[Music] on today's episode of still to be determined we're going to follow Matt around at CES hi everybody Welcome to still to be determined where we follow up on undecided with Matt frell which takes a look at emerging Tech and its impact on our lives I'm Sean frell and I'm a writer I write some sci-fi I WR some stuff for kids and I'm just generally curious about technology and luckily for me my brother is that Matt from undecided with Matt frell and Matt how are you today I'm doing good Sean I'm finally back from all my travel in the winter and I didn't get sick at CES even though some of my friends that I met there got pretty sick from CES so I'm really good we've got a low bar in our society right now how you doing get sick I'm not ill he said with a big smile yeah uh yeah so you were at CES for how many days I was there for four full days so it was a exhausting I was walking like 18,000 steps a day um I'm not I'm not built for travel I'm not built for walking I'm built for sitting on a couch like a slob uh it was exhausting but I'm so glad I went and at CES of course you saw stuff that is built to help you sit on your couch like a slob but you also saw a bunch of other stuff as your most recent video went into you and we'll get into the comments on that one in a few minutes first we like to visit our previous episode and talk about what feedback we received from all of our viewers and listeners there but then we will go on to talk about mat's experiences at CES which earned him some Kudos because he didn't do what a lot of other people do he didn't focus in on hey here's a new television yeah but to talk about our previous episodes we had a conversation last week in which we talked about corporate efforts to do sustain ility work around maybe packaging like apple or production efforts like BMW matad had an opportunity to visit the BMW plants in both Mexico and Germany to look at their most recent developments around things like heat capture and making sure that every every piece of of equipment that's being put together there is being put together in a way that doesn't leave a massive footprint behind and there was a lot of commentary on Matt's original video around the idea of Matt having kind of stepped in it MH the company wasn't leaving a footprint but maybe Matt was because people were taking him to task saying well these corporations are still causing problems so our conversation last time was largely around the idea of do you let the perfect be the enemy of the good can you talk about efforts that are measurable improvements over older ways of doing things things even if the companies are doing other things that we still disagree with and so there were comments that weighed in on that conversation and at one point we touched on the idea of the Brussels effect something happening in the EU where a law or policy is put into place that forces a company to do something there and it's just cheaper all around to do it everywhere and so it benefits people who don't even live in the EU there was this comment from Patrick Kenny who jumped into the comments to say my favorite action that the EU took that impacted the US early on is the requirement for THD and power factor corruption in computer power supplies back in 2000 the mess caused by Cheap power supplies really had an impact on many things and they stopped the stupidity with a pen so there was one Improvement that changed how we buy computers and we don't even at I think now we talk more openly about those times when EU or some other more local or Regional legislation has an impact in the United States for example when we talk about California's Environmental Protection laws impacting the national production of cars or we talk about the EU having an impact in uh the legislation around online tracking and privacy laws and the EU has been very aggressive in that front so now we go to websites and we see popups that say things like there are cookies here do you want all of them do you want some of them or do you want none of them and that's because of EU laws not because of anybody else but back in 2000 I don't think we were really talking about it too much can you think of any examples as as Patrick pulls out of his comment were there anything that you can recall from a few decades ago where it was this kind of oh man some local Act that rippled out in this way I can't like if you're going back a couple decades I can't I think part of the thing that's different now is social media it's like it social media is really kind of to its own over the past 5 to 10 years and so over the past five to 10 years we're talking about this stuff more globally than we ever have before so I think that might be part of the reason I wondered about social media I also wondered about just overall globalization and the production of goods and it's always been since World War II it has been a constant conversation about trade deficits and how much is made somewhere else and then brought here or how much do we make here and then send somewhere else for people to consume and I feel like in the past two decades that's reached a fever pitch in the form of there isn't a whole lot made here anymore so we end up with these moments of well yeah the EU passing legislation is going to have that impact because the production is impacted directly in other locations on the BMW conversation BK nesim jumped into the conversation to say with BMW and others it's not the old models that are the problem it's the newer models Matt had brought up an anecdote of saying at the BMW plant there were decades old BMWs being repaired and the issue that BK points out is that well yeah it's great that they were building things