And so, I was very pleased to be asked to introduce Robert, who's speaking to a very important topic on questions of wildlife, bush meat, and biodiversity in tropical forests and the contributions that wildlife, small animals, fish, and so on, make to forest-based livelihoods. And a whole host of issues arising with respect to the protection of these resources, their importance in the forest ecology and their importance to livelihoods and incomes. So, Robert, with that, I turn it over to you. Thank you. Thank you, Steve. Good morning, everybody. And I'm quite impressed to be sitting on this part of this thing, some sort of dark shape in the background. Why bush meat? You may ask the question, after all, we are the Center for International Forest Research. Why do we work on the question of wildlife and food? Because it has a lot of repercussions in terms of the dynamics of the forest. 70% of the species in tropical forests are disseminated by animals. A large number of the same species are predated by animals. These are the same animals that people hunt for food or for the purpose. So changing the wildlife composition in a given forest stand is changing the dynamic of the forest. It can be changing on the long-term. The carbon stock can be changing the forest or something else. And this has been described in 1982 by Ken Redford as the empty forest syndrome. So you have a forest that is still with a lot of trees. If you look at it by remote sensing, you still see a forest inside. It's empty. There is no animal. And then the forest is more or less doomed to change. How it is going to change is not yet sure, but we have some hints that show that it's going to change the balance in terms of fast growing spaces, slow growing spaces, carbon-rich spaces, carbon, less carbon-rich spaces in terms of trees. So there is a significant ecological impact on the wildlife. There is also a more crucial impact. It's a loss of biodiversity. And that's clearly how the issue of bush meat or anything for wildlife or food has been presented for decades. I mean, that's fundamentally we are extirpating spaces in place like Ghana. Anything that is bigger than five kilos has disappeared. So what you are left with is the rats and equivalents in the forest. So we are seeing a biodiversity crisis. The problem with this biodiversity crisis approach is that it has very little traction with the local people at any level from the villager to the ministers or the presidents. Because fundamentally it is seen as a problem of the North. I mean, these are these people in developed countries that tell us you need to protect, you need to stop hunting, but what's the purpose? The forest has always been there, the food has always been there. And we need that. And I think that's what we are still trying to do in our Bush Meat Research Initiative in C4 is to try to look at various angles, not only the conservation one in terms of this Bush Meat question. And I'm going to illustrate that specifically with the Congo Basin because it's the place I know best and that's the place where the various issues converge quite nicely. Congo Basin, six countries, Cameroon, Gabon, the two Congos, Equatual Guinea, Central African Republic. That's about 100 million people, 70 million are in DRC and the rest is scattered in 25 million in Cameroon and after it's mainly very low population, country Gabon is 1.5 million, Congo 3 million, Equatual Guinea less than 1 million. So a lot of forest, the second largest block of rainforest in the world, the second largest block of dry forest also in the world with the Miyambo. So it's quite an important area and it's also an area where a lot of the people derive between 40 to 60% of their protein from wildlife, fish or Bush Meat. And the size of the Bush Meat issue in the Congo Basin is quite staggering. It's 5 million tons per year of animal extracted for food. 5 million tons, just to give you an idea, it's about 80% of the overall beef production of the European Commission countries. And we do have a problem when you look only at the local level and at the consumption level and addressing that from the conservation perspective. You should stop hunting. Well, fine, let's stop hunting but who is going to produce 5 million tons of beef or equivalent to feed the people in the Congo Basin? People that are already below the World Health Organization minimum in terms of protein intake, so you reduce something that is already below. And as of today, I mean, there is no substitution. We cannot replace these 5 million tons. We cannot simply say people, you should stop hunting or you should stop eating meat. So we should try to manage these resources. And that's something that nobody has really tried to do in the context of forest. People have tried to do that in Savannah where they are do game-wrenching. But in the high forest context, it's very difficult, so it never happened. And it's not that it's not possible, but that was already considered as something, no, we should protect the species. And we show in our research that it is possible to manage some of the species. Is it possible to have a sustainable hunting on the small, fast-reproducing, resilient species? What we call the rat equivalence, but in fact it's anything from 1 kilo to 40 kilo, small antelopes, rats, porcupine and other fast-reproducing species. Pangolin are a bit different, they belong to this category, but they are slower producing, so they should be protected. The interesting part is that this group of species represents already 70% of the catch. Most of the people, they don't go out in the forest to kill a gorilla. They go out in the forest to take some meat, and it's much more easier to handle a small antelope than an injured gorilla or to kill an elephant. You just need to have a few dollars you can invest in a little bit of steel cable, you make a snare and you can catch an animal. If you want to want a big animal, you need a gun and you need a... So it's quite easy to enter the bushmeat value chain, it's a low investment. I return, bring you some cash, a lot to pay for the school of the kids, a lot to buy some cigarettes, some basic product. So it's something that is quite easy and that's part of the livelihood of the local people. And it's very important to understand also that it's a very gendered value chain. Men are hunting, women are selling and cooking the product. And this plays a disproportionate role in the livelihood of women. And then you have also added to that the public health issue, the fact that you have all heard about the Ebola crisis. If you remove the few grams of bushmeat that the people eat in Madagascar, I mean, sort of if you increase the chance of anemia in children by 25% there is a clear link in the Congo basin in the work. We have just finished with the colleague from Imperial College between availability of bushmeat, pressure, rate of stunting and prevalence of Ebola. So there is a clear interlinkage that we need to understand better and then working on it. So how can we work on that? I think that we should really look at the bushmeat as a sort of a socioeconomic problem more than a conservation problem. And we need to address reducing the demand. And we can reduce the demand in town. People in town have less the need to eat bushmeat than in rural village. We can stop the demand in international. There is nobody who needs to eat bushmeat in