 Coming up on DTNS. It's our listener co-host episode our supporters our patrons have brought topics for us to discuss with them Let's do it This is the Daily Tech news show for Tuesday December 27th, 2022 in Los Angeles. I'm Tom Merritt and from studio Redwood I'm Sarah Lane And on the show's producer Roger Chang Welcome to our annual end of the year listener co-host show This is the episode where we invite several of our supporters to appear right here on the show and this year We invited some of our longest-running patrons on board We had a lot of folks who weren't able to make it unfortunately But we were lucky to get the following Tim Jars this admin from Madison, Wisconsin. Welcome Tim Thank you. It is surreal to be here It is it is surreal on both ends with Tim and I were talking about this before the show because I've I've been Communicating with you across multiple shows by email and in forums and on twitters and then things like that over the years So it's really nice to meet sort of face to face. Welcome Tim. Thank you We also have Anthony Marco Ontario Region Labor Council representative to the Canadian Labor Congress Anthony welcome It's great to be on the show Long-term supporter long-term listener Tom. Thanks. Thank you, Anthony I'm also a fan of Anthony's shows the Marshall McLuhan variety hour and best episode ever Which he will be loath to plug so I will plug them for him I'm I feel I feel loath You should do you feel the loath tonight? And finally you probably saw him recently on Daily Tech News show James Thatcher aka big Jim from the trade nerd Com and host of the tech and trade podcast. Welcome back big Jim Thank you so much live from just outside of hangar 18 at the tech and trade studio. I'm big Jim Fantastic. Ah, what a wonderful panel Indeed so for this very special episode We've asked each of our listener co-hosts to bring a discussion a tech discussion topic That you know, they thought we would all be able to kick around so Something that is interesting to the Co-hosts and interesting to everybody out there Let's start things off with Tim. So Tim your question is something for all of us. Is it not? Yeah, as someone who's been in tech for a long time and The more you you deal with things the more you find your opinions are hardening around different ideas and Sometimes they're not always the ones that the majority find to be their opinion as well As the more I listen to podcasts and broaden my horizons. I find that some of my opinions are um, not as easily accepted by everyone or Not universal as I thought so I kind of wondered what everyone's view on what your uh, what's your Least popular or most controversial opinion within tech Oh, well, that's a good one. Um Big Jim you want to uh, what do you think? You really want me to rip the band-aid off this one? Say, I don't know. I mean it had to be somebody You're gonna hate me. I'm gonna say it Apple is not that great people. Okay. Apple is not that wonderful That's my least most controversial opinion. I can give you You know, what's funny about that is it's not only your most controversial But it's also your most popular opinion at the same time depending on how you talk it there, right? I Refuse to own any product from the house of job jobs. I don't I have no apple phones I have no apple tablets. I have no i-home. I have no itv. I have no I please mark. I he doesn't even know what the name's over mar because he doesn't own him sarah I refuse. I refuse. I walk away and I I go and get the holy water and bless the house with the cables to make sure that it is not No, honestly, here's the thing apple is a wonderful company when it comes to Having product that is going to last for a long period of time Very much high props for that. However um, this stigma that everyone in the industry has that apple is just You know, you know, you've made it when apple copies your idea. It just It infuriates me a little bit. Honestly, it just really infuriates me Well, you wouldn't be alone. You wouldn't be alone. Yeah, sir James rather um, but but tim since you did ask the question. Did you have an answer yourself? Well, there probably have been a lot through the years and I have to laugh at jim's because I have found myself the guy who In apple rooms is defending and writing google and in google rooms. I'm defending apple all the time so I I am someone who likes to play I've always been one who likes to play in every environment if possible. So I've always had My music is in amazon and google and dropbox and you know, I uh, I'm a windows sys admin by day But you can probably see I have a macbook sitting here to my left That I do all my non-work stuff on when I'm working Um and to jim's point, it's a 2011 macbook that I still use every day So that's that is impressive But there's stuff on it that drives me crazy too So, you know, I've owned android and iPhones and I like to have a foot in every environment to know what it's like, but uh, the one that brought this to mind for me recently was It seems like in general everyone has uh in the tech world has Turned their back on wise after their security issues And especially now after this past week with yufi's issues coming to light And I was always a little uncomfortable with the fact that it is a yufi is owned by anchor who has some questionable ties to the chinese government and That makes me a little