We have two guests today, they say the best things in this world comes in twos. So yes, first of all these guys are looking dappa, like this guy is dressed up, I don't know why I didn't get the memo to wear, I forgot the name, nimembo ajina, nimembo ajina of what that's called. But anyway, karebunisana sanokali. First of all, mi na chaka ngamshu ajina, introduce ajipa tiyema ua as they should, because sometimes you forget to put ourselves on the back. So please introduce yourselves and say everything you all are. Naka wama na teftam tu please, don't even feel shy. Ewa rama mubib mera yulekana kama di, omi ekini, mista kama aso, straight outa ma lindi kwa hibu. Yes, yes. Di buti? Yeah. Wana teftam tamata? Bil kwa ramtu ure. Oh really? Yes. Ewa rama mi na ito muntips klasi kia king of love, matoka ma lindi outa 003 kili fi kwanti. Jibu yos na lindi ne, atu kilangan tori. Okay, yeah, mi na deit. Oh, guys, you know what? Actually, in fact, now that we're here, our question of the day to Kwa Tumeliza, would you guys allow someone to date your sister? Opinion zing? Yeah. My chest. Hazama klasi. Ah, you see, anga de, kama monewe mependa, mependa na kwa newa, sendi asi date. Ma pensi chagui. Ay, zulu. Kanulu kumapatekitukini. Atu kwa na ma. Atu kwa na, ono na nasa huzuru wa boicha. Atu beba nisha angi. Ah, nisa watu. Bo karibu nisa na chano kali. Na kia meri pizant ma lindi. Nya bahana we. Ah, lemi, so lemi asi. First of all, I want to know what's the music scene like of ma lindi. Kus na jwang atu mombasa, bongone, what's ma lindi like na mnaka pema interaktsana na watu mombasa? Yeah, koko tini kosa. Watu ingona kudia ga ma lindi. Atu ingona kudia wa atu ingona ma lindi. Mene tuu ba asitu na beba naka tika musicia kia apde beba saa lego tukai kus apaka tukai uaibu. Naki na ma lindi watu kona kone music na tukona muzikim zulu kama uaibu twi. Ah, oh, love to hear. So, I want to know the story of you to so make a class kumazana, but how did you two meet? Mulitwa na api? Are you related? Are you best friends? Mulitwa na api na mkapelekana api kumiluko saye. Kwa na apu, nika zumbro, ne family. So, tu na tukawati ma lindi suatu liba tana beba tika music tu. Onu tukamotu kuzaa ne pastu. So, amikusimam kia mamikuzaa ne is it something that you perform the young age umili jwa sinata apu jwa musica. Lafuko jokunum se mojoka familiarna anani get, so to safanya this thing together. Ami watu zik like? Ami uli jipato, mehanzo mehanzo lafuhafu itu rumkapa. Ya li, waka tinanzaka helpa bwere kushu mili. So, nui utu kaputana tukona. So, tu na dutumu wajatu apu timizana. So, tu na pastu na musica. Walingtusi sa idea de tu tu push musici kia tu ibu. Right. Ya, kaputana. Aitakuanzasa the whole thing professionally. Ya, ya. Did you guys, what is the process like yakuzaa like? So, maybe you can decide nai taji manager yet or not yet ntaka producer and say de kumik beat ntaka ghostwriter. Like, yakuzaa su kuaji for someone who's in an in a society in Nairobi there is way too many people mahasla wa music ni wengi. Stand up to your place. Kama ma lindi kwenye badum na jikuzaa as you said. Ilu kuaji yakuzaa procesi yakuzaa watua kuwa side ya kuchipi nidinda industry? Kiku ele siya patuli paku na mtua na tu sa idea na zemiti. Misisi wengi tu tu na tu na nyokotu wakouta tu marekimbal na maishae tu sa gini tu kuwa na maishae tu alisipi. Na badu na jikuwa vizuri bireza tu na gichangatangatu na nyokotu akilu wakutu na gipelika studi wengi ya akama ni yukuanda kuama registrations zeni ma tours or whatever tu na fana tu wengi na pisae tu tu. Ya, sure, sure. Okay, so in terms of funding mejitolea nini jikuwa? Ya, sure nini jikuwa kazi tu nugunu yuki pata usi tu na hasul piya. Ya tu na hasul so ona kimiya tu na fanya kazi za kumu na fanya ya kama piya na design na style piya. So piya na side ya wufanyamzeki nambia brohanga mechikitu fanyangoma yi piya naji piya piya kiviya kikule tu nengia na fanyangoma ya. Oh wow, that's real. Persona pana the fact that nisa ma if your family were helping each other had it, happened? So now coming up all the first thing goes ah er Crazy center maybe did lose out was about okay is out in the world is two feet and move in in the market for so long that comes from a게요 is major sayu kwaji ni weiится na k cancer training the process of writing to the process of za d broadcast topscreen do proton nia kauga fly d,ingu aso id a postponed This is whatб Experienza ... ... ... ... ... ... stule aywaовadi w잖아 wama Kwa takila reshpunitia shabiki na faiko puse tu Napiyo oka tmigi nunaezaima hemo Hapita shabiki aisi relate niai ho Hapita siwaona kwa sisi vibe niai naninuna Shumikia na kwa na kuka m�a zao magidaafuot Mushasiku na foutu kuhirectu Kitupoziti Ui kudunia mtifuo natua haqsi ya na fYeshpunia kitu Kenyi kita beba kila mu tu Kwa kabali tu? Tota hukuye akira premaju na kwa kabali na hewa Ia pia nafapia wangale pia mafanzi nini pia wanataka. Mwa sabu neneza imbaki tu ala mafanzu asipu kewezu. So ki piga mzikiu, kia na mafanzo jereleti, piga mwengini steli nitu fahutu. Baku wone, wana fikiya wana pia indakshuna fanya. Alright, thank you. Also so as we now get to hear your news de Kido Fidogo, nga kujwa future collaborations. What are some of the things wana hope ku? Who are some of the people wana hope ku? Wakwez na pia mgetakapia, kukujana irobe labdamu. Mlaza, hamia nerebe infanyu mzik, futa nerebe. Hamama, Lindy is home and that's it. Of course, Ia pia. Ah, really? Ya, hamia huku. Sa hukunu takuana makazi, kwa sabpetu maona. Ki icho kubu ahasa ala, na otu na putaza masana nani wupuna irobe. So ina kwa geraisu kiki kwa geraisu kutubua. Okay, that's the same for you here. Ya, that's true. Yato kifanya mziki kule, bado marketing eko teleta huku. Laku piya kuna biga puchuni tida. Wana, utas pata huku piya. Kuna bega shows unas pata huku. Ina platforms nani. So hiku giya huku piya. Emi hukunda do Kenya. Abando, really? Ya, Abando, really? Like bada opiya kusakwa na kachu of Malindi right there? Absolutely. Okay, na piya mizik videos, nga zaschut ku zama nga mkuna. The stand-dunes in so many other nice places. Are they wanna... ...glosso wkwa za kushuki ni kama za uku What's the government like in support of artist kushuki in those historic hall places? I'm not a gamer. I was born in kushuki and sometimes I have other problems... ...in restricting, restricting kwa kwa gya... ...kuna kakachiawa na mi pangiliwa... ...so what's the result kushuki? But... ...dia wkmanya uya... ...pani kuboku me hidekulotuna bhaari, so first... ... They put us in this beach... I know there isn't Me any I like so much about your new future collaborations who are some of the artists for you personally do you work or not? You didn't do much before you started working then... OK some may be so much but I look so white and since you worked up to my dreams about me going at branding asspendment went to do things kina Bahati, kina Wilipo, Kali Graf, Neshiski ya, hacha BNB ya ah, wow ok, but there are a lot of people bia, kamuna wa tishio skulutuna ikli, come to me personally because every artist ni me let up I think 95% kilamsu se ma BNB nsa ma bia the thing about him kama enika ekonvenyal kuwenga the king of collab a king ya kuwa song eniwa me shika as well ah, blavit and for your classic, who are some of you? yeah, my friends too me brad na me, na fanya kazi na utile brown utile brown ma mongali asana bia kuna Bahati, Wilipo, Kali Graf Jones kuna kia mongali apia na bia kuna bia famiwaan bia ah, uu famiwaan like, I can see na, me asholly is just because of guys are so impressed with this guys' style the Emergency just like I'm just so impressed with it so I'm thinking the people that collaborate me na kwa 2XIRED kona to that video I just want to see how you style the whole thing but it's pretty, pretty, pretty exciting ok, kila kila, go adijiblu ya kitenginaza music we can play one song and then we come back kala fata bia where we can get the music from


Daily Tech News show is made possible by its listeners. Thanks to all of you for supporting us. Coming up on DTNS, we find out which 2023 prediction came true, and the rest of them that fell flat. This is the Daily Tech News for Thursday, December 28th, 2023 in Los Angeles. I'm Tom Merritt. And from Studio New. I'm Sarah Lane. And I'm the show's producer, Roger Chang. This is the show where we look at our prediction show from last year. Nobody else does this. We look at our actual predictions from last year, and we decide how wrong we were, except in a couple of cases where people are actually right, braving the ability to do this and coming back to us from last year's prediction show. Andrea Jones-Roy, data scientist, comedian, circus performer, and host of majoring in everything podcast. Welcome back, Andrea, and thank you. Thank you for having me back. I'm looking forward to confirming that I am indeed an oracle of our time. Oh, I can't wait for that as well. Also an oracle of our time, Will Smith, co-host of Brad and Will made a tech pod. Hey, thanks for having me, Tom. I'm ready to hang my head in shame as we talk about what I said last year. And not an oracle of his time, but a sun microsystems of his time. I as Aktar, mobile analyst at PCMag. That's true. I really love design, the sun logo was fantastic. I love that. Well, of course, one of the great privileges of being a host of this show is you get to do your predictions first and get it out of the way. So Sarah Lane, shall we start with you? What was your first prediction from 2023? First prediction was that mastodon, an ex-competitor, certainly kind of the front runner a year ago, I said, mastodon ain't gonna stick. By June 2023, I said mastodon will no longer be a thing, or at least it will be more of a niche thing that it was at the beginning. Okay, so I was very wrong. Very wrong here. And the reason that I'm wrong is because ActivityPub, when you go through Metta and Metta's, well, okay, so gosh, where do we start? Well, you've got threads, threads using ActivityPub, which I think is what you're about to say. Yeah, yeah. And then you've got Tumblr starting integration, Flipboard just fully integrated with the Fediverse. Yeah, yeah. So yeah, all of that. I sound very excited when I say that, that is what you predicted, but I know it's actually the opposite. So I mean, so here's the thing, I'm wrong but I'm happy that I'm wrong. I'm happy that ActivityPub has new life, okay? There are people who are always going to say like, well, Metta's not gonna do the right thing with ActivityPub and MasterDawn people are, they live in a different bubble. That's all true. And I don't really know how this is gonna all play out, but what I will say is that the ex-competitors are not dead. They are thriving. We are figuring out as users of those services, how they're thriving, but I'm feeling pretty bullish. Yeah, it feels like when you made this prediction, everyone was banking on MasterDawn replacing Twitter. Right, yeah. Right, and that did not happen. So if you'd stopped halfway maybe, you would have got this one right. Well, I mean, it was the kind of time, when we recorded the show last year, it was kind of that moment where we weren't sure, like we knew Twitter was probably gonna go bad, but we didn't really appreciate how bad it was gonna go how quickly. And, you know, I could see how you could look at that and we didn't know about, Threads wasn't a thing yet. Blue Sky was, you know, there were like 100,000 people on Blue Sky or something like that. And now we're what, almost 10 million people on MasterDawn and a couple million people on Blue Sky and like there's the kind of conversations that were happening in the early days of Twitter, kind of growing up all over the place. And then every brand alive is on Threads doing brand engagement things that I, I mean, I don't know, whatever. But I think this was a reasonable prediction, Sarah. Yeah, I don't think you were out over your skis too far. I think she was technically. No, I thought this was actually the most likely to be correct. So I believe your prediction much more than my own, for example. At the time, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I was like, oh, that was a good one, yeah. Well, and you know, all things, you know, as we are moving forward today, I also don't really think that MasterDawn is going to be a thing. I know