Speaker 1: The machines are getting smarter. This is tech Talk, brought
Speaker 1: to you by Skynett. Mark Saltzman is our tech guy.
Speaker 2: We talk all things well smart with Mark Saltzman. You
Speaker 2: can follow him on x Marc Underscore Saltzman for all
Speaker 2: the great tech tips of the day, and you can
Speaker 2: listen to him on the tech It Out podcast and
Speaker 2: all of that good stuff. And we've talked before about
Speaker 2: technology that exists in cars these days, far and above
Speaker 2: what it was even five years ago. The models that
Speaker 2: have come out, and now we're talking about some pretty
Speaker 2: incredible tech that is also attached to in some cases
Speaker 2: an internal combustion engine and sometimes a giant electric motor.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I think a lot of the innovation is happening in
Speaker 3: the EV space for sure. And so this week, I know,
Speaker 3: the LA Auto Show is at the end of the year,
Speaker 3: but we have the Canadian International Auto Show and so
Speaker 3: there's you know, a couple of dozen car makers here
Speaker 3: and yeah, there's been so I've been kicking the tires
Speaker 3: on some really cool vehicles, some of which are out
Speaker 3: now and some are coming down the road, and you know,
Speaker 3: they many of them, of course, have a lot of
Speaker 3: tech which is was what piques my interest for evs
Speaker 3: range is really getting up there. I know the Lucid
Speaker 3: Error Grand Touring has over five hundred miles, but the yeah,
Speaker 3: the twenty twenty five Chevy Silverado EV does as well.
Speaker 3: So that's the equivalent of driving from LA to Vegas
Speaker 3: and back again without needing to charge up. Yeah, as
Speaker 3: the proclaimers once famously saying about going to be five
Speaker 3: hundred miles, So that's you can say goodbye.
Speaker 1: To range anxiety with that.
Speaker 3: With that kind of range, that's great, right, So not
Speaker 3: every vehicle has that.
Speaker 1: That's kind of where we're capped out.
Speaker 3: I'll give it another couple of years and we'll see
Speaker 3: a thousand miles between charges as we see innovations in
Speaker 3: both the battery department as well as in the in
Speaker 3: the software to manage it all. But yeah, that was
Speaker 3: pretty cool. Then the pickup truck, the Chevy was pretty well.
Speaker 3: That's on one of their options, the rally Sport model
Speaker 3: it's called. It also has this sidewinder steering, so it's
Speaker 3: kind of like a crab walk where all four wheels
Speaker 3: can turn in the same direction. So that helps you
Speaker 3: over a rugged terrain or to sneak into a little
Speaker 3: tight parking.
Speaker 1: Little party lot.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, I'm kind of surprised that that never
Speaker 2: really caught I remember back in the I want to say,
Speaker 2: late eighties early nineties, Honda did that with four wheels steering,
Speaker 2: where they would if you turn the wheel a little bit,
Speaker 2: it would kind of do that crab walk, and if
Speaker 2: you turn it all the way, the wheels would actually
Speaker 2: go stept the front wheels and the back wheels would
Speaker 2: go opposite directions for an even tighter turn.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: And I think also when it comes to autonomous vehicles,
Speaker 3: which there's no shortage of those debuting this week here
Speaker 3: at the Auto Show as well, you know, the first
Speaker 3: sort of sign of autonomous driving was the parallel parking feature.
Speaker 3: I remember ten fifteen years ago. Easily wress a button
Speaker 3: and the vehicle assesses the distance between two cars and
Speaker 3: can squeeze between it. Not with the crab walk feature,
Speaker 3: but it just seems like that was like one of
Speaker 3: the first examples of autonomous technology. And so yeah, I
Speaker 3: don't you're right, I don't think the sidewinder or the
Speaker 3: crab walk feature has really taken off, but for those
Speaker 3: who want it, I guess, especially those in a pickup truck.
Speaker 1: I think it's kind of neat.
Speaker 3: And this isn't exactly new either, but BMW was showing
Speaker 3: off its new grill. It's at the front of the vehicle.
Speaker 3: It's like a self healing grill. It's been out for
Speaker 3: a couple of years, but it's getting better, so it's
Speaker 3: on the.
Speaker 1: On some of their latest models.
Speaker 3: So it's basically the way it works is that there's
Speaker 3: this I guess they call it a digital kidney grill,
Speaker 3: but it has this additional polyurethane coating that can repair itself.
Speaker 3: So you get scratches on it and within twenty four
Speaker 3: hours at room temperature, it could get rid.
Speaker 1: Of its scratches. So that's kind of neat.
Speaker 3: BMW, by the way, at the Consumer Electronics Show, over
Speaker 3: the last couple of years, they've shown color changing vehicles,
Speaker 3: first with grayscale, like going from black to white and
Speaker 3: kind of in between to full color. So I mean
Speaker 3: they're really invested in technology, but that was kind of neat.
Speaker 1: We've seen some really cool gary, some.
