Engadget Podcast: Kill the Rabbit (R1)
Enough with the AI gadgets, already!
The Rabbit R1 is finally here, and it's yet another useless AI gadget. Sure, at $199 with no monthly fee, it's a lot cheaper than the $699 Humane AI Pin. But the R1 is slow, hard to use, and doesn't actually do much. The much-promised "Large Action Model" mostly powers things you can easily do on your phone. In this episode, Devindra and Engadget's Sam Rutherford chat with CNET's Lisa Eadicicco about the Rabbit R1 and whether AI devices are necessary at all. Just like cameras, the best AI device is the one you always have with you: your smartphone.
Listen below or subscribe on your podcast app of choice. If you've got suggestions or topics you'd like covered on the show, be sure to email us or drop a note in the comments! And be sure to check out our other podcast, Engadget News!
Topics
Rabbit R1 review: appealing design, underwhelming performance – 0:49
Tesla lays off Supercharger development team leaving future of the network unclear – 25:28
FCC fines U.S. wireless carriers $200m for selling customer location data – 30:05
Razer will refund all Zephyr mask purchases over false N95 filtering claims – 32:52
Drake deletes track featuring an AI clone of Tupac Shakur’s voice – 35:16
Working on – 36:23
Pop culture picks – 40:18
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Livestream
Credits
Hosts: Devindra Hardawar and Sam Rutherford
Guest: Lisa Eadicicco from CNET
Producer: Ben Ellman
Music: Dale North and Terrence O'Brien
Transcript
Devindra H.
What's up, Internet? And welcome back to the Gadget podcast. I'm senior editor, Devindra Hardawar. Joining me today is senior writer Sam Rutherford. Hey, Sam.
Sam R.
Hey. How you doing?
Devindra H.
Doing. OK. And we will be talking about the rabbit R1 and the the, I don't know, the state of AI gadgets at this point or just how terrible they are. So we've got a special guest to join in for that too. As always, folks, if you're enjoying the show, please subscribe to us on iTunes or your podcast of choice. Leave us a review on iTunes, drop us an e-mail at podcastengadget.com. We also are doing live streams of this recording, typically Thursday mornings around 10:30 AM Eastern today. We're actually doing a little earlier, so you know, stay tuned to our social channels for that stuff too. I'm at vendor on Twitter. I usually announce it there. But yeah, join us. It's a good time. We've got a good group of folks watching us make the show. So let's talk about the rabbit R1 and joining us do that. Is senior editor at CNET, Lisa Eadicicco. Hey, Lisa.
Lisa E.
Hey, thanks for having me today.
Devindra H.
Happy to have you on and. I wanted another voice of somebody who has fully experienced the rabbit and I don't know the horrors or the frustrations around this thing, so I will. I will let you have the first word. Can you describe what the rabbit are? One is Lisa, and your overall thoughts.
Lisa E.
Yeah, absolutely. And that's always the first question I get when I talk about the rabbit or one is, what is this thing?
Devindra H.
The hell. Yeah.
Lisa E.
Yeah, I have it right here. Actually. It's basically just this tiny orange box that you speak into to, you know, ask it for the weather. You can ask it, or you're supposed to be able to ask it to order an Uber I have. Not been able to successfully do that yet.
Devindra H.
Hmm has not worked, yeah.
Lisa E.
Door dash. It's basically like having a Voice Assistant in your pocket. The the idea I think is really intriguing. I think when this thing was first announced at CES, it kind of captured everyone's imagination a little bit. You know, the idea of this operating system that can somehow tie together, you know, all of your accounts and services without needing to open any apps and just get things done for you. Sounds great. But I think what we're seeing here that a lot of people will agree is just like a very early product that doesn't seem finished yet to, to put it kindly. And it's funny that you mentioned it's going to say it's funny that you mentioned frustrations. I I just had a video go up yesterday. It's not a video review, but it's kind of like kind of like a behind the scenes of like how I tested this thing. It's like I.
Speaker
This.
Devindra H.
Doesn't seem finished, yeah.
Lisa E.
Took it out for a day of sightseeing to see like how it could help me and things like that and. There are times where I just look like visibly frustrated and I just love it. It's such like a raw reaction of what it's like to actually use this thing, whereas a lot of my reviews and videos are a little bit more scripted and less like off the cuff, but yeah.
Devindra H.
Yeah, I mean I I can feel that too. And also like when we review things like when you're reviewing laptops or another smartphones like, Oh yeah, I know what this is. I've seen this before. I kind of know the deal here. I will say straight up I I did not like this thing at all. It doesn't seem like fully baked. It doesn't even seem like they put it in the oven. I'll put it that way. Like this is a cool. The looking device, because it was designed by the folks at teenage engineer. And they make synthesizers and all sorts of cool stuff. I have a PC case from them that is just like kind of cool looking, but it has a cool look and that's kind of it. And it kind of is reminiscent of the play date, which we've talked about, which teenage engineering also designed similarly square. It's thicker than the playdate uses, not as good materials. I'd say the plastic. Feels chunkier and cheaper. It feels like a kids toy more than the play date does, cause that one actually has metal and premium feeling stuff. But yeah, this is supposed to be a smart virtual, you know, AI assistant, and at every step of the way I just found it to be incredibly dumb, like absolutely dumb and frustrating. The idea is that, yeah, you can talk to it and just order an Uber to you without specifying exact locations and, you know, hope that the driver actually comes to you cause you don't get much feedback from this tiny screen. The Uber service didn't work at all, but the thing that killed it for me is that I was able to order two sandwiches over DoorDash, and when I asked it to order some food, it gave me 3 random local restaurants, like, not even like necessarily high quality ones. When I tapped into the restaurant, it only gave me 6 menu items. I couldn't customize them. I couldn't do like just remove the cheese or something. All you could do is add menu items to the shop. Cart order it this process, by the way, takes several minutes because it takes rapidos forever to load anything. I hit a button and it ordered it never confirmed payment, never confirmed delivery address or anything. Right? It was working all entirely off of my door dash defaults and I just kind of hoped and prayed that food showed up. And that that to me does not seem like a good computer interaction, right? Like as soon as I place that order, my phone started lighting up because the door Dash app which is helpful and works on the phone was like hey, order confirmed. This is your driver. Here's the location of the map. They're coming towards you. Like all this useful. Information when I'm hungry and I'm worried that my food is not coming to me, the rabbit R1 occasionally will give you like updates like hey, so they're coming. I don't know. No, no, no updates beyond that, but there's no like interface because this thing has a tiny screen and only talks to you like that's it. So.