Paris or Brussels, sorry. We can reduce that. We can improve the sustainability of supply by managing the resource, the faster producing spaces. And at the same time, we need to work on alternative proteins. But we know that the alternative protein solution is not for today. So maybe in 25 years from now. And it's linked to the fact that people are moving from rural area to town. That's it's more and more in an urbanized world and more and more wilderness around. So it is where we are. And it is the sort of the purpose of the work we do in the bushmeat research initiative in C4. And now we have work in the Congo basin, but we have also work in the Amazon countries. And we are starting something in Southeast Asia. And really the purpose is to shift the paradigm from bushmeat being a biodiversity issue, to bushmeat being a livelihood development issue, also a conservation one, that we can address through proper management and proper multiple use management of tropical forest. Thank you. Thank you, Robert. So we'd like to invite colleagues to pose some questions or offer some comments. If I could ask you, when you do ask a question to stand up and give your name. Thanks Robert. I'm Lou Verso. And I just like to ask you, you talked a bit about this, the urban demand. And I'm just wondering, how much can the urban demand actually be a motor for creating value and using that value to create incentives for improved conservation or improved management? You know, if something is valued, and people can earn a living off of it, won't it be more incentive to conserve it and to manage it appropriately and more sustainably rather than cutting off the urban consumption and then having it just be a subsistence product? Again, there are three elements in the answer to your question, Lou. One is the fact that first, urban people are eating 10 times less bushmeat per capita than rural people. So people moving to cities with the same population, you reduce the demand. Second, people in cities can pay more, are willing to pay for bushmeat. When they move into cities, it becomes more like a luxury product instead of a basic product. So this is where it is important to have the issue of the bushmeat sector recognized as something which is formal, that is open and not criminal. As it is now, we cannot do what you suggest because everything is criminal. You are not supposed to hunt. You are not supposed to trade. You can only hunt with the traditional purpose for your own consumption. It is not the case. So before moving to this, I mean, giving a value to the end product in the value chain, we need to have the enabling environment and we need to have the politics understanding that it is important to bring these things out of the criminal world to something that we can manage and keep protecting the species that need to be protected. But yes, that's one of the ideas. Controlling more the demand in town, increasing the price in town so that it becomes a luxury product and at the same time working on the whole value chain, trying to bring it out of the criminality where it stands now. Thanks, Peter Holmgren. You started by saying that you asked the question whether why do we talk about bushmeat when we are dealing with forestry. To me, clearly, this is part of forestry. And at least when I studied forestry, hunting was a big part of the curriculum. So I think there's no doubt that the conservation values and the use values of bushmeat are inside the domain of forestry. But I had two boundary questions that I would like to tease out on. One is, to what extent are we talking about the forest? Do we also have bushmeat outside the forest? Maybe agro-bushmeat or whatever you might call that. Or are we confining this to the forest ecosystem in any way? That's one. And the second is, what about the wider game hunting for food? It's a very large part of the forest use in many, many countries around the world. And are we including all of that in the concept? And if so, because if we do that, and we're talking about a very high proportion of the value of the forest use, I'm curious about your views on those two. And just to conclude, I think it's excellent because this also shows how we enter the nutrition and health issues from forestry. Thank you. First part of your question, I think, yes, it's a forest, but the forest, we have a broad sense, in a sense, a significant amount of the hunting is what we call garden hunting. It's people snaring animals that are raiding their crops. So it's more like the forest landscape. So we are looking at the hunting question in the Congo basin, in the thing that is defined as the Guineo-Kongolian rainforest area, but you have savannah inside. We are also looking at issues on dry land and in savannah. So it's more, what do you do with wildlife at the landscape scale in terms of managing and extracting the resource? So it's not simply located within the forest. And a lot of the most profitable hunting is happening in fallows anyway, more than in the deep forest. About your second question, we haven't really looked at the bigger world because it's a sort of a different story. In most places in developed countries, hunting is seldom happening because it is a food security or nutrition issue. It's first something which can be cultural, something that people like to do. People make money out of it, but assuming that we stop hunting, nobody is going to die of hunger. But that's something that other people are considering, but we limit ourselves to the tropic and for this part on the issue of bushmeat. Our colleagues in Sirada are working on the sport hunting issue, but it's more related to the dry land area. Daniel. Daniel. I learned and believe that the term bushmeat came from the work in Africa. As we learned that you are going also to work in Latin America, Southeast Asia, how do you anticipate the terminology when this term is propagated to many different geographic locations with regard to their belief, their culture, whether it's for lack of flying meat or something. In fact, the term bushmeat comes from the French viande de bros, which really is sort of a literal translation of meat from the bush. And it's widely recognized. We had some sort of an endless discussion with the colleagues in FAO, essentially we use bushmeat or wild meat. We use bushmeat because people recognize its links to the issue of the bushmeat crisis. In terms of what is happening in Latin America, in the Amazon mainly, it's more or less the same than what is happening in the Congo basin, except that in the Amazon people are very likely eating more fish than they are eating meat. So it's really the major protein source is fish, but they do hunt for meat and so when we talk to the people in Spanish or Portuguese-speaking countries, they translate literally also bushmeat into the equivalent to in Spanish or Portuguese. So it's not an issue in terms of that. And by bushmeat we include anything that is more than 500 grams, so we have a tendency to stay away from the grubs and the insects, although they play an important role, but it's sort of a different dynamic, different issues. In Southeast Asia it's a different problem. Southeast Asia, most of the trade in wildlife is for medicinal purpose. There are some link to people eating, but it's always with some sort of background, or you are eating a turtle soup because it's good for your health, or you