 Coming in for the win, Nikki Ackerman. Good day, internet. Good day, internet. Good day, internet. Good day, internet. Hey, everybody having a good day here? Hi, Dr. Nikki Ackerman's. It's a good day. Hi, Sarah Lane. And Sarah Lane's awesome sci-fi hair. I like it. Oh, yeah. I know. I got a little bit of a haircut yesterday. I got them all cut, in fact. Some more than others. So, yeah, it's kind of, I would say it's a fun summer cut, but I don't know. It'll be a fun winter cut, whatever. Anyway, the show is not actually about haircuts, but it is about technology, and we're all here. So let's get into it. What do y'all say? Let's do it. I'm ready. Okay. I will count myself in. In three, two. This 10th year of Daily Tech News Show is made possible by its listeners. That's you. Thanks to all of you, including Carmine Daily, Vince Power, Rodrigo Smith-Sabata, and new patrons, William and Victor. Welcome, William and Victor. On this episode of DTNS, Apple and Epic, still going at it. Raspberry Pi 5 is here, and Dr. Nikki is going to explain how lab embryos are more evolved than ever. This is the Daily Tech News for Thursday, September 28th, 2023. From Studio Cinnamon, I'm Sarah Layton. From Columbus, Ohio, I'm Rob Dunwoody. And from All the Way Down in South Alabama, I'm Dr. Nikki Ackermanns. And I'm the show's producer, Roger Chain. Before the show, we got word that CEO of Sony Active, Interactive Entertainment, Jim Ryan, announced he's retiring in March of next year, after almost 30 years with the company, Heroki Tatoki, who is president and chief financial officer of Parent Sony Group Corp, will become interim CEO of the games business once Ryan departs while they find a new CEO. All right, let's start with the quick hits. Yesterday, we passed a long report from the information that open AI CEO, Sam Altman, was working with former Apple designer, Johnny Ive, to build a hardware device. Today, the financial time sources say, open AI is in advanced talks with Ive and SoftBank's Masayoshi Son to launch a consumer device described, by some, as the iPhone of artificial intelligence. The hope, reportedly, is to create a more natural and intuitive user experience for interacting with AI. After nearly two years in beta, Photoshop, the web service, a simplified online version of the company's desktop photo editing app, is now available to all. Photoshop on the web offers commonly used tools like generative fill and generative expand powered by Adobe's Firefly Generative AI model, but with a redesigned layout designed to give new users a more streamlined experience. Apple launched a new iPhone Wallet Beta feature for UK users, which lets them see their current account balance, recent deposits, and payments and balances after using Apple Pay. The new features use the UK's open banking API and follow Apple's acquisition of a company called CreditCuda that uses open banking to give users a snapshot of their financial health and credit score. Banks including Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds, RBS, Monzo and Starlene are all on board and this integration is rolling out first as part of the upcoming iOS 17.1 developer beta. Open AI said in a post on X that it has expanded the data chat GPT can access beyond its September 2021 cutoff and can now surf the web. In Open AI's own words, browsing is available to plus and enterprise users today and will expand it to all users soon. To enable, choose browse with Bing in the selector under GPT-4. This latest web browsing feature will let websites control how chat GPT can interact with them. Disney Plus is now alerting Canadian subscribers that beginning November 1st, it's going to start restricting password sharing in Canada. The announcement came in an email sent to Canadian subscribers, but the company didn't elaborate how in fact plans to enforce the policy. A new account sharing section in the Canadian subscriber agreement also notes that Disney may analyze the use of your account and that failing to comply with that agreement could lead to account restriction or termination. Nose other quick hits. All right, so Apple and Epic, they've been squabbling for several years now and they just can't seem to get along. So here's the latest. Apple has asked the Supreme Court, US Supreme Court, to review a judge's ruling from two years ago that deemed developers should be able to direct users to alternative payment methods other than Apple's own app store. That's where Apple takes a 30% cut of all sales of digital goods and services. Now Epic, maker of Fortnite, among other games, doesn't think it should pay that fee. What's so vocal about that? That's what it is fighting with Apple over. This follows Wednesday's news of Epic initially also asking the same Supreme Court to weigh in on the ongoing dispute. Epic games sued Apple back in 2020 after Apple kicked Epic out of the app store for violating Apple's rules. Initial rulings and appeals on the suit have mostly favored Apple, but a federal judge did rule that Apple violated California's unfair competition law by restricting developers from telling consumers about alternative payment options. We're probably not going to know if the SCOTUS will select the case for a few months based on the SCOTUS's schedule. Yeah. Yeah, SCOTUS has a schedule. Congress has a schedule. Lots of companies have schedules. I don't know, Rob. Nikki, this whole thing I thought was more or less put to rest. Obviously, Apple and Epic, neither company feel that they fairly won the argument or this wouldn't be ongoing. I've always sided with Epic and any other company that says 30% is just too much and we should not be forced to go through the Apple app store for savings could be passed on to the consumer in another way. But Apple has its reasons for doing it and we're not going to know. So yeah, what do we think? I think that Epic I personally agree with why Epic is doing this but as we said in the read they basically have failed most often when they go up against Apple and it gets to court. So I'm just kind of wondering at this point what does Epic's play? Are they hoping that public opinion or what would say? I don't know if that is a great strategy it's a strategy and we'll just have to see if the Supreme Court even picks this case up. You know in perhaps related Epic news CEO Tim Sweeney who has been very vocal about the Apple case but also is representing Epic in general also confirming reports that the