-paneled 3D experience with all these people laying down on the ground and staring up at it. Have you been over to the main concourse yet? I've been by it. I haven't been through all of it. It's amazing because it's the first thing you see as you're walking through the main hall, the main corridor of the central hall. And so it draws you in. And then if you continue down their path and you come across the webOS experience, which is, they have a lot of space dedicated to that. So that's a big push for them. Unfortunately, they're not letting anybody actually test drive. I got to test drive. Did you? Yeah. Dieter and I... It goes to show. When you go to a webOS area with Dieter Bohn, like the C's part and former employees show up and they anoint him a little bit, it's very nice. John Rubenstein appears from behind. Dieter, Dietrich Bohn. Dietrich. No, we've played with it a little. His name is just Dieter, I think, isn't it? I don't think it's longer. If only we had somebody we could ask. Anyhow, go on. Maybe it is longer. Well, no, I think, I mean, I have a smart TV. We've seen them for years and they're not very smart. They suck. The interface is awful. I mean, even Apple TV for all of its Apple-ness isn't that great to get around on a tiny little remote. Right. And the motion sensing is pretty interesting, you know, being able to point things. I hate the motion sensing. Yeah, I don't, I mean, they told me that there's so much RF interference there that the Bluetooth is a little jittery. Yeah. But I kind of don't believe it. Well, that's what I want to, I mean, I'm hopeful that, I mean, it looks really nice and it looks very simple. And I like what they did with the UX, the elements. I don't think that this, like this wavy thing, there's something about it that's cool and interesting and like the web OS interface is cool, but that's just the Netflix interface. Yeah, that looks like the Netflix interface. I'm happy using the Netflix interface with the D-pad. That interface is optimized for D-pad. It's not optimized for a weird Bluetooth mouse. Well, but comparatively to, I mean, I think what works here is that they have a platform, we talked about this, but they have a platform, they have a design, they have an aesthetic and they apparently are at least trying to push some guidelines to partners. Yeah, but Netflix is the only one that's important is Netflix and that list, right? I mean like- Well, I don't know. Have you ever used Vudu? I have actually, I've used Vudu. They're HDX, higher quality. I use Amazon a lot and I use Hulu. I mean, I use Netflix, Hulu and Amazon on a consistent basis, I would say. But all those apps, I mean, that's the thing you complain about. They're going to be all, that's the problem. That is the fundamental problem. And their whole thing, and they told us, we interviewed the designer and they were like, we believe in openness, we're going to have some standards, people can use them, but really we want HTML5 apps to be the way of the future. Which is the advantage of web OS is HTML5. But everybody, Samsung's backend is HTML5, Vizio's backend, Sony's, they know that these companies aren't good at software. That's why they're all partnering with software companies. I said this on like day two, but I'm so sick of talking about smart TVs. I mean, that's the thing about web OS, it's like, oh, that is the nostalgic, like I was looking at my old Palm Pre-Review and remembering the year that we came here and they announced the pre and it was so exciting. Web OS on an LG TV is not that. You know, it's like, it does kind of ping my nostalgic bone or whatever. Do you have no idea what that means? But it doesn't, it's just like a smart TV that I don't want to buy. It's an LG TV that I have no plans to buy, you know, like no amount of cool interface will get me to buy a TV that I didn't want in the first place. Most of what you're going to do is turn it on, turn to your cable box, make the interface go away. Probably, yeah. I mean, like it's not such a huge leap over the Roku, really, that I, you know what I mean? Like I guess if you're in the market and you need a TV and you're looking at smart TVs and you think picture quality is not that big of a deal or like it's all about the same, they make decent TVs, they're fine. And you're like, okay, I'm just looking for a really decent TV with a great interface. Like this is a good option, but I think it's a really small segment of the audience. I just don't think people think like that. They aren't, people aren't buying smart TVs for smart TV functions. I mean, not that I've seen. But that's what's unfortunate about the show is that like the web OS TV, which I don't really want, I'm just, you know, I would like to see it succeed. Right. I mean, that's kind of one of my top picks. There just isn't that much low hanging fruit to choose from. It was a dry, it was a dry. I will say that we tried the Oculus Crystal Cove yesterday and that was so incredible. Have we run the video? Have we put up the standalone video of that yet? I don't think so. I haven't seen it. Do you want to see it? Have you seen it? I haven't seen it. Can we watch it? Do you guys have that available? Because we've showed it in the morning, but maybe not everybody's seen it. Can you maybe try to get, I'm going to see if, I'm going to see if they can get it up because it's actually kind of fun to watch. Like everybody's reaction to it. I know Addy said it was fantastic. I actually, I mean, I said this last night, but like there was a moment when I saw my own hands and I was like, what are those doing there? Which is like to see your body and not understand it. I expect it to be less impressed. You're used to that. This is the regrettable thing about what I do at the show is I'm mostly like running the news. Is this it? Yeah. Let's take a look at this. This is the video that we did of everybody. That's just me and Thomas. That's not it. This is not. You're in a virtual reality right now. Look how realistic this is. It's like I can look around him. Can we run that? Or no? I don't know why I'm looking. I have you on my headset. Okay, here it is. Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God. What's happening? Oh my God. Oh my God. What the hell? This is, I have to say, this is, I'm not able to do words right now. Holy crap. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. What the fuck? The whole thing for one second, I'll tell it to you. It looks straight forward. Now you can Oculus face all your... Look up. Look in front of you. This is not good. I'm totally hung over. Look at this! This is stupid. This is like Hanukkah. I'm sorry I'm so giggly. Whoa. This is like being hugged by a video game. These guys are really cool. Got big bellies. Could you put them together? I really want to pick these guys up, like... But I can't. This is very disorienting because I can see my hand. And it's like, I want to kill it. Squashing guys. Wait, so how do I kill this thing? Okay, I killed someone. You guys saw that, right? Okay, I just want to kill things. Is anyone dead yet? Oh, he's dead. I can shoot them? Oh, I got one. I got that guy. Dude. Dude. That's a table. Okay, there's a table there. This is amazing. And I never want to take it off. I mean, I'm not going to take it off. Oh, I don't want to leave. This is the best thing. No, but no, no, no, no. I feel amazing right now. I really don't want you to take this off of me. Welcome back to Vegas. Oh, wow. That's cool. So the interesting thing about this, I said it on the morning show on the first, but the interesting thing is I expected to not be as impressed because I've already seen it a bunch of times. And the stuff they've done where they fixed the timing and the... It's a higher resolution now, right? Higher resolution. I mean, you can still see pixels, but it's higher resolution. They fixed some of the latency issues. They're getting that a lot faster. And now it has positional tracking in addition to the motion sensing. And it's pretty crazy. Like that cave, the thing... So here's what's interesting. That demo they showed was a seated demo where you're not moving around. What was most interesting about it was when you turned around and there was a cave like way far away and you felt like you were looking back down this crazy corridor. I mean, it was really insane. It feels insane. It feels like you are in another place. I'm so jealous. I didn't even know you guys did this. This is the first time I've seen of this. You blew it. I don't know. I think you were getting high or something. You were like, I got to go get my gravity bomb. No, I think you were just out of the trailer. I think you were off doing... It was 420 at the time. The clock struck 420. It was 420, coincidentally. The clock struck 420. Is it 420 right now? No, it's not. Would you guys buy one of these? Yes. You would? Not yet. I would buy it. What about with that running treadmill? No, I would buy it. The Ellis thing, yeah. So Ellis did this thing on the running treadmill, which is basically an Oculus and a treadmill that you run on. And he was like, he came back and I saw him and I was like, whoa, buddy, did you go out last night? And he's like, no, I did a virtual reality thing and it was too real. And he just like drifted in a super nauseated state around the trailer for a while. I mean, I get very nauseous with the dev version. This latency is much higher and it makes people more. This is the Virtuix Omni. I mean, this looks crazy to me. This thing is cool though. They said they're going to sell this for like $400. Yeah, this is the second generation because Paul did one. Paul did one last year. But it looks like they've really improved the walk-in. Yeah, yeah, it's much better. Like this is nuts. I mean, this looks terrifying. I mean, imagine the higher resolution, you know, low or zero latency in this thing with that, when we saw this thing as pre-OVR, which is you wear kind of like a chest thing and an arm thing. Imagine you got that on. But can we really not figure anything better to do than kill stuff in these games? Well, no, that's the next step. You know, I was actually talking to the Oculus guys. Oh, no, Addy was talking to them. We had several conversations. But Paul Merlucky from Oculus was saying, you know, the controller is now the problem because when you get into it, and you saw, by the way, in that video, everybody was going like this. Yeah. Because what happens is when you're in there, you want to interact the way you interact with the real world. You want to be able to touch things. And like you can't do it. And I think like I actually think Oculus, I wouldn't be surprised if we see them start to work on some thing that is like your hands are now like part of the simulation. And I think that's kind of the next step because, you know, it's like we are just like killing things, you know. It's like you're in there with a gun. Like that's cool. But it's like one thing you can do, and you don't want to be doing it all the time. I think, I mean, this is the, I mean, we're definitely at the beginning of real like crazy virtual reality stuff. Like it's happening now. I don't think that it's not going to not happen. I think that there's interest. I think that it's cheap enough to do. I think there's huge consumer interest. I think that the graphics are good enough that they feel realistic. And they did that thing, you know, the screen is still not as great as I'd want it to be. Yeah. But they did that persistence display where they're repainting the screen like all at once. Yeah. I think they're using OLED to do it. Yeah. And it's actually a lot better. Yeah, there's less tearing. There's no motion blur. You know, that's the thing. And I should just write this. This should be my end of CS. Just write it. But that's the thing where it does have a really high, you have to like wear a virtual reality headset and have a computer and like understand what you're going to do. But the experience is so great. The benefit of it is amazing. Oh, this is the cost. Yeah, but like those are all like high. You have to wear a thing. Well, that's really the ultimate is like how do you sell it to consumers? Right. How do you get consumers to want it? You know, I think I probably said this, I've said this a few times. They need to figure out how to make movies for that thing. Where like it's a murder mystery and you like walk around a house. No, I mean imagine. Imagine like Oculus Clue. Yeah, or that you can say like I want to be in this character's head for half the movie. Right. And then I'll switch to another character. They should really bring back, I don't know if you're listening to me, Palmer. You should definitely shoot Clue, the movie Clue for the Oculus Rift. Yeah, with a lot of different endings. Yeah. I mean that movie was great, first of all. One of the best. One of the best movies of all time. Yeah. But you should shoot it and that should be like an Oculus release thing that you do. You should do an Oculus Verge cast. Where you can go inside. You can just walk around us. Here's a scene from Clue. By the way, is Christopher Lloyd in Clue? Yes. Christopher Lloyd is in Clue and I don't want to say there's some magical stuff happening, but you know we just saw Christopher Lloyd recently playing the role of Doc Brown. I'm actually really, here's what I'm mostly disturbed about. We were so quickly able to bring up Clue. But our own content is much longer. Give us a minute, but Clue we got on tap, no problem. John's like, oh I was just watching Clue. Yeah, it's funny you should mention that. So let's get real though. Yeah. Let's talk about The Verge at CES. Are you working right now? I can't. I'm sorry, are you too busy to spend an hour with us? I'm fucking dying. Are you still talking? Can we just get it out there? This may be my last ever Verge cast. This may be my last day on Earth. This may be my last day. And you know what, I don't regret a thing except not doing a ton of drugs. That's the one thing I regret. It's not even true because I took a photo of a stack of drugs sitting by your desk yesterday. I did have some super awesome NyQuil. I took NyQuil last night at midnight, but it didn't kick in until like when I was sleeping. And I woke up and then it kicked in and now I've just felt like a complete maniac all day. Which is different than how I normally feel, in case you're wondering. Here's the thing about CES time and why I like it. Why I think it's the most magical time of the year. Yeah. First off, it comes after the second most magical time of the year, Xmas. And here's the thing about CES. You know, everybody complains about CES. I'm just like this chair is just hopelessly drifting. I don't know what's going on. Did you oil the floor here? Did you lubricate, lube on the floor? What's happening? I'm just getting crazy in here. Anyhow, as I was saying before, my lubed chair rolled towards ecstasy. What was I saying? I don't know. The verge. Okay, everybody hates CES. Everybody who comes here, all the journalists are like, oh God. And you know, I think we feel the same way in some way. We don't hate CES, but we're like the holidays just ended. We just did New Year's. We had a crazy year. November is always crazy. You know, like the fall is insane. And then you're like, now in six days I have to fly to Las Vegas, which is, you know, I'm sorry for people who live in Las Vegas. It's a terrible place to be. I mean, it's one of the worst places I've ever been. I'm not saying the people here are bad. They're wonderful. Yeah. But as a city, it's fucked up. It's bizarre. It is really bizarre. Everything's augmented. Everything. Everything is augmented. Everything. And it's just really, it's like dry. We're in the desert. There's like blood coming out of my nose every night. I've seen so many people with nose bleeds. No, Steven Greenwood was like, had a picture in our video chat room and he was like, I got to go take care of this. And it was like his sink covered in blood because he was like having massive nose bleeds, which I think, I hope he's okay. Is he okay? We don't know. We lost Greenwood. So you fell out of that blood and you just went about your business? We lost Greenwood, unfortunately. Rip. Rip Steven. Rip Steven. But, you know, Vegas is insane. There's like hookers everywhere. There's people handing you. Are there? I mean, I think. I don't know. Tom Warren saved somebody's life today. Yeah, can you tell me the story? What happened? Tom Warren apparently. I don't know if I know all the details, but. Make them up. Yeah, this we invented. It's the Verge cast. Apparently they were walking towards the. Wait, hold on. Can I just say like, this looks like Charlie. He's like a Charlie Rose guest. Can you go back to Thomas's? Yeah, yeah, this is like straight up Charlie Rose right here. It's so good. Sorry, not unrelated to everything. Go on. So apparently they were walking. We're not too far from the from the from the from the hotel. I mean, everybody for everyone's. I don't know. Docs or hotel. I don't need to. We're close to this. Everybody. I don't need stalkers coming in there, raping me to death. Because that's what they'll do to me. Or so the threatening letters I've received have said. So they're coming back. They're