 fair and just We have a guy here in Cleveland Tim Misny who uh his tagline is I'll make them pay and Then at the bottom it says doesn't have me. He'll make that pay This is not take a screenshot of that It's actually it doesn't say that it says like this is not indicate, you know Relaxing me. Yeah, right. Yeah, I'll make them pay I'm excited today. We're we're trying something out that we haven't done. I think I may have done it once before But we haven't done it in a long time anyway And it's pre-recorded interview So our main topic will be a discussion of technology in China and trying to bust some stereotypes about it with Eric Olander Who is a longtime China watcher lives in Shanghai is from the United States though gets back here regularly and He the time difference made it so that having him living in Shanghai having him on on during this is like super Early in the morning, right be the middle of the night So so we recorded the interview yesterday afternoon and we're gonna roll it into the show today Roger thinks it went well. I think it went well. Sarah thinks it went well So I think we're I think we're you're gonna like it Hopefully video folks won't be too weirded out that it's not got video because it was a much easier bandwidth wise to just record audio That's why during that time period Tom will be had be made up as former vice president dick Cheney You know, I have to say I he really is the chameleon of an actor Yeah, he is whether or not you liked vice. I I watched it. I thought it was well done You know, I'll leave it at that man He is he really he is he he can transform in ways that a lot of other actors cannot and what if you what if he's right now It'd be great if he's he's me Oh, he could slip into Batman while he's doing Cheney. That would be great He can't do that anymore. He's hitting the wall I can't really do that would be great or not. Yeah, all right So when we get done with the pre-recorded You'll there'll be an obvious ending Sarah where I'll say thanks again, Eric, you know And and then just jump right into your and thanks to all those who've just paid in our subreddit gotcha I Really hope Bohemian rap that he doesn't win best picture. Oh, I don't think it will I don't think it will I think green green book is the best chance to upset roma I don't think Bohemian is gonna get it. Maybe star is born with an outside shot, but not Bohemian, right? Don't you worry? Well, I'm not worried. You know these things are out of my control, but I'm just saying like I think roma is like The best movie at the last year like my car get director and it should get best picture Cinematography perhaps potentially screenplay though. I might fall for the like well if we're not going to give Spike Lee director Let's give him screenplay. So oh, yeah, right. You know, I think that might happen But yeah All right, you guys ready to break for some tech news Yeah, absolutely. Let's do it. All right. Here we go in three two Melissa Worster has supported independent tech news directly for five years be like melissa be lisa Become a dts member at patreon.com slash dts This is the daily tech news for friday february 22nd 2019 in los angeles. I'm tom merit and from studio feline I'm sarah lane from my home studio in cleven, ohio. I'm len paralta And i'm the show's producer roger chain I was tempted to say snowy los angeles because they're technically with snow In the city of los angeles yesterday. Yeah for I I I did see a photo from your roof that there was no snow. There was no snow in my roof Yeah, my mine either all but it was very it was very cold this morning, but no snow no snow Uh, no snow in cleveland either though. That's something cleveland and la have in common. Yes, it's beautiful here Or at least my area of la. I guess we don't because part of never mind Hey, today we have a special interview with eric olander who will join us To talk about technology in china He's the co-host of the weekly china and africa podcast that explores every facet of the prc's engagement on the continent Well, i'll be talking to him in a few minutes, but first let's start with some tech things you should know By do beat analysts expectations for revenue and profit revenue from its streaming video service I qui rose 55 off setting lower ad sales on search and also news By do plans to expand its ai offerings like smart speakers and autonomous driving to enterprise and government customers While revenue rose 10 it was the slowest growth in six quarters. So a rise, but also a fall Uh, so quick mac rumors reports apple plans to close its retail stores in plano and frisco texas On april 12th both stores are located in the eastern texas district court region That is that region that you might know as being famous for Kind of being friendly to patent holders A new apple store will open in the nearby galleria dallas shopping mall april 13th The mall is just outside of the eastern district's jurisdiction but fairly close to frisco and plano So the frisco and plano folks can still go to the apple store But without apple operating in the eastern district And this could prevent cases from being brought to the eastern district on the basis of apple having an established place of business within the region Facebook as we're moving its own avo vpn app from the google play store The vpn service will continue to work for existing users What will eventually be shut down? Facebook used data from the apps users to conduct market research, but it has stopped that practice Also, the company has also stopped Recruiting new users of the facebook research app for android Now if you're wondering what about the ios versions of all of this the ios versions of both apps were banned by apple So that's facebook stopping its own data collection. Sarah. Let's talk about them Dealing with other people sending them data Oh, let's the wall street journal reports that it found 11 health related ios apps that share info with facebook Even if the user of the app has no facebook account Now this is important. It's not necessarily facebook's fault here The apps track things