 was fast. Good jokes. Do them again. All right. Here we go live totally for real live and everything. Yeah. This is not the second time we're doing this. Oh, I don't know why you would say that person out there. Nobody did. Nobody said that. Nobody said that did they? Okay. Here we go. Quality content thrives for the support of those who benefit from its creation. If you gain value from the Daily Tech News show, consider joining others like me who provide support. Learn how to help at daily tech news show dot com slash support. This is the Daily Tech News for Monday December 19, 2016. I'm Tom Merritt joining me today. Ms. Veronica Belmont cohost of the Sword and Laser, GroBot, product manager and more mad. I add Veronica. Well, thank you. Happy, happy Electoral College Day to you. It's all happening again. It's wonderful. It's really in so many ways, Tom. It's all happening again. All of this has happened before. All of this will happen again. It's the Battlestar Galactica of elections. Also joining us today, Ms. Hope Reese, staff writer at Tech Republic. And we're going to be talking after the top stories about your story, Hope, about click workers, people using mechanical Turk and other platforms like that. Thanks for having me. Very good to have you along as well. Let's start off with the top stories. Korea's Chosun Ebo reported Monday that Samsung is talking with LG Chem about making smartphone batteries. Samsung supposedly wants to diversify its sources and LG could start supplying batteries in the second half of 2017. Samsung currently sources batteries from its own Samsung SDI and as well as China's Amperix technology. The Korea Herald reports that Samsung has finished its investigation into what caused Note 7 phones to catch fire and it has apparently reported the findings to outside labs like Korea Testing Laboratory and UL. Those are the third parties that certify things as being safe. Obviously, they want to make sure they get all of their ducks in a row heading to the Samsung Galaxy S8 as well as being able to make the batteries in other phones, whether they put out a new note or not safe. What do you read in the tea leaves here, Veronica? I'm just excited to finally find out what went wrong precisely. Do we know if it was if it was batteries specifically from one of those sources in particular, or was it just a yeah, it had to have been one or the other, right? Yeah, we haven't got the confirmation yet. So there were reports that it was a design flaw that was squeezing the battery too much. And that was what was causing the problem. It could have been any of them. Yeah, that hasn't been confirmed by Samsung. However, the fact that they're talking to a new battery supplier at the same time that they seem to have sent their final report would indicate to me that it might be the battery that was in fact the problem. Yeah, it's a little bit of a presumption on our parts. But I think the the the tea leaves, as you said, are lining up in a certain way. So I guess we'll find out the truth soon enough. Yeah, I would like to know. And it could be a combination of things. Yeah, probably it probably is hope. What was your take on this whole note seven fiasco? Oh, I mean, I'm not the best person to ask, but I'm very glad I wasn't involved. I think that's a perfectly reasonable response to say. So yeah, I'm surprised that it kind of happened and then happened again. Surprise. It kind of blew up in the way it did. Sorry, I'm sorry, too soon. Almost too soon. Did you guys just decide that did you see the whole silo green fiasco over the weekend? No. So he put out a video of him. It was like survey. It was like surveillance camera from his recording studio of a phone exploding in his face with no explanation. And not my when I saw it, I said, Well, that's not really how they explode. Usually they usually just kind of smoke. Yeah. And and a bunch of people got concerned that he was hurt. And he had to put out an apology video saying that that was a segment for an upcoming music video they were doing. And it wasn't real. Okay, it was fine. That's good. I'm glad he's fine. That's weird. What a weird thing to do. Anyway, moving on, permeated public culture that much. Yes. Facebook messenger launched a split screen group video chat feature Monday similar to the popular app house party. Six users can join a chat at once and 44 more people can join by voice. The feature is available in Android iOS and on the web. Masks are available on the iOS version. We chat added a similar feature last year. So this is the hot new thing. Everybody's getting into group video chats. It's different than like Snapchat had their groups thing last week. But that's serially, right? Like you send messages to multiple people, and then they send them back. This is a live video chat like like a Google Hangout, right? Except nobody uses Google Hangouts for anything other than daily tech, you know, for me, this is so funny, because this is such a feature that I would never want or ask for. But I feel like there is definitely like a segment of the population that loves doing stuff like that, obviously, because people keep making products like this. But for me, there's like zero appeal to a group video chat unless I'm doing it for a podcast or something like that. Yeah, I believe that the app house party is huge in the team demographic. And it's not about practical application. It's not about planning things. It's just about hanging out. Hope of you used anything like this? I mean, I've done it with Skype before, not for a while, but trying to connect a lot of