When I was growing up, my otherwise frugal father leased a new car every three years. He claimed that, as a financial planner, his clients expected him to look successful, which meant driving a nice, late-model car. He reasoned that nobody would take investment advice from a financial planner who drove a 14-year-old Datsun Bluebird. His message to me was clear: Invest in your career.Even as a kid, I had my doubts about Dads logic. Spending money to make money never sat well with me, especially when there was no direct relationship between the purchase and the ROI. (I also suspect Dad hated long-term auto maintenance and he used his clients expectations as a convenient fig leaf.)Considering my early skepticism, it should come as no surprise that I tend to under-invest in my career as an adult. But avoiding financial investments that could advance my professional ambitions has cost me opportunities, which has sometimes led to me overspending as an over-correction.Figuring out the appropriate level of career investments is never going to be easy, but the following guidelines can help you decide if a financial outlay is worthwhile.When it makes sense to spend moneyCompared to trying to suss out which opportunities are worth the money and which should get a pass, just saying no to all professional investments is an easier call.This is why I have consistently under-invested in my career. Im more comfortable saying no to everything rather than trying to figure out a good use of my money. But there are times when investing money into your career is the right thing to do. These include:When you can increase the value of your timeYou are probably well aware of the numerous online calculators that can help you pinpoint the dollar value of your time. Productivity experts often recommend using these types of equations to help determine what tasks you can outsource, since hiring an assistant can free up your time to focus on more lucrative tasks.But outsourcing is not the only way you can make your time more valuable. Getting certification or other education can often lead directly to higher pay, which literally means your working hours are worth more.Similarly, you might also spend money to ensure you bring your A-game to work. For example, a nervous flyer who is traveling to make a major presentation might upgrade their flight to feel more comfortable. The additional cost could be worth the money if it means feeling calm and ready for the meeting, instead of frazzled and stressed.One could argue that my fathers car-leasing habit helped increase the value of his time. By keeping cars no longer than three years, Dad saved himself the time and brainspace he would have needed to keep an older, paid-for car humming along.When you can expand your networkA large and diverse network is one of the best ways to open doors to new jobs and opportunities. This is why career investments that widen your network can be a great use of your money.Whether you are considering attending a conference, joining a professional organization, taking a class related to your industry, or joining a community association, the potential cost of these investments can often be worth it because of the professional connections you will make.When you should save your moneyNot every career investment is a good reason to break out the credit card. While it can be easy to talk yourself into spending money to increase your income (just ask anyone who has been suckered into multi-level marketing), its helpful to remember that not all investments will benefit your career.Heres when you should think twice about putting your money into a career investment.When youre substituting money for actionAnytime we dont know how to do something, it can be very tempting to throw money at the problem. For example, lets say a small business owner is struggling to build their clientele. They hear about a $2,000 seminar that promises to help them scale up their marketingand they get excited about using it to increase their client base.The seminar itself might be a very useful opportunity. But the entrepreneur could improve their situation in a number of free or cheap ways before spending two grand on a seminar. The high cost of the seminar can trick the business owner into thinking that they are taking significant action, but its instead allowing them to avoid the work they need to do. And its putting them in a worse financial situation.When you feel pressuredThere are a number of ways you might be pressured into investing money in your career. The more overt (and easier-to-avoid) version is the urgent sales pitch. These kinds of time-bound sales are common in every industry, including career development. This kind of pressure looks like a ticking clock counting down minutes left before the incredible career coaching deal is gone forever.While that sense of urgency can feel a bit stressful, committing to a 24-hour waiting period before purchasing anything can help you avoid succumbing to this kind of pressure.The more subtle pressure feels more like wanting to fit in. For example, if your coworkers all look like they could walk the runway, you might spend more than you can comfortably afford on your work wardrobe. Or you might attend conferences or weekly happy hours to look like a team player, even though you dont want to be there.If youre feeling this kind of pressure, remind yourself of what you really want from your career and your budget. Having clarity about your own values makes it much easier to resist pressure.You work hard for the moneyInvesting in your career can potentially give you a leg upor waste your money.You can figure out which investment is which by asking yourself which opportunities increase the value of your time or expand your network, and which ones allow you to substitute money for action or make you feel pressured.And if you find yourself leasing a new car every three years, just be honest that its for you and not your clients.