iffy on having cameras or home surveillance things from them but uh I I've spent a lot of my life working with engineers Because the network guys are often right next to Sys admins and they come from more of an engineering mindset. I have engineers in my family and I kind of get how they They take in a different way than a lot of us And wise as a company of engineers and although I don't agree with everything that They said when they had their issues I could a hundred percent see engineers thinking that way And in the end to exploit the problems they had when you had to have their gen one hardware So it was old and that never impacted me and it was It was gen one. That's some of what comes with that and they had to be on your local network to exploit it Well, if people are on your local network, you've already got a big problem So I have not thrown away my wise stuff and I have in fact bought some additional But um I also recognize the other side of those arguments of why some people have walked away from them Totally. Well, anthony, uh, we definitely want you to weigh in on this topic as well Is there something in tech that you feel most people would find controversial? So I'll throw up my my very short controversial one to start because this is my snarky one blockchain is not jesus That's my yes You don't say Again one that is also a popular and Depending on who you're talking to whether it's popular But my real my real one and I'm guilty of this myself is streaming music is artist theft Plain and simple. Um, I I grew up as a musician. I played in every dive bar You know within probably, you know, 50 miles of where I lived and I use miles instead of kilometers even though I'm after in canada, um, but you've made sarah very happy. We love you for this But um, it's it's plain and simple that artists just can't subsist on streaming And nobody's going out and buying physical media anymore There are great sites out there where you can actually support bands, you know Like band camp and stuff like that where if you jump on there, you can actually buy Order a cd get flak files get whatever you want to and actually directly support an artist And I know that people empathize with artists Greatly when they hear about how many, you know, how many clicks it takes to make a few cents But so a few of us are willing to actually do anything about it including me for the most parts I'm not trying to assuage my guilt here Um as growing up a musician, I have a lot of friends who are professional musicians And they just you know, it's almost impossible for them to get by these days Anthony I'm going to ask is that absolutist to you Anthony because I am the rare bird who Uses streaming media to figure out what CDs I'm going to buy And and I think that's great. I think if there's a follow-up step, I like obviously this is a continuum, right? There's no on and off switch about this here I mean, there's going to be some people who make it a point to go out and try and find new bands and that's great You know, I'll jump on you go down a rabbit hole on youtube and you might find five or six bands But finding physical media is getting tougher these days Because it's not worth it to the artist only sell 50 copies of a cd And so that is taking another you know another revenue source away It's you know when quantity of scale means that you have to order a thousand cds in order to make some kind of profit on them Um, some artists aren't even doing that anymore because they can't even guarantee that they'll sell a thousand Well, I mean Definitely, I would agree with this to an extent that you know If you look at like friend of the show mike tv gets at go Obviously, yeah, you stream his music. He's making pennies if he if he's lucky Um, but you get into the bigger artists like taylor swift and Beyonce and these types of people And I think there's a real classist kind of attitude towards streaming of music and we I think you're right. I think you're absolutely right that that we need to Look at a different way of funding these artists. Otherwise, we're not going to have artists Yeah, I was just going to say like I think the the patreon model, let's say is not bad It solves a certain problem But there are so many people who and I I don't know what the percentage is like they often say that if you had 50,000 devoted fans, you could probably subsist off of something if you're an artist If you're a music artist, you could tour around to major cities. You'd sell enough units all that kind of stuff But ultimately They could be making so much more and that's the reality of it and so so as much as I criticize the concept I I do it myself At the same time I Oh, go ahead tim. I say, I hope it never goes away because I have gained so many artists in my collection In fact, the fun thing I do every every year this time of year at christmas Is I load up all the new christmas releases in spot of fire apple music or whatever And pick out the tracks that i'm gonna go by With us the other day talking about your christmas songs I had many opinions on your opinions But I will always buy at least the mp individual mp3s If not a couple new albums every year from what I've found on streaming media So I would hate to lose it. I think it's worth pointing out a couple things. First of all, uh, I I don't know that anchor has any more Uh association with the chinese