 Hey, everybody. Welcome to the Virgcast, the show where we exist at CES and have emotions about it. And then we allow those emotions to travel down our brains. Into the microphones, through the Internet, out of your stereo. And then into your ears, and then into your brains. So really brain to brain communication here on the Virgcast. I think it was infection. Because it's CES. It's brain to brain infection. Yeah, it's a virus. CES is a virus and now it's in your brain. Thank you for listening to us. Hi, I'm Neelay Patel. I'm Chris Plant. I'm Dieter Bohn. And I'm Sam Sheffer. Swaggisty. His swaggisty. You can't call it a joke. You can't say it about yourself. He refers to himself in the royal swag. No, HypeTrek himself is back in the mix today. Very exciting. I will say this. Here's the truth. And I want this show to be about truth. Okay. I am super hungover. Why are you hungover on a Wednesday? Because you went up in the club on a Tuesday? Days don't exist. It's Las Vegas. Did you just try to write a little rap? I did. Don't do that. I did. Just let it go. Just let it go. Let it go. Did you just sing Let It Go at me? Yes. O for two. Actually, O for three. Hype check. Let it go. Oh, come on. Overplayed. Oh, rough. Rough, man. We are not friends anymore. Well, within two minutes of opening the show, we've burned frozen. So that, I think, is good. Any hopes of redeeming ourselves today? It's all downhill. No, it's Las Vegas. Time doesn't exist here. You went to a work party last night. I went to a work. And I worked. And you came back drunk. Can I tell you a story of what happened in my room last night? I went to bed. Please don't. The red shoes. So I won't say who it was, but I'll say it's somebody who works at our company. This is going badly. And he's tall and bald. And I'm like, home early, getting some work done. I'm going to go to sleep at a decent time. I'm reading a book about the Japanese railroad built during World War II, getting thoroughly depressed like I like to do before bedtime, going to have bad dreams, and typing away. And then somebody walks into the room, and he is like, oh, boy, it's my new wife. And I'm like, nope, that's not who I am. And he's like, guess where I came from. And I was like, the work party. He's like, the work party. And guess what I talked about. And I'm like, drones. And he's like, drones. And then kept saying drones. And then presided. I have a really clear idea. He had to tell me a story about how he really seduced the people at this party with his story about Hasbro buying magic cards but not developing Hearthstone. And halfway through, he's like, and then I said, you should have made Hearthstone. And then proceeded to snore loudly. And that was the rest of my night. And that person was me. On a completely totally unrelated note, some of our staff went and had awesome adventures with drones in the past couple of days. Really? You're going to try to cleverly transition. That's a great segue. People came here for tech news. What do you people think what happened here? The coolest video. They came here for the free coffee and the Wi-Fi and probably that sick car to look at it. You and that car, man. Can we talk about the coolest video on the site right now? You should start out as friends. Yeah. Let's talk about the coolest video. What is the coolest video on the site right now? Ben Popper went out into the desert and raced in a drone rodeo and then participated in a drone Thunderdome where he battled drones in a drone sumo match. He was like actually driving it, right? Yeah. He had to wear his first person racing through the desert sky. It was crazy. I liked about the drone battle was not the battle themselves, which looks childish and pathetic as you think it would. But what happens between the battles is they do break each other. The build is solid and unbreakable but the propellers are not. So you're given 90 seconds to fix it. So you see these grown men sprint into the ring, dive onto their drone and then do a full tear down of that drone and fix it in 90 seconds and get the hell out. They have that controller back in their hands and they're right back at it. That's the real sport. That's what you have to train. The drone pit crew is the real sport. Training to fix a drone in 90 seconds and also sprint like 50 feet to get in and out. I would watch that forever on loop as a guest. The drone already is just a gif of a grown man sprinting to his drone. And speaking of YouTube videos. And the verge.com. We hit half a million subs today on YouTube. I'm proud of the achievement and I know that social Sam is social. I'm trying to do my job. But I just want to ask you, do you know how segways work? Yes. You lean forward to go and you lean back to stop. It's like the whole room. There's a crowd here that didn't go there with you. It's like the acapella battle. You just take whatever the word is and you go right into the next song. And I don't blame them. Stop by the car. Get your picture taken. Now they're circling back around. What was the biggest thing to happen to you? Probably to cause me harm. Biggest thing. So I did suit stuff all day today. It's actually really funny. My CS is about being a suit. So I did suit stuff. What did you do today? I filmed a video that is going to go on the verge.com that makes me look like a real asshole. What was the video? I'm like everything I've published. What was the video? So it's my first CS as we've talked about extensively. And I went around the show floor asking people for advice. First about CS. But second about where I would acquire a legal substance in Las Vegas. And then third, if I were to come into legal trouble, how I'd get out of it. And you'd be surprised how many PR people had answers for that ready to go. That's like part of their job, right? Of course. The CEO of the company is super drunk again. Which happens all the time. Not saying which company that is. But maybe it's right across the way. There's one booth here. I'm pointing at replay. Replay XD. The newest of the replay family. I have no idea what they do. They do a lot of yelling over there. Oh, it's a drone. Duh. There's drones everywhere. That's a big theme we have not yet talked about at all on the show. Which is drones are everywhere. Is 2015 the year of consumer drones? I don't know. Who cares? Don't say those words to me in that order. It probably is the year of consumer drones. That makes us sound like terrible jerks. But GoPro is most likely getting into the business. And drones are becoming ubiquitous everywhere. They're everywhere here. We have a bunch of them in the office. We use them to film our videos. And when they get cheaper, people are going to buy them for Christmas. Right. Until they're regulated and they all disappear. Inside of an airplane's propeller. No, I mean, that's just like a the reason I responded so harshly to that phrasing is like... Because it's true. Oh, God. Yes, because of the essential truth of the statement. That's what I hate. I hate true things. Give me lies. No, what I mean is like it's nothing is the year of anything at CS. It's a totally artificial environment. 