people from different parts of the world who met in some situation. And you know, that's really the best way to Oh, so I get it. You actually need friends for these to make sense. That explains why I'm not getting it. Okay. Yeah, it's but it's another example to a Facebook really moving into any potential area it thinks might become popular. It sees something like House Party taken off. It sees we chat adding things. I think WhatsApp even partnered with someone to add a little bit of functionality in with a partner app. So this is the hot new thing. When you're at the Christmas parties. Remember to talk about how you live chill on your favorite multi video app. And then you'll sound like an old man because no one will believe you. Mark Zuckerberg has completed his project to build his own personal AI assistant he calls Jarvis. He's used Python PHP and Objective C along with some natural language processing some speech and face recognition. His assistant needs to be able to connect with devices from Sonos as well as his Spotify account is Samsung Television, a Crestron smart home system and a lighting system, a Nest cam and a bunch more. Zuckerberg can communicate with Jarvis by voice or through Facebook Messenger. And he says he spent about 100 hours on the system and might release it publicly if he can achieve more home automation not tied to a specific setup. I feel like this is such a funny little vanity project that you know may turn out to be an actual product. But at the same time, come on, Jarvis really like that really? He's a fan. He's a Marvel fan. It's just so annoying. He wants to be he's tired of everyone calling Elon Musk Tony Stark. So he wants to build Jarvis. Okay, fair enough. But this is this is also we get we get a look into the kind of IoT stuff that Mark Zuckerberg uses in his home. So there's a little insight there. I think the idea of a bespoke system might point the way to something here because what caught my eye was him saying like, Oh, I'd release it publicly, but it's so tailored to my system. I need to make it kind of universal for people. I mean, maybe there maybe there's something to that like getting a service that says, Oh, we will come in and create a bespoke technology system. Obviously, people have been doing that with home automation forever. Right? So it's a natural for this. But but maybe for smaller items, maybe there's a task rabbit type situation there or an Amazon home services type system that's a little cheaper than hiring a home theater expert off the shelf sort of thing. I don't hope do you use any of this stuff? Um, I do have Alexa and I think it's actually oh, actually now it just turned on. Be careful with that. Sorry. Really careful. Um, I think it's really incredible. I mean, that's to me one of the most advanced kind of voice recognition systems out there. And I just, you know, I see things moving in that direction for sure. Um, I there's still a lot to happen before it connects to all the, you know, features of your home. But yeah, the Amazon Echo, the Echo Dot, all those Amazon voice services things are showing up on more holiday shopping lists and wish list that I'm seeing than they have before. I think that's it's really starting to catch on. I don't know if I kind of disagree with you a little bit. I don't know if I'm if I necessarily see a need for this kind of bespoke thing. I think like these systems are already integrating with so many other Internet of things devices. I just don't know why you would really need a I mean, the interconnect ability is already pretty good in so many cases for at least for the for the major systems out there between Echo and Nest and, you know, connected televisions and security systems. I just I feel like it's going to continue to be more inclusive rather than need to be picky about things. You're probably right. But I just love that idea of of the artisan who comes on and oh, I will I will create custom Python for you and maybe just come and fix it. So I don't have to deal with it and maybe come set it up. So I don't have to do that. The problem is that to make sense, it has to be expensive. And once it's expensive, then it's really no different than current system people that come in and install your home theater for you. Right. All right. While sitting in traffic Saturday, speak of the devil, Tesla CEO Elon Musk tweeted, traffic is driving me nuts. I'm going to build a tunnel boring machine and just start digging. An hour later, he added, I'm actually going to do this and added the word tunnels to his Twitter bio. Or as Technica notes that Musk said, he had the idea about hyperloop while sitting in traffic outside LA as well. So tunnels, I mean, it's hard to tell, right? Why not? Right. He probably didn't mean it when he made the first tweet and then just started thinking, Hey, wait a minute, you know, I wonder if you could make a business out of that. He does know we already have tunnels as a thing, right? Yeah, already do tunnels. How do you disrupt tunnels? Yeah, that's what I'm trying to figure out. Like, where is the disruption here? Is it like under the ground? Maybe that would be kind of rad. Buy up the land at both ends. Is he talking about subways? I don't have so many questions. I like the idea that Elon Musk just decided because he's so rich, he never has to take public transportation that subways exist as a service of moving people from place to place in tunnels. Yeah. No, I think it's, it is both hilarious and intriguing. Because he did come up with the hyperloop, right? He thought, what if we could just go over all