government than other chinese companies I I assume that's just what you meant is that they they are based in they have they have some And and then and that uh, anthony to your point, uh revenue Music revenue has been rising under streaming. Uh, so it may not be the streaming that's the issue It may be the royalty structure. Would that be fair to say? No, it definitely Put it this way if the amount of people who were listening to a band were actually listening to a band the way We used to listen to bands which was either on the radio where they would get Way more of a cut for a radio play than they'd ever get for a streaming play or actually buying a physical piece of media Um, then they would be then they would be getting more However, admittedly if you get 10 million streams on something you might get more than one radio play So I I guess it depends where people are moving and what kind of music you perform if you perform classical music Maybe the streams aren't as high. I don't know and the other thing I'll point out is man Uh kpop artists sell a lot of physical media Like that that's uh, it's kind of crazy As as my wife and I have gotten more familiar with that industry the number of Of box sets and cds and seasons greetings packages and so I think I think artists can can look to that as well The same is true for jpop and j rock too. Yeah, yeah, there's a lot of of physical media and I was shocked that you could get you know, you know, uh Albums just good old-fashioned vinyl albums out of some jpop people. So I just bought taylor swift's album like on vinyl. Yeah, I mean, they're they're lovely I mean, I can't think of anything more fun than like buying a vinyl album being like yay. Okay. How do I play it? Now I love it Sarah you and I have not answered Tim's question ourselves. Do we need to do we need to fess up? Um, all I I can do this uh quickly. I would say that I don't know if it's controversial, but I I am a big vr person um, I was very not into vr for the Last I don't know. Let's call it three years that vr was sort of being floated around as like the next big thing I was like, uh vr. Uh, who cares? Um, I'm very much into it now I think that uh, there's a lot of Stuff that has to be I guess proven You know, I'm I'm not even really talking about the metaverse because that is That's its own thing and vr and ar would be a big part of that um, but I I I will say that once I tried a vr experience for the first time I was like, oh, this is real fun Um, so a lot of folks say not the future. I say probably is Don't know exactly how we're gonna get there uh, but That's that's that's what I would that's what I would bet on gotcha uh I would say that I try very hard to make daily tech news show a place that is not about outrage It's about understanding. It's about a place that uh, we we try not to just feed controversies unnecessarily Uh, but I think because of that my most controversial take is that things aren't that bad Uh, anytime I try to like undermine like hold on this this particular vulnerability is not as bad as people are making Or this practice of social media is not undermining the entire world as much as as people think I get the most backlash when I try to do that. So I I feel like that's probably because people want you to say that It is that bad. Yeah, because they're like, no, you're underplaying it It it is that bad and you're gonna you're making it worse by pretending It's not bad when I'm not pretending at all. I'm just trying to give a you know, my honest opinion on things People want the outrage. They want the outrage. They want the anchor Most recent news around twitter has made you think of that by any chance has it? I mean, should that's just the most recent Uh, you this stretches back to facebook in 2016 and apple every day for 15 years, so yeah, you you're also you're also serving a listenership which has a siloed lens towards tech Obviously and sure it's something they truly care about and so to them. It's not necessarily insubstantial It's more substantial than the general population would be and I I I like the fact that you're trying to bring You're trying to bring from outside the silo. You're trying to say like most people probably don't care so much about this But I know you who are listening Probably everybody on this panel kind of you know, we're probably the most takey person in our family slash friend group You know, so we're used to this Um, not everybody is though you know And also digging into digging into it a story more past the headline to bay to be like Yeah, this is a vulnerability But you know what it's it's email and addresses not passwords That were leaked and and that doesn't mean to say it's a it's a good breach But let's let's be proportional and understand, you know, rather than always going to to A hundred percent anger on every single thing out there And I will say that's one of the things I have valued most about D18s through the years is oh, thanks, man You don't go to extremes Whether you or sarah or any of the regular contributors except for the rare times we do That's That one person We we actually do we try really hard to do exactly what you're talking about. So thanks for noticing I appreciate it. No, it stands out We really don't you know, we try to stay away from the Sensationalism Look the only sensation the only sensational thing that DTNS has ever