this is an unpopular opinion, but it's like, I feel like Threads is the thing. MasterDawn is, you know, an activity pub offering of the thing, but yeah, I stand. I stand by my prediction. I think Sarah's kind of got it though. Is it a thing? Do regular people outside of us know that MasterDawn is behind some of this stuff or this decentralized system? Because people are still calling Tweets Tweets, even though they're technically posts. It might be Twitter.com. It's still called X and nobody's calling it that because that's just silly. When will there be, let's say, in the share menus of everything? And it says, it'll say X, Threads, and then MasterDawn. That hasn't really happened yet. Could you imagine if like when they introduced iOS 17, they were like, and now when you have the share menu shows, MasterDawn. Everyone would have been like, okay, cool, super. So I think Sarah might technically be right. I like the spin. All right. Twitter became X. It technically did replace Twitter because Twitter is no longer Twitter, right? So mathematically, it's been replaced. If you look at my home screen, I have MasterDawn, Threads, and X in a folder called Twitter. Nice. It A will be and B equals C something, something. Yeah. All right, Sarah, what was your other prediction? Second prediction, Alexa going to have a tough time, not advancing from where Alexa is right now. Sorry to everybody who had their Amazon assistants come to life. Yeah, so I think I'm right. Yeah, yeah. You nailed this one. 100%. I also feel like this was a little bit of a pointy in on my part where I'm like, it's okay to think it's not. It just isn't gonna be like all that great. And everyone's like, well, yeah, it isn't. So here's the deal. We, the smart assistant universe has some work to do. In fact, we talked about that on a previous and off a previous version of DTNS. Just nine days ago, we talked about that very thing. Exactly. It, the whole sort of like, here's how you make things happen versus here's how you would just talk to this, talk to your assistant in natural language. We are just now getting to the point where it's like, oh wow, we're doing like a natural language thing. In the past year, I mean, one year ago, we were not talking about this. So that's where I think this is pretty exciting. Well, but it's, I mean, it's kind of different because last year we were using our voice assistants and we were talking to them and asking questions and they were answering those questions across a knowledge graph that was like known, confirmed, correct information. And now we asked chat GPT something and it just makes up an answer that sounds plausible, but you know, mayor may not actually be factually correct. I like your question better, even if it's not able to properly answer it. Yeah, so you're gonna double down on this one? Or do you think Amazon turns it around this year? Are you asking me, Tom? Yes, I am.   I don't know what happens next, but I think that these companies have been, they thought they were at the forefront of all of this. And I think that they feel like they were caught in a way.  It's like, it still works, but it's not really what we're going for in the future. So. All right. Well, let's get Andrea's predictions from 2023 and see how you did, Andrea, what was your first prediction? So my first prediction was uncharacteristically optimistic if you share the normative beliefs that I do, which is that I predicted that actually the rise of chat GPT and all the other generative AI models would cause an increase in enrollment in the humanities and the social sciences and that it would actually bring STEM and the humanities closer together. And to be more concrete, I specifically said enrollment in the humanities and declared humanities majors in undergraduate institutions in the United States would increase. That is what I said. Best I can tell, whoops, my internet connection. Best I can tell that has not happened. That said, I think I can buy a pass of some sort because the data from 2023 is not in. There are numbers coming out of 2022. There's a ton of much more thorough research looking back the last 10 years or so, but of the numbers I could find from 21 and 22, humanities enrollment was plummeting, but I don't know about 2023. The latest I could find was an article in June saying things were still not good and I could see individual colleges reporting their spring 23 semester information, but fall 23 and those sorts of things, those are not out. So I could back out of it, but I think I'm wrong, A, because I have eyes and ears and I'm paying attention to the world and B, I think the lack of news that all of a sudden we're seeing a ton more interest in the humanities, I think that demonstrates that I haven't called it correctly. I think the other thing is- But technically, we don't have the data. Technically, we don't have it. Sure, sure. And the data might vary you out, but even if it doesn't, I often make the mistake of these predictions of making a prediction for something that's gonna take five years to happen instead of the next year. Exactly. So you could end up being right several years down the road. Maybe you were just ahead of your time. So I don't know if you wanna send me a calendar invite now to turn it in, you know, 2030, this prediction. Roger, note that down, yeah. Yeah, yeah, I'll be on the lookout. So, but from what I can tell, no, not yet. All right, what was your second prediction? So my second prediction, you know, I've learned a hard but important lesson about being optimistic. I also was optimistic. Again, if you share my values on this, I was optimistic as well with my second prediction, which was that Musk's takeover of Twitter, still called it Twitter, would be good for algorithmic transparency and accountability that we were all very worked up about him taking over. We were very unimpressed at the time with what he was doing overall. Obviously, there were people who were into it. And I argued that, you know, yes, it's bad and yes, it seems bad for Twitter, but I do think that this is gonna start to usher in more attention to the importance of algorithmic transparency. How are our algorithms working? Why are we getting the things that we're getting?  And to be very concrete with my prediction, I said that the Algorithmic Accountability Act, which was introduced into Congress in 2022, would be signed into law. And I took the liberty of looking this up and it made nary a move from February 2022. Not even looked at as far as I could tell. So dead wrong on that front. And, you know, the best I can say is, the most generous I can say is that I, you know, there were a handful of really thoughtful articles that came out in places like the Atlantic and so on about, you know, people wanting, people starting to demand control over their algorithms. So why is Instagram feeding me this? Why is YouTube feeding me these things? Can I get in there and twist the knobs in any sort of way? And so there are murmurs to advocate, kind of like the consumer, you know, data ownership, data privacy, like I should be able to toggle on what I'm sharing and what I'm not.  But nothing in terms of formal law, like I said, and certainly I don't know that Twitter or Musk per se was the impetus for that. I don't think it was unrelated, but I, you know, I think it was decided to say that that was it because of TikTok and a million other things that are going on. If anything, the fragmenting of the microblog space took some of the heat off of algorithms in effect, in some ways. Yeah, so just dead wrong, I'm sorry to say.  I mean, at least if you just take a more general sense of accountability, the amount of companies that pulled advertising from X because their leader, not even their leader, their owner went kind of like, I don't know, you guys have been paying attention for the past year.  We might not be able to fund you to the point where Musk is like, well then you will kill us and it'll be your fault. It's like, okay, so there is some more accountability because how often do we see major advertisers pull away from a pretty big platform without backdoor dealings and discussing like, okay, we gotta fix this. So you're saying if we just take the word algorithmic out, then we're good. Yeah, exactly. I'm just saying there's something here because now we're actually paying, I think more people are paying attention because I don't think these major companies were like, yeah, this is what people care about. They're like, wait a second, algorithm or not. We don't want our stuff associated with whatever's flowing through. So one with the other. I think that's right. I think it's- Tiny a spit. I actually overestimated the sophistication of the problem and it was actually not about the algorithm. The algorithm is flawed as well. And at the time people were commenting, at this time last year, people were saying that their feeds were getting all mangled and they were getting all kinds of weird things that they don't normally get and they weren't seeing people they were following. So it was starting, but yeah, you're right. It was actually just one dude. The algorithm is a problem but we didn't even need to wait for that. It was just some good old fashioned hate speech from a guy. And TikTok has shown that the algorithm, not that TikTok doesn't have this controversy around the algorithm, but the algorithm is its special sauce. Like you don't have TikTok as popular as it is without its special algorithm that it's going to great lengths to protect people from being able to see what it does. All right. Well, let's see how Will did. What was your first prediction, Will? My first prediction was that a renewed and wider spread focus on privacy was going to drive interest and adoption of open source software. I think I could maybe make an argument that I was half right on this, that we would, because we cared more about who's making money on our free labor on sites like X, sorry, I'm just gonna say 10, or what happens to our Creative Cloud accounts when we decide we wanna stop paying for Creative Cloud, we've stored all this data there. They're suddenly using it to generate machine learning, to do machine learning training on stuff like that. I think people are actually more aware of privacy. I don't think I'm right, I don't think I hit this at all, because I mean, open source adoption has continued at the same rate that it always has forever and ever. It seems like outside of the usual spikes. But I do, I mean, very anecdotally, we get a lot more privacy-focused questions to the podcast, we get a lot more, I see a lot more mainstream news places talking about privacy these days than they were. Yeah, yeah, that part is true. Last year or the year before even. So a renewed and wider spread focus on privacy, you got that part right. And who's to say that interest and adoption of open source software wouldn't have declined otherwise? You know, what I will take, I will take that it wasn't gonna be the year of the Linux desktop, nail that one, 100%. What about 2024, do we put our money on that? Look, Andrea, I got some bad news for you. We're not quite there yet, but you know, we're making good progress, okay? I have been holding my breath for a long time. I'm using Chrome OS on a laptop. That's litics on the desktop. I like that argument. I use a Steam Deck every day. There you go, yeah. You know, all kidding aside, we have seen a rise in open source software with the proliferation of Activity Pub and Blue Skies at Protocol. We've seen Meta drive a lot more open source, large language model and generative model stuff that you might have expected. So, I don't know. Anybody else willing to give Will partial credit on this one? Because it's called to me? I didn't get partial credit. Okay, well, Audrey says that, so let's go with that. Yeah. Well, I was gonna say, I talked to a lot of game studios because of my day job, and I am seeing game developers set up their new projects with Blender as the endpoint for their animation pipeline rather than using Maya or something like that, just because it's way, young people are coming in trained in Blender instead of Maya and if you don't have to buy a Maya license for everyone, it's, Blender is free. You can, everybody can have a Blender license, not