like Ovulation or your weight or your heart rate and then they share that data None of the apps appeared to have an option to stop the data sharing Even if you would have known about it and you would have wanted it the apps use a facebook analytics tool called app events That can target ads by event the facebook app events tool advises developers not to share health financial Health or financial information or other categories of sensitive information So the company told the wall street journal that some of the practices discovered seem to violate terms And it will force those apps to stop sharing the data So I've already seen people uh taking facebook to task for this because that's the reaction right Yeah, facebook's at it again They're stealing our data. I would argue this is exactly what happened with cambridge analytica where they Someone violated the terms of service without facebook's knowledge. What was different about that? Is the question of wait, when did facebook know they were violating it and what did they do about it? That's what's got people legitimately angry. This it sounds like facebook I mean we could maybe try to find out if they knew about this earlier But it sounds like now that it's public. They immediately clamp down on it. They've learned their lesson there These apps on the other hand should not have been collecting this data and sending it to this analytics app without disclosing that It's anonymized for the most part But you should know you should be allowed to decide not to use this app because of that And you should probably be able to opt in not opt out of that Absolutely, and I also think that facebook has a user trust issue to the point where even if the company says Don't worry. We're not collecting your you know your monthly cycle information or your social security information or whatever I think that there are a lot of users who are like, we just don't believe that Yeah, I mean, maybe you're not doing anything with it, but you're probably not throwing it out Now facebook's even even saying like look, we didn't want them to send it We don't we don't want them to continue to send it and we're going to stop them from sending it and people are like Yeah, but you're still facebook and i'm mad at you so Exactly nvidia introduced the g force gtx 1660 ti graphics card based on its touring architecture not the pascal architecture unlike nvidia's rtx cards the 1660 ti doesn't include dlss or ray tracing support, but then a lot of games don't either So this may not be a big deal for some of you if you want to save the money It does promise power efficient performance for 120 frames per second gameplay at 1080p It's got six gigabytes of ram pretty good specs nvidia says it's about one and a half times faster than the gtx 10 60 Uh, the gtx 16 60 ti is available worldwide for 279 bucks roger. I know you keep keep abreast of this sort of stuff How does this one strike you it's it's a good price. It's uh, they're trying to hit a market that was sorely missing when all all the video cards were being snatched up by um crypto currency miners there wasn't a performance But low cost card that they had in the lineup, but amd did And so I think they're trying to fill in that gap and you're right ray tracing support in dlss Isn't in most a majority of games So there's no benefit for gamers to buy it right now and not really have you know Like you some would say like yeah, you're just sitting on 100 bucks That's burning a hole in your pocket because you're not seeing the benefit So this this would be a good move if they can fill the channels and make it so that you can buy it without You know having to resort to ebay or or resellers who are you know trying to Make a quick buck by buying a huge Cash of these and re-selling them It could go a long way to help uh, nvidia be more competitive in that's uh in that kind of um value category When we were talking to patrick dorton about the the video card market a little while ago He was he was hoping to have heard something about this card at the time So this is the other shoe dropping on that uh, and it's you know It's something when you're building a machine yourself Which I know a few of you do not as many as they used to uh, this this is a good option to have out there If like roger says You don't have a rate tracing or dlss game that you have to play Or you don't have to have just the the most future-proofed possible Video card out there if you're if you're willing to to get by with this. Uh, it's it's a good card It's a good card and even if you're not a gamer you're a content creator, but you rely on adobe's creative cloud Many of their applications support the gpu rendering that's available within a lot of nvidia's and amd's products. So You know, it's again, you know, if they can hit that value proposition And fill those channels so you can actually go to the store and buy one and not feel like you know You spent 40 more than you had to be great. Yeah, good. Good point Let's move on to space shall we the japanese aerospace exploration agencies hayabusa to spacecraft Successfully landed on the near earth asteroid rayugu friday It will be the second craft to collect samples from an asteroid and return them to earth after 2005's hayabusa The original the landing and collection were made more challenging as the surface was made of larger than expected gravel Sounds like a lot of beaches i've been to hayabusa too will collect two more samples before returning to earth NASA's orisis rex arrived at asteroid bannu in december and that's scheduled to collect samples in 2020 We're mining asteroids We are literally mining asteroids. It's not we're not mining a lot We don't even know what we're getting until we you know four years later and get to say Yeah, Japan's done it twice now. The united states is about to do it Uh, this this is how it starts right and and the pictures are fascinating This kind of stuff always fascinates me because it does just look like gravel Uh, not not quite as uniform as you might see, you know on a gravel driveway or something like that