Rhaid o bobl y gallai cyfnodol, gyda'r cyfnodol yn cyfnodol ar gyfer y dyfodol hwn yn ei gweithio, o'r cyfnodol eich cyfnodol, o'r cyfnodol ar gyfer y cyfnodol. Mae yna'r gweithio gyda'r cyfrannu ysgrifau Cyfnodol Cymru. Yn ymwybodol yma ar gyfer y cyfnodol, mae'n teimlo'n gwneud hynny ar gyfer y cyfnodol. A rydym yn gwneud hefyd yn ymwybodol. forward, and we'll Sydney Penillor. We'll move to a vote on any item I ask members to agree with the proposal? But only Cabinet members who are present in the chamber are able to move or second motions or to vote, and members present virtually will be allowed to speak of the debate. I will ask Cabinet members to speak before non-Cabinet members and I'll start with those in the room before going to oedd neid o cefnico pa amserulol wedi barn mwych chi? Wel rai, yr oedd dd закончio hefyd, nad oedd nhw ar gyfer gweithio, ar gyfer i'i dra Un reducing. Rwy'n goin'ch τri同 sydd wedi siŵr Bart我也. lodgwch Gilion ar hios coffin Freedom Kinganken, drwch ar weithio o fod, coffin agendacyfl neu gwbl yn rhan. Gan yw pitlwch beth, ondat rydyn ni i'w s Ripham olywயl. ..og mi'n shreddeda'n cerddill-juad. Mewn gweld ddigon i'n meddwl, gallai i'n meddwl yn cerddill. Rhyw wiell y bydd yn ymgyrch ymwrdd. Oes o'r rai, oeddwn fagor ei ma兴ig? Yr rai, mae'n gweithio yma. Mae'r daug i'ch rai fagorol i'ch rai... ...o'r bobl yn Gottengol, yma. Mae Rhaiddeddi Milgrithioigueig. Rhaid dae bawb.wn i'n meddwl hynny dyfnodol sy'n gweld... ..wg rhollwch i'ch rhollwch. I should have introduced Dr Douglas Delacy, who is attending in person in order to ask a question. You're very welcome, Douglas, and it's very nice to see you again. So, do we have any declarations of interest relating to any business on this agenda? Yes. Thank you, Councillor Batchelor. Yes, thank you, chair. I haven't unregistered the interest in item nine, recommendation five, and when we come to that particular recommendation, I will leave the meeting. Thank you very much, Councillor Batchelor, that is noted. So, I have a, what's termed, and other registerable interest in relation to item seven, and this policy affects my interest because I own a property in South Cambridgeshire which is rented out, and so I shall leave the room at that point as well, and Councillor Peter MacDonald will take over the chair from me. Any other interests? Councillor John Williams. Thank you, leader. I also have the same interest, and therefore I shall also be leaving the room for this item. Thank you very much, and I believe that does leave us quarat, so the business can continue. Thank you. Right, so moving on to the minutes of the previous meeting, which are at pages one to page six, I shall propose these, and Councillor Bill Handley will second them. Are there any comments resulting from the minutes? Thank you. So, do members agree to approve the minutes? Thank you. Anyone wish to vote against? Anyone wish to abstain? So, Cabinet therefore agrees to approve all of the minutes as a correct record by affirmation. Now, we've got, we're on to public questions. Now we've received two public requests to speak. We've got Sylvia Sullivan, Clarke of Little Grandslam Parish Council. Are you online, Sylvia? I am indeed, Madam Chair. Hello, very nice to hear you. Do you want to ask your question at this point, or do you want to wait until we get to the item on the agenda? I will do whichever Cabinet finds most convenient for them. Okay. Well, it's just at item nine, so it's quite early on. Shall we take it at that point on the agenda? Is that all right with you? That's absolutely fine with me. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you very much, Charlie Good. And Dr Delacy, again, you are asking a question. Do you want to do that now, or would you like to do it at the point on the agenda? Thank you very much. Over to you. Thank you very much. Indeed, my question is as on the supplementary sheet. Thank you very much, and Councillor Handley is going to respond to you. Sorry, yeah, through you. Dr Delacy, thank you for the question and for the positive comments that are in your question. Officers are ready to award a contract for additional warm packs that we're going to be discussing later in this meeting and hopefully improving. I can confirm that the specification for thermosflask will ensure high quality and that they will keep liquids warm for 12 hours. I've asked officers to consider what tips and advice we can give with the warm packs, but until we confirm a supplier and how they will be distributed, I can't give details at this time. I hope you can take on trust that we will give users the very best information possible so that they can get the best from them. Thank you again for the question. Do you have a follow-up, Dr Delacy? Thank you, leader, if I may. Being greedy, could I ask for more? I'm actually writing a series of articles for our local parish news on how to avoid wasting energy and the first one of those will be how to do it for free. There are so many things people could do like using a thermos, like using a rolled up towel as a draft excluder, that most people just don't think about even when they are in, whatever the word is, poverty and needing to count pennies very carefully. So I wonder if you would think about doing that perhaps with the next South Cams magazine and distributing it to all your council tenants. Thank you. Thank you, Dr Delacy, through you, chair. That sounds like a very good idea to me and I will certainly take it, raise it with Gareth Bell, who's, I don't know if Gareth wishes to speak, but certainly that's something we will certainly take seriously and consider. Thank you very much indeed. Gareth, do you want to, because I'm sure you'll welcome all these suggestions and we'll be, you know, biting Dr Delacy's hands off to see his articles. Do you want to comment on this? Just very briefly, chair. Dr Delacy, will be pleased to know that there's a number of pages in the next residence magazine related to cost of living and related issues. It may not cover exactly the article that Dr Delacy would cover, but it's certainly work that is ongoing. We'll definitely take that on board and obviously we've got opportunities to follow up with the timing of the magazine for this winter. We might just be a few days too late to make changes to that because we're literally on print, but we're absolutely and we'd be very interested if Dr Delacy could share his work with us as well because we want to provide us best information we can. Thank you very much indeed. Yes, and I'd be really grateful if you would share personally with myself and councillor Handley, we'd be very interested. You know, we do have a website and there's lots of information on there, so our magazine isn't the only way we have of communicating with our residents and we don't have all the answers, so we're very grateful when residents share their best practice with us as well, so thank you very much. Thank you leader. Right, moving on now to item six, which are issues arising from the scrutiny and overview committee and I don't believe we have anybody speaking on behalf of the scrutiny and review committee, but they reviewed the fees and charging and there's some comments on page seven there, so members are asked to note the report. Thank you, so moving on to item seven, which is the minimum energy efficiency standards policy and this is the point at which myself and councillor Williams will leave the room and councillor McDonald will take over. Good morning everybody who's continued to join us, my name's councillor McDonald, lead member for business and economic recovery, so I'm going to chair this item item seven, the minimum energy efficient standards policy and that's as I don't own any rented property and therefore doesn't impact me in the district, so I think councillor Milnes is going to introduce the report and move the recommendations over to you councillor Milnes. Yes, thank you, I'm not able to move the that's fine councillor Milnes, so we'll take the cabinet's ask to, I think I can move Rory, is that okay? I'd like to recommend that we approve the minimum energy standards policy as laid out in the paper and very much following in the context of government guidelines and energy efficiency and trying to safeguard tenants, so I hereby move that, is that seconded please? Thank you councillor John Batchelor, seconded, are there any cabinet members who want to speak on the item? Sorry, I'm quite happy to introduce it although you've already done so councillor McDonald, so that's fine, just like to commend the work of Rory Cosgro the officer who's here in attendance today for this and clearly it's a very timely intervention so that we comply with government legislation and making sure properties in the private sector are ensured that they are kept to a minimum energy efficiency standard is clearly well worth recommending to the cabinet that we approve this as our policy, thank you. Thanks a lot councillor Milnes, are there any non-cabinet members who wish to ask questions on this item? Okay, in the absence of any questions, then the recommendation is set out in paragraph four of the report, I'm sorry, could I just have a word as a seconder? Sorry, go ahead. Yes, thank you very much. I just want to make it clear that we as an authority are also fully meeting these standards for the benefits of those listening, the council does have a private company called Irmin Street who rents properties on the open market and all their properties meet these standards, I just want to make that completely clear. I'd also say just for information that our own council properties, although they don't come under this legislation, would also meet all these requirements, thank you. Thank you very much and sorry for curtailing your opportunity to speak councillor bachelor. Okay, so the recommendation as I said is set out in paragraph four of our report which is to approve the minimum energy standards policy, do members agree with the proposal? Does anybody wish to vote against the proposal and does anybody wish to abstain? Accordingly then cabinet therefore agrees the proposals by affirmation, thank you very much, I think we can invite councillor Smith by. Thank you, that was speedy. Right, thank you very much indeed. So on to item eight which is mobile homes, fit and proper