come out with is hashtag ported a hell hell portal I mean, that's that's uh, that's a far about as far sensational as this has ever got But I have had heated arguments with Justin about that exact topic. Sure. Sure. I'm sure you have All right, let's uh, let's uh hear from anthony anthony. What is your topic you would like us to discuss Sure. So I mean, I come from a a labor activist background here in canada and one of the things that we've been trying to pass policy on here Over the last couple years and it's still a far away away if we can do it is Based on this question as companies continue to replace workers with robots and other automation The personal income tax base funded by a lot of those workers sometimes hundreds and thousands of them single locations Which funds social services? They're being eroded and tax to gdp ratio is collapsing across certain parts of not only in my country But the united states and in certain states So do we need to consider a boosted tax regimen for companies who replace workers with technology? This is interesting because it's similar. There's a similar conversation happening over automated cars, right? That that if or i'm sorry electric cars not all it now I brought automation in when I didn't need to electric cars that don't use gas and and gas taxes fuel the roads Fueled the the the repair of the roads and so there's a lot of talk of like, okay Do we need to tax electric vehicles? Uh in order to help fund road repair because we're not getting the money from the gas tax that that we got from cars before I hadn't thought about it in this particular way of like, oh, yeah You're now not withholding tax from a worker with a robot now the question I guess would be Uh, are we seeing a reduction in the labor force? Uh because of automation and because if you still have the same number of people working presumably they have the same tax contribution So would this have to be premised on a either a reduction in the labor force or a reduction in overall wages? I guess even if it's the same number of people working Uh, is is that presumed in this so the reduction that we're seeing here and the shift that we're seeing here Is we're going from what used to be career permanent jobs to more precarious jobs So for instance, if you if a big company company x opens up a warehouse in in your town You expect there might be a couple thousand jobs there depending on how big it is and they're going to be full-time jobs In fact, company is going to stay there for a long time They're going to be employing a bunch of people and it might go on for a long period of time So you've got yourself a stable employment You may get some ancillary jobs which come out of i'm the person who now fixes the robots and the person Who fixes the automation but that's not going to be near as many people as you'd have working there And so this company that has come to your town set up this, you know Perhaps monolithic structure on the outskirts of town you would expect every day You're going to have a couple thousand workers coming in and out of there on shifts and you're not anymore And so people are having to make up those jobs with precarious work Whether that's the gig economy whether that's um other jobs Maybe two or three part-time jobs slapped together and those two or three part-time jobs Are going to have benefits aren't going to have a pension aren't going to have a lot of security that a full-time job would have I I wonder if Down the road there are other things that happen that make more stable jobs happen But that is something that is nebulous, right? uh, I think A yeah, like what would those be? Well, yeah, exactly and And the reason I say that is in the past every time we feared automation Eliminating jobs other types of jobs were created and they were jobs that we didn't Understand would be stable jobs before they were created So it's kind of impossible to say now and that's why it gets really nebulous But I think what what is a a part of what anthony's saying that you could put your hands on even if you're like Well, but I think I think the marketplace will take care of it is That warehouse that he's talking about uh, and and tell me if this jives with what you're thinking anthony that warehouse May have gotten tax breaks that warehouse may have had particular infrastructure created by the city For it and now suddenly that warehouse is no longer Contributing the taxes that it was supposed to contribute Through employee payroll tax Because they automated sure and and let's face it. I mean going back to uh, as far as like 1968 in the us I'll use a us example the corporate tax rate was 52.8 percent Now those were the times going back in the 50s and 60s that a lot of people consider the golden years of growth and the economy and post war and all that stuff uh It has certainly gone down since then and it has plummeted since then the first year of first years of the trump administration had dropped by five percent And so, you know, are you seeing uh, tax rates? They're still out there. Sure. But here's another problem is corporate tax loopholes have have Expanded hugely because the concept of a multinational corporation 50 years ago certainly existed but not to the degree it does today You know all of the siloing of different corporations under one roof means that you can use a lot of tax dodges to avoid