coming in this morning and they saw somebody that was crawling on the ground. I think they also saw him last night and a couple of them started up a conversation. Well, he was trying to strike up a conversation with our team crawling on the ground, crawling on the ground, like looking for things. And he looked up at Tom and said something about you think I'm crazy, don't you? And Tom was like, and of course, Omar. Oh, I remember this story. He walked over to him and started striking up a conversation. Are you the weirdest thing here? I'm going to talk to you. He's like, what are you saying? Something like, you know, I've got the secret. And Omar's, what's the secret? He goes, you wouldn't believe me if I told you. And so, oh my God, I would like to know. He's writing, I mean, he's doing profiles of people that are here. So it turns out, I don't know how they found out, but they saw a missing persons ad and this guy is a missing person. Oh my God. Did he come to the show? How did he see the ad? Did he come to see us? These are the details I don't know. Did he attendee? I don't know. I don't know all the details. I don't know all the details. But anyway, so Tom saw that and he called up the number and indeed, like his wife was looking for him. He had missed a flight. He got in some kind of bad ass trip. Oh my God. What? Yeah, he was seriously like. Did this really happen? Yeah, he called him up and he's like the cops. Yeah, they came and picked him up. Well, I don't know if they're the cops, but somebody came and picked him up. That is crazy. We should write about that. See, yes, 2014. We should write about that. I think people would like to hear the whole story from Tom and Amar. Yeah, I would like to hear it. Let's see if we can get them to do that. Yeah, I would like to know the details. Not that I don't want to dox anybody, but that's a really interesting story. I think so. I'd read a thousand words on that. I mean, although you just heard the story now, just pretend you didn't hear it if you see it on the site tomorrow. I made up half of it. There you go. Vegas. Yeah. What happens in Vegas is disturbing. So, yeah, so then it's just a weird town. I mean, I haven't seen a lot of weird Vegas. No, we're usually kind of just trapped here, but even within the confines of the convention center in our hotel, which is very close, you do see the little tendrils, the little threads. I did have to spend a little time talking to people on the strip. I wasn't there physically. It's a long story, but I did speak to some people on the strip. And pretty interesting what people will admit to you here in Vegas. Like if you casually ask if they're going to do cocaine tonight, at least 50% of the people who were talking to you at the time will say yes, which I think is great. But, yeah, anyhow, it's a weird town. I'm making a point here. And the show can be very stressful, as we discussed earlier. And the food is bad, not for lack of trying, but the food that they serve to you every day in the trailer is not very good or healthy or delicious. I do like the breakfast, though, actually. I really enjoy the breakfast. Yeah, but every day the place smells like bacon. And then it smells like man later in the day. And then it's whiskey plus man. And then whiskey man, the greatest superhero ever, who just drunkenly wanders in somewhere and punches someone. And fights you with bacon. Yeah, exactly. He's like, take this, and he cramps the bacon in your mouth. You're like, I will take this. And, ahhh. Anyhow, so, that's a, somebody please make a comic strip that is that sequence of events. Whiskey man with the bacon. I will take, okay. But, okay, but we, The Verge, Dom, I'm going, I'm getting, I'm getting, I've got plenty of time, plenty of time for this. But what's amazing about CES, first off, what's amazing about CES, let's just say, the show can often be disappointing, you know, in places. But it's also often exciting and interesting and fascinating. Now, there were fewer exciting, interesting, fascinating things this year than I think last year. Yeah. It's weird. I talk to other people and they feel like it's reversed, that this is a more exciting year. But, there were some very cool things here. We saw some stuff that I think got us pretty excited. We saw some things that got us pretty bummed and we're like, yeah, that's lame. But, what's amazing about this is that we get the entire Verge team. Every, almost every writer. There's some people who couldn't make it for various reasons, some people that are just kind of hung back. But, the majority of the team, vast majority, in one room with our video team, with our product team, and everybody's like in one big room for a week straight. And, I don't know. We do some of the most interesting work that we ever do because we're all together. We do really interesting work. And, everything is over here. Because we're having, we're having conversations in real time about stories that are breaking. We're like swapping ideas. But, I think what's most amazing and interesting and is always to me the most awesome thing is that there's a bunch of people in the trailer. There's like 50, 60, however many people now. With everybody who's in the video and there's PAs and there's all these. And, I like all of them a lot. I really like hanging out with them. And, every night, I don't want to leave. I've been sick this whole week. And, people start to kind of wind down. And, you get like, everybody's having a drink. And, I've been feeling like, shit. I have to go. I feel so terrible. I'm out of here. And, then I want to stay. I end up staying later because I just want to hang out with the people who are there. What's amazing to me is that we have a team full of brilliant, incredible, fascinating, funny people. And, I like every one of them. And, I like to think, I hope that they like me. But, I think that we all like each other. Which is extremely rare, I feel, in a business of our size. For me it is. I mean, I've worked in big accounting firms. I've been in, I mean, I used to be in ITs. Like, giant corporations, small startups. And, I've always just tolerated. I hope nobody's watching. Now, I had a few friends. Why? Go back here. In my previous job. You had a Fortune 500 company. But, mostly it was just a constant, chronic toleration of the people around me. Yeah. And, this is, especially when there were team events. Like, something planned in the evening. Yeah. You had to do something. And, I remember one time we had to fly a whole group of people for team building. And, you had to do these human knots. Have you ever done this? Yeah. You have to do it with your own hands. This is why we like each other. Because, nobody forces anybody to do a human knot. No, we're doing that later. It's unbelievable. I've been trying to tie myself in. Dude, do a human knot. It's so awkward. Look, I spent a lot of time last night trying to tie myself in a human knot. Oh my god. It got deep. It got weird. It's getting weird in here, actually. But, we don't have that. I mean, we are all good friends. And, we can, it doesn't matter who you end up sitting next to or whatever. I mean, you always, there's just a lot of commonality. Yeah. And, like, the people here aren't like, oh man, I gotta get out of work and go party somewhere. Where is everybody going? Ben and Sam and a bunch of other people ended up in the hot tub at our hotel. In all the years we've been staying at this hotel, which is like seven years or something. Nobody's used the pool. Nobody's ever touched it. And, Ben was like, Ben Popper was like, we're doing the hot tub tonight. We're going. We're getting in. Long day at work. It was like 11, 10 o'clock at night or something. And, they went over there. And, I was like, yeah, that's not happening. Like, nobody's getting in the hot tub. And, sure enough, oh, we have a photo of it. Sure enough, a bunch of dudes are in the hot tub. Are you in the hot tub? What? Are you kidding me? There they are. Can we zoom in on that? I thought this was code for smoking weed the entire time. Oh, I'm sure they were smoking weed. No, they went in. Thomas provided from Amsterdams. No, I'm seriously, I'm just saying out loud, when they were like, do you want to come get in the hot tub with me? You thought it was like a- I thought it was like a wink wink. We're going to like hot box Ben's room. Yeah. I didn't realize they actually stripped down and got into the hot tub. They got into the hot tub. I don't even, like, I don't know if I'm disappointed by that or happy about that. I was, frankly, I was touched. I'm trying to, what feeling am I having? And they're photographing each other. I think it's perfectly normal. I think it seems to be normal and well within our standards of business conduct. You know, but, but, well, like, I think that to me- I mean, I'm okay to make that exception. If CES- It's like paragraph like, subparagraph six, paragraph five, sub C, you may get into a hot tub at CES with bros. And take pictures of each other. Bros may photograph in hot tubs in Vegas. I'm going to print that out. If CES was a complete bust and there wasn't a single thing here that was interesting and it was just a, you know, five days of working our asses off and not, you know, coming up with anything good on the work side, like it would still be worth it to me to have this, to have this time to like actually hang out with the people that I work with who I don't get to see all the time because you're in Europe and there's people all over the place and, you know, we're all very busy out doing things. Like even the people who are in New York are not, you know, are rarely all in the office at the same time. And that is, that is what makes CES kind of awesome regardless of what the show's like, you know? And if we find something cool at the show, that's like a bonus to us. And I think that, I guess like when I, when you see these things where people are like, tech is dead and this CES- Like this show does kind of suck. Like make no mistake about it. I was on the show floor a lot yesterday actually, and which was unique for me. That doesn't, I got to see a bunch of things, but I also saw a bunch of like other tech reporters and everyone's like, I hate it here. And I was like, my reaction is I love it here. It's really weird. Like- But we've also set it up so we can love it. I mean, we- Yeah, our stress levels are low. We equip people with the right equipment. I mean, everybody has the right equipment to do their jobs. We give them accommodations that are close enough and comfortable enough that you can get some rest when you do have downtime. We provide the vehicles to get the transportation around because transportation in Vegas is impossible. And food. Yeah, and food. And like, we're very well taken care of. I mean, we have people here like Michael Shane and Leah are like, you know, just people are, there are people here who are bending over backwards to make this team feel like healthy and be fed and all. I mean, there's a huge amount of people and like, and we'll make a list. We will do a post of like a wrap up post and we will, you will see these people and we'll make a list of these people. You know, yes, like that's the thing. Like you don't stress out about like, how am I getting to this event or what am I eating? And I will say like, it is a luxury. We didn't always, it wasn't always like this. I mean, at Engadget, we started this. I mean, the first one that I went to, first off, the first one that we went to when I was at Engadget- And you weren't even here. We were at a hotel far away. We had no, we were like literally taking cabs and I think maybe a couple of people rented cars and you're driving these long distances back and forth every time you had to go somewhere, every time you had to go to the show floor. There was no food provided. It was, you know what I mean? It was a mess. And we've like worked at this for many, many years. We're very proud of how to do it. And also like, I think that our attitude now when we come here is the verge has to do like the verge at CES. And the pressure of, there used to be this enormous pressure of like, do we have every embargo or are we hitting every little piece of news? Do we have every router? You know, when we were at Engadget, it was like very gadget focused. It was very much like, do we have every little piece of PR? Are we hitting every piece of news? And I think having done this now for, what is this, the third year doing it, the verge, like we just have learned like the verge has a pace and we've got things we want to do and stories we want to tell and it's just, it's a different rhythm. And that I think is also a stress reliever. There are moments, I will say there are moments. I mean, and the show's gotten, it's like we've gotten much bigger and the show's gotten smaller. Yeah. Well, I mean, they'll tell you it's been record. We've made it smaller. I mean, we've become more focused. So yeah, it's another record year. I saw the press release come out. Oh, is it? Yeah. Every year it's a record year. Exactly. You know, like Gary Shapiro has like, he's got like a warehouse full of people just waiting to storm CES. It's like. So it can be another record year. They're everywhere. They're in some sort of hyperbaric chamber waiting to be unfrozen. I need 10,000 clones. We're 5,000 under, send in clones. Is that what happened? Yeah. He's talking to his couch here. Wouldn't it be easier to just like fake the numbers? He would have a go at it. Who's the auditing firm that's checking? Like actually, Shapiro, I take issue with this. I'd like to see your books. Like nobody's looking. Nobody. But you're right that we have also, whatever the records are, whatever the numbers are, we've made it smaller by doing that. And so like, yeah, I don't know where I was going with this. I guess I was just talking about how the show feels to us. And I'm going to be like tired and battered and I already feel like completely drained. But it's been great. And like we do have tense moments. We do have real work to do. But I feel like especially when everybody's in the same room and on the same wavelength, doing that work is so much more fun and so much easier. And it's just a very cool experience. I mean, obviously we're, well not obviously, but we're the management. We're part of the management team. But the team pretty much runs itself at this point. I mean, I think Jake, this is his first year as a writer. He was here last year as an intern. So he volunteered to do an early morning shift one day. Or, yeah, early morning. For us, early morning here is 5 a.m. And he still came in at the same hour as everybody else, even after finishing. And we were saying, you know, you were allowed to take some time off. He's like, yeah, but everybody else is in here. So I felt like I should be here. It's awesome. And people do work their asses off. And it's so incredible to see how much. I mean, for me, like I've gone gradually now, and I think Neelay has and you have too. We used to be like in the trenches and we've gradually as the team has grown and we've taken on leadership stuff that it's like you don't do the writing anymore. Yeah, and I miss it. Yeah, and I actually have written a few things here and it's been awesome. The only things I write about are angry editorials. Yeah, but you know what's great about this is actually it's like a weird vacation from like the stuff we have to do during like it's weird to call it a vacation, but it is like we break from the things we have to do and you can write the editorial because we're sitting there and we're like, let's just do it right now. I wrote that like Michael Bay post in a second because everybody in the room was like, just write it. And it was like, OK, let's just do it. You know, and it's stuff like that happens. And it's actually really fun. Like I did that I wrote thing. I know, you know, I wouldn't have been able to find time to do that in New York because we're so just constantly doing like real work. And that's really awesome. And I should say, like the other thing that's really cool about this show is obviously our team and the way we feel. But the fact that like we're doing this and we've done these every day. Yeah, it first every day we did these like we did live stuff. We've had a ton of interviews in here that are live. We did the recaps like we get to do interact with our readership. We get to interact with the readership and also like we get to bring the industry in front of people. Yeah. And like ask some questions. Yeah. And we do live with our readers, I mean, like we do most interviews live and people look at Twitter and we do questions like that's cool. Like that's why I like it. Yeah. I mean, it's really it is really like a visceral sort of like this stuff is happening at this moment. You know, people are reacting like we're sitting here doing this every day. People are reacting to it real time. And then the next day we're like talking about that stuff or thinking about it or sometimes like even during the show. It's just cool. And like obviously, I mean, it goes without saying maybe it doesn't go as I say, but like we our audience is big. It's much bigger than I ever expected it to be after two years of being in