are eating the Pangolin, but in fact you are mainly interested in the Pangolin scales. So we have a study that looks at the wildlife market in the mainland Asia, continental Southeast Asia, and it's really about the medicinal trade, that's the main issue. And that makes it totally different from the two other, the Congo Basin and Amazon Basin. Dan? Dan Kuni. Robert, two questions. What's the global trend in terms of whether bushmeat hunting is legal, illegal, banned or not? And secondly, are there examples of where there's been sort of empty forest syndrome and then communities through the legalization and regulation of bushmeat hunting where the biodiversity has come back to sustainable levels? The trends, I mean I'm not sure that there is a sort of a global common trend, but the overall situation you have in many countries is that the regulatory framework is totally in adapted to the reality. And that search is not implemented. You have forestry or wildlife laws and regulation in most of the countries in the Congo Basin. They cannot be implemented. They have been developed by people coming from the north and then they give you hunting season where there is no meaning of any hunting season in this country, or they say that you can only hunt with a cable that is made with grass or something like that. So it's not implementable, but as a result, everything is criminal. You can have a license in Cameroon, but buying a license to trade bushmeat costs you $800, which is beyond anybody. And in the Amazon Basin, I guess Emigre will be better to answer, but the situation differs for each country and even within a country like Brazil, it differs by state. So there is no global trend. Some people consider bushmeat in their statistics, some don't, some consider that you can hunt, but you cannot trade, some consider that you can only hunt for your own consumption. So it's a bit of a mess. Overall, the legislative framework is totally in adapted to managing the resource. The second question, I'm not sure. From the top of my mind, I can't tell you if there is a place that was completely empty of animal that we left alone, the animal came back. We have an evidence that when you disturb, like after logging operation, the animal go away. A few years later, they come back in bigger numbers because they like the differentiated vegetation. You have some open area with grass, you have some closed area. But in terms of what is happening with the empty forest syndrome is generally linked to a high level of population and pressure and the population stays there. What is mostly happening is that it's not the animal that comes back, it's the forest that disappears to produce something else. Kiran Nasher, thanks. Thanks, Rubir. You were talking at the beginning part of your talk about how there's management and ranching of wild animals in Savannah, but not so much in forests. I was wondering if you knew anything or any updates about what was going on with Dagmar Werner's project on iguana conservation in Central America, where she was trying a model of ranching iguanas in semi-captivity, so the eggs would be on a farm. Once they got to a certain size, they would be released in the forest or on the edge of the forest. Do you know of any other studies that would be implementable or that would be interesting to look at for bushmeat? There have been a few attempts at breeding small rodents, especially what they call the brusch tail porcupine, which is one of the most hunted species. The problem is that it doesn't make economic sense in many cases. The most blatant example was that I was in a conference in Brussels about bushmeat, food security in the DRC, and we had this session on wildlife. And you had a very dignified Belgian professor that would say, oh, presenting a breeding of holacod, this brusch tail porcupine, in the area of Kisangani. And they say, yeah, you should do that. It's how you can do it. You have to give this type of food to the animal, and then we grow by so many grams per day. And then something like 10 minutes later, we had a Congolese PhD student who just finished his PhD on the damage to crops by wildlife. And his conclusion was that, oh, every year, the farmer in Kisangani, they lost $7 million equivalent of maize and rice because of the brusch tail porcupine. So you can see that when you go to the people and you say, you should breed this animal that is just destroying their culture, the message doesn't come very well.  So it could work in the context like Kinshasa, where you have a 10 million person capital city that is surrounded by no forest, no thing is left. So people would make sense economically in Kinshasa to breed some animals and sell to the people. But in fact, it's much more efficient to work with the animals we know, like pigs, chickens than to breed these rodents. So when it makes economic sense, it's much more easier to use the domestic animal we know. And in many cases, it doesn't make a lot of sense. Totally different situation in the game-wrenching business in the open savanna. Yeah, no. I think you more or less responded with the previous question. I was wondering because you mentioned the traditional opposition between conservation promoted by the north and extraction by the south. But I mean, the whole point of sustainability is to have a reconciled both issues. So I was wondering whether you could observe some local attempts with collective action for regulation in order to make it more sustainable because people are, I guess, starting to face the consequences of overproduction. There are some things in Latin America because the civil society is much more advanced than in the Congo basin. For the case of the Congo basin, that's the problem we are facing. The north see it as a conservation problem. The people in the Congo basin, they don't see it as a problem at all. So for them, there is nothing to address. If you go and you are invited to it by some of the ministers in charge of the environment, they will serve you bushmeat. For them, there is no social stigma associated. There is no problem associated with bushmeat. Because they only see that as presented as a conservation problem. When you start to talk to them and you tell them, okay, you know that the bushmeat informal sector is the size of the whole agricultural sector of your country, then it starts to be. Then you tell them, you know how many millions of CFA francs you could get back into the state coffin simply by managing the resource instead of making it criminal and only breeding corruption. But we are not, that's part of the thing that we are doing in the Congo basin is trying to raise the issue so that people start discussing and realize that there is a problem. Then you can talk about collective action to address the issue. But as of today, this didn't work. Aaron, this is the last question. Aaron Russell, thank you for your presentation. I would agree that the problem to me seems to be two different problems. One is with regard to conservation of biodiversity in rural areas in terms of rural consumption patterns. And the other one is very different with regards to urban consumption. But urban consumers, they would still prefer to have bushmeat if they had the choice. And the alternative that they're going to is to poultry and beef. And from all of our research, that typically results in negative consequences for the global climate