But but it is it is there. They are big chunks of rock and you're like that's that's the surface of an asteroid That's what it looks like Well, I think I think a lot of folks think of asteroids is like they're rocketing towards earth to kill us all You can actually land a spacecraft on an asteroid if you do it, right That is kind of mind-boggling and I think what's so fascinating is the continued automation of space or exploration You know back when uh, the Apollo missions the idea was you send up a man there You land them and they can dig with a shovel and bring everything back you can do these with robots There's a you you basically drop the cost But you also broaden out the number of missions Really hard to put a person on a moving asteroid and then return them safely back to the earth very easy to do with the robot No, it's it's a good point That the flexibility is is important in the mission execution too that because they found that this was not like a powdery regolith on the surface They changed the maneuvers Which could have been impossible with the extra weight of a person or because they didn't have the time to to bring them back Alive if they changed the maneuvering You don't have that problem when you have a uh when you have a machine Or at least you you have a little more flexibility Following up on last week's story about the gan created human faces at this person does not exist dot com We now have this cat does not exist dot com and if i've warned anything from looking at this cat does not exist dot com Uh ai is way better at human faces than it is at making cats. Oh man. Do you speak the truth? You know, it's funny. This person does not exist dot com It it really got a lot of attention people being like wow I mean, okay as we talked about it on a previous show Sometimes there's a hairline thing or sort of a symmetry thing where you're like Doesn't quite seem right, but was for the most part Really hard to discern between real and fake Not the same with felines no not at all every single one of these cats I was like well, that's a weird cat like that would be like a cat at the shelter You're like something's up with that cat. That's not a real cat almost flip-flopped. Uh, I I I actually went to This person does not exist dot com several times Try to try to find ones that didn't look right and eventually I did after enough refreshing With this cat does not exist dot com. It's almost the opposite like you have to You're looking for the cat that looks real find one that looks like a real cat Yeah, you're like that's a that's a weird paw their eye is weird like that's yeah I just found a funny because Verge of a cat like there's just there's a second cat merged with the Well, which which kind of you know, it um It ends up being a question of like okay, are humans just Are they easily enough to sort of cobble together to the point that we don't know the difference we're humans But but when it comes to certain animals and sure there might be animals that work better than cats But this is like no it this doesn't this doesn't work I I think it's part of it is it the a face is a fairly uniform thing, right? It's always fairly oval It's got two eyes and a nose right perhaps cat doing the whole body And that's that's more complicated. You got more parts there So maybe also I'm sure it has to learn more about cats than it, you know Than a person why or no no, but we're just very asymmetrical and I just think they're at the stage where they haven't fed The machine the machine the machine learning enough kids I don't know if that I mean that'd be interesting to find out I would assume they they've got they've got access to plenty of cat pictures It is the internet like there's no reason that wouldn't have had enough training No, in fact the internet is actually the place to get all the cat photos All I know is these things will haunt me in my dreams. Yeah, that's for sure All right, folks, uh, if you want to get all the tech headlines each day in about five minutes Don't forget daily tech headlines.com exists just for you. Go get it at daily tech headlines.com China it's Very often misunderstood in the world of technology We do our best on this show to bring you some stories to kind of help you See what's going on there in a different light from what you might hear elsewhere and to help us understand it even better Let's welcome Eric Olander long time china watcher who currently works in digital marketing marketing in shanghai Eric welcome back to the show. It's good to have you. It's great to be back tom Now, uh, let's jump right into this because I think the biggest thing when people are thinking about china right now At least in the united states is the trade war Is that really affecting consumer tech buying habits in china? How much of what's changing in china is is just other economic impacts So there's a short answer and a long answer will stick with the short answer for time The short answer is no It's not having a dramatic impact in part because the way that people perceive the trade war here is I think very different than it is in the united states in part because the media here is so filtered Through government control and censorship and whatnot and the government's really trying to kind of keep passions down That being said Huawei of course is one of the big casualties of the ongoing us china trade dispute and in that sense chinese consumers are Rallying around huawei in some ways because they feel that the attack from the united states Is more political than it is actually on security grounds So in that sense there is this kind of you know emotional connection to huawei where people feel a loyalty and a passion for the brand that being said Huawei makes great phones the p20 is an amazing phone amazing devices And so consumers are also migrating to brands like huawei In part because brands like apple simply aren't catering to the local needs of chinese consumers And in this day and age with a market as big as china's that's a really really big risk for a company like apple So it has less to do With the trade