Tongue-zapping spoons, tea-cooling catbots, lazy vacuums and more from CES As the gadget-filled spectacle that CES draws to a close, there's much to anticipate and just as much that leaves us completely baffled. We've already talked about the worst finds in the repairability and sustainability categories in our the worst of CES 2025. Now we turn an eye toward all the weird stuff that occupies the …
Working on unneeded products is a symptom of a bigger problem in resource reallocation. Often innovation stops within one specific company, but employees are kept for unrelated reasons.
Most people hate changes, or getting fired. An "ideal" job is forever and without much effort, because "experience". But this has enormous cost for the economy. Socialist governments tend to indirectly support such inefficiencies.
A surprising outcome of AI will be much faster adaptation to new jobs. Because fewer things are to remember, when AI can assist with necessary information. It reminds me when I first saw how ingeniously a friend was using Internet Search when assembling a new PC to figure out what was missing and downloaded missing drivers - I had no idea the Internet can be used for such things.
One huge regulatory step would be to mandate employers to reply to applicants promptly and always, especially when rejected. Maybe even force them to employ based on first-come, first-employed, unless completely incompetent. So that people do not waste time searching and waiting. If only governments were smart enough to address this issue.
But what truly is 'inefficiency'? If you're really objective about a lot of modern work, looking at it from the perspective of what's actually useful compared to what just makes money, then a lot of modern economic activity is purely parasitic.
I'd contend that the real purpose of work is to keep people usefully occupied. There really is no need for much of the frantic activity that characterizes modern productivity (and when AI has put us all out of a job who's going to pay its electricity bill?).
Odd how you blame socialism and governments when bullshit jobs are a product of the free market economy.
@AC
"An "ideal" job is forever and without much effort, because "experience"."
Experience is very useful- often the reason why initially at a company an employee is really struggling to do their job, but with time they gain the experience of what the job entails and become far more productive. In many roles where the work is complex its factored in that employees will initially not be very productive.
"AI" will not improve things for tasks that are really complex (& likely make things worse by "confidently" spouting something that is totally incorrect)
But hey AC, feel free to volunteer for an OP by an "AI" robotic surgeon... personally I will trust the human surgeon* with years at medical school followed by many more years "learning on the job" from more experienced surgeons.
* Not perfect - a lot of medics are not as good / clever as they like to think they are ** but better than "AI"
** My first degree (second one was computing related) was biology related & shared quite a few classes with medics.
Bad enough that the human race is forcing the innocent
Butter Bot into existence, now we've created a blameless robo-critter so cruelly designed that it can not even escape having its nose assaulted by excessively hot vapours! More than that, we declare its attempts at self-preservation, cooling said vapours to a bearable temperature, to be the very reason we could want to own the thing, perverting it's need for respite for our own ends.
Anyway, everyone knows you need wings to properly cool tea: bats, not cats. Do you want a squeeze of lemming with yours?
PS
> Luddites might consider just making tea at the desired temperature to begin with.
Even as a devout coffee drinker, I know that isn't possible - tea made at 66 degrees? That can only lead to brown fluid that is everything but drinkable tea!
"tea made at 66 degrees?"
The recommended brewing temperatures in °C for the varieties: Black Tea: 93-100,Green and White Teas: 71-82, Oolong Tea: 82-93.
Electric kettles(jugs) with selectable temperature are available which make using the recommended temperature easier.
This assumes you aren't indulging in the barbarity of adding milk. Might as well add milk ice blocks and boil the buggery out of the hopefully cheap substandard tea leaves. Instant powdered black tea (shudder) was once a thing which I imagine you could add easily tepid water or heated milk without compromising the taste. ("brown fluid that is everything but drinkable tea!")
I cannot imagine the Japanese tea ceremony with a tiny robot puffing over the tea although I can imagine their producing an AI enhanced robot geisha but I suspect tea making wouldn't be high on the list of its functions.
Like most of the "also rans" at this show the product is an overelaborate example of poor engineering and design. If you wanted to cool tea etc more rapidly you might use an aluminium mug with a heatsink or include a usb-c powered peltier refrigeration in the wall and base of the mug.
Or just be patient and dunk your biscuit while waiting. Tipping your hot tea into the saucer to cool it and drinking from the saucer is apparently rather frowned upon. (Apart from Hyacinth Bucket (Bouquet) who uses a tea cup and saucer?)
I discovered that the taste of tea cooled by adding cold water differs to that of tea left to cool due to convection or blowing on it.
IM(not so)HO one only adds milk or sugar to tea when the tea has been stewed rather than brewed. Honey (and a small tot of whisky) may be added to tea if the drinker has a cold, has had a nasty shock or is just feeling really pissed off. (Which reminds me it is actually tea time as I incompetently type this. Back in a mo' with my brew.)
> Luddites might consider just making tea at the desired temperature to begin with.
Even as a devout coffee drinker, I know that isn't possible - tea made at 66 degrees? That can only lead to brown fluid that is everything but drinkable tea!
The Eurostar designers had to work around a 85ºC limit for hot boiling water on the France side, unfortunately how that was done is left to the reader's imagination.
now we've created a blameless robo-critter so cruelly designed that it can not even escape having its nose assaulted by excessively hot vapours!
that one in the corner,
You're talking about the poor innocent farting cat air purifier bot? Now to be fair, de-fumigating the air after farting cats is a good use for technology. Although there ought to be a dog bed for farting labradors too...
Getting a bit slow - I was wondering what sort of boxes do cats come in these days.
In my younger days cats usually came as kitten, gratis, from someone with a surfeit of the blighters. Kittens would normally fit in and were carried in your hand(s) without the need of any packing. Kitty in a Box (best before?)
Realizing the box in which this hitech cat bed would have been shipped if you were so daft/gullible to purchase the bed, was meant, I admit cats do seem to prefer any old tatty cardboard box over even a "no tech" cat bed although baskets of clean laundry seem to be a favourite.
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Many of the weird things that show up at CES aren't products at all. They're whacky constructs that will grab attention so people stop and view the products that are on offer or the devices are just showing off the sorts of technology a company can produce. I recall one demo device at a machine tools trade show that assembled a simple widget, oriented it, placed several in a box and went on to be unpacked, disassembled and run back into a hopper to start the sequence over again.
There isn't a giant need to unbox and disassemble things, but it does happen and a Rube Goldberg machine showed the company can make that sort of thing. I suppose an EV battery pack could be a good example. Old cells could be levered out of the enclosure and new cells fitted with the old cells going off for sorting into "ok" and "break down for recycling". An automated process for that could be a good venture in a few years.
I had actually thought about getting a robot vacuum, because my flat is a perfect environment: it's all one level, no stairs, the floors are mostly wood/fake wood, and the connecting doors are usually open.
On the other hand, that just makes it incredibly easy for me to vacuum it myself. I can probably do every floor in less than a minute (if I'm in a 'shit! guests are coming!' mode).
So really, why would I bother getting a robot vacuum?
Still, for someone with disabilities, they're probably a godsend.
"On the other hand, that just makes it incredibly easy for me to vacuum it myself."
My house is a big obstacle course so a Roomba would have a hard time and the bits that it could do wouldn't take me that long. I would still need to deploy the hose to get in the corners and around the drum hardware so I might as well do it all myself. Headphones on and off I go. My vacuum cleaner also has a much larger debris bin. A Roomba would have to be emptied too often.
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