and water consumption and all of that. Is that, maybe that is a northern kind of value that's particular, that only some northerners are considering. But is that something that is worth pursuing as a rationale for increasing the amount of sustainably raised bushmeat or fish, I would like to say, for urban consumption? And linking to that, I mean, like you said, fish is the main source of protein consumed in a lot of the Congo basin. And there's, should we be focusing, should we be focusing on, obviously that's the World Fish Center's work. But there's a lot of flooded forest that produces all that fish. And it has a direct impact also on wildlife consumption. So should we be looking at fish? And also like the Mekong, we can't just say, oh, and we're talking about grubs as if it's not a significant thing. That is grubs and crustaceans and snails and frogs are one of the primary sources of protein in some of the Mekong. Should we be discussing, should we kind of, obviously, WWF and all these other organizations, they focus on habitats for large charismatic species. But like you say, the main thing that people are after are the caterpillars and the fish. And should we be focusing more on that? The first part of your question about the urban demand, it's, I was thinking like you a few years ago, it's a bit more complicated. I mean, you have in some urban cities where Bushmeat is a luxury product, typically Libreville in Gabon, where they will buy a leg of a dricker for Christmas.  And what we see in the area of the Trifontura area, in Colombia, Peru, and Brazil, it's in fact that there is a nutrition transition where people are not buying Bushmeat anymore, only a few people. What they buy is frozen chicken from Brazil, because it's cheaper. And in Kisangani, people buy Bushmeat because it's cheaper. And when there is Caterpillar, Caterpillar are cheaper than Bushmeat, they buy Caterpillar. So there is a test element, but the test element is vanishes in front of the economic element. If you provide them with something that is cheaper, a source of protein, they will buy this one. And from time to time, they will have a luxury to buy something like that. So that's something. About the fish, I fully agree with you, but nobody is working on the fish. I've asked the colleagues of the World Fish Center, does anybody work on the freshwater fish? I know.  My feeling and the anecdotal evidence is that fish stocks are probably more depleted than even the Bushmeat terrestrial animal stocks. So we cannot just stop and move to fish. I mean, fish are already harvested, but we know very little about that. You're in Makoku in Gabon, you have a sort of a 900 meter wide river that is flowing across the city. And you go, you buy the fish. The fish is coming from 500 kilometers. They give you an idea of the state of the river. So yes, yes, we should do that. And something that we consider, but of course, you're always limited by the human or in financial resources you have. And the fact that there is very, very little on fish. The USAN just published an atlas of the conservation and endangered aquatic wildlife in the Congo basin. But that's the first sort of answer. And there is nothing about the management. If you take the FAO statistics, they will tell you that people in DRC eat five kilo of fish per year, which is ridiculous. Well, thank you, Robert. Sorry. Peter, your last question. Sorry to ask again, Peter. I want to relate this work to the CDIR. Two questions. One is how does this work in terms of food and nutrition sit within the CDIR's mission for food and nutrition security? What's the perception? Do we have to fight for this space, et cetera? And secondly, given that we are moving towards a new phase of CRPs and flagships, et cetera, et cetera, is there space for a flagship on wild food for nutrition and health or something like that? Well, the first part of the question is very easy. It sits here and with ME over there. So it's definitely not in F4NH. They don't work at all on these topics. We discuss with them. They recognize that there is an interest. But this is not their concern. On the second question, yes, we are discussing, and especially with colleagues in Inveria Center, on this issue of what is badly called nutrition sensitive landscape, which is, in fact, it's something that considers also all the elements brought by wild food in the livelihood, food security and nutrition and local people, and not simply the domestic forming elements. So I guess it's definitely something that could be a flagship and that could be of great importance. All the data we have showed that anything between 10% to 60% of the protein intake comes from wild meat between 15% and 100% of the food security is mainly achieved by wild products. That is a significant element of the livelihood is also linked to selling this product to get cash to buy food. And all these elements are totally ignored in the current context, where in fact, you are farmer doing farming and eating and selling domestic animals. Well, no, there are something else, and this is something that we can work with. Robert, thank you very much for the very interesting presentation. Thanks, everyone, for the great discussion. Thank you.


I don't think you meet many people at SOAS that have just ended up here. It's like, you have to go out of your way a little bit to find it, you have to have some slightly interesting ideas. And having all of those people pulled in one space just leads to a lot of new ideas being formed. Some great, some less great, but all very exciting. My one word to describe SOAS confronting. Home. Cultural. Great. Different. Fun. Exciting. SOAS is a maelstrom. It's wonderful that you have made it so far. It's been a rocky road for all of you considering what you have been through in the last two years, but you should be proud of what you have achieved. It's been a pleasure teaching you and getting to know you over the years. My time at SOAS has been nothing but amazing from the lecturers to the lecturers and the tutorial as well. Everything has been so interactive. This is a fantastic moment. You should be truly proud. It is an incredible achievement and you should be pleased. But as you're celebrating, remember your loved ones.  I also really enjoyed getting to know my professors online, albeit online, who had incredible in-depth knowledge in what I was studying, which is the creative and cultural industries. My time at SOAS has been one of the most interesting mind-boggling experiences ever. The teaching staff are amazing and the people I've met from all different walks of life. I learnt more about African economies, more at SOAS than when I was doing my studies in Africa. We are the anthropology department at SOAS. We're here to wish our students and also our students a happy graduation. Happy graduation! SOAS has been fun, challenging and exciting. My time at SOAS is really wonderful. I came from the DRC Congo to do my master's here at SOAS and really had a very nice time with my colleagues and of course, it was really wonderful. So my time at SOAS has been fast-paced, exciting, challenging. It has given me the opportunity to delve into some really interesting topics. And I know that all of you have worked so hard, you've tried so diligently and you're going to be great ambassadors not only for SOAS but great citizens of a new brave world of change and progress. I'm living SOAS with so much, so much of information and so much of knowledge from different people. Helping such supportive SOAS staff and the whole community and it's library and everything, this is a very nice place. I miss all this. I wish you the very best. Please keep in touch, okay? You have to email me and let me know what you're doing. Take care. So good luck with whatever comes forward and enjoy the moment. Show the Tandooros Bashi, please stay in touch. Overall, it's a pretty show and fun and unique experience. Remember that you're SOAS graduates. You're there to change the world for the better. You're meant to disrupt the world for the better to create a more inclusive imprint on the world. Remember that. That's what the SOAS graduate does.