persons policy and fees and charges. So I am going to propose this and I believe councillor John Bachelor is going to second it. Do we need someone to speak on this or is it all quite, but do we want any narrative on this or is everyone? Sorry, I beg your pardon Brian, councillor Milne, sorry you were going to speak on this. Council Milne's, would you like to come in on this? My apologies. Well I'd just like to as in the previous item commend the work of Rory Cosgrove who's here in the meeting, if we need to have any questions answered on this, the mobile homes policy ensures that we, any people who are managing or owning the properties are covered by this policy. So I commend it to cabinets, thank you. Thank you very much. Are there any questions? Thank you. Do members agree with the proposal please? Anybody wish to vote against? Anyone wish to abstain? Cabinet therefore agrees the proposals by affirmation and moving on to item nine which is future use of plots of HRA land. Now I'm going to ask Mrs Sylvia Sullivan to come and speak in relation to item little seven and we are going to, once we have talked about that, we will leave item five until the very end and councillor John Bachelor will, sorry councillor John Bachelor will leave the room when we discuss that one, but we will take all the other items on block. So Mrs Sullivan, would you like to talk on behalf of Little Grandston Tarish Council? Thank you very much Madam Chair and thank you to cabinet for agreeing to listen to Little Grandston's submission. The chair Nusine Rustami regrets that she's unable to attend because of her work commitments within the National Health Service. Sorry Little Grandston has no public open space. Take your time, it's fine. I'm sorry I'm having difficulty reading. So do you want to, would it help if somebody, if I read out for you the letter that you've written on behalf of the council? That would be wonderful. Thank you very much Madam Chair and I'm happy to answer any other questions that maybe put forward. So the letter that was sent on behalf of Mrs Rustami who's the chair of Little Grandston Parish Council said we write the request that our parish council's preliminary application to Southcown's housing department for the acquisition of the land to the north-west of Primrose Walk Little Grandston be considered at your meeting on the 14th. Little Grandston has no public open space area and no playground. Our residents have no space to meet up in an outdoor area to socialise or partake in group outdoor exercise. We wish to provide a carefully designed playground area with a variety of biodiversity stations that can be educational in the appreciation care and preservation of native plants, trees and flowers. We propose to consult residents and actively involve them in its design. Many members of our local community have professional expertise and skills in land management, wildlife conservation, biodiversity and horticulture. We shall make a pitch to recruit and coordinate a road for volunteers in its upkeep and future developments. The subgroup of parish councillors allocated this project will also be conferring with organisations including the local branch of the Wildlife Trust and the Cambridge and Peterborough Environmental Records Centre to obtain the best advice on the types of plants to grow and so on. Our exciting vision for the development of this green space for our community intends to explore and implement innovative ways so that our residents can enjoy a peaceful space as well as having the opportunity to plant commemorative trees and shrubs in celebration of important life events such as birthdays and anniversaries. Say our ambition is to secure and realise this acquisition in time to commemorate the coronation of King Charles III in May 23. Thank you for considering our proposal. So would any members like to ask some questions or comment on this? No? Okay. So, is there anything you'd like to add, Mrs Sullivan? No, I don't think so. It's all encompassed within there. There was an application many years ago that the parish council attempted to lease this piece of land for informal recreation. That came to nothing. Thank you. I used to be the district councillor for Little Gramsdon so I do know the area and I also know how committed the parish council is. It's a little parish council but it punches well above its weight, much of that largely due to Sylvia actually. Jolly good. Right, so I'm just trying to find where the recommendations are on my notes in relation to this one. 51, sorry. Right. So the proposal is to instruct architects to establish whether two affordable bungalows could be delivered on the site if not possible or if financial viability cannot be established. Explore options to support the doubling nature strategy. So we're going to, so what the parish council would like us to do is to change this recommendation to say that we will sell the land to Little Gramsdon Parish Council in order that they can deliver that doubling nature, that doubling nature work, which we are so committed to. Is that a fair summary, Mrs Sullivan? Yes, I think so. Wearing my RFO hat, I would have a question about the ability to purchase such land. So the possibility of a long-term lease as a peppercorn rent might be an alternative. At the moment, as you appreciate, we're very much in an exploratory stage following our submission to the earlier application to sell the land. So I think things are open to negotiation. That's fine. So I mean, we obviously have an obligation to achieve the best value for the council assets, but I think we can amend the recommendation to say that South Cambridge District Council agrees to negotiate with Little Gramsdon Parish Council for the land to be transferred to the parish council ownership for environmental enhancement and for their player, for community use. All right, so there'll be a process of negotiation. I'm looking at Councillor John Williams, who's in charge of the money to make sure he's in agreement with that. Okay, so I will propose that amendment. Councillor Handley? Thank you, thank you, Leader. Can I just ask what to happen if the proposals get nowhere, basically, unable to do what they wish to do, what will we do, really come back to cabinet in a later date? Yeah, yeah, we'll bring it back to us. Okay, I think that's a really good idea. If we delegate to the head of housing and Councillor John Batchelor to make final decisions on this based upon the negotiations, Councillor Batchelor? Well, if I could refer to the report, you see the sale or lease to the parish council is one of the options which is actively being considered, and that's 56. So I would suggest that the fallback position will be, if it's not a viable proposition to build for ourselves, then we would take due consideration to the parish council along with other options. So I don't actually think that's what we're saying. I think we're saying that we will, for the time being, shelve our recommendation to build on it, and that our preferred option is to enter negotiations with the parish council to either sell or lease. So we're moving from option A, which was the preferred option on this paper. We're going to reject that, and we're going to accept option B, which is a sell or lease to the parish council for community use. So that's what I am proposing. Come back, Councillor Batchelor. Thank you very much. I think it would be better to keep a number of options open rather than the closed options off. Okay. There's, what, one, two, three, four, five possible options in the body of the report, and I would suggest that we revert to those if in the first place we can't build ourselves. Okay. Our policy is that our first priority is to provide affordable housing on any plots of land that we have. We have very few plots of land, so it is important that we take every opportunity. Okay. So whilst appreciating that, sorry, let me just take some of those ones. Okay. Right. So thank you. So on advice, I think this is probably not the right place to have a sort of big negotiation, a big debate about this. So I think if we defer this for now, allow some negotiation with Councillor Batchelor and Director of Planning and Little Grandstone Parish Council to get a better understanding about what community benefits are, and also a better understanding, well, a broader understanding about our obligations as the district council, and then bring this back to Cabinet in December for a final decision on it. Are you happy with that, Councillor Batchelor? Yes, thank you. So do I have a seconder for that? Councillor Batchelor is going to second that. So, oh, hello. Heather, would you like to come in? Thank you. Sorry, thank you, Leader. It was just on this item in general, and so I can't move in the room, was about, so from Planning Committee, so I'm going to talk, I'm not going to predetermine myself, but talking about previous applications, it has been a frustration on Planning Committee when self-build plots have come to us, and we feel that we really should be building feudal housing going on Councillor Batchelor's point just made. So, I do welcome that that's being looked at, and I thought it might help just to refer to a previous application on Primrose Walk, which was in January this year, where Committee did actually refuse based on the impact and loss of visual immunity, and I would just strongly advise any decision making that people may make to look at the Committee's reasons for refusal when deciding what to do with land down Primrose Walk. Thank you, Leader. Thank you very much, Councillor Williams. Sorry, I met the director when I've been pulled up here, very Monday morning at the moment. Right, so when I said that negotiation, we would defer this item, and there would be continued negotiations, I'm sorry, with the director of housing, not planning, I'm so sorry, and Councillor Batchelor and the Parish Council in order to find a way forward for this in order that it can come back in December, and we can make a final decision, because I am aware that the Parish Council have given themselves quite a short timeframe if they want to be able to make some progress on this in time for the coronation. Okay, so that's already been proposed by me and seconded by Councillor Batchelor. Do Members agree that this item will