- 1 year ago
This week the Dirhams & Dollars crew discuss the wonders and oddities showcased at CES 2019.
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00:00Hello and welcome to Dirhams and Dollars, the Gulf News business podcast, where we talk
00:07about news affecting the business community in the region and in the world. On Wednesdays
00:11we look at stories making headlines and we have in-depth conversations on a topic of
00:15the week. You can find us at gulfnews.com and you can always download the latest episodes
00:20from iTunes. I'm Ed Clouse and today I'm joined by...
00:23I'm Sarah Dia.
00:24And I'm Scott Shu. All right, everyone, welcome to our first show of 2019. Now, you may be
00:28wondering, what does 2019 have in store for us? Well, it's the same crap we had in 2018,
00:33pretty much across the board.
00:34You reckon? Or do you think it will be worse?
00:36I'm not saying the intensity of it, but it's basically the same stuff. We're a week into
00:412019 and we're right back to US-China trade wars, more Donald Trump-inspired chaos, and
00:48because apparently the Brits don't like the colonialists getting ahead of them, they have
00:52their own little thing called Brexit to prove that they are just as crazy as the Americans.
00:55Three months away. Less than three months away.
00:5860 days almost, I believe, March 12th. So, me being of a cynical disposition, I have
01:05decided-
01:06You, cynical? Surely not.
01:07I have decided 2019 isn't going to be any more merciful than 2018, 2017, and 2016. We're
01:12going to be talking about this crap all year. So, my suggestion is we talk about anything
01:16else today.
01:17Anything else.
01:18So, anybody been to Vegas recently?
01:21Sadly not.
01:24That's a sign to do what?
01:30Start your little bit.
01:31I don't have a bit.
01:32Well, then, you got a bit?
01:33I never said I had a bit.
01:34That was the whole point.
01:35That was the whole point.
01:36That was the whole point. You were to jump in.
01:37I never said I had a bit.
01:38I said jump in. You weren't to do questions.
01:41We don't have multiple angles to cut between us, so there's going to be a chop in the video.
01:46Alright.
01:47Or we just keep this in the video and see how sausage is made.
01:52Sure. Yeah, why not?
01:54So, let's start off. Have you been to Vegas recently or seen any news out of Vegas? Hint,
01:59hint, wink, wink, nudge, nudge.
02:01Right. I have not been to Vegas, unfortunately for me. I have seen news out of Vegas, but
02:06I've been ignoring it because it's tech news, and so when tech news goes on my Twitter timeline,
02:11I just scroll down and find finance.
02:12You actually have tech news on your Twitter timeline. That's actually more than I expected.
02:15When you retweet it, basically, or when it's like the BBC or New York Times.
02:19When I force it in your timeline.
02:20Yeah, I just scroll past it.
02:22Okay. Well, for those of you who aren't aware, normally when it's a boring news year, everyone
02:27focuses on the first week of January as the big consumer electronics show in Las Vegas.
02:31This is the place where everyone sort of gets together and has their big launch of the year
02:37or showcases new technology, and there's all kinds of awards, and it's a pretty big deal
02:41in Las Vegas. You can't get a room right now in Vegas if you wanted to go there. It's crazy
02:46busy, and Ed's covered it before. I've covered it a couple times, and it's a great place
02:51to go, but if you're actually covering it, it's pretty much work. I mean, you don't walk
02:55out of there without anything less than three blisters if you've covered the entire show.
02:59Yeah, it's not. It's the opposite of relaxing. It's not fun. I mean, it's fun to a degree,
03:07but it is exhausting. I mean, if you think about the World Trade Center here in Dubai
03:10or ADNEC in Abu Dhabi, I mean, they just, they shrivel in comparison to the size of
03:16CES.
03:17I mean, Vegas is probably at least, I don't know, two, three times the size of Dubai.
03:21It's just huge.
03:22Yeah, and the Exhibition Center itself is like a magnitude, orders of magnitude larger
03:27than ADNEC, and it's spread across like three or four different hotels. It's just enormous.
03:31Yeah, it actually overflows out into the hotels, to the Venetian and onto the Strip and all
03:34kinds of places, and it becomes pretty big. All right, so we've seen the news come out.
03:39It actually started over the weekend. So anything in particular you've seen you think is good
03:44this year?
03:45So, I mean, I think we can sort of break it down into a few different categories. I mean,
03:49it is an event focused on consumer technology, as you said, and I think, you know, this year
03:56the focus or the emphasis really seems to be on a few different things. So health care
04:01or health tech, driving or cars seems to be a very big focus this year, and sort of home
04:11tech or sort of smart home appliances. So, I mean, I'll start off with the cars. We've
04:19seen the Audi Aion, I believe it's pronounced, it's A-I-O-N, I believe. Now, the car was
04:26actually unveiled in 2017, but they've updated it and they've sort of done a full broad unveiling
04:33this year with an eye to having it on the road by 2020. Now, you may say, okay, we're
04:40thinking more gadgets, this is a car, you know, it's going to cost probably a hundred
04:43thousand dollars or something. But I think increasingly tech is moving from the home
04:50into the car. And certainly when I was in Vegas last January for CES, there was a huge
04:55emphasis placed by traditional tech companies like Panasonic, like Sony, Philips, on putting
05:01their tech into automobiles. And I think increasingly we're going to see very futuristic looking
05:07cars with sort of HUDs or head up displays that in the place of where the sort of speedometer
05:13used to be, it's going to look more like a kind of three or four iPads now. So, the Audi
05:18is a very, very impressive car with lots and lots of impressive tech in. And then as a
05:23sort of offshoot of that, we had a flying car, I believe it's called the Nexus Blue,
05:30and it's sort of a prototype for a-
05:32That's a VTOL.
