Lee Hutchinson and Ron Amadeo talk about the guns they saw, the ethical implications, and the possible applications. Plus, a talking robot.

It may have been our third day of CES, but Tuesday was really day one for the show, when some 150,000 people crushed into the Las Vegas Convention Center to wander the booths and toy with all of the devices. But Senior Reviews Editor Lee Hutchinson and Reviews Editor Ron Amadeo took some time off the floor to visit an old friend of Ars: Tracking Point, makers of the Linux-powered rifle.

Hutchinson got his first taste of Tracking Point at last year’s CES. His feature about the company’s rifle , which assists the shooter with sighting a target, received massive attention from Ars readers as well as from other sites. The controversy of gun ownership played no small role in the wide readership, but the empirical importance and innovation is difficult to deny: a bevy of sensors come together to allow an inexperienced marksman to nail a target at 1,000 yards.

At CES, the company showed Hutchinson a new “precision guided firearm” in an AR-15 form factor. The gun combines a TI OMAP processor and its sensors to produce the same kind of assisted aiming Hutchinson first saw in an unwieldy bolt-action hunting rifle.

AR-15s are popular semi-automatic hunting rifles, but they also, sadly, crop up frequently in public shootings like Sandy Hook. In the video above, Hutchinson talks about Tracking Point’s response to potential controversy, the differences between models, and new military and paramilitary uses that could open up now that the precision guided firearm is more like what those groups actually use.

In meta-CES news, Yahoo unveiled its new tech site at a CES keynote Tuesday. Yahoo Tech editor David Pogue, formerly the technology columnist for the New York Times, cited Ars as one of those tech publications that does not serve “normal people.” We couldn’t agree more, and we couldn’t be happier about it. The relevant clip is below.

A snippet of the Yahoo Tech announcement that mentions Ars.

Listing image by Lee Hutchinson