Speaker 3: Infotainment systems as big as forty eight inches for a
Speaker 3: panoramic display in sid distracting more than maybe, so it's arguable. Yeah,
Speaker 3: this is the twenty twenty five Lincoln Navigator that I'm
Speaker 3: referring to. Yeah, I mean, it's it's like a full
Speaker 3: on dashboard in there. Some people thought the Tesla's big
Speaker 3: tablet like display was distracting, But the more the vehicles
Speaker 3: are driving for you, the more I guess you need
Speaker 3: to keep your eyes on the road. I am kidding,
Speaker 3: but yeah, I mean, look, I as a geek, I
Speaker 3: like the innovations when it comes to technology and safety
Speaker 3: and range and some of the amenities, like you know,
Speaker 3: all the different kinds of cameras and sensors and autonomous driving.
Speaker 1: That that's excites me.
Speaker 3: I'm not a you know, I'm not a big car
Speaker 3: guy other than that, but yeah, it does have to
Speaker 3: be safe to use. I'll give you that one hundred percent.
Speaker 3: So that was pretty cool. So it's going on till
Speaker 3: the twenty third in Toronto. But we've had lots of
Speaker 3: visitors from the States. After all, we may be the
Speaker 3: fifty first state soon. Anyways, Right, let's not go there.
Speaker 2: Listen, we try to keep politics out of this set.
Speaker 1: That is true. That is true. Are you gonna watch
Speaker 1: that hockey game tonight? By the way, I know that's
Speaker 1: a big one. Yeah, I've got a Ideah, it's gonna
Speaker 1: be a big one. I know. I even Trump posted
Speaker 1: about it. Yeah, we'll see.
Speaker 3: But I hope that Canada does not reciprocate and boo
Speaker 3: the US national anthem. I'm disappointed that that happened at
Speaker 3: two previous games in Canada. But hopefully, you know, we'll
Speaker 3: see what happens in Boston. But yeah, it should be good,
Speaker 3: should be a great game.
Speaker 2: AI from from X from Twitter Elon Musk is Grock
Speaker 2: three and now they're saying it's available to everybody so temporarily.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So on Monday, I believe, Elon Musk announced that Grock three,
Speaker 3: which is his large language model, his generative AI platform
Speaker 3: to compete against Chat, GPT, his nemesis, and other players
Speaker 3: like Google Gemini. It is temporarily free to use. So
Speaker 3: if you go to X dot com and click on
Speaker 3: grock on the left hand side, that is the AI
Speaker 3: platform you can play around with. And it's pretty intelligent.
Speaker 3: I've been using it this week and you can have
Speaker 3: it do everything from create images for you royalty free
Speaker 3: that you can use I typed in show me an
Speaker 3: image of a peacock using a tablet sitting on the moon,
Speaker 3: you know, and it's like it's so fast too. But
Speaker 3: there are more practical applications. They have what's called the
Speaker 3: think option for deeper math and science and coding questions
Speaker 3: you may have. But this is just upping the AI
Speaker 3: arms race. Another feature called deep so is kind of
Speaker 3: like a search engine on steroids. It'll immediately give you
Speaker 3: the summary of the results, not telling you where you'll
Speaker 3: find the results. And you can even attach a document
Speaker 3: like if you've got I don't know, a gym membership
Speaker 3: contract a pdf, right, you can upload it to grock
Speaker 3: and for free it will summarize it for you in
Speaker 3: plain English.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of cool stuff.
Speaker 3: You can add an audio file and say, translate this
Speaker 3: to another language, or give me a summary of this.
Speaker 3: I typed in as Gary and Shannon are they funny?
Speaker 3: And the answer was yes. But there's style leans so
Speaker 3: they say that your style liens on witty banter, playful chemistry,
Speaker 3: and an act for finding human excuse excuse me, finding
Speaker 3: humor in both the absurd and the every day, which
Speaker 3: helped them build a loyal audience in Southern California's competitive
Speaker 3: talk radio scene. Yeah, and then it said that said
Speaker 3: their comedy is more morning coffee chuckle, then laugh out
Speaker 3: loud hysterics, which is tempered by their newsroom roots.
Speaker 1: So giving you kudos, but you know, yeah, very accurate too.
Speaker 1: That's scary.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it gave it me that answer and like
Speaker 3: a split second, so yeah, you have some fun with it.
Speaker 3: If your listeners are on X there is going to
Speaker 3: be a Windows and Mac download, like a separate application
Speaker 3: as well, but Grock three is free to try at
Speaker 3: x dot com.
Speaker 2: Wow, that's very very cool. We were doing a quick
Speaker 2: audience participation in asking if you had a favorite kid,
Speaker 2: and I know you've got kids, so do you have
Speaker 2: a favorite?
Speaker 1: I don't have a favorite.
Speaker 3: We have twins, a boy girl twin who are turning
Speaker 3: twenty three and a younger boy.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I was listening to that and all the call in comments,
Speaker 3: which were great, We don't. My wife tells me she's
Speaker 3: got a favorite, but I don't play that game. Now
Speaker 3: it's thirty three point three percent love between them all.
Speaker 3: Yeah no, but genuinely, genuinely, I really don't have a favorite.
Speaker 1: Oh that's too bad. I mean, hey, the day is young.
Speaker 1: Maybe one of them screws up. Yeah yeah, exactly. Give
Speaker 1: them time, all right, Mark, Thanks, great talk.