05:33What's that?
05:34Vertical takeoff and landing thing.
05:36Right, yes.
05:37They're going to use this for taxis.
05:38Yes, exactly.
05:39I've seen this. This is very cool looking.
05:40Yeah, exactly. So, they did a test run down the Las Vegas Strip, I believe yesterday.
05:45And yeah, absolutely. As you say, it's essentially a taxi prototype, an airborne taxi, and you
05:52know-
05:53Basically what it looks like is a car with four giant fans on top, but they're encased,
05:59so they're not like the old fashioned helicopters, which would chop up people if you weren't
06:03careful. I'm serious.
06:04No, yeah, yeah, absolutely.
06:05Yeah, you have to be very careful when you're a pilot to make sure no one goes around the
06:07back of the helicopter because people get killed that way. This thing seems to be much
06:11more oriented on making sure everything's safe and no one's going to lose any body parts
06:15because you took a taxi.
06:16Yeah.
06:17Who drives it? Do you have to have a car license or a pilot's license?
06:21Actually, I don't think the regulatory issues have quite caught up with VTOLs and everything
06:26else that's coming on.
06:27No, but I mean-
06:28I know, but I think there's no driver. I think it is largely automated.
06:31In the sky? Oh my God.
06:33So it's a hybrid, right? And so a lot like the Teslas and other self-driving vehicles
06:40at the moment are hybrid systems so that they can have a manual human driver or be automated.
06:45So I can pick up the controls if I start to crash and burn because that's so much more
06:49comforting knowing that I'm at the controls.
06:50Right, of an airborne taxi, yeah. But I think, as you say, rightly so, that regulatory frameworks
06:59have not really been adapted to this new class of automobile or aircraft, whatever
07:04you want to call it.
07:05VTOLs.
07:06Yeah.
07:07Do you ever play video games? VTOLs.
07:08No.
07:09You've obviously never played- oh, never mind.
07:10I mean, it reminds me of the Harrier jump jet, the UK fighter jet that basically turns
07:15its thrusters downwards and just takes off vertically.
07:18Yeah, we've done the first VTOL thing.
07:19Right, yeah, yeah.
07:20By the way, if you're listening to this, I'm just as clueless as you are about what they're
07:25talking about. But anyway, carry on, please.
07:27So I think in terms of flashy, attention-grabbing tech out of CES, anything that flies and can
07:35carry people is going to always steal the show. But again, it's a couple of years off.
07:41We're not even very close to self-driving cars yet. I mean, you saw last year with a
07:46couple of fatalities.
07:47There are a lot of roads in California and other places around the world. You can't say
07:51we're not there. You can say we're not at the level of technology we'd like, the level
07:54of safety we'd like, but they're out there.
07:56No, no, make no mistake. These things, as you say, are on the roads in certain parts
08:00of the US and elsewhere. But I mean, in terms of them actually being driven into people's
08:05like homes and for them to become completely accessible to the wider public, we're still
08:10some way off that.
08:11No, in fact, there was a good case in California about three weeks ago, where the CHP were
08:15driving down, the California Highway Patrol were driving down the freeway at about three
08:18in the morning and found some guy who'd been out drinking and decided to take his, I believe
08:23it was a Tesla, home for the night and put it on autopilot and proceeded to fall asleep
08:29behind the wheel and let the car take him home. And the police were having none of that
08:33and actually invented a new way to stop automated cars when the driver isn't capacitated.
08:39That's the point. If it's self-driving, then you can be intoxicated and get behind the
08:43wheel because you're not driving it.
08:44No, that's illegal.
08:45Yeah, that's very illegal.
08:46But he's not driving it, it's self-driving.
08:47If the rule is you have to be able to take the wheel in case of a malfunction or something
08:53else.
08:54I see, okay.
08:55They're not to the level where you can go ahead and get in the car and take a snooze
08:56on the way home.
08:57Yeah, you have to really still be in control, even if you're not driving it. And so I suppose
09:03that's what I mean when I say there's still some way off of kind of total widespread adoption
09:08because that is the dream, right? The dream is like I can do my morning commute to work
09:14and I can get in the car and get an extra 15, 20 minutes of sleep or whatever, right?
09:18Because the car is going to drive me to the office. But we're not really at that point
09:22yet. It's still very much a hybrid system where you do need to be in control. And the
09:28question always becomes like these demonstrations that take place at CES, how much are we actually
09:33seeing of the real tech and how much are we seeing a very tightly pre-programmed presentation?
09:38Well, this has always been the case with CES. I mean, I've covered them for a number of
09:43years and very often, very little of what you see there is ready to go in the stores
09:46by the time you get back from the show. Maybe not even by the end of the year or the year
09:50after that. So a lot of this stuff is just proof of concept stuff. Let me show you what
09:56I can do and maybe we'll have it out in a few years. And I'm sure the VTOLs or the taxis
09:59or whatever you want to call them are still pretty much in that category. I mean, listen,
10:03the first time I covered CES was 10 years ago. And at that point, actually having screens
10:08in cars was the new thing, not even HUD screens. And I remember they went nuts the first year
10:13I was there. They literally had a car where they put a screen everywhere possible, including
10:17the wheel wells. I mean, if there was a... Including the what? Wheel wells. That's that
10:21area where your wheel goes into the car. The steering wheel or the actual wheel? No, that
10:27piece of rubber outside the car which spins round and round and thatches to the ground.