The sun is bright. A caucasian grandma sits on the grass. She smiles at the camera. Caresses two small dogs. Its a peaceful summer day. Three seconds later, your brain notices something is off. Her face morphs slowly. Her mouth twitches. Suddenly, the dogs turn into reptilesyellow Komodo dragons, maybe. One has two heads. They open their mouths wide. Granny starts picking their scales. And then she starts to eat them.The lovely video is now a nightmare, one that is as real as the original candid shot. I feel uneasy. I feel a pinch of horror. The bizarre tornado doesnt stop there: The woman, now Asian, leans forward as the slimy animals start moving, transforming into a Jet Ski that granny rides into a river, leaving the scene.I dont know what I just watched, but as I flick my finger up, I go deeper into this Instagram rabbit hole. There are more posts. Some of them are strange satires that play on the idea of the illuminati controlling the world featuring everyone from Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin to Kamala Harris and Elon Musk. Others show disgusting monsters that feel too close to reality. All live in the same uncanny valley that is as deep as the Mariana Trench. Suddenly Im trapped in this Bermuda Triangle of stupid, freakish, and odd, and I cant help but keep looking, feeling awe and disgust at the same time. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Lucas Miranda | INTELIGNCIA ARTIFICIAL (@lucasflame.ai)Im not alone in this twisted dimension. As Oslo-based interdisciplinary visual artist Edmond Yang tells me through Instagram: At the moment, two of my videos have over 300 million views combined, with an accumulated watch time of nearly 100 years. Its surreal to think Ive consumed a century of human attention.Yang tells me he has been working in visual design and communication for more than two decades. When I discovered generative AI and the powerful tools it brought with it, a whole new world opened up for me, he says. These tools allow me to visualize almost any idea in my head, all from my phone. What started with still images has evolved into videos as video generation models have quickly caught up, he says. Ive always loved creating and sharing work, but now I can do it faster and on a much bigger scale, seeing how people react and engage in almost real time. View this post on Instagram A post shared by The Dor Brothers (@thedorbrothers)Yang says he is only one of many artists who are using video AI to explore these unnerving fantasies, all loosely grouped under the #weirdcore tag. TikTok is full of them, too.Weirdcore 2.0The earliest documented examples of weirdcore date back to 2016. Its origins remain unclear but we know that YouTuber DavidCrypt first popularized the term in a now-disappeared video explaining its themes. Weirdcore was framed as a visual and emotional aesthetic that evokes feelings of confusion, nostalgia, and unease through low-quality amateur photography combined with strange phrases and other graphical elements.It recycled the graphic style of early internet visuals from the late 1990s and early 2000s, which were a product of the technology limitations of those times: primitively shaded 2D and 3D graphics typical of software like CorelDraw, badly compressed imagery, GIFs, and lots of terrible typefaces. All of those things were hammered together with blunt tools like Microsoft Paint. The revival aesthetic became popular in places like Reddit and Tumblr, where it still lives today. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Ari Kuschnir (@arikuschnir)Somehow, the combination of out-of-context elements resulted in compositions that live between familiarity and strangeness. The images of early weirdcore provoked an unusually visceral and personal interpretation, which made many people feel weird in response. Some people perceived these images as eerie or unsettling. Others found them nostalgic. A few experienced a sensation of comfort in the surreal presentations.Then with the advent of diffusion artificial intelligence and video creation platforms, artists like Yang took the weirdcore banner and evolved it into new ultrarealistic, sharp-as-vampire-fangs visualizations that you can be enjoyed (or suffered through) on social media. But despite the dramatically different aesthetic, the new weirdcore 2.0 shares the same ultimate objective of triggering a visceral response in the viewer. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Daryl Anselmo (@darylanselmo)Daryl Anselmo is a professional art director for games and new media who has worked at EA, Disney, Zynga, and Improbable Worlds. He tells me via email that he doesnt have a specific goal with his weirdcore videos, but he has always been drawn to the idea of benign violation theory, which he says describes how people cant control their laughter in situations of discomfort, or they laugh as a safety mechanism when their worldview is being threatened. Its a place in which some comedianslike Ricky Gervaisthrive.