this traffic and then design the hyperloop and with juries out, right? Whether the hyperloop is actually going to end up being a viable system or not. But it does work. You know, people have proven some prototypes. So I highly anticipate the disruption of tunnels. What's not to look forward to? Right. The US Supreme Court has decided to hear a case between TC Heartland and Kraft, two companies we don't talk about in tech news very often, about a law that requires patent owners to sue companies in the district where they reside or where the infringement occurred. Now, why this is appropriate to technology is so many tech companies file in the Eastern District of Texas. That's because most patent lawsuits are filed in the Eastern District of Texas because its judges are perceived as more favorable to patent holders. And the reason companies can do that is that in 1990, an appeals court reinterpreted the law to mean that a web presence in an area was sufficient to determine the location. So that law that said, well, you have to file your case in the place where the infringement occurred or where you are suddenly became anywhere you wanted that had the web and in Tyler, Texas, they have the web. So everyone decided to file in the Eastern District. The Supreme Court is expected to overrule that decision and say, no, you have to actually physically be in the location. You can't just say because you're on the web anymore than you could say because you have a telephone, you're everywhere in the world. And if they do decide that it could shift a lot of cases to Delaware, where many companies are incorporated. I'm sure the Delaware appreciates that. Maybe they do. They may not. I don't know. Well, right. No, Delaware might like it. But the Delaware clerks probably are anticipating the case. But it would be a huge shift and it would actually change patent law because you would have fewer favorable rulings. I mean, I don't know if you guys think this qualifies as patent reform, but it could have a small effect similar to that. I was going to say I'm always in favor of reforming patent law in most ways. So that's that's the end. That can be a plus in my book. Yeah. Well, it'll be interesting to watch that case and it does. They're talking about maybe getting an eight oh decision on this like it would just be 100% unanimous. So it sounds like a done deal that they know which way the Supreme Court's going to rule. Well, the French Postal Service has approval to begin a test program to deliver parcels once a week by UAV on a set nine mile route. The route stretches between Saint-Max-Million-Lesson-Bremont and in the province region of France and in the south. Where's Patrick when you need it? Patrick tomorrow, your pronunciation. Yeah, he's gonna be like, oh, yeah, that was very correct. Good job. The quadcopters can fly up to 12 miles carrying about two pounds at up to 19 miles per hour. The hope is to eventually use the service to deliver to hard to reach rural or mountainous regions, which is rad. Yeah, so I mean, the US Postal Service has done a test. UK has done a test. I think Sweden or Switzerland have done a test or Wanda does regular medicinal deliveries. You've got Singapore doing this. You've got Australia doing this. And now the French Postal Service is going to put in a regular route for parcels to not just not just a letter. This is up to two pounds, right? So this this is real, real unmanned aerial vehicle delivery. I hope does that excite you? I think it's great. I mean, there's of course a downside, which is, you know, what happens to the postal workers. But overall, I mean, this is gonna improve efficiency. I mean, probably save a lot of money. We get places, get packages, you know, to where they're needed. I see it as a good thing. Yeah, and I think it's quite possible that the the difficulty in delivering these now will mean that the workers that time had to be spent delivering into these remote regions will not be lost but better spent on other things and improve other things, especially in France, where they have they have fairly strong labor protections. And they still, yeah, and they still need people to fly them. So it's the kind of question like, you know, when technology comes in and takes away jobs, you know, it also makes jobs in other areas as well, not necessarily to the same degree that the jobs were lost and sometimes, you know, in a different kind of space. But this is, yeah, you still I don't know if these are all going to be automated. Exactly. Typically, UAVs still need a pilot of some kind. Yeah, I think they said that these are capable of automation, but there would be a monitor. So yeah, there's going to be there's going to be somebody keeping an eye on them for sure. Thanks to all those who participate in our subreddit, you can submit stories and vote on them at DailyTechNewShow.Reddit.com. All right, let's get into the story that Hope wrote along with your partner Nick Heath from Tech Republic about Amazon's Mechanical Turk, which launched back in 2005 and is still around and still kicking. In fact, 75% of the people who use Mechanical Turk are in the US, 15 to 20% in India, around 10% in other parts of the world. And if you don't remember what it is, it's a system that says, hey, people who need small things done and are willing to pay a little bit of money for them can post them here. And other people who are willing to do those things can say, OK, yeah, for 10 cents, I will identify whether a dog is in that photograph or something like that. You can also achieve something called master level, which