Coming up on DTNS Mozilla 70 launches with more tracking protection Verizon gives away Disney Plus and private alternatives to Google products This is the Daily Tech news for Tuesday, October 22nd 2019 in Los Angeles. I'm Tom Merritt and from studio feline I'm Sarah Lane and from the dark forests of Finland. I'm Patrick Beja And I'm Roger Chang the shows producer We were just talking about some of those dark forests and we were talking about the passage of time and Christmas traditions and all kinds of good things on Good Day Internet Become a member and get the expanded show at patreon.com DTNS let's start with a few tech things you should know Sources tell CNBC that Softbank is an advanced talks to take control of workspace company We work which would value we work between seven point five and eight billion dollars and give Softbank up to seventy percent Or even more control of the company last month We were canceled its plans to go public after its IPO prospectus in August revealed a nine hundred million dollar loss in the first six months of 2019 the company was reportedly going to lay off two thousand people about thirteen percent of its staff as of last week Hmm the European data protection supervisor or edps has found quote Serious concerns over the compliance of the relevant contractual terms with data protection rules and the role Microsoft and the role of Microsoft as a processor for EU institutions using its products and services Microsoft said it quote will soon announce contractual changes that will address concerns such as those raised by the edps Remember last month when we saw that leaked paper on nasa server briefly from google that uh, if if if it were you know A final paper would have indicated that the company had achieved quantum supremacy quantum supremacy being The idea that a quantum computer could perform some kind of calculation in this particular case a technique for determining random numbers In an amount of time that was reasonable compared to a classical computer taking an unreasonable or impractical amount of time however IBM researchers have proposed a method in which a classical computer could Achieve the calculation described in google's paper in a practical amount of time IBM's method would require using hard drive space so kind of like a ram disk In addition to ram and other optimizations to perform the calculation in two and a half days Rather than the 10,000 years google's method would have required google still hasn't published that paper and ibm hasn't tried their method So this is all theoretical but uh, just so you know, we don't have clear quantum supremacy achieved yet Not determined yet. All right. Damn it. Let's talk a little bit about Facebook patrick Must we I guess we must New york state attorney general leticia james announced that 31 more u.s. Attorney generals Have joined her investigation into facebook bringing the total to 47 including james the investigation seeks to Determine whether facebook's actions may have endangered consumer data reduce the quality of consumers choices Or increase the price of advertising. Yes, you got 45 states on board now, uh, as well as the district of columbia and guam Uh, I think actually I say that portorico might be in here too. I can't remember but Uh, that's pretty overwhelming. Uh, significantly california's attorney general not on board for this investigation of facebook I guess that's probably not super surprising But uh, also not surprising that all these attorneys general thought it might be good for their reelection campaigns to be seen as going out to facebook also I of course there needs to be an investigation to to make the determination But at least the first part Have they endangered consumer data? I think I know what the answer to that one is going to be Well, yes and no, I mean has there has consumer data from facebook been endangered. Oh, yes There's no debate about that. Was it facebook's fault where they negligent? That's the kind of thing this investigation has to determine I think you could make an argument facebook certainly has made the argument that yeah, I stand by my I answer well, that's you know mark zuckerberg's whole like this is the fifth realm or whatever his you know Fifth estate. Yeah fifth estate. Yeah the latest thing. It's kind of like well This is a thing that we did wrong, but it's new We're still figuring it out everybody, which is actually true. It is true Yeah, I think there are a lot of the fifth estate argument makes sense in a lot of ways The question of whether or not facebook endangered consumer data I think is separate from that and it's one of the elements of the investigation, but I think it's different. You know, many companies may or may not endanger consumer data Maybe I'm wrong. I'm surprised you're it would be the easier one to prove right. Yeah, exactly Well, speaking of another company Sometimes people think of us, you know having any trust issues But not in this sense google announced that its ai chat bot google duplex will launch in new zealand As part of a limited test to confirm holiday hours for a handful of local businesses Making this the first time that duplex has expanded even in a test outside of the u.s Google says that businesses participating in the test will receive an automated call from google Asking to confirm their hours for the upcoming labor day public holiday, which is on october 28th Those times will then be automatically updated on maps and search Well, I learned two things here one labor day is october 28th in new zealand. That's interesting But also that google wants to Be seen as reliable for these holiday hours because man when I see holiday hours on the internet right now I don't trust it. I assume that it's old or mistaken because it's so often is So if they're gonna do this if they're gonna test google duplex, which I think this is a great test automated calls Uh, it's got a limited scope helps them refine the algorithm. That's all great But at the end they need to be telling me like we just called and confirmed these hours Or I'm not going to trust it. Uh, it's because there's so often wrong Or they get this into the system on a consistent basis And you just get used to having reliable holiday hours over, you know, maybe not today But how do we get to the point where we know that they are reliable? Right? That's my question because they're always reliable If you're using google, but if I never trust them, then I'll never know whether they're reliable No, that's true But if there's some sort of like, you know check mark or star or whatever, you know Where it's like google duplex has verified