Lisa E.
You also can't ask it for order status. I tried to do that too, and I used DoorDash and I was like this. Seems like it'd be a really useful thing for a Voice Assistant to be able.
Devindra H.
Yes.
Lisa E.
To do to be able to say, hey, how's my order doing and?
Devindra H.
Yeah.
Lisa E.
Yeah, that didn't work, but I agree it's it's very odd that they only have a few menu items and they seem to be randomly selected. I don't know. Like I ordered sushi through DoorDash, and my choices were like this big sashimi platter for two. That was like 30 bucks, which I did not want to order. And then, like, a spicy tuna roll. So I was like, OK, I guess I'll get a couple of.
Devindra H.
Uh-huh.
Lisa E.
Icy tuna rolls.
Devindra H.
Gets them to the rules. Yeah, that. But that was the only thing that actually worked about this thing. Because beyond that, the rapid R1 is just it. It's kind of a dumb AI thing, right? You can ask it the questions. You can ask Microsoft Copilot and chat. CPT and the Google bar. Everything you can ask it simple questions. It can do some translation, but the other stuff this is just kind of dumb like it you can talk to it and have it create a mid journey picture for you. If you have a paid mid journey account. OK, what am I gonna do with this? I get 4 pictures from you. Could do that. You could do everything you could do.
Lisa E.
Did you do that on your phone though too? I mean, just gonna ask them and I to create. An image for you.
Devindra H.
Everything this thing does on your phone.
Sam R.
That's the real rub of the problem is that everything you could do with the rabbit, you can do better.
Devindra H.
On your phone. Faster, better without paying an extra $200. By the way, this thing is $200 doesn't have any monthly fees, but you can add a SIM card to it for like. Always on connectivity. But then you're just paying for it to be like always on and useless. Like that's that's the ultimate thing. So Sam, you've seen a lot of this stuff around the rabbit and around the humane AI pin. What are your thoughts at this?
Speaker
Yeah.
Sam R.
Point. So my thoughts and I've kind of like working on like a rant in the background about this, but to me both the rabbit are one and the humane eye. AI pin they're closer to virtual boy than something like the Oculus Rift, right? The virtual boy was. An interesting idea, and like you know it, it like tapped on like it it it did 3D it sort of did VR but not in a way that anyone really wanted and so.
Devindra H.
It's in 3D, yeah. It gave you headaches and you would see red for a long time after using that, yeah.
Sam R.
Yeah, and. And so like, it just seems like these are just like the way, way too early versions of AI based devices and you can kind of see like. Especially the R1 is like you know, there are some OK ideas or interesting ideas like, you know, the large action model where like, hey, theoretically I tell my my device and do stuff and it does stuff regardless of app or just you know, I can just give it directions. But you know, this is sort of what, you know, Google Assistant has been trying to do for a long time and others. And so it's not. Necessarily a novel idea, but you know there is something there, but it's just like both you were saying. It's just like, so half baked at. Point and I think like the big issue is that like you talk about these devices, they're using old smartphone chips like not even like recent trips at all. So they're very underpowered. And then on top of that, smartphones have just gotten to the point where they have like NPU's that are worth anything. So like, you know it being able to handle any sort of like AI machine learning. Tasks and so obviously these things are wildly underpowered and it's like you look at like the, you know, the pieces that are going into this thing. It's like, of course, they're just. Don't deliver on what you want or expect, but I think you know they're trying to plant a flag because it's like, hey, if we can come up with an engaging idea and get people to care about us, or at least know our name, maybe our second attempt will like, be good sometime down the line. That's that's. That's the big ask because it's like.
Devindra H.
Yeah.
Sam R.
When you come out with something that's this bad, you're just kind of ruining your reputation at the same time.
Devindra H.
And the reputation of like the the category too, right? Like the humane AI PIN complete disaster, even more expensive and required a monthly fee. This. Yeah.
Sam R.
Right. And and and then that actually ties back perfect to my virtual boy analogy because the virtual boy came out and like, what the late? 90S and it was so bad that no one tried to do VR again for like a decade, and then it wasn't until what, 20? Yeah, 2016 where, you know, we had the Oculus Rift and the HTC, HTC Vive and then like, Ohh it's been long enough that like, people forgot about how bad the virtual was and they were willing to give these new headsets. A chance and and he even knows. Like, as good as they were. Or, you know, VR still not like, fully hitting the mainstream. And like, you know, some people might have a quest at home or whatever. But like, you know, it's not. It's not the same saturation level as smartphones, laptops, whatever.
Devindra H.
