Coming up on DTNS, it's your move, Microsoft, because Sony just bought Bungie. Spotify deals with some artists to fall out. And where does the smart home go from here? This is the Daily Tech News for Monday, January 31st, 2022. From Studio Redwood, I'm Sarah Lane. I'm lovely Cleveland, Ohio. I'm Mitch Travolino. And I'm Roger Cheng. The show is pretty soon. Before we started the show on Good Day Internet, we were talking about all sorts of things like when older dogs don't like younger dogs all that much. If you want to get that wider conversation, do so by becoming a patron at patreon.com. GTNS. Of course, we want to give a big thanks to our top patrons, including James C. Smith, Miranda Janell, and Justin Zellers. Now, let's start with a few tech things you should know. The virtualization and cloud computing company Citrix announced it agreed to be taken private by Vista Equity Partners and Evergreen Coast Capital in a $16.5 billion deal. The private equity firms plan to combine Citrix with a 2014 acquisition of the analytics platform Tibco, offering this as a combined software as a service solution. Apple now allows developers to publish unlisted apps on the App Store. These can be shared with private links and won't appear in search. This isn't meant to be a replacement for its test flight beta system, and there's no invite-only mechanism for unlisted apps. Developers can request to move publish apps to unlisted, though, if they so desire. Meta paused new users from joining its CrowdTangle social media tracking tool, although new users can still be added to existing company accounts, just not new users. Meta disbanded the CrowdTangle team last year, moving the tool under its new data and transparency team. The company said staff constraints from reorganization is the reason they're pausing registration. Pinterest expanded its AR shopping features, now working with retailers like Creighton Barrel, Walmart, West Elm, and Wayfair to offer 80,000 shoppable pins that can be virtually placed in homes through its lens camera. Once viewing an item, users can proceed to purchase it directly through that retailer. This is part of Pinterest's try-on AR efforts, which have previously focused on beauty products. Pinterest says that users are five times more likely to buy from try-on-enabled pins than standard pins from retailers. And the iOS app store and Android app markets operated by Tencent and Huawei no longer list the dating app Grinder in China. App Reachers at Keemai noted that the iOS version was removed on January 27th. It's unclear when Android apps were pulled. 9-5 Mac sources say the iOS app was removed by Grinder's parent company. Grinder users in China have reported issues with the app over the past several weeks, things like not being able to send or receive messages or add likes. Competitive LGBTQ dating apps remain available in the country. Grinder resolved that the Chinese video game development company Kunlun Tech to a group of US-based investors in March 2020.  If you're not up to speed, we'll get you up to speed, the short version is that these artists and several others have all asked Spotify to remove their music after objecting to COVID-related misinformation featured on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast, which is a very popular podcast on the Spotify network. In 2020, Spotify signed a $100 million deal for an exclusive license on this show. Now, in response to pressure from artists and also users, Spotify published its platform rules, outlining its policies on what it considers dangerous, deceptive, sensitive and illegal content. These aren't new rules previously used by Spotify internally, but not made public until now. These rules say that Spotify forbids hatred and incitement of violence, sexually explicit material, and, and this one's important, quote, content that promotes dangerous, false or dangerous deceptive medical information that may cause offline harm or poses a direct threat to public health, end quote. The company will also work on adding a content advisory on podcast episodes that discuss COVID-19. One would think other health related issues as well if there's going to be some sort of a blanket situation going on here. Spotify said that content violating its rules could be removed from the platform with repeated violations subject to suspension or removal from its service altogether. These rules stop short of outlining any specific strike system or escalation from removed content to suspension. Yeah, this was dominating my Twitter feed kind of takes on this and it's very interesting because this obviously, you know, Spotify is starting to, you know, by getting into this, goes to the Joe Roken Experience buying podcasting studios like Gimlet and others that they've been doing over the past several years, you know, getting from being a music service to an original, you know, increasingly an original content platform and running into a lot of the same problems that, you know, this really seems analogous to a lot of the issues that YouTube had a couple of years ago with that was more associated with brands buying ads that appeared on, you know, shows with content that advertisers would have preferred not to have been associated with, but, you know, kind of running into that same problem of, hey, we're taking podcasts from being this very passive thing to this thing that we're making exclusive, you know, we're putting in this very advanced ad tech to it. And it turns out there are some ways that it can go sideways when you so closely associate your brand or your platform, I should say, with content like that. Yeah, I mean, the exclusive license on the show is a big part of this. I'm an Apple Music user. I fight with my friends all the time who send me Spotify playlists from like, what do you what am I doing with this? But I, you know, I always say for the most part, the platforms are more or less the same, you know, you listen to your music, there's, you know, there's there are certain shows that are exclusive to, to, to these and other platforms that, that host music and podcasts, but it's that exclusive part of it that if I, you know, I was kind of thinking about this over the weekend, if, if it was Apple Music and there was some podcast that somebody had, you know, you know, the Apple Music had paid a lot of money for and it was something that I felt uncomfortable enough that it, it kind of mirrored what a lot of people might think the company stands for. And I'm not even talking about the Joe Rueckin podcast. Let's, you know, this is kind of hypothetical. But if there was something that I disagreed with enough that I felt really uncomfortable with any platform kind of signing off on, right, then I would have a problem with this. No, granted, I'm not a musician. I don't, you know, I don't have much sway here. Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, they are, they've been around the block a while and quite a bit big discography for both. And I, it almost reminds me of the days, days of your when certain artists would, you know, get bent out of shape about a company offering streaming versions of their songs and say, no, no, no, you got, you have to buy our music. That's all we're doing. But this is a little bit different because it is about, you know, enough people saying this is harmful to us, or we just don't agree with it. And we're going to make it hard for you, Spotify. Weirdly, this move to, it almost makes Spotify's exclusive podcast strategy makes sense on a business decision. Take away the, the controversy about COVID misinformation, right? Take away that. But the idea that an artist could say, take my, very popular artists could say, take my music off my platform. And there are innumerable other options for people that want to use that, that Spotify loses out on, as opposed to controversial as it may be an exclusive podcast that you can only, you know, I know there are like video versions and stuff like that out there, but you can only get the podcast version of that on that platform. You know, in a weird way, the move by artists to take music off the platform kind of validates as a business decision, the pursuit of this exclusive content. Yeah. All right. Well, in other shoe dropping news, Sony announced it intends to acquire the game developer Bungie for $3.6 billion. Sony says the company will remain an independent subsidiary and will be free to self publish and reach players at its discretion. Bungie was founded in 1991, acquired by Microsoft in 2000, with its halo title made an Xbox console launch title and then went independent in 2007, then signed a 10 year publishing deal with Activision in 2010, ending that partnership in 2019. They've been around. It's hard to see this as anything other than the response to Microsoft's recently announced plans to acquire Activision, but we wanted some insight into what this means for the gaming industry at large. So we asked Jen Cutter to weigh in on the news. Don't know about you guys, but I was definitely not ready for yet another major acquisition. Since we're in the realm of anything can happen, guess I should keep an eye on Nintendo in case they buy Square Enix next. Bungie wasn't in immediate danger of tanking in the years following the slightly tense split from Activision. Activision's insistence on cranking out Destiny expansions yearly put quite a strain on teams and leadership leading to the breakup. But they certainly had a rocky ride when transitioning Destiny to a free to play model, even removing previously paid for content from the game without reimbursing players, as well as making any remotely cool armor a paid cosmetic rather than earnable in game. Because devs gotta get paid. That said, Destiny is not Bungie's only game, just the only one with reliable consistent news, like the new Witch Queen expansion dropping February 22nd. New IP from the company has been in progress for many years now, with a proper reveal coming in 2025 and amazingly still no leaks about it, though future projects within the Destiny universe are expected. With all the consolidation of major AAA developers, is this going to be good for the industry in the long term? Short term, sure. Stocks go up. But will this end up inviting scrutiny like the Nvidia arm deal? Right now, all the companies are playing nice and openly honoring previous multi-platform deals. With the Microsoft purchase of Bethesda, Xbox boss Phil Spencer stressed the company would continue contractual obligations with Sony for Ghostwire Tokyo in Deathloop, but future titles will be exclusive to platforms where Game Pass exists. It even broke today that MLB The Show will now be on every platform, including the Switch, with cross-platform play, cross-saves and cross-progression enabled.  