gets you better jobs and better pay. But the problem with all of this is if you're relying on this to make a living, you have to do it a lot. You have to always be on call because the jobs aren't consistent. And there's no transparency in how you get to become a master level worker. I think the other part of this hope that I found really fascinating is machine learning algorithms, which we think of as Oh, the AI taking over is relying on platforms like Mechanical Turk or crowd flower to help them learn, help them train, explain what's going on there. So this is really interesting. I was at an AI conference in February and talking to a guru Bonnevar, who is at IBM and he's in the cloud computing, one of the heads of cloud computing. And I asked him, we're having a discussion about jobs. And, you know, like we just said, it takes, you know, the age of AI takes some away and and brings some back. And I said, what are the blue color jobs of the AI era? He's like, well, there are going to be plenty. It's called data labeling. So basically machine learning, which is a subset of AI relies on all of these, you know, pieces of of actual data that's labeled. So image recognition, voice recognition, all these things, they need tagging. And the tagging has to happen by humans. So you see a photo and you say, there's a cow there, there's a cat there, there's whatever. Very tedious work. But when humans have labeled this, then the machine algorithms can kind of teach themselves to recognize the objects. And that's how they learn. Basically, it's the foundation of AI. So we have all of this massive amount of data right now that needs to labeled. And one of the primary ways that it's done is through a platform called Amazon Mechanical Turk. So Mechanical Turk is one of many of these platforms, but it's by far the largest there are over 500,000 people who have done work on Amazon Mechanical Turk. And the thing about it is, you know, everyone knows what Amazon is, but this is a little bit of a hidden kind of, you know, the insiders know what Mechanical Turk is, but not a lot of other people do. It allows, it's basically a connecting platform for anyone from academic researchers to big companies to people like, you know, like myself who need a transcription job done to have people across the globe who will do the job or whatever rate I set. So the jobs are completely, you know, they're unregulated. I can set the rate as a requester, and it's basically take it or leave it. So for a lot of people, they, you know, some people use this as a side income. Some people rely on it as full time work. But basically they're being paid pennies per task and literally pennies. I've been speaking to a lot of Turkers, they call themselves about the kinds of tasks they're doing and what they're being paid. And it's really incredible. So they're, the whole mentality is just like piece these little, little tiny monotonous things together and make some kind of money. The thing to me that was interesting is once I started actually talking to people who do this kind of work, I was really surprised by just what a wide range of tasks there are. And some of them, you actually wonder why are people requesting this? Basically, if you're a requester, you're anonymous, you don't know why. So a lot of these are very graphic and, you know, horrific type things. Like in one week, I talked to two or three Turkers who told me that one of their tasks was to label headings from ISIS and videos. I mean, you get to deny the task. You don't have to accept it. But still, you're on there trying to find these ways of money. And then anyway, there's stuff like that. There's pornography, there's all kinds of things. And so the idea being that the people assigning those tasks are looking to identify inappropriate content then? That's, yes, exactly. But the thing is, you really just don't know. So it could be anyone using it for any purpose. A lot of the larger companies, when I started trying to talk to them about this, they don't really want to talk about their involvement in Amazon Mechanical Turk, they kind of stay away from that subject. Some of them, Microsoft has its own in house, you know, click work kind of places. So they will do that. But so many of them are outsourcing work. So the thing that's interesting to me is just that you have this, you know, super high tech AI, you know, incredible stuff that's going on. But the backbone of it is really kind of these workers who are really making pennies for what they're doing. It sounds to me like the one of the main problems is that you, you can't really guarantee you'll make enough. In fact, it sounds like you had a really hard time nailing down what the average salary is because it varies so widely by task. And because of that, the market pressure that you as a turker would apply is, oh, I'm going to turn that down because it's not enough. But if you're uncertain when the next job is coming, and you're relying on this for some cash, you're going to end up taking a bunch of jobs that are that are piddly because, well, at least you're getting something and starting to build up something. Because if you turn down too many jobs, then you're not making anything. And the thing is, I actually, I had some angry emails after this piece came up from turkers who said, your article is wrong. And I make great money on Amazon Mechanical Turk. Well, you can make some money on it, but over, I think 52% make less than $5 an hour. So really, you know, it's just a very small sliver that's making much more than that. And in different parts of so you