What's funny is that Nintendo also tried 3D again with 3DS right in the late 2000s, and like also kind of a rough launch, like so rough that they have to immediately lower the price and give like gifts to the people who bought it early, because the 3D just didn't work so well. But yeah, lots of learning, even Nintendo like, it needs that learning. Time. I think the ultimate thing I just wanna say here about this thing is that I don't. What the hell is? This thing for. It's not a phone replacement because it can't take calls. It can't do text messages. It's not a great phone companion because it's harder and slower to use than anything you can do on your phone.
Lisa E.
It's also not connected to your phone, so it's not really a phone companion. It's a stand alone. Device I had. It to hotspot it to my phone because I. Didn't want to buy? Another SIM card for it but.
Devindra H.
Yeah, same same I was hotspotting to to like get it to work elsewhere. I guess it's sort of a companion because, like, if DoorDash is on your phone, then you will get the alerts, like, as DoorDash, the service is doing stuff on the. On the this thing on the rabbit R1. But. The point of it, it's just like the the battery life is terrible. They recently released an update that made it less terrible, but when I first got this thing, the battery life would run down in like 4 hours while I link while doing absolutely nothing. Now it will run down in maybe 8 to 12 hours while doing absolutely nothing. Still not great for a device like this. Small and. It's not actually doing much, so the point of it just seems entirely like it's entirely missing. I'm wondering, do you guys think there is any? Is there any hope for AI gadgets as a standalone thing, or is this all just something we're gonna be doing on our phones because we're paying a lot of money for phones? We're paying monthly service for phones? It seems like that's where. We would want our AI smarts.
Lisa E.
Yeah, I think so. I mean, it's hard to say right now. I definitely think for now, absolutely this is the kind of technology that you'll see on the phone. I would love to see it on a smart watch because that is something that is. Like you know. Nobody really likes interacting with such a tiny screen, so I feel like there's so much potential for features like this to be on, like the Apple Watch or the Pixel Watch or something like that, and I hope. It. Does but. But yeah, right now I think you know it's funny because before rabbit AI and before the humane AI pen like one of my first thoughts is generative AI became more popular. Was like, I wonder how this is going to impact phones because that's my big beat here at CNET is mobile devices, so I was wondering, are phones going to change in any way? Are they are their designs going to change? Are there going to be new types of hardware that come out? And I didn't think that would be the case because the smartphone, as Sam said, is already so pervasive that we don't really. Have a need for anything else. So it is interesting to see this kind of stuff, but honestly, it's it's going to be hard to get it to progress faster if a lot of people aren't using it. So I think that's the other thing too. And I think that's probably why they shipped this so early, so that their models can also learn from more people besides just their employees using it. So. But yeah, I'm I'm pretty skeptical right now about there being a need for AI hardware. And yeah, I mean this thing I I think you hit the nail on the head where the biggest issue with it is that it doesn't really do anything better than your phone right now and that there isn't a clear need for it. And I think that's why I reviewed it the way that I did. Like, yes, there are other issues and other bugs. With the battery drain issue that you mentioned was really, really bad. It was. I'm not gonna lie, it was hard for me to even film my video when I was, you know, making a video about this thing because we we actually have to stop at the office, like by lunch time to, like, charge it up again because I didn't have a battery pack on me. So it was.
Devindra H.
Oh man.
Lisa E.
It was tough. But I knew that was something that they were going to fix, but that's not my that's not the big picture problem with this device. So I still, you know, I know they just put out an update, but I still feel confident in my overall assessment of this is that it's more about fundamentally what it can and can't do is like the big issue here. There are moments when I enjoyed it. But like I loved just using the camera to like point this at something and ask a question, you can do that on your phone, but I would argue that most people probably aren't.
Devindra H.
It's more like a visibility, you know, awareness of certain types of features, right? Because yeah, you can do computer vision stuff. You can point chat CPT or copilot, or even like the Google lens stuff where you know add objects have it describe things. And this does that. It has a cool camera that can rotate backwards or towards you and. OK, fine. I guess I'm just like, so flabbergasted. How, like, how undercooked this entire project is. It reminds me of when, like, maybe 10 years ago, 10 or 15 years ago, when, like, there were more hardware startups and people were just trying to do crazy things. And it kind of felt like companies were just, like, gathering VC money because, like, hey, we got this crazy buzzword pitch. Of our product, give us give us millions of dollars and I believe rabbit has gotten quite a bit of VC funding in addition to like the pre-order money and stuff that they've gotten for this stuff so. They have the buzzword of AI that they're kind of writing, and the idea that they showed off is that the large action model is something you could eventually train. You could show it how to use an app, and maybe you could eventually command the rabbit or one to do that, but I have no faith that this product will ever be updated to actually do that, or even if they do it, it won't work well because nothing works well.
Sam R.
Right there, there, there's that teaching mode that is supposed to, like, teach it how to use other apps so that like it can do, you know, more than just DoorDash.
Devindra H.
Right now.
Sam R.
And but like pretty much everything on that device, it's not really available yet. And there's no like real timeline of like when it will be, you know instituted so.
Devindra H.