years ago that lasted this long but are they still doing that there's a there's the conversation in the same vein by Daryl Li darl l Rickman who talked about BMW and the right to repair regarding BMW Motorcycles he wrote regarding BMW and the right to repair I am into BMW Motorcycles BMW sells many repair parts for bikes back into the 1950s they have a division called group classic that is in charge of this and it sounds like Matt was at group classic HQ on moon shaer stasa which is also historically registered building that BMW started in but I also understand that complaints the people like Toast Master talking about when BMW started integrating a lot of electronics into the motorcycle they could have used industry standard OBD ports for accessing vehicle information but instead developed a proprietary Port software that for a long time was only available to their dealers and now there's a third party that provides compatible readers but at a cost of about $400 an OBD reader usually costs about 25 he goes on to say so BMW in my experience supports the DI wire but also locks out customers it's I think that that's a fairly standard complaint in the comments on this one yeah and I was just hoping you might jump in and respond along the idea of it feels a little bit like these corporations are of two minds at the same time MH people in the companies probably love that there are diyers who want to dig in and do these things and then there are other people in the companies who are like how do we make sure we lock this down so that we are controlling how this is repaired how this is dealt with and what can happen to this machine and as the machines have gotten more complex I'm sure there's an argument being made inside these corporations that probably sounds like we need to make sure that this is locked down for intellectual property because the software that is running in there we wrote that or we need to lock it down from a safety perspective because if somebody goes in and screws around with something they made it inadvertently make the car unsafe or the vehicle unsafe and there's a certain number of things that are at odds in that and I'm wondering not necessarily BMW but just from your research and looking at a variety of technological Fields everything from production of solar panels all the way to cars and everything in between can you think of any other examples where there seems to be a tension in the development of something where the company seems to be saying or or perform in in a way that shows they're not in step with themselves and their customers where they're producing a thing and saying here it is go have at it but at the same time locking it down in a way that keeps customers from doing everything they exactly want to do oh my God throw a rock at any product this is this is this is where it's like I sometimes am not in complete lock step with some people in the DIY community on this because a lot of anger comes out and assumptions are made of it's purely you know planned obsolesence and they just it's just pure profit motive and that is absolutely part of it but that's not the only part of it and you hit on a couple of the things there are very rational reasons to do it for a security to lock things down to make sure that your product can't be hacked easily uh to ensure that when your parts are getting replaced that they're being replaced in a way where it's like if there's a security protocol call that has to happen between different Hardware components that it's it's locked down and secure where if a third part is doing it you don't know if it's being done properly so there's reasons why companies would want to kind of lock it down um the probably the most famous and talked about one is Apple is like notorious for like saying one thing and then doing another thing that's like wait wait that kind of contradicts everything you say you're doing over here but what you're saying over here is a valid concern and a reason but why the hell are you doing it over here you could kind of go back to like how people get angry at Apple for they create all these proprietary cables so that you have to buy cables uh I don't buy that you how much cable costs how much their profit margins are on a cable versus the profit margin on a phone you know what I mean it's like it's you're talking pennies it it or quarters it's like it it's not worth it to them for the selling cable argument but there's this weird issue with apple where it's like they're on the board that help create USBC but USB C wasn't becoming a standard fast enough for them and they wanted to get rid of the dock connector that they used to have so they created the lightning cable because they wanted to iterate and move faster than the standards bodies were moving so they created the lightning cable it was like okay makes sense I understand why you came up with the lightning cable after the dock and then USBC finally started to get standardized and take off and started to move it's like okay come on Apple let's go to USBC now cuz that's what you you said that's that's the thing that you were part of the standards body for and you wanted to do and they weren't moving to it and they weren't moving to it they weren't moving to it and suddenly the EU is like hey yo Apple it's been like a decade can you please move to USBC and they're like fine dragging their feet so it's it's one of those things of in the early days they're like we're doing this for security it it has more functionality than a typical USB cable and the technology can provide so that's why we're doing it and then it's a decade later it's like that argument is now gone but yet you're not changing and at that point