The real truth of how this all shakes out won't be seen for a few years, but I think will definitely be felt during this console generation. Sony's State of Play event on Wednesday is going to be lit. Jen Cutter, thank you so much for weighing in on this. Both Rich and I this morning saw the news. Well, we all saw the news. We were kind of like, okay, who has a really good inside track on gaming? Jen Cutter. So thank you, Jen. Really appreciate that. I wanted to add this much to this debate in that one of the interesting things is that as Microsoft has actively pursued the ability to play a variety of games on its hardware as a service, it's really removed what traditionally has bounded video games to the marketplace in that you had a hardware manufacturer, whether it was Sega, Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft, and then you would have games that would be written for that specific platform and then released that way. I think what you're seeing is a seminal shift away from a control of the platform and more of a platform as a free-for-all, but we're going to control the IP or release, well, own the IP in order to make money off of it. If you want to watch a specific show that you can only get on Netflix, you're going to sign up for Netflix. If you're going to watch a show that's only available on Hulu, you're going to sign up for Hulu. If you're going to watch a show that's only available on HBO Max, you're going to sign up for HBO Max. And I think this is what you're seeing is that we're shifting away from the circuitry on our platforms at best so you're going to buy it. We have the most compelling content you're going to subscribe. And I think this is what you're seeing right now. And I do think, to Jen's point about regulation, I do think maybe this, setting this up, again, this is just a press release, so we'll see how this actually works out in business, but the fact that this is a independent subsidiary, if that's the structure, if that's the language that these companies need to start using to maybe hope that they're going to pass some regulatory muster, obviously Microsoft has stopped well short of framing it as that saying, hey, we'll follow the letter of our contracts while they're there. And the other thing is this may not be Sony's only response in that, so we will definitely have to keep an eye for some more news in this regard. Before we move on to smart home news, just a real quick one, this is just coming in from the wire, New York Times has acquired Wordle. Yes, the puzzle game, daily word puzzle game that has gripped the world with its fun ease of use. We have no word on what Wordle was acquired for price wise. The press release about this said it was acquired for an undisclosed price in the low seven figures, still seven figures. But yeah, congratulations to Josh Wordle, software engineer living in Brooklyn, New York, who released the game not too long ago and probably had no idea that it would explode in popularity as it has with myself, among many others, doing the Wordle game every single morning. And now for just $1 a week, you can keep playing Wordle. Oh my god. And that's exactly where my mind went is like, don't mess this up for me. Just let me play my free game once a tape, please, New York Times, I'm begging you. All right, moving on to smart home gadgets. They're great. I have many of them, but they often require more involved installation than just plugging in a cable, you know, power on good to go. Walmart is trying to address that reality partnering, partnering with Angie, you might know them as Angie's List, to offer home services across its nearly 4,000 stores. So customers can book Angie professionals from 150 common home projects, including wide range of services like mounting a TV, or, you know, flooring and painting your home. Smaller jobs like furniture assembly have flat fees. Larger projects get a little bit more expensive requiring custom quotes. Now back in 2018, Walmart had partnered with the company Handy to offer in-home installation services in a subset of its stores. Handy was subsequently acquired by Angie later that year. Amazon has offered in-home services since 2015. So Walmart is not alone here. This new partnership, though, with Angie and Walmart will be offered on a broader range of products and will continue to expand in a more complex service agreement to customers. The service goes live in mid-February. Yeah, this is really interesting because, you know, I haven't had a ton of smart home stuff in, but one of the things that I had was a Nest doorbell. And, you know, it's one of the wired ones. And just even like I had to reroute some of the cable that had to go, you know, it needed a certain wire to come through that wasn't, you know, present and stuff like that, was able to do that with the help of my father-in-law. But, you know, anything more complex with that, you know, we're talking about, like, smart lighting systems. We're getting into, you know, as smart thermostats get more complex, like, to get the benefit of a lot of these smart technologies that needs to be a tighter integration when it comes to, you know, how it's talking to your furnace or how it's talking to your water heater and stuff like that. We saw at CES that were smart water valves and stuff like that, that Moen, I believe it was Moen, is putting out there, maybe it's Kohler. Either way, those are kind of things that maybe not everybody can do on their own. And I think it's really smart to say, like, hey, if we're going to be selling this, we need to provide an easy way for people to be able to install that and partnering with a fairly well-known, you know, Angie's list, fairly well-known Walmart, pretty ubiquitous, you know, seems like, like a smart way to make those a little bit more approachable for people every day and also have another revenue stream, of course. Yeah, of course. I, you know, at first I was like, oh, this is like Geek Squad from Best Buy, you know, like, if you, if you, if you want to handle it yourself, perfectly fine, but if you're feeling like a little overwhelmed or maybe you're not familiar with the technology, this is great. When it comes to something like mounting a TV, every time I move to a new apartment, I have to mount my TV. Well, I don't have to, but I choose to because I like the look of it. I can't do that myself. If I tried, I'm pretty sure I would muck something up and my landlord would kick me out immediately. That's not really like that. That seems like that sort of obvious stuff, you know, if you have flooring and painting needs, that that's kind of obvious stuff too, and that's cool. But we were talking about smart home options, well, and smart home option companies fighting with each other with Rob DeMillo on, on last Friday's show. And there are definitely, you know, for sure times where someone might say, I'd really like this to work, but I need a little help setting it up ahead of time. And for those of us who are less tinkery than others, I think this is a great, great call on Walmart's part. Yeah, I'm just thinking also with just like consumer solar installations and stuff like that, obviously that's like, you know, that could be a roofing cup or something like that. But I feel like that is an area that's very adjacent to what they're going to be offering that, you know, again, we didn't want to talk about smart tech. That could be something that could be a key, you know, growth area for them going forward. Well, listen, folks, here on the Daily Tech News Show family, we'd like to offer you as much information as you will take from us. So check out Nikki Ackerman's latest installation of her a scientist in tech miniseries on how a researcher is tricking rats into thinking they've been teleported and then measuring their brain response as a result. You can find it in the DTNS feed. All right, well, we got some chip news. The first reviews of laptops with Intel's Alder Lake chips have been released. And these are focusing on the MSI GE76 Raider gaming laptop that seems to be the one that went out for review for these kind of initial launch of these chips. If you haven't been paying attention to the desktop Alder Lake releases, this is a major new architecture for Intel, mixing performance and efficiency cores like ARM chips have been kind of doing for the first time. The mobile chips range from low end i5s with eight cores, evenly split between performance and efficiency to the core i9-12900HK that uses six performance and eight efficiency cores. The top end i9 was used in the MSI laptop being reviewed, and reviewers are saying the system as a whole is a big leap forward for Intel, obviously beating out its 11th gen chips by wide margins and posting impressive gaming benchmarks. It also has a discrete NVIDIA 3080 graphics card, probably doesn't hurt. Making more headlines is the fact that it also beats Apple's M1 Max chip in performance. The system posted slight leads in rendering tests like handbrake and blender, but over a 30% lead in synthetic benchmarks from Cinebench and Photoshop. The only absolute one that I could find kind of researching this for the segment was for the M1 Max was in a 4k Adobe Premiere test. It was from the Verge and they even said that once Premiere updates with better Alder Lake integration that could well change. So Intel's back on top, Apple's quivering in their brushed aluminum shoes, right? Well you know kind of a little caveat here, this system uses three times as much power and has about a third of the battery life as the 16 inch MacBook Pro.  You know the very different audiences for these two machines. MSI laptop is a gaming powerhouse, discrete GPU, RGB lights festooned all over. MacBook Pro is designed, you know, pretty specifically designed for creative professionals. Obviously a lot of other use cases for both machines. We'll have to wait to see Alder Lake chips not tuned for like this maximum performance use case to get a better comparison for it. But Sarah, you know for me like looking at this a couple of years ago, I feel like when like Intel made that first Ultrabook push, we saw like that first gen MacBook Air, you know we kind of hit that mainstream like question of you know have we hit like good enough mainstream performance for like you just pick up one of these laptops, it's going to be fine for everyday use. Are we hitting that with these you know Alder Lake with Apple's latest you know M1 kind of Pro chip Pro and Max chips? Are we like reaching that on the high end for like what we could conceivably want to use a laptop for at this point? Well I would I would venture I guess that a lot of folks listening right now would say I want the best performance possible. Now like you said it's it's a bit of an Apple's an orange comparison because the M1 chip is in a variety of laptops. For example my MacBook Air has an M1 chip just over a year old. Love it so much. Best machine I've ever had as far as you know the laptop and you know in the in the Mac family goes but I wasn't that long ago you know everyone was saying like M1 chip won to beat and you can you can beat that but it it depends on what you need to use this machine for and like you said you know something that's hardcore gaming is just going to need more more punch overall and I I I would never I would never tell anybody like oh all you need is the Apple M1 chip it's it's the best one ever and because these things just keep evolving they always have they always will to some degree so so yeah I mean I think that for for folks who follow until product strategy and rollout this is very exciting. Yeah and I think what's what's kind of cool about both of these products and and kind of just the I guess competition or whatnot and let's throw AMD into