be deferred until December? Anyone disagree? Anyone want to abstain? Thank you very much, okay. So we're now going to go back to, so thank you very much indeed, Mrs Sullivan, and we will be in contact with you very soon about that. Thank you, I'll now leave the meeting. Thank you all very much indeed. Thank you, nice to see you. Bye-bye. Okay, so we're now going to take on block all the other items, bar the item on horseshoe's lane, western cove. Sorry, Chair, could I introduce the item? I'm coming to that, yes, so please. So over to Councillor Batchelor now. Thank you very much. So this is all about achieving best value on the few bits of land that we as a council actually own and have control over. The self-build project simply did not achieve this and so effectively we are no longer taking any part in the self-build project. Our priority on these bits of land are to provide affordable housing wherever it's financially viable to do so, which would also make it very clear that our obligation is to meet best value and by best value we mean the official valuation of each plot. We would not sell any plot below the valuation. So having said that, I recommend the remaining items on the list with the exception of western cove or the fifth one for which I will be leaving the room. Thank you. Thank you very much indeed, Councillor Batchelor. Right, does anyone else wish to comment on any of these items? No, and I believe Councillor Bill Hanley is going to second it. Do you want to say anything? No, thank you, Leader. Thank you very much. So taking all the items excluding item five, Horshow, Tulane, Westin, Coelville, on block, do members agree with a proposal? I'm sorry, and excluding the item seven, Primrose, Walk, Little Branson. Members agree with proposal? Thank you. Anyone wish to vote against? Anyone wish to abstain? Thank you. So cabinet therefore agrees the proposals by affirmation. Okay, so we will now come back to the item that's excluded. Okay, right. So now that Councillor John Batchelor has left the room, Horshowsley, Lane, Westin, Coelville, the options are to seek revaluation and sell on the open market without restrictions, B to retain it as a parking area with management and maintenance costs retained within the HRA, C to retain within the South Cam's ownership and explore options for use to meet objectives of doubling nature. And the officer recommendation is option A, which is to seek revaluation and sell without restrictions. Would anybody, I will propose this, I think Councillor Hanley, you're happy to second it. Would anybody like to comment on this? No? Okay, so do Members agree the proposal? Anyone wish to vote against the proposal? Anyone wish to abstain? Thank you. So cabinet therefore agrees the proposals by affirmation. Okay, so moving on. I'm sorry. I'm just going to wait a second for Councillor Hanley to return into the room. Thank you. So item 10. Now this is obviously a very, very critical item. So this is about the cost of living crisis support for residents, probably the most important, one of the most important things we'll deal with today. So Councillor John Williams, I think you're going to move the recommendation and introduce the report. And Councillor Bill Hanley, I think you're seconding it. I'm pretty sure you'll want to say something on this as well, as I know both of you have been working very hard on it. So over to you, Councillor Williams. Thank you, leader. When I proposed the motion at the last full council meeting, I'd ever be confident that our officers would be able to come up with a package of proposals to deal with the cost of living crisis in South Cambridgeer. And I've not been disappointed. It's extremely good suite of actions to support our residents, particularly those on low incomes who are going to be very badly impacted by the recession, particularly this winter, with regard to fuel and other costs going up. So I'm very pleased to be able to recommend to you that you agree to this package of measures ranging from discretionary homes, housing payments to access to affordable food, and charitable giving, which we're in £15,000. We're setting up and we hope that others will contribute to that fund to help people with things such as slow cookers and electric blankets. And being able to ring fence £20,000 for our community chest grant scheme to enable parish councils, all parish councils, to pitch for funds to enable them to help the most affected in their parishes. So I really do recommend this. This is an ongoing situation, though, and I'm sure that as other issues come to light, and we're of course waiting to see what the budget brings on Friday, but that may well also involve us having to continue with this and go further. But clearly this is a good start, and I'm very pleased and I thank the officers for heeding our call and for producing these schemes. Thank you. Thank you very much. Councillor Handley, do you want to speak at this point? Yes, please, Leader. I'd like to echo what Councillor Williams said. I think it shows we've responded very quickly to the challenge of the cost of living crisis, and I fully support the proposals. I'd also like to thank officers who have worked incredibly hard to bring these proposals forward. I can't be understated how hard they've worked. Like most authorities, this council knows Bethan anyone who's likely to be hardest, hit hardest by the cost of living, and we have an extra track record of supporting local residents, such as during the COVID pandemic. So let's hope that the Chancellor of the Exchequer recognises this and makes sure that local authorities are properly funded to continue to give real help and support where it's needed. Thank you very much. Anybody else like to contribute? Anybody who's participating remotely? Thank you. So if I could just add my thanks to officers. I know you've put a massive amount to work into this, and it has been an emergency, but as a council our officers have acted as if this is an emergency and needed a really, really fast response. So I think this is a very, very exciting package of measures that we put in place. This situation isn't going to go away, and the numbers of people in our communities who are going to find themselves struggling is only going to go up. And therefore we've got to make sure that we are fleet of foot and hopefully adequately financed by government in order to allow us to do as much as we want to do and as much as is needed to be done. So thank you very much for Councillor Williams and Councillor Handley for your leadership on this, and thank you very much indeed to all the officers who I think have been seriously burning the midnight oil on it. So the recommendation is to approve the priorities and allocated funding set out in paragraphs to support South Cambridge communities during the current cost and living crisis. Do you members agree with the proposal? Does anyone wish to vote against? Does anyone wish to abstain? So council cabinet therefore agrees the proposals by affirmation. Thank you very much indeed. Item 11 is the local council tax support, and Councillor John Williams is going to introduce this and move the motion, and I will second it. Councillor Williams. Thank you, Leader. Well, as you can see from the previous report, this is part of the suite of measures that we're introducing to help across the living crisis. Because it's directly affects our council tax collection, this has to go to consultation and will be part of the February decision on the council tax for next year. So we can't introduce this straight away now, but we need cabinet's approval to kick this off so that we can go out to consultation and be ready in time for the February meeting. It's quite clear that we want to expand it to ensure that we've covered everybody who should be entitled, so it will cover 100% of those of working age who qualify, and we're also ensuring that it keeps up with the cost of living as part of the package. So again, I'd ask you to agree this so that we can now get on with consulting on it and so that we're able then to make these changes for the next financial year. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Williams. How long was the consultation for? I don't know, it will certainly, we'll be certainly starting it soon and it should be completed before Christmas. Good, good, good, those can't come fast enough. So excellent, thank you very much indeed. So this will actually, you know, this will affect people's, this will have a direct effect on the cost of living for very many people, so I'm very pleased. We are doing it. Any comments from anybody? No, okay, so moving, moving swiftly on. Recommendation is to approve option one for consultation with resident stakeholders, including precepting authorities and parish councils. Do members agree with the proposal? Anyone wish to vote against? Anyone wish to abstain? So cabinet therefore agrees the proposals by affirmation. Thank you very much. Thank you, Councillor Williams. And item 12, the provisional general fund revenue and capital up turn. So that is Councillor John Williams again and I will second over to you again, Councillor Williams. Thank you, Leader. Just like to first of all apologise that you are receiving this report slightly later in the financial year following closure of the last year's accounts than you would otherwise have done. I do apologise for that but as you probably appreciate officers have been quite tied up with other things and as the previous reports have shown that we're now able to close the last year's accounts and I would ask you to note and approve the out turn for last year. Thank you. Thank you very much. Does anyone wish to speak on this item? Nobody online? No? Okay. I'm happy to second it. The recommendation is set out in paragraph four of the report. It's quite long so I won't read it. I assume you've all read it. Do members agree with the proposal? Anyone wish to vote against? Anyone wish to abstain? The cabinet therefore agrees the proposals by affirmation. Thank you and moving on to item 13 which is fees and charges. Now members please note that appendices B and C of this item are restricted as they contain commercially sensitive information. It's not anticipated that discussion will need to take place on any of these on the appendices but if