it's kind of like what is really going on here do you think there's a sunk cost fallacy at work there are they like we've built things around this lightning cable that now pulling back to the USBC is gonna take time and effort that we don't feel is worth it I like I don't know it's like at that point you're reading the tea leaves it's like only people inside Apple will know for sure and then those of us outside are trying to come up with correlations and causation and all this kind of stuff and making up stories about their pure evil because they want to make profits on selling cables and oh they're changing cables to make profit and all that kind of stuff and it's like I don't buy that stuff wholesale that's part of the rationale maybe but it's like it's not it's it's a it's a whole mess of gray area with all these companies with BMW Apple just um I have a 3D printer from a company called bamboo love that printer it's like the first 3D printer that's kind of like an appliance take it out plug it in open an app you don't have to be super familiar with this stuff it just works it's it's fantastic but they just put out a firmware update that that uh basically locks out a whole bunch of functionality that was built into the system where it's like it's it has local control so like if you want to use a different piece of software to do your 3D modeling and send that data to the printer to print they basically just lock that down in this new firmware update and it's got the whole Community up in arms as to like why would you do that so it it's it's it's frustrating you see companies do decisions like this where they make the decisions because of the rationale of security and you can understand why they're saying what they're saying but the way they Implement a lot of these changes leaves a lot to be desired and it comes across as no you're just trying to do a uh a like build a moat around competition at this point so it's this is why I do like the DIY Community for pushing back and trying to hold these companies feet to the fire of like this is unacceptable you can't do it this way but at the same time I'm not a subscri to the conspiracy theories of yeah it's it's only for profit it sounds very much like you just uh put into your own words what zela in the comments said which is I think there's a good reason that some manufacturers don't use Universal standards if a product is vertically integrated it has a higher potential to innovate it's yep there's that well worth producing the phone and the charging so like once we've got it working why would we change and if it's as simple as why would we change and if it's as simple as pushing things on the spreadsheet to the next quarter because right now like oh finances right now it's makes more sense for us to push it to next quarter and that keeps happening over a two-year period and then forces on the outside are like they're nefarious and I'm not saying that it's I'm not trying to defend apple or any specific Cor oparation but there is an old saying which is don't attribute don't attribute to nefarious goals what could be attributed to stupidity it is in some cases like it's just people not doing what they said they were going to do that's that's basically where I sit on that spectrum is just like I don't subscribe you know like it's not like nefarious evil purposes oftentimes it's just somebody just made a bad decision it like they just made a bad call and that could have what led to this whole thing and it wasn't something that somebody was like twiddling their mustache going we can make more profit it's like of course that's going to be part of the conversation but it's not the the main motivator or cause sometimes of some of these decisions I would also like to share this final comment from our most recent episode this one stood out to me as one that I think would be here we are January 19th as we record this it'll be obviously later than that as you consume it but Mac fish jumps into the comments and says Sean as I just recycled my Christmas tree might I suggest the ferals corporate Naughty or Nice List and I really like that idea so I I'm going to suggest to Matt I didn't talk to him about this before we started recording but I'm hoping he'll be on board as we go through the year if you see a corporation doing something nice jump into the comments and put a hashtag nice list and a description of that and if you see a corporation doing something naughty do the same hash naughty list yeah and leave a comment with a description and what we'll do is we might visit them during the year and pull out some as you point things out to us it also is an easy way for you to kind of spawn on the types of videos that Matt is going to put together on his main Channel if you I think in particular Matt would be interested in the nice list if you see those things that look like POS POS developments I think he's going to jump on those and probably use those as a means of either adding two video ideas that he's already working on or maybe spurring on new video ideas so that's that's a great thing there but then at the end of this year the Year of Our Lord 2025 I would like to be able to revisit the naughty and nice list and take a look at what you've all been seeing and and maybe take a little bit of a of an opportunity to track those comments and see what has gone on during during the year what do you think about that mat I I like that idea I do like the idea of having a not nice list and having the group kind of help Source this information as to like what they're seeing as naughty and nice yeah and you're 100% R Sean I like to focus on the nice list as an example of here's what you should be doing I'd