business. And at CES it just like surges. And you know, we've had some really big days and the audience has come and people are like reading these stories or commenting on them. People are like posting stuff in the forums. And you know, it's just great to just see it all working. Yeah. Sort of amazing. You know, after launching this two years ago, I feel like I do this every once in a while where I start to get a little romantic. A little misty? A little misty. But you know, after a while, you know, we launched this and it was like not a sure thing. No. Just to say like two years ago. And our first year here was a disaster. What's funny is, yeah, it was a little bit. It was a sequence of disasters. It started bad. Yeah, it started bad, but we got good. We got better fast. But what's funny is like you see like, you know, Walden Care just launched Recode. Yahoo Tech just launched David Pogge's new thing. Just sputtering it away. I'm not going to say anything about it anymore, but you know, I think you know how I feel. You know, all of a sudden, like everybody's like launching these like new tech sites and these new brands. But a couple of years ago, it was like, why would anybody do that? Who cares about that? And we were sure. Everybody thought the market was saturated. Right. They thought the market was saturated. We didn't know that this was going to be a thing. This could have been a complete disaster and it has not been. And that makes me feel very good and very happy. And I'm very proud and pleased to work with the team that we have because they're awesome people. And they're not just awesome like writers or reporters. They're awesome human beings that I enjoy spending time with. They're legitimately cool people. And they're weird and funny and uncoordinated. Uncoordinated sometimes. Is that happening? Yeah. Thomas has been Thomas has just been dying for Sam Byford. He's a lovely man, by the way. Lovely gentleman. He's a man in Japan. All he wants. Sam has a really true Sam Byford. He's just a very tall Sam Byford is a is a lanky dude. He lives in Japan and his arms are sewn on with yarn. He has a tendency. He has a tendency to I think we had we might have had a supercut or something of it last year. But he's a tendency when he gets near things that move to fall. He's a tendency to fall. He fell down in his living room. He was just standing there and he fell. Here he is. Is this is this the clip? I don't know. Do we have audio? Oh, this is yeah. This is classic Sam. Yeah, this is this is what we want to repeat. Well, we'd love we hope that he would get on something moving. So we've been putting him in precarious situations all week. Yeah. And he's getting off right now. We put him on even faster. Those old graphics are nice, man. I forgot what our old graphics look like. They're pretty cool. Totally like a distant memory. We have new graphics this year, which are all glitchy, which I really dig. But so, yeah, you've been trying to put Sam Byford in precarious position, increasingly dangerous, which I think is wrong and rude. And he did fall off the car last time we were randomly on his own. Ben Popper has just been hurting himself through. I know Ben. I'm getting Tate and Popper tased himself. Got punched. Punched that. Then he got to a hot tub with Sam Sheffrey. Can we get the video? Do you have the video of him tasing himself? It's the best. And there's a video of him getting punched. There's a discussion at some point of the headline being, don't tase myself, bro. There's just this picture of Carl just socking. But this is Ben, the guy who put a magnet in his finger. He's also an MMA guy. Also. He trains in MMA. He loves fighting. He loves getting injured. He loves getting injured. He's like, do you see his eye twitch? His eye twitched. You can't hear him there. He's like, it works. It definitely works. It definitely works. Anyhow, yeah, but hey, we have an amazing team. And they've just done a great job. I'm going to go get a beer. I'm going to go get a beer. I'm going to go get a beer. I'm going to go get a beer. Anyhow, yeah, but hey, we have an amazing team and they've just done amazing stuff. And we've got more to come. We actually have a few things that are going to go up tomorrow. We've got some big things tomorrow. We have a defining, a defining piece. And we also have Virge Awards, which are going up tomorrow. I've got to take this out. Just get it out. Just take it out. It's done. Where we pick what we think was the most impressive, exciting, and interesting stuff of the year. And it's going to be a great time. Have you given away your picks yet? My what? Have you given away your picks for tops? Oh, have I for top things? Yeah, have you said? Last night we talked about them a little bit. I was pretty vague. I'm actually like honestly. Well, you know, so here's the thing. So we have to like, we have to decide whether we're going to do like best laptop. Yeah. Right. And it's hard. Tom ran a report. Is there a best laptop? This is a little bit. We should just talk about this a little bit. Right. Yeah, there's not, there's not many. But Tom actually just put up, he just put up a report called, you know, Microsoft and platforms are nowhere to be found. And it's true. There's just no windows here. Like if this CS is a show of like sensors and things that connect to your phone and to your mobile devices, or like make your phone smarter in some way or extend your phone on the other screens, none of that stuff is running windows as far as I can tell, or windows phone or windows RT. And it's just kind of like Microsoft's here. They got a bunch of meeting rooms booked, right? The VPs are here. The senior leadership is here. Yeah. But their platform is nowhere here. And I don't know how we're going to give away best laptop. I don't know that we will. It's like a minor spec pub. That's the nice, you talked about this last night, but the nice thing about doing your own awards, like last year we did, you know, the categories that we chose are based on like what actually was happening. So it wasn't like we were locked into these static categories. And I think we'll do the same thing this year. But yeah, I mean, that's, that's tomorrow. And then it's, and then we're done really. I mean, Friday is, we'll probably have a few things that trickle out because there's always a few things, but God, I'm exhausted. I'm sorry, by the way, if I've been sniffling, I've been sniffling. I have a little bit. I'm so congested. It's out of control. This is the first time I've ever been sick at CES in my memory. Have you ever gotten sick here? Yeah. I've had problems. What kind of problems? I don't want to discuss them. Dirty, awful problems. Dirty problems. No. Neal, have you ever been sick here? No, I always get sick right afterwards. Oh yeah. That's what happened to me last year. Yeah, afterwards is bad. Cause your body is just like brutalized. Oh yeah, I mean, Becky has a complete, like now it's years later, so she's got a whole, she's like, she gets ready for me to leave. She like plans a whole week of like things she can do alone. And then she plans a whole week of avoiding the house cause I'm in it sick. So it's like, seriously, it's like two weeks where she's just annoyed with me. Well, I haven't gotten a flu shot and apparently I'm told that I have to get a flu shot before I go home. Yeah. Laura was like, don't come back if you don't have a flu shot. Don't come back. I can't get a flu shot. They once told me, I went in to get one and they said I couldn't. Cause you're a foreigner. I said I'm allergic to feathers. What? A lot of, a lot of silence there. What do you mean allergic to feathers? That's what they told me. I said, they said, do you have any allergies? I said I'm allergic to feathers and they said go away. They told me to go away. What do you mean you're allergic to feathers? This is like 20 years ago. What kind of feathers? What do you mean what kind of feathers? How do you know? Not all feathers are the same. Like that seems like a really obvious point. I don't know that much about feathers. Well, clearly. There are different kinds of feathers. Feathers, I don't know, feathers and pillows and. So you can't use like a down, you can't use like a down pillow? No. What kind of, what happens? Like red and watery. Dirty problems. Sniffles. Maybe there's feathers around you. Maybe that's your problem. You can be allergic to, oh man. Right now there's no feathers around me. You don't know that. Do you see any feathers around me? You can't see behind you. I think we have to wrap up. It's done. There's no feathers here. There's really nothing to talk about at this point. Look, this has been The Urge. My sign is The Urge is signing off from CES. Let's see really quickly. Can I take some Twitter questions? Just a few minutes. Let's take some Twitter questions. I was just going to say. Tweet at me. Twitter questions. Tweet at Neely. Tweet at Neely. At Reckless. Right now we only have a couple of minutes. I see people in control room, they're getting real sweaty. Yeah. And not in the good way. Not in the Sheffer way. Not in the Sam Sheffer way. So the reason we're in such a rush is because. What did you say to me? Unrelated? We are right next to the Gibson tent and they start throwing a rock concert. Gibson's going to have a rave here in about 10 minutes. Yeah. That's good. And there's going to be a guy. Someone just tweeted me the werewolf picture. Oh yeah, werewolves. Were werewolves the story of the show? I don't think so. There were a lot of werewolves here. I completely disagree. Yeah. Deerage, man. Yeah, that's great stuff. People that have questions. By the way, did you notice the werewolf has my beard and glasses? That's something I noticed. I didn't see it at first. Can we get a full screen of that? Are you buying a pebble? By the way. I want a pebble. By the way, my body does look like this if I take my shirt off. It's exactly as muscular and hairy as I am. So disturbing. Are those my eyes? No questions coming in. There are lots of questions coming in. What do you got? Are you going to buy a pebble? Like buy a pebble or the company? Yeah, you're going to buy the company. I'm going to wait to see what the review says before I buy. I don't know. I really like analog watches. I'm not totally sold on the smartwatch as a thing, but my point about the pebble was if I was going to buy one right now, that's probably the one I would buy because it looks the nicest in my opinion. Yeah, I agree. All right, what else you got? Are we going clubbing tonight from Birch Coffee? Definitely. That's tomorrow and tonight. You got to be careful when you go clubbing with hot coffee though. You don't want to spill any on your lap. I don't know what kind of weird sexual innuendo that was. Don't spill hot coffee on your lap. Was there anything that truly sucked? Anything that truly sucked. Well, there's a lot of things that truly sucked that we don't write about. Yeah, we ignore them. We try to shield our readers from that stuff as much as we can. Our gift to you, the reader, is that we don't want to waste your time with stuff that sucks. You want to read about the stuff that sucks, plenty of other websites you can go to check that out. The Verge, our goal is to deliver only the highest quality stuff to you. Best keynote of the year. Best keynote of this CES? It's got to be Johnny Shea. Well, Johnny Shea. You think so? I mean, Kaz was really great because- Better than Ledger? Ledger? We're used to his shtick now. It's a shtick now. We're used to his shtick. By the way, he told us he was going to come in for an interview again today. Failed. Well, we don't know yet. Day's not done. Day's not done. Day's not done. He told Dan, where are you guys located? I'll find you, come in, we'd love to do it. Ledger. John Ledger. Yeah. Get over here right now. Do an interview with us. Something's going on. Don't dodge us. We're asking you to come. You said you would come. It's time to come. That doesn't sound right, but you know what I mean. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. You want to really prove that you're an Avenger, the Dark Knight? Swoop into our studio. Swoop into our studio. Bacon Man. What? Bacon Man. Bacon Beer Man? Bacon Man. No. We're going to bring some whiskey and bacon and we'll talk. Bring some whiskey and get into our studio. Wait a second. What was the question? Was there a question? All right, let's go. What else do we have? It was Best Keynote. Oh, Best Keynote. I think Johnny Shade was the... He's fantastic. This thing that he does where he's like... The delivery is amazing. That? Yeah. I want to just do something in life where I do, oh my God, he's doing it right here. Yeah. Can we get the audio? You know what's amazing about this is like, this is also shit. Every time we ask them to get audio, they're like, oh my God, the audio? We didn't know that was going to happen. Well... There we go. Ladies and gentlemen, say hello to the ASUS Transformer Book Duet TD300. It is an Android laptop, a Windows laptop, tablet, and an Android tablet. It is also the world's first and only Intel fourth generation core processor running genuine DOS, and now you can own it starting $599. Yes. Thank you. Power. And then if you get some applause over the top, he's great. What we learned is that if you yell, people will clap. They don't know what to do. They're just doing it again. We can see more. WQHD monitor. Ladies and gentlemen, please allow me to introduce a complete lineup of Zenfone. Let's begin with the stylish and compact Zenfone 4. I don't get this. It has a 4-inch... It's an interesting UI idea....camera and comes with five vibrant colors starting at $99. Boom. Thank you. Also, like the cameraman, does the cameraman know to do that pull the zoom back? Yeah, the zoom back. Designed to run in- All right, that's enough of Johnny Sheen. Great stuff. Very good stuff. Somebody asked us who we think won the show, and I would say stay tuned. Stay tuned. We have a very real, powerful answer for that that'll be up very early tomorrow. What else? Have you been gambling? I gambled. I spent $2 on a slot machine when I got off the plane because Laura wanted me to for some reason that I don't really remember, and I lost immediately. Also, what is up with these slot machines? You can't work the arm. They just stop on their own. I'm getting back into the center of the frame. This is driving me crazy. No, it's okay. I got it. I already rolled over here. You don't even bother. Just have a seat. A real asshole. I don't mind rolling. I get to be closer to whatever. Where's your sweater from? Wait a second. Yeah. So that was it. I just... The slot machine normally... I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. But you can't... I mean, if you can't work those arm, you can't stop. They just stop on their own. This is not gambling. It's a random number generator. Yeah. Go ahead. Sweaters from Lisbon. Lisbon the place? Yeah, the city. Well, that could be a company. Oh, sorry. Lisbon Sweaters. Alright, what else? What else do you have? It's a really challenging question. Where you at? Yeah. One more question. Make it good. Were there any small companies that amazed you this year? There's been a couple. I feel like they're the same small companies that amazed us last year. Oculus and Pebble. Oculus and Pebble. Yeah. There's nothing really crazy. But I'm seeing a lot of, I think, yeah, I hung out with the NES guys yesterday. I'll put that video up a little bit later. What is this shit? It's an airplane. You know what they should have done is put the convention center somewhere other than in the path of the airport. Yeah. Yeah, that would have been convenient. Right? Or at least let you jump out of a plane directly to the convention center. Right into the CS. Yeah. No, I think it's like there's a bunch of home automation stuff that's interesting. I hung out with the NES guys. Oh. And that company has gone from zero to 1,000, right? And now they have a fire truck driving around. But like Revolve, the Canary guys, that stuff is really interesting. Yeah, Canary seems interesting. Honeywell's coming for you. Honeywell's coming for you. Yeah. Honeywell in Europe has a home automation system that's actually pretty decent. All right. Let's continue that on the homecast where we talk about the new version of the game. We've got a lot more coming tomorrow, by the way. There's a lot more coming tomorrow, including some The Verge Awards, which you're going to want to check out. There's going to be some shocks and some surprises. And I think a relatively definitive, at least our definitive answer to who won CES. That's the Vergecast. We will be back, presumably, next week with a regular Vergecast. And I'm not going to tell you how you can find us, because if you're watching right now, you should know. And don't make me come over there. We're done. And you have to go, and we have to go. What, do I have to threaten somebody? And as always, it's not a threat. It's just a fact that even though I'm going to wish you and your family all the best, they're in the greatest danger they've ever been in. And nothing can stop what's going to happen. My mom's coming from overhead. Nothing can stop what's going to happen to you.