requested we will have to move into confidential session. So if members do want to discuss the appendices could they indicate now? Anybody online? Okay. So if you change your mind if you could just let us know so we can quickly move into confidential session. So councillor Williams again is going to put the recommendation and speak to the item and I will second it. Councillor Williams. Thank you leader. You'll see that scrutiny overview have made comments on this, have seen it. Basically fees and charges on average are being increased by around five percent. Some fees aren't going up at all or where we believe that where we can to help people in the current cost living crisis fees have not gone up and there are some places where they have gone up more than five percent because they are basically commercial or fees to do with planning services which we felt that could be increased by more than five percent. But by and large we've kept the increase to around five percent given that the current inflation rate is double that. So I hope you'll agree that we should go ahead with these fees and charges which will come in for the next financial year. Thank you very much and hopefully government might allow us to get full cost recovery for some of our services such as planning due course which will help. Councillor Batchelor. Also in the housing area because we're not in a position yet set the rents for next year in that we're waiting on the government's decision about whether or not they're going to cap it so that is quite a significant element which we're still waiting on. Thank you and that will obviously have significant impact on us as a council maintaining our housing stock, won't it? So any other comments from anyone in the room? Anyone online? No? Okay so I'm happy to second this. The recommendation set out at paragraph three to approve the fees and charges as detailed in Appendix A of the report to take effect from the 1st of April unless otherwise stated all the earliest feasible date thereafter and to note the proposed variations to fees and charges in comparison to the prevailing inflation rate which is detailed in the report so do members agree with the proposal? Anyone wish to vote against? Anyone wish to abstain? So cabinet therefore agrees the proposals by affirmation. So we're now going to we've now come to the point on the agenda where we need to consider whether to exclude the press and public from the meeting and this is because the next items contain information which is commercially sensitive. Members of the public are advised that if cabinet agrees to exclude press and public the video stream will end. So I therefore propose that the press and public will be excluded from the meeting during consideration of the following items of business in accordance with section 100A brackets for the local government act 1972 on the grounds that if present there would be a disclosure to them of exempt information as defined in paragraph three of part one of schedule 12A of the act brackets has amended. Is that seconded? Council MacDonald, Council MacDonald is going to second. Do you members agree with proposal? Anyone wish to vote against? Anyone wish to abstain? Thank you. So cabinet therefore agrees the proposal by affirmation. Members of the public are watching the webcast this means the video stream will now end. Thank you very much for joining us today to view the cabinet meeting. I know the next meeting of cabinet is scheduled to take place on Monday 12 December 2022 and farewell Dr Delacy. Very nice to see you. Please cycle safely if the folks still there and if it's bad stay and we'll come and talk to you. All right. Thank you.


Hey, Karen, it's going to be pretty disappointing with what he's going to be on the defensive side of the ball. From your perspective, what do you feel like the families were tonight on that day? We couldn't keep the ball in front of us. They was getting to the rim and then getting easy kick out threes. So we got to figure that out defensively. I don't know how many points they scored. 129, that's unacceptable. We can't allow that many points and expect a win. I know there's, you know, things from a schematic standpoint that you can change, but how much of it is just mentally, individually, just kind of locking in, you know, on the defensive side of the ball and just bringing that every now and then? I think it's a little bit of both. We got to lock into our man and play one-on-one defense, but we also have to know the schemes because they're slipping out of screens. They're setting screens and we're switching certain matchups and we're just not locked in or not into the floor right now.


Hello everyone and welcome to the 2.30 to 3.00 p.m. early session of the 2023 Open Simulator Community Conference. You know in this session we are pleased to introduce the presentation, Leveraging 3D Environments for Soft Skills Training. Our speakers are Bruce Gross, who is Cooper Swizzle, and Karla Kincaid, Yoshikawa. If you were at our earlier session you'd know that Bruce ran a five-year 3D-based training program before retiring. He brings a broad spectrum of experience and training and enjoys using and sharing knowledge gained from his 15-plus years of training experience. Karla has worked as an organization development and training consultant for many years. She continues to use many technologies in her work and sees 3D games and environments as powerful tools to enhance online and remote learning. Please check out the website found at conference.opensimulator.org for speaker bios, details of the session, and the full schedule of events. The session is being live-streamed and recorded, so if you have questions or comments during the session you may send tweets to at OpenSimCC with the hashtag pound OSCC23. Welcome everyone. Karla, Bruce, let's begin the session. Thank you. Welcome to Leverage 3D Environments for Soft Skills Training. I'm Cooper Swizzle, as Lyrgis mentioned, otherwise known as Bruce Gross. And I'm Karla Kincaid, Yoshikawa in Real Life and in 3D. We're from training in the 21st century, which we'll refer to as T21C. And you can learn more about us by coming to booth 13 in Region 3. Okay, I better go forward. At training in the 21st century, we focus on soft skills training for professional development, which can involve personal growth and development as well as professional. Today we'll be highlighting some of the distinctive advantages of 3D environments for this kind of transformative learning. In 2010, we saw challenges in corporate training whether they involved face-to-face sessions, webinars, or self-paced e-learning. In face-to-face soft skills training sessions tried to cram too much into marathons. They had week-long training off-sites where participants didn't have time to internalize the new concepts or to practice new behaviors. So most of what they learned was quickly forgotten once they returned to the work site. Leverage is bored people silly. And most of the people thought they can multitask their ways through a session. So they didn't pay attention. And self-paced e-learning couldn't incorporate the power of learning from and with colleagues that is so important for adult learners. Instead, they were click, click, get it done, check the box for completion processes. Retention and actual utilization suffered in all three of these training methods. Next slide. T21C's approach relies on 3D environments, unique, unique ability to make people feel like they're together in the same place, where they can act and interact together. We can create controlled learning environments to ensure participants are both intrigued and engaged while staying focused. We use the terrain and environments we create to reinforce content and to enhance retention and attention. Environments can add drama and even humor to the content, both of which aid learning. Can you show the next slide, Bruce? The environments also add spatial memory to the learning. The sense of being in a specific space can be powerful for retention and the sense of being present with others makes it easier for people to stay attentive and engaged during a class. The two environments that you're seeing are both involved in a change management course. And the way we've used the environments here is you see this mountainous terrain with the sea of uncertainty that in some ways reinforces some of what they're learning in the content.  And that's a bit of a humorous aspect to it. So we use, this helps to reinforce the memory of that when having an environment that corresponds to and symbolizes or goes along with what they're learning helps them retain it better. So we also use scenarios to teach concepts and catalyze discussions, which is important for adult learning and retention. And we have a simple demonstration of something we might incorporate into a training session to show you. So in accordance with maintaining control of the environment, we've hidden this scene, but now we want you to focus on it. So, Franz, if you can put out the sexual harassment. Yes, over on the left side of the stage. Thank you. So this is a scene that we've used in sexual harassment prevention training. We want to know if you think this shows sexual harassment.  