rather instead of like was it the carrot versus the stick yeah the carrot yeah agreed it's a lot it's a lot more fun being in the carrot when you're trying usually you're working out some of your own but when you're a carrot it's just a lot it's a lot nicer on now to our conversation about Matt's most recent this is the five best things I saw in Vegas at CES 2025 well you asked for it Matt and they responded you said let me know which of these you'd like to know more about and for the most part the comments were just yeah talk about this and then somebody will be like no talk about this and somebody else we'll talk more about this so you got a little bit of it all so people in the comments were looking at pretty much everything you talked about and saying yes give us more of that like Swanson who said jet engine followup please and Richard zeit who said yes to the compostable batteries that that are made out of paper and well Lam wolf says fantastic episode I'm super curious about Jack's offerings for the solar Roof System and would like to see a deeper dive on that so when it comes to you saying which of these would you like to know more about the answer was yes so okay is it safe for me to assume that these things that you talked about I imagine a majority of them you were going to do a deeper dive on I would not say majority okay I would say probably a minority of them but like maybe 30% of them are things that we've put on our idea list like the composable b Paper battery one was one I immediately put on my list but just wanted to confirm from viewers of like do you want to hear about this because I want to hear about this I already had that on my list but I was surprised at the number of people who talked about the jet engine that one that I was interested in yeah yeah I was very interested in that I just watched a video it's not I don't believe it's new but it is a panel at some sort of conference around sustainability and basically it seemed like it was a a conference around the idea of like what can industry do to make the world work better and it was a panel where an individual was asked a question and this individual was a historian and he was basically like this is all ludicrous because everybody here is super super rich and everybody's talking about what can we do and the answer is going to always be tax ta and it was a very very good video I'll see if I can find the link to it and provide it to you Matt maybe if you want to put it in the show notes you can do that but he pointed out is said we're having this conference about you know impact on the world and everybody came here in private jets yeah like and I found myself as I watching your video after having seen that I found myself thinking like well this would a tremendous impact of you know measurable sorts to say if a plane could take off and land and you could say its carbon footprint was a tenth of what it would have been a year earlier that will be remarkable and that's something to shoot for so I was very very interested in that was that a model of a of an idea or is this a company that's just like we're actually testing these things so there are other companies that are already doing I don't want to say electric flight alone but like cleaner flight um there's companies like zero Avia um i' I did a video I've done videos on electric flight before and the one my one hesitation with doing something on right electric um that jet engine I saw it's just people don't seem to want to watch videos about flight on my channel which I find every time I put something out about flight in any way shape or form it's just like a lead balloon going ironic like nobody watches it and it's like but yet I see comments like this of like people like oh yeah more than that it's like well where are the people that say this that aren't what it's like I don't understand the connection of it seems to get people going but so you don't want to make you don't want to make a video just for Liam wolf and me okay uh but it's like that they are on my list of possible ideas that we're going to look into more I'm going to have I'm going to probably reach out to WR to have additional conversations with them but like zero Avia is doing test of their prototype plane using their engines um but they're selling their engines to third parties to to make the actual plane but they have planes that have it on it the company I talked to at uh CES they basically have the engine and what they're trying to design is the whole package not the plane itself but the whole package to power it as well because the big question around electric flight is batteries like how like how do you get enough energy into the plane cuz right now aviation fuel has so much energy in a small amount of space that's why it works for the volume and the weight and all that kind of stuff and with batteries that's not the case yet so they're also developing their own battery system that will have a high enough energy density to make it work that sounded like in my conversation that that's the piece of the puzzle they're still working on even though they have an electric engine that works it's like this is the thing that actually works now they're they're basically building the part that's like going to fuel it so it for them it doesn't sound like they have any kind of working prototype like plain but they have the engine and now they're doing the the energy storage interesting to to kind of power it yeah I I personally am and put me on the list of people who are looking forward to a followup on that if you are able to put one together I find it fascinating another one that really caught people's attention the AI monitored walking stick