Tomorrow Daily 095: Japan crowns the worst robot ever, an interactive zombie movie, and more

On today's show, maglev elevators might change the way we travel inside buildings in just two short years. And a new, interactive zombie movie shows you if you can survive the zombie apocalypse. And we have a Japanese competition that's looking to crown the world's worst robot. You're not [UNKNOWN]. It's Tomorrow Daily. [MUSIC] Greetings Citizens of the internet, welcome to Tomorrow Daily, the best geek talk show in the known universe. I'm your host, Ashley Esqueda. Joining me today, our very special guest Tom Tran is here. Thank you. How's it going? Good, glad to be here, it's awesome. I, we're excited to have you. Khail is, Khail is on a super-secret mission, I'm assuming he's. Performing some manner of weird Khail pizza espionage. I don't know. He said he couldn't say a whole lot about it. Sounds delicious. It must be delicious, delicious espionage. But he'll be back tomorrow. But for now we've got Tom here, Tom tell us a little bit about yourself so that everybody can be your best friend. I'm, my name's Tom Tran, I'm a stand up comedian. I live here in Las Angeles, I'm a writer, I'm a producer, I took a job at Apple just because somebody told me. That I couldn't. Challenge accepted. [LAUGH] Took a job at Apple. Worked a a store just for a couple of years just to hang out cuz it turns out I spend more time at the store anyway. And I was like why don't they just pay me. And they did. And then I Good. went on tour doing stand up comedy for a few months. We just did a. Fifteen country tour this year so it's good to be back to Los Angeles for a little while. And also, If you could not tell by his shirt, he is a huge nerd. This is why I'm hot and its a fire flower from Mario. I also love rap music hence this is why I'm hot. I like it. I like the mash up. So are you ready to talk about some headlines? Let's do this. [MUSIC] Okay. So unless you live under a rock, you've probably ridden in an elevator. Goes up and down, pretty straight forward. Hasn't really changed ever since they were invented. With the exception of maybe a two-car elevator shaft, where you can have two different elevator cars moving in the same elevator shaft. This German company is looking to change all of that which is really, really cool and exciting and futuristic which we always love on this show. This is a German company named ThyssenKrupp. They want to make two axis travel possible so the big issue with kind of. Innovating elevators. That's kinda weird to say. Would be a cable. So that's what elevators run by, it's a cable system. This particular thing would be a no cable system. This would be removing cables from the equation. Which is kind of neat. They looked to the Star Trek turbo lifts as inspiration. Just gonna say that. Yeah, really, really cool, a turbo lift. And so this is called the Multi Elevator. And this is a concept video that they released earlier today saying this is how it would work. These are our plans, this is how we want this elevator to kinda work together. And they say a lot of people are gonna be living in these, like, mega cities. In the future. And if buildings are shaped like this, which if you're just listening. They're shaped like a bunch of Legos smashed together. Then you would have to have elevators that move to left and right. as well as up and down. And so that's the point of these elevators. Now I was watching this. And this is what I'm concerned with. The, the photo they showed of that building looked like an architect doing a drunk Jenga game. Yeah, yeah. Those buildings do not look sound to me. They do not look like they are going to stay up. No, I mean, and if you've been to Las Vegas, the Luxor has the Pyramid Hotel. Right, which goes this way. Which, by the way, not awesome for a bunch of drunks in Las Vegas to be going parallel. Yeah I don't I've ridden in that elevator also. Maybe intoxicated. I may or may not have been and it is terrifying because the floor is moving diagonally upwards so. And, and. It's just very strange. And if you're not paying attention, your very much like, I don't. Is gravity not working. Something terrible is happening right now. Yes. Something awful is happening. Yeah. So but they say, this multi-elevator would be more efficient. It would carry more people. It would have. Shorter wait times? It would also have a much smaller elevator shaft meaning they could add more of these elevators or even more you know office space or whatever it is you would have available. Well I feel like this is one of those situations where science fiction or fiction is ,. Becoming reality or real. It definitely is. Because with the turbo lift, this is the first step in creating the Enterprise because you're going to need an elevator that goes left, right, up, down. Right, right and that's, I, see I really like this. It's really exciting and it's super fun. You know the cool thing about this is, it's actually in development right now. They're saying a prototype is going. To open when this German building opens in 2016. There's a building that they're actually working on this project in right now. So this is gonna be a reality supposedly in a