war and more to do with catering to local consumer needs Now and samsung's falling into the same thing where you know samsung and apple are playing the parts of nokia and blackberry for From years ago right now if they're not careful How much of the perception Of american companies plays into these things What is the perception of the facebook apple amazon google within china by the consumers there There is no perception of facebook and google i mean google left china back in 2010 so in 10 years in tech In the us is like 30 years and in china it's like 50 years So it's just not relevant most people on the street today have no idea what google is I mean they heard of it as a brand the same way that we've heard about the moon, but i've never been to the moon Yeah facebook just doesn't exist So we have two entirely different operating systems of life That is and and that's something that's hard for us to understand that we think that the world wide web is truly international Well, it's really not because the tools that you use in the united states there in los angeles to navigate through your daily life Don't work at all here your mastercard your visa doesn't always even work here Your payment systems here don't work because they use we chat and ali pay The web is done by bydu and all of their time is not even on the web Web traffic here is actually quite low overall because most of the time people are spending on the super apps like we chat And so it's a totally different operating system of life And so in that sense the american brands just aren't relevant amazon's here But when amazon's up against ali baba, it's insignificant. It's kind of cute. That's the way that people look at it Nobody talks about amazon in china even though it's here, but it's just not even competitive with ali baba Well, that's why they want to merge To to be to with the better import brand right because if they're going to have any business They might as well ride the coattails if somebody else who does their business better than they do it seems like But at the end of the day, you know for american tech companies in china It's a long sad story because this is a very very difficult market to work in both because The complexity of the market, but then you have these other factors like the local players like ali baba They have a thumb on the scale in the form of the government The government plays a very very active role in society here much more so in the economy than it does in the west and whatnot And local players oftentimes have an advantage that being said that being said Oracle microsoft a lot of these big brands. They're still very very active here They make a lot of money here and the tech space is expanding beyond just pure tech Into automotive tesla setting up its first factory it's gigafactory here So the tech space and the definition of tech is growing and american companies still are very very active But just nowhere near on the scale and size of the chinese are now. Let's flip this the other way I think a lot of people have heard of tencent ali baba That by do maybe even bite dance now that the tick tock has has busted out With the acquisition of musically what are Our misperceptions of these companies from this side and and what are the big ones that that we just don't even We're not even aware of over here So I think the biggest misperception and it's a 20 year old misperception is that the chinese copy And that everything is just an equivalent you see in the news in the new york times the wall street general They'll always say, you know, this chinese site is the equivalent of this or this one is the facebook of china or the twitter of china And that's really a misnomer because weibo for example owned by syna is not the twitter of china Just the same way that we chat is not the facebook of china these things may They have started early on very very similar similar to the way that steve jobs copied the icons from you know The xerox park and it looked a little bit like what windows was doing, but then it morphed out, you know Unrecognizable sure to start it and that's where we are today is that these kind of the parallels are not there at all But what's interesting to me about Thinking about chinese brands that a lot of consumers in the u.s. Probably don't even know they're consuming a chinese brand So i'm always surprised when people talk about tick tock and the growth of tick tock and that it is It's bite dance behind it and musically as well And and so we're starting to see the arrival of chinese brands, but in very very subtle ways dji for example I thought dji was from texas for the longest time, but it's from shenzhen And dji represents a really interesting trend that we're seeing where It's the marriage of not just the low-cost hardware that china was so famous for for a long time ago But now it's the marriage of the low-cost hardware with Artificial intelligence very sophisticated software that goes into it that brains are going into it So those line scooters that you've got all over san harmonica and san francisco everywhere Those are made out of shenzhen and it's the combination of that hardware and the software And that's where china's Going next and we see those line scooters all over the place We never think that that's a chinese scooter sure people assume that it was manufactured in china But the software was also built in china as well and that's really one of the big next steps in innovation Now given what we've been talking about, uh, I think it's clear that it's not impossible But it's hard for a u.s company to come into china and be successful And and likewise it's no cakewalk for a chinese company to come into the us Especially these days when there's some prevailing headwinds trying to to push against at least some of them But They've got there's the the middle ground that i want to focus on india africa south america What advantages and disadvantages do you think the chinese tech companies have in these markets? So in let's take a look at southeast asia for example because ali baba is making big moves in