2015 is going to be the year. Everything here is fake. Made of fake things. Can you tell that I've had to do suit things all day? No, I couldn't tell at all. You were hung over? No. Yeah, I've had to be so polite all day. That's a rage. Fully sane. I mean, like, look... No, I think the drone thing is... The reason it's exciting, the reason people buy them is actually a thing that Ben has said several times, which is this is awesome. You put on the thing and you're flying and it's actually an immersive experience. And I was talking to somebody about Uber today, which is a miserable, bad company. But the thing that Uber makes real and the thing that seamless makes real is you push a button on the phone and something happens in real life. And everything has been so virtual and so restricted to cell phone screens for three years. What you're seeing here is drones happen in real life. They're loud and noisy and they can hurt you. And our government is trying to figure out how to deal with them. But they're toys. They're toys on the scale that literally the United States of America is like, maybe we shouldn't have those toys. Maybe only professionals should have these toys. Maybe only we should have them for blowing up things. Yeah, there's definitely going to be like an NRA for drones. Super mad. Like drones rights people are going to get all open arms. Drones rights. How dare the government. Those are bees. And drones. They don't like rev up. How many drones have you seen here? Oh my God. I don't know. Like seven or eight. That's a good number. You mean like total or like a variety of drones? Not drone wise. They all look the same except for that drone that like follows you. It's the air dog. That's what I was going to talk about. It's terrifying and hilarious. It's a drone that just automatically follows you. Right? Does it protect you from like attackers? From other drones. It's your little friend. It's an air dog. I get it. No, that's a good name. No robotics. You're French. The drones are everywhere so they should be boring but people are like finding random extra things to do to like make their mark on the drone world. So it's creating some like weird nerdy innovation. Gizmos is what I'm saying. Yes. Gizmos. I was already mean to Sam so I don't want to be mean to you. No, actually the coolest drone thing was that Intel's keynote last night. Intel's keynote last night. They did a drone that did automatic avoidance. It could drive itself and if you close the door it would like not run into the door and it wouldn't hurt you. And so it's finally adding like the proper amount of automation and self driving and autonomousness to the drone to make it actually genuinely exciting. What's the tech called? Most drones here are like lies. Right? Like in the sense that they're just kind of like RC quad copters. Right. If like two years ago if I was like I'm going to buy you a remote controlled helicopter, you would be like that would be awesome but please don't tell anyone I played with this. Right? Like it's the one guy at the park who's making life hard for everyone because he doesn't quite know how to keep it in the air. I was that guy. It's fine. I know that feeling. But now it's like it's a drone and everyone's like the coolest thing that could happen in 2015, year of consumer drones. It has the same name as things that kill. Yeah. It's the year of RC boats. That's the one that's coming next. By the way RC cars were dope. I used to build them. Yeah. Cool. See? But I used to build rolling drones. Yeah. That's awesome. Those are super disruptive. Sure. The drone was sitting there in the middle of the stage, sad and lonely, just hovering. Yeah. And a dude like ran at it. And it was like nope, don't hit me. And then another dude, they had four guys just like pell-mell rushing the drone. Did you have a video of this? And it was like dodging around trying not to get hit. I don't like it. Because like what I like about drones is hitting them with a baseball bat. That is what they're for. You read my mind. Because it's like if a drone gets out of order, I'm going to get my bat and bring it down. Right. So the NRA and the drones are right people. They're coming for each other. The greatest match of skeet shooting ever seen. No. But I would say the thing that makes drones drones is what you're talking about with Intel. They have to be smart. They have to basically fly themselves. That's why RC helicopters, they were hard to fly so they're not popular. Now you push the button and your little parrot drone pops up in the air and does a flip. And then your father-in-law is like cool Christmas present. And you spent $800. You bought me another drone I don't want to play with. That didn't happen to me. Not at all. Wow. Just a little color. All the sadness coming out. It wasn't sad. The truth. Sadness truth. My father-in-law is a legit corn farmer. And the first time Becky introduced me to him, he showed me his sniper rifle. So the drone thing I think is going to work out well for him. Look how cool this is or was he like look what I have. He was more like so you're dating my daughter. I can't tell if we're going to be really good friends. I'm super happy she brought a boy home that I like. But also I have this gun. In a two kilometer range. He's like it has a laser. It's a true story. He has an impressive gun collection. He has one that was signed by Dale Earnhardt, senior. I