company is laying off 830 employees which is about 16% of its workforce not, you know, 50% but still, it's, you know, you're nearing 1,000 employees, it's a lot of layoffs. Sweeney said Epic will divest from indie music store front band cap which band camp rather which Epic acquired last year so yeah, that was a pretty recent acquisition and also plans to spin off Super Awesome makes safe online experiences for kids perhaps pretty candidly Sweeney said Epic is spending way more money than we earn and I wonder I don't think this is posturing I think that Epic needs to cut some costs many companies do and layoffs are a part of this but I wonder how much of this will be used as leverage in this ongoing Apple case you know, by Epic saying hey look at all these people that are out of work now Apple forced our hand here you know, I think Apple or I should say Epic they may try that I really think what is happening here is that Epic, like a lot of companies they over did stuff during the pandemic when people had enormous amounts of free time and were paying playing ridiculous amounts of Fortnite and other Epic games now that we're kind of back to normal you know, people's time is shifted elsewhere therefore Epic's revenues are going down so I think that it's probably as much about that as if anything but if they think it'll work that folks off because that 30% that you know, we have to give to Apple every time somebody buys one of our apps or upgrades or does whatever if they can use it and they think it's going to help their case I wouldn't put it past them trying it front of mine who works in sorry, I was just going to say this is probably just going to keep dragging on forever and the fact that there probably is going to be a government shutdown soon is going to make the the scotis selection last even longer so I don't mind yeah, I know I think I agree with you there, Nikki a friend of mine who works not for Epic or Apple but works in the mobile gaming industry I asked her, what do you think about all this and she said, you know everyone keeps talking about Fortnite and how Fortnite is this is such a big part of the whole thing because Fortnite is so big too at this point Epic had tried out another game that did okay but isn't the kind of hit that Fortnite was and I really heard anyone else talk about that I'm not a Fortnite player so I don't totally know how much that can be used as collateral in this situation but it definitely seems to be brought up quite a bit so let's talk about tiny little computers that don't cost a whole lot that are actually amazingly powerful for what you get it's been about four long years since the release of the Raspberry Pi 4 and though there was some speculation that its successor wouldn't be available until later this year, if not next the Raspberry Pi 5 along with its $60 starting price tag is available for pre-order today and will be available for purchase by the end of next month a lot of noticeable improvements made on this Raspberry Pi 5 I will talk specs now it includes a 64 bit quad core ARM Cortex A76 processor that runs at 2.4 GHz allowing for a 2-3 times performance boost when compared to the Raspberry Pi 4 the device also comes with an 800 megahertz video core V2 graphics chip 2.4 lane 1.5 gigabit per second MIP, MIPi transceivers that let you connect up to two cameras or displays and a single lane PCI Express 2.0 interface offering support for high bandwidth peripherals but you'll still need a separate adapter such as an M.2 hat hat stands for hardware attached to top for you to take advantage of that the Raspberry Pi 5 also boasts dual 4K 60 HDMI outputs with support for HDR, a micro SD slot, two USB 3.0 ports two USB 2.0 ports gigabit ethernet, a 5 volt DC power connection via USB C and Bluetooth 5.0 with Bluetooth low energy Alright Rob I just the other day my Mac Mini that I use right now what I'm streaming for a variety of things has started to wheeze a bit it's been wheezing at me restart has not helped and I'm thinking alright what's the next step could something like the Raspberry Pi 5 be my streaming machine for $60 it absolutely could be that is a thing that a lot of people set them up they set them up as media players and the fact that this thing is now supporting it's got HDR HDR support at 4K it could do it so I'd like to see it I like to see that actually running or powering someone's giant television or a monitor but it could actually do that one of the things I did own in a Raspberry Pi I believe it was like the second edition probably I don't know 7-8 years ago and I just got it to tinker around with it and play with it but a really cool thing that actually someone I know does is they build actual arcade games they build the full cabinet you know they do work working they turn the garage into a wood shop and they actually build the cabinets to hold you know a Raspberry Pi a monitor and then the keyboard control or should say that you know the controllers you know for the games and they load up literally hundreds if not thousands of games to that Raspberry Pi and play it and when you're down in the basement playing on these games it really feels like you're playing on an actual full arcade style game and like this person I know that they've done is they've turned this into a little bit of a side business you know during the summer months he's a school teacher teaches wood shop at school but you know during the summer months when he is off he builds probably 10 or 15 of these things and they sell anywhere from like 1500 to 3 grand depending on how good they look and all the stuff that they put in them so that's one area where I know Raspberry Pi's you know swimmingly well I should say they are really good for emulating arcade games have you played around with a Raspberry Pi? you know I've had my eye on one for a little bit just to try out one of those like I don't know what they call them they're like electronics maker sets to kind of learn how to do electronics and 60 bucks is not a lot so this might be going on my Christmas list and I'm sure the uptick in specs is more a little bit more on the nerd side but I mean it looks like you can do a lot with this so I might get one we'll see I mean a fun tinkering project we could all have like a Pi off like Legos but upgraded come up with these things are ridiculously inexpensive for what you get now like this is not a you're not going to say I have a MacBook Air can I replace