 Hey, and welcome to the Vergecast at CES 2014, day whatever.
 I'm Josh Tapolsky.
 I'm Neil Ivetel.
 I'm Thomas Ricker.
 He is Thomas Ricker.
 We have the delightful, the illustrious, the sexual, the handsome, the manly, the feminine
 Thomas Ricker here with us.
 Thomas?
 Can I go now?
 You've come all the way from-
 Thomas has been very resistant.
 You've come all the way from the weed haze of Amsterdam.
 To the weed haze of Las Vegas.
 To the weed haze of-
 To the cocaine haze of Las Vegas.
 Speaking of which, do you have a bomb?
 You got a joint for us?
 Let's do it.
 Let's spark up right here.
 This is made out of hemp.
 Yeah, of course it is.
 It seriously is.
 It's called sativa too, which is amazing.
 Thomas wearing your Amsterdam-
 Why do you have a young woman's rave wallet from 1994?
 I know, really.
 Chain wallet?
 I took my children to the-
 Chain wallet?
 I'm not kidding.
 His weed chain wallet.
 That thing was the hottest seller at Hot Topic in 96.
 That is a sick, and also a true bird.
 You're really wearing your Amsterdam residency on your sleeve here.
 In your wallet.
 Thanks.
 In your pocket.
 Thanks.
 Anyhow, Thomas Ricker is of course our-
 It's nonstop.
 He cannot get over the fact that I live in Amsterdam.
 He's our man in Europe.
 How is it possible?
 How are you alive and not stoned?
 How are you here?
 Are you getting the shakes?
 You need to get the shakes.
 No, I'm okay.
 I'm cool.
 So anyhow, this is our-
 So first off, let's clear the air, because there's a huge haze of weed in here.
 Thanks, Thomas.
 This chair is just rolling out of the-
 It's fine.
 Everything is fine.
 This is actually an early after hours for us.
 On the East Coast, I would classify this as after hours.
 On the West Coast, this godforsaken show is still happening.
 And all around us-
 All around us, people are juggling.
 They're riding electronic skateboards.
 They're flying on drones.
 I just saw Rick Rubin float out of a window.
 And it's been-
 Too big for that?
 No, he's trimmed down a little bit.
 Has he?
 Okay.
 Yeah.
 So this is the Vergecast after hours, but we're still within hours.
 We're still in hours.
 It feels early to me.
 It is early.
 Are we really done with the show?
 No, this will be our final Vergecast for the show, because-
 Shocking.
 Because we have to break down the studio.
 Friday is like the breakdown day here.
 And we wouldn't have a place to do it.
 We would just be like, us Skyping.
 Awesome.
 A parking lot.
 Yeah, or Hot Boxing in the car.
 Yeah.
 Thanks to the sweet weed that Thomas brought over from Amsterdam.
 So we thought-
 So we're not going to talk about the show that much.
 We're going to talk about our experience.
 We have to talk about it a little bit.
 I mean, I feel like we got out to the floor today.
 Well, we're going to talk about a little bit.
 You haven't had a chance to talk about it.
 Tell me about-
 Thomas, bring a fresh perspective to what you've seen this week.
 It's kind of hard to give a fresh perspective.
 I mean, this is, what, my tenth year coming here?
 Is it really?
 I don't know.
 I'm longer than you, definitely longer than you.
 Yeah.
 Wow.
 Support of the show, everyone.
 You're longer than you, definitely longer than you.
 And we're both like, yep.
 That's true.
 That's true.
 I won't deny it.
 I don't know.
 To me, I'm trying to get excited about it.
 I mean, for me, the best part is just being here with the team.
 The entire team is here.
 I honestly think that's always the best part.
 But sometimes the stuff going on is more fun than other times.
 I mean, it's exciting.
 There's little things that we're finding.
 There's, weirdly, this little Polaroid cube camera that I saw.
 You like those.
 I like the design.
 It's a totally non-functioning prototype.
 It's a plastic shell.
 Yeah.
 And everybody freaked out about it because we took some really beautiful, beautiful photos.
 No, but my favorite product to see us last year was a non-functioning shell.
 It was Sony's Circle with a Light, Blu-ray era, HD.
 What happened to that?
 I didn't show that again this year.
 This year, it's a square.
 It's like, thanks, Sony.
 I had one dream, and you squared it off.
 It's the aspirational Sony.
 Show you what they're capable of.
 We could turn a circle into a square.
 So you actually, you did something that Josh and I didn't do.
 You went to all of the big vendor chaos shit show exhibits that they have.
 What's that?
 It's weird.
 That used to be the biggest part of the news cycle.
 Now we just don't go because we send so many other people.
 Those things are hugely stressful.
 Which camera?
 This one?
 You can just talk to us.
 Those are hugely stressful.
 I mean, you guys know.
 I think one year, we kind of took it a little haphazard, and we got behind on the coverage,
 and it wasn't so great.
 Then I somehow ended up taking over and running this massive team of writers and now video
 crew over to these events.
 It's insane.
 They line us up.
 It's like hundreds of journalists that are lined up in a shoot.
 Then they open the door and say, go.
 Then you have 100 vendors lined up around the corner, all showing off products, many
 for the first time.
 You have to go in there.
 You have to figure out, well, what's important, what's not.
 You have to quickly filter all that stuff out, of course, because we're racing other
 people.
 Then you have to do it in a quality way.
 Stern is just there with a vibrating fork, destroying the coverage.
 This goes on for three days in a row.
 You can imagine there are like 30 of these.
 You have somehow gotten the... I guess it's because you're so organized and so great at
 your job, but as a result, you're in charge of running the teams that go to these events.
 It becomes just a question of getting a battle plan.
 It's not even... In the moment, it's not like journalism.
 It's like suddenly things have been made available to you to look at.
 You have to decide on the spot, is this interesting?
 What is it?
 What does it do?
 Is it interesting?
 Have we covered it?
 Do we need to cover it?
 How much coverage do we need to do?
 Then it all happens minute to minute.
 You're competing with every other journalist in the world.
 Here we are working, is it unveiled?
 That's just the video.
 I don't know.
 It's a blur.
 Yeah, it's unveiled.
 It's a blur.
 It's a nightmare.
 It's a nightmare.
 It gets kind of weird every year because this is where the first stories of CS break.
 Right.
 That's the first press-related event.
 I have to say, there weren't many stories this year that came out of those events.
 No, there were small things.
 Some small things.
 The Polaroid camera was in one of those, right?
 The Polaroid camera was there.
 There was a giant e-ink clock, which is three meters wide and hangs up on your clock.
 It sounds great.
 Normally, you would think e-ink, okay, that's really visible.
 I'm going to be able to see it, especially up on a white wall.
 When it's off, it's actually gray scale.
 When it's on, it's just a darker gray.
 You really can't even tell the time.
 It costs like 500 bucks.
 If they get the technology right, then I think it's going to be... I liked it.
 I think it was beautiful.
 I also want to be able to tell the time, so I don't think I'm going to be getting one.
 Time is very important to you.
 Time is relative.
 I actually never set my watch.
 It's actually really cool.
 Really?
 Are you joking?
 You're joking.
 I don't know the time.
 It's on East Coast time, but I can never...
 Oh, you didn't say.
 I actually have a rule.
 If I go somewhere for two days, I don't set it.
 I'm just going to stay on East Coast time.
 Like this, we're here a week.
 There's no way I can't change it.
 I can't believe you haven't changed yours.
 You don't look at it.
 I look at my phone.
 You don't look at it.
 You're all right.
 I'm always around clocks.
 I assume you don't wear a watch, do you?
 No.
 Just check my phone.
 You should have a chain wall and a pocket watch would be an appropriate addition.
 You've got two chains.
 Then I have to wear tweets, double breasted.
 Everything should be attached to you by a chain.
 You should have a chain laptop, chain tablet.
 By the way, do you remember-
 Like little tablets on chains.
 Oh, you don't remember this, but earlier today I made a joke about an Airbus A320, and I
 made up some fake thing that I had, like this dual hydraulic something or other.
 So somebody tweeted me, and apparently it actually has the thing that I made up.
 It was really weird.
 I was like, oh, it's a 320 with it.
 I was like, I knew a lot about planes, unrelated to everything that we're talking about right
 now.
 So what's your thing of the show?
 Is it the Polaroid Cube?
 No, definitely not.
 I mean, okay, let's talk about Polaroid for a little bit.
 I mean, it's a fascinating... First of all, it's not a company.
 You know that.
 It's a shell, right?
 It's a brand.
 It's a brand.
 Right.
 It's a name.
 It's a name, and the name gets licensed out to whoever wants it, which is fascinating
 because you pick up one Polaroid product, and you think, oh, this is a piece of shit,
 right?
 Yeah.
 In fact, most of them are.
 Yeah.
 But they actually have nothing to do with each other.
 You just license the name, and then you go off and you manufacture it with whoever you
 want.
 They have a Polaroid booth here.
 Yeah, they do.
 In fact, it seems like there are two of them.
 It's really sad.
 Can I... Is that the Shell Company?
 Yeah, I mean, it's the Shell Company.
 You know what's really weird with these...
 Great headline, by the way.
 Yeah.
 You read the post?
 Well, that's my headline.
 Is it?
 Inexpensive but cheap.
 Yeah.
 There's cheap crap everywhere.
 Yeah.
 But the Polaroid booth is particularly egregiously cheap crap.
 Yeah.
 And it's like somebody didn't get the... Whoever bought the brand-
 They had a nice looking booth last year.
 It's a nice looking- Yeah.
 They play up the nostalgia a lot.
 Right.