buying a Maya license for everyone. It saves you two grand a person per year, which is a substantial cost in the pipeline. So, there are inroads happening. It's just the normal spikes here and there rather than like a general overhead trend, I think. All right. What about your second prediction? Oh, my second one, I was way wrong. I made some, I went out on the limb here. I, my prediction was that there are new markets that can add compute to them in the same way the smartphones have added compute to cameras and made something that's way better than a phone camera has any right to be. And I think the category I picked was that someone would do that with home audio and take those little dinky $99 speakers that are in Alexa and Google homes and the home pods and all those things and build a little app that you run on your iPhone, you map the room from an audio perspective and you get some incredible high quality sound out of a 545 of these little $99 speakers. Nobody's done that yet and I'm sad. Yet, yet maybe you're just out of your time too. I think you're way out of your time. I also just moved and have been arguing with sound and I wish really on a very personal selfish level that you were correct because that would be very nice. And I would hope with the matter standard with that being an everything at some point somebody will be able to make an app to do exactly what Will is talking about because matter is supposed to make everything interoperate. Now, will the speakers work together to the point where they can act as a solid unit? You have to talk to Sonos about that because I know Google tried it and they kind of ran afoul as some patents. So I don't know whether the consortium behind matter has any way to access those patents but that would be, it seems like it's a matter of time because that seems doable. And it would actually sell more of these freaking speakers that people are like, I don't wanna talk to Alexa or whatever, like at least I could hear good audio. Yeah. Well, that brings us to the halfway point and Sarah, you have one prediction correct. Will, you have partial credit on one prediction. So that's where we stand partway through the review. Want to remind folks that we are not live until January 2nd again, but you can still send us emails if you've got thoughts or things you'd like to show up in the new show after the first of the year, we're getting close, send us emails feedback at dailytechnewshow.com. All right, let's carry on with our review of our predictions for 2023. We made these in 2022, for 2023. Now that 2023 is just about over, we're looking back to see how we did. I, as Aktar, what was your first prediction?   It didn't, I said probably the pro because Mac OS was getting like spacing on the menu bar, there's universal control to getting closer and closer. The same systems on a chip are running these Macs and iPads and iPad flows. So like it's getting closer, but we didn't even get a new iPad this year. So I couldn't be, I'm so wrong that there's not even a device for this to run on because yeah, we got a new iMac, which is like, okay, look, an iMac, if you could add touch to it, that thing's a freaking iPad. But I will not, I completely got this wrong because you can't do this, you can't do it in any official way. I know some hackers work on this, but it's not there.  I don't know if I even want Mac OS on an iPad, but I think- You're so bad you don't even want it anymore. Well, I just, I think it should at some point. It didn't happen, now maybe I don't want it. I'm taking it myself personally. I don't know if anybody else wants that, but like I just want options, but that's a zero for me. My transparent in accountability act salutes you. I mean, Apple didn't even put it, they did this despite you. They're like, we're not even putting out an iPad. I is, iPad, no way. The show's market mover, let's go. All right, what about your second prediction? Any better luck there? I might have, we'll get a Google foldable and my hand is a Google Pixel Fold. So I think I got that one because Google and Samsung were buddies I wrote last year and Samsung being the foldable expert, Google got back into the tablet space last year. Wow, that's weird to say now. The Google Pixel tablet, which I've reviewed and it's all right, but the Pixel Fold does exist. It's out there, it's ridiculously expensive. I know they were doing deals during Black Friday and things. I still think the Galaxy Fold is better, but this does exist, so that's a solid win for me, I think, unless somebody can read what I wrote and find a way out of it. No, I as, I think you got it right. I'm Pixel Fold. Pixel Fold, hello Pixel Fold, I'm Pixel Old. Yeah, yeah. No, you nailed this one. This is, this is the, no room for, no wiggle room. Like, how did you know by astronomers? Well, I will say that the amount of effort that Google put into Android 12 L and the buddy buddying up with Samsung to get usable software. This is how bad Google's gotten at software. They're like, okay, Samsung, can you fix Wear OS? Can you teach us how to do multitasking? Because the stuff I used to complain about years ago, like, oh, Samsung adds too much stuff to Android. To the point where they've added enough stuff where it's better than stock Android, things got better. So I thought, at some point, this foldable market, if Google doesn't at least kind of pull a Microsoft kind of thing of like, look, we're gonna make one. So you got, it was not really competition. There's the fold from Samsung, there's the OnePlus that's coming out. There's all these devices that are gonna, these book style devices. And if Google doesn't even bother to put their money with their mouth is, nobody's, I think the other companies will be like, well, you're not making one, we're not making one either. So I think for Google's future, they needed to make a fold. Hope the next one's better. Well, you nailed that one. You and Sarah are now neck and neck. Sarah, how do you feel? I feel fine. Haya's did some good projections. Yeah, yeah, you can't deny it. It's right there. Neck and neck. Well, good news, the only one left to look at are my predictions. And I will not be challenging either one of you. All right, let's hear it. My first prediction for 2023 was that Twitter would have new ownership by the end of the year. Not only is that not true, but it's not even called Twitter. I didn't even, I was wrong in calling it Twitter by the end of the year. I did think that Elon Musk would retain a stake and my best bet for a new owner was Salesforce. There was a lot of talk that Salesforce was interested in buying Twitter from Musk, that it was not reliable, scuttle that, or if it was, it didn't end up being true anyway. Or maybe it was just wishful thinking. I have no idea. The deal could happen. It's three days to go. Still time. Come on, Salesforce. The dream's still alive, Tom. Yeah, do we know anyone at Salesforce? Who can we call? I felt like because Musk had been very clear that he didn't really want to buy it after all, like he tried to back out, that he would do his best to kind of rearrange the deck, bring down the costs, right, which he had already started to do by this time last year, and then polish it up for a sale and get rid of it, which would have been a sensible thing to do. I still feel like, but not in fact. Look, I still think there's an outside chance that it's a Brewster's billion situation where he has a bet with another billionaire where he has to lose $100 billion as fast as possible in order to win a trillion dollars. Yeah. That's the most compelling explanation for everything that's gone on over there. Yeah, over the course of the year, that has been, that has risen to be one of the more credible explanations. My second prediction was that floppy disks would make a nostalgia comeback. Do you mean the save icon, Tom? Yes, for the younger people in the audience. I mean the save icon. No, I was thinking like, okay, we've had all these nostalgia comebacks around cassettes and LPs and older computer stuff that maybe floppy disks would start to have some nostalgia around them. I've seen some evidence of this. But it's not solid enough for me to claim that I got it right, but maybe I was just too- You didn't say a huge comeback. You said- No, no, I didn't. So like if you keep this vague enough and get a lawyer just talking, and it'll be like, yeah, it's close. The people who use them, I'm sure they were nostalgic about it. They were like, what's this new 1.44 megabyte thing? They probably knew what it was because they had to buy a drive for it too. Because what are you gonna do with it? I, Wired ran an article in March of this year called Why the Floppy Disk Just Won't Die, but I don't think that's the same as it making a nostalgic connection. That's so much. Yeah, good. Oh, I just was thinking that there had to be a Kickstarter or something that gave Floppy Disk as a reward for like a high tier kind of, hey, back art game, you'll get the game on Floppy. No, I couldn't find anything. I'm sorry, Tom. I feel like it's still cooking. Like it still might happen. But all the news stories about Floppy Discs are about like, can you believe Chuck E. Cheese still uses Floppy Discs and sort of that kind of thing. So I think I'm over on the predictions this year. Which puts me with Andrea. Hey, I just want you all to know that my prediction for next year is that the QWERTY keyboard will continue to dominate and social media is not going away. You can write those down. Write them down, folks. Yeah, that's it. I gotta go way safer. I'm gonna predict that the internet will maintain above 50% penetration. I don't know, that's probably not what I'm gonna predict. I'll predict something ridiculous. Tune in tomorrow to find out. But that's it, we did it, we reviewed. I love that we do this and I wanna thank you all for being willing to go back and look at these like this. I think it's helpful. I think it's good at kind of setting our perspectives a little bit. Indeed, and thank you to our panel starting with you, Andrea. Where can folks find your work? You can find me on all the social medias that I predict are not going anywhere. Now Instagram's gonna crash, because I said that. But you can find me at Jonesroy, J-O-N-E-S-R-O-O-Y on all the things and on YouTube. And I'm posting a whole bunch of data science tutorials in the new year, so you can check that out. Excellent. What about you, Will Smith? Well, you can find me on the tech pod with Brad, Brad Will made a tech pod every Sunday at techpod.content.town Where we talk about, well, usually it's a single topic. Sometimes it's what's happening in the news. Sometimes it's a project that we've been working on. But always something topical, always something interesting. And we hope you learn something new every week. Well, we're so happy to have you with us today. I, as actor, where can people find out your latest? Go to PCMag.com, where we actually, well, in our offices, we do have floppy disks, but nobody cares. I'm reviewing mobile phones and tablets there all the time. And so if you want to know what's good about the Galaxy Fold 5, I'll let you know. If you want to know what's good about the Pixel Fold, I'll let you know. Just check that out at PCMag.com and social media.  Because social media is going away now that Andrea Prenector wants to go away. Yeah, we're all just kind of like quietly read books. I'm going to make my own world. I'm going to send you all a letter next year and tell you what I'm talking about. Gary, Patrons for all. Yeah. Thank you, patrons, for supporting us and making it possible for us to do this show. I know I say it, but I don't think I can say it enough. There would be no show without you. You get value from the show, give a little value back, and that just makes the whole thing work. So thank you for supporting us at patreon.com. Slash DTNS. Don't forget, no live shows this holiday week while you're normally live Monday through Friday, 4 p.m. Eastern, 2100 UTC at dailytechnewshow.com slash live. We will be live again January 2nd, but don't worry. We're still going to bring you a show tomorrow, our tech predictions for 2024. This show is part of the Frog Pants Network. Get more at frogpants.com. Diamond Club hopes you have enjoyed this program.


