CES is a visual feast of lights, colour, people, costumes – and of course endless gadgets.
There are plenty of striking pictures from the show floor.
But are any of the exhibitors interested in delighting your ears?
Rather like the city of Las Vegas itself, it has its own distinctive beat.
There’s the hubbub of chatter. The hiss of vending cart coffee machines. The thumping bass and discord of various sound systems vying for attention. The amplified echo of a hundred demonstrations. The ringtones and message alerts from thousands of mobile phones.
And also – this being a tech fair – the whizzes and ticks and buzzes and bings of robots and drones.
In a nutshell: it’s extremely loud.
After hours of stalking the vast halls of CES besieged by visuals, I decided to try and find beguiling sounds instead.
Things did not get off to a good start.
The first robot I encountered – a service machine designed to guide people around museums – responded to my greeting by asking me whether I was „fickle after kissing“.
Its mortified owner told me it was confused. It wasn’t the only one.
Next, I asked one of the show guides where I could find some interesting noises, and was promptly escorted to a section of the show floor dedicated to in-car speakers.
I had to explain that as much as I admire Lady Gaga, the strains of her hit Bad Romance blasting out of the back of a Jeep rammed floor-to-ceiling with sub woofers wasn’t what I had in mind either.
It was in a start-up zone called Eureka Park that I struck audio gold.
I was drawn in by the sound of crickets – very incongruous in a giant exhibition hall with no natural light, let alone greenery. It was coming from an air purifier called Clair with a built-in Bluetooth speaker nestling at a tiny stand towards the back.
„When people sleep they need fresh air and also this kind of sound can help people sleep better,“ said a spokesman who introduced himself as Bono from South Korea.
„So, we put them both together. “
Thank you, Bono.
It’s the sort of stuff that’s perfect for radio, in fact. After that, I captured the warm American male tones of a virtual assistant designed for cars and the staccato gunfire of a man who was evidently immersed in a VR game of mortal combat that only he could see.
Next came machine-like marching sounds from a team of forearm-sized Aelos robots playing miniature football, and a delegate attempting to play Let It Be by The Beatles on a Magic Instruments digital guitar. It’s supposed to be easy to learn. Perhaps he tried the wrong tune.
I bonded with natural-voiced Emys, a Kickstarter-funded desktop robot that looked like a cross between ET and a Ninja Turtle. It has been designed to teach young children foreign languages (did you know that castle in Spanish is castillo?).
I also hugged a gurgling Talkie – a cuddly little monster with wi-fi that you can use to exchange voice messages with your children.
Olly, a robot that claims to adapt to the personality of its owner, told me about feeling both happy and sad in a mournfully child-like voice.
„By the end of the day I’ll be dead,“ complained an uncomfortable promotions girl, fidgeting in a pair of towering stilettos.
„And if I’m not – just kill me. “
Meanwhile, a little bat-shaped speaker chimed like a casino slot machine, as it tried to re-establish a connection with the smartphone it was supposed to be streaming music from.
What’s the sound of CES? It’s all of those things. All at the same time. All day long. And it’s music to my ears.
Listen to Zoe’s radio report on The World This Weekend, on Radio 4 at 13:00 GMT

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They have become a common sight at many U. S. mass transit hubs since the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001 — armed officers, such as National Guard members in camouflage and with weapons visible.
Now in the wake of Friday’s mass shooting at a Fort Lauderdale airport that left five people dead and multiple others injured, a national security expert says a consistent, visible presence of armed officers is needed in public areas of the nation’s airports.
John Cohen, a former counterterrorism coordinator at the U. S. Department of Homeland Security and an ABC News contributor, said the Transportation Security Administration , formed in the wake of 9/11, has been focused for the most part on preventing planes from getting hijacked and explosives from being taken onto flights.
These duties are critical, but the shooting in a baggage claim area at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport and a shooting incident at Los Angeles International Airport in 2013 that left a TSA officer dead and others injured show the need for a broader approach, Cohen said.
„We need to finally think differently about aviation security,“ Cohen said. In the U. S. and around the world, „we’re facing a growing number of mass casualty attacks from individuals who operate independently“ of any organization, „and those people are difficult to detect and stop prior to an attack,“ he said.
A consistent presence of specially trained, armed officers in public areas of airports such as baggage claim areas and ticket counters could help in two ways, Cohen said.
„It could serve not only as a deterrent but also speed up response times should a situation arise such as the one that occurred in Fort Lauderdale,“ he said.
Authorities have not ruled out the possibility that the Fort Lauderdale shooting was tied to terrorism. But they said Saturday that at this point it appears that suspected gunman Esteban Santiago was acting alone.
Cohen said there are challenges to changing security in the public areas of airports.
The TSA has primary responsibility for aviation security from a federal perspective, he said. But law enforcement and security in public areas of an airport — the areas open to people who are not ticketed passengers and who have not passed through TSA checkpoints — are traditionally the responsibility of the local airport authority and local police, Cohen said.
Federal transportation security officials have been hesitant to direct local authorities on how to operate the areas of airports not under the TSA’s purview, but local agencies and airport authorities could take the lead on this, he said.
„Local airport authorities should make it a priority to have uniformed law enforcement officers patrolling these nonsecured areas. These officers should be trained to recognize the behaviors of an individual who may be planning or preparing to carry out an attack and should also be trained to respond to a mass casualty attacker or active shooter,“ he said.
„This is a normal thing for police departments to do,“ and officers in most local police agencies are already receiving active-shooter training for responding to incidents such as school shootings, he said.
In the Fort Lauderdale shooting, the assailant stopped only after running out of bullets, according to a witness who spoke to „Good Morning America“ today. Cohen said security needs to be in place at airports to stop active-shooter or other similar incidents.
Federal officials could also help by communicating or sharing their security standards with local airport authorities and considering making it mandatory that trained, armed officers patrol the areas of airports not overseen by the TSA, Cohen said.
„If the TSA is not already considering making its security standards mandatory for any public areas of an airport, it should do so,“ Cohen said.