my MacBook Air with a Raspberry Pi probably not you're not going to be able to do that but for just the power that you're getting in this device for 60 bucks or for 80 bucks if you were to go with the 8 gigabyte version of it it's pretty amazing for tinkers for folks who are just trying to learn more about computing, play around maybe you want to learn some alternate programming languages or just really play around with something and tinker around and not worry about destroying your $2,000 laptop this is really cool to play on well if you have a thought of what we should all do with our upcoming Raspberry Pi fives or anything that we talk about on the show or something that we might talk about on a future show we would like you to tell us about that and one way to do it is to email us feedback at DailyTechNewsShow.com so earlier this month scientists at the Wiseman Institute in Israel published research in the journal Nature reporting the creation of an early human embryo using only stem cells and without the aid of sperm, eggs, or a womb the team took adult human stem cells collected from skin cells and cultured them in their lab the model resembles an embryo at day 14 the team's next goal because I know that's your question is to achieve a model at 21 days of development with a 50% success rate and obviously go from there okay so Nicky let's break this down what is an embryo model how do they make it and how long has this been going on? we're going to go all over all of this so exciting find and I'm excited to tell you guys about it so usually before these models how embryology research would be done is that you would use donated embryos but in this case this embryo is created in the lab from scratch from the stem cells that you mentioned so the end goal for this is to kind of eliminate that sample scarcity that comes with using donor tissue and it also maybe will help reduce some ethical limitations in the future so when stem cells are retrieved from skin cells what does that process look like? well basically you can culture these you take these cells that are kind of like the origin cells of the skin cells they're not completely skin cells yet and then you can culture them and inject certain factors in them so that they turn into different cell types and actually this is not the first time that this type of embryo has been made so to give you guys a short timeline the first model embryo was developed from stem cells only in 2012 and this was in mice stem cells so that obviously we always try everything first in mice and then the first human oocyte which is the egg cell which was made from stem cells was in 2018 so they made the human egg cell and then the next logical step was to do this sort of embryo model now you talked about ethical implications obviously there's much more research to be done here but it's a pretty important step why is this such a big deal going forward? that's a very good question so the fact the big deal is how this actually happens so if you think about this starts out as a handful of pluripotent stem cells meaning that these are stem cells that have the possibility to become any other kind of cell they have that possibility within their genes let's say and these specific cells what happens is they self-assemble into an embryo model and this happens for multiple days in this case the oldest they got to was 14 days and at that point in time four different cell types had differentiated from these stem cells and they separated into different cellular layers and started to form the embryo which obviously eventually becomes a human and for me a pretty cool part about this is that this developed in the lab in vitro exactly the same way that it would have normally developed in a human and that's pretty incredible all that in a petri dish or the equivalent I mean yeah knowing quite a few friends at this point in my life who have gone through IVF in vitro fertilization or gone through a good route for their own ethical reasons or perhaps medical reasons or both I know that it is extremely expensive and for someone's body extremely taxing does this is the hope here that we're going to bypass some of the current solutions that we have everything that goes beyond just how people make babies normally yeah and like we mentioned in the beginning this right now has a very low success rate I think the success for this one is about one percent based on how these cells work it's a really complicated recipe and their goal is to learn more about things like IVF and also things just about how embryos develop because one of the reasons we need IVF is because we have sometimes faulty embryos but we don't really know why because they're hard to study and obviously this is an incredibly complicated process I did break it down into like some a small recipe if you want to hear about what's the recipe to make absolutely let's do it you start with 120 pluripone stem cells from a human cell line not a mouse cell line and you let them grow for three days this is like put them in a pot and stir them for three days and you continue this culture in something that's called an orbital shaker literally is just shaking it around so that it doesn't get stuck to the bottom of the petri dish and you use a cell culture media this is just a liquid that has all the things that you need for cells to grow I'm going to call this the secret sauce for the embryo at about day eight you will get a spherical structure so that's already getting kind of interesting and it starts to have different tissue compartments that have self-organization so this means the cells are differentiating into different tissue types and by days 11 and 12 you will get these fully differentiated cells that form these different structures and they express growth factors that make the cells move and change shape into something called gastrulation the easiest way that I have to explain this is like if you think about a human as like a giant straw the empty part the inside part of the straw like your guts and all that that's gastrulation is like when a sphere becomes kind of like a straw that's how I explain that to my class at least and along this entire process the researchers inspected all of these embryos microscopically and noted that all the molecular properties and the structural properties of these embryos match the human ones at these same same stages so this is a model for human embryo they're not technically