like him. He's a cool guy. I buy him drones every year for Christmas. And next year I'm going to buy him one that flies itself. He lets them around. Like a little dog. Here's your air dog. Instead of Becky getting a dog, I'm going to buy her a drone. How can they use the name air dog? Air hog. Air hog is what you're thinking of. I got you. Okay because I was worried air dog represents a classic film franchise of dogs that slam dunk and score touchdowns. That's air bud. That's air bud. Air hog. Air dog. None of these names are good. Air bud is masterpiece. Air bud 2 I think is the masterpiece you're thinking of. The first air bud was like it proved the concept and air bud 2 took it home. But you want to wait for the second air bud. You want to keep talking about Intel. They did one other thing that's really cool. It's called the Curie module. So last year they had a computer that fit in an SD card. And the Curie module is like the so that was called Edison. So inventor. And the Curie is assuming Mary Curie. It does like wearable stuff but it's like the size of a button. So we've been talking about this. The Internet of Things is everywhere and Intel is like they've made a thing that you just like can stick it on anything and it becomes an Internet of Thing thing. Can you just explain what that means in real work? You want me to explain the Internet of Things? You say you have a button, a sensor that's the size of a button you put on your shirt and it becomes the Internet of Things. It becomes a wearable. It tracks your movement. I think he means what's it doing. You wrote the piece. I didn't write the piece. It does gesture recognition, six axis, movement, gyroscope. It's enough to build a basic wearable. It's a starting point. So it's just about you explain. Okay. So the Intel keynote every year is Intel being like, man, we should sell more chips. Right? Because that's what they do. But they don't actually sell any products. So Intel is in this weird place where they have marketed their way to being a super wellknown consumer brand. People like know Intel. Intel inside. Intel is a smart company. Centrino and Pentium. And they show up and try to invent reasons that you would buy their chips. So every year the Intel keynote is full of fantastic ideas. None of which will ever come to market. But they're like, here's other places you could put processing. That's their functional what? Can we talk about this now? This is what I'm okay. Go ahead. I promise. No, no. I can't wait to hear more about chips. It's going to stay boring for one more second. It's already boring. Intel's problem is its chips are nowhere that matters right now. They're in our laptops, not on the phones, not on the tablets. And their big opportunity is to beat Qualcomm to the processing that surrounds everything around us. All those Internet of Things things. So that little thing is it is the guts of how you make anything smart. So it's a little bit of memory. It's a processor. It's a bunch of sensors. And you can buy it. And you can like I'm a coffee machine vendor. And I want to make smart coffee machines. Who do I go to for the processor? Intel or Qualcomm? Or I'm a Kickstarter dude. And I want to make a smart whatever. And Intel will sell me off the shelf this package and I will kick start something and we'll go through that disappointment. So is the Internet of Things sort of a race to become a thing now? Are these companies going to be like, oh, we need to be the company that makes this chip that you want to put inside your door handle. Or like your shirt. That's the big platform story here. That's why Nvidia was like, here's a boring or not boring. It was super boring. Can you be so boring it loops all the way back around? Interesting. Because that's what that was. It was like wow. It was so boring. And Jen Sun Wong is a great CEO. He's done interesting things with Nvidia. And that's his company. And he's like but he's just like he's got this shtick where he's just like and what you want is for chips to be more powerful than they were. And your car dashboard. Do you guys know how doomed you are right now? Because I wrote an article about the Internet of Things two days ago. And my Twitter feed since then has been nonstop B to B, midsize corporate consultants sharing the article. Oh, those are the best people on Twitter. They're the best. I wrote that Facebook is the only way. They don't know how to use Twitter but they know how to share articles that relate to corporate infrastructure. No. Middle managers who are bad at Twitter is like an entire subculture of Twitter. And a great Tumblr. It's just like really bad hashtags. Like eggs with bad hashtags. Eggs. Yeah. That's my life right now. That's who they are. They literally are. And as people, that's who they are. They've collapsed themselves to egg shaped humanoids. They use the worst hashtags. Surrounded in B to B hashtags. These are the people of CS. Not you. You're great. You guys are cool. You're not an egg. You're in the version. You're not an egg and you're not an egg. That guy hates me. Might be an egg. Don't know. Too many hashtags. Hashtag IoT. Wait, Dieter. Hashtag B to B solutions vendor. I'm Dieter. Hashtag SMB. You wrote the piece. I did. Hashtag networking storage. Cisco. He just yells Cisco. Dieter, talk about the Internet of Things. I already did. Dieter, I'm going to do this right now. Guys, remember that? Sam, I have a question. Dieter, hype check Internet of Things. I would like to stop and structurally rethink the Virgcast. I have what I would call an existential question about it. Sam. Should it continue to exist? No, Sam. That's the definition of an existential question. Right. Right. Yes. Yes. And I think right now we have a fatal flaw which is that Sam, our voice of the teen generation, is saying the most businessy things on the show. Right. It's like you entered the CES. You entered this space. You know how many years I spent in Vegas. Is this the year of consumer drones? This is my sixth CES. Hype check some stuff. Say some YOLO things. YOLO words. Tell me more about this IOT. Does it have any good ROI? Hype check actuarial tables. Complete bust. That's so depressing. I'm just saying. You walked into this room and you were like, let's talk