[The fictional show within a show] Itchy & Scratchy in The Simpsons was benign violation theory perfected, Anselmo points out. I have found that these generative AI tools are kind of perfect for exploring that space and creating that emotional response in the viewer, and social media is probably the best platform to share it on. His videos are purely surreal, and somehow bring me vibes of Chilean filmmaker and artist Alejandro Jodorowsky. View this post on Instagram A post shared by (Insert): dial up sound effect (@junkboxai)For self-described JunkBoxAi artist Mike W, its all about emotional impact, even if the medium is absurd or surreal. I draw inspiration from pop culture, the unpredictability of weirdcore, and the humor of unexpected juxtapositions, he tells me via Instagram messaging. His weirdcore leans harder on celebrities and current news, which is another main avenue for weirdcore 2.0. Whether hes placing a celebrity in a ridiculous alternate reality or turning a mundane concept into something dreamlike and unsettling, he tells me, the primary goal of his art is to entertain, spark curiosity, and connect with people, to be a source of joy and surprisesomething that makes people pause their scrolling, laugh, or wonder how it was made. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Edmond Yang (@edmondyang)Yang says his weirdcore work helps him push boundaries and challenge himself to explore new ways of storytelling. Its about finding humor in unexpected places. I categorize my creations into two types: The first is day-to-day, reactive videos inspired by trends, memes, or hype. These are quick, experimental pieces where I play with current cultural moments, he says. Whenever he sees something happening, he thinks about making it hilariously over-the-top or imagining an alternate outcome. For him, the goal is to surprise people and evoke a reaction. The second type is more intricatevideos with refined concepts that take more time to produce and edit, Yang says. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Edmond Yang (@edmondyang)Other weirdcore creators tend toward absolute horror, like Belgian artist Florian Nackaerts, who focuses on body horror surrealism.How the weirdcore sausage is madeTheir tools and workflows are all similar. Nackaerts started using generative AI in 2021 with the arrival of DALL-E mini and quickly moved through Stable Diffusion, Midjourney, and, finally a combination of video generators. He says he animates with Hailuo (a tool favored by most artists that is developed by a Shanghai-based company) or Kling (another Chinese tool made by Beijing-based Kuaishou), and sometimes Dream Machine (developed by Portland, Oregon-based Luma Labs). View this post on Instagram A post shared by Niceaunties (@niceaunties)Like other video artists, Nackaerts uses different tools depending on the feel he wants to achieve, as each has its own aesthetic, with Hailuo producing the most realistic imagery. Each of these video tools generates very short clips, about five seconds in length, so they need to be edited into a full-length video. Nackaerts creates voice tracks using AI text-to-speech and voice-cloning tool ElevenLabs and the music on Udio. Once generated, his clips and tracks are edited together using a free app on his smartphone. I make all the videos only with my smartphone from the beginning of the process to the end, Nackaerts tells me.The artists I spoke with follow similar workflows. Mike W starts by brainstorming a concept (usually a single absurd or thought-provoking idea, like placing a celebrity in an impossible scenario, he says). From there, he refines the idea into a series of prompts that capture the vibe, composition, and emotional tone he wants. Mike Ws quiver of tools includes ComfyUI (a free tool that helps users create any diffusion AI workflow imaginable), Flux (a text-to-video tool developed by Black Forest Labs in Germany), NYC-based Runway, and the grandaddy of diffusion AIs, MidJourney, which is a still-image generator used to create starting frames to animate in the other tools. The use of these keyframes is crucial in order to maintain continuity between the clips, which are roughly five to eight seconds long. I meticulously craft each frame or animation to ensure consistency and style, he says. View this post on Instagram A post shared by (Insert): dial up sound effect (@junkboxai)Its a similar process for Yang, who focuses on creative experimentation. Most of his videos start with a base image that he sends to a video generator, using image-to-video tools to create the clips he needs to assemble his final piece. Its a numbers game. I often create 20 to 30 variations before landing on the right clip to move forward, he says. Like Nackaerts, he handles everything on his phone, from start to finish, which makes the workflow both efficient and portable. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Ari Kuschnir (@arikuschnir)Anselmo follows a more traditional path that goes from pre-production to production to post. In preproduction he explores an idea with the help of generative AI, seeing what the machine imagines. Sometimes I have a clear picture and I am trying to force an image generator to bend to my will, he says. Other times I only just have a loose concept so I lean into the AI more as a crutch [to] see what kind of journey it wants to take me on. Once he has a group of cohesive still images, he sometimes storyboards them into a rough cut before taking the ones he likes most into a video generator to produce his footage. Much like an analog director, he usually does a few takes per image, generating between five and eight minutes of footage per day that will get cut down into a 30-second reel. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Daryl Anselmo (@darylanselmo)Meanwhile, Im generating a song, trying to find a sound that vibes with the look of the world, Anselmo says. Once he has all the audiovisual resources complete, he brings them back into the editing suite for a more complete edit, doing postproduction tasks such as color grading, sharpening, film grain, and other effects like pans or zoom. This is all done on his computer, where he also runs the footage through an AI image upscaler/enhancer at the very end, right before he uploads it to his phone for posting. It usually takes me a couple of hours per day, he says, noting that his goal now is to speed up the volume of output.: I really just want to get some of these stupid ideas out of my head and onto the next one to see what else I can learn from the process. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Daryl Anselmo (@darylanselmo)Now what I want to know is how I can get all these stupid ideas out of my head without having to flick my thumb up one more time to see more.It may not matter, as this black hole of weird has already reached critical mass. Creators like Yang and the Dor brothers have made the jump from social networks to regular media, sometimes getting into the news cycle, like when the latter turned politicians into bodega robbers. View this post on Instagram A post shared by The Dor Brothers (@thedorbrothers)They have been creating videos for musicians like Snoop Dogg as well as ads that have been playing in Times Square. While these are quite far from the disturbing material they put up on social media, you can see that the times are a-changing. A new generation of video artists are coming from the fringe of weirdcore 2.0 into the mainstream. Perhaps ironically, their uncanny valley art and provocations are doing more than anything else to bring reality crashing down in flames.

Kos has been recognized as a 2025 Honoree in the XR Technologies & Accessories category at this years CES event in Las Vegas for its Mixed Reality Makeup 0 min try-on studio. This innovation from the J-beauty leader offers an entirely new makeup try-on experience utilizing cutting-edge high-speed projection mapping technology. The new makeup simulation system will replicate the color and texture of makeup on the skin in a way that AR simply cannot.According to CES, the system enables customers to experiment with numerous makeup designs in a true 3D environment, allowing them to select products more swiftly and with greater confidence compared to traditional try-on methods or AR makeup filters. Thus, it is a worthy honoree.Designer: Kos CorporationThis innovative Mixed-Reality Makeup (MR Makeup) Color Machine utilizes high-speed projection mapping technology, which Yoshihiro Watanabe Laboratory of the Tokyo Institute of Technology developed. This technology allows makeup to be projected on the face. MR Makeup allows the makeup to smoothly follow the human bodys movements and changes at the facial expression. The high-speed face recognition and projection technology, updated 1000 times per second, completes the process from facial movement to MR Makeup projection with a few milliseconds delay or less, said the corporation.What makes it even more interesting is that since it is a projection, it can be adapted to any section or shape. The makeup can be easily changed or worked over without actually having to remove it. This is a boon, especially if youre someone who always messes up their eyeliner and needs to remove and re-apply it all the time! The high-speed projection mapping is paired perfectly with the color correction tech to create a realistic makeup simulation in no time. By combining these, we have succeeded in developing an immersive makeup simulator that can achieve a natural finish that looks like you are actually applying makeup, even on a moving face, said Kos.The final result is seamless and wonderful, beating the AR-enabled virtual makeup try-on applications we often find on smartphones and smart mirrors. It reproduces natural colors and textures that AR cannot hope to replicate. Since the colors are directly projected onto the skin, the makeup is realistic, perfectly adapting to the persons skin tone. AR filters cannot achieve this realism. Kos believes this makes the MR Makeup Color Machine quite versatile in its potential. They believe it can be used beyond makeup and cosmetics. They say shortly, everyone should be able to try their makeup anytime and anywhere that is their goal.The MR Makeup technology has been showcased at CES 2025, allowing visitors to try the one-of-a-kind makeup service. It is designed to encourage personalized self-expression and offer potential for entertainment applications. Check it out if youre attending CES this year!The post Mixed Reality Makeup Simulator Creates The Ultimate Makeup Look That Even AR Cannot Reproduce first appeared on Yanko Design.