human embryos but they look almost exactly the same is this a way I mean I know it's obviously a way to better understand how embryos embryos grow and and this is one step closer to that because as you said sometimes it's not super clear why embryos fail is is that the end goal I mean are we you know is the goal to I mean I'm talking super science fiction way down the road to not have people carrying children anymore you know or some combination of the two I think it's a tricky one I think specifically the scientists in question don't mention this too much because that's a slippery slope to go down obviously everyone's first thought is like clones and you know gattaca style genetic manipulation of embryos the main idea right now is to make it easier to study early stage embryogenesis and not having to use donor cells from people to do that I think that's a really big goal already and then I think for them is to make it past you know 21 days like you said and then longer than that and then ethics also become complicated especially in places like the US so I think it's going to be a lot more incremental steps I think the end goal will be helping people who would need help creating embryos maybe that's a good way to put that and you had mentioned before the show today because I had said something about oh you know IVF so expensive so I hear and you said well there's a lot of work to be done eventually this would be much more cost effective than some of the alternative routes that science provides I would hope so but the way it is now with a 1% success rate it involves a lot of work in the lab so obviously right now I doubt it's very cost effective maybe they could streamline it in the future but we definitely have to wait and see whether that is more efficient I would assume it's at least easier to create something than to get donor tissue to a certain extent whether this remains stable after 14 days is another thing that they still need to investigate. Well Dr. Nicky thanks so much for bringing this to our attention I know a lot of people are probably hearing about this for the first time myself included really cool thank you yeah on a very different note if you feel like traveling which Dr. Nicky also did made a bit of travel and you're tired of those junk fees that get tacked on to your plane ticket or various other things that you have to buy when traveling Chris Christensen has some tips for you. This is Chris Christensen from amateur traveler with another tech in travel minute this is not just a tech minute but also a little bit of a legal one there's been talk about junk fees in travel president Biden has talked about that there's things going through the U.S. Congress in terms of changing the rules but California is likely to actually pass two laws before then SB 478 and AB 537 that will do things like changing it so that sites like Airbnb would have to give you all of the fees except the taxes so the taxes could be separately but all of the cleaning fees that would apply all of the other fees so that when you look at the price essentially the price plus the taxes which seems like they could have included that but they did not but it looks like some help may be coming for those of us who are tired of junk fees this is Chris Christensen from amateur traveler Alright let's check out the mail bag So on Tuesday's show we asked folks what they felt about the idea of foldable laptops now that we're starting to see more and more options we've got a ton of feedback so we'll go through a couple Josh Llama from Sydney Australia wrote The closest contender to a foldable laptop on the market today says Josh Llama would be the attempts to sell mobile OS can do everything that a desktop OS can do like the Samsung DX which turns your phone into a Chromebook-esque virtual machine with a dock or iPad OS in split view but at this time we haven't seen widespread attempts of that working developers have experimented to make the iPad Pro their main workstation but they've run into issues with multitasking and working within that form factor DX hasn't gotten a whole heap of attention since its launch back in 2017 there's just something about the laptop form factor that makes it work that being said I cannot justify the $4,000 asking price Andrew from Melbourne also in Australia thanks to the Aussies today says and Benjamin from Boone Iowa wrote Rob, I know you weren't with us on the show but I'm going to guess that you have thoughts on the idea of a foldable laptop we're obviously getting used to foldable phones so I am a user of Samsung DX I use it fairly regularly from my phone so not at $4,000 but if there was a foldable device I would say a foldable device not at $4,000 but if there was a nice portable folding a foldable laptop that I could use with DX I would try to use it now with portable monitors but it is something that I would at least give a shot to I've got a mechanical keyboard here I'm a huge fan of them and I have a laptop that basically is a desktop but if there was one that came that was just a giant monitor without the keyboard I know I would have my mechanical keyboard plugged into it because I got my mechanical keyboard plugged into the one that has a perfectly fine keyboard on it as we speak there you have it Nicky, what are your thoughts? Foldable laptop? I'm unsure because right now I'm talking from one of those laptops that has the touch screen fold all the way around to the back and I thought that was really cool when I bought it and I literally never ever used that feature if anything I accidentally touch my screen and screw something up so maybe could be a little bit of a like a fancy feature but it seems like some people have specific use cases for it I kind of see what Rob is saying is like a modular piece that is kind of cool I don't know if it will be enough to be marketable to everyone so it might just stay expensive Well, when when you're not using your laptop that does cool things like turn itself on its head let folks know, Nicky, where they can keep up with all that you do Yeah, of course, so it's easy it's my name everywhere, it's nicoleacrimans.com on my website nicoleacrimans at blue sky and Acrimans Nicole, I always want to call it blue ski but it's blue sky and acrimans are having their exodus right now from twitter Really, blue sky is kind of the scientist that's the social network that the scientists have chosen Yeah, I think so Some of you anyway, your