paying taxes at all And it would be one thing if everyone was benefiting from this But ultimately we've seen and we see the gap between the wealth and the poorer people Across not just canada, but the united states getting wider and wider and wider And there are some places that don't have drinking water that you can drink anymore. I mean we're losing social services hand over fist But those are all true whether you've got robots involved or not. I I think you would say Well, I mean put it this way This is a this is a big contributor to it because if you have less and less people who are paying income taxes and people in the Gig economy oftentimes aren't paying income taxes because they're getting paid under the table Um, so whether you're doing food delivery sometimes even if you're working as a service worker in a restaurant You know, you're taking home tips, but you're not claiming taxes on them stuff like that So there's a lot of personal income tax that doesn't get pulled and it's not my ideal situation that we should be Paying for all of this stuff through personal income tax. That's not the ideal at all I certainly think the corporate tax rate should in places be uh, lifted up as well Yeah, yeah, do we see a drop in income tax being paid either in canada or the u.s Um, put it this way personal income tax. I mean not i mean cut every every single politician Whether you consider them left or right is going to campaign on lowering taxes Like it never used to be that way It was like we're gonna we're even the most left politicians or party politicians Let's say in canada like the new democratic party here in canada Which is the closest thing we have to you know, the democrats down there They're even going to get up and they're going to say we're going to reduce taxes on you And everyone says great. Yes Everyone says great because they think of themselves and I I get that I completely get that But when infrastructure is crumbling around you, uh, like hundreds of millions of dollars in some cities with With streets and sewers and pipelines and all of that stuff and you start to see sinkholes popping up all over the place Um, it's don't get me wrong. This isn't an isolated case. All a lot of this stuff is interconnected Um, but certainly this is contributing to it. I'm one of those types of people who when I walk into a store that has self-checkout I don't work there. I'm not doing self-checkout. I'm going to the one person who's behind the counter who's actually getting paid to do the job Are you worried that the robots will rebel if we tax them? Well, if they do then we're we're screwed. I mean first of all, they're going to So we have to figure out how to mitigate That's not waste time answering the question But they're going to First of all, we need to pay the robots to tax the robots. All right So we kind of delay their rebellion or they're for the robots to get angry enough to rebel Well, okay. So first We're diving into one of the topics that I didn't want to get into which was at what point are we going to agree that robots in AI are Or we have to are we ready for them to have Self-awareness and are we ready to not treat them like slaves? But Moving past that point for a moment. That's a slippery slope that we'll just say for Next year's episode. Um I guess The way that I look at it, Anthony is You know, we're going to get to the point where Obviously income tax is not going to be the preferred method of revenue for a Government regardless of the size, right? We're going to get to that point because we've got Multiple streams of revenue coming in from multiple different locations and you're not going to be able to grab that um Does that mean we go to a value-added tax like you have in canada? Not necessarily. Does that mean we need to hire make a higher corporate tax? I don't know Perhaps we shouldn't give so many tax incentives. Um, but that also being said I see us going in this in this model to a usage tax Um, you know, tom, you brought up the point What how are we going to deal with all these gas taxes that we used to pay for roads when their car is not using gas anymore I think and correct me if i'm wrong tom. It was like three or four years ago I want to say it was washington state was proposing looking at a per mileage rate for taxing vehicles. I think it was washington state might have been oregon um One of those states was looking at this a while ago and they ended up not doing it because there was a revolt of people now It might change because I was washington. I looked it up and checked. Yeah, you're right Yeah, and and and I think we might get to that point now where we aren't going to tax the vehicle itself We're just going to say, okay every mile you drive you pay a quarter of a penny Or whatever equivalency because you're using a public road And because we have electric vehicles and everything's automated and we can tell where you've been and everything else Maybe not necessarily tracking you individually, but saying, okay, they're inside a this zone So that means they're on city streets or they're in this zone So they're on state roads or they're in this zone. So they're on a highway Um, I I could see us moving towards that I could see us using moving towards more usage fees than necessarily Income fees, but and that that could be an automation that could be applied to automation in a