10:31That actually comes out and they put screens in behind that. For whom? For the hell of
10:36it to show all the possibilities you could... I mean, it was overkill for a point. It wasn't
10:41actually a serious thing, but they had them everywhere. You pop open the trunk, pop open
10:45the hood, there'd be screens there. You don't... There was a demonstration. Go on, sorry. And
10:49since then, obviously, it's moved forward quite a bit. We're moving quickly into the
10:53area. I want to see what the HUDs will do. These heads up displays? Yeah. Explain please
10:58these acronyms you're speaking. All right, you're driving down the road and right now
11:01you have your speedometer and you have all the other gadgets on your car. In the future,
11:06that will pretty much be gone. What you'll have is your windscreen. The back of it will
11:11have numbers and everything else superimposed on it. So you can still drive, but you'll
11:15be able to see in digital format your speed. But isn't that distracting from the road ahead
11:19of you? No more than it is now having it right underneath because you got to take your eyes
11:22off the road to read your files. Now you have it right there in front of you. And you'll
11:27also be able to program things in like maps. So it'll say, turn here, follow this road
11:31or do something else. There's all kinds of possibilities and they're slowly getting to
11:34that. It's not quite there yet, but I'm really looking forward to that. Can I ask you, when
11:37you hear about these things coming out of CIS, do they worry you or do they excite you?
11:42Most of the time I'm pretty excited. And you, Ed? Do you mean, do they worry? Why would
11:47they worry me? Because for me, well, I mean, maybe worry is not the right word, but I read
11:52about some of them and I'm like, I don't need that much invasion. I don't need my fridge
11:56to know what I'm eating. I don't need my mirror to know what I'm doing. I don't need to. I
12:01don't need that level of intrusion. I feel like you would have said the same thing though
12:0520 years ago if we'd been talking about this.
12:08If I told you you had a GPS enabled phone that tracks you wherever you go and can give
12:11you a view of every trip you've taken over the past five years, you'd probably say, no,
12:17that's massively invasive. And it still sort of is, but it's there and it's actively being
12:21done by millions of people every day. So my fridge deciding to place an order for a gallon
12:26of milk because I'm running low, not to me anything worse than what I'm already doing.
12:32Yeah, I don't like it, but I think it becomes about, I do understand what you're saying
12:36and I, and I think it's an ongoing conversation, but I think it really boils down to like convenience
12:42versus sort of invasive technology. And ultimately with mobile phones, we trade off the invasion
12:48of our privacy for the convenience of having a mobile phone. And likewise with things like
12:52GPS and, and even social media, you know, we, we trade off what we know social media
12:56is doing to us.
12:58I'm much more likely to go down that road. I've already deleted my Facebook and everything
13:01on Twitter, Scott. So, and Instagram, you're not, you're not much better than the rest
13:05of us.
13:06I think it's just got to go Instagram and maybe even WhatsApp.
13:08And you're on snap. I mean, come on, you just, you only deleted Facebook.
13:11No, I'm not on snap. I'm on Twitter. I'm on Twitter a lot.
13:14Gulf News is on snap though. So I'll just plug that quickly. We have a weekly show on
13:17Snapchat.
13:18You can find me on snap on Gulf News, but I don't have my own personal snap account.
13:21Yes, you do.
13:22I don't use it.
13:23Yeah, but you have it. And so it can track your location because it has a location enabler.
13:27Yes, I know. If I take a snap, which I never do.
13:31And you can switch that off in the setting.
13:32It still has your email details.
13:34Yeah. So everyone has my email details. I'm a journalist in the Middle East. Believe me,
13:38is there someone out there who doesn't have my email details?
13:40Yeah, I mean, so really that debate between convenience and invasion is ongoing. And I
13:48think, you know, there's a safety component. And I do see what you're saying about the
13:52sort of level of distractions in cars. You know, one of the prototypes that we saw a
13:57couple of days ago out of CES had screens within the steering wheel, you know, that
14:02you could sort of use. And there were a lot of questions raised about, OK, now people
14:07are not just looking at the sort of the tickers just beneath their line of sight out of the
14:12windscreen, but they're looking at the steering wheel. I was like, this is probably going
14:16to be quite distracting.
14:17So if it has like a map instead of looking at your phone, then that would be OK.
14:21Yeah, but there's even worse than that. There were a couple of stories about Augment, not
14:26sorry, not augmented reality, but virtual reality being made for cars. Now, if you're
14:31not familiar, virtual reality is where you actually have a screen or some type of glasses
14:35on over your eyes. And it's not really quite sure what the implication is going to be,
14:40whether or not you're using external sensors to drive on the data that's being beamed to
14:44your eyes or whether or not that's for your passengers, because there are games and other
14:48things which they've been promoting with this. That's going to be a problem.
14:52The augmented reality, I'm not so worried about, because that's basically your heads
14:55up to screen. That's the same thing.
14:57I think, you know, one of the cars we saw last year was developed by Panasonic and effectively
15:05was like almost windowless in the back. So it could seat, I think, five or six people
15:11in the back of the car.
15:12It really wasn't even a back if I saw it correctly. It was basically a table, like a kitchen table.
15:17It was like everyone could sit around it on the way out of the road.