friends Well, we're so glad to have you on the show today Nicky was traveling recently so we hope to see you early and often after today I hope so too So folks, it's free preview week all this week we're giving everyone access to good day internet extended show stick around for GDI as we discuss what your zoom background or any video chat background for that matter says about you Oh gosh I don't want to know but I do want all of you to know that you can catch the show live because we record it live Monday through Friday at 4 p.m. eastern 20 hundred UTC we're always on demand but we'd love to have you join us live if you can find out more at dailytechnewshow.com we're back tomorrow with Tristan Jutra joining us talk to you then this show is part of the frog pants network get more at frogpants.com club hopes you have enjoyed this program excellent show everybody good show, good show, good show good show, Rob, before you tell us all what our zoom backgrounds mean about us just a reminder that if you want to let your voice be heard about what we should title the show that's DTNS and GDI and it is you get GDI for free this week so maybe you're listening to GDI for the first time head on over to showbot.tv make your voice heard so researchers at Durham University in the UK released a study published in the public library of science titled virtual first impressions zoom backgrounds affect judgments of trust and competence the study compared how 167 adults judge pictures of zoom participants faces against different backgrounds each image featured a man or a woman with a smiling or neutral expression the backgrounds tested were blurred living space, houseplants a bookcase, an empty wall and a novelty image of a walrus the faces placed against the houseplant or bookcase background were judged trustworthy and faces over the novelty picture or living space were judged the least competent or trustworthy study also noted more research is necessary to confirm these findings and to see if they apply across cultural context all the participant faces were of white individuals no surprise there mm-hmm yeah I mean I don't know if I'm the only one who follows rate my skype room this is a Twitter account or an X account this is it's for all sorts of backgrounds but this was a very popular account that was launched in the pandemic when all of a sudden you're like oh wow I get to see everybody's office or kitchen or wherever they might you know have like haphazardly set up their you know background we're all pretty used to this doing remote video work but a lot of people were just doing this regularly for the first time and thinking about lighting and ring lights and you know all that good stuff and I have to say I'm so used to so many different kinds of backgrounds that I try not to let that hopefully influence my feeling about the person sitting in front of it but there is something to it there is definitely a what does this say about you the way that I don't know the car you drive the shoes you wear might say the same yeah my first thought was like if I'm interviewing someone on zoom and like they're in a basement and it's like dark and there's like I don't know I would be like what are you doing yeah or like you don't do this very often right yeah that kind of thing this is not professional but it depends on the context like an interview versus like you know a podcast or something it's not at all the same context so totally yeah I also think Walrus was pretty cool it's a good point I like the Walrus well but it was like this is the if you see the photo it's centered behind the person you kind of want the water I did and I had a herd of sheep in my background in my zooms during the pandemic there you go all right that's kind of fun yeah I wonder if there's any variances of before pandemic and after pandemic because I would have to imagine that during the pandemic people just got used to you know there may be a loose child that runs through the background dogs, pets you know neighbors coming up and looking at the window while you're literally on your interview and they're at the window like this looking in and you're looking at them as they're looking at you that kind of stuff just became commonplace so I wonder if you know the numbers have kind of evened out across everything but what I found interesting is that it said that a blurred background of your space actually crushed you less with that they want to know what you're hiding yeah you're hiding something I also think it's because of that particular thing is people use that built in function for that and then it's never clean around the edges so it does it clips out and stuff it gives the impression and this is different than having a slightly out of focus background because you got a super swank you know a webcam or you're using a DSLR for a webcam in that it just looks like you didn't bother to clean up and this is the fastest way to make sure that people didn't see that I mean okay so I'm using streamyards this is streamyards built in blurred background I've never used this before so I know it looks kind of weird but I feel like I look like I'm on a roller coaster or perhaps merry-go-round and you're right so if your head is missing like it's been cut off well I lost it I'm going too fast but yeah I know I get why it's used I don't know this particular blur is a little bit strange I've never done this before we're doing it on the fly but yeah I guess this doesn't bother me when I see it with other people but I always sort of assume that they either have something written on a whiteboard that is company secrets type thing or they have a messy house and I don't care about either of those things but that's usually what I think I think what's implied in that it's not that I agree with it what's implied with that is the person is lazy or couldn't get their act together right it's the easy way out type thing and therefore we see someone we judge them instantly because that's how our monkey brain works watch any cable news network when they bring in pundits to talk about whether it's like the conflict in Ukraine or political issues like the polo campaigning or financial issues you'll notice that the people they talk to that they Skype in or whatever from their homes they always try to have like a bookcase of books or something so they look somewhat and the books that they wrote too but somehow it feels like they're more learned or perhaps