the mix they've been really pushing the mobile envelope up until Alder Lake is is that we do have kind of a spectrum of options of it's like hey if you want this gaming laptop which by the way I didn't see and in any of the reviews like oh it like burned my hand off it was super loud the fans were super loud so it's like yes it is a big gaming laptop but it's not like you're making this ridiculous compromise when it comes to you you know convenience features like that that we have like kind of this big spectrum of really high-end stuff admittedly at very crazy price points at times you know both these machines over $4,000 maxed out so it is a good time you know it wasn't too long ago we're asking like man can Intel iterate off of this 12 nanometer process stuff like that you know great to see them you know pretty rapidly bringing Alder Lake to mobile and having a roadmap for being like hey we have a strategy clearly the performance is there we'll have to see when the more mainstream consumer stuff comes out you know how well that scales compared to Apple and AMD what they're offering Rich would you like to talk about pandemic things you know nothing would actually make me no never mind some things would make me happy but anyway I know it's that was a tough one I'm sorry that was that was a curveball at least yeah at least in the US some of us have been receiving you know kind of these free COVID tests in the mail you know we got retail supplies of PCR tests a little tenuous during the current Omicron surge but while getting tests delivered is great a new paper from researchers at the University of California Santa Barbara outlined the system perform tests at home using a smartphone the current iteration definitely has some DIY feel to it it requires the team's back to count app a hot plate a cardboard box although I think any box will work and an LED light to do the test you put saliva in a $7 testing kit on top of the hot plate then you put down a reactive solution that turns red when bonding with viral RNA you put the cardboard box with an LED over the top of the plate then place your phone on top of the box again there needs to be like some sort of hole in there to see the color reactions using the camera using the phone's camera so plus side really cheap aside from you know a smartphone it's in limited trials it proved as accurate as a PCR test and it can be easily modified for new variants and other pathogens according to the researchers only downsides at least right now this was the limited trial with 50 participants so maybe that accuracy doesn't scale as we get more people into these trial you know into testing on this and right now the app is only calibrated to work with the Samsung Galaxy S9 phone man bone is probably pretty affordable on eBay Sarah I wanted to test shoot um I actually I mean I'm not I'm not personally uh needing a test right the second today many people are um so having options for this is pretty cool um this does feel like this this is not for the gen pop right this is for somebody who's like okay I understand what you need for me I have a hot plate um and a variety of other uh instruments required for this but but hey you know more info is good info I yeah I yeah Roger go ahead oh I was gonna say like I as I've said at the beginning of the show or before the show in the GDI I I actually tested positive for COVID and I have personally gone through two uh home antigen uh uh tests and this would actually be great other than the fact that you need to have a hot plate uh but if they if they could develop one without a hot plate because you know right now there's two there's two there's two tests that you use to to just determine whether or not you have COVID one is the uh the the quick test which is the antigen but it's not as sensitive so you need to be freely like your head needs to be filled with with mucus to to get any sort of reading from it compared to a PCR which is a lot more sensitive uh and a lot more precise and you know just not not having to have to dance between those two levels of of precision would be a boon especially in the case of me I have two or I have I have one older daughter that goes go test them every week in order to let them go to class and you have to show verification that they did test negative this could be a huge help especially we can send it electronically and they're and and and the uh and the positive or not the negative uh false rates are are relatively low what's cool about this story for me is one the idea that you could have just like different reactive agents that you could test for a bunch of different diseases in your home to be like oh I got the flu okay best brand go to work but the like I think in tech we've kind of just like take for granted now that like oh yeah I just got this smartphone in my pocket whatever like this reminds me of like the first time I saw someone like check email on a phone like where it's like oh yeah this is a super powerful computer that's in my pocket that's attached to a really powerful imaging system that can be combined to do things that like almost seemed unimaginable before I don't want to go too hyperbolic on this because again like this nowhere near being commercialized or approved in any sense of the word uh but like that's what that's what this feels like to me is like very show some of the transformative power of the things that we have in our pockets every single day which is really cool well in the uh in in the weekend mailbag report we got a lot of really good feedback um and and and and and and some constructive feedback um on our latest live with it uh show which was about the remarkable too for anybody who didn't catch that in our feed we offered it to all folks not just patrons so do listen to it if you can get a chance it was me joined by Jen Cutter who is a real uh she's she probably is the better person to be to to test something like they're remarkable too because she writes a lot longhand anyway uh of of the responses we got and thank you again to everybody who responded William wrote in with some good points William said as a long time user of their remarkable too I enjoyed hearing your impressions of the device I think you gave it a pretty fair summary great job overall one thing not mentioned though was the fact that remarkable provides every user with the root password to their device this allows you to log in and install software apps as well as modifications that greatly enhance the remarkable too is no taking functionality uh William says I've installed the open source co-reader e-book software which is superior to the built-in uh remarkable too e-reader functionality although you do still need to have removed any DRM from e-books beforehand and that is something that Jen and I got into um in our live with it segment William says co-reader has great Robbox integration functionality makes it easy for me to open PDFs and e-pubs that I've stored there another customization that can be made is to change the sleep screen I use one that's mostly a transparent PNG so I can still see the document that I had on the screen before I put it to sleep this ability is not possible on any of the more traditional lcd or led tablet displays in this age of ever more lockdown devices I think that remarkable deserves a lot of credit for providing this freedom it's not for every user but if you're someone with a reasonable level of technical skill it's amazingly liberating passing out a root password with your devices though I just imagine like somewhere there's a security researcher that's like yes yeah but as long as you can change it as long as you can change it it's not the same for everyone that's fine and you know William you do bring up a really good point that that was something that I kind of just stayed away from because I was trying to kind of figure out like okay what do we got core access I did play around a little bit with DRM and EPUB just to see if it worked kind of thing you know not trying to get in trouble or anything but and that is possible but it isn't always the most obvious method so I think yes for anybody who has thoughts on the remarkable to or e-readers in general especially productivity devices that are kind of e-readers plus would love to hear more of your thoughts as well and yeah keep keep that coming feedback at dailytechnewshow.com we also got an email from Jeremy this was in response to our conversation with Rob DeMillo on last week's show last Friday show Jeremy says I'm one of the people that has multiple Google speakers in my house that are linked as a group I see that might be nice to adjust all the speakers at the same time but I wonder if that's something that really happens now Jeremy is speaking in response to Sonosane no that's our thing Google you can't do that you have to adjust all the speakers individually no matter how many you have Jeremy says I have never done that with my group of five speakers one reason is that not all my speakers are the same a level eight on my Nest Hub Max is a different volume than on a Nest Mini the other reason that none of my rooms are the same size thus needing different volume levels I don't know how many houses that would have rooms all the same size with all the same speakers and that doesn't even get into what is in the room that changes those acoustics I agree though that taking away the choice does suck and like Rob said if Google was smart enough to mimic the Sonos system and not copy their implementation then this is BS yes indeed that's all you got Rich I I I really I I as a Sonos person I talked about this on the show a little bit last week but I do sometimes I don't know if I'm playing music and all my speakers are linked it's nice to be able to control them all at once you know as as a nest right haha no pun intended but but yes Jeremy I I agree with you that in many cases it wouldn't really be something that would you know hinder your enjoyment of media I will say if Google looked at their analytic user data and said this is a critical feature that many of our users use they would have paid Sonos a licensing fee to keep it up and while they work done work around so that they didn't need to do it there you go yeah well listen we got some brand new bosses over the weekend and we would like to thank all of you now Ilta out Adler Antonio Mendelia Steven Wirtz and Bryce Johnson all started backing us on patreon yay thanks Ilta thanks Antonio thanks Steven and thank you Bryce y'all the best and we appreciate you so much we are live Monday through Friday on this here show for 30 p.m. Eastern 2130 UTC if you want to know more you can find out more at daily technewshow.com slash live and we'll be back doing it all tomorrow with our guest me come on for talk to you then this show is part of the frog pants network get more at frogpants.com I hope you have enjoyed this program


Our Anautoformer model is able to accurately predict air quality levels by leveraging the temporal dependencies in AQI time series and incorporating more detailed features extracted from the data. This model outperforms other baseline models on the Landshow dataset, demonstrating its potential for use in air quality prediction. This article was authored by Huifeng Feng and Xiang Hongzhang.