factory setting as well potentially I'm just wondering at some point considering that uh corporations are considered persons in many ways under uh under us law under canadian law I'm wondering if the robots end up being the children of those persons Oh Be robots as a service so the company that owns the factory doesn't own the robots They're leased from a company that is also a shell company of a paper company in the Bahamas that is run by spf It's very very very easy and clear. Yeah. Yeah, just be aware of the three laws. That's all I'm saying They're gonna hope they're programmed gotta hope they're programmed in As the guy who is the uh the apple defender and in google rooms and vice versa I'm also often the The blue voter in red states and red voter in blue states or whatever you want to categorize that as But I've also always often found myself in the minority there and As anthony said selling higher taxes is is a hard sell for any any candidate But I wonder if we could reshape it to you know, we always hear the example of Everybody feared spreadsheets were going to kill accountants. Yeah. Yeah would not be used But it freed them up to do other things or they were retrained to do other things in the enterprise What if there's some sort of tax incentive? For when you automate certain jobs retraining those users Yeah, so that so that you're providing more of a safety net to make a transition to something else Without throwing everybody into gig work Yeah, I mean I I grew up and I saw what happened when the auto industry went down and Everybody who depended on those jobs lost their lost their income Yeah, because that that's where my head's at honestly. I worry less in the long term that automation is going to take all the jobs I worry about the transition Depending on how fast automation comes and it's going to come faster in some areas than other And those areas are going to need a better transition plan At least in the u.s. Right now, it's very hard to sell punishment on anything If if you reshape it as some sort of incentive. Yeah, unlike those other countries that love punishment I mean, I guess the question though, too is the u.s. Is bad at so many things punishment add to the list With the worldwide labor force now, too, you can guarantee that even though you might say that there could be a ton of jobs in creating automation and building automation Because of wages those jobs probably aren't sticking anywhere in north america. I can tell you that much. Yeah You'd be surprised being the supply chain guy on this channel right now I'm going to tell you right now you would be surprised how many companies are are looking at close shoring and short shipping A lot of their sourcing right now to Mexico to parts of canada northern, uh, Saskatchewan area is one of the areas. I know that some people are looking at building warehousing and rnd investment because those areas have A lot of area they've got money enough to be able to support that kind of an atmosphere Um, we've also seen a lot of movement in the caribbean lately A lot of the 583s are looking at reopening back up, which is Surprising to those of us in retail. So it's a 583 so back in the old days you would take, um A fashion apparel and you would maybe Produce your your fabric for your shirt in the u.s. You'd send it down to uh, let's say, uh Uh, Think of a guatemala guatemala. Well not even guatemala. I would even say, uh, let's say honduras You'd send it to honduras and they would cut it Trim it and make it look nice and then send it back up That country would then it would come back as duty free under what was called the 583 program Okay, that got replaced by caribbean free trade agreement But once china opened up and no longer was required to have visas anymore everybody fled to china. So You know now I think it's starting to slingshot back When you when you see this kind of reshoring happening, uh, do you also see Prices rise for you or is it about the same? Is it lower? so We're I cannot speak for All of the companies out there. I can speak for Darn it my my experience with my companies that I work with and consult with and or work for directly um What we're seeing is it's a trade balance, you know you But they're becoming these countries are becoming more attractive again Because not necessarily because ocean freight rates Went up and now they're coming down again. That's not the issue. The issue is with inflation That plays such a balance that people can kind of play the tag game with the inflation of the value um I think that's going to be helpful uh to looking at short-shoring Now the other side of this is also cost of inventory and if you ask anybody right now in retail Hey, do you have any inventory just laying around they'll show you warehouses and warehouses of inventory because we all overbought Um, so and that's no secret in the industry. Everybody knows that Uh, so I think short-shoring enables us to have shorter amounts of inventory quicker turn time Maybe it costs a little more, but it's way cheaper than paying that inventory tax at the end of the year I see so it may it may cost more in some ways, but it reduces other costs. So correct It's a balancing act. It's a balancing act Well, folks if you want to talk to any of these fine people, they are patrons Uh, you might find them hanging around at our discord, uh, and you can talk to