I'm John Furrier with SiliconANGLE.com. Founder, I'm here with the founder of Apple Computer Co-Founder, Steve Wazer of the Waz. Thanks for allowing me to come backstage before SNW where you've given the keynote on innovation quickly. What's your theme for innovation through the talk today? Well, my theme is going to be a lot of the characteristics of innovation, some clever examples, some pointing out what sort of what you should look for in people to get innovation and how we stifle it. You're doing the gig with, as a chief scientist, FusionIO, the hot SSD company in multiple markets, killer technology. Apple's always been innovated with storage back in the early days, and FusionIO is changing the game on storage. What's the big thing about FusionIO and this whole movement that they're pioneering? Well, FusionIO is really the leader in finding the innovative approaches and not the logical, easy to see, the direct, you know, let's replace our hard disks with a solid-state disk. No, finding the solution that actually pays back in dollars, in revenue, in efficiency, in how much you get done for how much money. You were back in the day when you were hacking with Apple and building the big machine that we now know is Mac. You had to hack storage. Storage was a big deal. From floppy drives to hard disk, you had to innovate, not a lot of work with. What message do you say to the culture out there today? The young guns, working with cloud, working with storage, and with FusionIO and all these new tech? What's the hacker message for them out there? Probably the bigger message is to think the way a hacker does. Go down to the smallest little elements and try to get more out of devices, more out of pieces of code than people think you can. Is storage a bottleneck for the innovation going forward as an opportunity from your mind? Storage is a huge opportunity. Right now we're seeing so much innovation, so much change in that area. All of the huge storage network providers, the sand providers, everybody's retooling and going to the newer equipment. The hard disks are coming so far down in price. Then you've got the intermediates, the higher speed, higher access, solid state disks, and then you've got the storage solutions right in the PCI bus like FusionIO and other companies. Oh no, it's a hotbed of innovation. Very competitive too. Final question for you. What gets you excited these days? I mean, you've seen a lot in your day and looking forward, we're at this inflection point with cloud, mobile, social data at the center of the value proposition and storage, etc. What gets you excited about what you see in the future? Well, I get the most excited when I see something that you didn't expect in advance, so I can't predict it. That's the future you don't see is the most exciting. And I also get excited when I see products that have an incredible hop in performance and speed in appearance and beauty and how much they get done. Maybe it's just like a 4G phone instead of a 3G phone. We're here at the WAAS backstage at SNW. Thanks so much for the quick advice. You're going out on the stage. Thanks for your time and have a good trip to London. Thank you very much, John. Okay. That's a wrap. All right.


We don't know if the COVID-19 shock will be inflationary or deflationary, by Michael J. Hoffman, an audio-mesis wire narrated by Million Quinteros. I recently wrote about the economic implications of COVID-19 and what effects it will have on the economy. There is much debate on whether this supply shock will inevitably result in inflation or will induce a fallen aggregate demand and thus cause deflation. My opinion is that neither will occur in the conventional sense, but the focus here will not be on predicting the final outcome, only on illustrating the complexity of money and its effects on prices. This corona shock is reminiscent of what I have dubbed monetary coletics. The term is derived from a metaphor used by Austrian economist Ludwig Lachmann, in which he compared the ever-changing patterns of economic activity to the seemingly random and unpredictable patterns we see in a kaleidoscope. His view was that it was a mistake to assume that the economy is always tending towards equilibrium, and that countervailing forces are always at play. It is true that there are many variables at play in a complex economy, and one of the most elusive of these is money and its effect on the price structure. Below are some countervailing economic forces from the COVID-19 shock, contributing to price inflation, domestic and global supply chain reductions, causing a fallen production and output, the Federal Reserve's $6 trillion stimulus, inflation expectations, reductions in oil production, contributing to price deflation, unemployment and falling incomes, money velocity falling due to pessimism and uncertainty, global demand for the dollar and U.S. Treasuries, stimulus used to pay down debt. As we can see, there are numerous factors at play. It cannot be denied that a significant rise in unemployment, which is currently happening, as 16 million workers have lost their jobs in the last several weeks, reduces real demand and thus spending. In fact, this can lead the unemployed to increase their savings even further as they anticipate a prolonged period of being out of work. This creates a tendency toward deflation. In addition, COVID-19 is a threat to many major world economies, not just the U.S. Investors, corporations and even governments will likely find the U.S. dollar to be a safe haven for investment in such uncertain times. This will also lead to the demand for dollars to rise, causing a commensurate tendency for its purchasing power to rise as well. In fact, this is just what we are seeing at present. U.S. prices seem to be falling in the graph posted by Reuters below. On the other hand, there are serious inflationary pressures bubbling that have yet to surface. We have already seen disruptions to our supply chain, as the empty shelves at our local supermarkets like Walmart shows. This alone, however, has not been significant enough to increase the general level or trend of prices in the economy because of the counteracting forces mentioned above. Yet, this week, checks have begun posting to U.S. bank accounts and will continue to do so for months. This could quite possibly offset the fall in money velocity we've seen by unemployed consumers thus far. There are complications involved, of course. Part of the Federal Reserve stimulus package is not money printing per se, but repose or repurchase agreements. In essence, $1.5 trillion of the Fed's efforts haven't necessarily permanently increased the money supply, but have provided temporary liquidity through short-term loans, some of them overnight that will be paid back. This means that, although over $2 trillion of the total stimulus is inflationary, it is uncertain how much of the remainder will be as well. If the loans that the central bank has made to banks cannot be paid back, then it will perhaps be forced to monetize them, likely resulting in both price inflation and money supply inflation. The Federal Reserve's balance sheet now exceeds $6 trillion, and it is likely to climb higher as the potential for debt monetization rises, putting upward pressure on assets and consumer prices. In addition, the Federal Reserve has also promised to provide loans to small businesses through the Small Business Administration's Paycheck Protection Program, to provide liquidity to money market mutual funds, and to prop up the municipal bond market with liquidity. This has inflationary potential as well, though nothing is certain. One possibility is that, far from satisfying the demand for liquidity in such a crisis, an increase in the supply of credit or money might actually increase the demand for it. As Amasa Walker states, the supply does not satisfy the demand, it excites it. Like an unnatural stimulus taken into the human system, it creates an increasing desire for more, and the more it is gratified, the more insatiable are its cravings. Inflationary expectations are another consideration as well. Should consumers expect stores to raise the prices of the goods they need the most, such as food and toiletries, they'll increase current spending, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy, unless price controls are used, which economist Paul Krugman recently advocated for. Some have claimed that the desire to pay down debt will outweigh the desire to spend on either consumption or investment. This may be true, but we have to remember what happens to such expenditures. If creditors decide not to re-loan or hoard the money, and instead spend it, this excess supply of money created by the stimulus will create added demand for consumer goods or capital goods, despite the initial receivers of the funds using it to reduce their debt burdens. This will in turn create inflation. The key to everything is the subjectivism behind the demand for money, which was emphasized in Lachman's writings. The usual tools of analysis by economists won't work in such a colitis situation. The government lockdown of non-essential businesses has both a deflationary and inflationary effect on the monetary and financial system. We are seeing a significant rise in unemployment, which will continue so long as the shutdown lasts. In fact, it could continue into the indefinite future as regime uncertainty takes hold, creating a lack of interest in hiring and increasing output in the near future among businesses. Also, further monetary stimulus proposed by the Trump administration could result in a combination of significantly high inflation and high unemployment, also known as stagflation. Stagflation is the worst of both worlds, and will take hold if either the money supply or money velocity rises, as businesses are prevented from resuming commerce and workers are prevented from producing. The result will be an excess supply of money in the system alongside a reduction in the supply of goods and services. The most difficult part is extracting all of the variables at play and weighing them against each other. This would take an admirable effort, but would also be mistaken. We cannot know what will happen to people's subjective demands for money or their demand for specific products. Such a signal extraction issue is why money is as misunderstood as it is pervasive. The corona shock is a real-world example of monetary colitis, and the patterns we are seeing emerge from it are as unpredictable and turbulent as the weather often is. Time will tell how the economy will react, but much like a kaleidoscope, radical changes are likely.