Look at this group, thanks Angela, so my name is Dan Koshy, I'm the executive director of Automotive Great Linux. And I have a really big announcement, I'm so excited, I wish we could get through it right away, but I have things to tell you about first, so let's start. First of all I want to thank our sponsors, without our sponsors Automotive Linux something would not be possible. First of all, thanks Automotive Great Linux for being a diamond sponsor, so thank you to the board of directors of AGL for supporting this event. I also want to thank Suntech and Toyota, our Platinum sponsors, and Intel Luxoff Microchip Open Conductivity Foundation, Yes Foundation, sorry, Panasonic Renaissance and the QT Company. Thank you very much for all your support, and I want to thank all of our silver sponsors as well. Again, without your sponsorship this event would not be possible. I read some statistics, this is a very impressive event. We have 625 people across 223 companies in 30 different countries registered for this event. So thank you all for attending, thank you all for your interest in AGL and Automotive Linux Summit. I would also like to welcome our nine newest members, these are the members that have joined since the last AGL meeting. What's nice about this is we're seeing a good mixture of companies, we're seeing companies from the security industry, we're seeing companies that are providing software and services, especially you have Linux expertise. We're seeing companies that provide navigation voice recognition, we're getting a really good mix of companies now joining AGL and I really want to thank them and thank everyone here for supporting AGL. Okay, so why does AGL exist? AGL exists because the automakers are realizing that they're in the software business. In fact, this is a very timely quote just from last week from Mark Andreessen, the founder of Netscape and also a very famous Silicon Valley investor entrepreneur. And people respect what he has to say and he said, the entire experience of being in the car will be defined by software. That's a pretty strong statement and I happen to completely agree with it. And so AGL exists because we need a de facto standard for the industry. We have too much fragmentation out there. We have Microsoft systems, QNX systems, we have multiple flavors of Linux, all over the roads, all over the cars. There's no software reaps and that's where AGL comes in. First of all, AGL is a code first organization. We believe strongly that specifications, which the automotive industry is well known for producing specifications that some of them are very important in safety critical things and so on. But for this type of software, we believe that a code first approach is better because we believe that specifications lead to fragmentation because if you have a specification, multiple vendors can claim to be compliant to the spec but then you end up with multiple different platforms having slightly different codes and that's no good to anyone. So AGL is about code first and building a single platform for the whole industry and by doing so, we're going to reduce fragmentation that I mentioned earlier. We're going to have one single platform. It's going to become the de facto standard for the whole industry so that all the OEMs, all the suppliers, everyone is using the same platform. And by doing so, we're going to foster an ecosystem of developers, meaning app developers, middleware developers, services developers, voice recognition, navigation, all these things. We're going to build this big ecosystem so that we're all working on the same platform. So that means as a provider of a solution for automotive, you can port your software once to this platform and it's going to work for everyone. It's going to work for all the OEMs and all the suppliers. And that's a big thing that we want to achieve here with AGL. Having said all that, this leads to decreased kind of marketing. It takes on average using industry data that we've uncovered. It takes on average 36 to 39 months to produce an infotainment system using the old supply chain model where an OEM gives a specification to tier one, tier one builds a black box and has some software in it and the next model year comes around or the next model grade comes around and the process is repeated. And there's no reuse and ownership of that software by the OEM. So we want to really break that old supply chain model by having a new supply chain model that says the platform survives so that the platform evolves instead of being replaced every 12 months or every 36 months in this case. And the idea is to bring down that time to market from 36 to 39 months to 12 months and bring the car industry on par to what consumers are expecting which is we have all these cell phones in our cars, in our hands and we all put them on the dashboard of our cars and we do that because of the functionality and so we want to bring all of those capabilities and that functionality to the car industry using a single ubiquitous standard which is AGL. So I'm going a little retro. When I was preparing for this presentation I was looking at old slides and I was looking at ALS 2015 where I was on this stage at ALS giving a keynote and I found this slide so interesting and how far we've come and I decided I was going to share that with you today. So let's go back in time. Back in 2015 at the very first all-member meeting which was hosted at Toyota facility in February 2015 we had four OEMs. It was a good start. We had Honda, JLR, Nissan and Toyota that were members. Fast forward to today we have ten automotive manufacturers so that's a huge accomplishment and that's a great sign for AGL. The show support by these manufacturers has been tremendous.  This is an actual slide that I showed at the ALS 2015 keynote. We had 55 members. We were doing okay. Fast forward to today. We now have 98 members. And as I said earlier, what's really nice about that membership pipe is that we're not only seeing OEMs and suppliers. Those are obviously no-brainer in terms of they should be joining. But now we're seeing companies like Oracle and SAP and telecom companies wanting to be part of this ecosystem in order to be part of the connected car evolution which includes a whole backend for over-the-air software upgrades, for security, all of this stuff. So we're seeing a whole mix of different companies joining AGL for those reasons now.  We had only 25 companies present. We thought that was really good for the very first AMM. Our last AMM in February, we had 230 people across 56 different companies across 14 countries. So you can see the momentum building over the past two years.  We didn't have our own code base. In fact, we were building AGL software on top of Tizen 90i which was a separate open source project. That was fine for the time, but really we wanted to be in control of our own destiny. So we decided to build our own software base called Unified Code Base. So fast forward to today. We've had three very successful releases since January 2016. And for those who don't know, we named our releases after FISH. That was an idea that Walt Minor, our community manager, came up with. And we think it's cool because it's an open source project. So we've had three very successful releases. And now the industry is starting to rely on us to have a release every six months. So now companies can make product plans. They can make deployment plans based on knowing that every six months a new AGL release will be coming out. This has led to a very healthy community. If you look at our numbers in terms of the growth of our community, we have over 750 developers now on the AGL primary mailing list. And as I've said before, I think this is a key metric of how healthy an open source project is in terms of developers, in terms of people sharing ideas, in terms of people collaborating together. And so very healthy. We have 750 developers, 27% growth in the past four months, over 1,200 people on the mailing list in general across the AGL mailing list. And in terms of activity, we've really grown, as you can see, from 2004 we had almost no activity on the mailing list to nearly 1,800 posts last year. And already this year we're seeing, we're going to eclipse that. We have not that 6.7 posts per day. So our community is extremely well supported. It's very active. Developers are helping each other on a daily basis. And there's really quality technical discussions happening on those mailing lists. And it's my belief that maybe the DeLorean went to the future and came back with AGL software. I don't know. Okay, so our first announcement today is that we're announcing our UCB 4.0 release, which is daring dad. Release candidate one is available today. And the final release, we're going to go through a couple iterations of dot releases to fix bugs, stabilization, and our final release will be July 22nd. So look out for that. And then finally, the big announcement that I have today is that we're announcing that AGL is in the 2018 Toyota Camry. Here's your comment. Coming out late summer 2017, the Lexus line will follow shortly after. So what we're planning around this today is that we have a press release. So if you haven't looked out for that, that'll be going out this afternoon. We have a press conference that's not open to the public, unfortunately, but we will have a press conference later today where we have Forbes, Wall Street Journal, CNET, Reuters, Bloomberg all attending this. So this is big news and we hope to get really good coverage for AGL. And then finally, come and see the Toyota keynote tomorrow by Kenichi Murata. He will be giving all the details on exactly what is being released.  In addition to this, we also have a real Toyota vehicle demo outside the building today. Now this is a pre-production demo, so you will not see the actual Camry. It's actually a Lexus with an AGL demo connected to it. But it shows the real functionality, for example, the CAN bus being read, all of the features from the car being transmitted to the infotainment system in real time into full CAN bus data available to AGL. So this demo is available outside. You go down the escalators, go around the back of the building, and it will be available there. The demo is available during the breaks and the lunch. And please keep in mind that the demo will be there Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. So if the line is very long, then Venum has asked us to keep the line short for safety reasons. So please remember that there will be other opportunities over the next three days to go see the demo. I'd also like to remind everyone that although we've been talking about infotainment because that has really been the pain point for automotive manufacturers in terms of catching up to the mobile phone, in terms of features, functionality. And infotainment obviously is a huge part of what we're doing, but our charter and scope of AGL goes beyond just infotainment. We're also planning solutions for instrument cluster and heads-up display. We're also planning a solution for telematics, meaning a headless profile. In fact, there's work going on right now at AGL where we're redefining our architecture and layers so that we can properly support the headless profile. Headless profile means that it runs on lower performance chips that are much less expensive and also don't need a display and graphics and all of the things that you'd expect in an infotainment system. So that is also coming from AGL. And then finally part of our roadmap. In fact, the board of directors discussed this yesterday is functional safety. We want to start a project to build the requirements out for functional safety in ISO 26262 and see where that takes us and whether we can use it when external for that or whether we need some other solutions. So we'll see what we're going to launch that project. And then also advanced driver assistance and eventually autonomous driving. That's all part of the AGL scope. And we want to be in every processor in the car. We want to be in every function in the car. So I want to conclude with this. We have 98 AGL members based on the data that I pulled from the registration for this event. We have 223 companies. So what are the rest of you waiting for? Join us. This is really taken off. This project is like no other.  We're going to be on the roads. We're going to be in multiple cars in the future. This is here to say AGL is for real. AGL is where the future is. In fact, I was really happy to see this morning. Forbes magazine sent out a tweet. I don't know if some people saw it. They said, quote, forget about Apple, Google and Tesla. AGL is where it's at. That was the quote. Check it out from Forbes magazine this morning. So very happy about that. So please join us. If you're not a member, come see me and we'll make you a member. We'll do this together. So thank you very much, everyone, for your attention. So for our first keynote speaker, I'd like to introduce Hina Nuri Suzuki, President and Representative, Director for NTT Data and NC Corporation. Suzuki-san has promoted full-scale entry into the automotive field and drives to expand the business field in the target area of automotive IOT and products. Now please help me welcome Suzuki-san. Today, this is my first time to make a keynote. It is very appreciated if you will have an interesting theme I will present from now on. But I would like to present today importance of data utilization in the political career by seeing some of the audience may not know who I am.