15:19It really was like, I mean, sitting around as we are now in the back of a car. And it
15:24was sort of effectively windowless with like TV screens where the windows used to be.
15:29And as you say, you could change the configuration to a living room style sort of set up where
15:35we would all sit and look at each other and we could sort of talk or whatever.
15:39And then if you hit a couple of buttons, it would shift the seats around and it would
15:42bring out a desk and you could sort of work and sort of have an office in the back of
15:45your car.
15:46So, I mean, like going back to...
15:48But I mean, how realistic are these things? Are they going to be launched in like 50 years,
15:5220 years?
15:53It's much shorter term than that. I would say like 5 to 10 years.
15:56I think you're going to start seeing them become mass produced by about 5 years.
16:00You reckon?
16:01They're already being developed and there are already some working prototypes out there.
16:06Dubai World Trade Center has some working prototypes of driverless vehicles and I believe
16:09one is similar to the Panasonic, I wouldn't swear to it.
16:12Yeah.
16:13So those things are out there. They're coming. I mean, people are actually trying to find
16:15ways to integrate them into the current system. So yeah, it's shorter than you think.
16:21Yeah, I think we're on the cusp right now of having sort of very traditional petrol,
16:25diesel cars that have very minimal amounts of tech in them.
16:29I mean, only really sort of newer model cars have sort of inbuilt sat navs or GPSs and
16:35sort of have digital systems within them.
16:37You look at the Teslas with their enormous sort of central displays above where the sort
16:43of gear stick or the handbrake would be in a normal car.
16:47And they really are the only company that sort of bring as standard that level of technological
16:53integration.
16:54But I think it's something that you're going to see change quite rapidly in the newer model
16:57of cars as tech becomes cheaper, it becomes easier to put that in there.
17:02And I think within 5 to 10 years, we'll probably all have quite a high degree of technology
17:06in our cars.
17:08Ford's making major steps in that direction. They've been working on it for years.
17:13Not BMW, Mercedes, I believe, had a number of announcements at CES.
17:17It's a growing trend.
17:18And it's not just for niche cars now.
17:19It's getting to be mass-produced.
17:20Yeah.
17:21Okay.
17:22Cars aside, what else did you like about CES?
17:23Well, I'll be honest.
17:24Part of what I saw about CES didn't have anything to do with the tech.
17:28It had a lot to do with the cross-platform technologies that are out there.
17:33Samsung will now allow you to have Apple iTunes on the device.
17:38Now, that may not sound like a big deal because obviously they've just added an app.
17:42But this is two major rivals working together, which is going to save me some money in the
17:45long run.
17:46So I no longer have to worry about if I buy an LG, do I have to buy an Apple TV to go
17:49along with it to stream what's on my movie catalog onto that TV.
17:53Now, it's simple.
17:54Buy a Samsung, bring out my Apple stuff.
17:57Five years ago, that was inconceivable because these guys were considered major rivals.
18:00Less than five as well, not just ...
18:02You can go back longer than that.
18:05But the point is, though, you're actually seeing major companies who were generally
18:08used to be suing each other, left, right, and center, are now actually working together
18:12to make their various catalogs or products available across other sectors.
18:17I think that's pretty good.
18:18That's a good sign.
18:19Yeah, I think this is a good thing.
18:21I think there are a lot of companies out there vying for dominance in smartphones or in TVs
18:29or home entertainment.
18:30Actually, the biggest fight this year at CES we hear about is Google Assistant versus Alexa.
18:35That seems to be everywhere.
18:36And that really was the fight of last year as well.
18:39I think Google have really, from what I've seen now of CES in the last couple of days,
18:44Google have really beefed up their offering for this year.
18:47They've got way more integration for Google Assistant, which is their version of Alexa,
18:52the voice-activated assistant.
18:55Way more integration and a lot more contextual intelligence of the service, so it understands
19:02a lot more about what you're asking.
19:05I remember on the podcast last year, we did a few tests of Siri, Alexa, and Google Assistant
19:11and Cortana, the Microsoft one.
19:13I remember we asked Siri what the population of the U.S. was, and then we asked her a follow-up
19:20question about the population, but she didn't link the two questions.
19:25She didn't get the context of the second follow-up question because it didn't specifically state
19:30sort of the U.S. or whatever.
19:32So I think that's coming along quite fast.
19:34And actually, just to link that back to the cars, one thing we're seeing more now is Amazon
19:39Alexa crossing over into the cars, so you're listening to a podcast or listening to some
19:44music in your kitchen on Alexa, you leave the house, you get in the car, and Alexa picks
19:51up where you left off on that podcast or on that song and starts piping it straight into
19:56your car.
19:57I think Alexa, Google Assistant, whatever wins out of that battle, there'll probably
20:03be a number of them, it won't just be one, will sort of eventually permeate every aspect
20:09of our lives.
20:10I mean, much like in the films, right?
20:12When you see in the films, the guy walks around his house, he's in the shower, he's like,
20:15all right, order me some shampoo, and then he gets in the car, and then he's at work,
20:19and he's talking the whole way through.
20:20What film was that?
20:21I think iRobot with Will Smith.
20:24He's got this assistant constantly around to do digital tasks for him.
20:31There actually is a real-world application of Alexa at CES, which may actually stretch
20:37that analogy way too far.
20:39Colyer, which is an American plumbing company, I mean, they deal more with plumbing, but
20:45they actually have an Alexa-enabled toilet, complete with seat warmer and blow dryer,
20:53and yes, apparently you can doctor your toilet now while you're doing your thing.