this and you you know, we get to the point where it's like more and more It's like, okay. That that's great. That's you know, that was a vetting process that we all believe in then, you know That would be helpful Yes, but if they do it well enough, they don't even need the the check to say not oh sure, you know the others are not super reliable, but this one is And over time you just don't even need the check mark. You just Think that google's data is reliable I would like to live in that candyland world you are describing, but i'm not sure how which Well in a couple of years if uh duplex and other methods are Used consistently and efficiently we might we might tom be optimistic thinking of the future patrick I want to complain about right now Okay, fair enough live in the now man Mozilla launched firefox 70 for windows mac linux android and ios cross the board You're getting new social tracking protection Which blocks cross site tracking cookies from sites like facebook twitter and linkedin Firefox has been doing a lot of tracking protection natively within the browser So you didn't even have to use like a privacy badger or no script or anything like that But now they're expanding it to include social networks a privacy protections report will now let you see How many trackers both the normal trackers and the social trackers Fingerprints and crypto miners that firefox has blocked for you So you can track the trackers basically is what the rott pointed out that means firefox's password management service lock wise now has a password generator And we'll feed some data into the firefox monitor to alert you if one of your accounts may have been involved in a breach It'll say like oh there's been a breach at this account Would you like to check and see if your account was was part of that The green lock icon in the address bar is now gray to sort of de-emphasize You know to kind of say like hey a secure site should be normal. So gray, right? And now an insecure http and ftp connection will show a red cross out logo to say like you shouldn't be trusting this connection firefox 70 also strips the path information from the http referer sent to trackers that If you do get tracked we'll give them less information to go on and on the performance side On windows web render is rolling out running on integrated intel graphics and compositor updates on macOS should speed things up and reduce power consumption there You know interesting ux to to have gone from that sort of green check mark to the gray And you might go well, yeah green means go isn't that good? But that is it's a it's a subtle but important distinction Right because everything is supposed to be secure if for some reason it isn't that's when you get a flag Uh, and I think that that's I don't know it's smart on whoever's you know behind the design team on firefox but all in all these features are They're rock solid. Uh, I you know I talked on the show yesterday about uh browsers being one of those things that I drag my feet on the very most Just because there's such a big part of my daily existence and my work and everything that I fear change But uh, but I used to use firefox and this might be what's taken me back Yeah, my my reaction to this is is there a reason not to use firefox? And I say this as someone who doesn't use firefox as my primary browser, but There's no reason not to use it I mean unless there's a site you use that doesn't work well in firefox, right? Which there there are examples of that and that that's true of a lot of browsers like well I'd use it, but it doesn't work well in chrome for whatever reason That's the only thing I can think of it is zippity fast on mac os now. That is a technical term that I use Usually I only use that term with brand new browsers like when vivaldi first came out or edge for chromium first came out because Browsers that are brand new are always fast because they haven't had time to build up things in the code Right when they're built from scratch firefox feels like it was built from scratch right now So, yeah, I have switched. I I am using firefox 70 right now as we speak Well, if only I didn't have so many darn chrome tabs that are really nice Over cross platform Devices that I have you can use firefox sync and get your tabs cross platform Fine All right. That's true. All right. We can't I don't know I don't know why I I don't use it But for some reason, you know, it's really the I guess it is a an example of the importance of getting that market share on browsers because people if I don't switch as a tech enthusiast then And Normal people certainly won't well It's one of those things where when I when I decided to move all my tabs over to firefox I was like, ah, this is going to be a pain. It wasn't You know, I logged into google for my google drive and then gmail and everything else was fine It's it's a mental barrier more than an actor. Yeah, no, absolutely. Yeah Well talking about google google fi connects to three lte providers sprint t-mobile and us cellular Depending on which one it thinks is the fastest up until now it had to disconnect briefly to switch Starting with the pixel 4 a new feature called dual connect will let google fi Make the switch without the disconnect claiming you could watch a video during the switch and not see a blip google uses dual sim dual standby a k a d s d s to have two connections happen at once both to google fi So you'll need a physical fi sim along with a the e sim in your pixel 4 The feature will roll out to pixel 4s over the next few weeks and eventually come to other fi compatible phones This is a little bit geeky for sure And it's not as cool as dual sim dual active which would actually bind the bandwidth together and give you a faster connection Which probably the carriers are not too happy with google doing which is probably why they haven't used dsda But dsds is a great way to make that seamless now granted if i'm watching a video There's all kinds of things that could make it screw up So i'm sure someone's going to be doing this and go hey, i've made my video screw up But you know theoretically it should be able to do seamless connections like that Which is which is really good and and and something that will make fi even more attractive I've always been Something of a fan of google fi Just because of the fact that it has a pretty straightforward billing situation and has international Roaming and also the the ability to go on multiple networks at once like that Well, this is the sort of thing where you know, you have explained what google is doing to make Something like watching a video more seamless But for somebody who doesn't really understand what's going on under the hood You would just say i don't know google fi is like mostly fine But sometimes there's these like weird blips and i don't know, you know And so that is this this is just like one more reason that someone would say. Oh, yeah. No, this is like a legitimate Solid uh connection option. I used to have these weird blips, but I guess they they don't happen anymore. It's great. Yeah This would be why I I wonder why google fi has not expanded beyond I guess it's only the us, right? But they do have roaming Internationally. Yeah, I'm I wonder if it's just the the the complexity of becoming an mvno and in other countries That they just don't want to have to deal with that's a good question. Yes. Yeah Could