We're going to take our first kind of walkthrough of the banning of flavored tobacco products. I've got a whole list of witnesses. This is crossover week, which means all the bills have to be out by Friday. This one came to us from another committee, so we have an extra week to do it. But we have a very full agenda. We've just added the insulin bill. There's a couple of somewhat controversial proposed agendas or amendments, so. Do we want to be passed out by the manager? Yeah, so it's back on for discussion with the amendments, and that's why we passed over it today. So that's been added to the end, and I do have to bail my car out by 5.30, or I can try to hear tomorrow. I'll give you a reminder. You're going to treat me again. I can walk. Okay, so what I'm saying is to all the witnesses, please keep your testimony to five minutes. This is finance. We're not going into health. We're just interested in money.  We are not a paperless committee audience, so you have the bill in your packet. And that says voted out, right, is draft 2.3. So that's, I believe, what came out of health involved. That is true. Jennifer, please let me get a council for the record. So this is a bill that would ban labor tobacco products and be liquids. Focusing just on the money pieces of it, what you need to know is first that it would eliminate the ban on and penalty for possession of all cigarette tobacco vaping products by people under 21 years of age. So there's currently a $25 penalty for possession that would go away. The other piece, the main price of the bill is that it would ban the retail sale, not possession, but retail sale of flavored cigarettes, e-cigarettes, and e-liquids. So only tobacco flavored products would be allowed. This includes a ban on menthol cigarettes. And the penalty is up to $100 for a first offense and up to $500 for a subsequent offense, which is the same as the sale, the penalty for a sale to, to act as products to a minor to be assessed on the owner or operator by the establishment. Now the federal government has already banned flavored. They are e-cigarette. They are doing, there are three categories, and it's been a while since we've talked about this here, but there are three different categories of, or types of flavored e-cigarette products. There are the pods that go with like a jewel device and things like that. Those are the ones that the feds have started regulating. They are also the ones that come as one whole, like a disposable e-cigarette. You use it, you throw away $69. And you think you're out of big lighters.  And then the third one is the open tank ones that people can refill with flavors of their choice. The pod cartridge ones are the ones that the federal government is beginning to take enforcement action on those manufacturers that did not get pre-market food hold. And so I think they're actually going to start the enforcement action in May. That's the last I had looked at that. Those are the ones along with the disposables that are most used by you. Now we've also raised the age to 21. 21, right. And that started September 1st. That's right. So it's illegal to buy them now if you're under 21. That's right. Paying possess. Well, yes, it is currently against the law to possess. This bill would eliminate the penalty for possession. And that, I know, law enforcement has some reservations. They try to build a good relationship with youth and then stop kids from smoking or something. So the penalty for possession has been a little controversial and they don't want to make criminals out of kids. So, okay. So as far as who is most likely to use what, I will defer to the various witnesses here. Okay. Any questions from Jen at this point? This bans all flavors. All flavors? Anything? Heights? Yes. Tobacco? Cigars? Chew? I'm sure little cigars. They're on here. Yes. And as far as the flavors, it goes pretty broad talking about any characterizing. So it has a term, E-liquid, which is whatever substance somebody's using with any cigarette. And the, so it applies to flavored E-liquids and flavored tobacco products and flavored tobacco substitutes. And the flavors, characterizing flavor is a taste or aroma other than that of tobacco, in part either prior to or during consumption of a tobacco product or tobacco substitute or component and part of a byproduct. Includes tastes and aromas relating to any fruit, chocolate, vanilla, honey. I added maple because we're Vermont. That wasn't actually, I think, on any other states list. But maple, candy, cocoa, dessert, alcoholic beverage, mint, menthol, wintergreen, herb or spice, or other food or drink, or to any conceptual flavor that imparts a taste or aroma that is distinguishable from tobacco for probably not relate to any particular known flavor. I'm not sure where Unicorn poop fits in here. I think that fits into the concept. But that is a big sell-up. It's gone. It would be, right. So nobody would be allowed to purchase it in permit. They could use it if they had purchased it somewhere else. Okay. Okay. I have a chair to ask. This was at your committee. Yes. This came out. Some of us, with a reluctant vote, some of us both did our best to do some amendments. We lost. Okay. But I believe in the end it came out with the unanimous vote just because the overall thing, at least for me, was worth doing even though I lost. Thank you. Jim, in the testimony, was there anybody that had, that you heard, had the ability to tell us what the impact of the move to 2011 in terms of youth access? Not that I recall, though. I mean, I've heard all the testimony. It's only been in effect for a few months. I got how much data they had. Testimony. Okay. Thank you. Jim. Oh, you're actually going to get to stay. I'm going to stay for a bit. This morning, Jen had three bills on the floor, and we had two or three bills in committee that we needed her for. So, a little. It was pretty busy. Okay. So, we're going to start with Patrick Cleanore. And... Hello. How are you? You're good. And the routine here is that everything is recorded, and there's no austerity. So, just we ask you to give your name and if you represent anybody other than yourself, a business. Sure. My name is Patrick Cleanore. I'm Chief Economist of Fiscal Economics Incorporated. It's a consulting firm out of Alexandria, Virginia. Altria has asked me to come here today and give you my thoughts about the effects of the flavor ban on revenue. Altria? Yes. Altria is? Tobacco. Tobacco coming. Tobacco coming. Okay. No, it's coffee alarms. Okay. Okay. Now we know what you're saying. Thank you. And you wanted to talk about the revenue effects. Well, that's my expertise. I've worked on tobacco revenue for about 20 years prior to my current position. I was Chief Economist of the Tax Foundation in D.C. So I've worked on sort of border issues quite a bit. And when I first looked at revenues, I mean, when I first looked at Vermont's cigarette tax revenues and I looked at their consumption because, you know, you're often trying to figure out border effects, right? And if consumption roughly matches purchases, tax-paid purchases, what do you think? Well, there's not much of a border effect going on. At first glance, that appeared to be the case in Vermont. However, when you decompose things, as I did, you find that, you know, Vermont gets about, Vermont's the beneficiary of border sales on two of its borders, those being New York and Massachusetts. And it loses quite a bit of sales on New Hampshire side and roughly those two balance. And so you ask, well, why is that important? It's important because if you enacted a flavor ban, you would lose sales. You would decrease your outflow of cigarettes to Massachusetts and New York. And you would increase the flow to New Hampshire. And I calculated under two scenarios. First, you know, there's substitution, right? Some people will simply stop using flavor product and switch normal cigarettes. And other people won't do that. So you have to figure out the degree of substitution that's going to occur. And I figured that in the case where you had no substitution, Vermont would lose about $20 million a year in just cigarette sales, cigarette excise, and sales tax revenue. In addition to that, there would be those other tobacco products you'd lose revenue on. And in addition to that, you also, you know, the value of a retail space is a function of how attractive it is to, as a retail space. And if you, you know, the rules change, that will diminish to some degree. And property taxes will be affected by that. In addition, income tax, you know, is a store sale. More people start shopping across the border of, say, retail staff are going to learn less revenue and you'll get less income tax revenue. So you have those tertiary effects as well. But I estimated under, if you hadn't, if you hadn't, if people refused to go to the non-flavored brands, you'd lose about $20 million a year. And then sort of the opposite of the case, we'd have about half switch over. It's about $10 million a year. So they're substantial, the amount of revenue you're likely to lose in just sales and excise tax revenue from a dam like this. And I modeled this. I used the assumptions that your fiscal office in the Department of Taxation has calculated. So I just used their estimates of the flows in this direction. So, you know, just a simple model. Those, they could replicate if they wanted to. Well, we had joint fiscal, let's have a fiscal note. I know we had, for the claimant dates, they were at $5.5 million. That wasn't everything else. Right, which is, I mean, cigarette, now you've seen the market with more cigarettes. And these others are relatively small shares. So you're likely to have a much larger effect when you do all products, not just, you know, vapes, it's a relatively very small portion of the market. And about 17% of cigarettes sold in the state currently are flavored. And then, for the other things like chewing tobacco and things like those, those are much higher. You know, those are 80 or 90% flavored. So you have to, you know, so it's kind of a complicated analysis. But I found significant revenue losses as a result of the, and again, it's just dynamic you have to think about of losing sales in New York and Massachusetts and then, because those shoppers don't want to come in and then increasing border activity going into New Hampshire. But you got, you're well familiar with this dynamic. Oh yeah. Yeah, I know. I work a lot on this issue, so. Okay. So does your analysis differ than what our joint fiscal? I just, I used the, like, yeah, some chart. I just started to come to this. Well, they put out, that's numbers. They put out a paper in 2017 where they estimated, they talk about, you know, they give the percentages. They say in their, you know, they give the negatives of the border flows.  