 So they have a lot of the old Instamatic cameras in the booth.
 Right.
 And like old Polaroids inside.
 Yeah.
 And then it's just like the most, absolutely the worst tablet just like-
 Right.
 Such a bummer.
 So they play up on that tradition, but what is there now is nothing, has absolutely nothing
 to do with that history.
 So this is the year where they're trying to reclaim from Instagram.
 From Instagram they're trying to reclaim their Polaroid-y-ness.
 Maybe.
 I mean, that was also a shell.
 The Instamatic.
 I think that's what it's called.
 Yeah.
 That was also a shell.
 A little square- There it is.
 No, that's the cube.
 So, so adorable.
 That's the little cube camera.
 But there's a bigger one that we've seen before.
 It was pre-announced I think two or three months ago.
 We see the Instagram camera.
 It's literally the Instagram icon.
 Yeah.
 It's called the Socialmatic.
 Yeah, Socialmatic.
 Oh, the Socialmatic.
 Yeah, that's it.
 It looks exactly like the Instagram icon if it were turned into a product.
 But you know what's weird about these?
 It's like whatever.
 You made it.
 It's great.
 It's got a Z-ink printer in it, or zinc or whatever they call it.
 Here it is.
 There it is.
 That's cool.
 It's insane.
 You know what it isn't though?
 If you scroll down you can see the old leather case.
 Now that, I've got an old Polaroid in a closet back home and it has that exact leather case.
 It flips over the top and comes off and then hangs there when you try to shoot.
 They're really preying upon that tradition.
 Now I don't know.
 Maybe it'll be phenomenal.
 Maybe it'll be amazing.
 No, it won't.
 It can't be.
 But the contract claims it's going to be manufacturing with Foxconn.
 Oh really?
 So let's like, you know.
 The manufacturers have the issue.
 It's the design.
 How much money do they have?
 Foxconn will be like, you pay us a little bit of money and we'll make a crappy product.
 The question is how much?
 Foxconn makes HP laptops and Macbooks.
 That's a great, very cogent point.
 Perfect example.
 I mean, it's like how much design was put into it.
 What are the optics like?
 Is it going to be a good camera?
 They're not listening to the details.
 Well, it's a crappy camera, but it does like, it develops the film weird.
 You know what people don't want to do is like, take a picture and print it, right?
 They want to share it to social networks.
 Does it have a screen on it?
 I don't think so.
 It definitely doesn't in this iteration.
 I don't know.
 That doesn't.
 Which is a plastic box, remember.
 That doesn't feel like a win.
 So what did you really like?
 I guess there is a nostalgic hit for me and that was the webOS TV.
 I finally went into LG's booth, which is magnificent, by the way.
 You come in off the main concourse and there's this enormous multi-paneled 3D experience
 with all these people laying down on the ground and staring up at it.
 Have you been over to the main concourse yet?
 I've been by it.
 I haven't been through all of it.
 It's amazing because it's the first thing you see as you're walking through the main
 hall, the main corridor of the central hall.
 And so it draws you in.
 And then if you continue down their path and you come across the webOS experience, which
 is, they have a lot of space dedicated to that.
 So that's a big push for them.
 Unfortunately, they're not letting anybody actually test drive.
 I got to test drive.
 Did you?
 Yeah.
 Dieter and I...
 It goes to show.
 When you go to a webOS area with Dieter Bohn, like the C's part and former employees show
 up and they anoint him a little bit, it's very nice.
 John Rubenstein appears from behind.
 Dieter, Dietrich Bohn.
 Dietrich.
 No, we've played with it a little.
 His name is just Dieter, I think, isn't it?
 I don't think it's longer.
 If only we had somebody we could ask.
 Anyhow, go on.
 Maybe it is longer.
 Well, no, I think, I mean, I have a smart TV.
 We've seen them for years and they're not very smart.
 They suck.
 The interface is awful.
 I mean, even Apple TV for all of its Apple-ness isn't that great to get around on a tiny little
 remote.
 Right.
 And the motion sensing is pretty interesting, you know, being able to point things.
 I hate the motion sensing.
 Yeah, I don't, I mean, they told me that there's so much RF interference there that the Bluetooth
 is a little jittery.
 Yeah.
 But I kind of don't believe it.
 Well, that's what I want to, I mean, I'm hopeful that, I mean, it looks really nice and it
 looks very simple.
 And I like what they did with the UX, the elements.
 I don't think that this, like this wavy thing, there's something about it that's cool and
 interesting and like the web OS interface is cool, but that's just the Netflix interface.
 Yeah, that looks like the Netflix interface.
 I'm happy using the Netflix interface with the D-pad.
 That interface is optimized for D-pad.
 It's not optimized for a weird Bluetooth mouse.
 Well, but comparatively to, I mean, I think what works here is that they have a platform,
 we talked about this, but they have a platform, they have a design, they have an aesthetic
 and they apparently are at least trying to push some guidelines to partners.
 Yeah, but Netflix is the only one that's important is Netflix and that list, right?
 I mean like-
 Well, I don't know.
 Have you ever used Vudu?
 I have actually, I've used Vudu.
 They're HDX, higher quality.
 I use Amazon a lot and I use Hulu.
 I mean, I use Netflix, Hulu and Amazon on a consistent basis, I would say.
 But all those apps, I mean, that's the thing you complain about.
 They're going to be all, that's the problem.
 That is the fundamental problem.
 And their whole thing, and they told us, we interviewed the designer and they were like,
 we believe in openness, we're going to have some standards, people can use them, but really
 we want HTML5 apps to be the way of the future.
 Which is the advantage of web OS is HTML5.
 But everybody, Samsung's backend is HTML5, Vizio's backend, Sony's, they know that these
 companies aren't good at software.
 That's why they're all partnering with software companies.
 I said this on like day two, but I'm so sick of talking about smart TVs.
 I mean, that's the thing about web OS, it's like, oh, that is the nostalgic, like I was
 looking at my old Palm Pre-Review and remembering the year that we came here and they announced
 the pre and it was so exciting.
 Web OS on an LG TV is not that.
 You know, it's like, it does kind of ping my nostalgic bone or whatever.
 Do you have no idea what that means?
 But it doesn't, it's just like a smart TV that I don't want to buy.
 It's an LG TV that I have no plans to buy, you know, like no amount of cool interface
 will get me to buy a TV that I didn't want in the first place.
 Most of what you're going to do is turn it on, turn to your cable box, make the interface
 go away.
 Probably, yeah.
 I mean, like it's not such a huge leap over the Roku, really, that I, you know what I
 mean?
 Like I guess if you're in the market and you need a TV and you're looking at smart TVs
 and you think picture quality is not that big of a deal or like it's all about the same,
 they make decent TVs, they're fine.
 And you're like, okay, I'm just looking for a really decent TV with a great interface.
 Like this is a good option, but I think it's a really small segment of the audience.
 I just don't think people think like that.
 They aren't, people aren't buying smart TVs for smart TV functions.
 I mean, not that I've seen.
 But that's what's unfortunate about the show is that like the web OS TV, which I don't
 really want, I'm just, you know, I would like to see it succeed.
 Right.
 I mean, that's kind of one of my top picks.
 There just isn't that much low hanging fruit to choose from.
 It was a dry, it was a dry.
 I will say that we tried the Oculus Crystal Cove yesterday and that was so incredible.
 Have we run the video?
 Have we put up the standalone video of that yet?
 I don't think so.
 I haven't seen it.
 Do you want to see it?
 Have you seen it?
 I haven't seen it.
 Can we watch it?
 Do you guys have that available?
 Because we've showed it in the morning, but maybe not everybody's seen it.
 Can you maybe try to get, I'm going to see if, I'm going to see if they can get it up
 because it's actually kind of fun to watch.
 Like everybody's reaction to it.
 I know Addy said it was fantastic.
 I actually, I mean, I said this last night, but like there was a moment when I saw my
 own hands and I was like, what are those doing there?
 Which is like to see your body and not understand it.
 I expect it to be less impressed.
 You're used to that.
 This is the regrettable thing about what I do at the show is I'm mostly like running
 the news.
 Is this it?
 Yeah.
 Let's take a look at this.
 This is the video that we did of everybody.
 That's just me and Thomas.
 That's not it.
 This is not.
 You're in a virtual reality right now.
 Look how realistic this is.
 It's like I can look around him.
 Can we run that?
 Or no?
 I don't know why I'm looking.
 I have you on my headset.
 Okay, here it is.
 Oh my God.
 Oh my God.
 Oh my God.
 What's happening?
 Oh my God.
 Oh my God.
 What the hell?
 This is, I have to say, this is, I'm not able to do words right now.
 Holy crap.
 Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait,
 wait, wait, wait, wait.
 What the fuck?
 The whole thing for one second, I'll tell it to you.
 It looks straight forward.
 Now you can Oculus face all your...
 Look up.
 Look in front of you.
 This is not good. I'm totally hung over.
 Look at this!
 This is stupid.
 This is like Hanukkah. I'm sorry I'm so giggly.
 Whoa.
 This is like being hugged by a video game.
 These guys are really cool.
 Got big bellies.
 Could you put them together?
 I really want to pick these guys up, like...
 But I can't.
 This is very disorienting because I can see my hand.
 And it's like, I want to kill it.
 Squashing guys.
 Wait, so how do I kill this thing?
 Okay, I killed someone.
 You guys saw that, right?
 Okay, I just want to kill things.
 Is anyone dead yet? Oh, he's dead.
 I can shoot them? Oh, I got one.
 I got that guy.
 Dude.
 Dude.
 That's a table.
 Okay, there's a table there.
 This is amazing.
 And I never want to take it off.
 I mean, I'm not going to take it off.
 Oh, I don't want to leave.
 This is the best thing.
 No, but no, no, no, no.
 I feel amazing right now.
 I really don't want you to take this off of me.
 Welcome back to Vegas.
 Oh, wow.
 That's cool.
 So the interesting thing about this, I said it on the morning show on the first,
 but the interesting thing is I expected to not be as impressed
 because I've already seen it a bunch of times.
 And the stuff they've done where they fixed the timing and the...
 It's a higher resolution now, right?
 Higher resolution.
 I mean, you can still see pixels, but it's higher resolution.
 They fixed some of the latency issues.
 They're getting that a lot faster.
 And now it has positional tracking in addition to the motion sensing.
 And it's pretty crazy.
 Like that cave, the thing...
 So here's what's interesting.
 That demo they showed was a seated demo where you're not moving around.
 What was most interesting about it was when you turned around
 and there was a cave like way far away
 and you felt like you were looking back down this crazy corridor.
 I mean, it was really insane.
 It feels insane.
 It feels like you are in another place.
 I'm so jealous.
 I didn't even know you guys did this.
 This is the first time I've seen of this.
 You blew it.
 I don't know.
 I think you were getting high or something.
 You were like, I got to go get my gravity bomb.
 No, I think you were just out of the trailer.
 I think you were off doing...
 It was 420 at the time.
 The clock struck 420.
 It was 420, coincidentally.
 The clock struck 420.
 Is it 420 right now?
 No, it's not.
 Would you guys buy one of these?
 Yes.
 You would?
 Not yet.
 I would buy it.
 What about with that running treadmill?
 No, I would buy it.
 The Ellis thing, yeah.
 So Ellis did this thing on the running treadmill,
 which is basically an Oculus and a treadmill that you run on.
 And he was like, he came back and I saw him and I was like,
 whoa, buddy, did you go out last night?
 And he's like, no, I did a virtual reality thing
 and it was too real.
 And he just like drifted in a super nauseated state
 around the trailer for a while.
 I mean, I get very nauseous with the dev version.
 This latency is much higher and it makes people more.
 This is the Virtuix Omni.
 I mean, this looks crazy to me.
 This thing is cool though.
 They said they're going to sell this for like $400.
 Yeah, this is the second generation because Paul did one.
 Paul did one last year.
 But it looks like they've really improved the walk-in.
 Yeah, yeah, it's much better.
 Like this is nuts.
 I mean, this looks terrifying.
 I mean, imagine the higher resolution, you know,
 low or zero latency in this thing with that,
 when we saw this thing as pre-OVR,
 which is you wear kind of like a chest thing and an arm thing.
 Imagine you got that on.
 But can we really not figure anything better to do
 than kill stuff in these games?
 Well, no, that's the next step.
 You know, I was actually talking to the Oculus guys.
 Oh, no, Addy was talking to them.
 We had several conversations.
 But Paul Merlucky from Oculus was saying, you know,
 the controller is now the problem because when you get into it,
 and you saw, by the way, in that video,
 everybody was going like this.
 Yeah.
 Because what happens is when you're in there,
 you want to interact the way you interact with the real world.
 You want to be able to touch things.
 And like you can't do it.
 And I think like I actually think Oculus,
 I wouldn't be surprised if we see them start to work on some thing
 that is like your hands are now like part of the simulation.
 And I think that's kind of the next step because, you know,
 it's like we are just like killing things, you know.