What's going on everyone? We are live me and Cody are both live. We're talking this can be a new sweet film podcast I guess I guess it could be but mostly what are we discussing? We're gonna be talking about some special stuff. So if you're catching this later, we are talking about this top 10 movie heroes And also the top 10 movie villains of 2018. I mean Cody We're just gonna do a regular old video like this. We've been filming quite a few videos today, but Well, I'm lazy and I do not want to edit all those So now we're doing it live. We want to have fun with this. We want to have a fun discussion Cody, how are you doing today? Tell the wonderful people out there how you are doing. Um, I haven't had you on the channel in a while So how are you doing? Yeah, I know I'm doing exceptionally well This is it's been a little while since we've had a sweet podcast So I'm excited for us to do this and I'm just I'm really happy to be back because the last couple of months have been Extremely busy. Yeah, of course and also guys since this is a live We will be getting some of your guys's feedback a little bit towards the end of the video So anything you guys want to say any questions that you guys want to give us Make sure also if you catch in this later Do comment what your top 10 movie heroes and villains of 2018 are but really mean me and Cody You're gonna get straight into this video. We don't want to make the longest Livestream ever in history of humanity. So Cody, I'm gonna let you decide. Do you want us to do villains or heroes first? We can flip a coin, but let's start out with the characters that make the heroes better. Let's talk about the villains I'm totally good with that. So Cody. Tell me. What is your Number 10 or do you have any honorable mentions? I don't personally have any honorable mentions for the villains, but I don't know about you No, I don't have any honorable mentions there. I mean, there were a lot of really good villains this year, but there weren't a lot Yeah, I'm with you So what are you year? What's the number 10 man for a top 10 number four villain or top 10 best villains? There you go. My my My number 10 Is the meg Oh, okay shark nice from the movie And it's great to see that we had two of them for those of you who who saw the meg Just one of the most guilty pleasure-esque movies you could watch in the year 2018 and overall I thought the meg was a great villain. It was an insatiable beast that tried to kill Jason Statham and Well Yeah, I'm not going to spoil the movie if you guys haven't seen it We're trying to do spoilers on this top 10 list particularly So yeah, but I'm with you the meg the meg was almost there for me The meg is my number 10. What about you Zach? What's your number 10? The jump cuts in mile 22 is going to be my number 10 now this film could have been beautiful This film could have been amazing, but let me tell you my god these The the jump cuts in that film are some of the worst in the whole entire movie ever made I'm not even joking Like horrendous horrible just some of the worst and I will never get over how bad this movie was It is one of the worst films of this year The jump cuts in this film It's worst seen the film to just see how bad they are like man Yeah, I completely agree and especially when you start editing videos on youtube or just doing video editing in general You you pick up on stuff like that and especially if you use jump cuts in your video the editing in mile 22 it was Wow, what a bad movie and it's actually coming off of patriots day with peter burg and which was a good movie Yeah, which is a really good movie. It's a fantastic movie. It's just a shame that mile 22 didn't turn out that way Especially since I think we both agreed earlier on it was one of our most anticipated films of the summer Yeah, I'm with you on that one. I'm with you on that one, dude. Oh, yeah No, uh, what's your number nine kody speaking of really horrendous things. Um The slender man as in the movie not the character is my number nine Because it was just uh, it was a horrible horrible villain to humanity this year Maybe not in the world of of the story or the film But um, the slender man was a villain against humanity. It was horrendous. It was poorly acted. It was Everything it was one of the worst movies to come out this year I'm with you on that but my number nine is I did not include the slender man at all in here But my number nine is going to be the kkk from the black clansman.  That's just the best way I can say it.  So Yeah, I they they deserve to be on the top 10 villains list of the year Yeah, I I completely agree funny enough my my number eight is actually uh Is actually another movie and it's uh It's truth or dare Now I could get into the specifics something might tell me that that film is gonna wind up on another list We're not gonna talk about this film too much in depth. Uh, yeah, uh, just to say it was Cool concept it had a really neat concept and the idea was good for like five seconds And then it went bad It's not like happy death day to where it's like, oh, you know, they know what they are They know they're a really really campy cheesy horror film. That's like scream meets groundhog day. No No, that's not what it is at all it's just Bad I couldn't talk about it. We'll just talk about it there. Yeah. Okay. Zach. What's your uh, what's your number eight? Um, my number eight, I'll get to in a second Thank you guys for joining if you're in the live stream. I appreciate it a ton again guys I want to hear your guys's top 10 movie villains and right now We're going through the villains and we're going to go through the heroes if you're catching this later Please comment down below. I see there are some people watching. We encourage you to do in the chat I am commenting within all my phone. I'm curious you hear talk with you guys It's nice to have you guys here and if you're also here watching Why not slap a like on that like button because I would really much appreciate that But okay, my number eight is henry cavill's character from mission impossible fall out Now while I always had a suspicion that he was going to be bad I didn't know until I saw the film and my god that review I ended up on a different list of yours But I loved the review and I loved the action sequences with him, especially the helicopter scene at the end And them fighting on the cliff just excellent excellent excellent stuff And he was a great antagonist the second best antagonist in all the mission impossible franchise Number one so goes to philip seamore hoffman. Um, but yeah, that's my number eight. Cody. That is my number eight. Nice Great choice great choice number seven for me For those of you who are watching you may not know there was some really there was some really good stuff on netflix this year And so number seven for me is the cult from apostle Most underrated film of the year I completely agree and there are The cult in general was really bad There were the leaders of the of this band of super religious zealots was was the worst I mean, they were disgusting.  Yeah. Nah, I like the postal actually. I love the possible the villains in there the cult It's great. It's a certain extent. You're like, where's this going to go in them when it gets going? You're like, damn That was tough Uh, moving on to my number seven. It's the social media from eighth grade and the amount of cringiness and the amount of Aspects that it does and I mean bo bernum set out to do that and did it so lightly that I think this is the most underrated villain of the year Am I wrong or am I right? I didn't even think about that. Holy smokes Yeah, I'll I'll say this it was between this or the villain from searching But I decided to go with this because it kind of ties back into that social media aspect And I think this really hits it on the head Absolutely. All right. So my number six villain My number is six villain is Is michael miers From hollow waist. Well, can I say my number six thing because my number six is michael miers too Wow Hey, it's the first one of the show Yay Yay Yay, let's talk about michael miers Michael miers is what it is he's been out of the picture for so cute. He's so cute even back when he was freaking you It's that mask, isn't it dude that mask turns me on Of course it does. I would expect nothing from you Future wife, I thought that was sir. Sure. Ronan. I'll let my no future wife. I'll let my family's me Please wear michael miers mask not on halloween, though We're gonna wear scream on that one. Oh gosh But yeah, I know I'm with you michael miers is a really good villain this year.  We don't know but He's awesome and one of my favorite deaths is when he grabs that annoying Kid and just shoves him on the gate Thank you michael. Thank you Oh my Getting all morbid up in here, but you gotta have to with michael miers I mean halloween. Was it the best movie ever? No. Was it a really good return the form? Was it a fun halloween movie? Yeah, yeah, it was and I know there are people who have problems with it I didn't I like the halloween films or at least the first the first couple Um, but yeah, so is that it's that we already talked about it. So zack. What's your number five? My number five is drago from crete 2 and not only one of the best written villains of 2018 but just a villain that you can really sympathize with Back in the original rocky. You just said we need to kill this guy. He killed apollo crete And this film you see how much was at stakes you see How much effect in that to the point that He had more steak Then creed did himself and if that's not a great villain, then I don't know what is crete 2 was a fantastic film. I thought it was excellent I still think the first one's better by a slight margin, but crete 2 I think what the director did so well and the writing did so well was getting drago To for you to care about him and it's it makes him to be one of the best movie villains of 2018 I completely agree. I mean victor drago He's well written. He's a well constructed villain. You care about him You see what he's doing even though he's not the most respectable character But yeah, okay. Yeah, I can It's a good he's a good villain. What's your number five though? Okay. My number five Is the is the environment in leave no trace Oh, that that's a really good one the first second I thought you were gonna go annihilation and I was like dammit. Why did I put annihilation on this list? But leave no trace. That's a good one. Um, especially towards the ending now Okay, if we're gonna talk about films that are extremely underrated this year leave no trace might very well be the most Underrated film of the entire year.  So that's my number. That's my number five. What's your number five? My number four is the demons and the cults from mandy Uh I cannot preach mandy enough one of the best films of this year That takes a while to kick in but the second it kicks in it's a drug-fueled adrenaline rush That the last hour is someone nicolas cage's best work on screen I'm not meaning this like from like, oh, yeah, it's the nicolas cage. No, he is so good in this film emotionally Adventurally Everything it's the film that was built to play nic cage and the villains in here.  Come on. Let's face it. It's a uh, it's a drug trip of a movie Absolutely, even if you're not taking drugs. It is a drug trip of a movie. Uh, what is your number four? Uh, my number four is henry is henry cavill's character from mission impossible fallout. Nice. I I love Henry cavill. I mean, it's right from the very beginning.  