I could one I guess there's a limit to what you can roam internationally? You have to make deals with everybody. Yeah, no, sorry. I meant could one could a european get to google fi Uh account and then use them in europe But it's a lot of trouble because then you have to you have to make sure that google will give you the account You know, so they have to think you're of an american Which might be distasteful to some I have no idea Well speaking of connectivity verizon will give all new and existing verizon wireless customers also new fios customers And new 5g home internet customers of verizon's a year of disney plus for free when the service launches on november 12th disney plus is six dollars and 99 cents per month on its own with tv shows and movies from disney marvel pixar Star wars and others we've talked about disney plus quite a bit on the show But uh, yeah, if you're a verizon customer get it for free I'm a verizon customer. I'm looking forward to it because i'm not sure I would have paid for it Otherwise not because I don't think it's a great service just because you know, I kind of have that service fatigue where I'm like, well I pay for other things. I I don't know if I need this but but getting me in for a year If it's a good enough service if it's if the platform is solid Then for seven dollars in a year from now, I'll be like, yeah, no, I need that um Two things first of all, I would pay multiples of the seven bucks to get access to this service Which I guess is coming to europe at some point Yeah, it's already in the netherlands right now. They got there. Yeah, that's the test and it's just in I'm just saying europe got it first patrick I I guess what I'm hearing is that I could move to the netherlands and I will consider it No, I think you get it on november 12th. I don't know if it's in finland per se, but there are plenty of european countries getting at november 12 right No, wait, no, no, no, no I don't think so, uh, I i'm pretty sure maybe it's the uk we can check that but uh, I think it's very few european countries if Maybe the uk and that's it Um But I would pay more and sarah within a year It might be more expensive because there's no way that the service is going to remain at that price, right, right? I just think I think it's you know, it's smart and you know, we're seeing more and more of these You know, this carrier has decided to you know, give you some sort of either a you know, a free or a Or a discounted option of this platform because the two companies had made a deal, you know ahead of time In order to get customers uh, you know To to make us feel like we yeah like we we we are dependent on on on these platforms for certain content And maybe it will be the case and maybe it won't I mean, there's so much competition right now But I do think it's it's smart of, you know, Verizon's kind of like hey, you know, we'll take one for the team here I Mean t-mobile has done a t-mobile Tuesday thing Where they gave away mlb.tv access the past two years I haven't paid for mlb.tv the past two years because i'm a t-mobile subscriber You mentioned the quibi thing With t-mobile. So these platforms what's interesting is instead of zero rating They're going for like just giving you things for free As a way to entice you onto your platform, uh, which yeah, I I agree I I think that's a much better way to go and it's not unlike When I my service now, which it's gonna change because i'm about to move but I use uh Comcast is my provider right now and you know, I was on a one-year really great internet speed plan Knowing that after the year it was all gonna go up But you know, that's that this is a very common industry practice that people use all the time Whether or not they stay is you know, that's up to them But it it gets you dependent on You know some sort of a business for something that you use in your everyday life and then you end up saying I'll have to pay you now or I have to pay you more now. Okay Yeah, no, it's good for disney plus for sure Uh patrick the the most important part of this story is that both of us get to say we're right It is launching in europe Only in the netherlands on november 12th because they already have it as part of the preview Comes to australia new zealand on november 19th, and then western europe Gets it in 20 the first half of 2020 eastern europe first half of 2021 latin america first half of 2021 asian pacific throughout 2020 and 2021 So yeah, not not launching everywhere november 12th, but it is eventually coming to most parts of the world. Yeah There yeah, I'm not gonna say what it was gonna say Folks if you want to get all the tech headlines each day in about five minutes Be sure to subscribe to daily tech headlines dot com Ed bot at zd net has an article up called how to replace each google service with a more privacy friendly alternative Ed bought of course a a great tech reporter and and tech pundit For many many years, and I thought we would be It would thought it'd be fun to just look over ed suggestions and maybe make a few of our own here Now we'll start with mobile os where he says well you have apple That's your choice If you don't want an iphone then you're stuck on android and and that's not 100 true There are a few other very small operating systems out there and and you can find those and and dig them up But they don't have wide support. They don't have wide development for the apps so he's he's sort of Mostly right of like well if you want the complete range of of services and apps available You're probably stuck between android and ios, right? Yeah, I like his approach. He's essentially talking to regular people who want to get actual viable alternatives not the Privacy obsessed geek maybe in our circles Who wants the best somebody who's willing to live with just web versions of things because they're like I want to live on sailfish. That's all I want to do. Yeah And and I I think it's a good thing to point out that it's easy We have to read these headlines and we might even say this ourselves, you know Well ios says it's more secure or private, but look at this that happened. Ha ha you don't really realize that if you use Facebook or whatever service then apple doesn't protect you from that. So is it really more secure? Well, yes, it's more private and on the os level, of course, you can always screw things up on top of it, but overall the Apple os is more respectful of your privacy than android and you know, it's almost it's also more pricey. There are trade-offs, but You can just send those emails straight to patrick, uh for that statement But I will back you up. I mean send them to edbot. Yeah, I mean apple Apple android can be just as private as apple. You have to work harder to do that's kind of my take on it Uh, apple makes it easier for average people. Like you said, uh to do that browser wise. He recommends edge The chromium beta. He says it's pretty stable. Even though it's a beta He's like, don't use the edge that's on windows right now Get the new one that is built on the chromium engine and he loves the simple tracking protection Now i'm a big fan of the firefox tracking protection, but it's kind of the same thing as android, which is I I am I want that extra control and that extra data that firefox gives me now firefox makes it really simple Uh, but microsoft makes it if microsoft interface on edge might be Even more attractive to