mentioned 75% are in this country. If you go to Canada and a couple of my sources were from there, you have a much harder time. Because first of all, you're not even paid in cash, you're paid in Amazon gift. That's rough. And then you you have a much more limited pool of jobs that you can apply for and get. The other thing that we didn't mention is that you might complete a job. And for for any reason, the requester will reject your work. You don't even necessarily know why. And then you don't get paid. Do they get the work? Like the you've already turned it in so they could essentially be getting work for free, earned it in, and you've wasted your time. So there's all this hidden, you know, these hidden tools and the time and, you know, the content. I mean, and then finally, the lack of communication with Amazon because across the board, every single person I spoke to said, we never hear back. No one ever responds. It's a blanket email back every time. You know, they're pretty much voiceless. They gather in a lot of these online forums and communities. And those seem to have play a role in kind of having Turkish support each other, giving them resources. But it says if they're, you know, they're banding together. But, you know, the reality is like they're not actually getting a lot of answers from Amazon. It's interesting because it's very much very much got to echo on my end. It plays really into the this whole gig economy idea, you know, with driver drivers. But they never seem to like only like you said a small fraction of people are actually making enough to to have that be their full time job. It can definitely bring in supplementary income. But it's difficult to to have that be the thing that you do full time. And I some of the people you you talk to in the article, like I think one of them said like, oh, sometimes I make 20 bucks in a day. And that's like a good day for me or $35, I think he said. And that's that's gonna when you're competing for stuff like that, it's it's definitely you don't get a lot of time off from that because you have to be constantly keeping your, your, your, your, your attention to the incoming jobs. Yeah, it's I there's a Facebook group that I joined. And a lot of people would post their time sheets on there. So I could get a sense of what are people actually making is this typical is this good. And I mean, you know, what they were considering good on the Facebook page really was below minimum wage for for all this stuff. So it feels to me like one of the biggest problems here is scale. There is there's not enough work coming through for you to be confident that oh, if I turned down this one for being too low, there'll be another one. So it almost would behoove Amazon if they want to help these employees to get more people on the platform, get more people to use it. In addition to, like you said, provide some transparency, provide some outreach, let these people have a contact where they can say, hey, there's something bad going on because when when you have that kind of contact, it improves the product for both sides. I mean, so there's a designation called master's level. And everyone I spoke to said, we don't understand the rhyme or reason behind this. Some people who have had a high rejection rate or not enough jobs or whatever, they get it. Some other people don't. There's total mystery. Amazon won't be clear about why, but people who do get that there, they have a benefit of, you know, more jobs and better paying jobs that they can choose from. So, you know, they say how do they want to do better and make more? So it would be great for Amazon to tell them, hey, you know, good work, here's how you could make more money or, you know, what's going on. But there isn't any of that. They need an advocate on the Amazon side for them. They need their own tron to fight for the user. You know, this does. It's like Uber and Lyft, you know, there and all these other kind of platforms where people are piecing together work, contract working. The thing that makes this different for me is that, you know, we see an Uber driver and we know what they are. But the AI stuff is so hidden. We don't know when we're on Facebook or online, who's doing the work behind that's powering all this or the big companies that are really, you know, benefiting from it. So, you know, an Uber driver, if they drive you, they're going to make the money, whereas a turker might not make the three cents from the job, you know, for no reason. Well, and it sounds like from your story that the amount, the need for this is not going to dry up. That it's not like we're anywhere near having fewer pieces of data that needed to be catalogued. In fact, it sounds like it's going to keep growing for quite a long time. Yeah, very just go ahead. Oh, no, you go. I was going to say, it'd be nice if the big companies that do have, I know for like X dot AI, for example, which manages booking via email for for scheduling your meetings and stuff. It's it's not completely AI at this point. They have people who are looking at that content and that data and making sure the AI is working the way it's supposed to or actually doing the scheduling for it. It would be nice if companies like Google or Amazon or Microsoft actually employed these people instead of outsourcing this to Turk or something like that and paying them pennies on the dollar. You know, actually give them paying jobs and make that part of the industry and support those people who are doing that work. Yeah, there's a path for that, right? Hope. I mean, you describe the fact that a