all kinds of cool Fun folks in there as well. You can join that by linking your patreon account at patreon.com slash dtns All right. Well, um, all of our guest hosts have brought a topic. So big jim Why don't you bring us on home? What is your topic? Uh, you know, it's we're going into 2023 and I just want to know we really are weirdly Dragging away 23 kicking and screaming. We're going into 2023. Yeah, I just want to know Where's my jetpack? Where's my hover car? Yeah, where's my question? Where's my rosy the robot? Have you seen my house? Where is my robot that comes in and actually picks up stuff? Not the little vacuum that goes around in circles I mean that don't get me wrong. Those are cute. No, I need something to pick up after my kids. Um What happened? Why aren't we not there yet? We were promised jetpacks. No. I want my hoverboard from back to the future too I want my hoverboard Yeah, yeah Ooh, uh tough stuff, uh, I don't really have an answer for you, but I I I feel your pain. Um, I see you All right, so you saw I feel your pain. Yeah, I haven't I haven't seen the new avatar, but I'm sure it'll make me cry um, but yeah, I I don't know. I mean there are a lot of things as far as autonomous vehicles or You know robots that are you know helping people in a real way outside of A amazon warehouse. I mean we're we're not there yet. Um Turns out takes a while for Everything, you know, not only the technology to be capable, but for the people who want that technology to then say Yes, this is the way that I wanted it in the first place I think there's a lot going on, but sir. We're only 10 years away We're only 10 years away from that's what we say. That's what we say We're only 10 years away. You said that for the last 30 years So that's my that's my point I I think this question is fun, uh, because you know, we all want jetpacks. We all saw the Jetsons We you know, we want hovercars. Uh, we want rosy the robot who can go beep beep. Yes, mr. Jetson Uh, I I think I love how the Jetsons is like that's what we want Right. Well, that's usually what people go to when they think about jetpacks and hovercars, right? Yeah, it's the template Where were the Jetsons smartphones? I was gonna say video calling was the thing I remember hearing most about growing up It was a complete impossibility Until it was a day to day Until it's monday until people dismiss it now, right? I don't even think about that Call would have been in this conversation until Uh, suddenly skype and then later FaceTime come along and now people are like, oh, yeah Just FaceTime me like it's like we don't even think about it. Yeah My parents are almost in their 80s and they understand FaceTime They barely understand email But they can make a FaceTime call to me like it's nothing and that is amazing The fact that we've got the fact that we've got FaceTime now the last thing I want to do is see somebody when I talk Like I don't want to do either of them. I don't want to talk to me just text me just text me and That's what I want. I was just saying I watched a video not too long ago And it's probably been up for years But it was Neil deGrasse Tyson talking and just answering this question and then he basically said Uh, you have flying cars. They're called helicopters And and they might not be exactly what you asked for But because of the requirements of down thrust to actually get a flying car You know man, they had helicopters when the Jetsons was being made too. I don't think that's what they meant What was the name of that car tom that was like that was the guy was making? Outside of california, you know what i'm talking about the one that had the clusters on the sides And it was supposed to be able to have they were gonna have a two-seater and a four-seater The molar the molar. Thank you roger Molar I want my molar car. You know why because I don't like sitting in traffic for 40 minutes trying to come home Oh, I do. Why don't you? I think it's uh, Fun I have a corollary. I actually don't really sit in traffic ever because I work from home. But anyway I have a corollary to jim's question. It's 2023. How does network printing still suck just as badly as it did in 1995? I'll be honest. I'll be honest. I I have 100 behind you tim that that network printing is Still way more frustrating than than it should be I do I am able to print over wi-fi now Like it it doesn't always work a lot of times. I have to go check on it Maybe I have to you know, hit a button turn it on turn it off again I used to not be able to get it to work at all and so I I think it's raised from like 20 percent reliability to 90 60 percent reliability I want to know why I can print still terrible Yeah, yeah, I want to know why I can print over wi-fi faster than my network connection Well that I can't tell you that makes no sense If I send From my cell phone to my printer and it's going through the same network connection Probably a different protocol, right? I guess I don't know but it's it's faster. It just spools up and goes Yeah, it's you it's using a different protocol. It'd be my guess tim might have an answer I would guess that I thankfully I have moved out of desktop support Congratulations Well, no wonder you seem so calm I'm no longer going to answer this question, but I appreciate you I hear you complaining, but I also can sleep well now. So Tom were your comments saying