They they have like a vague timeline on the website of features like coming down the line and training is like one I asked rabbit like hey so when can we expect this? And they're like, hey, we have it, we have. This is like our this is all we're saying right now, right? They're not giving actual time frame. So it could be the end of the year, it could be later. I don't know if this company will even be around in a year or two because of how like disastrous this entire thing. A couple of things I want to point out. There were stories going around that the R1 itself is basically an underpowered phone that's running an Android app. Rabbit has denied claims that it's like interface is an Android app, but. There's an APK going around there. It looks like the same thing. It could be it's just using like a similar Linux base that allows it to also run on some Android phones. But again, even that that like previous point like. Yes, it's running on a stripped down version of hardware that people already carrying. Why should people buy anything else? I'll also point out we've seen stories where Apple we know Apple is working on further AI integration into iOS. The upcoming version. We've seen the stories that they were talking with Google and talking with open AI about that sort of integration, I'm sure. More. Yeah, is coming to Android because like Google is all on at this point. So yeah, I think we're just gonna see these things highlighted more in our operating systems. That's essentially what copilot is in Windows 2, right. Just like, hey, AI is front and center. It's not like hidden behind a whole bunch of stuff. Yeah. Do you guys have any thoughts, further thoughts about like could I actually be useful for us in mobile in desktop downline or I'm a little like I don't, I don't know how many of these things will actually be useful, but things like transcription are actually helping my life now, so that's something.
Lisa E.
Yeah, I think it will be hard to get like out of the habits that we're already so used to. So there's, I don't know if you guys are familiar, but there's also a company called Brain A. Why they're at Mobile World Congress and I think they have the most compelling implementation yet of like AI on a device because they are putting it on a phone and instead of just not having apps be part of the equation entirely, they kind of generate this interface on top of your phone that can. That sounds kind of similar. To what rabbit is trying to do. So if you want to buy something on Amazon, you could say find me a tennis racket. It'll pull up a tennis racket and you can press and hold it and say show me a video review of it and like this idea of just being able to issue these commands to jump between different apps instead of closing the app and maybe copy and pasting that URL into YouTube and searching for the video, that kind of a thing I think is is really promising. But again, that's something that lives on a phone. And it's not. Replacing apps, it's just kind of making it easier to jump between the two. I think that is going to be the most useful and compelling thing, and I think you know the big smartphone makers already kind of know that, especially Google for one, I think circle to search is kind of a step towards that direction. But yeah, I also think that it's going to take a really long time to get there. I don't think this is something that's going to happen. And. I think I don't know Android 16 or something. I don't think we're going to see this big reimagining of what like the smartphone operating system is, but I think it will change slowly.
Sam R.
Over time. So one thing that I just thought of just now is like, I can't believe I'm going to mention Bixby, but like, even saw we even saw this years ago when Samsung introduced Bixby, and they're like, hey, you can give it complex commands or you can say.
Devindra H.
Oh my God.
Sam R.
You know, hey, Bixby, uh, post the photo that I just took to Instagram. And so it would take something from your photo roll and post it to Instagram, which is like kind of like a, you know, semi complex instruction set. And it would do that. You know, it wasn't 100%, but it was like, you know, maybe 75% of the time. And so that's kind of interesting. And but like both of you were saying, it's super annoying because almost everybody's phone has better hardware than the rabbit. And so the idea of, like, even if it is an app and it, you know, there's, I can see some like, you know, logic against that, like, you know, the large action model is like a proprietary thing that they're developing. And then it just happens to be like, you know, that's how you access it. Through, you know the rabbit you know built on. Android and OK fine. But like you know you you got to do more. But I did have one question for both of you. And so like looking at these devices, the AI pen suffered from a lot of similar challenges. But when I'm, like, reviewing stuff, I always like try to look for like hey, is there like 1 redeemable quality of like the the device like hey, I want to see more of that and so like. For me, with the AI pin, I kind of like the idea of like the laser projector as like. Hey, you don't want to wear smart glasses, but you can have a pen and the projected display in your hand, so you have like, you know, a sort of like heads up display ish thing, but without having to look like, you know, a Google Glass nerd or whatever is. Is there something on the like rabbit R1 that you think is like, redeemable? Is it the design? Is it like, you know? Whatever you.
Devindra H.
Know I mean personally like it looks kind of cool, but like teenage engineering can sell me, you know, a garden hose or something. They they put their design talents on something like I will be like, but it's really compelling and minimalist and.
Speaker
Sure.
Devindra H.
Cool looking. I think the main design thing they're selling here is like the rotating the scroll wheel and I hate the scroll wheel. I hate it so much because it's the only way you can interact with the interface even though the screen is a touch screen and then it turns into a touch screen if you have to type in text. And I can't honestly think of like a single redeeming thing other than it looks. Pretty cool, but that's not on rabbit. That's on teenage engineering, you know.
Sam R.
And you have to be really in love with that shade of orange, cause there's no other. Color options. Yeah, you won't.
Lisa E.
It's very orange.
Devindra H.
Lose it? Mm-hmm.
Lisa E.
Yeah. I think for me, so I actually do have like something nice to say about it. It doesn't make up for all the shortcomings, of course, but I do think it was pretty good at understanding my intention when I would ask it something like even if it couldn't answer the question, it would acknowledge what I asked and why and it would tell me why it couldn't answer that question. Sometimes versus. Like you know, with Siri or something you might get, I can't help with that or I don't know how to help with that right now. Like, I don't feel like I really got that unless I was like, maybe trying to use Uber. And I couldn't really figure out why that wasn't working. But if I were to ask it a question, like I pointed the camera at something I was eating for lunch and tried to ask it how many calories was in a. Was in a meal like this and it, you know, identified what was in the dish. But it also said that it couldn't tell me the calorie information because it doesn't know much about the portion size or, you know, other ingredients in it. So I thought that was really interesting that it could. Understand me pretty well, but again, that's, you know, still not enough to make up for all the other. Shortcomings. Yeah, but it's like a yeah.
Sam R.
It's like a nice change because it's like like like you were saying. It's like a lot of times when you're, like, talking to a I it doesn't feel like you're on the same page. So just just to feel like it's like, ohh, it kind of like. Understands me a little bit is, you know, it's a kind of nice.