There are 25 logos to admire (plus the boring company one).

Shures new USB gaming mic looks familiar, but it might be too streamlined.

In early January, soil moisture in much of Southern California was in the bottom 2 percent of historical records.

In case you haven't checked outArchinect's Pinterestboards in a while, we have compiled ten recently pinned images from outstanding projects on various ArchinectFirmandPeopleprofiles.Today's top images (in no particular order) are from the boardDoors & Gates.Tip:Use the handyFOLLOW featureto easily keep up-to-date with all your favorite Archinect profiles. The Old Town Hall's Ground Floor Interior inPrague, Czech Republic byStudio Olgoj Chorchoj; Photo:Honza Zima IMA House inSan Jos del Cabo, Mexico byEzequiel Farca Studio; Photo:Fernando Marroqun SC Residence inManhattan Beach, CA byLaney LA; Photo:Roger Davies Lake Hayes Home inQueenstown, New Zealand byBen Hudson Architects; Photo:John Williams West Seattle Chalet inWest Seattle, WA bySHED Architecture & Design House in Kutn Hora inKutn Hora, Czech Republic byBYR architekti; Photo:Alex Shoots Buildings Ju+ Coffee inNanjing, China bymodum atelier; Photo:Howie Fergie-Whistler Cab...

Hondas potential merger with Nissan would represent one of the largest shake-ups to the industry since the creation of Stellantis in 2021. But there are huge risks involved, too. On Tuesday in Las Vegas, during a roundtable discussion with select media, Honda executives offered some more insight into the merger, including how combining resources and factories could help the companies stay competitive in the increasingly costly fight with China.Honda is concerned about Chinas meteoric rise as a dominant and highly competitive player in the EV and autonomous driving space. In late December, when Honda and Nissan announced that they had signed a memorandum of understanding to create an automotive company worth around $50 billion, Honda CEO Toshihiro Mibe said that the rise of Chinese automakers and new players has changed the car industry quite a lot... We have to build up capabilities to fight with them by 2030, otherwise well be beaten.Honda executives offered some more insight into the mergerThe stakes are high, too. According to a recent report by S&P Global Mobility, the global EV market will grow nearly 30 percent year over year, with 89.6 million new EVs expected to be sold this year. According to Allied Market Research, the global autonomous vehicle market is expected to reach around $60.3 billion in 2025 and is projected to reach $448.6 billion by 2035. If the Japanese automakers want to continue to dominate the market as they have since the 1960s, they have to iterate quickly and get products into consumers hands.Since the beginning of last year, weve been in conversation with Nissan, Noriya Kaihara, director and executive vice president at Honda, said through a translator following the companys debut of two production prototypes, the Honda 0 Saloon and the Honda 0 SUV at CES. Nothing has been decided but weve been discussing how to proceed.The Honda 0 Saloon at CES. Photo: Vjeran Pavic / The VergeHonda wants Nissans large SUVs and underutilized factoriesDuring the roundtable, Kaihara said that Honda is looking at Nissan as a way to reduce costs around future software-defined vehicles (SDV).We have significant labor and development costs, and if there are operations we could share, that would be good for us, he said. Developing brand-new software, he continued, including advanced driving systems that move closer to autonomous vehicles and battery-electric vehicles, is both increasingly important for the longevity of established automakers and increasingly expensive.Honda also said that Nissans large SUVs like the Armadaand Pathfinder make it an attractive partner. Toshihiro Akiwa, VP and head of Hondas BEV development center, said through a translator that Hondas hybrid technology is solid but only currently exists in its midsize vehicles like the CR-V and the Accord. The company is interested in Nissans larger vehicles because Hondas motor and battery capacity can be adapted to the larger vehicle.The Honda Prologue. Image: HondaThe Nissan Armada. Image: NissanWhile Honda does have the Prologue, that vehicle was part of a $5 billion joint venture with GM that only lasted through the development of two vehicles. The Prologue has been a surprise EV hit, selling over 33,000 in 2024 and outselling the larger gas-powered Honda Passport. Since the partnership with GM went south, its not likely that the Prologue will be in production long, though Honda has made no announcements about its plans for the vehicle. Honda does not currently offer an all-electric crossover outside of the Prologue, though fans of the brand have been asking for an all-electric CR-V for years.Nissan, on the other hand, saw its earnings decline by as much as 90 percent last year, forcing it to lay off thousands of employees. The company has been struggling