20:57Interesting fact, it's $7,000, that toilet you're talking about.
21:02That's nothing to spend.
21:03There is a number of high-end stupidity going on at CES, and every year, this is always
21:08part of the fun thing.
21:09I mean, not only do we have an Alexa-enabled toilet, we also have, what was the other one?
21:14Oh yes, the Foldimat, or something like this?
21:17The one on Twitter?
21:18Foldimate.
21:19Foldimate.
21:20It's a giant machine, and I mean, it is like, what, five, six feet tall?
21:23It's bigger than my fridge.
21:24Yeah, it's boxy as hell, but you throw your laundry in there and it will fold it for you.
21:29And it only costs $980.
21:31I think it's $1,000, yeah.
21:34Yeah, so basically, if you have room to spare and money to throw away, you can-
21:38A lot of room to spare, like a second fridge room to spare.
21:42I don't get the appeal of this at all because, I mean, now, if it was ironing, if it ironed
21:49my clothes, then we can talk.
21:52Actually, I think-
21:53Then I'm spending thousands.
21:54If they combine this with a Roomba, you know what the Roomba is?
21:57Roomba is a remote-controlled vacuum cleaner, it's a little disc, probably about the size
22:03of a giant Frisbee, that you can program it to roll over your floor and sweep and clean
22:08up.
22:09Now, you mix that with the ability to pick up my clothes and then put it in the washing
22:12machine and then fold it, then we got something.
22:15But I'm not going to spend $980 for a giant closet to fold my stuff for me.
22:22What's that thing that Sheldon uses on the Big Bang Theory to fold his clothes?
22:25It's tiny.
22:26Yes, it's also just plastic.
22:27Yeah, exactly.
22:28I mean, you can buy that if you want to fold your clothes more easily.
22:31Never been looking for that, but glad to know you've been, Sarah.
22:34Yeah, I've got no interest in that, but genuinely...
22:37And there's probably someone out there-
22:38It's not tech unless basically you can plug it in, so a little piece of plastic that just
22:42folds it for you, yeah, it doesn't cut it for me.
22:44That tiny little thing that fits anywhere defeats the purpose of that whole giant, gigantic
22:49$1,000 thing.
22:50And probably costs, yeah, $10 versus $1,000.
22:53Yeah, something like that.
22:54Yeah.
22:55No, in terms of home gadgets like that, I'm not particularly interested in anything that
23:01doesn't make my life extremely easy.
23:06I think you could solve all of those problems really just by finding a girlfriend or wife
23:11who earns loads of money and then just becoming like a house husband, and you've got loads
23:15of time to do all of that sort of stuff.
23:16Ed the gold digger.
23:17Yeah, exactly.
23:18I know where your technology future lies.
23:19That's my-
23:20If you're listening, this was Ed asking for-
23:21Yeah, soliciting for a wealthy wife.
23:25No, I think for me, when I saw last year all the Samsung washing machines, Samsung fridges
23:30and all that, and we can segue now into talking about home tech or smart homes, because that
23:35is another big thing.
23:36And actually, when I was in the UK in December, I went into a regular sort of consumer electronics
23:43store, the kind of place you'd buy like a PlayStation or a TV, nothing too sort of specialist
23:48or niche.
23:49And I was taken aback by the amount of home tech, specifically security, that I saw.
23:58And it made me realize once I sort of had a look into it and sort of did some digging
24:03that really the cost of things like security cameras that you no longer need a sort of
24:10central system to record things onto tape or whatever, that doesn't exist anymore, really.
24:17I can just get like a kind of Google-enabled CCTV camera, put it outside my house and get
24:24live 1080p video streamed direct to my mobile phone 24 hours a day in color.
24:32So I think that kind of stuff is really coming on a long way.
24:34Actually, I think there's going to be a little bit of a hiccup when adopting that.
24:38My wife for Christmas got me a Nest home thermostat, proof that I'm middle-aged, it was the gift
24:44I wanted, a new thermostat to keep the bill down.
24:47But then I got to the point where I had to install it.
24:49Now there's places in Dubai you can call to come out and install it, but I'm more of a
24:53do-it-yourself guy, so I got out my kit and opened it up, and it wasn't difficult to install,
24:58but there's a different issue here.
24:59Do you have a kit?
25:00I don't have a full toolbox at home.
25:02I don't have a kit.
25:03Classic Gen Xer.
25:04Yes, do-it-yourself, yes.
25:05I don't even have a can opener, and I don't know how to use one.
25:09Anyway, that's another story.
25:10Yes, we'll go down that road later.
25:12But anyway, I opened this thing up and I realized that the Nest, as cool as it is, as interesting
25:16as it is, is not compatible with my home.
25:19One, you have to have everything sort of wired correctly, and in this case, you had to have
25:25some fairly modern wiring to plug into your stuff.
25:28My apartment's probably 12, 13 years old, maybe even older than that, and it didn't
25:33have it.
25:34And the second thing was whoever built my home maybe got a little bit on the cheap side
25:37and did not put in good copper core wiring.
25:40They put in copper thread wiring.
25:42This may not sound like a big deal, and if you don't know what I'm talking about, trust
25:45me, it's just a matter of someone got cheap a couple years ago, and now it won't work
25:49with my home products.
25:50People doing things on the cheap in Dubai?
25:52Never.
25:53Sure not.
25:54So basically, what was a 1000-durham thermostat, which I would love to have, will cost me probably
25:58in the area of about $2,000 to $3,000 minimal to install.