about the markets. Yeah, because that's what matters. Wow. Wow. See, this is what you're watching in real time. Why does this show happen? Because people want to spend money and people want to buy things. And people need to sell things. That's why the show happens. That's why we are here right now. Sam is becoming Michael J. Fox. No. And now old sitcom. You are Michael P. King. My first CES. Sam just did the opposite of the Lloyd Dobler speech. I want to put this thing in perspective. Do you know what Say Anything is? The band? Oh, my God. I was just going to say the little baby is all grown up, but he ain't. My first CES, I was 19 years old and we worked at Engadget together. Do you remember that? I am now 24 and this is my sixth year in a row in Vegas. It pains me that we have employees who are like 18. Anyway. But I feel like that's what really the underlying message of the show is. What are you going to buy? What am I going to buy? That's the message. What are you going to buy? If I'm going to answer that question, I'm going to buy a rideable in 2015. I'm going to spend whatever it is. I don't want to spend $1,000. I want to spend somewhere to $500 or $600. I'm going to buy a rideable and ride that to work and then I'm going to buy a consumer drone. Probably GoPro. Okay. So what I want you to buy is a DVD. Is that a format that you know? Of the movie Say Anything. Yep. Have you ever and you can watch a great movie. So this movie Say Anything was made in 1989 and Hype Check I was born in 1990. So that's cool. Hype Check I was born, like my birthday? Also, you can't say this movie Say Anything as if people don't know about it. I would say that this quote probably defines the three of us. I'm not going to say it because it's such a long. No, just read the quote. Is it copyrighted? Read the quote because I actually don't know the quote. It's super long. But it's like the dude this is really a show about Baltimore malls. Wait, wait. In shorthand, Sam, where is San Dimas High School and how would you say its football is? They're in California. Okay. And their football is great. Ah, damn it. You're just the worst. Don't mess. Sorry. It rules. That's the that's from okay. Okay. Go on. No, I'm saying this is like a generational thing that's happening, right? And I mean that in a really like significant way because my entire theme of like technology in 2015 is the 90s are back. And this is like a very Gen X quote from this movie where the dudes the girlfriends that is like, what do you want to do with your life? And he's like, I don't want to buy anything or sell anything or process anything or buy anything that's processed. Like, it's like this whole like basically nothing. I refuse to do anything. I will not engage in the marketplace. That's that's the core message of saying now the real reaction. Everything is about what we will spend our money on. And it's like consumerism, consumerism, because Gen X is trying not to sell out and they sucked and put our company in a hole. And now they left millennials like Sam and I to actually have to dig it out. So yeah, I'm talking to you Gen Xers. You all suck. You're an egg. You're an egg. You ruined my life. And I graduated in 2008. I'm pretty sure it's not our fault. Wow, this is getting super deep. This is getting too deep. Pull it out of the hole. I guess the conclusion of this discussion is that I should go on say anything. Yeah, that's what okay, first you should do that. Okay. The other bigger I can I can make this about CES. Oh, great. I will do it. I was gonna watch it on a TV screen. Oh, my God. In the comfort of your own home. While your drone that you got instead of a dog. I'm watching. I'm watching. No, the drone is watching the movie and I'm watching the movie through the drone like it with my VR goggles. That's the future. Oh, so speaking of crazy goggles, is this on the site yet? It's probably not on the site yet, but it will be soon. Surely by the time you listen to this. Is this a lightsaber thing? No, I so CES is great. So like two years ago, we broke Oculus. We were the first people on Oculus because Palmer Lockheed just knocked on the door of our trailer. I had this weird duct tape thing that I made. We just a longer conversation. Can we like revisit that for a second? The entire trailer lined up. Our trailers, not a decent size, but there was a line of humans lined up in it for a tiny room to try out the Oculus Rift. It was literally like held together. It was ski goggles with duct tape in the screen. Everyone that tried it freaked the hell out. It was, that was like I watched like some sort of trend, like technological transcendence. Right. And now everyone's doing that in the gear VR booth, which is crazy, right? Like, and we're still in the trailer and Palmer Lockheed is a billionaire. So our paths have diverged. Yeah. I'll give you guys credit too, because you gave it like best of show, right? Yes, we did. And I remember seeing that early version and where I can admittedly see the future, that early version stank. Yeah, but it was super low res. But you can see the potential. The cycle is so fast now. Two years ago, dude was just like here, like knocking on the door being like, do you want to look at this? Now it's like, it's a big part of Samsung's booth, right? It's like, and like, that's a billion dollar thing. You can hear the click of his sandals coming closer. It's actually, the story I'm telling is fundamentally about Samsung because last year, SmartThings was like, we're not CS. We don't want to spend the money on a big booth. We're a startup. Come to this house suite like Airbnb that we put smart locks all over. And now it is literally the center of Samsung's booth. Just for people that don't know, SmartThings was a company that was just swallowed by Samsung very recently. Yeah, August. But so SmartThings is like, they make the hub that connects to everything. But they were just a startup. And now like their centerpiece of Samsung's like whole show is SmartThings. Well, I don't know if I should even give away the big thing that we've seen. Oh, you know what, I'm gonna hold it for tomorrow's show. We've seen one more thing that we'll save for tomorrow's show that is nuts. Like VR nuts. Oh, that's exciting. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So we'll talk about it in tomorrow's show. Yeah. Okay. Good, good tease. Hype check. Teaser. A plant could do it. It's fine. Oh, wow. Thank you. Rough. No, so there's like that, the small stuff. And then so today I'm walking around and I saw like basically four guys who had just shown up to CS. They were holding like a folder full of their own flyers and wearing like get lucky mirror masks. And I was like, I got to know what that is. And they like had no, like they were just here to like show people the product they'd made. And it was like a crazy product, right? They are about to start a Kickstarter. But like they had they built an app for a Windows phone and the Windows phone sits here and this mirror visor comes down in front of you and it projects augmented reality over like the world. Yeah. Like it like out like out. It looks like it's far out. Did you try it? Yeah, I tried it. It works. They clearly needed to continue developing. But the crazy thing about it is you look around to point the reticle to point the mouse pointer. But you know, the phone is in the visor. So you how do you like get it to work? You click your jaw and bone conduction. That's how it clicks. And it's like these guys are just here. They're just like doing it. It's like it's four dudes from China just walking around. Yeah. Well, we may we cover them. I think Kwame did a story on that will go obscene. But like that's like the other part of CS. Like there's all this crap and then there's people who are just here. And what's like this, the thing about the show, three or four people have to be here. The announcements here are like in many ways whatever. But to actually just get all of these people together at once is so valuable. Because you're just around the people who are making these decisions and you're having those conversations. And then you drink way too much and you regret it for so long. What else is on top of us, Cedar? Mind if I circle back and talk about this one really quick? It's going to connect to these. I've got a thing after you're done that's going to take a while. Oh, it connects to Palm. Don't worry. Oh, yeah. I spoiled it. Palm. Oh, no. Everyone else, the end gadget's right over there and they're rushing to write about Palm. Now that they are, now they are. Something is happening. For me, I'm feeling like my big theme in the show that I'm starting to realize is we didn't finish it, but do it for us. And it is everywhere. I mean, any VR company. I saw OS VR yesterday, which is the very definition of, hey, this could make us a billion dollars. You want to do that for us? You can have some of the money. OS VR is kind of like Android for VR is how they're promoting it. And it's by Razer. Who you might know as the company that makes keyboards. Oh, I didn't even know that. Razer shows up with something insane every year. But this year there's no hardware, right? They have hardware, too, which is also open source. So you could modify the hardware, throw your name on it, sell it. Like it's a pretty bold idea. Does it feel good on your head right now? Not really. Tried it? Yeah. But it's an interesting thing. And a lot of the drone things, Palm is another one of these things. Well, but so to the VR thing, it's everywhere and nobody knows exactly what to do with it other than like show you ads. And everybody that's saying, hey, Oculus, where's your consumer product? My attitude, I think, was this in the last Rushcast? My attitude to Oculus is it's cool, guys. Just keep working on it. I'd rather they don't need to rush to get that on. There's no rush because they're the only actual company. They're not the only actual company. Well, more importantly, you can torpedo. Samsung and Sony. No, a bunch of other people are chasing it. But like I don't think anybody else is as close as they are to getting it right. I would argue that they have the lead because they're backed by Facebook now. Of course they do. But you want to release number two. If you're at that company. DK2 is out, right? Well, no, I mean a real release. You wait for the first major release and then you kill it violently with whatever you have. Because if you let that come out, you release the better version and then you just literally destroy it during Christmas. They released the Kickstarter version, right? That was DK1. These are all dev kits. So these aren't real. So Oculus doesn't have a consumer product yet, right? No. And they have no need to announce one until they know who they need to destroy. Right. And actually the other thing that's happening in the show, which is we have not talked about it at all. It's been on the site. Is there any number of vendors here hawking 360 degree cameras? Yes. And there's 720 degree cameras, which just is like you don't understand how numbers work. So a 360 degree camera is like it goes all the way around like this and a 720 gets the whole sphere. And it's like that is not how degrees work. You how are you an engineer? You did not play 1080 degree snowboarding. I don't know if your camera works as well as you think it did. Great game for the N64. Because you don't you literally don't understand the math of circles. Wasn't this on Android like four years ago? I remember doing a photosphere of the old office. No, no, no. That was garbage. Let's just be honest. There's eggs with hashtags. Hashtag eggs. B to B. Hashtag hashtag. That's my new word for garbage. Instead of garbage in 2015, I would like everyone to say hashtag hashtag. But it's actually a hashtag followed by the word hashtag. Hashtag hashtag eggs. That's garbage. Thank you. This episode of the first cast is hashtag hashtag. Pretty much worst episode ever. No. What was I saying? These cameras are they literally record everything around them in once. So you can move them around a room and create like the immersive environment. Like hold it on a stick. Because VR has the content problem. Yes. Which is how are we going to make this stuff? And there are lots of ideas. Ryan wrote a thing about that, by the way. There are lots of ideas about how movie directors are like make immersive movies and everything will be a video game. They're crazy. I don't want to spoil it because my billion-dollar business is going to get me rich. I'm the