couple years. So hopefully in a two, two year span, you know, Kale and I and maybe Tom are going to be traveling over Germany to check out these elevators. Speaking of Las Vegas, you know what would have helped this whole project move on? When Las Vegas was redoing downtown area they actually wanted to build the Enterprise a full scale model Enterprise hotel>>Guys>>in Las Vegas this would have been amazing! Thiese and Crepp really missed that was an opportunity missed>>Yeah>>it was a true opportunity missed>>Yeah Vegas was behind it they had an architect it was all ready to go this would have been perfect>>That would have been really fun. Well, okay, so speaking of fun, you've have to tell me about this interactive zombie movie. I got to play it this morning and it's pretty awesome. Yeah, I checked it out. It's an interactive zombie film. It's a feature film. Really high quality. When I watched it at first and I read up on it, I thought to myself, a five minute movie that teaches that teaches you how to survive the apocalypse? That's a little. Doesn't make sense because I can last five minutes of the zombie apocalypse after that I'm dog meat but it's very cool it's optimized for your tablet and it's definitely a lot more fun on your tablet but a film maker who clearly got a lot of help from the G-Shock folks cause as you can see ->>There you go. Yeah lots of G-Shock close ups in this G-Shock is definitely featured in this. [LAUGH] It teaches you to use your memory and your memory will help. Follow the story along. And you, you can get up to three lives. If you fail, like, maybe I did, you get to restart but you get to do, make shapes, circles, zig-zag, which is why the tablet is the best way to do it. Yeah. I mean, I did it on a screen. It's real easy to play on a touch screen. It's a little bit tougher on a iTouch pad. If you're playing on, like, a laptop. Yeah. Because you only have a little tiny bet of space. Yeah but you watching the film. You're the one follows its along and its, I was watching it and playing it and all I kept thinking is. This is like boy scout camp. Intense. It was crazy. You, the music. The cinematography. The quality of it was amazing. It's very good. And it's fun. It's fun. And it's brought to you by a filmmaker named Maximilian Neiman, so good job Maximilian Neiman. Now, are you in the Romero/Walking Dead camp of slow zombies, or are you in the 28 Days Later fast, running zombies? Oh, you know, I like a challenge. So I'm gonna say I'm, like, I love me some classic Romero zombie, but. I just, I really love that fast-moving, like ter, they're way scarier, because they can catch you. And it's like, I feel like I could always just get on a bicycle, and like ride away from the [CROSSTALK] Yeah, but the problem is when the Romero zombies horde up on you, that's when things get crazy. That's true, that's true. But then it's like, you know, World War Z. They're all super fast and they're like diseased, and they like climb up like ants. Like, you know, like, you know, it's like crazy. Kind of like that. Like my in-laws. I just did that. [LAUGH] So our last story today made me laugh so much. This is [LAUGH] this is a competition in Japan you guys that is looking for the worst robot in the world. So it's a robot Sumo wresting competition. Mm hm. It's called the Hibocon and it's in Japan and it's made for people. Who have no idea how to make robots. So if you're watching the footage you can see all of these absolutely terrible robots made out of things like food containers and the like. The, the one there has just got a broken leg. It's over. The goal is to make worst robot possible. There were 31 entrants. It was in July of this year but they just released the footage for the. Japanese Media Arts Festival a week ago. So now we are getting to delight in all of these awful, awful robots. So it's really funny that the, the lower, the translation is just hilarious. The subtitling is just like, these are crappy robots and they're the worst. Look at this pole-dancing Barbie robot. Your pole dancing Barbie. That I would say is an awesome robot. That is an insane amazing robot. And there you have, doesn't that look like a train? Got a train robot and crane. Well, knocked it over, it's over. What all these robots are very, very different. It, they're all. This one is literally a. I dust pan. Is a dust pan. With wheels. Like this one just seems to I don't know I don't even think it knows what it's doing. It's just swiping the air. This one looks like a ball of cotton. Clay, a clay? Cotton maybe? That one's like an egg. Just a little egg and then one with like a pan. It's very strange. but, but my favorite robot, are of course, they're, they're a few stand outs. All of the Barbie one. What is that? Woah. Woah. Woah. Woah. I don't know what's happening in this shot. That is insane. Guys. This is the thing to watch on the show today if you're just listening. This is absolutely the funnest. You wanna be watching. It's. No words can describe. There's this this robot that doesn't do anything unless it's moving down a plank. Yeah, this is the robot I believe, this one right here on the left, the [laughs] this like hexagon, actually was the won that won