lot of these platforms are still hybrid and need people like Veronica's describing if these companies could actually make it. So, hey, do it at this level. You get this is how you get to master level. Be at master level. This is how maybe you get hired by the company thing is. I think they're just taking advantage of the system where they can pay whatever price they want, you know, to get the work done. They don't have to pay benefits. They don't have to communicate. You know, people are out there and they're going to do it. So well, and that's probably one of the main motivations in keeping it light touch is that as soon as you start engaging with the people in the platform, then labor laws kick in, some of which are necessary for providing protections, but some of which aren't applicable to the situation. And that's something that the ride hailing companies like Lyft and Uber have been fighting as well. So we kind of need that piece to be solved as well before we can really clearly solve this side of it. But I still think there needs to be more communication about it. Agreed. I know Uber drivers were surprised in Pittsburgh. They didn't know before anybody else, you know, that all of a sudden there would be a self driving fleet in their city. So yeah, I mean, this does happen elsewhere. One one area where there is more regulation at academics to use turf for research, they often have academic guidelines and, you know, rates of pay that they have to abide by. So that I think is a little bit more of a positive way that Turk is used. And of course, you know, it's there's a lot of necessary work that is on there and it's helping people. It isn't all in all, you know, evil thing. Yeah, but it's enabling some things to happen that need to be questioned. Yeah, well, at least there's a precedent for some kind of guidelines. If you're interested in more about this, I highly recommend checking out Hope and Nick's story at TechRepublic.com. We'll have a link in our show notes as well. Hope thanks for talking about this with us. Thank you so much. Let's get to a couple of emails before we're out of here regarding the crew car sharing service. We got an email from Ron who says, first of all, it doesn't sound any better in German. This is taking place in Munich. And secondly, I don't think Mercedes intention with this is selling cars at all. This is a car sharing service. So you sign up for crew and you say, oh, my car is available for this amount of time per day for other people to rent it. You might know that Mercedes is kind of a pioneer in the whole car sharing business, says Ron, with its car to go free float car sharing service. Here you can grab a usually quite new, smart Mercedes A-Class, B-Class, GLA or CLA car for a minute price and then drop it off anywhere within their business area for the next driver to pick it up. They're not trying to sell you anything, though all those shiny new cars may be tempting. On the other hand, I can drive brand new models every few months. They really want to make money with this. A lot of people, myself included, don't own cars anymore since it's more of a burden. I sold my car four years ago and I save so much money now. Whenever I need a car, I take car to go or drive now or rent one for the weekend, which is still much cheaper than owning one myself. Of course, this works only in conjunction with public transportation, which is quite good in Germany. So I think there is a trend towards not owning a car anymore, especially among younger people in larger cities. And Mercedes wants to have a foot in that emerging market as soon as possible. Also, the free float model is only lucrative in large cities like Berlin, Munich, Hamburg, and so on. Car sharing with private cars might also work well in smaller cities. So that might be what they are looking for in the end. So he's saying, hey, Mercedes might not want to sell you a Mercedes by operating crew. They just might want to have a profitable business going forward. Yeah. And then finally, James P. Callison wrote in and said there's another much simpler reason for choosing Volvos for your self-driving car fleet. In 2015, Volvo said they would assume liability for their cars while in autonomous mode. That was part of the regulations that were put in place in Michigan as well as the car maker has to assume the liability for that. But if the car maker is already on board with that, then that makes it easier to choose them for sure. Wow. Yeah. That's that's definitely a plus. Yeah. All right. Thank you again. Hope Reese, staff writer at Tech Republic for joining us. Let folks know where they can find more of what you're doing online. Great. Yep. It's at techrepublic.com and you can just search Hope Reese or Nick Heath or Amazon Mechanical Turk or whatever you'd like to read about. Do you have a Twitter feed or anything like that? Follow me on Twitter at Hope H-O-P-E underscore Reese R-E-E-S-E. Go do that. Ron Cabellmont, what's going on with you? Just the usual, Tom. Getting ready for the holidays, hanging out, eating snacks, living life. Sword and laser of the year coming up this week. We do. We do indeed. I love the book that we read this month. It was fantastic. The Rook by Daniel O'Malley. Check it out, SwordandLaser.com. Thanks to everybody who supports the show at DailyTechNewsShow.com slash support. That includes Chelsea Flowers and James White. And thanks to Mike Harris and Adam Lumbard who both raised their pledge at Patreon.com slash DTNS. You guys are the best you make possible for us to do this show. Our email address is feedback at