Oh dear. Type an N for no, if you don't think it's sexual harassment. And type a question mark if you think it's a maybe. And you can do that in the chat. Bruce, can you, are you zoomed in on the scene? I don't know if it's my um. Yes, and they're right there. It looks good. Okay, fine. My camera in a little strange. And they're saying it's hard to know if I'm seeing them sit there. They are close. That's correct. Kayaker thinks it's a no. Lyra thinks maybe it's family. Frank thinks it's a no. Lisa thinks it's a no. Aida doesn't know for sure. So the thing that we're trying to point out here is this is a scene that can generate discussions about what is very what is a very ambiguous and difficult topic. It generates valuable and enlightening discussions. So what we would do from here. After we would ask students in the class, what do they think we would then have a discussion to find out? Why did they think the way they thought was this based on perception and things of that nature? So, so in this case, we're using animus characters created for us by Kim star or virtual vignette. This is known as a simple animation. Carla. Yeah, we wanted to be able to create more complex scenarios using these kinds of characters but with synchronized animations. So here's a we're going to show you a video demonstration that we'd hope to do live, but we didn't have time to make the changes to have it run smoothly here for today. So here's the video. I think somebody's going to show the video. Is have it an open discussion and an interactive class, but it's not really possible to do that in the presentation. So we'd appreciate to getting your responses to it from a few questions we want to ask. So our first question is, do you think this is an effective dance team from what you just saw? So we'd ask you to type in team then why for yes and inferno? Our second question is, does it look like they have a shared understanding of what to do? So type in shared and then why for yes and inferno? The third question is, do you think they have communicated effectively with each other and put in communicated then why or in? And the fourth question is, do you think this team is collaborative and so put in collaborative and then why or in? So just to get your response to what you saw. So thank you for your responses and what we're basically trying to show you here is that this would be a discussion that we would have along the pathway or many of you have seen the caves that we build. We can do this in a cave, but it's a way to incorporate the context of what they're learning in a discussion instead of doing, you know, just a PowerPoint presentation that people just sit and listen to or, you know, just a regular lecture. So when we create our trainings, it's all about not only just being immersive, but keeping them engaged and discussion is one of the most important things when you're doing 3D training. And we could use this kind of scenario for courses on communication, on teamwork or team building and collaboration, as well as on leadership or cultural differences because all of those things would be elements that would come out in an open discussion. So we use discussions in which learners share from their own experience, perspectives and solutions. And one of the values of that is that participants then are learning from each other rather than from just the trainer. They can reveal so they engage the adult audiences and learners in ways a simple presentation can't. And they increase retention as learners actively connect with what they hear and see and connecting it to their own life experience. So what we wanted to do was we wanted to be able to create a more effective and not just a simple simulation. That's where the Animaster comes in. So we worked with Christine Nin of Ninja Services to create what we're calling the Animaster tool. And it enables us to set up and time the actions of the Animash characters so they synchronize precisely and tell us whatever story we want. We're looking forward to sharing this new capability in the Kitely Market in early 2024. Let's see. And just to answer any questions real quickly, the Animaster, so Kim's Animash have things in them to make them move around. But in one place, the Animaster will let you take that a step further by, as you saw in the dance, we could make them dance. When we did OS Fest a couple of months ago, we had them, we had different ones for tours to take them through the tours of our exhibits. So it takes the place of having to have someone there. Okay. Now, click. Yeah. We also use individual and group activities or games in which learners are challenged to act to actively use concepts for teaching. One example is this box game. It can be used in real time group activities collaboratively, competitively, or both depending on the participants. And it can also be used as a self-paced individual activity. The activity is also designed so we can put it in a wide, we can use it for a wide range of topics. So in the image you see it's being used for a course on bullying where people are asked to make, to match specific behaviors to different types of bullying. You notice another game that we have down in the corner there, that is based on people feeding fish a certain kind of food based on their level of readiness to do certain tasks. So that was a fun game. But again, we always try to make sure that we can multi-purpose our games. Excuse me. We're also working with a client who's using this game to create a cyber security learning activity. Bruce, can you advance this slide? Oh, I thought I did. Sorry. In this case, it involves matching specific activities to a framework for cyber security developed by the National Institute of Technology on how to prevent, detect, and respond to cyber attacks. It's important to us that that these tools be flexible because we don't, you know, we like to be able to repurpose them. It's also important to us that they be simple to use for the user. So we'll go into that more later. But now we get the next activity, Bruce. Okay. This is my dog, Oscar. And so what we're going to do is we're showing you that there are four. Oh, hold on a second. I got to bring it out. Bear with me one second.  Yeah, this might not. Okay. So the basic idea is when the game is over with, as you can see, it will say, congratulations, you're correct. We have four boxes here or four activities.  The bath will not work because once what you do is you click on the box that you want to put on the platform, click the platform, the box will float over. If it's not the right box to go on the platform, it will come back and it'll give you an error message in your nearby chat. So it's okay, Franz. I got through it. I think everyone understands the principle. Well, we left out one important thing. There's a reset button that usually goes with it too, that once we click it, everything goes back to starting position. So it's very easy to set it up again for the next use. So that's a real, it's one of my favorite things about it. And if you notice, this one had only four boxes. I'm going to go backwards on the slides. This game has, I believe, 12 to 16 boxes. And the cybersecurity one has 18 to 22 boxes. So we can set the game up for whatever the learning activity is meant to be. And if you notice the number of platforms, we have set it up so that we would have different groups who would each have a set of platforms and boxes and they could compete with the other groups, but work collaboratively among themselves. So it can be used as in any number of ways for people, depending on whether they love to be competitive or they love to be collaborative, we can accommodate that. Okay. Here's a few other things that we offer. So, Karla? Yeah, well, I want to say that game plus the many other things we do, we really focus on trying to make them very, very easy for newbies in the 3D worlds because we never know what combination, but most often we have people who have not been in 3D before or have been in 3D very little. So that's why the box, all you have to do is click the box, then click the platform and you're done as a learner. This show an example of some other kinds of things that we do. If you notice the picture on the left here, there's a little cobbler in the corner on the left side of the picture. You click him and you get a text message coming in in local chat and he is asking a question in this case and then we can alter the number of selections or choices the person has and based on what they choose, they will get different information. It can be something that gives them more information about the topic that corrects them if they made a mistake or we've also used this for a kind of a mystery quest or a treasure hunt kind of thing where they get a clue if they get the right answer and they don't get a clue if they don't. So it can be fun that way. The picture on the right is just something where people walk along and something pops up. In this case, this is about facial recognition and the people click on the little black dots on the column next to it. Each one corresponds to some sort of emotion and they can choose what emotion they think it is and then they'll get an answer based on whether they get the right answer. So that's a simple process. Again, all you have to do is walk and click here. So this next one are two games. They're the same game just changed around. This one on the left as you can see is for bullying. The one on the right is for sexual harassment prevention. There's boxes that they can click on because these are multiple choice or true and false questions and based on what answer you're supposed to be giving, the boxes either say have Y or N and the multiple choice boxes have A, B, C or D. And with these, this is set up for actual real-time training. The walking along a path and clicking on different characters to get in some kind of question or answer situation, it can be done as either a self-paced learning or as a real-time group learning process. This one is again walking along the path and having information pop up or walking through in this case a cave and clicking on information where we might get note cards or we might give local chat messages depending on whether we want them to be able to retain that information and come back and refer to it or we want them to remember it. So we want to thank you all for attending and want to know does anyone have any questions before we close? Type them in the chat and thank you for all your responses earlier. Any questions? Well, I want to thank you Bruce and Carla. Oh, let me see. I don't see any questions at this time. I want to thank you for such an informative and interesting presentation. As a reminder to our audience, you want to check out the conference.opensimilar.org to see what is coming up on the conference schedule. You won't want to miss our next session, which begins at 3.30 p.m. in this keynote region after a 30-minute break and it's entitled State of the Metaverse. Also, we want to encourage you to check out the amazing Boo 13 that our presenters have and all their content in the OSCC Expo 3 region to find accompanying information and also explore the hypergrid resources in OSCC Expo 2 and the sponsor and crowd funder booths located throughout all of the Expo regions. Thank you again to Bruce and Carla and to you, the audience. And thank you all. Thank you.