more accomplished education wise and therefore have a greater their voice I am a person who reads well you know I see someone with glasses and you think that they're smarter because they have glasses hey I that's true during the pandemic very smart and Rob as well I used an actual green screen so I had like just a big green backdrop and I would actually if I was doing a zoom call I would run it through OBS first where I could really you know do a really fine finely tuned chroma key so you sometimes couldn't tell where I was it's like dude are you outside right now because like I literally would have like a video playing like a 15 or 20 minute video on a loop playing where you could see people walking in the background and stuff like that man your microphone is ridiculous I can't hear any of the background noise and you know I was saying you know that you know it's just a video back there and they're like what so it would be when I would actually stand up and then go walk back or I have a I had like a like a green t-shirt and I would take the t-shirt and put it over my head my face would disappear type stuff but people aren't generally doing that level of production so you know it saddens me that it elevates it it saddens me that people would actually think less of you if you weren't going out and running a whole other piece of software just to make yourself look better in a green scheme and I think it's interesting that I mean we're very visual creatures it's just where you have so many facial expressions to display a discontent but like for example if you had a bookcase and you were on some sort of round table about you know vegan issues and all your books are about the joy of barbecuing and you know stuff it would send the wrong signal and I think what people are trying to do is what they do in real life situations is they want to cultivate a set of expectations or at least a non vocal signpost that I'm in law enforcement and can't you see all these badges and all these other things behind me that indicate that I'm in law or I'm a lawyer like look at all these degrees I got from these great universities that's how you know I'm a good lawyer you know doctors do the same thing and it's you know I mean if you go to a mechanic you don't care because they have the car on the lift and it's like well as long as you get my car working by the end of the week I think we're probably also what diplomas on walls are I don't I wish I knew where mine was I didn't throw it out my diplomas are European it doesn't have any gold on it it's actually it's a cool diploma you know not a lot of bells and whistles just the facts American diplomas are in frame you got to frame it yourself I should have framed it I used to be on my wall for many years then I don't know I was like I almost I almost framed my Kentucky Colonel little thing remember that guy maybe it was before you started but he got everyone on screen savers like he signed him up to be official Kentucky colonels which is like basically an honorary signifier from the state of Kentucky can you vote on things can you do anything with this it's what Colonel Sanders was okay from KFC he was a contact that's where you're not some sort of house of rivers you're a fry cook I was I was just talking about zoom backgrounds backgrounds in general I think probably all of us are we know enough about setting up and what these sorts of broadcasts like the one that we're doing right now what it entails microphones very important you know so many people just don't get that audio is as important as it is and it just has to be for things like what we're doing maybe for a quick weekly call with your remote team not so much but I tend to forgive I mean unless it's somewhat bizarre like you were saying Nikki like maybe there's like a dark basement where you're like what's going on in there besides that as long as I can hear you and you seem like you're doing okay great you know I don't care what your background looks like Scott Johnson was saying that he got pulled in for jury duty virtually and then he got excused because apparently they picked a bunch of people who had like good mics and good video and they excused them because it could have been that the case was about something to do with electronics and they're like oh these guys are like not on their phone like can't figure out how to launch the zoom so they're like too smart for this case or whatever so maybe that is interesting I think really what it shows is the reason why the reason why books have such fancy covers on them is because a lot of people do judge a book by its cover I mean don't we yeah that's true but your first impressions versus what you do after when you think for a second is what makes all the difference I think yeah I don't really judge folks in zooms just because I'm so used to doing it is just is just what you do what still amazes me is that I mean we are well out of the pandemic at this point but what amazes me is that there are so many pundits who it's not like they're on television once or twice a year so maybe they don't have the right setup but it's folks who are literally on every single day that are using the camera in their laptop or they don't have a good microphone and I'm just like you know why didn't that channel actually get you to you know setup because it doesn't take a lot I mean even if it was twice a year I would get a webcam or something like I said for those folks I forgive because it's like it might have been hey something happened we need to get you on right now just use your iPhone just use your you know use your laptop you'll be fine but it's the folks who are literally on 2, 3, 4, 5 times a week or more on different shows it's like okay you're on television you probably should have done a little bit to step your game up whether it be you know get a green screen or something but something I think at least some of those individuals I noticed are in different locations the few times I've seen them so I think they just might be traveling or they're in you know can do a good traveling setup you can even do like a clip mic maybe they just don't want to do it anymore this is their passive way passive aggressive way I don't know I think yeah I'm with you Rob it's like just someone at the newsroom not have you know 5, 10 minutes just to talk through you know some stuff then again see how many times I've tried to explain audio or even basic lighting to somebody