since the arrest of former Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn in 2018 for financial misconduct. Unsurprisingly, Ghosn isnt pleased about the news, telling Bloomberg that Nissan was in panic mode, calling the deala desperate move and noting that the synergies between the two companies are difficult to find.But as Honda executives at the roundtable noted, Nissans struggle could pose an opportunity for Honda, too. Thats because Honda plants that serve the US are currently running at maximum capacity, and they could use the excess capacity at Nissans factories to meet customer demand. Im not in a position to make comment [on Nissan], but they have capacity, Kaihara said.Hondas factory in Ontario, Canada. Photo by PETER POWER / AFP via Getty ImagesTrumps tariff threats and loss of EV incentivesPresident-elect Donald Trumps threats to impose tariffs on foreign imports and eliminate federal subsidies that have helped save Americans billions in EV costs also came up in the conversation.If Trump impacts future government strategy we have to be very flexible when the subsidies are cut or stopped, Kaihara said.That includes where Honda builds and produces its most popular vehicles like the CR-V and Civic. Each factory in Canada and Mexico is almost to full production level, Kaihara said. Its not so easy to change that direction, but depending on the tariff situation, we might have to change the production location to Japan or somewhere else. A significant move like that would be costly and could translate to increased prices for consumers when they go to buy their next Honda.In spite of all this, Honda is not wavering on its commitment to electrification.For the time being, we will have new EVs in the next year for the Zero series, Kaihara said. For the long term, I think, considering the environmental issues, EVs will be the solution for the future, and that will not be changed.

Twelve years ago, I could have told you exactly what happened at my first CES and what happened at my third. Each was a chapter with a beginning, middle, and end; the lines between them drawn clearly. But now, 15 years since I attended my first CES, its a lot fuzzier. I know I missed my flight home at that first show. I know I saw a lot of cameras at first, and then progressively fewer cameras over the years. I know there were team dinners and early meetings, but I couldnt tell you what happened when.What I do know about my first CESes is that I had and I cannot stress this enough no clue what I was doing. The same went for CES two, three, and four, to varying degrees. I think I had a Pentax DSLR loaned to me by a colleague. I had a work-issued BlackBerry and, Im pretty sure, insisted on wearing nice dresses and impractical shoes to evening events. There was no Uber at the beginning, and you could spend an hour waiting in a cab line at the airport. We stayed at the MGM Grand, which housed live lions at the time.I broke an 11-year streak of not going to CES this year, which gave me a rare opportunity. Its not often in life that we get to step back and see something that has become routine with fresh eyes. But thats more or less been my assignment at CES 2025. Theres not much for me here on the smartphone beat, so my job is to just walk the show floor, find cool stuff, and put it on the site. Ive taken this remit extremely seriously by scheduling very few meetings, loading The Verges CMS on my phones browser, and wearing sensible shoes for the miles of walking I will embark on.The journey starts on day one in the West Hall. Theres a Dunkin with a line that moves quickly, plenty of seating, and electrical outlets built into the booths. None of it tracks with my memories of deteriorating seating areas so small and crowded I frequently ate lunch sitting on the floor. Later, I realized thats because this entire hall just wasnt there the last time I was at the Las Vegas Convention Center (LVCC). I tell myself Ill do a quick lap around the place and then head to Central Hall to see the big booths, but then I spot them: Big Tractors.This was not here in 2014.Theyre enormous, and only some of them are tractors. The first one I spotted is an autonomous, articulated dump truck, a John Deere representative informs me. I have no real reason to be here, but it is cool as hell. Forty minutes later, I have pictures of myself in front of all the tractors, a garbage truck, and an electric fire truck. I wind up right back where I started an hour later and head toward the Central Hall searching for robots.CES always has A Thing. I remember the days of sitting through demos of 3D TVs. This year, its robots: both the hardware kind and the ones embedded in software. Robots picking up socks, walking up stairs, offering companionship, or just being cute lil guys. And of course, robots in the form of AI. Everything has AI in it, from TVs to glasses, whether it has any business being there or not.Robots arent new to CES, of course, but this crop seems