Secretary Clinton and I disagree. She wants to raise the minimum wage and that's good. She wants to raise it to 12 bucks an hour, not good enough. I am proud to have stood on the picket lines with fast food workers from McDonald's and Burger King. And they understand that in this country we need a $15 an hour minimum wage. And I will stand with those workers in that fight.


Coming up on DTNS Google wants to pick your news a robot to help you read terms of service And who's at fault for the uber self-driving car death? This is the Daily Tech news for Wednesday, November 20th 2019 in Los Angeles. I'm Tom Merritt and from studio Redwood's mom's house I'm Sarah Lane from a rainy Salt Lake City. I'm Scott. It's got Johnson Oh, and I'm Roger Chang the show's producer. I thought you're gonna go for a new nickname Skull Johnson Yep A pinch of me between your cheek and gum more like the King Kong Skull Island kind of feel is what I was going Hey, we were just talking about the magic bullet remember that and fried chicken and ladybug infestations and all kinds of other good stuff I'm good day internet and if you want to be a part of that fun conversation You got to become a member right now patreon.com slash DTNS let's start with a few tech things you should know Facebook's experimental app employees called the NPE team have released whale an app that lets you decorate photos with text and stickers a Meme creator if you will that's the idea anyway It's free to use but no in-app purchases or subscriptions The app is only available in Canada for now though The NPE team is charged by Facebook with rapidly developing apps to experiment with new ideas speaking of Facebook Facebook also announced as f8 developer conference will take place May 5th and 6th and 2020 at the McEnry and Convention Center in San Jose, California You can sign up to get notified when registration will open at f like the other f eight dot com If you hit the f8 key on your keyboard, it doesn't doesn't register. Oh, well, we're automatically go there. Dang. I tried Alibaba has set a likely price of a hundred seventy six Hong Kong dollars for its secondary stock listing Remember they're on the New York Stock Exchange, but they're also going to be now on the Hong Kong stock exchange That's the price for institutional investors But a CMBC source says that's likely to be around the same level for retail investors as well Apple launched a lineup of battery cases for the iPhone 11 11 pro and 11 pro max in the same black white and pink colors as Their predecessors and also with wireless charging support What's new though is a physical button that auto opens the iPhone's camera app even if the phone is locked All right, let's talk a little bit more about what went wrong with Disney Plus last weekend Scott Well the Verge reports that the head of Disney's direct to consumer division Kevin Mayer Says difficulties with Disney Plus app at launch had to do with the way the company quote Architected the app. A lot of us would say developed or made whatever. That's a fun word Anyway, Mayor said that the BAM tech aka Disney streaming services had never seen the high volume of streams when they are You know when when hosting things like HBO and MLB Exposed the quote limits to the architecture Mayor says Disney will recode the app within the next couple of weeks and fix the issues affecting That kind of stuff. So you won't have a problem in the future like hey my I got kicked out of my movie Or I had to leave and I came back and I started and it made me start over that sort of stuff They they pointed out they're gonna try to fix as well I think I think architecting the app is actually I think he's trying to say It's not just the way we developed it. It's that we structured it to follow a certain path when it does things and we Didn't Understand just how big the demand would be for this I mean to say this is the biggest demand that BAM tech has ever seen is saying something BAM tech has Handled the largest streaming events in in some of anyway, the largest streaming events launches any anyway that have ever existed HBO now with the Game of Thrones coming back was Huge for BAM tech and they weathered it fairly well, even though it had some problems back then So this was just gargantuan. This is unprecedented and when that happens It starts to expose things where when you were developing the app you architected in a way say well Then it's gonna go over here and make that call and you know that can handle 10 million at once So that ought to be fine and then suddenly you get a hundred million and you're like oh I should be you know changing this so that it's not all hundred million going at once and swapping the server I should be logging continue watching in a in a place in memory that doesn't get flushed out And then people don't get to continue watching I'm making this up But those are the kinds of things that can happen and that explains to me why you had these weird issues That weren't related to streaming. It's not like they didn't have enough bandwidth It's not like they didn't have enough servers. It wasn't simple like that It was the actual architects with the app that makes a lot more sense to me Yeah, no, it's also you can imagine like two different conference rooms, right where the IT guys are like This is the worst and the producer people are like we have a lot of demands, you know it's kind of it like a It's a good situation to be in depending on who you ask. Yeah, that's true But also I would argue it's easy to look at and be critical But I would actually argue given the demand given the fact that this wasn't a measured rollout the way HBO now was where it was Only available on Apple Apple TV at first and then they went to other platforms and kind of took it in a different way Having this all land on the same day on every platform on all these different apps on a pretty varied You know group of of ecosystems and have it go as well as it did. I think it's kind of impressive So I'm sure there's room for concern and I'm sure that it's great for them to look back and say well Here's what we could have been different and I'm even sure it's okay for them to do that in light of shareholder concerns about How well it went and how retention is going to go as a result But it worked pretty good like I was having problems the first day a little but I kind of did get in that day And then from the day after that I had no problems and I haven't really had any problems since I think they did pretty good All things considered I've seen a lot worse launches of a lot worse services. So it's not so bad Google Assistant has a new feature called your news update that can be played by telling the assistant to listen to the news Google assembles the update from various Google partners based on what it knows about you including your location among other parameters Among several dozen participating partners are Fox news the NBA Al Jazeera wired and more Stories in your updates can come from multiple sources with the source read out before the news item plays So you know what you're listening to and you know where it came from Updates generally start with big national and international stories followed by local news And then more personalized bits like sports for example, you can go into assistant settings to prioritize or mute various sources Yeah, and one of the things I found out when I went to set it up is if you already have news set up in Google Assistant It's not going to give you this new Algorithmically generated one. It's just gonna give you whatever you set up before So I got the BBC when I tried this and I'm like, wait, that's not right And I went and I had to go into the settings for Google Assistant, which you depending on how you're doing it I was doing it on my pixel 4 can can be a little little tricky to find But once you find it then you say, oh give me the your news update And I did that and once I got it going it said it said, okay pick a few sources But even if you pick sources, it's not going to limit it to those sources It's going to try to bust you out of your bubble and show you things that maybe you wouldn't have chosen that it thinks you'll like Anyway, based on what Google knows about you and the more Google knows about you the more accurate it's going to be Mine was interesting. I I didn't like the sources available. Honestly, BBC is my go-to and it wasn't on there And also the first time I tried it it played the same story from CBS News back to back Like it started it gave me two world stories Well, actually two national stories US national stories and and they were the same they were the exact same recording So might be a few bugs to work out. I don't know the local stuff wasn't bad though It was actually the Santa Rosa power outages were on there and and a thing about An event up in Santa Clarita, which is just north of Santa Rosa isn't really local to you But I suppose, you know, if you was like state thinking like state local Yeah, yeah, you know this this whole idea is and like you mentioned It's not gonna work that well the same way that if I use a streaming music service and it you know I kind of hit like Selected for you radio. It's like, you know, sometimes they get it right Sometimes they don't get it right, but it's interesting especially, you know Spotify's news yesterday about trying to you know a handpick at cherry pick play Podcast playlists for people. This is you know an extension of the same thing. It's like, you know It should machine learning try to figure out what it knows about me enough that it could deliver me in the news that I want Well, I don't know that has yet to be determined But I I like the idea that in theory. Yeah, what I like is eventually we get to a place where Deeper data can be found like good if Google's good at anything It's integrating search into every one of their products in a way that's useful And what I would love this to be able to do is say it's clear Scott really likes tech news So I'm going to pull The morning headlines from the Daily Tech news show feed or whatever I'm gonna place something from somewhere that isn't just a mainstream partner like these guys That's when I know they've really made it with this when they dig a little deeper go a little further I mean that has other implications like Extreme sources of news and whether you want any of that in your feed or not So part of me likes the idea of curating partners, but I Feel like this is a good step in the right direction And I actually look forward to using it even though I mostly use Google's assistant on my iOS devices The robot lawyer behind the do not pay parking ticket dispute service remember we've talked about