southeast asia and also amazon is Moving aggressively into india as well So this is one of the big battlegrounds that we're going to see one of the key advantages that ali baba has Is that it brings together obviously this massive e-commerce platform and all the artificial intelligence all the big data that that goes with that It brings together logistics as well And it's got payments wrapped up into it So through ant financial, which is their payments arm and obviously ali pay and all of that technology and the relationships that ali baba has With its banks and so forth that process all this in the back end It brings a full suite of of applications into a market like vietnam or malaysia or even india amazon for its part is coming in with an e-commerce platform It doesn't bring the payment side. It's not necessarily bringing in the logistics side in places like india And so that makes it much much more difficult The second part of it is in the hardware space. So chinese hardware manufacturers the opos vivos huawei xiaomi lenovos They have managed to build phones and devices that are specifically made for this market And really there's no american equivalent apple is not engaging in these lower end markets They don't want to be in that bottom theater space But these chinese brands which now are seven of the top 10 global mobile phone makers by volume They're really competitive in building phones that are sub one hundred dollars And that's bringing the next billion consumers online So the marriage between a chinese phone that the vietnamese consumers getting on for the first time Mixed then with lazada, which is backed by ali baba and that e-commerce really shows the strength of the chinese value proposition In places like southeast asia that's replicating in south america and africa and a lot of emerging markets Yeah, it makes me wonder if if you know a few years down the road We start to see reliance geo or indian companies or companies coming out of kenya or nigeria Start to upset the apple card of the dominant huawei who's gotten complacent. It'll be very interesting to watch It will be but scale is really important here Remember huawei sold a hundred billion dollars of gear last year It will be very very difficult to get to that scale But at the same time local providers are going to be able to customize services in ways that the big ones can't Yeah, uh one last thing I want to get uh you to address before we go, uh, you you do the china africa project And I wonder if you have anything that people should know about the sub-saharan african tech scene That you don't think they would have heard of we've talked about in pace. We talked about the the drone delivery in urwanda Is there anything else going on there that you're like, ah people people should realize that this is this is coming This is the next thing It really africa is one of the most exciting tech markets in the world It's a continent that is the youngest continent midi ages 18 years old The growth of social networking is just huge bandwidth is coming in huawei marina is bringing in a new asia to africa Massive trunk line onto the continent. So we're seeing a connectivity boom as well But on the chinese side It's really really interesting because a third of the entire Cell phone market in africa is controlled by one company and it's a company You have probably never heard of transom which makes the techno brand And this is a company out of shenzhen that doesn't even sell here domestically in china It's selling purely into uh africa and asia into developing emerging markets So that's really interesting that one company controls a third of the entire market Now what transom is doing is they're starting to put on a layer of services on top of their hardware So we're starting to see the arrival of chinese music services E-commerce services and the arrival of ali baba and tencent is starting to come on the back of this chinese hardware That is really now pervasive across the continent So I think that marriage of the hardware and the e-commerce is going to be what we see in the future So how do you spell transom? transom is t r a n s s i o n and the brand that they have the phone brand It's techno t e c n o So we do a lot of coverage on tech on the china africa project So if you go to china africa project dot com and just search for those Those words you'll find a bunch of the shows that we've done and we're going to be doing a lot more of that in the future Eric, thank you so much for sharing your insight with us today really appreciate it It's my pleasure and uh, you just mentioned it but remind people again Where should they go to keep up with what you're doing? So we produce a weekly podcast on all things china africa including tech and you can find that over on our website at china africa Project dot com or where you subscribe to all your podcasts and you can also find me on twitter at e olander. That's e o l a n d e r And i'm tweeting all day about china africa issues and so i would love for your for your audience to join our discussion Thanks again, Eric Thank you Eric wonderful Wonderful insight into the chinese marketplace and also thanks to everybody who participates in our subreddits Sometimes there are china stories there sometimes not but you can submit stories and vote on others at daily tech news show dot reddit dot com Also on facebook if you like facebook groups, we've got one facebook.com slash groups slash daily tech news show Let's dive into the email Shall we come a had some thoughts on our? conversation yesterday thursday on google glass and whether or not it should be called A failure and i think that there are a lot of different opinions on on what that means Comey says sure many cutting-edge products cutting-edge products rather don't succeed financially But i'm rather interested in using cool products rather than investing in the company stock So i appreciate it when a company is gutsy enough to release a brand new product to the market and let us all experience it Most of us don't have resources to even create a prototype We rely on big