26:01Oh, have you not installed it yet?
26:02I had to take it back.
26:03I mean, literally, it's going to cost me four times the amount.
26:06Oh, you refunded it?
26:07Yeah.
26:08Oh, shame.
26:09No, they were good about it.
26:10They took it right back without any complaints, but really, I would have had to rewire the
26:12house.
26:13You refunded a Christmas present, though?
26:14Yes.
26:15I mean, okay.
26:16Okay, my wife was not going to let me sit there and let it go to rot.
26:19It was a 1000-durham.
26:20What else are you going to do with it?
26:21I mean, if-
26:22Re-gift.
26:23Yeah, I'm not re-gifting it.
26:24No, that's his present.
26:26He needs to get another one.
26:27No, no.
26:28When I get a new apartment or a better place, we'll upgrade then, but I mean, if you're
26:32looking to go out and look for smart home stuff, people are going to have to deal with
26:35the fact that maybe their homes aren't up to the code necessary to get this new stuff
26:39in there.
26:40I mean, if you want, what is the home security device?
26:42The Ring?
26:43Yeah.
26:44Which is very cool.
26:45Someone comes up, rings your doorbell, and all of a sudden, you get a notification on
26:47your phone with a live feed, and you can see exactly who it is.
26:49Yeah.
26:50Or you can look in the peephole.
26:51What if you're not home?
26:52Yeah.
26:53What if you've never made a product to your house, and you're not there?
26:56What if you have, you know, one of your family members comes over, and you're, you know,
27:00in the bathroom, you know, or something, which you can't rush out, you hit a button, open
27:04the door, they can come on in.
27:05There are practical applications.
27:06Or if you're old, and getting up is an effort, then you can see who's at the door and decide
27:11whether it's worth getting up for.
27:12Can you communicate with Ring?
27:14Can you talk-
27:15Yes, there is.
27:16There is.
27:17Is there like an intercom sort of system?
27:18Yeah.
27:19So you can say to them, like, hi, who is this?
27:20And they can say, I'm from Jehovah's Witness, and you can tell them to piss off.
27:22Yeah.
27:23Basically.
27:24But the problem is with this thing, though, is most people here in Dubai who have apartments
27:29are not going to pay to have this stuff installed, because it means not only installing something
27:33in your door, it means actually having to change your locks, which your landlord may
27:36not approve of.
27:37So there's all kinds of implications.
27:39So if you're looking at smart home stuff, do your reading first before you get out there.
27:43And even that savvy $7,000 toilet isn't going to be easily installed with your plumbing.
27:47Like, you don't know how-
27:48I think people are just worried about that angle, yeah.
27:50I think if you're spending $7,000 on a toilet, you probably don't care about the installation
27:55cost.
27:56You can pay for the additionals that come along with it.
27:57But I think that's a really important point, actually, about the practical sort of application
28:02of some of this technology, because, I mean, really, it's not just plug and play for everyone.
28:07And I think, you know, we live in a region that, whilst it is very technologically advanced
28:12in many ways, still lags behind in other areas.
28:16So like the classic example, really, being Alexa, not being sort of fully integrated
28:22with the sort of global network.
28:24So she's not launched yet.
28:26She's still not launched here.
28:27So if you buy an Amazon Alexa-
28:28I mean, you can go a bit further backwards than that and just talk about Skype, but that's
28:33not the issue.
28:34But I mean, yeah, but in the sense of like, you know, Skype is a sort of application that
28:38just doesn't work here.
28:40Whereas Alexa is something you can buy, it's hardware, you know, the Amazon Assistant,
28:44you can buy it, but you can't- she'll talk to you, but she just won't be able to sort
28:50of get all of the data and stuff that she would in countries where she's been launched.
28:54That's not entirely true.
28:55I can ask it to do stuff.
28:56I mean, I still have three of them in my home spread around, and I can say things like,
29:00you know, hey, what's the weather today?
29:02And it will give me anything but UAE, because it's not been launched here.
29:06But if I turn around and say, what's the weather in Dubai today, it'll come right up and tell
29:09me everything I want to know.
29:10Right, right, right.
29:12But she just won't be tailored to Dubai.
29:14Right.
29:15Which means I also can't order products on it or a bunch of other services there.
29:19So the full suite of services is not sort of enabled here.
29:22And so, you know, that I would lump that in into the same sort of conversation of, you
29:27know, installing appliances in that, you know, you have to remember that what might be built,
29:33and this is true for the developers as well, the Googles of the world, the Amazons of the
29:36world, they need to also be aware that when they develop products in Silicon Valley or,
29:41you know, in the Pacific Northwest, they have to remember that those products are
29:45going to be used in other parts of the world that aren't necessarily compatible with the
29:49way they're developing it.
29:50So that is something to bear in mind if you're a tech fan here in the Middle East, that,
29:55you know, you might not find that you can start going to the toilet immediately with
29:59your $7,000 toilet.
30:01What a shame.
30:02What a, what a crying shame.
30:04And so that's the home tech side.
30:07And what about health?
30:08I know you're quite into health, Scott.
30:10Well, I liked a number of things I saw out there, but I didn't really see anything this
30:13year which really pushed any boundaries.
30:15A lot of it was focused on ECG type of equipment, which is very similar to what we saw launched
30:20on the Apple Watch, which is nice to see it out there and, you know, people doing more
30:23medical things, but I didn't see anything to move it beyond that.