Yeah. So they would, they did it, they would come up basically identically. We have a fiscal note. Okay. Great. I was just trying to get a sense. We're getting new information. Oh, I thought it was good. We originally got a 5.5 million for the flavored vapes. Okay. And then. Who's that matching? This is everything. Right. It's a much broader field than just the vapes, which is where we started out. The joint fiscal note that we have now is a 2020 note. I mean, he's indicated that he's made his calculations on the basis of something that JFO put out in 2017. It was a length of your background. Right. Yeah. And I just passed him a copy of the current JFO document. So I'd like to add one thing. My analysis assumes there's no increase in smuggling in this state. That's a big problem that you should take into consideration because that's really, like, you think, well, smuggling, that can't be that big of a deal, right? In New York state, they lose about 70% of their cigarette sales to illicit, to, you know, basically people trucking cigarettes up from Virginia and selling them with counterfeit stamps and things like that. So that's enough. My analysis did not take that into account. Currently, I guess it's estimated you lose around 5%. My guess is that will go up markedly if you can take a big flavor ban. Because you're asking people who have smoked cigarettes for maybe 50 years to either switch to a different brand that they've just led a non-interest in or come up with another source. OK. We're going to, we've got, we're moving right along here. But I think you're saying we could, and I believe the state of Virginia got fined or convicted for sending cigarettes to New York City. About three, they sell out three times more per, well, it'll be about six times more per capita than New York. So those flows are there. OK. Right, thank you. All right. OK. Ken Elliott. Welcome. It's not welcome back here. Thank you, Senator Cummings and members of the committee. I appreciate the opportunity to be here. My name's Ken Elliott. I represent the vapor technology association. And I think it's important for me to tell you who we are and who we're not. Senator Cummings has heard me say a couple of times. Vapor technology association represents retailers, manufacturers, wholesalers of a small to medium size feature predominantly in the United States. We're not big tobacco is not members of our association and jewels not a member of our association. So I'm here to suggest that banning flavors would not only not prevent youth usage, but also harm adults at cost of the state. As discussed, you've already had raising the purchase age of 21 and instituted a 92% sales tax, wholesale tax on these products, all designed with preventing youth usage in mind. The question was asked earlier, legislative council about do we know the impact of that? I don't think you do fully know the impact of what that's doing to youth usage. But what we do know is that from the division of liquor control that they have a 95% compliance rate, I think the gentleman testified in the health committee that that was the single largest jump in the shortest period of time that they'd ever seen in compliance for these kinds of products. I have their statement from February that I'm glad to share with the committee relating to that. So it suggests that there is some evidence that that's not only preventing young people from walking in a retail location and buying these products, but also helping stop the flow of older people from buying them and selling to kids. Second, and more to exactly what you're interested in is the economic impact of this. There are about 288 jobs associated with this category of products, vaping products specifically here in the state of Vermont. There's a total economic input, an output of about $34 million. And we estimate a total state and local tax revenue of $3.6 million. I'm glad to share with you the analysis, and we shared the numbers that we had come up with, although we thought the banning of flavors would do to the general fund in terms of $3 million. And Graham actually wrote back that that $3.6 million across all taxes sounds pretty close because the $3 million that Tom gave does not include the sales and use tax for localities or local options. And so I have that statement. I also have our, there's two pages here, our economic analysis of what we came up with and what it means in terms of jobs and the sort of things that I'm glad to share with you. And the reason why I say that I don't think that banning of flavors actually prevents youth usages is because there's actually for some Vermont-specific data that helps us understand what's going on behind this. And what we know is that 92% of kids use some sort of closed pod-based system. I think the reference earlier was that those pods have been banned. That ban actually went into effect on February the 6th of this year. So those flavored pods for pod-based systems that overwhelmingly are used by kids in the state of Vermont are no longer available in the United States. There's a separate process that was referenced called the PMTA pre-market-to-back application process, which the deadline for is May 12th of this year. In that process, if you have not submitted a PMTA application regardless of whether it's a closed system or an open system or disposable product, if you've not submitted a PMTA application as of May 12th, you're illegal for use in this market. So you have to have submitted an application to be legal on the shelves in the state of Vermont. So what I'm suggesting is that number one, the ban doesn't really affect the youth usage because those products have already been banned from the market. And the second thing that we know is that over 90% of youth access this product through social sources, meaning they get it through somebody who's already bought it and sold it to them. Your T-21 law is designed to cut off that flow because more likely a kid knows somebody that's 18 or 19 and they can use T-21 to buy a form. And we know that 90% of kids try these products for some reason other than flavors. And that's from the Vermont survey. 10% said they tried the product because of flavors. 90% said they tried it for some other reason, most of which is curiosity or peer pressure. So banning flavors doesn't shut off any of that, doesn't control any of that. So that's why we were in favor of some other measures designed to get it out and talk to them. I have a health committee. I'm glad to talk about some of those things. And finally, you have a medical marijuana law in place that allows for edible products. You can buy cookies with this product. And you figure it out a way to make those products available for adults while keeping the night out ahead into kids. I would submit that we can work together and find a more meaningful way that does that without banning flavors that are overwhelmingly used by adult-tentable systems. So thank you, Senator. I'm glad to take any questions. Thank you. Thank you. Sean Bartlett. This is one of the most spacious rooms in the building. So this isn't my professional thing that you've got to tell me. But my name is Sean Bartlett. I'm an operation manager for Jolli Community Stores. I've been in this industry 40 years, actually 45, because I was working at AP. I'm one of them. I'm one of them. Boy, that's what I am. I'm on the down-earth of his head. I call myself a blue-collar-white-collar worker. The company I work for, Jolli Associates, is also from our company. They're owned by two people. No stock, older, nothing. Here we are at this table. I've been at this table a few times in the past about smoking legislation and different things and prices, but I just feel somebody's got to be here. So that's why I'm here. I appreciate your time. I'm a very passionate person. I'm just crossing my voice. That's just me. No offense if I offended anybody here. No, that's fine. This is open form. I'm here to discuss the actions possibly related to flavored tobacco products. Not to also hear that smokeless tobacco, such as sold, drizzly, you know, TP, like cigars, other things. I guess we're here. And the reason I hope I'm right if we all agree just quick, because only in five minutes. Because we're trying to keep these items from kids. Is that kind of true here? Is that the consensus? So, because I was going to ask each of you to be able to move on. So with that being said, keeping against kids, I'm all for it. I'm not a smoker, but I'm just like, no, I'm a grandfather now, so I'm happy I have three kids. So with that being said, there is the House in the federal government already passed and are looking into some things of this nature. So just like I felt, the government did a very good job in the VAPES. You know, they looked at it. It was a child issue, they believed. It was getting abused or whatever. And they're fascinated by the technology which most kids are. The products we're talking about, you know, and I think the federal government, we raised age to 21. They did a way to look for the flavors. I think we addressed that with the youth and stuff. And the mandate of 21 is the other reason I'm here. I thought for years, guys, it should be 21. And I'm in the industry. I thought 18, 21, why not? Because it was a revenue source in general. But I'm glad we did do that personally. I'm in that business, but I believe in that. But that being said, 21 is 21. And that showed we're not targeting youth. We're not targeting kids in high schools or anything. If people aren't getting this product, they're getting it in so much way, immediately. And it could be black market downroader or some adult buying it for them. Noncompliance rates, which our company in general, I advise noncompliance rates for alcohol and tobacco. I'm very proud of that. The state works great with me. We have meetings every month at different locations. And it's been a great relationship working together like I believe the government should be. So that's been great. I'm sorry, I'm a little over here. But why are we targeting these products is my question. It's about children keeping away. I think we've addressed that. I think the federal government's addressed that. I think the 21's addressed that. I think we go around and do things to stay. And we're really trying to, retailers here really do care. We have POS systems that read our stuff. I mean, I think we go above and beyond. And it's been, none of us want to go up there to sell tickets. We're not selling tickets in general. Why would the state want to lose its tax revenue? I don't understand. These times that we want to have revenue to start new programs, help people out. Times are tough with what's going on right now in today's world. Why is this the time to look at this? Now, if it was all for health, there would be one thing. I think I can say from the point of view of the health department and the advocates, there was some pretty compelling evidence that smoking is not good for you. It has health problems. That's the motivation behind it. And this is a strong statement. A lot of people don't want to hear that. Then why don't we just make it illegal today? But we can't talk out of both sides. And the other thing is that in my past, when I've been here, they talk about people to have it. It's not fair. Gold is low income. They could go against race or greed or color, whatever you are. And it's not right to target people that have been doing this for years. There's a lot of education out there. As far as the kids would use it, and the cigars, and the OTP, and I just want to give you a few statistics. Jolly Loom, other company that I work for. Menthol Cigarettes. We attack menthol cigarettes. In the state of Vermont, just what we lose on excise tax and loan, we lose $429,361.24, based on my sales. Sales tax of $80,431.06. That's just the menthol, so that's a half a million dollars. Smallest tobacco, which is your grizzly, your choosing act, right? I alone will lose four. The state loan will use fours, $173,600.84. And the sales tax on that, $76,551.19. On OTP, cigars, and all this, you will lose $190,906.32, with a sales tax of $1,166,000. I'm sorry about that. $16,655. The e-sig, since we changed the tax just in the last six months, lost $470,882.38 in the sales tax of $39,882.75. And like I said, the e-sig thing, it's been dealt with. It's there, the feds are on, I think. I want to tell you a little more statistics. In our business, my business is 15% methyl out there, okay? So that's 15% methyl. In my business, smokeless, 81% of all the seals we've had are smokeless tobacco. And these statistics are just based on the flavors, guys. These have nothing to do with the other products I sell. That's how much I lose just by doing this flavor here. And if you'd like, I have copies for you folks. So both of your sales is on things like flavored chew? 55% of my tobacco sales are flavored. 