capable of actually doing things for us, though reliability varies. I watched one small, adorable robot dive off a table unexpectedly as it dashed toward my colleague. Its durable, the robots handler said as she picked it up and set it back on its perch. I dont think we have anything to fear from the current crop of robots, you know, overlord-wise.We love our cute robots this year.Getting around Las Vegas during the show the Consumer Technology Association (CTA) says about 140,000 people are attending this year remains a major obstacle. A decades worth of transportation innovation has done nothing to improve the situation. I still find myself walking between venues to avoid the gridlock on the streets and in the rideshare pickup zones. At one point, I climb into a Tesla with two other attendees and descend into the Vegas Loop. It feels like a short, slightly futuristic Uber ride and saves me a long walk between the West and Central halls. Cool, I guess? But theres still no good way to get from the LVCC to The Venetian, and I sit on a bus that creeps forward for 15 minutes through a half dozen traffic light cycles waiting to make one last left turn into the expo drop-off.1/9 Photo by Allison Johnson / The Verge1/9 Photo by Allison Johnson / The VergeOutside of the convention center, I take in the ways that Vegas has changed and not over the last decade. Tourists still line the banks of the gondola route through The Venetian as the gondoliers voice echoes in a slightly mournful tone, reverberating from a Banana Republic storefront. There are still men standing along the street handing out cards for seedy entertainment, slapping the pieces of paper to get your attention. A woman standing at the front desk outside of a restaurant exclaims, Allison! Is that you? as I hustle by on my way to an appointment. I fell for that tactic one or two times in previous years, but I know enough now to remember that shes just read the name on my badge and I dont break my stride. In Vegas, your attention is a currency thats second only to actual currency.Afeela like somebodys watching me. Thats a CES joke, people.Theres one new fixture on the strip thats impossible to ignore: the Sphere. One of my meetings in a hotel suite overlooking the Sphere comes to a halt so we can watch an animation of what looks like an alien breaking the glass and climbing out of it. The biggest item on my agenda on day two of the show is Deltas keynote at the Sphere (its Sphere, not the Sphere, Deltas media communications remind us). This isnt the first time its been used as a CES venue, but it is the first keynote presentation in the space. And the keynote is quite the show. Delta uses the Spheres massive interior screen and other experiential effects in all the ways youd imagine. A plane rolls toward the audience, and as it turns to taxi, a wind whips up as if from the jets engines. The simulated plane lands later and our seats rumble to mimic the impact of touching down on the runway. At one point, a syrupy sweet smell is pumped into the space, revealed to be hazelnut coffee, as delivered by an Uber Eats driver on a moped. Tom Brady made an appearance that I didnt understand, but overall, it promised a spectacle and delivered.Toward the end of the presentation, the lights dim and the screen shows an image of the Earth as a giant, floating glass ball, rotating in front of stained glass. The light seems to catch and reflect in the three-dimensional object, and even though I know I am looking at an illusion on a flat screen, my brain is convinced that theres a giant, floating orb in front of me. Even watching it back in my recorded videos, I cant believe its not there. It took 15 years, but I guess I finally got a great 3D demo at CES.What struck me more than anything at this CES was the very show-ness of it all. I know its a show. We all call it a show. We say stuff like, Have a great show! to each other when were here. After years of attending, CES can feel like an assignment, a series of to-dos as long as the Las Vegas Strip that you cross off one by one, step by step. But above all, its a show. There are no acrobatics or stunts, yet its still supposed to make us feel something. It took 15 years, but I guess I finally got a great 3D demo at CESLike a good show on the Strip, theres some sleight of hand involved. Someone behind the scenes controlling the autonomous robot. The concept car that never ships. The giant glass ball thats just an array of precisely arranged pixels on a curved screen. Like any other show, theres a beginning, middle, and end whether or not we remember them. The details of this years CES will probably fade over time like all the rest have, but Ill remember the feeling of it for much longer. And even for someone whos seen plenty of CESes come and go, it turns out you can still feel a little sense of wonder after all. But Im not holding my breath about any of those concept cars shipping.Photography by Allison Johnson / The Verge