companies to make tremendous efforts to develop and mass produce a product So i think we should be a little bit more fair when talking about the significance of those products Many products were a failure of the marketing for exist for uh Example they should have labeled google glass as a developer kit like magic leap did for example But it was still a remarkable product of hardware and we all learned a little bit more about the potential of ar I think there are enough people who worry about the product's financial success or failure As a technology lover. I think we can rather focus on the innovation aspects and encourage companies to come up with more products In new categories. Oh very well said comey. Thank you very much. Yeah, absolutely very nice All right, shall we check in with len peralta? Let's check him with len peralta len I know you've been drawing up a storm. What you got for us. Yeah, it was a fascinating discussion about china By our guest, but of course I had to go back to Cat story Sort of a companion piece from last week Which is this person's now exists, but I so in this drawing we have a cat Who is being shown off by another cat? That cat is saying this cat does not exist cat and neither does this cat cat See the cat on the stool is a a transporter accident of a cat The cool cat uh pointing him out is just a cool guy Yeah, you know, he's he's a cool cat. He's a cool cat and he doesn't exist either neither None of these cats exist cat Now this is gonna make me want to like force a this dog does not exist Obviously so we can get a triptych from that's next right next week. Come on internet. Let's go. Let's go. This dog does not exist But this print you can get right now at len peralta store dot com Along with all the last four or five years of detain us drawings. They're all there You can pick them up today Len prompt store dot com Our goal each month is to get one more patron than last month We need six of you just six of you if you are a person Who makes up one of a potential six people? Who likes the show and isn't backing it yet become a member patreon dot com slash d tns You'll get a commercial free rss feed that you can put in your podcast reader You'll get special columns from roger updates from sarah about her product tests and today an editor's desk from me About my theory about asymmetry and how if we wrap our heads around the asymmetry of interactions online It might help us figure out how to have better social networks It's all available on patreon dot com slash d tns If you have feedback for us. Well, guess what we'd love to hear it Our email address is feedback at daily tech news show dot com We're also live monday through friday at 4 30 p.m. Eastern 20 130 utc And you can find out more and tell a friend Maybe those five other friends once you become a patron get it at daily tech news show dot com slash live Back on monday with charlotte henry is our guest talk to you then This show is part of the frog pants network get more at frog pants dot com Diamond club hopes you have enjoyed this program Nice that was cool Nailed it. Oh good. Yeah, you like that. Yeah, that was really neat. Yeah I thought that it went well Um, I think video wise it's a little bit weird, but um content wise. I thought it was great Yeah, that's cool. Very cool. Yeah, it was seamless content wise Yeah, the key is our near anyway opening it With the thing I would say coming out of that music coming out of this music, right? That was that was that was what I did. I was like, okay, I'm not gonna write an intro I'm just gonna be like, well, would I say if eric was here? Yeah, I would always say. Yeah. Yeah No, that was smart. That was smart because you had already done the intro at the top of the show So why do it again? China? That's What is it good for? That's how I started the interview. It doesn't allow me to do a fun thing. China like that China All right, what should we call this crazy show that we had today? We should call it China Let's start the sound different Yeah I actually submitted a title that is boring, but it does promote what this episode is about which is what you don't know about china tech Well, I think that's fine. We don't always have to be clever. We can be on the nose We can are you eligible for the showbook? Yeah I don't know. Yeah Can you imagine if I was like check your credentials? Get out of showbot right right who who let you in here. Yeah, that's who do you think you are? We're gonna have to check your credentials mr. Merritt I was gonna say though, uh, even even though, uh, I'm going to assert my executive privilege For the title. We should give some attention to some of these good cat puns and facebook angry Things uh, you're still facebook and i'm still mad That is a great one. We you know, we have so many facebook titles nick with a c Yeah, yeah, you remember that for the next time we're mad at facebook because it will happen again. Um, sure fabricated feline photo fail Nice good work and to mdta uk yes You're still facebook so he brings bacon. That's no cat That's good. That's a good one. I'm gonna go ahead and vote for that one Cats are harder to make than people. That's no, I I was like borderline furious this morning where I was like, uh, I mean, who's this fooling? Like like if you don't want a cat, you don't want to be a cat owner. You're not a veterinarian Like there's no reason to have the I guess it would be like stock photography But like they were all like really messed up I'm half expecting this to turn out to be not the same people who did this person does not exist dot com And and it turns out that they're just running an open source tensor flow kind of thing And that's why it's not very good um And that actually goes back to what roger was saying earlier about like maybe it's not trained on the on the right amount of Images, but I still think like there's no excuse for it not to be or or maybe cats are so beautiful That we simply cannot recreate them Can't replicate it. Yeah That's probably what it is. Yeah, it's probably the new touring tests. Can it create a cat? Yeah