You not only understand where he's coming from You know, not only sympathize with the guy, but you also He's an amazing villain from for uh, for ethan hunt for tom cruise. He's he's amazing What can I say? Yeah, I'm with you on that. Uh, I almost had him down lower, but I I think my number three is Up there for being one of the best villains of the year. All right, cody Yeah, do it So there's a little film that's here called suspiria that came out and I do feel like the witches are some of the most grotesque and grossest people in the whole world. Um, the scene where they're playing with the police officer's pee pee is kind of gross But Um, the witches Are gross. They're terrifying. They're disgusting And the whole film just makes you hate them So much and they're one of the most satisfying villains of the year. I love them a ton, dude I can agree with that Now and there's a reason but i'm a i'm about to break my rule and I should have said that I had honorable mentions but unfortunately these this is kind of a three-way tie because between victor drago The witches from suspiria And my third one Is the executive the music executive from a star is born Oh, I thought you're gonna go bohemian rhapsody for a second, but that's a that's a good one That's that that's an out-of-the-box one, especially for me. So but you are right because It does kind of it does add to the ending I mean, I I'll say that you already talked about victor drago and suspiria So I'll talk about the music executive here. It's just he's just He wants to make ali the best person the best musician.  He is a giant one and he's he's a disgusting human being that works in an industry that's Very very disgusting at times But I mean great villain as a whole and I don't think I'm not sure a lot of people will consider him a villain And then he stands but I know I personally do and so that's my number three three-way tie victor drago Which is from suspiria and the executive in A star is born. Yeah, good choices. My number two. I have a feeling we might have like the top same two Maybe i'm wrong. I think our number one's probably the same, but I think our number two is the same too Uh, it's from a little film called black panther. Is it? Yeah, it is. Okay, so mine is um Well, it's black panther jk.  I know I would probably side with my movie jordan, but Kill longer my god, who knew we would have two fantastic mcu villains this year. Yeah, he's great You want to talk about kill longer first? Yeah, I guess I can I mean the first thing as a whole is number one I love michael b jordan. He's probably the hardest working actor in hollywood today And what he's been able to do from creed fruit veil station to creed to to black panther It's incredible. The guy is amazing performances every single time he gets up on the silver screen He puts a lot of hard work and it shows because kill longer is probably He's a great villain in terms of marvel marvel's had some great villains I think he's Right, he might be a little bit higher than low key for me as far as volunteer with marvel, but as It's Go right ahead zack take it away talk about kill longer kill longer just second best villain in the mcu Just i'm saying it right now. He is absolutely awesome. I think a lot of it goes to michael b jordan's performance He just has this swagger and confidence within him that just works and his opening scene in this film is some of the One of the best introductions in any comic book film to date I love love love kill longer, but my god. What is our number one? Let's say it on the count of three three two one cody Oh Meaning zack pope. Yeah, thanos I mean what other villain would not take the spot over thanos thanos is well written. He's smart He's intimidating. He looks real. They actually got a purple man to play this and just had josh brawl and do the voice Yeah, um, and you can see those hair follicles. Yes, you stop Stop That's a little inside joke if you guys watched our live commentary from avengers Griffon pointed that out. Yeah, if you didn't know thanos has hair Everywhere you gotta look at the look. It's so bad. Especially in four But you will not be able to one see you know what change it top 10 villains of 2018 thanos is here But then again, seriously, he has one of the best moments of 2018 He is the only villain on this list to win Can we say that he's the only bit on this list to win? Come on. I mean that makes him the best villain of 2018 It's true. I mean once again with all the other great villains of this year great writing We've had a build-up for thanos and josh brawl performance as thanos really really brings him to life. It's uh It's a performance for the ages and as far as a villain goes not just in terms of marvel As if you put him up there with like lord voldemort or jafar or darth vader or palpatine He stacks up with those guys. He stacks up as one of the greatest movie villains in history So we just got a great comment in the live chat some people are giving their things Killmonger josh haines that he thinks is actually better than thanos dude is What's it called his motivations, but Marin Bobic says something kody and I don't think you saw what did you see widows kody? I did. Yeah. Yeah. I loved widows But he mentions Daniel Kahlua's character from widows and chris hemsworth's character from bad times at the L royale Now chris hemsworth's character. I think would have been more of an honorable mention for me But how did I miss Daniel Kahlua from widows?  He was one of the best parts. That is an excellent that is an excellent excellent choice Thank you so much for putting that out there. I loved his performance in widows I think he was even better in widows and get out, but I think it shows how diverse the actor can get Yeah, and I mean chris hemsworth in bad times at the L royale Excellent villain there. Although I wouldn't say he was top 10 material for me. I should have I should have Yeah, but he was good I think the best thing you can say about him is that he definitely looked like he was having fun with the role For sure and if I am going to give one other honorable mention that none of us Mentioned I don't know if anyone's seen revenge. It's a foreign film, but it is gory. It is badass. Have you seen it kori? I don't think you've seen revenge So revenge is about a girl who's having an affair with a very rich man He'd go out to a hunting party with his two friends He goes out to get something and well one of the friends rapes her And then it's her wanting revenge And those three guys are horrible and they deserve to be put on this list as well So that is it. I see mr. J vaders is in here. Thank you so much j vaders We are moving on to our next top 10 listen. That is top 10 movie heroes Of 2018 now listen nice. This was a very very Very Hard list to do because I could have named every single person from avengers infinity were on this list But I didn't I only chose one so Cody do you have any honorable mentions for this list? Uh, yes Name some not all some Every single one that's in avengers infinity war. Um, okay, dr. Strange is in my honorable mentions couldn't get him in there uh spider or spider-man and my third one is Captain america and Ethan hunt Those are how Ethan hunt didn't make it Yeah, there's another there's another person on here that Oh, oh, and uh, uh, uh, here we go Thor Thor didn't make it. Oh, wow. All right. All right. Well my two honorable mentions I do have is bumblebee and aquaman Uh, you haven't seen aquaman yet, but I think bumblebee is an excellent hero What he does on cybertron how badass he is that seemed with the chain at the end. Oh god Yeah, but my number 10 my number 10. Cody It's from a film called hereditary And There are heroes in that. Um, yes, there's one and it's called the ending of the film because I could actually look at the screen I remember that that is the 10th best hero of 2018. I'm not joking. This is not an honorable mention This is me not joking. That is literally one of my favorite heroes of 2018 because at that point I could go from here to here And I could look Yeah At that beautiful screen again That black screen as the song from toy story 4's cheeser trailer plays I just go Yay, what what what? I'm happy again Somewhat start for life, but I'm okay But the ending came so I'm happy, but that is my number 10. Cody is what is your number 10? Yeah, and if you guys think Zach is joking, he's not I was in the theater sitting next to him when this What's happening? I think that was like one of the best theater experiences of this year.  Nice choice. That's a good one bow Burnham Number one anybody who's who has talked to me for any length of time knows that I think bow Burnham is one of the most revolutionary artists in today's day and age besides Childish Gambino But what he was able to do with eighth grade, especially it being his first director his directorial debut It was a brilliant brilliant film Especially since He showed that he really understands the system the way things are going on right now And if you hear how we wrote how we was able to write the Perspective of a girl in in middle school. It's actually quite funny and quite genius But what you I agree with you. What's your number nine? Zach? Um, my number nine sir is Tomb Raider Nice take whatever you think about this film. I think this film was fine. It was fun. It was good. I liked it. It wasn't horrible Um, I kind of prefer the original one still but I think Alicia vickander is one of the biggest badasses of 2018 and she deserves the top 10 heroes on here Just for that manner. She saved everyone.   I mean is there anything else I can say against that No, no, I don't think you can Which is why my number nine Is pattington from pattington too A good choice because you might show up on my list later I'll tell you what pattington no matter what anybody is going to say pattington for me is one of the heroes of 2018 as a character because pattington Went into a prison and he made every one of the prisoners who was grumpy And very messed up feel like they had a sense of hope Can I say this? Why are they not? Why is it not legally mandatory to show this film in prison yet? I don't know Zach. Why isn't it mandatory to show this film in every school known to man? To shea But that's my number nine. Zach. What is your number eight? My number eight is going to be Deadpool because he saved Deadpool 2 from being an utter disaster Now here's the thing. I like Deadpool 2. It's fine. I like it. I enjoy it There's some good aspects to it. Don't even talk to me about that Um, but Deadpool Deadpool himself. I mean was one of the best heroes of this year. He saved a lot of the world Um, even though domino really did steal a lot of his film He saved a lot and he saved my girl. Vanessa.  Yeah Yeah, I see I see I see it going on. Okay, so What's your uh, number eight, right? Yeah, my number eight My number eight is iron man Ew Look, he's the one that started it out. No, you didn't. He's the one that started it out and I Robert Downey jr. Between this and civil war in my opinion. He has given his best performance. He's done Not only in the mcu, but probably his entire career.  I I I can't even talk about a koya without gushing over how great danie gara is In walking dead, but she's so fantastic.  