 It's like you're in there with a gun.
 Like that's cool.
 But it's like one thing you can do,
 and you don't want to be doing it all the time.
 I think, I mean, this is the, I mean,
 we're definitely at the beginning of real like crazy virtual reality stuff.
 Like it's happening now.
 I don't think that it's not going to not happen.
 I think that there's interest.
 I think that it's cheap enough to do.
 I think there's huge consumer interest.
 I think that the graphics are good enough that they feel realistic.
 And they did that thing, you know,
 the screen is still not as great as I'd want it to be.
 Yeah.
 But they did that persistence display where they're repainting the screen
 like all at once.
 Yeah.
 I think they're using OLED to do it.
 Yeah.
 And it's actually a lot better.
 Yeah, there's less tearing.
 There's no motion blur.
 You know, that's the thing.
 And I should just write this.
 This should be my end of CS.
 Just write it.
 But that's the thing where it does have a really high,
 you have to like wear a virtual reality headset and have a computer
 and like understand what you're going to do.
 But the experience is so great.
 The benefit of it is amazing.
 Oh, this is the cost.
 Yeah, but like those are all like high.
 You have to wear a thing.
 Well, that's really the ultimate is like how do you sell it to consumers?
 Right.
 How do you get consumers to want it?
 You know, I think I probably said this, I've said this a few times.
 They need to figure out how to make movies for that thing.
 Where like it's a murder mystery and you like walk around a house.
 No, I mean imagine.
 Imagine like Oculus Clue.
 Yeah, or that you can say like I want to be in this character's head
 for half the movie.
 Right.
 And then I'll switch to another character.
 They should really bring back, I don't know if you're listening to me, Palmer.
 You should definitely shoot Clue, the movie Clue for the Oculus Rift.
 Yeah, with a lot of different endings.
 Yeah.
 I mean that movie was great, first of all.
 One of the best.
 One of the best movies of all time.
 Yeah.
 But you should shoot it and that should be like an Oculus release thing that you do.
 You should do an Oculus Verge cast.
 Where you can go inside.
 You can just walk around us.
 Here's a scene from Clue.
 By the way, is Christopher Lloyd in Clue?
 Yes.
 Christopher Lloyd is in Clue and I don't want to say there's some magical stuff happening,
 but you know we just saw Christopher Lloyd recently playing the role of Doc Brown.
 I'm actually really, here's what I'm mostly disturbed about.
 We were so quickly able to bring up Clue.
 But our own content is much longer.
 Give us a minute, but Clue we got on tap, no problem.
 John's like, oh I was just watching Clue.
 Yeah, it's funny you should mention that.
 So let's get real though.
 Yeah.
 Let's talk about The Verge at CES.
 Are you working right now?
 I can't.
 I'm sorry, are you too busy to spend an hour with us?
 I'm fucking dying.
 Are you still talking?
 Can we just get it out there?
 This may be my last ever Verge cast.
 This may be my last day on Earth.
 This may be my last day.
 And you know what, I don't regret a thing except not doing a ton of drugs.
 That's the one thing I regret.
 It's not even true because I took a photo of a stack of drugs sitting by your desk yesterday.
 I did have some super awesome NyQuil.
 I took NyQuil last night at midnight, but it didn't kick in until like when I was sleeping.
 And I woke up and then it kicked in and now I've just felt like a complete maniac all day.
 Which is different than how I normally feel, in case you're wondering.
 Here's the thing about CES time and why I like it.
 Why I think it's the most magical time of the year.
 Yeah.
 First off, it comes after the second most magical time of the year, Xmas.
 And here's the thing about CES.
 You know, everybody complains about CES.
 I'm just like this chair is just hopelessly drifting.
 I don't know what's going on.
 Did you oil the floor here?
 Did you lubricate, lube on the floor?
 What's happening?
 I'm just getting crazy in here.
 Anyhow, as I was saying before, my lubed chair rolled towards ecstasy.
 What was I saying?
 I don't know.
 The verge.
 Okay, everybody hates CES.
 Everybody who comes here, all the journalists are like, oh God.
 And you know, I think we feel the same way in some way.
 We don't hate CES, but we're like the holidays just ended.
 We just did New Year's.
 We had a crazy year.
 November is always crazy.
 You know, like the fall is insane.
 And then you're like, now in six days I have to fly to Las Vegas, which is, you know, I'm sorry for people who live in Las Vegas.
 It's a terrible place to be.
 I mean, it's one of the worst places I've ever been.
 I'm not saying the people here are bad.
 They're wonderful.
 Yeah.
 But as a city, it's fucked up.
 It's bizarre.
 It is really bizarre.
 Everything's augmented.
 Everything.
 Everything is augmented.
 Everything.
 And it's just really, it's like dry.
 We're in the desert.
 There's like blood coming out of my nose every night.
 I've seen so many people with nose bleeds.
 No, Steven Greenwood was like, had a picture in our video chat room and he was like, I got to go take care of this.
 And it was like his sink covered in blood because he was like having massive nose bleeds, which I think, I hope he's okay.
 Is he okay?
 We don't know.
 We lost Greenwood.
 So you fell out of that blood and you just went about your business?
 We lost Greenwood, unfortunately.
 Rip.
 Rip Steven.
 Rip Steven.
 But, you know, Vegas is insane.
 There's like hookers everywhere.
 There's people handing you.
 Are there?
 I mean, I think.
 I don't know.
 Tom Warren saved somebody's life today.
 Yeah, can you tell me the story?
 What happened?
 Tom Warren apparently.
 I don't know if I know all the details, but.
 Make them up.
 Yeah, this we invented.
 It's the Verge cast.
 Apparently they were walking towards the.
 Wait, hold on.
 Can I just say like, this looks like Charlie.
 He's like a Charlie Rose guest.
 Can you go back to Thomas's?
 Yeah, yeah, this is like straight up Charlie Rose right here.
 It's so good.
 Sorry, not unrelated to everything.
 Go on.
 So apparently they were walking.
 We're not too far from the from the from the from the hotel.
 I mean, everybody for everyone's.
 I don't know.
 Docs or hotel.
 I don't need to.
 We're close to this.
 Everybody.
 I don't need stalkers coming in there, raping me to death.
 Because that's what they'll do to me.
 Or so the threatening letters I've received have said.
 So they're coming back.
 They're coming in this morning and they saw somebody that was crawling on the ground.
 I think they also saw him last night and a couple of them started up a conversation.
 Well, he was trying to strike up a conversation with our team crawling on the ground, crawling
 on the ground, like looking for things.
 And he looked up at Tom and said something about you think I'm crazy, don't you?
 And Tom was like, and of course, Omar.
 Oh, I remember this story.
 He walked over to him and started striking up a conversation.
 Are you the weirdest thing here?
 I'm going to talk to you.
 He's like, what are you saying?
 Something like, you know, I've got the secret.
 And Omar's, what's the secret?
 He goes, you wouldn't believe me if I told you.
 And so, oh my God, I would like to know.
 He's writing, I mean, he's doing profiles of people that are here.
 So it turns out, I don't know how they found out, but they saw a missing persons ad and
 this guy is a missing person.
 Oh my God.
 Did he come to the show?
 How did he see the ad?
 Did he come to see us?
 These are the details I don't know.
 Did he attendee?
 I don't know.
 I don't know all the details.
 I don't know all the details.
 But anyway, so Tom saw that and he called up the number and indeed, like his wife was
 looking for him.
 He had missed a flight.
 He got in some kind of bad ass trip.
 Oh my God.
 What?
 Yeah, he was seriously like.
 Did this really happen?
 Yeah, he called him up and he's like the cops.
 Yeah, they came and picked him up.
 Well, I don't know if they're the cops, but somebody came and picked him up.
 That is crazy.
 We should write about that.
 See, yes, 2014.
 We should write about that.
 I think people would like to hear the whole story from Tom and Amar.
 Yeah, I would like to hear it.
 Let's see if we can get them to do that.
 Yeah, I would like to know the details.
 Not that I don't want to dox anybody, but that's a really interesting story.
 I think so.
 I'd read a thousand words on that.
 I mean, although you just heard the story now, just pretend you didn't hear it if you
 see it on the site tomorrow.
 I made up half of it.
 There you go.
 Vegas.
 Yeah.
 What happens in Vegas is disturbing.
 So, yeah, so then it's just a weird town.
 I mean, I haven't seen a lot of weird Vegas.
 No, we're usually kind of just trapped here, but even within the confines of the convention
 center in our hotel, which is very close, you do see the little tendrils, the little
 threads.
 I did have to spend a little time talking to people on the strip.
 I wasn't there physically.
 It's a long story, but I did speak to some people on the strip.
 And pretty interesting what people will admit to you here in Vegas.
 Like if you casually ask if they're going to do cocaine tonight, at least 50% of the
 people who were talking to you at the time will say yes, which I think is great.
 But, yeah, anyhow, it's a weird town.
 I'm making a point here.
 And the show can be very stressful, as we discussed earlier.
 And the food is bad, not for lack of trying, but the food that they serve to you every
 day in the trailer is not very good or healthy or delicious.
 I do like the breakfast, though, actually.
 I really enjoy the breakfast.
 Yeah, but every day the place smells like bacon.
 And then it smells like man later in the day.
 And then it's whiskey plus man.
 And then whiskey man, the greatest superhero ever, who just drunkenly wanders in somewhere
 and punches someone.
 And fights you with bacon.
 Yeah, exactly.
 He's like, take this, and he cramps the bacon in your mouth.
 You're like, I will take this.
 And, ahhh.
 Anyhow, so, that's a, somebody please make a comic strip that is that sequence of events.
 Whiskey man with the bacon.
 I will take, okay.
 But, okay, but we, The Verge, Dom, I'm going, I'm getting, I'm getting, I've got plenty
 of time, plenty of time for this.
 But what's amazing about CES, first off, what's amazing about CES, let's just say,
 the show can often be disappointing, you know, in places.
 But it's also often exciting and interesting and fascinating.
 Now, there were fewer exciting, interesting, fascinating things this year than I think
 last year.
 Yeah.
 It's weird.
 I talk to other people and they feel like it's reversed, that this is a more exciting
 year.
 But, there were some very cool things here.
 We saw some stuff that I think got us pretty excited.
 We saw some things that got us pretty bummed and we're like, yeah, that's lame.
 But, what's amazing about this is that we get the entire Verge team.
 Every, almost every writer.
 There's some people who couldn't make it for various reasons, some people that are
 just kind of hung back.
 But, the majority of the team, vast majority, in one room with our video team, with our
 product team, and everybody's like in one big room for a week straight.
 And, I don't know.
 We do some of the most interesting work that we ever do because we're all together.
 We do really interesting work.
 And, everything is over here.
 Because we're having, we're having conversations in real time about stories that are breaking.
 We're like swapping ideas.
 But, I think what's most amazing and interesting and is always to me the most awesome thing
 is that there's a bunch of people in the trailer.
 There's like 50, 60, however many people now.
 With everybody who's in the video and there's PAs and there's all these.
 And, I like all of them a lot.
 I really like hanging out with them.
 And, every night, I don't want to leave.
 I've been sick this whole week.
 And, people start to kind of wind down.
 And, you get like, everybody's having a drink.
 And, I've been feeling like, shit.
 I have to go.
 I feel so terrible.
 I'm out of here.
 And, then I want to stay.
 I end up staying later because I just want to hang out with the people who are there.
 What's amazing to me is that we have a team full of brilliant, incredible, fascinating,
 funny people.
 And, I like every one of them.
 And, I like to think, I hope that they like me.
 But, I think that we all like each other.
 Which is extremely rare, I feel, in a business of our size.
 For me it is.
 I mean, I've worked in big accounting firms.
 I've been in, I mean, I used to be in ITs.
 Like, giant corporations, small startups.
 And, I've always just tolerated.
 I hope nobody's watching.
 Now, I had a few friends.
 Why?
 Go back here.
 In my previous job.
 You had a Fortune 500 company.
 But, mostly it was just a constant, chronic toleration of the people around me.
 Yeah.
 And, this is, especially when there were team events.
 Like, something planned in the evening.
 Yeah.
 You had to do something.
 And, I remember one time we had to fly a whole group of people for team building.
 And, you had to do these human knots.
 Have you ever done this?
 Yeah.
 You have to do it with your own hands.
 This is why we like each other.
 Because, nobody forces anybody to do a human knot.
 No, we're doing that later.
 It's unbelievable.
 I've been trying to tie myself in.
 Dude, do a human knot.
 It's so awkward.
 Look, I spent a lot of time last night trying to tie myself in a human knot.
 Oh my god.
 It got deep.
 It got weird.
 It's getting weird in here, actually.
 But, we don't have that.
 I mean, we are all good friends.
 And, we can, it doesn't matter who you end up sitting next to or whatever.
 I mean, you always, there's just a lot of commonality.
 Yeah.
 And, like, the people here aren't like, oh man, I gotta get out of work and go party
 somewhere.
 Where is everybody going?