because it literally did nothing but be really heavy and big. And all the, that one right there. That's disturbing. That's a tissue box with personal massagers attached to it. Yeah. Little personal massager legs. But yeah the robot that ended up winning was the big giant one that looked like a big box. And it did nothing. It did absolutely nothing. It just sat there. And the guy who won said, I actually feel ashamed to have won because I won with this terrible, terrible robot. It was pretty great. Pretty great. The announcers at the very beginning even admit crappiness from strategy. That's a quote from their video. [LAUGH] Which is fantastic. What a great tagline for a robot competition. Competition. It's really good. I feel like we should enter next year. I would like to see Rosie the Robot go up against Johnny Five from Short Circuit and see what happens. Well, okay, so that brings me to our question of the day which is if our hashtag today is TDBADBOT. And the question is, what's the lamest robot you can think of? Lamest robot I can think of. One that breaks my remote control if it's on Fox News for more than five minutes. Oh, that is a pretty lame robot. I would say like, I could just think of a robot with a broken, like a broken leg that just walks in circles. [LAUGH] Does absolutely nothing, just keeps going in circles, until the battery dies, like what a, what a talent that is. Or a robot that burns toast for no other reason than to burn it. Fair enough. Fair enough. It just burns toast. It's called my toaster. That's the robot that burns toast for me. True. But you guys get bonus points if you use Photoshop. Make a really terrible robot and send it over to us because I think that would be amazing. That's it for the first half of the show, it went by so quickly. Yes it did. Were gonna come back with new releases cause it's Tuesday and then of course we also have user feedback and your phone talk for the day so don't click away, Tamara Daily [MUSIC] Hey everybody we're back. Welcome back to the show. I'm here with Tom Tran. Standup comedian. Hey. All around funny guy. Super nerd. Super nerd. All, all the great things. Like we said [UNKNOWN] he'll be back tomorrow super secret pizza espionage, I don't know. [CROSSTALK]. Better bring some back with him. I would, I would hope so. But I would keep my fingers crossed. But it's Tuesday and sense your not normally here on Tuesday we like to talk about all the great things are coming out during the week. For people to check out, so this is new releases. [MUSIC] But first up we have the next kind of chapter in the Game of Thrones universe which is pretty cool. It's Telltale Games. Game, it's Telltale Games Game of Thrones Game. [LAUGH] Wow. Say it again. And really fast. So much. Telltale Games Game of Thrones game. It's called Iron From Ice. It's episode one. it looks amazing. They have pretty much everybody from the original cast, the actual Game of Thrones cast doing voice over for this. If you have ever played a Telltale game before like The Walking Dead or you've played The Wolf Among Us you know how good their games are. There are usually a lot of conversation and kind of, you know, a little bit of a choose your own adventure vibe, right? Right. Like interactive choose your own adventure. And this actually goes into the Bolton storyline with, with Roose Bolton and, you know, like, there's like this next, another house that we maybe haven't really been introduced to in the show. But then they get into Ramsey Snow's kind of, or Ramsey Bolten I should say. His storyline and a lot of that stuff. It's supposed to be really, really good. I'm really looking forward to this one. And you can get it on quite a few platforms. You can get it on Xbox One, Xbox 360, Playstation 4, Playstation 3, and PC. So that's a lot for one. And I'm assuming iPad and Android ,. Tablets will follow. So that's pretty awesome. I do you have you are you a big Game of Thrones fan? I'm about to say something that may get me thrown out of the nerd club. It's going to be no and then you're going to have to leave. It's not a no. I haven't started watching the show because I've decided I can't get emotionally invested in a program until I know how long it's going to run. Fair enough, okay, alright. I just watched Deadwood. Oh, that is such a good show. That show's been over since it was illegal and creepy to like fantasize about Kristen Bell. Yeah. That's how long. That's true. Wow. It's been a long time. Yeah. Wasn't it cancelled in like 2004. 2004. Yeah. Wow. Yeah but I need to know this relationship's gonna last for a while. I think it's gonna last. I think you might be OK. I don't know, I thought the same thing about Revolution. I just found out that got cancelled last night. Yeah, yeah. Maybe you're right. Yeah. But I think a lot of people felt that way about firefly and we all how that ended. Five or six seasons in I will, I will binge watch and then. You binge it up. Yeah., All right. I like it. The next game on our list is my personal favorite. My pick of the week. Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker. Hm-mm. I'm a little bit obsessed with Captain Toad. It's about time Toad got his own. I agree. Captain Canopio. We gotta get, we gotta get a bird that says that's his Japanese name, Canopio. So we gotta get onboard with Captain Toad. He is a treasure tracker. I love that Nintendo kind of picked out the, in Super Mario 3D world, you're able to do these levels. Hm-hm. They were little, little trend levels where you get stars. And they made his own game based on that. Because it was so fun and it was so different and cool and it's getting great reviews and I'm really looking forward to getting that on Friday for my Wii U. From a marketing standpoint this is what I have to tell Nintendo. I was very excited about this and they I read the actual description and it says, and I'm quoting, the features. Equipped with nothing more than a neck scarf a back pack and oversized headlamp. Not doing a great job convincing me that Toad is a superhero. Get out your neckerchiefs everybody. Get out yo neckerchiefs. I'm excited. Yeah, I am excited. I'm not gonna, I'm, I'm, I am so real about Captain Toad it's not even funny. And then lastly I actually missed this last week but I"ve been hearing incredible things about this and I'm a big fan of horror movies. Mm-mm. So The Babadook is out in theaters right now. You can go see it and I've just heard nothing but this is a great horror film, it really likes take some turns you don't expect. Looks absolutely terrifying. And and I, I don't know, I'm really, I'm a sucker for a good horror movie. So. I watched the trailer and I was honest to God creeped out. It's really creepy, yeah. The, the trailer is weird and like it's set, the, she reads from this book and it's called the Babadook. And it's this monster and all this stuff and then of course like terrible things start happening or whatever. From the book. Crayon no, it's the [UNKNOWN] coming to kill us. Yeah it's a, it's a it's really fascinating to me. Like I want to see it. It looks really good in kinda like almost indie like. Right But it looks smart, smartly written, very good horror. What was, what was cool about it was they released it on DirectTV first and then released it in theaters. So it was, it was exclusive to DirectTV for awhile. Which is the way that the industry is going. Streaming technology. It's kind of like hey, it's exclusive here first and then you can watch it in first. Or, well we've seen a lot of a lot of like documentaries come out. Mm-hm. Video OnDemand first and then, And then based on, I think the Eroper Report does that too. Yep. The, the movie. Fiction. Not a documentary. Wish it was real. But, yeah, no they did that too, they released it on video on demand, it did so well that they did a theatrical release. And if you wanna good, like, maybe poop your pants a little bit horror movie, this looks like the one. Watch the trailer. It looks pretty good, and I'm often disappointed by horror movies, so I'm looking forward to actually seeing this. I'm actually looking very forward to. Awesome. Well we should all go see it together this weekend and all poop our pants together. okay, well, it is now time for your user feedback. [MUSIC] So we had our hashtag of the day earlier on the show. We do that everyday and yesterday we asked everybody to tell us to us the hashtag TDtrailer to tell us what they would have a trailer full of as their only entertainment for the rest of their life. OK so, because there was this gaming trailer. It was a truck and a trailer that had 25 Xbox 360s and 25 screens where you could sit down and like basically have a giant LAN party. Did it have a generator for all these? I'm sure it did. I'm sure it did. That would suck if it didn't. It would, yeah, it would be kind of a crazy power requirement. So we asked everybody that and we got some really great responses. August wrote to us and said, I would have my wife and kids in the trailer with me cuz I can, I really can't live without them. Hashtag TV trailer, hashtag family and there's his, there's his family right there. Oh. I'm assuming it's your family. It could be a stock photo of somebody else's family. I don't know. They could have taken it out of a, Of a magazine. A frame. Sears, Sears catalog. Leo writes to us and said, I would love to have a trailer dedicated to Super Smash Brothers, Mario Kart 8 and the Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time. At #TDTrailer like that. Yeah. Those are good choices cuz then you have the replay availability in Super Smash Brothers there's a longevity this sort of long game in Ahrea Time we also have Miro Car eight also very competitive lots of replay value. I like it. Lionel wrote to us and said. I would have a trailer with no gravity so I can float around forever doesn't seem like that can get boring. I think I agree with that. Like this microgravity trailer would be. Kind of amazing. Except for you know, the eating, drinking and having to go to the bathroom thing. Well you could get out. True. But then that would be your only form of entertainment. So, yeah you just float around. Two of you floating experiments and things inside there. You could try out a bunch of stuff. Okay and then lastly Stefan wrote up and said, I wouldn't need a whole trailer, all I would need is a smart car and an Oculus Rift. There's Room for two! [LAUGH]. I