people who otherwise might not worry about their privacy Yeah, it it sounds like to me from what I understand. He is recommending edge four is Firefox 70 it's they're kind of neck and neck same idea. Definitely. Definitely. Um What about search? Uh, he points out that bing is really your only major competitor to google But duck duck go uses the bing results as well as results from other search engines It does an amalgamation of them. So you get the best of bing plus and duck duck go Uh, you it's not perfect people have shown where it's like well, they don't protect privacy in this way They don't protect privacy in that way, but boy, do they protect it more than your google search It would be easy for me to say Oh, please, you know, i'm not going to use google search I mean it is it is now a verb that is part of the vernacular of the entire world However, we have enough people in our audience certainly Who use duck duck go and swear by it that I know that it is not like Some crappy search engine that you're using just because you don't want to use google. It's actually a very good button Yeah, I use it every day. It's my default search engine on my phone. There you go I've been using uh quant which is actually a french search engine Um, and it's it's fine. You know, I still default back to not default, but I still go back to google Every once in a while, but I've been using quant As yeah, like sometimes I I think google might be a little bit more, um, complete but For if even if you use your default search engine Most of the time and then if you really want something specific you go to google then Um, it's you're better Protecting your privacy. Of course I do all of this in chrome. So it's kind of moot, but it's not even completion It's almost like a flavor of search. There's a certain flavor of search that I know google is better at It usually has to do with like immediacy like oh They're gonna have Great example is uh rise of skywalker trailer breakdown Uh, I used google for that search because I knew they were on it faster than duck duck go would be But I always go into duck duck go use the bang g command Which then sends my search to google without any of my identifying information on it So I'm using google, but I'm protecting my information Uh, anyway, edbott's got other, uh, great recommendations over there Line two as an alternative to google voice outlook.com. He argues is is better than gmail Points out, you know office 365 dropbox box, etc As alternatives to google drive. He doesn't really have a good alternative for google photos or youtube But let's finish with his maps recommendation where he says hey folks get over it apple maps is good now You know one of the Apple maps has been a you know a punching bag of maps apps For some time with good reason when it first launched it was lackluster compared to Alternatives google maps being of course that you know kind of frontrunner Because I have been using carplay so much with my card now that that that does um support it When I'm you know, I can I can use google maps or ways or I could use whatever maps app That carplay is is compatible with if I want but if I'm using siri That's what is going to launch and so just because I'm not always thinking about it as a default I do end up using it quite a bit and I'll tell you It hasn't really led me astray the way that it used to it It does seem like a pretty solid product at this point at least in the u.s At least in my neighborhood or you know where I'm going That's what I was going to say. I'm not sure how Much better it is than it was before outside of the u.s It seems fine, but on something that is tangential Opening hours we were talking about in a good day internet I just had a bad experience Week ago because I was using apple maps, but on the map side. I think it's on par on the actual navigation side. Yeah Well, thanks everybody who participates in our sub reddit Sometimes we talk about navigation there. Sometimes we talk about other things you can submit stories and vote others At daily tech news show reddit.com. We're also on facebook join our group facebook.com slash groups slash daily tech news show All right, let's check in with chris christensen our amateur traveler Who's back with a handy app to help you find your next scooter rental? This is chris christensen from amateur traveler If you like using scooters to get around town things like bird lift Lime spin jump, etc But one of the things you don't like is that you have to use a number of different apps to find scooters Then there is an app for you and that app is scooter map dot com That app will help you find scooters and put them on a map for a number of different Companies that do rental scooters So if you like scooters get scooter map dot com i'm chris christensen from amateur traveler But will it help you find scooter lane? Hold hard to say Well, we're using apple maps. No All right, we got time for one quick email. Let's check out the mailbag Uh go to mon on patreon actually was responding regarding tom's recent differential privacy special episode that we ran on October just over a week ago. October 15th.  So thanks for what you do Yeah, I think it was the epsilon uh the epsilon stuff that I talked about on differential privacy came in handy that I love I love that that is what we want to do. We want to make you feel like hey, wait a minute I know this uh when you're in a conversation about technology. So I'm very very glad to hear that and uh folks If you missed that differential privacy episode like we said, october 15th. It's there at daily tech news show dot com Shout out to our patrons at the master and grand master levels including jeff wilks sonia vining and ken haze Thanks everybody. Also. Thanks to patrick beijer for being with us today patrick. What is new in your world? I guess uh everything all the time, but in particular Go check out the latest episode of pixels, which was recorded just a few days ago If you want to learn more about what's been happening with blizzard and china and gaming in general, we do a Significant discussion about all of this go into the different aspects And uh, I think you will come out understanding a little bit more about it than you did before That show is called pixels and you can find it anywhere you find podcasts And also i'm not patrick on twitter Folks i'm so excited uh that we're just over a week uh from the new patreon rewards being delivered I I I I can't wait to sit down on november 1st and figure out like okay, here's what I do Here's how I get to send to hear the new people. Uh, so if you want to be one of those Patreon.com slash dtns and don't forget if you're Starting at the two dollar level if if you're at the dollar level you won't get this You need to be at the two dollar level by november 1st to get a pdf copy of the official dtns Good day internet cookbook two dollars or more. Uh anybody above gets it as well So sign up right now patreon.com slash dtns If you heard anything in the show and thought ah, wow, I really want to give this some feedback I have some thoughts about this or that or the other thing feedback at daily tech new show.com is where to send those emails We're also live monday through friday at 4 30 p.m. Eastern. That's 20 30 utc for limited time Anyway, find out more at daily tech new show.com just live This show is part of the frog pants network get more at frogpants.com