effectively glid yes F jumped into the comments and said as a cited person that smart walking cane thing is absolutely gamechanging I've personally had to assist countless people over the years that got turned around and lost their way from their mental map for whatever reason and were frustrated and even sometimes in a full Panic to have effectively Google Maps and liar in a rolling stick with the ability to audibly interact with the user is genius that is good use of AI not content creation but helping Humanity yep I just had a conversation with some people in my family about Ai and whether ethical AI is even a possibility and then I watched your video and I was just like well I can't imagine anybody arguing that a cane that's helping non-sighted people be able to navigate the world more safely and easily would be a problem and and I was wondering did you see anything else there which was AI focused in the disability community in whatever aspect like tools or things for the home or office that were to help with accessibility issues yes there was one I saw last year they were at the show again this year I think but it's like um kind of it was like a think of airpods so it's like a headphone that can act as a not just as like a hearing aid but it can isolate voices and it used AI models machine learning models to do voice isolation and it not only just gets rid of the noise and lets the voice itself come through it can isolate specific voices so if you're let's say your party and your heart of hearing and it's very noisy room and there's a like there's three people talking to you and a couple people are have a side conversations and you're trying to listen to the person right in front of you you can H basically at the push of a button on your phone have your headphon focusing on like you I'm talking to you and then everybody else kind of Fades out or I'm having a conversation with two people I can say focus on these two people and have a conversation with them crazy cool technology that kind of stuff I I got all like excited about it this year it's not necessarily accessibility for like people with hearing impairments or site impairments they have this device that's like the size of a phone and it can speak or translate I can't remember how many languages like 100 languages or something like that and doesn't do it of course in real time there's a lag but I know this software exists Google translate on your phone like we can only kind of do this yeah but it requires cloud services and all this kind of stuff and this is a dedicated device that's all it does is this and so I want to go to countries I can't speak the language and having something like this would be incredible but they also have a pair of headphones that you can put in and it will basically like going to the UN and somebody's giving a speech in French and you don't speak French and there's like a lag of a translator in your ear talking to you that's what this stuff face does and I was just like oh boy so imagine having the headphones and this little device in your hand and it's like you could have this translating people to you almost in real time not real time but close to real time in your ear about what they're saying and then you could speak back and show them the screen it would translate what you're saying for them to see so it's like this kind of stuff is gamechanging stuff it's going to open up the world to a whole bunch of people that couldn't travel places or do things or communication it's just like I don't know and I also love I also love the fact this company on their big posters at their Booth talked about how it was a babble fish and if you're a fan of hitch gu of the Galaxy I was like I love you just for that reference calling it a babble fish um really cool Tech that kind of tech is the stuff that gets me super excited at CES very cool there was also a vote from Paul to cover APPA this was the ultra Efficient Electric car that has such a small battery it actually makes sense to put solar panels on it in his words do you want to talk a little bit now about aptera what did you see that made them stand out I didn't see them at CES but I've seen them before at other events I've also spoken to the company a couple of times um so I'm very familiar with them I did a video on solar powered cars do they make sense and talked about apar in that video it's a car that's been in development for years now and they they're super close to finally starting to deliver vehicles to their pre-order folks and I know a bunch of people are excited about this now technically it's not a car it's technically sold as a motorcycle because it's got three wheels so it's kind of this they don't have to abide by certain car standards because it's actually technically a three-wheel vehicle even though it's a car-sized thing and it's got this weird teardrop shape for aerodynamics and it's it's bananas it's got two seats in it a huge trunk very cool that it can like charge I think it's like up to 40 mil a day if you just leave it out in the sun which is more than enough for an average Drive in the US right I think it's cool but um sounds like maybe a big Paradigm Shift like just from a visuals perspective it might be something question so remember when the Cyber truck was announced and everybody was like what the hell is that um that is my attitude towards aptera of it's a cool idea it's a cool concept and it's going to have a niche audience that's going to be like I am there for this and then once you get past that Niche audience everybody else is going to be on what no pass it is a such a unique looking vehicle that's going to turn a lot of people off uh the second aspect of it that I have