only person who believes in VR. And I also believe in 720 recording. Because I know I'm convinced. But I think thinking about it like a traditional movie is the wrong thing. I think it has to be flat. I think it's interesting that like you're bad at degrees, too. No, no, no. My 720 recording has to be flat. It's not a sentence that makes sense. Going to videos, singing things in a concert is ideal for 720 because you're not doing lots of cuts and you won't have to worry about disorientation and you're using the 720 to create an atmosphere. That's where 720 works. When you put it into a movie, which is the entire point of film is to control the viewer's eyes. It's like a big difference between film versus video games. Oh, but okay. There's ways that you can direct that thing where people can look around and like trick the human into like following your lead. Yes. Gizmodo did a good post on this. For sure. This is all video game technique that has been in the past 20 years. You'll be rewarded 500 points if you hold Y, which will force you to look over here. It's like, oh, okay, great. But I think the early things that are going to do crazy well on VR will be live concerts, live shows. Right. Taking you to other places, right? Yes. No, I get that. I'm just saying like the other that's all happening and like what kinds of content we make and then how do we make it? And there's like a big I hear a lot of people talking about doing machinima stuff where you can create video game environments and tell the stories in there because they can be rendered as the player moves around. But then there's this other thing, which is like what is the camcorder of VR? So your kids play and you have this like you have a 720 camera and you're like It's like how do you record moments that you can then experience in a virtual reality headset? Right. Or you can like send it to grandma and then she's watching your kids play with you. And then she very quietly Imagine grandma wearing a VR headset right now. Just do it. It's wild. Is there a future? That's a Tumblr that exists. And if it doesn't, one of the B2B strategists in my Twitter feed should start it immediately. Is there a future where we like so now you like you take a photo and you Instagram it and it goes on Instagram and it's on a flat screen. Is there a future where everyone has these 720 degree cameras and everyone like puts on their VR goggles and like No, so I think the most promising thing Sam, you're driving. No! Dude, AT&T is gonna start running don't VR and drive commercials. B2B. Back to B2B. How is that B2B? Because you said AT&T. Oh my god. That's not what B2B means. Will you just... Just move on. AT&T is a B in every definition of that word. And then the 2 is to a C, the consumer. B to C. There's no other unless you think that you are a business. I'm a business man. No, I didn't want you to make that joke and you did and I knew you were gonna make it. You lobbed the ball to me and I had to hit it. Yeah and now I feel shame. And it was out at first. Has anyone ever thrown in like a soft pitch softball into the feeling they feel of shame? I dunked it. That's the cartoon that's my life. Guys, can we hear about Palm because I worry that David's skin might fall off. No, I'm fine. I don't need to talk about it. Oh sure you don't. My last VR piece is I think it's gonna be phones. I think Samsung is so smart to partner with Oculus and make the Gear VR and make the phone display, switch it over and be as good as Oculus display. Can I just say, okay. And you can just do that. Can I just give like the hashtag team perspective on this thing? You think it's gonna be dedicated? Hold on, hold on. Let me, let me give, let me give that perspective. Let me drop some B to B knowledge on you. False. So like, so let's say it's like, I don't know, it's a Thursday night. Me and my roommate are like, oh, let's watch a movie. I Chromecast some, I'll buy the interview on YouTube and then I'll Chromecast it. Because you love freedom of speech. Yes. Is there, is there a future where like we all have VR headsets and we're just like, oh, let's just like airplay this movie on our phones, drop it into our faces and we sit on the couch and watch a movie in VR. I mean that's. It's college kids. I keep telling you. Is that, is that gonna be a thing? Yeah. Like is. It only makes sense if it's phones. That's what I'm like. No, so I don't think it's phones. This show has been about trying to get you to wear dumb shit on your head for like five years. But dumb. But there's dumb shit and that's like VR and then there's putting your dirty ass phone in a sleeve that you strapped your head. That is one gross. What is it? Show me your phone, Chris. Yeah. Like just use like your hand sanitizer. Also, do you know that you, like when you make phone calls, you take that dirty ass phone and put it directly against. This is gross. Wait, how is that gross? You're already holding it in your hand. Have you ever made a phone call? And you put it next to your face. You literally like rubbed it against your face. It's in a cage. I can barely touch it. I have trouble. That's your argument. The other thing is like people. Actually, that's a really compelling argument. It's just a super bad argument. I have a lot of trouble envisioning a future where we sit there and like we like be, you know, we'd be like intimate or whatever. And like, you're like, no, you're like, you're like watching a thing in like a strap on face object. It's like, what future is that? Type check VR intimacy. It's weird. I read Addie's piece and she's like, a Gear VR is great. It works. The screen is high res. The apps are cool. Like the demos are cool. But it's like, who the hell is going to use this thing? Like, hold on, let me strap on my headset. And then it's like, oh, I'm in VR. If you just did a fine interplay of VR with 3D glasses, that is the story. And where are 3D TVs right now, Neil? By nowhere. They're everywhere. But they're everywhere. No one's talking about that. You just emphatically made the point I just made at me as though I was dumb. You just like mansplained my own words at me. Yeah. So then, educating Eli. Educating. You're saying the same thing. Stop it. Stop repeating what I'm saying like I'm dumber than