that it's not as bad as it really as we're making it out to be Is that me working? Yes, exactly. This is the exception that proves the rule right here I just stopped printing things printing as a nightmare. It's never worked. Hey, you're saving trees. Good good for you Exactly. Yeah, look at me. Yeah, we're off compliance. We we have to we don't have a choice I really do think that these sorts of things we always imagine a future that isn't really the future we want Exactly, right? There are things that because if you think take video calls The video calls of the future that you would see in the 60s and 70s Were always these huge single purpose machines that were installed in the living room And you had to sit down at them and then press the buttons through the one phone company Uh and get the video call. Uh, I think what we have with smartphones is Much better than what we imagine So a lot of times tech gives us a better version of what we think we want Sometimes we don't we don't really want it Uh, it turns out it's just not something like I think jetpacks are really cool I'm not sure how practical they are because they exist And you don't see a lot of people using them Um, and then then there's things that just you know, they're they're harder to make work Then then you think and that that's where the flying cars are I think Yeah, yeah I just can say I also think that if covid proved anything it proved that people can work from home And if companies actually have the level of trust that they probably need with a lot of their employees to work from home It starts to ease the demand for Requiring a flying car if we actually had employers who trusted 50 of their workforce to do the work that they did during covid from home to instead Or to keep doing it from home, uh, you might not actually need You know the traffic tie-ups that you need like we have two to three hour commutes going into the city of Toronto Coming from and I live about an hour away in good traffic in bad traffic It's two to three hours and people live further away than me and they make the commute back and forth every single day Yeah, oh, yeah, I live in an area of the bay area that is Similar to that and I don't know how they do it Really don't uh, yeah Uh, well folks, uh, if you've got thoughts on this we would love to hear them Keep them coming because we'll be doing going back to live shows in a couple of days here on january 3rd So feedback at daily tech news show Dot com. Thank you so much And deed and also thank you so much to our fun panel today Um Bringing the knowledge everybody tim. Let's start with you. Where can people keep up with your work? Uh, I don't have anything really exciting to promote there So you can find me on the dts slack or maybe the discord if I get around installing that Well, excellent, uh, we're we're glad to have you. Um, and if you see tim do say hello Um, it was such a pleasure to have you anthony marco. Also such a pleasure. Let folks know where they can keep up with you Sure, you can find me, uh, you can find me still on twitter for the time being at anthony marco No fake name there and since tom was so nice to uh to promote my podcast earlier I think uh, you should all go listen to each east meets west with tom and roger Uh, excellent. It's somewhere at sub brilliant.com. I believe if I'm not It's where tom and roger fight and it doesn't upset me And you can find on my podcast at anthony marco.com. They just do that over there Awesome anthony. Well, thanks for being with us at james thatcher aka big jim Good to have you as well. Let folks know where they can keep up with you Well, you can always follow me on the dts discord, which if you're not there, why aren't you there? We're having a ball over there man Uh, and also you can find all of my Rantings and ravings on twitter at jthatcher 79 if i'm around if i'm not around which is most likely because i'm on the discord You can find me at the trade nerd dot com or If you really want to know what goes in my brain You can buy my book to love me or not global logistics haiku's views from the inside at logistics haiku Dot com. I mean There's not a book. I want to buy more than that. I have my copy right here Of course you do because that's how you are Can you go here? No space to la we can route you to houston warehouse in chino Yep, you really just cannot curve ball tom. He has it in the uh bookshelf behind him I was gonna pull out my meta device here Just a little bit ago when you were talking about vr, but I figured that I'll be out doing tom on his own show The border barrier Folks we have the as you can tell we have the best listeners in all of podcasting uh right here Thanks to everyone who supports the show this show happens because of all of you We cannot do it without you you are welcome to join us don't feel like oh those those folks I could never be part no come on in join us right now daily tech news show dot com slash patreon Speaking of patrons, we don't have live shows this holiday week in the u.s But we are normally live monday through friday at 4 30 p.m. Eastern. That's 2100 utc You can find out more at daily tech news show dot com slash live But we're gonna see you tomorrow with our special reminiscent show where tom roger and I share how we all met And how it was working at tech tv and beyond 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