My number seven is The Incredibles the family. Oh, okay It's it's been You know, it's been great considering it's been so long since we saw them up on the big screen We got a really good movie and seeing them back Was such a joy and if we get another Incredibles film That's just as good as as the one we got i'll be happy But it was so great having a last a girl mr. Incredible dash violet jack jack ever I am back jack jack steals the entire show in fact I probably could have just had it be jack jack, but no I did it just as the Incredibles and it was It was really really good to see them back and they were great great heroes once again Yeah, I'm with you on that. Um But if i'm going to my number six, it's actually maybe just mrs. Incredible. Um elastic girl herself I have to just I wanted to I would have had the whole family But when I look at that film in a sense It's really her story and how well done she was how great she was how beautiful and elegant she is She's needed to have her own story, you know And I just love every single thing that how they wrote her character in this film And how they really just didn't do a parallel to the first Incredibles They really gave her her own standalone story and this is Incredibles is just well incredible, right? What's your number six kody? Okay, my number six Is the is the end credit scene of teen titans go I almost had this I almost had it. I did not award it. So I was like, I don't hold off on it. That's a good one That's a good one. Yeah, I mean we've been waiting so long You know teen titans go is kind of a joke of of teen titans in my opinion The movie was good The movie I'm not talking about the movie the teen titans go show the movie was yeah, the movie is a lot of fun It's very funny. It's very self-aware and that makes it makes it pretty good But the end credit scene we've all been waiting for teen titans to return and it looks like there might actually be some hope now And it is oh, I haven't even told you this. Yeah, they announced next year They haven't said if it's gonna be on cartoon network for it's gonna be on the dc streaming service But we will see them both fighting and we don't know if it's a show a movie whatever I don't care. I just want to see it Yeah, but they will be fighting teen titans go and the original teen titans will be coming back together All right, that makes me very happy Good now. Zach, what is your number? five Paddington, you know him from Paddington Doss I loved Paddington. It's the film that I honestly I liked the first one. It was fine But I sat down to go see the second one said I'll survive. We're just gonna make kids film walked out I sobbing Part filled the joy and said my god, you are one of the best heroes of 2018 mr. Paddington Thank you. Thank you round of applause. You turned the whole prison good And it's it's so special. Um, if you have not seen Paddington two yet Please give it a watch. You do not need to see the first one and the second one is a perfect film Yep, it is It really is Absolutely What's your number five? My number five is ali from a star is born now Why is she a hero because? Because what it comes down to is jackson main the character played by bradley cooper was in a very deep and dark slump Before he met the best part of his life Which was ali and then his music career started to pick up of course Lots of dark stuff happens throughout the entire course of the film But it really was ali who managed to get make him find that fire deep within himself and make him realize that he Is uh that he's amazing that he really loves doing this kind of thing So ali for me is a hero and ali Lady gaga's ali is just one of the best characters of this entire year If i agree with you i'm with you on that, uh Which leads me to my number four my number four is ethan hunt I think this is tom cruise's best portrayal of ethan hunt to date The film again is one of the best action films of 2018 But when i look at heroes i just sink there and think ethan hunt saved a lot of people in this one And he's tom cruise so i i mean when tom cruise is in a film as long as it's not jack reacher He probably should end up on this list And yeah, uh, there's nothing more to say, but it's ethan hunt. He's yeah, he's everything. I wanted to be in more All right, my number four hero of this year is lori strode from halloween from halloween The good choice. I almost had her but I Now halloween. I already stated my piece on this halloween. I think it's a fine film I think it's a very enjoyable film to watch around halloween time But but jamie lee curtis coming back as lori strode and what i consider to be her best performance of the character since the first halloween is she brings back so much justice we get a really great interpretation of her and She faces up against michael mires and It looks like she killed him and i hope that's the case I don't think she killed him, but I guess we'll find out sooner or later In the 47 sequels Maybe so my number three codie It's a film called mandy And in my third favorite hero of this year Is cheddar the goblin What? Do you remember cheddar the goblin from the commercial that he watches? Oh shoot? That's right. No, i'm joking. I'm joking It's nick cage man. I mean this dude gets his revenge.  Um, bye The rest of my list. Yeah, um, uh, codie. What's the number three my number three? It's bumblebee Oh, I am I Dude, I love bumblebee so much. I've already talked about him on another list that may be coming out, but Bumblebee I've been waiting so long for us to actually get a good transformers movie Now trass travis night has presented us with a good transformers movie and bumblebee is The the opening scene for those of you who haven't seen bumblebee yet The opening 20 minutes of the film are worth the price of admission Even if you do not like the rest of it, even if you think hailey steinfeld is a bad actress First of all, you should be slapped for that. I'm kidding I mean, why are you saying you're kidding? That's like that's like walking up to me and telling hey zack, you know what film is really good and I go what and they go gaudy or Slender man, that's just a slap across the face but The first 20 minutes are is worth the price of admission and bumblebee One of the best heroes that we've had this entire year I'm with you there. Um, but my time number two codie comes to one of my Favorite films of this year and it's a little guy new spider-man called Miles Morales. Yep Um This is one of the best origin stories ever made. It's one of the best comic book films ever made It's probably the best spider-man film I've ever made. It's one of the top 10 best animated films ever made It is one of the best films ever made for me. It is everything I've ever wanted to spider-man film to be and more I cannot say it enough. I love miles morales I love his story and it really even if you take out the other spider-man and just make it a miles morales story I still love it just because how much I enjoyed his character and his progression throughout the whole entire film I can understand that into the spider-verse was a really remarkable film From the producers of the emoji movie Yep All right, so my number two and number one kind of go in the same category. My number two is mary austin from Which is freddie mercaries freddie mercaries kind of in the same plate as alice She is she is and was that's an freddie mercaries freddie mercaries one true love and That's my favorite part about this is mary austin You get down to the basis of everything you get down to the film of bohemian rhapsody Although it may not have happened like this in real life mary austin is ultimately the person that saved freddie mercary from Going to a really really bad place in the film and it was great to see and lucy boynton who plays her is just phenomenal and Just seeing the relationship between mary austin and and freddie mercary grow It was one of my favorite aspects of the film and she was the best part of his life and his one true love So let's get down to it. And if you don't believe me freddie mercary says that on countless occasions All right ready freddie. You ready for my number one. All right Well, you didn't have this person in your list using your honorable mentions and my number one drum roll everyone It is Because of one of our lists earlier, but Thor and avengers infinity war now full of discretion I've never really loved the character comic. I like I love what chris hamsworth does the character But the Thor films have never like made me fall in love with them ragnarok I love aspects of it, but overall I just enjoy the film. I think it's kind of just a nice little spin-off into the franchise Thor 2 we don't talk about Thor 1. I think it's fine. Um Honestly, I think it's just fine Infinity war made me actually love Thor I think it's the darkest we've ever seen Thor it shows the more most layers and emotions we've ever seen Thor have And it's also the most badass this dude's ever been His scene going into Wakanda Is the main reason he's number one. I'm sorry that yeah, so that's why Okay, okay fine That works for me. What about you kody? What is your number one?  Ha ha you would be wrong sir. Oh Oh Who is it queen? I yes Oh god My number one hero is queen and here's the reason I could have easily put bohemian rhapsody at number one And the reason is this is because not very many people know the story of freddie mercary and granted The way the story was constructed for the film. It's very condensed. It's very mixed around and It's not a hundred percent accurate. It's a very messy biopic But I mean what movie is a hundred percent accurate But I what I'll say is that the movie bohemian rhapsody and what queen did Is they brought queen back into the spotlight? I can't tell you how many people I have I have heard talk about after they went out to see the movie They went to see and buy either the movie soundtrack or as many queen tapes as they could get their hands on That is remarkable. There are not a lot of films There is not a lot of things that can bring people who are unaware Into being conscious of the cultural phenomenons that are going on or previously happened in society And queen is one of if not the best Band that was ever formed and they created one of the best if not the best pieces of music known as bohemian rhapsody And that is why queen slash bohemian rhapsody is my number one hero of 2018 Oh boo All right, whatever I guess we're gonna end it on there and lose all credibility because cody just asked to say queen No, i'm joking. Uh, that is and you did you had a lot of great outside choices that I would have never thought of Um, so thank you. Yeah the ending of hereditary. So I should have been my number one But so we're deserved that top guys. Uh, that is our top 10 movie heroes and villains of 2018 Again, thank you guys so much for joining us on this live stream It means a ton to us if you're catching this later make sure that like and subscribe one for both of our youtube channels You guys go over to cody curtis. I'm looking up on youtube. I know he'll pop up randomly, right cody Yep, you guys can find me on youtube by searching cody curtis And guys do also look out for a couple other top 10 vids One other one that cody will be joining me as top 10 movie moments I don't exactly know when that will be out, but I do have a top 10 best and top 10 worst films of 2018 coming later this week I'm shooting for thursday at the latest to start them going And then I also have a top 10 tv shows of 2018 and i'm either doing top 10 video games or top five video games Depending on which ones I can kind of spell that i'm kind of binging a couple to get through but uh Yeah, guys, that's gonna be the rest of the list. Thank you guys so much for watching this Make sure to also go check out sandwich on films also down below if you guys want to get into some advanced movie screens But guys, of course until next time Stay classy


Hi guys, it's Tom here from the Blackstar Service team and today I'm going to be showing you how to use the St. James as an audio interface. The St. James is fitted with a USB-B connection located on the rear of the amp. When it's connected to a desktop PC or a laptop, it shall enable the St. James to act as a direct audio interface capturing the tone you have created. Step 1. Grab a USB-B cable and connect the St. James to the main USB port on your computer. Step 2. Connect the cable to the main USB port. Your computer should register the St. James as an audio device. For Windows users, do your best to buy downloading AppCO for all for additional driver support. Once connected, just simply set your sound preferences within your door so that the input device is set to the St. James. You should then be able to record directly into your door using the St. James. I hope this helps and we'll see you in the next one.


Recursion describes a repetition of a linguistic element or grammatical structure in sequence. The recursive property of language enables its grammar to produce an infinite number of sentences. In other words, there is no upper limit to the possible sentences that a speaker of a language can create. Recursion can occur in adjectival phrases, prepositional phrases, or sentence coordination. Take for instance this quote from Louis Saccar's book, Holes.  The string of adjectives modifying the noun grandfather is an example of a recursive structure. According to the rule of generative grammar, an adjectival phrase may consist of an adjective and another adjectival phrase. That adjectival phrase can consist of an adjective and yet another adjectival phrase. The rule can be applied over and over and over to create grammatically boundless possibilities. Prepositional phrases also lend themselves to recursion. Jack can be sitting on the chair at the table in the house by the park in the town with the garden next to the lake and so on. Similarly, on the level of sentence coordination, I can think that you think that he thinks that she thinks that they think that we think that linguistics is great.