 Ben and Sam and a bunch of other people ended up in the hot tub at our hotel.
 In all the years we've been staying at this hotel, which is like seven years or something.
 Nobody's used the pool.
 Nobody's ever touched it.
 And, Ben was like, Ben Popper was like, we're doing the hot tub tonight.
 We're going.
 We're getting in.
 Long day at work.
 It was like 11, 10 o'clock at night or something.
 And, they went over there.
 And, I was like, yeah, that's not happening.
 Like, nobody's getting in the hot tub.
 And, sure enough, oh, we have a photo of it.
 Sure enough, a bunch of dudes are in the hot tub.
 Are you in the hot tub?
 What?
 Are you kidding me?
 There they are.
 Can we zoom in on that?
 I thought this was code for smoking weed the entire time.
 Oh, I'm sure they were smoking weed.
 No, they went in.
 Thomas provided from Amsterdams.
 No, I'm seriously, I'm just saying out loud, when they were like, do you want to come get
 in the hot tub with me?
 You thought it was like a-
 I thought it was like a wink wink.
 We're going to like hot box Ben's room.
 Yeah.
 I didn't realize they actually stripped down and got into the hot tub.
 They got into the hot tub.
 I don't even, like, I don't know if I'm disappointed by that or happy about that.
 I was, frankly, I was touched.
 I'm trying to, what feeling am I having?
 And they're photographing each other.
 I think it's perfectly normal.
 I think it seems to be normal and well within our standards of business conduct.
 You know, but, but, well, like, I think that to me-
 I mean, I'm okay to make that exception.
 If CES-
 It's like paragraph like, subparagraph six, paragraph five, sub C, you may get into a
 hot tub at CES with bros.
 And take pictures of each other.
 Bros may photograph in hot tubs in Vegas.
 I'm going to print that out.
 If CES was a complete bust and there wasn't a single thing here that was interesting and
 it was just a, you know, five days of working our asses off and not, you know, coming up
 with anything good on the work side, like it would still be worth it to me to have this,
 to have this time to like actually hang out with the people that I work with who I don't
 get to see all the time because you're in Europe and there's people all over the place
 and, you know, we're all very busy out doing things.
 Like even the people who are in New York are not, you know, are rarely all in the office
 at the same time.
 And that is, that is what makes CES kind of awesome regardless of what the show's like,
 you know?
 And if we find something cool at the show, that's like a bonus to us.
 And I think that, I guess like when I, when you see these things where people are like,
 tech is dead and this CES-
 Like this show does kind of suck.
 Like make no mistake about it.
 I was on the show floor a lot yesterday actually, and which was unique for me.
 That doesn't, I got to see a bunch of things, but I also saw a bunch of like other tech
 reporters and everyone's like, I hate it here.
 And I was like, my reaction is I love it here.
 It's really weird.
 Like-
 But we've also set it up so we can love it.
 I mean, we-
 Yeah, our stress levels are low.
 We equip people with the right equipment.
 I mean, everybody has the right equipment to do their jobs.
 We give them accommodations that are close enough and comfortable enough that you can
 get some rest when you do have downtime.
 We provide the vehicles to get the transportation around because transportation in Vegas is
 impossible.
 And food.
 Yeah, and food.
 And like, we're very well taken care of.
 I mean, we have people here like Michael Shane and Leah are like, you know, just people
 are, there are people here who are bending over backwards to make this team feel like
 healthy and be fed and all.
 I mean, there's a huge amount of people and like, and we'll make a list.
 We will do a post of like a wrap up post and we will, you will see these people and we'll
 make a list of these people.
 You know, yes, like that's the thing.
 Like you don't stress out about like, how am I getting to this event or what am I eating?
 And I will say like, it is a luxury.
 We didn't always, it wasn't always like this.
 I mean, at Engadget, we started this.
 I mean, the first one that I went to, first off, the first one that we went to when I
 was at Engadget-
 And you weren't even here.
 We were at a hotel far away.
 We had no, we were like literally taking cabs and I think maybe a couple of people rented
 cars and you're driving these long distances back and forth every time you had to go somewhere,
 every time you had to go to the show floor.
 There was no food provided.
 It was, you know what I mean?
 It was a mess.
 And we've like worked at this for many, many years.
 We're very proud of how to do it.
 And also like, I think that our attitude now when we come here is the verge has to do like
 the verge at CES.
 And the pressure of, there used to be this enormous pressure of like, do we have every
 embargo or are we hitting every little piece of news?
 Do we have every router?
 You know, when we were at Engadget, it was like very gadget focused.
 It was very much like, do we have every little piece of PR?
 Are we hitting every piece of news?
 And I think having done this now for, what is this, the third year doing it, the verge,
 like we just have learned like the verge has a pace and we've got things we want to do
 and stories we want to tell and it's just, it's a different rhythm.
 And that I think is also a stress reliever.
 There are moments, I will say there are moments.
 I mean, and the show's gotten, it's like we've gotten much bigger and the show's gotten smaller.
 Yeah.
 Well, I mean, they'll tell you it's been record.
 We've made it smaller.
 I mean, we've become more focused.
 So yeah, it's another record year.
 I saw the press release come out.
 Oh, is it?
 Yeah.
 Every year it's a record year.
 Exactly.
 You know, like Gary Shapiro has like, he's got like a warehouse full of people just waiting
 to storm CES.
 It's like.
 So it can be another record year.
 They're everywhere.
 They're in some sort of hyperbaric chamber waiting to be unfrozen.
 I need 10,000 clones.
 We're 5,000 under, send in clones.
 Is that what happened?
 Yeah.
 He's talking to his couch here.
 Wouldn't it be easier to just like fake the numbers?
 He would have a go at it.
 Who's the auditing firm that's checking?
 Like actually, Shapiro, I take issue with this.
 I'd like to see your books.
 Like nobody's looking.
 Nobody.
 But you're right that we have also, whatever the records are, whatever the numbers are,
 we've made it smaller by doing that.
 And so like, yeah, I don't know where I was going with this.
 I guess I was just talking about how the show feels to us.
 And I'm going to be like tired and battered and I already feel like completely drained.
 But it's been great.
 And like we do have tense moments.
 We do have real work to do.
 But I feel like especially when everybody's in the same room and on the same wavelength,
 doing that work is so much more fun and so much easier.
 And it's just a very cool experience.
 I mean, obviously we're, well not obviously, but we're the management.
 We're part of the management team.
 But the team pretty much runs itself at this point.
 I mean, I think Jake, this is his first year as a writer.
 He was here last year as an intern.
 So he volunteered to do an early morning shift one day.
 Or, yeah, early morning.
 For us, early morning here is 5 a.m.
 And he still came in at the same hour as everybody else, even after finishing.
 And we were saying, you know, you were allowed to take some time off.
 He's like, yeah, but everybody else is in here.
 So I felt like I should be here.
 It's awesome.
 And people do work their asses off.
 And it's so incredible to see how much.
 I mean, for me, like I've gone gradually now, and I think Neelay has and you have too.
 We used to be like in the trenches and we've gradually as the team has grown and we've
 taken on leadership stuff that it's like you don't do the writing anymore.
 Yeah, and I miss it.
 Yeah, and I actually have written a few things here and it's been awesome.
 The only things I write about are angry editorials.
 Yeah, but you know what's great about this is actually it's like a weird vacation from
 like the stuff we have to do during like it's weird to call it a vacation, but it is like
 we break from the things we have to do and you can write the editorial because we're
 sitting there and we're like, let's just do it right now.
 I wrote that like Michael Bay post in a second because everybody in the room was like, just
 write it.
 And it was like, OK, let's just do it.
 You know, and it's stuff like that happens.
 And it's actually really fun.
 Like I did that I wrote thing.
 I know, you know, I wouldn't have been able to find time to do that in New York because
 we're so just constantly doing like real work.
 And that's really awesome.
 And I should say, like the other thing that's really cool about this show is obviously our
 team and the way we feel.
 But the fact that like we're doing this and we've done these every day.
 Yeah, it first every day we did these like we did live stuff.
 We've had a ton of interviews in here that are live.
 We did the recaps like we get to do interact with our readership.
 We get to interact with the readership and also like we get to bring the industry in
 front of people.
 Yeah.
 And like ask some questions.
 Yeah.
 And we do live with our readers, I mean, like we do most interviews live and people look
 at Twitter and we do questions like that's cool.
 Like that's why I like it.
 Yeah.
 I mean, it's really it is really like a visceral sort of like this stuff is happening at this
 moment.
 You know, people are reacting like we're sitting here doing this every day.
 People are reacting to it real time.
 And then the next day we're like talking about that stuff or thinking about it or sometimes
 like even during the show.
 It's just cool.
 And like obviously, I mean, it goes without saying maybe it doesn't go as I say, but like
 we our audience is big.
 It's much bigger than I ever expected it to be after two years of being in business.
 And at CES it just like surges.
 And you know, we've had some really big days and the audience has come and people are like
 reading these stories or commenting on them.
 People are like posting stuff in the forums.
 And you know, it's just great to just see it all working.
 Yeah.
 Sort of amazing.
 You know, after launching this two years ago, I feel like I do this every once in a while
 where I start to get a little romantic.
 A little misty?
 A little misty.
 But you know, after a while, you know, we launched this and it was like not a sure thing.
 No.
 Just to say like two years ago.
 And our first year here was a disaster.
 What's funny is, yeah, it was a little bit.
 It was a sequence of disasters.
 It started bad.
 Yeah, it started bad, but we got good.
 We got better fast.
 But what's funny is like you see like, you know, Walden Care just launched Recode.
 Yahoo Tech just launched David Pogge's new thing.
 Just sputtering it away.
 I'm not going to say anything about it anymore, but you know, I think you know how I feel.
 You know, all of a sudden, like everybody's like launching these like new tech sites and
 these new brands.
 But a couple of years ago, it was like, why would anybody do that?
 Who cares about that?
 And we were sure.
 Everybody thought the market was saturated.
 Right.
 They thought the market was saturated.
 We didn't know that this was going to be a thing.
 This could have been a complete disaster and it has not been.
 And that makes me feel very good and very happy.
 And I'm very proud and pleased to work with the team that we have because they're awesome
 people.
 And they're not just awesome like writers or reporters.
 They're awesome human beings that I enjoy spending time with.
 They're legitimately cool people.
 And they're weird and funny and uncoordinated.
 Uncoordinated sometimes.
 Is that happening?
 Yeah.
 Thomas has been Thomas has just been dying for Sam Byford.
 He's a lovely man, by the way.
 Lovely gentleman.
 He's a man in Japan.
 All he wants.
 Sam has a really true Sam Byford.
 He's just a very tall Sam Byford is a is a lanky dude.
 He lives in Japan and his arms are sewn on with yarn.
 He has a tendency.
 He has a tendency to I think we had we might have had a supercut or something of it last
 year.
 But he's a tendency when he gets near things that move to fall.
 He's a tendency to fall.
 He fell down in his living room.
 He was just standing there and he fell.
 Here he is.
 Is this is this the clip?
 I don't know.
 Do we have audio?
 Oh, this is yeah.
 This is classic Sam.
 Yeah, this is this is what we want to repeat.
 Well, we'd love we hope that he would get on something moving.
 So we've been putting him in precarious situations all week.
 Yeah.
 And he's getting off right now.
 We put him on even faster.
 Those old graphics are nice, man.
 I forgot what our old graphics look like.
 They're pretty cool.
 Totally like a distant memory.
 We have new graphics this year, which are all glitchy, which I really dig.
 But so, yeah, you've been trying to put Sam Byford in precarious position, increasingly
 dangerous, which I think is wrong and rude.
 And he did fall off the car last time we were randomly on his own.
 Ben Popper has just been hurting himself through.
 I know Ben.
 I'm getting Tate and Popper tased himself.
 Got punched.
 Punched that.
 Then he got to a hot tub with Sam Sheffrey.
 Can we get the video?
 Do you have the video of him tasing himself?
 It's the best.
 And there's a video of him getting punched.
 There's a discussion at some point of the headline being, don't tase myself, bro.
 There's just this picture of Carl just socking.
 But this is Ben, the guy who put a magnet in his finger.
 He's also an MMA guy.
 Also.
 He trains in MMA.
 He loves fighting.
 He loves getting injured.
 He loves getting injured.
 He's like, do you see his eye twitch?
 His eye twitched.
 You can't hear him there.
 He's like, it works.
 It definitely works.
 It definitely works.
 Anyhow, yeah, but hey, we have an amazing team.
 And they've just done a great job.
 I'm going to go get a beer.
 I'm going to go get a beer.
 I'm going to go get a beer.
 I'm going to go get a beer.
 Anyhow, yeah, but hey, we have an amazing team and they've just done amazing stuff.
 And we've got more to come.
 We actually have a few things that are going to go up tomorrow.
 We've got some big things tomorrow.
 We have a defining, a defining piece.
 And we also have Virge Awards, which are going up tomorrow.