love this, this picture of a guy in a car ready to drive with a Rift on. That's fantastic. That's not dangerous. No. Definitely. Not dangerous. That will, that will surely end well. That will surely end well. But yeah. You guys did such a great job this week. And we love pictures attached to all these tweets and like, YouTube comments. Like, send us some pictures of stuff. We, very visual here. And then lastly, which is a lot of people's favorite part of the show, we have our very final piece of user feedback, which is our phonetographer of the day. [MUSIC] We've got a really good phonetographer today. Alright. Well I, we really like our international. Viewers and listeners. They're really really cool. I mean we love, we love us some United States of America obviously. U. Merica. U.S.A. But it's really cool to see how many people, like, write in from all around the world. And so Gus H. wrote to us and sent us this absolutely stunning picture. And said hi Tomorrow Daily, this is the photo I took with my Galaxy S3 in HDR mode of Cape Town harbor from the building I work at, Media 24. Gus Hoffman, Cape Town, South Africa. I mean like wow, look at that picture. That looks straight up Lion King. Yeah. Like that looks like- And that's not joke. Like Galaxy S3, that's like, that's a few years old. Mm-hm. We always say on the show people send us pictures. Of amazing photos with older devices. And we just can't believe that they've gotten. Because I, like, I feel like with any older devices I'd be shooting like, blindly. I think with the, with the talent, enough talent, some. I've seen some professional photographers take like, a great photo with an old iPhone. Yeah. Portraitry. Portraiture. Yeah. Like things like that. I mean it's really incredible. Mm-hm. So Gus, from Capetown South Af, like, thanks. It's a really good picture. Pretty awesome. It's amazing sunset. Ridiculous. If you guys wanna submit your photos to be considered for the photog of the day segment, you can email us at tomorrow@cnet.com. Right here. You can also send us your hashtag of the day, if you like using email. If you absolutely hate using email, that's okay because we're on social media. You can find us @tomorrowdaily at Twitter, on Facebook, Instagram. And tomorrowdailytv over on Google Plus if you're so inclined. Be sure to rate and review the show. If you watch or listen to it on iTunes, that really helps us out. Also we would really love it if you subscribed to us if you are watching on the YouTube, which I know a lot of you do. And give me a thumbs up. I know Kail says every day, it makes me feel better. It doesn't really do anything, but. It's like, yeah There you go. Thanks, I appreciate that. There you go. So, you see now you guys are off the hook. Tom hooked us up. Not off the hook. You gotta do it, too. Okay, fair enough. But yeah, so that's that's everything and if you wanna share the show with your friends you can just send them to tomorrowdaily.com and that'll send you right to the CNET show page with all of our episodes which is pretty easy. Yeah. so, I was just thinking. Yeah. You look really familiar. [UNKNOWN]. Yeah. And it occurred to me that I think I know you from a video game. You do know me from a video game. What game is it? I am actually every Vietnamese guy in Call of Duty Black Ops. Now that's racist. And I know that sounds super racist. [LAUGH] Active Vision paid me a lot of money to do that. To be every [UNKNOWN]. I am literally every American Vietnamese character in Call of Duty Black Ops. I help consult on the video game. I worked with the company as a. Military consultant. Okay. Because I was in the army for a long time. They asked my to come in and work on the video game. And I was like awesome. Yeah. And then one day one of the art guys was like, you're Vietnamese. And I was like, are you just figuring this out cuz we've been working together for like six months now. [LAUGH] He's like wait a minute. And then they asked me if I wanted to be in the video game and I said. How do you say no? I was like, are you drunk? Of course I wanna be in the video game. Yeah. Yeah. So I am. Literally every Vietnamese guy in Call of Duty Black Ops. Right, could you, if you have it we can maybe try to show it on this camera and on your one shot here. Yeah. Send it over that way. Just turn it around right next to your face. That's. There he is. Right there. I'm going to zoom in. Look. Literally. Yeah. Tilt down just a little, there we go. Getting glare. Oh. So good. You and your kids have killed me three billion times. How does that feel? You guys have, you guys have killed Tom a lot. [UNKNOWN] I mean, that's something to be proud of. Thanks for paying for my condo [LAUGH]. Super nice. Super Nice. Where can we find you online? You can go to my website thomtran.com. It's t, h, o, m, t, r, a, n. Or ,. On the tweet at @thomtran1. Super, super easy. You can find me at ashleyesqueda. Now we are going to wrap it up for today. We will be back tomorrow. Cale will be here with a brand new slate of weird, wonderful geek news, technology, future tech, all the great stuff that you guys know and love from us. But it's all done, be a good human. We'll see you next time. Bye. [MUSIC]