DailyTechNewsShow.com. We're live Monday through Friday at 4.30 p.m. Eastern. AlphaGeekRadio.com and DiamondClub.tv. And our website is DailyTechNewsShow.com. We'll check in on Veronica's French pronunciation tomorrow with Patrick Beja. Talk to you then. This show is part of the Frog Pants Network. Get more at FrogPants.com. The club hopes you have enjoyed this program. All right. So much more, the song for more. And for more. It is spot on as far as I can tell. Oh, thanks. Good. We'll hope we usually just kind of kick around and figure out the name of the show and edit and stuff. But I know you're probably busy, so if you need to take off, take off whenever. Okay. Yeah, I may have to go in a minute. Oh, please. Yeah. No problem. That was great. Thank you for being on. Really appreciate it. Yeah, I didn't have much to say about Samsung. That's okay. No problem. All right. Thanks again. All right. Thanks, Hope. We'll talk to you soon. Okay. Bye. Bye. All Turk and no pay is pretty good. All Turk and no pay make. We should read some others just to be fair, but that pretty much sums it up, right? No pay makes Jack a dull boy, which is the second one. And on this day's Turk. Also good. Mechanical Turk, not just for cheating at chess. Assaults of batteries. I am all run, AI Ron man. Yeah. I don't know if that reads. It's a bit itchy. Supreme court doesn't stand patent. Taggers are stealing AI's jobs. What happens on Mechanical Turk stays on Mechanical Turk. Turk and ain't easy. Turk's for me. Talking Turk. That's nobody's business, but the Mechanical Turk. By this is a fertile field for the- Yeah, fertile myrtle. Yeah. The murky world of Turk work. The young Mechanical Turks. Jam of inspiration. Turk, Turk, Turk. Watch me Turk. Turk, Turk, Turk. No, watch me Turk. Watch me Nae Nae. That's funny. Oh my gosh. I think, I like both the top two, but I think all Turk and no pay makes sense for the discussion. Yeah, it does. It kinda nails it right in the center. Yeah. Honestly, Turk does too. It's just not, it's like right next to, I don't know, they're both good. They're both really good. I think we'll go with all Turk and no pay. It's getting the most votes too. Most votes. We'll let democracy win this time. We'll wait till the college of merit steps in. The college of merit, the university. When does the electoral university get to, nevermind? Well, that's if you go on for a postgraduate, postgraduate degree. Your graduate election. Well, good show. Thank you all. Good show. It's great. Fantastic. I'm just gonna sit here and level eight a bit. Level eight. Are you guys off next week Veronica, or do you guys have to? It's kind of like, whatever. We don't really have days off. Eileen's job, it's, there aren't days off like we used to get at CNET, right? But also most people aren't showing up for one reason or another, like they have vacations. So you can probably work from home. It's kind of loose. I think a lot of companies are like that during that break time. Yeah. Unless you're hourly. Right. All right. Well, Veronica. Thank you for being on the last Veronica episode of the year. You're welcome. Yeah, I work from home on Friday. I might try to stop in. Oh yeah. That would be great. Yeah. So consider this my verbal tentative acceptance. Okay. Yeah. All right, I gotta go back to work. Pop in and troll. All right, thanks again. All right, bye. Have a good day. And it leaves us, Roger. Once again, it is you and I. You make it sound so like depressing. Oh no, it's not depressing. Just daunting. You and I against the world, you know? But it's such a dystopian feel to it. It's just you and I. Yeah, it's more dystopian. That's what I'm going for. It's like, well, like we ran into bullets. Our swords are dull. We only have two loaves of bread and some apples. And we will survive the coming onslaught. All Turk and no pay. Turk, Turk, Turk, Turk, Turk, Turk. And watch me, Turk, Turk, Turk, Turk, Turk, Turk. Yeah, I need to contact, oh, I guess I'll talk to him. Oh no, he won't be on the 23rd. I'm just going to ask Peter Wells what his schedule is, because he released an episode of the 11th, but not this past 8th, not this time. Oh yeah, he said on that show that that would be his last one. God, okay. And then hopefully he will rise again in the new year under his new banner. Okay. So I'm just wondering if I should have that calendar in there still, because he shared it with me and I have the one Jenny gave me, but I'm not sure if they will be accurate. Yeah, we pretty much have all the episodes down for next week, right? We have the best of, which is on drop off. Yeah, everything's in the can now. This is all canned. Good. Our canned episodes, it makes them sound horrible. I mean these vivacious episodes. These intensely flavored with all natural ingredients. You know, it's funny, all natural can include MSG. I don't, it's a naturally occurring compound in mushrooms and other food stuffs. No more birthdays for the year that are on my calendar, which is good. I'm just writing a little thank you note to hope. Oh, that's good. Before I forget. She was great. Yeah, yeah. It was a good article. I did not, for some reason I totally didn't realize that Tech Republic was based in Louisville. Yeah, almost all the Tech Republic people are in Louisville. Not every single one. Obviously they're her co-writers in England. Okay, I thought like for some reason I thought when Erin said she was moving, I thought she was moving out to come to the offices of Tech Republic. Like she was working remotely and I think that's what threw me off. She was moving? Erin, Carson? Yeah, didn't