30:27I've seen a lot of apps out there too that, you know, will help you get this information
30:31and track it.
30:32But let's face it, unless you're a doctor, you're probably not going to be able to read
30:34an ECG chart.
30:36So at the end of the day, I'm not quite sure what, how helpful that's going to be.
30:40On your, on your Apple Watch, when you get your data back from your vital signs or whatever
30:46it's measuring, does it deliver it to you in sort of quite an easy to read way?
30:51Yeah, I have an app I pop open and I can look and see what my heart rate is.
30:54I can see, you know, how it was when I was sleeping.
30:56I don't have it on this one.
30:58But do you know what the normal heart rate is or does it just show you yours?
31:01No, no.
31:02I know enough about medical stuff in the background.
31:05I know what a normal heart rate should be, but I can look at a minor, you know, normal
31:09heart rate.
31:10I think for a man in his 40s is about 90 to 110 or something like that.
31:15Mine's anywhere between 60 and 70.
31:17So I'm right.
31:18You interrupt this for public service.
31:19Yes.
31:20I need too much information about Scott's heart.
31:23But in general, you know, you can look and see it.
31:25You can look it up too.
31:27Most of it's put in a fairly easy way.
31:31But most of this stuff, I don't think people are going to be looking for their heart rate
31:33or their blood pressure.
31:34I think it's more of immediate things like, you know, did I trip and fall?
31:37Will my, you know, will my phone or my watch call emergency services for me?
31:42Apple has that already on its device, which is great, but I don't see anyone moving it
31:45beyond that point.
31:47And Apple is telling you when you're in the healthy range of like how many steps you've
31:51taken in a day.
31:52I mean, it will tell you in quite an easy to understand way, like if you've hit this
31:56bar to the full, then you've done your steps for the day.
31:59They all do that.
32:00Fitbit does that.
32:01Right, right.
32:02So in the context of like delivering that data in a kind of bite size, easy to understand
32:06way, then that's quite useful.
32:09You don't just want a bloody chart or an Excel spreadsheet of numbers that you have no idea
32:13how to read.
32:14No, no.
32:15It breaks it down pretty well.
32:16Yeah.
32:17But like I said, everyone's got their own thing.
32:18I mean, I like the Apple Watch.
32:19My wife likes her Fitbit.
32:20I use Fitbit too for a while.
32:21I thought it was great.
32:22But, you know, I don't see anything out there that's not a reproduction of what's there.
32:26I guess I keep saying this, you know, this year has not been as exciting on the medical
32:31side as I always hoped it was going to be.
32:33I think that's definitely an area that's going to keep on growing.
32:37Perhaps this year is not sort of the best year for it, but it's certainly something
32:41that I think is, if I was to pick a sector to watch in the coming years, I think health
32:45is just going to become ever more important.
32:48I did see some stuff out there that was fairly interesting in terms of environmental impact.
32:53There was one company, and I forget the name of it, which I really wish I had it here because
32:57it's a pretty good thing they did.
32:58They actually developed a water cooler that is basically a dehumidifier.
33:03It sucks the moisture out of the air around it and turns it into drinkable water.
33:06That's cool.
33:07So, you no longer have to worry about plastic bottles or the quality of your drinking water
33:12or anything else.
33:13You could put that in Dubai in like the summer and it would just generate a ton of water.
33:16Yeah, exactly.
33:17So, I mean, stuff like that is pretty good.
33:19I don't know how much electricity that consumes, but I assume that was part of their consideration.
33:23But people are looking to do things that actually, you know, have a relatively positive impact
33:27on people.
33:29What about, I saw some pieces before CES started about, and, you know, we'd be remiss to not
33:35mention it, the border situation or the wall situation currently ongoing at the US-Mexico
33:41border.
33:43I saw some pieces before CES started talking about the situation there and how, you know,
33:50CES was going on in sort of in the shadow of this situation.
33:56Has there been anything actually sort of contextually relevant to that, to that crisis?
34:02I mean, the technology that's going on down there?
34:05The off switch, you can turn off Donald Trump on Twitter, maybe.
34:08No, I haven't seen any technology.
34:10I mean, there's things I'm sure which will probably come out of there.
34:12Drones being used along a border I think is already a pretty, you know, fair phenomenon
34:17now among countries.
34:19But I haven't seen anything in particular which makes me think that anyone at CES is
34:23developing border security.
34:25Because, I mean, CES has a sort of a good image, I would say a kind of good image in
34:31the sense that you get a lot of, as you say, a lot of sort of ethical, environmentally
34:35friendly technology coming out of it.
34:37You have people with kind of good intentions.
34:39It'd be quite interesting to see if someone turned up with sort of the new technology
34:43for a border wall, what the reaction to that would be.
34:46I haven't seen anything out of that.
34:48Most of this stuff is meant for mass consumption.
34:50It's consumed electronics at the end of the day.
34:53So, I mean, unless you can sell it to the average person on the street, most people
34:55don't want it.
34:56And those people don't need their own personal border wall.
34:58I did see that CES got in trouble, though, for giving an award to a company making adult
35:03toys.
35:04And that was then rescinded.
35:05So there's been a bit of controversy there.
35:07But yeah.
35:08Anyway.
35:09Yeah.
35:10That was just more of an image thing and not necessarily a, well, we won't go too much
35:14into that.
35:15Yeah.
35:16And I think on that note, maybe we'll wrap it up.
35:17What about TVs?
35:18Just briefly.