Well, we got you don't know about what you don't know about china tech or you're still facebook and i'm still mad Hold on to your face. You're still I want to use that someday, but I think we'll go with what you don't know about china tech. Yeah, I think given um The longer than usual and very illustrious uh interview that makes the most sense Yeah, for sure It was actually kind of fun to not be doing the interview with eric and being able to kind of chat along with people a little bit Uh while we were talking that was fun You did a nice job on the interview too. Oh, thank you and you edited it down at all or is that good? Live to tape straight nice very good. I did joke in the discord I was like the only downside of this is I have to hear myself and nobody likes hearing themselves. No, no I'm like what a goosey sound on your voice. Yeah. Yeah Two days a week when I do headlines. I am like sara. You are unlistenable So not true. Well, I know we all feel that way about ourselves, but it's like so not true No one should ever listen to you. Yeah, you know, like it's just it's it's it's very hard to like the sound If you're on voice There's been a lot of theories and even some studies that the fact that you hear your voice through your head Changes and the the dissociation of hearing it not coming through your own head Is why you don't like to hear your own voice played back to you Which is there like an uncanny valley kind of well, it's your your jawbone when you talk it The sound actually goes through here up to your ears. That's what I'm saying, you know, and it's funny this whole sort of Um Discourse goes way back to when we all got answering machines for the first time Back in the early 80s Well, I mean When machines became, you know something that you could buy and people were like, I don't sound like that I sound like that. Oh my gosh And it was like this thing where like you couldn't you couldn't accept Your your sort of outgoing message for, you know, when you weren't home and people were Yeah, we got Wait for the beat. You got to leave your name. You got to leave your number. Wait for the beat That's right. This cassette of answering machine messages available early 1999 Those are the worst man Tom when you worked at the radio station. Did you make your own like? Uh answer machine message. I did that all the time. I did. Yeah, and but we also Had a cassette recorder when I was a kid in the early 70s because my dad was into it So we all knew what we sounded like from making cassette recordings My sister and I would do like variety shows and stuff So the answering machine coming along was not the big The big reveal for us that it that it was sometimes for other people But yes taking advantage of the radio station equipment to make like a mix with some music behind it That's what I did. I made Crazy crazy stuff people were so taken aback by that was they never left me messages Because they were like did I get the right person? I don't know. Yeah, this can't be led. It was way too well produced. It was way well produced Hey, um, it was weird. Well, go ahead. Go ahead. I would just you know We can get back to this in a second, but I was wondering um since we were talking about artificial intelligence On this show. Did you guys talk about dust or i'm sorry sunspring? On the your show at all this week. No No, okay, so i'm gonna share this in the Chat room It's uh, it's an entire Little short movie that was written by an algorithm Yeah, you know what? I saw some um some secondary opinion About that because they were um people were saying Oh, there was a philosopher who wrote a thing like nothing ai creates can be considered art because art is defined as human creation Etc etc Yeah, it's very interesting because it doesn't make any sense at all Mm-hmm. Um, it's it's like they just fed a bunch of stuff into an ai Uh, I'm going to share it right now. Oh, you are okay There we go. Yeah, that's a big old link. Yes Sorry about that ai week Yeah Sunspring Okay, but but it was human actors. Oh, yeah. Yeah, they acted it out and then create the guy from silicon valley to be in it Yeah, it wrote a script The ai wrote the script. Okay Through a bunch of science fiction Like they fed a bunch of screenplays in there and then they gave it some prompts and then they just they acted out what it gave it It's really gave it scraps. Oh, that's kind of cool. Yeah, I thought I thought maybe this might be a fun thing since you guys were talking That's actually a fun thing for sword and laser, too Mm-hmm. Yeah. Oh, it's super cool. It's really it's fun because the you know, the actors sell it like Like you think you understand what they're talking about because they're acting it's so right right But it doesn't make any sense at all. It's it's just like predictive text, right? Yeah, yeah Huh, I'll have to watch this later. Yeah, for sure. It's like 10 minutes long, right? Yeah less Well, it's got my vote for best picture. That's right. That's right. It's certainly better better than anything this year at the Oscar I liked the favorite. I know sarah differs with me on this I did not dislike it. I did not dislike the favorite. I thought that it was um I thought it was going it's going to be a comedy It wasn't your favorite It it was no. Yes. I with either spelling Nor nor did another movie send you a wrap. I thought I thought the movie was that I you know when it ended I was like, well, that was weird I thought it was supposed to be a comedy. It just it just wasn't what I expected And I only saw it the once so, you know, maybe maybe on a second. Um A second view I might feel a little bit differently, but For the most part I'm like Yeah, I don't think it deserves best picture, but it had great performances I think one of the reasons I'm still into the Oscars is because uh, well partly because eileen works at rotten tomatoes So, you know, she's just in that world but but one of our one of our best early memories of dating was Watching the Oscars and the Golden Globes in her little like tiny one-room apartment and out on ocean beach And so there's always