and they're like I'm not saying that everyone needs to understand how this all works absolutely not but it's pretty easy for me to say here's what you do this is my kidney we let yourself maybe there's a window we can you know face the other way and people just kind of go like can you not hear me it's fine sure it's going to work but it's not great it's hard to make somebody care about stuff like that I promise next time I'm on I'll put up curtains I like your background no but I've got some setting in my face it looks healthy vitamin D this is the argument this is the argument for the use case of a virtual use like a virtual copy of you that you could use whatever the instance might be it might be it could even be your voice but it would just be like hey it's the best looking version of me like I'm on CNN so let me call up the CNN avatar of me and I don't have to figure out what my room looks like just have a decent mic I can be in like my pajamas my hair is all messed up and you know I got a cup of coffee that's filled with vodka or something and I'll be drinking it but they wouldn't tell because it's just nice CGI version of you you're like deep fake Roger yeah it would be great right if you had that option and you like had to be on a call like a conference you know a video conference call like you could just set that up you could be yelling from the on the top of the toilet you know and just like yeah it's a good idea we should put that on hold for next week's meeting you know maybe we should move on to you know our finances I mean I think that's where those things will go because I believe there will be a future that will that will be integrated into a video conference web tools like StreamYard and Zoom that will automatically just virtually insert or remove things for you so you don't have to do anything you press a button and it makes you look nice I did see that Zoom now uses an AI feature to track your conversations and then sends you a like summary of it after by email you talked a lot about barbecue today have you thought about ordering some barbecue for the little barbecue store I don't know it's it's weird I think I think a lot of it is we've trained over the decades perhaps centuries that certain appearances carry more weight in terms of authority than others or even identifying your your like safe group like you know I'm thinking like caveman thought like stranger is bad and like that's why we have prejudices it's because like it's a hardwired safety mechanism not that you know now we're smart enough to be over it well some people are but I mean the idea is to recognize when that when that prejudice that filter kicks in and why you're reacting in the way you do right like it's weird because a lot of it is is sort of instinctual when you see a big large animal with sharp teeth kind of making loud rumbling noises you generally like yeah maybe I shouldn't be in its space and I should back up a little bit but a lot of the stuff when it comes to just social interactions are taught behavior right not directly but like you just learn through you learn through other people's interactions right like societal expectations I remember we had this discussion and in my university that's a state when we were talking about like the whole the whole kind of stereotype that Asians are bad drivers and I and there were two students myself and another Asian student we brought up she said yeah we're really bad drivers and I said I think it's because it's cultural right because driving wasn't a thing in Asia until like me like personal automobile ownership wasn't a thing until the late to mid 60's right for a lot of the population only people had cars were well off and so in the US for example you have so many cues of what's considered good and bad driving not just from your parents or your relatives for movies TV shows right we know when we watch a comedy movie about someone who's in a in a driving class and they're like turning the wheel like this and they're all over the road they're bad you know they don't pay attention we have all these cues but if a society doesn't build those up or have those you don't learn it in the same way which is why I'm glad that they added like some of these could just be cultural cues like okay I grew up in a society where bookshelves bookcases were a signifier of authority in a different society it might be something else it might be like oh you know this person's a great believer or an artist they carry great weight or they're just old and so you know we give respect to elderly people because they've been around and ideally should know a little bit more than we do ideally I mean sir you have way too much fun with those filters yeah you have that's a scam I don't know who's car this is this is something I've got on my computer that's either Dodge or Plymouth this is not a car I've seen in real life I don't know where this is I wrote tree and this image came up on yeah don't you see the tree on the side of it yeah I guess I somehow saved it for some weird reason in the year 2020 that's what the file says although it's I don't know it has the final top though if they went with the straight it's a purple I don't know what it's a dodge swinger or a Plymouth I'm also I've been told that I'm an extremely bad driver don't know what that says about me I am kind of a bad driver I think it's a societal thing also about driving I was thinking about that because it also people say all the time that women are bad drivers and this happened to me where like I have a brother he's apparently better driver than me but also my dad took him driving when he was 14 but didn't ask me to go driving when I was 14 because like boys do car things and like yeah no wonder women are worse drivers because they don't get introduced to driving earlier you're doing this yourself I mean my dad was definitely taking me driving at age 14 because I had to learn stick but you know I still know how to drive manual so I mean it worked I don't know why I'm a bad driver it was because a woman or what and also what people consider to be bad driving is a little different I noticed that people I've had passengers often male who say I'm not a good driver so I mean there's a phrase when I was driving up from New Jersey up to Massachusetts when you cross like the three states in the three state area you'll notice specific license plates have certain driving behaviors are very distinct from the