Lisa E.
Development. I guess the other thing about the rabbit are one that I thought was really kind of hindered the experience was the fact that once it answers something for you, there's no way to find that answer again. Like when I was I I thought, you know, sightseeing was a great example because you're asking it for things.
Devindra H.
Yeah.
Lisa E.
You're you're asking it to identify things, and when I would ask it for ideas of things to do in the neighborhood or whatever it gives me this really long winded answer that sometimes was actually quite good. Like, you know, the recommendations were. Bad. But then I couldn't find those answers again, and one time I asked, I think I was asking it to build me like a vacation itinerary or something, and it gave me some points of interest and I was like, can you send that to my e-mail or can you save that to my journal and? It told me no and.
Devindra H.
No, that would be useful.
Lisa E.
It told me to write it. Down it literally said you could just. Jot it down, which I thought was kind of funny.
Devindra H.
You can just write it the do you have a? Pen and paper. Your job. That's.
Sam R.
It's like it's like right?
Devindra H.
Your job AI it is a very good device to telling you what it can't do. Like. Yeah, I got the alert too, with Uber and DoorDash. Like it's maybe kind of slow on rabbit W like it literally says that may or may not work depending on where on where you are. Good to know that Uber didn't work for you too, Lisa, because I asked rabbit about this and they're like it depends on what the partners allow. It depends on what Uber allows them to get access to. So if any of these companies are like, I don't want this stupid AI company to be like.
Lisa E.
Yeah.
Speaker
Same.
Devindra H.
Doing weird stuff with their AI stuff, they can just block access to it entirely, and I don't. I haven't seen anybody use the Uber thing at this point, so maybe it's just entirely.
Lisa E.
There, there's also some like tinkering that needs to happen sometimes because I couldn't get DoorDash to work at first either, and I was wondering why, and I realized I don't know if This is why, but this did work for me. I noticed that Apple Pay was my default payment method on DoorDash and it would make sense that it wouldn't work through the R1 because you can't. You need to authenticate it through your phone, so that's probably why it didn't work, but.
Devindra H.
But of course it wouldn't tell you. It wouldn't be like, hey, I'm having a payment issue. Can you please confirm you have a credit card or something like that? No more devices like this. I don't like. Please, if you're gonna. If you're gonna throw us things to review, please have them be done. That's all I.
Lisa E.
Once. Yeah, no it. Tell me that.
Sam R.
Ask. I think I got bad news for you because this is not the last time we're going to see anything like this.
Devindra H.
I'm sure, but I I hope the like viscerally negative reaction to the humane AI pin and I'm assuming. This one it's going to be a sign, maybe a warning to some companies that are going to try to attempt. This so we'll see.
Lisa E.
Or maybe not. Maybe they don't care and they like because both of these devices, even though it's bad attention, they still got a lot of attention. So I could see, yeah.
Devindra H.
Yeah. They get a lot of attention. Yeah, it's more like when will the VC money dry up because that is what is enabling these startups to do their things. I can imagine Samsung and other companies will just, like, keep pouring money at, like, these weird experiments. But a small company like Rabbit, which we had never heard about. But we're doing weird teases before. So yes, I don't know if this will be. Thing again. And I, yeah, I don't know if that's necessarily a good thing or bad thing, but I think VC is spending a lot of money on AI hype. That test has stopped at some point, you know. So anyway, Lisa, where can people find you online these days?
Lisa E.
Yeah, absolutely. So you can find me on XI almost on Twitter at Lisa Ataca. Yeah. Yeah. You could find me on Twitter at Lisa at a Chico. I'm also on threads at Lisa at a Chico. And of course, you can find my work on CNET.
Devindra H.
You could say Twitter, we all say Twitter, it's fine. Awesome. Thank you so much. And check out Lisa's review. My review will be going up soon too.
Lisa E.
Of course. Thank you. Guys so much for having me.
Devindra H.
Let's move on to some other news and I think some of the biggest news this week that I've been seeing is that uh Elon Musk is on a tear. He's apparently on a terror at Tesla, where it seems like he has fired everybody working on the Supercharger project. So that is the EV charging, the whole setup for that thing. Impacts the executive leaders 500 staffers. I find this kind of baffling because isn't Tesla getting a lot of money to spread the Supercharger network isn't like that a linchpin of other companies working together with the Supercharger network. Sam, like you, have been looking at the car stuff. Do you have any sense of what's happening here?
Sam R.
Uh, it's. It is pretty baffling and like it's just super annoying because, you know, most of the car makers have switched over to NCS, which is was a Tesla developed connector, although now you know it's available for. Everybody and it's so it's like really, just like what's the biggest issue that everyone talks about EV's. It's like, don't have enough chargers or the Chargers are slow or a lot of times they growth and don't work or, yeah, unreliable. And so it's just like, super annoying be like.
Devindra H.
Run reliable, yeah.
Sam R.
You finally, you know, convince everyone to adopt the same connector. There is a big network, but it's gonna be a lot. It's gonna need to be a lot bigger for more people to, you know, really want to adopt EV. And it's just like the timing is just like really just not great.
Devindra H.
Do you think it's like, I mean, we know we know Musk is a capricious guy who like, will just like, make decisions like on a on a whim. Is this like a weird response, like an anti Biden response like he has also been like working with the cabal of people against the current government, apparently. Like there. There's like a whole he's becoming more and more right wing.
Sam R.
Yeah.
Devindra H.
So I wonder if that's part of it.
Sam R.