just a little nostalgia Of like Oh, I mean, um, there was there was a time where I mean we don't live in the same City anymore or within driving distance of each other. So it's harder now But like my mom and I were like we're always together on oscar nights. Yeah. Yeah, that's what we do It's fun, you know, we'll have some food have some one You know talk about the movies that we liked even if we haven't seen them like it's it It was a bonding experience Was who do you think should win makeup and hairstyling blend? Oh, I think vice for sure Because of the transformation over the favorite. I mean the favorite. I think of the front That's kind of a transformation of christian bail. Oh, yeah. Well, we had we had on the but costume, you know, it's sort of Okay, you can make somebody look like somebody else, but the overall costume stuff is Yeah, yeah, I there's a costume is separate from makeup and hairstyle. Yeah, it's different. Yeah. Oh, I thought it was the same Which is different than special effects visual effect. It's a different right, right Um, hey, so was roma released on netflix? No, it was released in theaters In fact, it even had a short exclusivity window of like 15 days. Yeah, okay And it's funny. I I've um I've watched it a few times via netflix, um I think it's a very good movie But it's very heavy Yeah, you know, like to the point where it's like If people haven't seen it and they're kind of rushing to see it before the oscar is like I'd be interested to know what the Take away is because This is not a this is not a feel-good movie Right I mean, there there there are some things to draw from it for sure It's a beautiful movie. They're they're they're certain some social implications that are made during this movie that are um, uh, really good takeaways, but It is it's heavy I've got another question. So, uh, the ballad of buster scrugs is also nominated for something And that was just on netflix. I was released in theaters as well It just didn't have an exclusivity window Netflix releases most of their big movies in theaters usually landmark theaters and indie theaters pick it up and show it So that they can qualify for the oscars. They just don't usually give an exclusivity But in roma's case, they actually even gave it a short exclusive theater run. Well, that's pretty cool That's Very very different. I was wondering about that because i'm like How was that? I only saw that on netflix. How was that? nominated for academy award Yeah, because they do release it in theaters and there's only a few chains that will do it because Landmarks like we don't care about the exclusivity window. That's fine. We'll we'll get some butts in the seats, right? interesting interesting in some indie theaters art theaters and stuff will do that too Well, now you got me interested in this roma It's like it's everything sarah just said I I really can't have anything like it's great and hard Okay, all right, that's always good That have a like a like a message as long as it's you know, yeah, I think it's sort of like I I I've told a few friends recently where they're like, hey oscars and you know, we don't pay attention I'm like I think it's probably gonna win And you should watch it before sunday if you care about that, you know Because it's always better if like the movie that wins you have an opinion about Whether you wanted it to win or not So it's funny too when I was growing up in the 80s late 70s 80s My perception of the oscars was the hollywood elite Vote for big movies and the really good indie movies never win And that has totally changed like yeah now Something like roma granted, you know, netflix ain't no small production house, I guess but But something like roma, I I don't feel like that ever would have got a nomination It would have been too weird too off off in the cuff and it's not a blockbuster by any stretch, right? I don't know. I feel like things have changed a little bit over the years So so I think that's what keeps me interested in the r oscars too is is the fact that's like Oh, you know what there's really like good stuff being nominated. I want to see a lot of these movies You know, I um only just watch room Like about a week and a half ago. I had no idea that it was even like a nominated film like because I was like Because following up on captain marvel. I say brie larson wanted a a best actress for what and then uh, I saw it was room So Yeah, so I wanted everyone. I really like weird movies like that. Yeah, I thought It was great and she deserved it. Yeah. Yeah, but it was like I didn't even know what existed. Maybe I was like I need some ice cream. Yeah, right I think he was it really well I'm in my mouth like wow. Yeah Well, we like watching a lot of like uh true crime stuff And so it's sort of like that had that feel but much better a much better story I guess I don't know. It was really cool. I liked it. Yeah, I mean black panther got a best picture nomination That's a blockbuster black clansman got a nomination not a blockbuster Uh, bohemian rhapsody. Yeah, arguably a brought blockbuster type movie the favorite definitely not green book not roma Not stars born. Yeah vice not So it's it's it's an interesting mix and then looking at genres too. You've got, you know, superhero music weird experimental, you know spiky like Alfonso Cuarón Yeah Yeah, I mean after um La La Land lost moonlight in that very strange moment in oscar history Which was two years ago, right? Yeah two years ago 2017 I mean at this point. I'm like, all right. We don't know where we're going We don't even have an oscar host like no one really knows what's going on here But we know that we there there are a certain amount of people industry people and also people who just enjoy film and cinema and The craft of it who you know care about this whole thing I will be watching on sunday with pizza in hand Well folks, we hope you also will have pizza in hand. Whatever you're doing And the flavor you want Video folks. Thanks for hanging around and and watching us do an audio podcast and audio folks stick around. There's more to come