that for years It'll automatically file things to kind of help resolve your parking ticket for on your behalf Has a new service called do not sign That is included in the do not pay three dollar subscription Do not sign will let you upload scan or link to a license agreement like a terms of service type thing The service then uses machine learning to highlight clauses It thinks you might want to know about and any methods for opting out of data collection It'll even send letters on your behalf to opt out just like it does with the parking ticket stuff Do not sign is available in the united states on the web and in its iOS app man Yeah I mean just the fact that something like this exists Just goes to show you how how bamboozled you can get by by license agreements otherwise I you know, I I haven't had an opportunity to use this, but I can think of lots of scenarios where If for some reason it could help me You know figure out like hey, is this is this legal? Do I what do I got to do here? You know, should I sign should I not I I do it Some years ago there was somebody and I don't know where the link is anymore if it even exists anymore But there was and I I brought this up with tom this morning But there wasn't a lawyer Who was just and this was human controlled obviously not machine learning, but it was somebody who was taking common Ula's from various common services and I felt like there was kind of a gaming bent to it if my memory service It was like sony's ula or microsoft's xbox or something But anyway, it would take these and boil them down to one or two small paragraphs of the gist of it Like the gist of what you're giving up what you're signing off what they can take away from you What they can cancel you for these sorts of things and I really liked that because i'm not going to read the nine page Scroll that pops up when I install a new version of world of warcraft or whatever I'm not going to see what terms change for blizzard and i'm just going to hit okay and and assume that i'm going to be okay And I really liked that because somehow it just made me feel like somebody out there was watching out for other people Maybe the robots can do it. They can look out for their their humans Owners and make us all do better. I don't know. I would I will probably use this I guess is what i'm circling around here to it makes sense to me to To try to simplify that process if we're not going to legally make these guys make that stuff more common language And easier to understand then I don't know we'll work. We'll do a workaround and here's here's a workaround Yeah, I I like this um because it reminds me of ulilizer That's another service that was attempting to do this but it didn't really have the machine learning It was it was doing some other tricks to try to analyze License agreements and and highlight things and it's not just about privacy I mean some of this stuff is compliant with the gdpr and still in the terms of service So you have to you know, you still have to look at it even though it's more It's more it has to be more plain language with the gdpr has to be more upfront This still might be helpful for stuff But it's also they have one example in this verge article about a gym That basically put in its terms of service that you couldn't cancel unless you moved away Like you you were like stuck in the gym forever, which can't be legal But again, like are you gonna take them to court or you know, you're gonna find some other way around it And this was the do not sign was able to find the loophole that said tell them you moved and then they have to cancel your service Oh, I Man, I didn't know about that one if that was if that's a thing that happens What needs to happen there is just a good round of public shaming for that gym So that they take it out of there and never do that again because that's terrible To do that to your users my gosh And this is that's the other advantage of this kind of service is it will bring more of those sorts of abuses to light Yeah, good point Well, something that I think is actually very positive is google adding new tools to google earth That lets you set landmarks draw lines from one place to another add text add images Even add videos to every point along any particular journey And then share it with your loved ones or whoever you want to google is also experimenting with pre-made tours It's calling them stories Which is a term that I don't know it references lots of things But if it sounds familiar to you google earth already had guided tours in its voyager tab The new tools now allow anyone to make and share a tour and then invite others to collaborate on their tour Web only for now so it's not on mobile, but google says you can view tours on the latest versions of ios and android So it's uh, it's getting there google earth already had something similar to this But they were all like professionally done, you know by by documentarians and stuff So this is a chance for you to just be like, hey, you know I had a great trip to minneapolis And here are the cool things I did there and then share it with your friends I was joking that it could also be used for bragging if you go on some like amazing Caribbean vacation or something like that Sure, I mean, but like brag, but I still want to like follow along on what you did. Like, was it that great? Let's see. Where'd you go? What'd you do? Yeah If you're going to the same place as someone else went this is a great way to pick up some tips Yeah, this will this will solve a problem I have the very specific problem Which is we get every year people on my morning show ask us About the best places to go when you're in vegas because we go to vegas a lot We have a big meet up there We're there a few times a year and it makes sense that we might have some suggestions So here's a great way to say instead of having to explain it in 50 emails or build an email template about it I can just Link him to this to this map and say here's all the places that we recommend going You've got pitchers. You've got everything along the way like I think it's a kind of a Brilliant thing and a little surprise. They didn't make this available more I don't know sooner into the more broad public. I think well and the in the era of air B&B and Google street view and being able to sort of virtually be in a place that you've never been before Or maybe you've been before but you know, you're you're figuring out how you're going to do it better the next time kind of thing When when it's your friend, you know, tom and eileen go to japan They come back and they say that we had the best two weeks of our lives Here's everywhere we went you got to do with us like that is so motivating for me And it's not like you have to do it all while you're there. You can do this later As I understand it So you're not like you're this isn't a system where you're like, okay Hold on a second before we get off the bus I gotta hurry up and do the post about what train we took like it's not like that You can go later and say all right. What pictures did we take? Oh, this would be good to have up here and we went to fuji and blah blah blah blah But that's a That I mean, honestly, I would love to follow one of tom's trip to japan or hawai All right, he's taken everyone I will definitely document our trip to japan So I'd like to be included in your trip to japan, but if you guys can come with me Better get into google earth asa. Yeah get in there Hey, I want to say this first big. Thanks to sp shared and for submitting this on the subreddit Bill Gates back to energy company heliogen if you haven't heard of it because neither did I nobody else did It's kind of a little secrety thing, but it's finally making some noise Anyway, they have used computer vision software and automatic edge detection To direct a field of mirrors to use sunlight to create temperatures Above 1000 degrees celsius. That is very very warm About a quarter of the temperature of the surface of the sun That's just how warm the solar heat could be used to make Cement steel glass other materials no carbon emissions. The next step is to demonstrate the process at scale Being a little tricky. We'll see anyway later on heliogen believes it may be able to create hydrogen at scale as well kind of a big deal One of the things I noticed in in this article is is the heliogen people are at least saying that They can demonstrate at scale. This is not like well now We have to solve how to do it at scale which is often the case with scientific studies Like well, we did it in the lab, but now we have to figure out how to do it practically They are like this is practical. We just now have to we did we did a one-off to just prove that And now we know how to scale it and we'll do that next It'll be interesting to see if they follow up on what they say they can do but if they can This would take out a huge carbon emitter If it's adopted by industry and save a lot of power to boot Yeah, there was a um, you know that I don't remember the name of it Bill Gates has there's a documentary series about Bill Gates on netflix. It's a netflix original They follow him around And a big part of it is like here's one of the innovations We're working on and then they'll kind of show the work in progress and show the people involved in it It's very good. I liked it a lot And they also end up dispersing it with questions like Why were you so hated in the 90s or Or did you and steve jobs really hate each other? So you get plenty of that drama But really it's about these things he's investing money in And one of them was this self Not perpetual machine, but basically it was an energy source for a small village That could run perpetually and not have any carbon emissions Never need new fuel Like that was the goal was to create something that just kind of kept on pumping I have to think because I never mentioned this thing I have to think that this is somehow connected to that or it's not the very least it's connected to his It's not because this isn't creating energy. This is creating heat. Sure. But if you're creating Hydrogen at scale, which they just say they're not they're saying they think they could adapt this to do that at some point But they haven't gotten to that yet Right, I was just saying that so if they if that's what they're saying and if they do and if they can Then that means a whole lot of demonstratable Capability here not just hey, we can heat stuff up real good. So I mean, honestly, no I disagree with you. This is this this tech particular technology is we can heat stuff up real good And that at this level of heat is incredibly useful Without even getting into electrical generation. You don't think it has any