It could be my. My theory is that. You know, Tesla stock is not doing well. You know, they had a really, you know, disappointing sales in Q1. And I think you know they did. They've recently done a bunch of layoffs and I think this is Elon's just like you know, revenue doesn't look good. We're going to ask some ton of people and. In this case, unfortunately, acting an entire department gets some payroll off the books and but it it it, it just feels really ham fisted. Now we should probably mention that, like uh, someone on Twitter asked Elon about this and he said, uh, the Supercharger network will still grow. But quote, just at a slower pace for new locations and more focus on 100% uptime and expansion of existing locations. So there is a little bit of like, OK, I get it like one of the one of the big issues is that. With a lot of like, you know, Ford and other companies using the Tesla supercharging network. The cables on superchargers are not long enough to accommodate, like all the different charging port locations on these various models. So they there's a lot of work to be done about that in terms of, like, hey, getting a cord that's long enough, that's not broken. Uh, so that and can accommodate more than just Tesla specific vehicles. So there.
Devindra H.
But how is he gonna do? How are they gonna do that without the vast majority of the Supercharger team? That's where I'm a little.
Sam R.
Is a little bit of that. I mean, yeah, that that's the big question. I mean, who knows? It's like, you know, is it simple? As like hey. You know, we assign some contractor to go and, you know, swap swap out of cable. Who knows? But yeah, so there is a little bit of positivity, but it's still overall kind of a baffling decision.
Devindra H.
We did also recently talk about a judge recently rejected Musk's proposal for pay package right the $55.8 billion pay package from Tesla. The the judge called that an unfathomable, unfathomable sum of money. Me, I almost wonder if he's like, OK, well, we're gonna cut costs, and I'm gonna. I'm gonna get money out of this company somehow at some point. So maybe just.
Sam R.
Like trying to trying to pinch a few a few pennies to make sure that his like options payout is bigger just you know not not the greatest optics, especially in the in the wake of.
Devindra H.
By saving jobs. Layoffs was there. Did they open source something? Sam? Was it the connector or the Supercharger setup? Yeah.
Sam R.
Yeah, the the NCS was was a Tesla patent, but now it is available for, you know, open.
Devindra H.
But that's just the plug that is just like the interface, right? Not the whole. Yeah, not the.
Sam R.
Yeah. Connector.
Devindra H.
One other thing I do want to point out. Several people have reported that, you know, Tesla took in $17 million in EV charging grants to essentially support the Supercharger network. So this is, yeah, kind of kind of stinks. Another Elon Musk special, I guess in other news, we saw that the FCC is finding America's largest wireless carriers. $200 million for selling customer location data. This is like location information being sold to aggregators. This affects AT&T, Verizon, Sprint and T-Mobile together, remember. Sprint. OK, I remember when this story initially broke and this seems like OK, this is genuine. This is like a genuine payment. It's not just like a slap on the wrist. Fine, $200 million in total across all these carriers. That's something. And maybe we'll hopefully prevent them from doing something like this again. Right, Sam?
Sam R.
The whole problem of like, you know, data breaches and stuff like that, it just becomes such a pervasive thing. It feels like there's a new breach happening every day and it's like at some point you have to make you have to hold these companies accountable for, you know, leveraging, you know, holding people's information and then not protecting it in a way that. And so like you. Know I think some of the companies.
Devindra H.
And actively, actively selling it, like actively profiting from it. When people didn't realize, yeah.
Sam R.
Absolutely and and and so like, I know I know in terms of like the data breaches like T-Mobile has like you know giving people like subscriptions to some like the watchdog services, which is nice, but like and this is it's just becoming a wide growing problem. I think GM ran into this where they were selling data on. The driving history of what of owners, and it's just like.
Devindra H.
Yeah, yeah.
Sam R.
At some point, we're gonna need some sort of regulation to step in and be like, hey, this is not OK because until they do that, companies are going to say, hey, I can make a quick buck. And even if things go wrong, it's, you know, they're not responsible for any of the damages.
Devindra H.
And companies are doing this across the board like we've we've seen the reports about, you know, advertisements in TV's like that is those are. Companies are making money because you're seeing advertisements in a product you've already bought. You know a product that you probably did not even expect ads in, but that is extra money, extra revenue for all these companies. I think the FCC is finally paying more attention. I think that's the main thing. You know, these the real time location data is selling that became. They knew about that in 2018, so like this is all kind of a response to that thing. T-Mobile is facing the biggest fine $80 million because Sprint was also fined $12 million. AT&T said the decision lacked both legal and factual merits, and the decision quote perversely punishes the companies for supporting life saving location services. I think you can support life saving location services without without selling people's data. I think that's a pretty basic thing.
Sam R.
Right. That that's kind of like throwing the baby out with the bathwater, so. Situation. It's like there are good legitimate uses of this, but you don't have to profit on every single, you know, item of point of data.
Devindra H.
Anyway, another fun thing Razor announced it's gonna be refunding Zephyr mask, the costs to buyers because remember, they claimed this thing. This was the light up mask. They claimed it was an N 95. Ask. This is part of a more than $1.1 million settlement with the FTC because the FTC like looked at everything Razor was saying and they said no, that's not actually true. I remember we covered some of the Sam and we were like this is a cool looking mask. I would buy this actively powered mask, yeah.
Sam R.
Yeah, I I have one. I I, I stupidly put it on like I think last year when the the the wildfires like made the whole sky turn orange in like the Northeast and and so even when it was out there was like some very fine like semantic arguing about like it's. In 95 like capabilities. And it seems that Razor probably aired even try too strongly on even mentioning A-95 capabilities at all. And so that's, you know what they really getting trouble for and you know it it kind of makes sense because razor not exactly known for making like medical like PPE type devices and so like you. You gotta be careful about that stuff, and I mean, hopefully they learn their lesson.