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The brother of a man accused of shooting five people at a Florida airport questioned Saturday why his brother was allowed to keep his gun after U. S. authorities knew he’d become increasingly paranoid and was hearing voices.
After serving in the National Guard in Iraq, 26-year-old Esteban Santiago had trouble controlling his anger and told his brother Bryan Santiago that he felt he was being chased and being controlled by the CIA through secret online messages. But when he told agents at an FBI field office his paranoid thoughts in November, he was evaluated for four days, then released without any follow-up medication or therapy.
„The FBI failed there. … We’re not talking about someone who emerged from anonymity to do something like this,“ Bryan Santiago told The Associated Press, speaking in Spanish outside his family’s pale yellow house nestled in the lush mountains of the southern town of Penuelas. „The federal government already knew about this for months, they had been evaluating him for a while, but they didn’t do anything. “
In recent years, the 26-year-old Estaban Santiago — a new dad, family said — had been living in Anchorage, Alaska. But there were signs of trouble.
Esteban told FBI agents in Alaska that the government was controlling his mind and was forcing him to watch Islamic State group videos, a law enforcement official said Friday. The official was not authorized to discuss an ongoing investigation by name and spoke on condition of anonymity.
The FBI office in Alaska, which declined to comment on Bryan Santiago’s comments ahead of a planned Saturday news conference, interviewed Esteban Santiago and then notified police, who took him in for a mental health evaluation.
Also, he was charged in a domestic violence case in January 2016, damaging a door when he forced his way into a bathroom at his girlfriend’s Anchorage home. The woman told officers he yelled at her to leave, choked her and smacked her on the side of the head, according to charging documents.
A month later, municipal prosecutors said he violated the conditions of his release when officers found him at her home during a routine check. He told police he had lived there since he was released from custody the previous month. His Anchorage attorney, Max Holmquist, declined to discuss his client.
Bryan Santiago said his brother had requested psychological help but barely received any.
„I told him to go to church or to seek professional help,“ he said.
Family members have said Esteban Santiago changed after serving a yearlong tour in Iraq. He was born in New Jersey but moved to Puerto Rico when he was 2, his brother said. He grew up in Penuelas before joining the Guard in 2007.
He deployed in 2010 as part of the Puerto Rico National Guard, spending a year with an engineering battalion, according to Guard spokesman Maj. Paul Dahlen.
Esteban Santiago’s mother wiped tears from her eyes as she stood inside a screen door Saturday. The only thing she said was that Esteban Santiago had been tremendously affected by seeing a bomb explode next to two of his friends when he was around 18 years old while serving in Iraq.
Former neighbor Ursula Candelario in Penuelas recalled seeing Esteban Santiago grow up and said people used to salute him after he joined the Guard. „He was very peaceful, very educated, very serious,“ she said. „We’re in shock. I couldn’t believe it. “
Since returning from Iraq, Santiago served in the Army Reserves and the Alaska National Guard in Anchorage, Olmstead told the AP. He was serving as a combat engineer in the Guard before his discharge for „unsatisfactory performance,“ said Olmstead. His military rank upon discharge was E3, private 1st class, and he worked one weekend a month with an additional 15 days of training yearly, Olmstead said.
She would not elaborate on his discharge, but the Pentagon said he went AWOL several times and was demoted and discharged.
Still, he’d been awarded a number of other medals and commendations including the Iraq Campaign Medal and the Global War on Terrorism Service Medal.
His uncle and aunt in New Jersey were trying to make sense of what they were hearing about Santiago. FBI agents arrived at their house to question them on Friday, and reporters swarmed around.
Maria Ruiz told The Record newspaper that her nephew had recently become a father to a son and was struggling.
„It was like he lost his mind,“ she said in Spanish of his return from Iraq. „He said he saw things. “
Santiago was flying from Anchorage on a Delta flight and had checked only one piece of luggage, which contained the gun.
Sen.-elect Nelson Cruz, who knew the family and represents the town where they live in Puerto Rico, said he had been talking regularly with Bryan Santiago since the shooting.
„They’re very humble and very Christian people,“ Cruz said of Esteban Santiago’s brother and mother. „They want to tell the families of the victims that they’re extremely saddened and extremely upset by what happened. „

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Travellers have been stranded at Fort Lauderdale airport in Florida after a gunman opened fire earlier on Friday, killing five people.
The suspect has been identified by police as 26-year-old Esteban Santiago, an Iraq war veteran.
Some airport passengers described what they saw and heard.

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