81% of my skull sales are that. 15% of my menthol are that. Okay. Right? So total tax generated our company alone was $1,778,232.53 that we lose. And we've already lost a lot just from last year. And I understand the vague part of it, but do not target these products that have been out there. And the other thing I'd like to bring up, and I can pass those out for anybody who wants to. Sorry, guys. I'm trying to hurry with my time. Here's all my data back up. Oh, I can't. I can't. Here's the other thing. I think we're going down a slippery slope. And what I'm saying by that is, you know, I lost my notes, but I don't need them anymore. So I think we're going down a slippery slope. I really do. Why are we targeting a specific category that's legal for 21 years of age and older? That's adults folks. That's adults. That's why I made that broad statement. All right, if we're doing that, beer, which I love the cracker, which I love, I'm going to let you do it. But I'm doing it for a reason. Right here, we have maple nipple. We have cocoa. We have passion fruit. We have cream malt. We have graham cracker. I assume you still sell Boone's Farm? Ah, brilliant. That's what I was saying. That was a big concern. So listen, traffic, traffic is traffic. That's our industry. We're the number one and number two in traffic beer thing. Do we want it? But if we're saying this is because of youth, how can we say it at the same time in the mouth of this? On top of it's cannabis. What's going on with cannabis in the future? Right? Is it going to be apples? Is it going to be gummy? How is that enough? So you know why? Because it's a 21 and it's responsible and it's an adult. Here's some other pictures. Thank you. We've got maple whiskey. Hmm, maple industry. Peach. Peach, you know. I just got different vacas. Yeah. And thank you. So I just brought those. It does just make the point. I think everybody's trying to be responsible. I understand the kid thing. I don't want kids doing this. But if we go down here and target different categories that are legal, I think it's a wrong thing. I think it's a slippery slope where you can pick and choose between different categories. I just think it's a wrong thing. I just want to make one other statement. Based on these sales, if this continues and stuff, we already put off over two million dollars in projects because I told the younger I can't afford it. My job is to keep people employed. My company, Health Insurance, they don't pay nine and a half percent of their health insurance. I have 401k plans, 50 cents on a dollar. I'm going to have to, in Vermont, we have 38, overall, 45 stores over my 38. I seriously believe I'm going to have to use it. This is on the fence. One full-time employee per store. And that's real. I also already have put off two renovations and that's the truth. I'm trying to go in there, I think, ahead. I guess that's it. I've got to be strict. But I appreciate your time, but, I mean, this is not the time. And like I said, the federal is already working on this stuff. You know, there's nothing to cover before that works. I appreciate kids. I appreciate safety. I appreciate you guys putting in time to be here this year. But we are not following 21 years. The people can't make the decisions, and folks, you know, we need the other help. But thank you for your time. Appreciate it. Thank you. Those are good photographs. You might have another career. Yeah. Okay. Casey Harrington. Oh, no. Thank you. Welcome. Thank you. Thank you. I'm Casey Harrington. I'm the owner of the Beverage Fair in the Bury right here in Central Vermont. We employ about 20 full-time employees. And I agree with basically just about everything that Don said and the other people here. We're independent. We don't have the stars that Jolly does. But being here in Central Vermont, the one thing that I'd like to talk... No, we're just getting our next witnesses on the phone. The one thing that I'd really like to bring to the attention of people is New Hampshire sales. Central Vermont, you don't think it's a border town, but Woodsville, New Hampshire is 30 miles away. And if you go through that Super Bowl matter on a Saturday, three-quarters of the vehicles there are Vermont plates. They're getting their booze there. They're getting their cigarettes. They're doing a lot of shopping there. And this is one more reason for them to go.  There's no deposit. So, I mean, it's just one more thing to drive people into New Hampshire. Per capita, they have the most smokers. They sell the most cigarettes per capita out of any state. And it's not because everybody in New Hampshire is smoking. It's because there's an influx. Probably do with that with alcohol, too. Excuse me? I said they probably do that with alcohol. Yeah, that statistic falls true with alcohol, too. So this is just one more reason for them to go. And I truly believe it's not going to hurt people from smoking. I'm open for any questions. Any questions from the committee? All right, thank you. Thank you very much. Okay, our next witness is on the phone. And I don't know if Graham will get here in time. Hi, Frank. We have his written estimates. Hi, Frank. Yes, hi, Mark. Frank, this is Senator Incomings. You are with the Senate Finance Committee and a room full of interested folks. And we just ask you to introduce yourself, who you represent, and the floor is yours. And we're asking you to kind of hold your testimony to around five minutes. Great. Well, thank you for the opportunity to talk with you by phone today. So I'm Frank Shulka. I'm a distinguished professor of public health and economics at the University of Illinois in Chicago. Much of that time doing research and economics of tobacco and tobacco control. So looking at the impact of taxes and prices and tobacco control policies on adult tobaccos. But then also looking at some of the broader economic impacts as a result of those types of policies. So what I want to talk a little bit about is today is some of the work of my colleagues. And I am looking at the impact of which I know you are considering there for months. What the potential impact would be on tax revenues and what some of the other economic effects might be. So I'm part of a project that's called the International Situation Study. This is a project where we do surveys with smokers in countries around the world. Including the U.S. and Canada and 27 other countries at this point. Looking at how tobacco control policies are implemented and what impact they have on tobacco use and what some of the other effects are. The policies in terms of flavor bands are well researched in this area. It's just starting to undermine things from the experience which will actually be presented this week at a conference called the Annual Beings of the Society for Research on Negative Teens in Tobacco. So in Canada they started out with provincial level policies a few years ago and then in 2017 adopted a national policy. And as part of this ITC project we surveyed smokers before and after the policy went into effect and then we can start to look at what impact it had on smoking behaviors to see how people quit to respond to the policy or how their consumption patterns changed for example. So what we found in Canada when they implemented this policy was that it did have a real public health impact in terms of smokers to quit. It created a risk that they would have otherwise. So smokers of menthol cigarettes for example ended up twice as likely to successfully quit smoking for at least six months compared to its gotten from menthol smokers before and after this policy was implemented. The other thing that we're able to see is how this impacted those who continue to smoke from what we see there is that many of the menthol smokers ended up switching to non-menthol cigarettes in certain years. It would be a key thing in trying to understand what the potential impact is on tax revenues. So it provided a written testimony that walks through some of the findings that we have from the survey data talking about smoking behavior and then using these results to try to estimate what the likely impact would be on tax revenues in Vermont. So what we found was that about 55% of the menthol smokers ended up switching from menthol cigarettes to non-menthol cigarettes in response to the flavor ban. What we found was that some of the others switched over products which were bathing products for example that were non-menthol some switched to a combination of bathing products and non-menthol cigarettes. What I did was to use that estimate combined with an estimate of the impact on quitting smoking to see what the potential effects on revenues were. So what I had to do for Vermont based on some data that I have that looks at how many smokers are menthol smokers how many smokers are non-menthol smokers that come from the faculty supplements in the current population survey I used some of the same data that the state's been using to look at the proportion of cigarette sales for example in our menthol cigarettes to come up with the rough estimate of how much cigarette response to this proposed flavor ban. What I estimated there would be about a 3.4% reduction in cigarette sales so given 4.6 million dollars in tax revenues so I went on and tried to look at what the impact would be on tax revenues from other tobacco product sales and the illiquid taxes and make it a bit more difficult around the detailed data available on those but again using some of the state's estimates about the share it could be between 20% and 40% of cigarette sales and then making the same assumptions about distribution from flavor products to non-flavored products I estimated there to be about somewhere between a 1.1 to 2.2 million dollar reduction in tax revenues for the taxes on other tobacco products and the illiquid taxes so putting those two together I can see about a 5.7 to 6.8 million dollar reduction in revenues and I think this is going to be anything an overestimate because it doesn't account for some of the other substitution that I talked about to other tax tobacco products but smokers or users of flavor tobacco products it also doesn't account for some of the relapses you might see among smokers that quit tobacco products which end up being that they'll send that money and other goods and services that also generate tax revenue so you'll see some offsets with increases in tax revenue and elsewhere I know they don't have much time but the other key point that I want to make is that there are likely to be some smokers, some flavored that do try to avoid the policy but it's not going to be an off-off that's the public health impact to lead to larger revenue losses and you can see that just looking at some of your experiences in the past with tobacco tax increases were the same arguments were being made and I think the other key point is in terms of its broader economic impact I think the key thing here is that again if people aren't buying tobacco products that were flavored with some policy that money doesn't just disappear from the economy it's going to generate other goods and services and that's going to create jobs with lots of potential losses tobacco sector and moreover when we look at these experiences particularly around convenience store business and the research that we've done in the past we see that tobacco control policies are almost certain to occur in response to this policy so again some more details in the written testimony if people have questions I'm happy to answer any comments I know we heard in health and welfare that Canada had banned menthol cigarettes and no one knew the results so it's helpful to know that someone does know the results but did Canada ban all flavors tobacco products? yes, but they haven't gone as far as what you're proposing here in terms of banning flavored e-lips for example and that is part of what we saw in the Canadian experience where there was some substitution actually very little I think about two and a half percent of smokers that did switch to then flavored vaping products as a result of the policy but we also saw some that switched to non menthol or non flavored vaping products as well okay committee, any questions? that's very helpful, thank you it's helpful, thank you very much thank you very much okay, thank you okay Graham he was kind of in the same ballpark yes they do not need more the public space did you just not spit I don't know but I've got cameras coming in so we're going to stick with cigarettes okay I'm going to ask you not to come in yet because I've got a full house do I don't want to catch anything that's in this room that's right okay so Graham how much money are you going to lose from the joint fiscal office I'm here to present a distal note and also some supplemental information I think the committee has on my revenue estimates for S288 which would be an act of banning flavored tobacco products to be liquid and so I'll just get rid of the punch here we estimate that this would result in a direct revenue loss of 5.45 million dollars I'll just move to year 21 about 4.76 of this would be to the general fund from reduced cigarette and tobacco tax revenues and an additional 690,000 to the education fund from reduced sales and used tax revenues and this is estimated to decline slightly over time as public health initiative slowly a little away at cigarette tax revenues and that's what Tom Tibet has laid out in his forecast so I can get more detail on the estimate or I can go into how that's broken out by type of tobacco if that's all the pool committee I don't know if you have a quick question so is that everything that these members have to do with the tobacco the chew everything the other tobacco products the chews, divs, stuff like that and then flavored cigarettes which means mental cigarettes or e-cigarettes does this include what we get is that there's some kind of federal match or something like that because at one point I heard larger numbers