Devindra H.
I mean, hopefully all these companies are razor is one of those companies that is like, loudly good at spouting like marketing claims, right and. Like that, that moment of the pandemic too, was like when I think a lot of people were thinking like I could make money selling masks, right? We could sell masks, yeah.
Sam R.
And it was kind of crazy how fast they turned this thing around, because, like, you know, this thing had RGB built in. It, had some fans built in, and they were talking about like, you know, they they were gonna make a a future version with, like voice amplification and like some other features. And it's just like, OK, you know, it'd be interesting to see, like, yeah.
Speaker
It looks.
Devindra H.
Cool, yeah. Yes. So we could all sound like RoboCop.
Sam R.
See like a tech company take on the idea of like, what if we have to live in a world where you have to wear masks? All the time, but at the same time it's like you have to do the basics right.
Devindra H.
Yeah, yeah, I'm reading from our report here. According to the FTC, razor never submitted the Zephyr mask for testing to the FDA, which certifies things for things like N 95. The company is handing over pretty much all the money it earned. All the money it yeah earned from selling these masks to the FTC and the FTC is going to dole it back out to customers so. OK. We also saw the news. I don't know if you have feelings about this, Sam, but Drake deleted his AI, generated Tupac track after Tupac Shakur to say was like, don't do that. You didn't get permission to use the voice, and this is in amid the whole, like the diss track. Like, back and forth, right between him and Kendrick and everybody else. I don't know if you thought about this, but it is hilarious.
Sam R.
Yeah, I I mean it's. Like. It it's very funny, but at the same time it's like you, you know better because it's like you're taking, you know, one of one of the greats of, like, you know, rap history and using it for, like, a kind of silly purpose without permission, which you knew about. And it's like, OK, probably do that. And then also this is tied into, like, the whole Taylor Swift drama. Situation two somehow, and it's just I don't.
Devindra H.
Know it's. I think we're gonna see more and more of this. So. Yeah, not too surprised, but. Every time I see a a new update from the whole like this track back and forth, I don't I. Don't know what? To think about the the the that aspect of pop culture like so much Taylor Swift stuff is just like far beyond everything I'm thinking about right now. Yeah, it is hard to keep up. Let's move on to what we're working on. Sam. Yeah, what do?
Sam R.
Like. It's like hard to keep up, yeah.
Devindra H.
You want to shout out? Yeah, I got the.
Sam R.
Only in were M16R2.
Devindra H.
Oh, nice, yeah.
Sam R.
And and for review, you know, we saw that back at CES, but now it's finally available. So, you know, want to do a full review on that. I just heard that the MSI claw is coming in. So hopefully we'll check that out in the future.
Devindra H.
OK.
Sam R.
One point that could be a little spicy, but we'll see. And uh, you know, we Engadget we got some like a big kitchen package coming out sometime in the in May. And so I'm testing out the breville in Fizz which is sort of like their version of a soda stream. But there are actually some really cool advantages to this thing.
Devindra H.
The claw. Ohh OK.
Sam R.
Most. Probably it will carbonate pretty much anything. It doesn't like. You know, it doesn't have to be just water. You could carbonate orange juice, lemonade, whatever. So that's kind of cool.
Devindra H.
I'm a breville fanboy, so I am intrigued by that there. There was another company that I saw also made something that you can fizz anything.
Sam R.
Yeah, it's the drink, master. Yeah, but in my opinion the the info is just looks a lot better. The name is not the best, but yeah, it looks better. Very super easy to use. And then I'm also testing out the ninja Creamy because, you know, summer is coming up soon. Everyone. You know what's better than ice cream on a hot day?
Devindra H.
The drink master? Yeah. So yeah. I'll tell you what's better, though. Is shaved ice is shave ice I have. I have a shaved ice maker. Ice. It's like 100 bucks, but. It's great cause the kids, the kids always love it, yes.
Sam R.
Actually, thank you for reminding me cause I'm I need to test out if this thing can do shaved ice.
Devindra H.
Yes, definitely worth the thing. But uh, it's also like when you have kids giving them just essentially crushed ice is so much better than ice cream, which you know is packed with sugar with the crushed ice. It's like you can put a little bit of syrup. You don't have to, like, go heavy on it. I'm also a shave ice fiend. So this is this is my summer already. Like, I'm just, like, devouring this stuff.
Speaker
Right, right, right.
Devindra H.
But yeah, love Breville product. Sam, I love the way they look. I have several in my kitchen right now. So yeah, I'm looking forward to that stuff. I am still in the midst of testing the new surface devices. The rabbit review kind of took priority. I'm trying to do some quick reviews in these things because they don't actually look different. The Surface Pro 10 and the laptop 6 for business, both of them. For business and we're also prepping for the Microsoft build event where we're expecting to see like consumer versions of these services and maybe something very new. I don't know what that will be. Yeah. So that's what I'm dealing with right now, a rounding gadget. Billy Steele has reviewed the Beats Solo 4, gave it a score of 78. And he says it has upgraded audio, extended battery life. A familiar design. These look like the beat solo. How they've always looked. I don't know if you've experienced these, Sam, but like I reviewed the Beats Solo 2. I'm like 2014 and you still look very different.
Sam R.
I I now that like the air pod maxes and like the whole air pods like family has like expand a little bit. I am legitimately not sure why that Beats branding still exists.
Devindra H.