any potential for for well No, I mean, of course, I'm not going to say that because we we use heat to burn coal and push generators So yeah, maybe this could You know push a generator to create electricity too, but I don't I don't know that that's the biggest advantage of So I think there are more efficient ways to do that I do understand because the french developed one that looks very similar and they're set up to heat a water tower to generate steam For power generation, but it isn't On the same it is like this is too powerful for that. Yes, right because you'd melt the tower Yeah, your steam wouldn't be steam very long You'd have it would yeah your steam would needs the tower like you'd have the tower would turn to steam I just I bet there's a lot of wiggle room between zero and a thousand degrees celsius where they could find Oh, yeah, no, you're absolutely right about that You know, there's all kinds of derivative technologies that might come out of this as well But I think those are actually fairly common like roger says there's other projects the the real big Advancement here is to be able to create create this kind of heat and a sustainable useful level People have tried to do it before and they just couldn't quite get it to this level At a hearing tuesday the u.s. National Transportation Safety Board determined cause and responsibility For the death of a pedestrian who was hit by an uber autonomous car safety driver Raphael Avazquez was found partially at fault for being distracted by her phone Uber's advanced technologies group was also Partially found to be at blame for inadequate safety procedures and ineffective monitoring Of vehicle operators uber did not have a system to keep safety drivers from becoming complacent So all three of those things The ntsb said mail uber you are partially to blame for this death as well And the victim herself a lane herdsburg was found partially at fault for having methamphetamines in her system Which may have impaired judgment when crossing outside the crosswalk And the state of arizona was found partially to blame for insufficient policies to regulate autonomous vehicles and encourage uber To put in place the proper safety procedures and to make sure that that there were regulations to ensure safety This is obviously, you know, not a fun topic But I think what I find most interesting about this decision is it points the light on the fact that We all want to just say well, it was it was the pedestrian's fault She shouldn't have crossed outside the crosswalk. Well, it was the driver's fault. She shouldn't have been none on her phone No, it's uber's fault. They're an irresponsible company. It's the state's fault They should have regulated things better and the fact is yes. Yes to all four of those Everyone had something they could have done better to prevent this And man, can you imagine if we spent that amount of time and care in determining the blame in a regular auto accident That didn't involve an autonomous car Of of of the of these Of these readings the one that sticks out to me the most is uber not having a system to keep safety drivers from being complacent What would that system be? So something to train them first of all and the importance of of of paying attention But that's like saying like if you're gonna You cannot you look if there's what I'm saying is you could have no things to keep people From being complacent or you could have several to try to encourage it And if you do there's less likely that something like this happens You could have alarms that go off You could have like what tesla has where if you don't have your hand on the wheel and it says hey, you know what? You need to get back to doing this Yeah, I uh I had the same question pop up in my head sarah like what else could they do and they're probably a number of things And who knows what they already did there's probably a list of Of things that they do do to try to keep those people attentive or whatever Well, no according to the ntsb. They did not have a system to keep safety drivers from Anything they could have done like it's such a larger conversation, right? It's like if you are driving a vehicle you you are the driver of a vehicle I mean you are you got to be on point 100 of the time right because you're not you're not sitting back and and being complacent ever But if you were a safety driver in an autonomous vehicle that's supposed to be working as advertised You're kind of chilling Right. Yes. Well, that's exactly what you're doing. That's exactly what the ntsb said is first of all This isn't a tested and approved vehicle. This is a test vehicle And as such you need to make sure that your drivers aren't complacent on top of that I think you're right sarah that this is going to be an issue for autonomous cars for the foreseeable future until they Get to the point where they can be fully autonomous that we're going to have to come up with ways To make sure that people keep paying attention so that they can take over if there is a fault Use some of that computing technology they're using to make these cars drive themselves use some of it to notice that you're on your phone and go Hey Get off your phone, right? No, and that's why you mentioned tesla tesla already does this with their autopilot system It tries to to bug you to make you pay attention Now arguably Maybe it doesn't do that good of a job. I don't know. I mean that's a separate conversation But what with the ntsb was saying here is look, this was a complex issue And there were a lot of factors and not any one of them was the reason But if you've done These things it's less likely that that would have happened and having any kind of way to keep the driver from not paying any attention Would have possibly saved a life Well, thanks everybody who participates in our subreddit You save lives every day by giving us news that we may not have seen otherwise Voting and submitting stories daily tech news show dot reddit dot com keep them coming We'd love the feedback join in on the conversation in our discord as well Which you can join by linking to a patreon account at patreon.com slash dtns And if you want to get all the tech headlines each day in about five minutes be sure to subscribe to daily tech headlines dot com Let's check out the mailbag We got a couple good ones first one from ellison chariden friend of the show Ellison said two thoughts on self-driving cars speaking of self-driving cars Learning about the selfishness selfishness level of drivers, which is cool Ellison says steve and i are constantly noting that the tesla sees somebody turn in front of us And can't tell that the car is moving at a rate and with enough momentum to make it across well before we get there And so it freaks out and slams on the brakes or sets off an alarm That is a timely a timely email that just sort of Yeah, which is yeah, I mean based on our conversation. It's sort of like that sounds like what it should do Even though it's being a little bit dramatic, right? Like right. It's over side of like Save people at all costs. I mean i'm sure there's there's a point at which over correcting this would make it riskier because then you're more likely to Have someone hit rear end you because it's doing this and it's an unexpected behavior But that's our that was our whole conversation yesterday is if the car can start to tell the intention and be like Oh, that that car is turning. I don't need to slam on the brakes because it's got plenty of room Then that that makes all of this better for everybody. Yeah Uh, we got a lot of emails from folks worried about rob demillo After he talked about sleep tracking yesterday And some of them were saying, oh, I think you have this this medical problem or that medical problem And you didn't talk about seeing a doctor. Are you just trying to self-diagnose? So rob was nice enough to write us a little email today saying dear dtnsers Thanks to all of you who wrote in expressing concern for my health and well-being with regards to my sleep patterns And sleeping disorders in general, please rest assured that I take my health very seriously Especially as I unwillingly age I'm kicking and screaming into the future And I know that home remedies are not an adequate replacement for calling in the professionals The tools that I described on dtns are meant to be used as guidance and confirmation of the impact of small changes in One's daily habits, but are never intended as a replacement for help from physicians I'm already working with doctors and sleep disorder experts on potential causes for my issues. So I am Getting professional assistance. However, being a technologist I cannot help but do my own data collection and analysis of my sleep issues As well as data collection of the rest of my health and habits And I don't anticipate that stopping anytime soon by monitoring my sleep patterns with low cost low invasive technologies I've been able to make changes in my daily and nightly routines that have impacted my sleep positively So that will continue and I'm happy to continue to report on new technologies and techniques going forward Thank you again for all of your concerns Feel free to reach out to me on twitter I'm there as uber rob if you'd like to start a discussion or see what sleep tech i'm tinkering with now peace rob I I want to add to that that one of the reasons that I didn't bring up the like well It sounds like you have this disorder is i'm not a doctor I shouldn't try to diagnose rob any more than rob should try to diagnose himself and second of all His medical problems are none of my business the point of our conversation was like oh, what's the sleep tracking tech you're working with? Yeah, yeah What do we have at our disposal not being doctors or sleep specialists? You know, we're we can you know get a little bit more insight on on what's going on with with ourselves Hey, shout out to patrons at our master and grand master levels including paul boyer Dustin r. Campbell and andrew bradley also thanks to scott johnson for being with us today Scott you're the best.  Well, uh as the best I've been trying my hardest to do the best things. Um, you can find everything. I'm up to over at frogpants.com Uh, a lot of sort of rushing around trying to get certain things ready for christmas Uh that we like to do on our store and stuff you want to check that out We're having a huge clearance sale to make room for new things So if that's your jam and you are all a fan of any of the work I do you can find all of that at frogpants.com Or you can follow my daily ramblings over on twitter at scott johnson Hey, uh, we have new patreon rewards. 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