that was in something I believe Senator Kitchell was concerned because we did away with the tobacco fund when we were it used to be dedicated to Medicaid it isn't now because as part of that having to prove to Wall Street that all our money was available it all goes to the general fund but Senator Kitchell says this is what they use for federal match these dollars this estimate does not include any federal match because the abolition of the state health resources fund last year means that any cigarette revenues essentially go into the general pool of dollars for the general fund I don't know to what extent those dollars actually line up with Medicaid dollars so we do not include that match and so I want to emphasize on this estimate that a lot of it depends on the actual quit rate so to what extent quit using these products upon banning them and I just want to highlight that there is some literature academic literature and survey data on this but even a small amount of difference in the quit rate could lead to a significant change in the revenue loss so for instance for the flavored cigarettes for menthol cigarettes I think I have a quit rate of just over 35% if you change that by 10% then you're talking an additional one and a half million dollars of revenue loss so it really swings the revenue these are our best estimates myself and Tonka vet after looking at these so I just would highlight that as part of this estimate and then switching over to this sheet you can see how this is broken down so the vast majority of this revenue loss comes from the sales of menthol cigarettes that would be banned so up to 4.7 6 million dollars that would be lost to the general fund 5.6 comes from menthol cigarettes and we haven't had enough time because we banned May 21 for e-cigarettes we haven't had a year's worth we haven't had a year's worth okay we can't do that from the floor but we don't know what that loss would have been we'll lose it but New Hampshire is close and there is so it's but it's in that 4 to 5 million dollar category I can't quite remember what the revenue loss for tobacco 21 was I can say that in this estimate in that the relative because there's obviously some we had to assume compliance rates under the tobacco 21 we carried those over to this estimate so even though we don't have full information I don't know to be honest whether we would ever have information on Vermont specific tobacco 21 users we also banned online purchases but we will probably never know how successful that was we carried the same compliance rate over for under 21 across all tobacco basic products for the electronic cigarettes you passed last year in the 92% wholesale tax on that we know that we are collecting roughly $3 million a year from that tax and that is built in this estimate and that was on an estimate last year of $850,000 so we are collecting significant more revenue from that tax that I did because this is good and bad no we are going to lose it we will lose it for sure but yeah okay and there's a loophole in the federal law I believe that this closes which is they have banned flavored vapes other than that ball from the production but there are disposable one time use things they haven't banned and I think those would still be available this estimate builds in the fact that that happened in January but that directed from the federal government came down I didn't change the recommendations that much okay so this bill does or doesn't include banning the one timers it does, it bans everything everything that is not tobacco flavor and the argument in health and welfare is this is a public health issue the counter argument is traditionally we have worked at stopping youth from starting smoking because it's like drinking earlier you start the more likely you are to be addicted and have a harder time and I think are we down to 3% or 7% 7% youth smoking so we've been very successful there the five million is also about the budget for the health department's prevention programs I think one of the things we've been seeing from the comments in the bill the cancer society and the art association I don't have any of those documents by file I don't see any fast out we've done in the mailbox that's because I said we were not taking health tests but in terms of usage and the whole issue of youth what we're talking about in the documents was that there had been a swing statistically in the use of menthol products for example among youth and that's what they were changing and that has obviously got to be relevant to the issue of taxation if there's a switch from one product to another that has to have a tax impact on the way the other I don't know the extent to which you were able to use any of the materials that the proponents have been circulating for quite some time in your analysis and I really have no question yeah I think what you're talking about is roughly like the quit rate we ban menthol cigarettes they move someplace else and so we spoke to the advocates and we also read several studies on this we came up for the cigarette of a quit rate of roughly just over a third so what that means is that those people with a third of the current menthol user we just quit flat out so that's your loss of memory the other 70 or 75% would go to other cigarettes or another tobacco product possibly so we've got cannabis out there and I understand we also have hemp cigarettes which I'm trying to get the bill so I tax right so there are substitutes available and so that's the most difficult part of the assessment is trying to make that specific factor so the research that I had seen was roughly about a third of the menthol cigarettes and a little bit less than the other types but some of the research also depended upon the jurisdiction so I read a paper in New York New York City banned flavored cigarettes that the revenue just dropped off so most people just quit straight up so like I said a 10% change in the quit rate can lead to a swing of a couple million dollars so this is our best guess at this point that's all we can do how do you account for people that just go out of the city by their nearest cities don't ever try to buy booze or beer in the store if you're out buying a drink and that is well understood I would guess the study itself was a survey of menthol cigarette users in the city and they reported the quits so it wasn't as a revenue I don't believe it was this one but again those are surveys that's where the Virginia cigarettes were getting sure but I think generally the estimate of around a third is I wouldn't say it's just me picking a number there are more than one study that showed a third and that was information also that was being related to me going from the advocates who have looked at this issue quite a bit I wouldn't say it's completely out of the ordinary the other thing to remember here is that Vermont for menthol cigarettes it's not prevalent because the users of menthol cigarettes tend to be younger and they tend to be more ethnically diverse so Vermont is a relatively Caucasian state that's older so our rates of menthol cigarette usage okay thank you is there any breakdown of these numbers for proposals other than other than the ban so if you hypothetically said we didn't want ban flavored e-cigarettes what you would do is take this sheet and just subtract the e-cigarettes line from the totals so that's why I produced these numbers you can see this broken out by various categories so if you wanted to go in much more detail it would be a completely different estimate but this is how we built our estimates looking at these three three legs of the school of tobacco taxes that we received and so if you decided not to ban one of or leave flavors in for one of these that would be that would reduce the left revenue loss and this all started we've been taxing tobacco as high as we dare for years I would point this committee to put a tax on babes that got beat up a year before it got passed um we've been working in taxing tobacco to discourage youth smoking quite successful at that and then babes hit the market and they were cool and they were new and they tasted like you know cherry or whatever and there was this huge uptick and when we started with this bill it was banning babes flavored babes um that I believe included menthol and it was um closing the federal loophole with because the feds are banning flavors but this did the bit quick thing the one time disposable and in the committee it got expanded to everyone and everything based on its good public health policy to me and some of the others that got out voted it's also a matter of personal freedom or choice and we know the revenues but I think that's what we've got to think about we've got another week before this has to come out and if you want we can get the health testimony in here um I've tried to keep this as focused on the revenue impact really our jurisdiction so that's it we are 15 minutes over


Hello and welcome to the session. It is going to be a falling problem today. Explain why 7 into 11 to 13 plus 13 and 7 to 6 into 5 into 4 into 3 into 2 into 1 plus 5 are composite numbers. Let us write the key idea first. Composite numbers are those numbers, the solution. We have 7 into 11 into 13 plus 13 which can be written as 77 into 13 plus 13 which is equal to 77 plus 1 into 13 which is equal to 78 into 13. Therefore the given numbers has therefore 7 into 11 into 13 plus 13, 78 and 13. Also 78 is equal to 13 into 6, 78 into 13 is equal to 13 into 6 into 13, 13 into 1 into 13 is equal to 13 into 2 into 3 into 13 into 1 into 13 plus 13 is a composite number. Let us see the second number into 6 into 5 into 4 into 3 into 2 into 1 plus 5 which can be written as 42 into 5 into 24 plus 5 which can again be written as 1008 into 5 plus 5 which is equal to 1009 into 5 into 6 into 5 into 4 into 3 into 2 into 1 plus 5 into 6 into 5 into 4 into 3 into 2 into 1 plus 5 is a composite number. We understood this problem. Bye and have a nice day.


Now, the need for those citizens to key into the agricultural program of the President, Bola Amitabha's administration, has been re-emphasized. The immediate past permanent secretary of the Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security, Dr. Ernest Afolabi Omaehe, made the charge in his hometown in Nafuza, Oman, his local government area of Adel State. The former permanent secretary revealed that he was home to announce his intentions to contest the 2024 governorship election in the state under the platform of the all-progressive Congress. It may quick to maximize the resources of those states for optimal growth. Because of these facts and your commendation that I have done well and displayed so much confidence in my former assignments as a federal civil servant, I have accepted the call of me to come and serve you in the capacity of a governor. It is a new day, new hope, new possibilities. It is time for me to answer the call to serve. With my own unique faith, even in the face of impossible odds, I am convinced that with our body faith and love for the state, I can foster the change we want to see and profoundly capable of bringing that change. As you are gathered here together, let's agree that we will reduce poverty in our state. My purpose for us to be voted as governor is to show that every single person will need to work to be able to get a job, or get the training that leads to a job, and earn a living wage that can pay the bills and provide quality life. Let's do this. See everywhere, you can see Alapodha, who had done very well, to serve Nigeria, to serve part of this country, this serve not rest, just now, all of us, who are going to do this good mission. Let me say, I believe that we need this government. Let's see what we do. Alapodha shall be able to do it. He has made for Nigeria. I want you to come and vote for us. We don't see red now. We don't see water. We don't see running very well. We don't see doctors. We don't see them. We don't see the tumor. My name is Mahadalibu. My name is Mahadalibu. I don't suppose that Mekawa is Lugre or Sun, because we from Mekawa is, we know what we don't suffer to get this type of thing. What do they see today? What do they try to happen now? When other local government, they try to join hands with us in a donut, they don't see what they pray, what they cry to see and for what it is. I believe so. We go, Alapodha, go back, Dr. Ernest, we go back and say, see the problem where we get anybody for this local government, but not with the vote pass, not with the win pass. Fresh news updates.