35:19Do you see any TVs?
35:21Because, I mean, TVs, I feel, is the most consumery of the lot.
35:24It is.
35:25And why do I need 8K?
35:26Everyone has a TV.
35:27Right.
35:28I have a TV at home.
35:29This is exactly how I feel about all the other tech.
35:31Why do I need this?
35:32Well, the thing is, most of the time, 4K is pretty high definition.
35:37And we haven't got everything caught up to 4K yet.
35:39There's still plenty out there, which is just high definition.
35:42And so the only reason you really need an 8K TV is so you can get a bigger TV out of
35:46it and maintain that sort of 4K image.
35:49Which, I don't need a 108-inch TV at the moment.
35:53And that's sort of where that goes.
35:54I think it's just a little bit ahead of its time.
35:55I mean, and it's only for the day when TVs get really cheap, much cheaper than they are
36:00now.
36:01And even now today, by all standards, they're cheap.
36:02So cheap.
36:03I can't believe how cheap they are.
36:04Yeah.
36:05You know, like to get, I mean, in the old days, when you had the box TV, to get anything
36:10above sort of like 30 inches or something was thousands of dollars.
36:14Of course, and you'd break your back carrying it.
36:15Break your back carrying it, and you had to have tons of space in the house to even fit
36:18it in the living room.
36:19But I mean, now you can get like a 40-inch flat screen HDTV for, you know, 600 dirhams
36:26or whatever.
36:27I mean, it's so cheap.
36:28It really is.
36:29Which is awesome.
36:30I mean, it's awesome that everyone now can have access to really crystal clear, widescreen
36:34sort of TV.
36:35Yeah, but at the end of the day, you need to get, I don't know, how much can you keep
36:42adding to this?
36:43I mean, computers hit a point a couple of years ago where, you know, for a long time
36:46they kept adding new RAM, new storage, and after a while, people got to the point where
36:50I don't need more RAM.
36:51I don't need more storage.
36:53So they sort of maxed out at around, you know, 16, 32, maybe 64, you know, GB on the RAM
37:01side.
37:02But after a while, I was like, okay, I don't need any more than that.
37:03Resolution on TVs, you get to the point, it's sort of becoming the end of the line.
37:08How much more do we actually need?
37:09And then what comes after that?
37:11All right.
37:12Now, here's the one thing which I didn't see at CES, which I hope we'll see more of in
37:16the years to come.
37:17Where's the 5G stuff?
37:18No BlackBerry 5G this year.
37:19Yeah.
37:20I mean, there's a couple of things coming up, but mainly it's more along the lines of networking.
37:27So get your house set up to receive 5G and do other stuff like this.
37:31Networks that may, you know, mesh networks that may cover your house, you know, to work
37:35with 5G or something along those lines, but I want to see more of that come up over the
37:39next year.
37:40Yeah.
37:41I mean, the story hanging over last year was the deal falling through between, excuse me,
37:47between Huawei, the Chinese consumer technology company and AT&T, I believe.
37:54And there was a proposed merger and it fell through days before CES began.
38:02And Huawei had been planning to announce it at the conference and in the 12 months since
38:06that happened, and of course that deal fell through because of US government concerns
38:10about Chinese technology gaining too great a foothold in the US.
38:15In the 12 months since then, obviously that story has become sort of enormous.
38:20We saw the arrest of one of Huawei's most senior executives, the CFO in Canada.
38:27We've seen obviously heightened trade tensions between US and China and Huawei, you know,
38:32concerns about Huawei and their 5G networks in the UK, in Western Europe, in the US and
38:38Canada.
38:39You know, certainly one of the biggest global 5G players and to let, you know, for everyone
38:44who's listening, 5G is obviously, when you open your phone and you see 4G, 5G is the
38:49upgraded network to that.
38:51And I've seen one of the biggest players, Huawei, really sort of being taken off the
38:55map in a bit.
38:56Yeah, and it's at a bad time too, because 5G right now is really beginning to just enter
39:02the market.
39:03If you don't know what 5G is, Ed just mentioned a few minutes ago, it's a mobile phone technology.
39:06When we had 2G, you could barely even get email across it.
39:103G, you could start getting stuff.
39:114G was great for video and 5G is supposed to really open up your phone to a whole bunch
39:15of new experiences, to stream and get massive amounts of data all at once.
39:20So this is not the time to get kicked out of a particular marketplace if you're looking
39:24to get into network technology.
39:26Yeah, but if you're a government who's got protectionist tendencies, then it's good if
39:30you have local players and you don't want to compete.
39:32US protectionists?
39:33Yeah.
39:34Yeah.
39:35Right.
39:36Can I end the show?
39:37Yes, you can end the show now.
39:38On that bombshell.
39:39Alright, I think we're going to end that, since Sarah's been in the glaze over too.
39:41Yeah.
39:42We're going to talk of technology and 5G.
39:44Alright, you can always find this podcast, as you know, on Twitter, at DermsDollars.
39:50I think we're also going to have this particular video of the podcast on YouTube.
39:56Yeah, it's something we're trying to do every week now, I think.
39:59So just go to YouTube and go to the Golf News page on YouTube, you can find all of these
40:03podcasts and all of our other videos on there.
40:06And we're also on iTunes, and of course you can find me on Twitter, at Scott Shuey.
40:11I'm on Twitter, at Ed Klaus.
40:13And I'm on Twitter, at TheSarahDeer.
40:15Alright everyone, thank you for watching.
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