she move? Oh, but I think she also moved to CNET. Yeah, but no, no, but like when I see that's where I got confused. Like I thought, oh no, she moved out here for Tech Republic and then she got a job at CNET. Yeah. I didn't, that's why I assumed it was out here. Tech Republic has always been in Louisville and they got bought by CNET Networks, I think. Or maybe they got bought by ZDNet actually. I don't even know. Maybe it was a ZDNet thing. I don't know. Anyway, they've always been there. Since they've always been there, Roger. You just never noticed. Even when the first immigrants came across the land bridge, they discovered Tech Republic and what would someday become known as Louisville? Yes, previously it was known as a Tech Republic slugger. I actually have, where is it? I can't reach it. Jason Heiner gave Buzz Out Loud a Louisville slugger from the CNET Louisville crew. Nice. You have a home defense implement. That's kind of small, but not getting on the noggin, I guess. I will see, I'll see what's your, what's the thing with the button? Use that little hammer on your knee to see the reflexes. Yeah, the reflex hammer. I don't know what it's called. Yeah, the reflex hammer. Candle after. How's your, how's your home remodeling going? It's paused right now. I just managed to do the hallway linen closet. Like I just put contact, I vacuumed everything and then I sprayed it down with, the hell I use a non-bleach cleaner, still kind of funky. So Jen stuck some of her Yankee candles in there to over scent it. Like my closet smells like pleather. Oh, that's called a medieval bath when you just scent something instead of cleaning it. Well, yeah, I don't know what to put in there because it kind of has- Yeah, you don't know what's really causing the- Well, it's not funky, but it's not, no, it's not mushy, it's really strong perfume, like old people perfume, that kind of thing. Oh, it just kind of soaked into the, it was probably cleaning fluid stored in there that just stunk up the place. Lemon pledge kind of scent, maybe? No, more like kind of the rose watery, like, like, you know, your grandmother would use or- Maybe they kept spraying the linen closet to make the linen smell like rose water. I just, yeah, I just put contact paper in and putting candles in there. My closet smells like old leather handbags. And then see, when you sell the house, someone's gonna move in and go, this closet smells like Yankee candles and we can't get the smell out. Jen says, we're not ever moving. It's like, you don't understand. I moved, I haven't lived anywhere longer than seven years until my last place. So we're always moving. New house, this new house, that. Well, I understand- The singularity may come and then you'll live forever and never move. We could eventually come to the point where I dump all my comics and anything else that's heavy and then just keep a hard drive on me. So wherever I move, I just plug it in. Well, you might just like shed your need for a corporeal form. I could, but that's very stark tracking. I never understood that as, and this is the thing that's always bugged me because all sci-fi- Being a pure energy. But that makes no sense. Pure energy, everything is made up of energy one form or another. Energy and matter, yeah. It's like saying like, oh, you're gonna be a being of pure weight. Well, what does that mean? That's just a measurement of one aspect of what I am. Well, no, I think what it means is, is not obviously pure energy. Like you say, everything's energy and matter, but we are mostly matter with some energy. And I think the beings of pure energy were mostly energy with very little matter. It would make more sense if they said, well, you're made up of like photons or something, you know, like, yeah. Well, I think that's what they were saying. Photons exist as energy. Steve, thank you. DTNS, oh, I saw this thing from when? DTNS mascot. Ooh. Where? On the slack. Literally pennies. Hey, can we think of a, I can use for the, uh, hmm, that's a good question. So Len wants to think of a DTNS mascot that he can use for the generic superfan poster. He was thinking maybe Ira the sock puppet, but that's more of a night attack thing. What if you made it kind of like a computer with a TV head, kind of like from a Fooley Cooley? There's that, there's the companion. Let me see if I can get a Fooley Cooley. Right here, let me send this. Ugly bags of mostly water. You know, that's not even true either. All right, I get- You're mostly water? Well, that's true, but ugly. Oh, you're just saying we're not ugly. We're not ugly. We're not bags. We're not bags. I mean, that's a loose thing. You're just not literally saying, it's a loose translation. You know what, what would a life form made up of what, silicate or whatever, know what a bag is. It has no appendages to hold- It was the universal translator's best approximation for the word. Well, you know what? It needs to get a thesaurus. It didn't speak English either. Can you imagine that's the upgrade that you got to pay for and Starfleet decided to cheap out? Yeah. Well, you could have got you the thesaurus or you're limited to the basic, Oh, crap. I can't even think of it. Adverbs and the, let's try it out. What are you describing on? You use a adjective. Man, this month has been kicking up, but, so I posted that picture. So you see kind of that- Yeah, I see. Compute screen. Perhaps not so creepy looking, but. All right. We are going to get out of here, out of your way. Let you carry on your with your day. And we will be back tomorrow with Patrick Beja. Goodbye.