huge questions about is no offense to aptera but it seems like it's very developed and focused for warmer climates I have no idea how well this thing would perform in Maine in the heart of Winter you know what I mean it's like you're not going to get 40 miles added to that car day you'd probably be lucky to get a couple miles added per day with that and then it's late weight and does it have enough traction for the snow and the icy conditions so there's there's this whole aspect of of for me it is such a niche vehicle it will never be mainstream but maybe it becomes like a Vespa and it's just a thing that in certain parts of the world it's popular in other parts of the world it's not and maybe that's okay but as soon as but as soon as you try to apply this kind of same thinking to a regular vehicle it's when it's apparent and this is why I talked about my previous solar car video it's apparent that it's not viable because when you're talking about a normal kind of car with the weight and all that kind of stuff you might be adding 10 miles a range a day and how much extra does it cost to integrate those solar panels into the vehicle and it's like does it does really even make sense um in most cases it doesn't uh I'm definitely not app anti- aptera I Am pro aptera I think they're a really cool company I'm very excited for them to start delivering these vehicles and see them on the roads it's going to be really awesome but it's just going to be a ve very Niche vehicle for a very particular subset of use cases and regions around the world I don't think it's ever going to be a mainstream thing we shall see finally there was this from Elizabeth who just wanted to give you a in the back and say wow this was by far the best review of CES 2025 I've seen so far everybody else seems fixated on TVs and smartphones I really look forward to the coming episodes on both homech and clean energy in that vein do you want to shout out any particular smartphone or TV that you saw that stood out and made you say like well that's pretty cool uh I'm a fan of LG and same thing happened last year it's like last year was transparent televisions which I'm kind of like neat Tech but what's the point everybody seemed to be doubling down on transparent TVs and LG because we need to be able to watch TV while we're driving what is the the idea the pitch that they're making which I don't think this is one of those like a company comes up with a technology that's really kind of like interesting and they think this is the use case for it but then they put it out in the world and then people find other use cases for it it's like curved televisions it's like what's the point of a curved TV they they they made up a use case that didn't happen but then it became a little more popular in like gaming monitors kind of a thing where this transparent Tech they're selling it as you don't want that big 100 inch black slab hanging on your wall it's ugly well you could have this thing that just looks like a frame and then when it's not being used you see the wall behind it or you could make it look like there's a painting in the middle of it and then you see through it so it's like it can become less of a eyesore in your room and I'm like less of an eyesore in my room for 10,000 I think I'll buy the cheaper TV and black slab right so it's like there there's there's issues in how they're promoting it but I got to tell you it is cool technology when you see it in person it really is eye popping and amazing that's like oh you can see through it and suddenly it's opaque and black and it's like a regular TV it's really cool stuff um so for me LG and their TVs they were pushing this year I was the most impressed by on top of which they have wireless technology where the big problem is like you have this TV you hang it on your wall and then you've got like your cable box and your Apple TV and your other things that you're plugging into it and all these cables are hanging on your wall or something like this this is just all you have to do is plug in the power and it has a separate breakout box that you plug stuff into that you can squirrel away in an entertainment center off in the corner and it wirelessly transmits the video and audio signal to the TV really cool I don't know how well it's going to work for gaming there might be an additional lag there if you're a gamer but like that's really cool um I think that has more practical purpose than a transparent television but for me again coming back I think LG had the most impressive TVs that I saw while I was there interesting so listeners viewers what did you think was there anything here that we talked about that you would like to know more about or is there something that you think we missed in our conversation let us know in the comments as always your comments help Drive the content of this program and they are a great way to support us as well as subscribing liking the video sharing it with your friends those are great easy ways for you to support the program and if you want to support us directly please go to still tb. FM or click the join button on YouTube and you'll find ways in both those places to throw some Quarters at our heads believe it or not we love it yay welt and then we get down to the heavy heavy business of talking to you about technology and as I mentioned earlier in the program if you feel so moved jump into the comments leave a hash naughty list or Nic list comment and let us know what corporations are doing in your neck of the woods and whether you're applauding them or booing them from the background thank you everybody for taking the time to watch or listen we'll talk to you next time [Music]
2025-01-28 13:49