Kinda where is. It's very weird. I mean, I could. I could see it for certain types of things or but apply beats to Apple stuff too. It's because it's from what we've read, there are two separate hardware divisions Beats has it has its own speaker and like headphone makers, and Apple has its own people. And they just, they just never are like really combining their efforts.
Sam R.
Yeah. And. And I'm like, you have to wonder, like, are there enough people who are, like beats, like brand loyalty, where like continuing to like, you know, have two separate teams make sense? I mean, I guess that's probably a question for Apple, but I feel like there.
Devindra H.
Isn't it is a I mean that that's a rare case, right? Where Apple bought a company like full full on, like paid. But what was it? I forget how many billions, but it was a it. Was a big chunk.
Sam R.
Yeah, doctor. Dre got, like, a big Payoff on that.
Devindra H.
Doctor Dre got a big payoff. We're watching the collapse of Peloton, by the way, we we at some point predicted like Peloton would be a good fit. For Apple, Peloton is collapsing right now as we speak and I could still see I could still see like Apple peeling. We could do something with that hardware and with like the basic infrastructure that they set up, but I don't know if beats is actually working out for them, so maybe that's a point against it. I guess we'll see. Let's move on to our pop culture picks for. The week, Sam, what do you got?
Sam R.
I just finished up. I know this came out a little while back, but I finished up Lupin season three, which is truly excellent. You know, if you if you need a good like, you know, spy, you know, con man caper drama, it's Excel.
Devindra H.
Lovely song, yeah.
Sam R.
One. And then recently I just picked up Kaiju #8 which is an anime. The whole premise is that this guy we live in a, you know, a Japan where Kaiju come and kind of stomp in the cities all the time and the main character is works for the crew that cleans up after the Kaiju remains and then at some point he gets some power. But I don't want to ruin it.
Devindra H.
Yes. Yeah.
Sam R.
Thing, but it's it's really good, uh. Enjoying it so far. It's kind of like an offbeat take on, you know, the superhero kids, you genre, which you know, it's fresh enough where it feels, you know, nice and original and definitely interesting.
Speaker
Ah.
Devindra H.
I will check that out. I want to shout out a movie that's hitting limited release this week and will be available later this month. It's called I saw the TV. So directed by Jane Schonbrun, and they had made a movie called We All went to the World's Fair, I believe showing review that at Sundance a couple or like talked about it a while back. This is a fascinating movie. It is sort of a movie for anybody who grew up in the 90s and was, like, obsessed with Buffy. In shows like that and I totally relate to that experience, but it's also using that as a lens for. Basically, the trans experience in in the 90s and right after of being so obsessed with another world where your body doesn't feel like your own, where you feel like you don't even belong in this space. It is kind of juggling all those things. It is a beautiful movie. It's beautiful. It's dark and twisted and a little maybe a little slow at times. I just found it to be really compelling and really fascinating and certainly as one of those folks, I don't know about you, Sam, but I was like such a Buffy head because. I I did not like where I was living. You know, when I was a teenager. So like to escape and to be somewhere else and to come up with like super fans to meet up with people who were also similarly obsessed. And the 90s were a special time because it's not like you had a ton of content coming, right. If you wanted to see something, somebody basically had to turn you on to it. And then you had to share tapes because. Because reruns weren't really a thing, you can just, like, buy a DVD box that you couldn't stream anything.
Sam R.
It was, it was like the last analog era. Yeah. And so it's like this. This wasn't on my radar. But like I was. I was in 90s kids. So like to see this is like, you know, I'm I'm interested. I'm like, you know, I I feel like we're at the age, like, we're getting nostalgic for those 90s. And like, you know, other directors and creative types are like, hey, they're kind of channeling some of that. So it's like kind of coming around again, which I'm I'm all for.
Devindra H.
I believe, yeah. James Sundrum is is also a 90s kid. Like they live through this as well and. And it is fascinating to see this channel. I have never seen like the singular, the way we used to get obsessed about TV shows, just really distilled in a way that also feels very true and feels very real. It's just like a touchstone of my life. Like, I was so into these shows, like in high school and in college. Those were my friends. Right. Those were the people I hang out with, and it's such a big thing. It's it's sort of weird. Like, yeah, you can get obsessed with shows right now. No, but there's so much going on, right, like when Buffy was the thing when all these shows where things like. No, you get really into these shows because it's not like you have too much other genre stuff to dive into. Yeah.
Sam R.
The the amount of choice was so limited that like you find one thing is like that is your thing, because there's nothing.
Devindra H.
Else, I freaking love this movie. When you get a chance to see it, I think totally worth it. Starring Justin Smith, by the way, who has been in who's in the Detective Pikachu movie like he's been in all sorts of stuff, but I think this is a towering performance from him. He was in Jurassic World. Falling Kingdom, right. He's been and dungeons. Dragons I've also left him in like all the stuff they've been in so.
Sam R.
I thought he was great.
Devindra H.
So good. Underrated like one of the best movies of last year, but yeah, that's it. Check out. I saw the TV glow and. Yeah, check out Jane showing from other film, which I believe you can get on demand, right. Now. All right. That's it for the episode, folks. Our theme music is by game, keep Poser Dale N our outro music is by our former managing editor Terence O'Brien. The podcast is produced by Ben Nell. You can find Sam online at at Sam Rutherford and you can find me online at at Davindra on Twitter. Masses on blue sky all over the place. I'm on threads but don't hit me up at threats. Please and yeah, hopefully Sherwin will be back next week too. She just needed a break this week. We're all so busy. e-mail us@podcastengadget.com leave us a review on iTunes and subscribing anything that gets podcast.
Sam R.
7.
Devindra H.
Including Spotify.