 I've got to take this out.
 Just get it out.
 Just take it out.
 It's done.
 Where we pick what we think was the most impressive, exciting, and interesting stuff of the year.
 And it's going to be a great time.
 Have you given away your picks yet?
 My what?
 Have you given away your picks for tops?
 Oh, have I for top things?
 Yeah, have you said?
 Last night we talked about them a little bit.
 I was pretty vague.
 I'm actually like honestly.
 Well, you know, so here's the thing.
 So we have to like, we have to decide whether we're going to do like best laptop.
 Yeah.
 Right.
 And it's hard.
 Tom ran a report.
 Is there a best laptop?
 This is a little bit.
 We should just talk about this a little bit.
 Right.
 Yeah, there's not, there's not many.
 But Tom actually just put up, he just put up a report called, you know, Microsoft and
 platforms are nowhere to be found.
 And it's true.
 There's just no windows here.
 Like if this CS is a show of like sensors and things that connect to your phone and
 to your mobile devices, or like make your phone smarter in some way or extend your phone
 on the other screens, none of that stuff is running windows as far as I can tell, or windows
 phone or windows RT.
 And it's just kind of like Microsoft's here.
 They got a bunch of meeting rooms booked, right?
 The VPs are here.
 The senior leadership is here.
 Yeah.
 But their platform is nowhere here.
 And I don't know how we're going to give away best laptop.
 I don't know that we will.
 It's like a minor spec pub.
 That's the nice, you talked about this last night, but the nice thing about doing your
 own awards, like last year we did, you know, the categories that we chose are based on
 like what actually was happening.
 So it wasn't like we were locked into these static categories.
 And I think we'll do the same thing this year.
 But yeah, I mean, that's, that's tomorrow.
 And then it's, and then we're done really.
 I mean, Friday is, we'll probably have a few things that trickle out because there's always
 a few things, but God, I'm exhausted.
 I'm sorry, by the way, if I've been sniffling, I've been sniffling.
 I have a little bit.
 I'm so congested.
 It's out of control.
 This is the first time I've ever been sick at CES in my memory.
 Have you ever gotten sick here?
 Yeah.
 I've had problems.
 What kind of problems?
 I don't want to discuss them.
 Dirty, awful problems.
 Dirty problems.
 No.
 Neal, have you ever been sick here?
 No, I always get sick right afterwards.
 Oh yeah.
 That's what happened to me last year.
 Yeah, afterwards is bad.
 Cause your body is just like brutalized.
 Oh yeah, I mean, Becky has a complete, like now it's years later, so she's got a whole,
 she's like, she gets ready for me to leave.
 She like plans a whole week of like things she can do alone.
 And then she plans a whole week of avoiding the house cause I'm in it sick.
 So it's like, seriously, it's like two weeks where she's just annoyed with me.
 Well, I haven't gotten a flu shot and apparently I'm told that I have to get a flu shot before
 I go home.
 Yeah.
 Laura was like, don't come back if you don't have a flu shot.
 Don't come back.
 I can't get a flu shot.
 They once told me, I went in to get one and they said I couldn't.
 Cause you're a foreigner.
 I said I'm allergic to feathers.
 What?
 A lot of, a lot of silence there.
 What do you mean allergic to feathers?
 That's what they told me.
 I said, they said, do you have any allergies?
 I said I'm allergic to feathers and they said go away.
 They told me to go away.
 What do you mean you're allergic to feathers?
 This is like 20 years ago.
 What kind of feathers?
 What do you mean what kind of feathers?
 How do you know?
 Not all feathers are the same.
 Like that seems like a really obvious point.
 I don't know that much about feathers.
 Well, clearly.
 There are different kinds of feathers.
 Feathers, I don't know, feathers and pillows and.
 So you can't use like a down, you can't use like a down pillow?
 No.
 What kind of, what happens?
 Like red and watery.
 Dirty problems.
 Sniffles.
 Maybe there's feathers around you.
 Maybe that's your problem.
 You can be allergic to, oh man.
 Right now there's no feathers around me.
 You don't know that.
 Do you see any feathers around me?
 You can't see behind you.
 I think we have to wrap up.
 It's done.
 There's no feathers here.
 There's really nothing to talk about at this point.
 Look, this has been The Urge.
 My sign is The Urge is signing off from CES.
 Let's see really quickly.
 Can I take some Twitter questions?
 Just a few minutes.
 Let's take some Twitter questions.
 I was just going to say.
 Tweet at me.
 Twitter questions.
 Tweet at Neely.
 Tweet at Neely.
 At Reckless.
 Right now we only have a couple of minutes.
 I see people in control room, they're getting real sweaty.
 Yeah.
 And not in the good way.
 Not in the Sheffer way.
 Not in the Sam Sheffer way.
 So the reason we're in such a rush is because.
 What did you say to me?
 Unrelated?
 We are right next to the Gibson tent and they start throwing a rock concert.
 Gibson's going to have a rave here in about 10 minutes.
 Yeah.
 That's good.
 And there's going to be a guy.
 Someone just tweeted me the werewolf picture.
 Oh yeah, werewolves.
 Were werewolves the story of the show?
 I don't think so.
 There were a lot of werewolves here.
 I completely disagree.
 Yeah.
 Deerage, man.
 Yeah, that's great stuff.
 People that have questions.
 By the way, did you notice the werewolf has my beard and glasses?
 That's something I noticed.
 I didn't see it at first.
 Can we get a full screen of that?
 Are you buying a pebble?
 By the way.
 I want a pebble.
 By the way, my body does look like this if I take my shirt off.
 It's exactly as muscular and hairy as I am.
 So disturbing.
 Are those my eyes?
 No questions coming in.
 There are lots of questions coming in.
 What do you got?
 Are you going to buy a pebble?
 Like buy a pebble or the company?
 Yeah, you're going to buy the company.
 I'm going to wait to see what the review says before I buy.
 I don't know.
 I really like analog watches.
 I'm not totally sold on the smartwatch as a thing, but my point about the pebble was
 if I was going to buy one right now, that's probably the one I would buy because it looks
 the nicest in my opinion.
 Yeah, I agree.
 All right, what else you got?
 Are we going clubbing tonight from Birch Coffee?
 Definitely.
 That's tomorrow and tonight.
 You got to be careful when you go clubbing with hot coffee though.
 You don't want to spill any on your lap.
 I don't know what kind of weird sexual innuendo that was.
 Don't spill hot coffee on your lap.
 Was there anything that truly sucked?
 Anything that truly sucked.
 Well, there's a lot of things that truly sucked that we don't write about.
 Yeah, we ignore them.
 We try to shield our readers from that stuff as much as we can.
 Our gift to you, the reader, is that we don't want to waste your time with stuff that sucks.
 You want to read about the stuff that sucks, plenty of other websites you can go to check
 that out.
 The Verge, our goal is to deliver only the highest quality stuff to you.
 Best keynote of the year.
 Best keynote of this CES?
 It's got to be Johnny Shea.
 Well, Johnny Shea.
 You think so?
 I mean, Kaz was really great because-
 Better than Ledger?
 Ledger?
 We're used to his shtick now.
 It's a shtick now.
 We're used to his shtick.
 By the way, he told us he was going to come in for an interview again today.
 Failed.
 Well, we don't know yet.
 Day's not done.
 Day's not done.
 Day's not done.
 He told Dan, where are you guys located?
 I'll find you, come in, we'd love to do it.
 Ledger.
 John Ledger.
 Yeah.
 Get over here right now.
 Do an interview with us.
 Something's going on.
 Don't dodge us.
 We're asking you to come.
 You said you would come.
 It's time to come.
 That doesn't sound right, but you know what I mean.
 You know what I'm saying?
 Yeah.
 You want to really prove that you're an Avenger, the Dark Knight?
 Swoop into our studio.
 Swoop into our studio.
 Bacon Man.
 What?
 Bacon Man.
 Bacon Beer Man?
 Bacon Man.
 No.
 We're going to bring some whiskey and bacon and we'll talk.
 Bring some whiskey and get into our studio.
 Wait a second.
 What was the question?
 Was there a question?
 All right, let's go.
 What else do we have?
 It was Best Keynote.
 Oh, Best Keynote.
 I think Johnny Shade was the...
 He's fantastic.
 This thing that he does where he's like...
 The delivery is amazing.
 That?
 Yeah.
 I want to just do something in life where I do, oh my God, he's doing it right here.
 Yeah.
 Can we get the audio?
 You know what's amazing about this is like, this is also shit.
 Every time we ask them to get audio, they're like, oh my God, the audio?
 We didn't know that was going to happen.
 Well...
 There we go.
 Ladies and gentlemen, say hello to the ASUS Transformer Book Duet TD300.
 It is an Android laptop, a Windows laptop, tablet, and an Android tablet.
 It is also the world's first and only Intel fourth generation core processor running genuine
 DOS, and now you can own it starting $599.
 Yes.
 Thank you.
 Power.
 And then if you get some applause over the top, he's great.
 What we learned is that if you yell, people will clap.
 They don't know what to do.
 They're just doing it again.
 We can see more.
 WQHD monitor.
 Ladies and gentlemen, please allow me to introduce a complete lineup of Zenfone.
 Let's begin with the stylish and compact Zenfone 4.
 I don't get this.
 It has a 4-inch...
 It's an interesting UI idea.
...camera and comes with five vibrant colors starting at $99.
 Boom.
 Thank you.
 Also, like the cameraman, does the cameraman know to do that pull the zoom back?
 Yeah, the zoom back.
 Designed to run in-
 All right, that's enough of Johnny Sheen.
 Great stuff.
 Very good stuff.
 Somebody asked us who we think won the show, and I would say stay tuned.
 Stay tuned.
 We have a very real, powerful answer for that that'll be up very early tomorrow.
 What else?
 Have you been gambling?
 I gambled.
 I spent $2 on a slot machine when I got off the plane because Laura wanted me to for some
 reason that I don't really remember, and I lost immediately.
 Also, what is up with these slot machines?
 You can't work the arm.
 They just stop on their own.
 I'm getting back into the center of the frame.
 This is driving me crazy.
 No, it's okay.
 I got it.
 I already rolled over here.
 You don't even bother.
 Just have a seat.
 A real asshole.
 I don't mind rolling.
 I get to be closer to whatever.
 Where's your sweater from?
 Wait a second.
 Yeah.
 So that was it.
 I just...
 The slot machine normally...
 I don't know.
 I don't know.
 I don't know.
 I don't know.
 I don't know.
 I don't know.
 I don't know.
 I don't know.
 But you can't...
 I mean, if you can't work those arm, you can't stop.
 They just stop on their own.
 This is not gambling.
 It's a random number generator.
 Yeah.
 Go ahead.
 Sweaters from Lisbon.
 Lisbon the place?
 Yeah, the city.
 Well, that could be a company.
 Oh, sorry.
 Lisbon Sweaters.
 Alright, what else?
 What else do you have?
 It's a really challenging question.
 Where you at?
 Yeah.
 One more question.
 Make it good.
 Were there any small companies that amazed you this year?
 There's been a couple.
 I feel like they're the same small companies that amazed us
 last year.
 Oculus and Pebble.
 Oculus and Pebble.
 Yeah.
 There's nothing really crazy.
 But I'm seeing a lot of, I think, yeah, I hung out with
 the NES guys yesterday.
 I'll put that video up a little bit later.
 What is this shit?
 It's an airplane.
 You know what they should have done is put the convention
 center somewhere other than in the path of the airport.
 Yeah.
 Yeah, that would have been convenient.
 Right?
 Or at least let you jump out of a plane directly to the
 convention center.
 Right into the CS.
 Yeah.
 No, I think it's like there's a bunch of home automation
 stuff that's interesting.
 I hung out with the NES guys.
 Oh.
 And that company has gone from zero to 1,000, right?
 And now they have a fire truck driving around.
 But like Revolve, the Canary guys, that stuff is really
 interesting.
 Yeah, Canary seems interesting.
 Honeywell's coming for you.
 Honeywell's coming for you.
 Yeah.
 Honeywell in Europe has a home automation system that's
 actually pretty decent.
 All right.
 Let's continue that on the homecast where we talk about
 the new version of the game.
 We've got a lot more coming tomorrow, by the way.
 There's a lot more coming tomorrow, including some The
 Verge Awards, which you're going to want to check out.
 There's going to be some shocks and some surprises.
 And I think a relatively definitive, at least our
 definitive answer to who won CES.
 That's the Vergecast.
 We will be back, presumably, next week with a
 regular Vergecast.
 And I'm not going to tell you how you can find us, because
 if you're watching right now, you should know.
 And don't make me come over there.
 We're done.
 And you have to go, and we have to go.
 What, do I have to threaten somebody?
 And as always, it's not a threat.
 It's just a fact that even though I'm going to wish you
 and your family all the best, they're in the greatest
 danger they've ever been in.
 And nothing can stop what's going to happen.
 My mom's coming from overhead.
 Nothing can stop what's going to happen to you.