you. Guys, let's talk about Palm. Let's talk about Palm. This is the CS story. TCL, which bought the Palm brand is everywhere here. FYI. They are everywhere here. They have a bigger booth. So like a big story of CS is you watch companies from like lower on the chain, like turn it like, you know, like Sony used to be like the big prestige brand here. And then Sony is failing. And now Samsung like occupies that space in the brand continuum, which is a hashtag that I will use soon. But like Samsung moved into that space, like they've become the dominant consumer electronics brand. And like we read a story about it last year. There's a wave of Chinese companies here at CS that are trying to occupy the space that Samsung used to occupy for Sony. And they're getting slightly better at it. And the way that I'm measuring it is like by where they have located their booth babes. So like two years ago, the booth babes were like out in front like, we're naked. And then they're like last year, they put some clothes on them. And this year now they just the TVs are showing booth babes and there are no actual booth babes. And next year, it'll be like virtual reality machinima booth babes. And then there will be no booth babes. I'm glad there's one more step. Thank God. I hope there's one more step. But it's like funny to watch them get better at like talking to the Western audience that they're not as literate with. Because their products are as good if not better in many cases, but they're learning how to market to this audience. And their booths are just getting bigger and more expensive. And they're literally just trying to like turn into the next Samsung. That's the opportunity for them. Anyway, TCL, which is Alcatel. Right. So they bought what was left of Palm, which was literally nothing but the brand. LG had webOS, the patents went to Qualcomm. Right. There's nothing left. And we've, you know, got figured out that this was doing it because they screwed up the shell companies. Anyway, they finally announced what they're planning on doing with Palm. And it's a disaster. It's it's it. Here's here's I'm going to read the press release. Palm has always carried a lot of effect and emotions. That's why TCL has set the direction to rebuild the brand involving Palm's very own community, making it the largest scale crowdsource project ever seen in the industry. This is the ultimate and we got halfway there. Now you figure it out. No, they didn't even get halfway there. They just like all they did is they went to a graveyard, exhumed a corpse of grandma that we all love. And they're like, you guys remember grandma? You guys make her dance. This show has been about dancing corpses for two days now. Dieter is a... I'm not even kidding. Yesterday, yesterday the dead bodies were in driverless cars. Dieter, do people know that you're a diehard Palm fan? Because you have a lot of feels about this. Wait, why don't you tell them what to do? This is your opportunity. Can you tell me why you care about Palm? Like why? Why? Yeah. I mean, other than like, oh, cool, Lisa Simpson. Palm definitely had all of the right ideas about what these operating systems should be in webOS. They're really ahead of the time. In 2008. They had all the right ideas. They could not execute on any of them. Yeah. Palm was basically like John Rubenstein from Apple, like insisting that he would refuse to use an iPhone because he didn't want to get tainted by the competition. And then watching the iPhone just blow him out of the water. No, that's not why they lost. Well, they lost because of Verizon. Yeah. But like, his whole move, like the dominant trend in smartphones is now they're huge. And Ruby insisted to like, I'm gonna make them smaller. That was his move. Wait, were you... The Palm Pixie. That was... It was tiny. When the iPhone, the very first iPhone came out, Engadget did like a series of reviews with lots of different people. And somebody on it said like, oh, it's good. But I think I'm gonna go back to my Palm. Yeah, Josh returned his iPhone. That was Josh. Yeah, he went to the store and returned his iPhone. Yeah, he was really mad about it. No, I mean, the rich history of the new media is Palm fanboys. Aka, Peter Bone. Like, it's all right there. If you like, you just peel away the surface. It's people who are pretty mad about Palm. They're launching a massive open source project. They have no idea how to do it. Or maybe they do something. How is it open source? Open something. It's open. Yay. So what an open source brainstorm sesh is like not actually open source. Like, what is the source that you're opening? Peter, what happens to Palm? Here are some tweets. What happens? What happens to what the thing that is Palm now? Alcatel gets to keep calling their tiny phone the Pixie without anybody suing them. And this project, a bunch of people get really excited. They make something that doesn't work and we forget about it in a couple years. And then TCL just has Palm and they're just. And eventually sells it to someone else. Here's the mashup. Mozilla buys, does something. They rebrand Firefox OS as Palm. Whoa. Unless they could. That's, you just collapse all of the. It's a very good idea. And then they sell that to like the Migo Foundation, which merges it. Because those are like threads of CES every year. It's like enormous companies have started a coalition to do something. We'll call it the Open Handset Alliance. You call it. That's the Android one. That's the Android one. That's actually really valuable one. It really works well. There was the UHD Alliance for TVs. The UD Alliance. And now it's the Sudd Alliance. No, it's not. That's not. It's still the UD Alliance. And then apparently. I would like to apologize for talking trash about the Open Handset Alliance. Yeah. Yeah. Only as a protective measure. It's still. Because of people who use Twitter. It's not a real alliance. It's more of a coalition. It's Google and a bunch of people that Google has cowed into submission. Yeah. That's it. What do you think an alliance is? Fair. It's Google as a hegemon. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's great. They should call it the Open Handset Hegemony. We're just getting deeper. I don't know if we're talking about international relations or like a really stupid. Gizmos. Gizmos. We're talking about Gizmos. Really stupid like risk strategy. Gizmo Handset Alliance. Google should put them all. All the purple ones. Hype check hegemony. What? I don't know. Oh, God. What did you need to say? Hegemony. What is hegemony? There's like you're surrounded by technology. Go watch Say Anything and then we'll talk about it. And then we'll do foreign policy. The next Vergecast in New York we will have a thorough discussion about Say Anything. Yeah, yeah. I would like to have a thorough discussion about Say Anything. It's a really good movie. Okay, we only have like four more minutes. And I think that the last thing, it's a non-CES story. But I've been told that this is the most important technology story of the next decade. You're really putting me on the spot here. I hear that Nike might actually really for really real make the self-lacing shoes. Right. We have so I want to start with a personal story. I think we have that on the site, right? Yeah. I am really bad at tying my shoes. I noticed yesterday. I'm trying to help you with that. I don't understand. I mean, I can't strictly wear a slip-on. The basics are clear to me. That is not a problem. Yeah, like why is it 2015 and we still tie our shoes? I don't. I wear campers. That is like the beginning of the worst keynote in history. Attention teens, the time is now. It's like a made for TV. Do you have problems tying your shoes and it's just you like, yeah, like our where did the soda go? That's the thing the Deeter just the fake infomercial that Deeter just made fun of is my life because I do it. I'm like, this time. Having trouble cooking pancakes? What about pouring your drink? We have the solution for you. Sam, get some chill, bro. Okay. So in the movie Back to the Future 2. I didn't finish your story. Travels to the year 2015. That movie came out before you were even born. What are you doing? Yeah. Hype check your birthday. June 19th, 1990. It's fine. I'm 24 years old. Stop saying how old you are. It's fine. So, so Marty McFly travels to 2015. I want to hear about the shoes. And the vision of 2015 is obviously flying cars, 3D jaws, the Cubs win the World Series. And also there are there is a pair of shoes called the Nike Air Mags. And Marty McFly is sitting in the DeLorean. And he puts on the shoes. And they I don't know what is so funny, but I'm gonna keep talking. You remember? Yes, I've seen the movie. I've seen the trilogy probably six times. Who directed the new jaws in that movie? I don't know. Max Spielberg, Steven Spielberg's son. True. Hold on. Hold on. Can we so so Marty McFly puts on these shoes. They laced themselves and everyone is like, Oh my god, that is the future. Right. And who's everyone? The viewers of the movie? No, no, no, literally everyone that exists on planet Earth is like 2015 is the year of the hoverboards, which we basically kind of already got. But you need a gigantic copper platform. That's not basically almost getting anything. We just showed a video about the importance of just lights. So anyway, he puts on these shoes. Everyone on planet Earth has a priority. Hoverboards are almost here, but the whole world has to be repaved in copper. Correct. So Marty McFly puts on the shoes, they laced themselves and for the last 20, 25 years, everyone is like, we're gonna get these self lacing shoes. And last February, so February of 2015, like about a year ago, Tinker Hatfield, who is one of the designers of the Nike shoes, he designed the Jordan ones, the twos, the threes, the fours, the five, basically all the Jordans that matter. He also designed the Air Mags that came out. And for those of you that don't know, Nike released Air Mags on eBay. There's like 1600 pairs. They were all auctioned off, but they didn't self lace. And everyone was like, okay, so we'll wait till 2015. Can I just hit pause for a moment? No, no, no. I'm almost done. I'm almost done. It's not that I, I want you to finish. I really do. It's important to me. I just want you to stop using the word everyone in exactly the way that you're using it. We have to wrap. We have another shoot coming. Yeah. We have a lot of self lacing Air Mags are coming out this year and I am very excited and I would argue, point was misused there, but I'm with you. God, we had all that context. Otherwise I wouldn't have been able to follow the story. Can we get a cut of Back to the Future 2 like narrated by Sam while it's happening? Do you know what I'm talking about? Yeah, you should do a riff tracks. Cause that's back to the future. No, it's just like back to the future to as explained by Sam and like it's Sue. It's just a movie about shoes and the desire of people around. What I'll say when these shoes come out, it will be the like every news organization will be talking about these shoes. Yeah. They're the ultimate local news product. Yeah. No. And like CNN and Fox and the verge.com and every other tech and every other news site is going to be like, so, Oh my God, the future is here. Trey's half video smile says that one, that video is not made and two, it is time to wrap. So I don't know if you know this, but CES is happening and we are covering it all the time and Sam's here to tell us where we can read about it. You can read about CES on the verge.com slash CES. You can also watch all of our awesome videos on our YouTube channel, which is the verge.com slash YouTube. There are so many Sam Sheffers. We just hit 500,000 subscribers on YouTube and we are celebrating that and it is awesome. You can also follow the verge on Twitter. We are at verge. I am at Sam Sheffer. He is at reckless. He is at back lawn. He is at plant. You can also follow us on Snapchat. We are the real verge on Snapchat. And that's the one thing that you should follow. And that's the one and only thing you should follow. And no, our traffic comes from Facebook. You should also go on Facebook.com slash verge and like us there to get all of the news from the verge.com in your Facebook feed. Because who uses Facebook anymore besides for news? And that's our show. Do you just bow? I am very worried about you. I am very worried about this new corporate Sam Sheffer. Thank you for listening. Goodbye. Rock and roll. Whatever. Bye. Thank you so much. Bye. Why?