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Three bizarre home devices and a few good things at CES 2025

    Every year, thousands of product sellers, journalists and gadget enthusiasts gather in an unreasonable city to marvel at often unrealistic products.

    To serve our readers, Ars has done the work of sifting through hundreds of such items presented at the Consumer Electronic Show 2025 and weeding out the most bizarre, unnecessary, and mind-blowing ones. Andrew Cunningham swept through PC and gaming accessories. This writer limited it to goods related to the house.

    It's a lie to say it's all a joke, so I threw in some really good stuff for human domicile that was announced at CES. But the things you want to tell your family and friends about with seeming disbelief? Enough of that, still.

    AI-powered spice dispenser: Spicerr

    A hand holding a white tubular device, with herbal tubes in the lower portion, as herbs fall from the bottom.

    Part of my job is to try to expand my point of view outward – to include people who may not have the same experiences and who may want different things from technology. Not everyone is a professional writer working on the latest turn-based strategy game in Markdown. You should try to hear many tones within the common voice in your head when discussing new products and technologies.

    I can't get there with Spicerr, the world's first AI-powered spice dispenser, even if we leave out the AI ​​part. Is measuring and dumping spices into a dish even five percent of the overall challenge? Will a mechanical dispenser be more accurate than standard teaspoons? Are there many types of foods on which you would like to sprinkle a “custom blend” of spices? Are there home cooks so committed to fresh, bright flavors that they want their spices to come in small bottles, at presumably premium prices, rather than simply having small quantities of regularly replenished supplies?

    Perhaps the Spicerr would be a boon to inexperienced cooks, whose relatives have all known them to under-season their food. Rather than buying a battery-powered appliance they charge to 'take the guesswork out of flavour', you can also buy them good cookbooks, or a Times Cooking subscription, or just a few new bottles paprika, oregano, cumin, cayenne pepper and turmeric.