neighboring state and there's a reason why Massachusetts drivers have the nickname they do and I think it's very dependent like some places you don't need to go 10 miles faster than the posted speed limit because then you're just a lead foot in other places well it's you also get this is just a stereotype I hear a lot people who especially people who have never lived in LA or I guess California in general who go it'll rain once and no one in LA knows how to drive anymore and it's like yeah they do I mean maybe some people get thrown off by a little rain but for the most part people know how to drive I don't know why people say that you could say that about lots of places where it doesn't rain that much it snows in the south I feel like the world still spins fairly normally I don't know every state is like we have the worst drivers it's just everywhere when automated driving when automated cars become the majority of personal vehicles on the road I think it's going to boil down to a state set their car to drive like this but here in our state we set it to be like I just want it to be all trains and we wouldn't have any of these problems team trains I'm with you on that let's make some underground point A's to point B and get her down I want to see the views see the Rockies would be incredible you can you just get on the train it's just the one Amtrak that's really expensive and hard to book I mean you never said about time you just said trains quickly I want a bullet train oh oh miss leadfoot here with the lead train leadfoot train lead train so I recently watched my dad's fault I recently watched the movie iRobot Again and I remember the part where he was on the motorcycle and I can't remember the actress's name but she said isn't this dangerous it has gas like a combustible liquid in the tank and I wonder how far we are away from that to where is it 20 years from now when there will be younger people who have never known anything but EVs you actually used to drive around with gasoline in the tank just like right in the back of the car where if you got hit it could your whole car could blow up and it's like clearly that doesn't generally happen they designed it so that that does not happen as often as we can make it not happen but I'm just wondering how close we are to that to where people just don't even comprehend how we used to drive with gas or how we used to actually drive and not let the cars just do it for us it's probably because gas is so expensive I'm filling up my own gas tank I have to do regularly I think when at what point will this all seem like a crazy thing that the old people used to do you know yeah and there would be one on every corner sometimes four on each corner pick one and then you sit there for a minute and you fill up your car or you can't drive I'm pretty sure my if my kids have kids grandkids will be of the generations like you actually drove yourself what were you crazy like we're fine with people other people or auto pilots flying the plane we sit in because we generally know statistically it's pretty safe but you're risking your load life in your own hands with other people are doing the same thing and you just managed to wait and then you operated an like handheld electronic device splitting your tension away from both navigating the vehicle like the era before seatbelts were law like so people would just like choose not to sometimes I remember as a kid I was dancing around on the backseat of my parents car when I was a kid it's like hi how you could I was in the back of the pickup and told to hold on I mean nothing bad ever happened but it was like I wasn't like strapped down or anything I was just just kind of you know my dad would say don't stand up or anything that's dangerous 20 years out though I think we're like maybe 40 because like I know the government's like incentivizing EVs and all that but like by the time it has to be so that poor people can afford it and then it'll be everybody well I honestly think there will be a paradigm I love this word paradigm shift and we use vehicles where it will be more of a you just buy the time like car sharing except they're instead of owning the actual car you're just like well it would be more of a subscription model you pay for a month and you don't have this is a great thing you wouldn't have to settle on one model you would just get whatever suits you it's like oh I'm moving so I need a pickup or a van oh I just need to go to the store I'm going on vacation give me you know a drop top to see that doesn't incentivize people to buy more cars I well that's the whole idea is that people wouldn't buy yeah the car they would subscribe to services would be pissed about that no no because they would get in on it they would be the ones you know well and that's the whole idea though there would be there would be there would have to be a top to bottom shift but I mean you know there's a reason why you don't really see a lot of a condo boxes as a entry level model for a lot of car makers right for dropped cars think Chevy will be in a few years you know a suzu a bunch of others have because the monies and all the SUVs and like you know the pickup trucks and that's where they're all like forty fifty thousand dollars but not everyone could afford that I mean I can't so gigantic they're there to hold the big dreams that Americans have are big dreams or sub stories depending little but you know you have big dreams that turn you got big dreams or you got big woes you need something to carry them home with yeah something like that good to yeah big trunk in your car I don't know well I think that just about does it for GDI today Dr. Nikki so good to have you on the show always a pleasure I love being here well we love having you next month yeah absolutely and would like to give a shout out to everyone the Twitch shout out has been supporting us over the show through the show so we bring bacon and rabbit forty one for sharing us on with bits and Prince of brow and nine new for resubscribing with some pride thank you very much also over yes thank you very much over on the patreon side we notice that Ross gave us a raise thank you Ross I haven't really had a lot of visibility on patreon raises but I think we're getting back to normal see so so everybody who supports us thank you so much whether you raise or could do so in El Futuro we appreciate all of you very much until tomorrow folks have a good day good day