What's going on everybody Ryan Williams here again on the fan door hurry up And I'm here talking about players to avoid in season-long fantasy. That's right We've been talking very positive on the fan door hurry up channel But now we got to get into the we got to get into the nitty-gritty because drafts are that maybe some have happened Already pre-seasoned over some are gonna be happening through the weekend into the holiday week So we definitely want to talk about some guys that you guys should be avoiding in your fantasy drafts Let's start it off with a wide receiver in New York for the Giants. That's Kenny Galladay Kenny Galladay is coming in at wide receiver 36 and while many people might tell you okay That's at the bottom tier of wide receiver three range and we Kenny Galladay has major upside We saw what he did in 2019 full healthy season 11 touchdowns. I believe that led the league that year In in scores, but you're looking at a situation here with a hamstring injury And this guy has injury history in the past hasn't played a game in a meaningful game since November of 2020 that is cause for concern now dealing with this hamstring injury again that happened I believe in August early August August 5th has not seen any type of action since then and we were only told that He was gonna miss two to three weeks. So his week one status is up in the air We could be dealing with the situation just like last year where he's kind of day-to-day day-to-day and then not playing and just in that range I just think there's other other areas that you can go in you can take You know, maybe a late round or mid-round running back around that time You can take another wide receiver who's going to be healthy that you can trust this offense I don't think will be very good. They were bottom five and red zone and goal line plays last year I think they could be looking to repeat that this year and that's why I'm avoiding Kenny Galladay at that price tag Let's talk about another guy. I think I might catch some flak from this On on Twitter and on YouTube in the comments, so I'll be curious to see but this is a tight end TJ Hawkinson for the Detroit Lions who's coming in at tight end six with that price tag And there's a little bit to like with TJ Hawkinson. We saw Anthony Lynn who's coming in as the new offensive coordinator He comes from the Chargers. Okay. So who is at the Chargers? Oh, yeah Hunter Henry and Hunter Henry had some success With Anthony Lynn and Titans in the past have had some success as well And so you're looking at TJ Hawkinson who's just coming off of the Probo year Big stud two years a thousand receiving yards in both years really doing some stuff at the tight end position that we hadn't seen Statistically, but now we have Jared Goff here at the helm. We don't have Matthew Stafford anymore It would be a lot more exciting to have Matthew Stafford They're throwing in passes then Jared Goff and Jared Goff has not produced really a tight end one since that Tyler Hey could be here. I believe in 2019 and people have been trying to you know cling to that with Jared Goff And I just really don't see this offense being able to excel and when you're talking about tight end six There's just so many other wide receivers running backs. Maybe you take a quarterback in that range You're talking about him going right around the top 60 picks. It just seems like you know, people want to say Okay, even if it's a bad offense, he's going to get all the targets. He's going to you know, really excel We we just don't know we don't know enough about the Lions offense and what to expect there's Favorites to be the second to worst team in the league right now if you're looking at the fan dual sports book And so for that for those reasons, that's why I find it hard to trust anybody in the Lions offense And let it loan a tight end where you have to draft him when you're talking about tight end six in right around the top 60 picks Last but not least let's talk about Michael Carter and Michael Carter the running back for the Jets I do apologize to you Michael Carter because I've been putting you through the ringer and you're only a rookie Haven't haven't shown us anything yet, but this really comes down to just the situation here I mean you're looking at the the death chart for the Jets and they do have talvin Coleman They do have tight Johnson I don't even know if Michael Carter who's really banged up right now and could be missing week one It's even going to be listed as their starter officially and this guy's going at rb 33 and I get it rb is gross this year It's hard to kind of cling your hat on anybody who's pretty much going outside of the top 12 So people want to feel like they're shoring up that spot later But when you can get guys like tovin Coleman, you know, even 10 picks later you can get tied Johnson pretty much 20 picks later still right now in drafts and I talked about tied Johnson I believe last week on the fan door hurry up with you guys It's he wasn't playing much with the ones that's michael carter In the preseason and I just don't think that this team is really going to be relying on him Even with being a first round pick I think that they're going to try and mix and match guys and they're going to let Zach Wilson throw this defense is not going to be good The secondary is dealing with some issues of letting go of players And I think Zach Wilson will have to pass and that will lead to Not having michael carter on the field as much as we think so that's going to do it for My top three players that I think you should be avoiding and your season long drafts excited to hear Your guys's thoughts hit me up on twitter at ryan alexander underscore w you can comment on the youtube channel I'll be sure to get to you guys as we monitor how these picks are doing in season long drafts But until that I'll catch you guys next time on the fan door hurry up channel. Enjoy your holiday weekend


And I turn to my neighbor. What would you say? How would you send your messages? I know that you have slides, and I thank you for that. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Jean-Claude, thanks for the introduction. Thierry de Montréal for setting this up. It's always a pleasure to be here, an event that I'm looking forward the whole year. My privileged honor this morning is to start the session off. And I'll do so with a number of slides. First of all, the state of the world economy summarized with a very Eurocentric view here for economists, the Eurozone, the United States, the UK, China. And what we see here is a state of fragility. We see that those bars go up and go down. The Eurozone's not growing. These are quarter on quarter growth rates. The third quarter is just in flash estimates, so quite fresh. The Eurozone is at the brink of a recession. The United States are surprising us with relatively high growth rates, quarter on quarter in the third quarter, 2023. The analyzed growth rate would be almost 5%. This is a lot. I'm not sure what you say, Jean-Claude, but in those times where we need to cool down, our economists are getting rid of inflation, this looks red hot too much and unsustainable. And China, the engine of growth for so many years is not growing steadily. It's up and down, and one of the major impressions that this slide gives to me is how similar the Chinese and the American experience look like if you look at those bars. And the United Kingdom here looking very much like the Eurozone. The world is such growing with a rate of about 3% in this year, next year, a little bit more, but certainly below the levels that we have seen over the last years. Now, that is not surprising given the shocks that we have been under. And I would say what we should take away from that is not only divergences across the Atlantic and across China and Europe, but a relative lack of collapse, because resilience is what we should see here. Even for the Eurozone, the feared recession, if it comes, will be a mild one and we're not facing big disaster here. The next year, some improvement in the Eurozone in our estimates, some improvement in the United Kingdom, decline in the United States and the shift side was in China. The big issue for us economists over the last two years or so, of course, has been inflation. The good news is that headline inflation is coming down on the right-hand side. You see the United States on the left-hand side, the Eurozone in both is coming down. Core inflation is very much the same now in those two areas. Surprisingly, something like 4.2, 4.1%. But what you also see is that the Eurozone has a larger trajectory to run through. We have been at higher rates than the Eurozone. And what worries me here is that the 2% target is still quite far away from us. If you look at the green bars in this picture, there's a services inflation and you see it's very high, both still in the United States and also in the Eurozone. And the services inflation, of course, reflects wage growth more than all the other categories. So I think we must say the job's not yet done. The central bankers are gaining back control. That is true. But I fear that we're really in a situation higher for longer, as the professionals say. And the fight against inflation will be finding the world economy for more than the next one or two years. My fear is that the strong increase in interest rates will feed into financial risks. And we have not seen everything yet. So on top of all the geo-economic struggles that we're facing, the climate disaster financial risks, I think, are high. The rates will be higher for longer, I've said so. But we know that monetary policy comes with a lag and that lag can be substantial. And my view is that a large share of what monetary policy will achieve has not yet visible in the data. We see that fiscal policy needs to become sustainable again. That's true in the Eurozone, but it's very much true in the United States. And that too will put pressure on growth and on the financial markets. Quantitative tightening has not really fully started and that will also affect interest rates, the long-run interest rates and the growth perspectives. Only 20% according to some estimates of the total impact of monetary policy tightening is yet in the data, so more to come. And what I fear is that the financial crisis that we have seen showing its face earlier this year is not yet over, somewhere all those fixed income assets must be that have come under pressure over the last years with the high interest rates. And we only need a big shock, you know, that forces insurances, for example, to liquidate their holdings to see more financial stress in the system. So I'm a bit fearful on this side and I'm also a bit fearful about the Eurozone. Inflation differential across the zone are huge in the October inflation rates. The difference between Slovakia and Belgium is something like 950 basis points. That's enormous and something that worries me quite a bit. We are far away from an optimal monetary area in Europe. This should not be possible if we were really having an integrated single market. And the interest rates spread across Eurozone is up, look at Italy with almost 150% of debt over GDP and the interest payments more than doubling. That puts stress on the system. Now, if I may look at the international arena, what we see is that the boom in use of economic sanctions is going on. This is the translation, if you like, in economics, what we see in the political world war by other means. This is the political science colleagues say, political conflict that's fought out with economic means. The trend's not good. This is data from the Global Sanction Database that I'm putting together with US colleagues at the exponential growth. That is certainly something that's weighing on the growth perspective of the world economy and shows that the political risks are, of course, translating into economic risk because sanctions mean disruption of global value chains mean decoupling, at least at the bilateral level. And so that's what we see here in terms of globalization. That's my preferred measure of globalization is just taking a quantity index of international goods traded divided by quantity index of industrial production. So we're hopefully comparing here apples with apples and not bananas. And what we see here is resilience on the one hand. So the world has not declobalized, but the hyper-clobalization here in blue has stopped and it had stopped like 15 years ago. But what we do see is at the newest data that the world economy is slowing down, a significant decline in this measure. So trades falling faster than industrial production. The World Trade Organization's trade reports relatively alarmist, not the latest version of it. And I think what we can say is that the decoupling is happening, for example, at the bilateral level between the United States and China is also eating into the aggregate data. Trade diversion can only go somewhere to mitigate the bilateral effects of less trade, for example, across the Pacific. And then something I would like to bring our attention to is the enlargement of the BRICS group, the two, six more members. I think this is significant. It's under discussed, as far as I can say. There are implications on the world financial system as the BRICS have their own bank, for example, setting up more autonomous currency systems. And the enlargement of course involves this country here, the United Arab Emirates. And so I thought it's important to bring it up. In terms of numbers, share of the BRICS plus six in global GDP or in global population, this enlargement is not making a big change. But what it does is it brings in countries that have been outside of the inner circle of policymaking, like Iran, for example, into the BRICS. And I believe that is the challenge for the world order, as we've seen it. The hope is that this does not lead to more polarization, but certainly this event tells us something about the situation that we're in in the world economy and we should take note of this. Here I stop, Jean-Claude. Thank you. Thank you very much, Gabrielle. You stick to the concept, which is give messages, short, concise messages. Thank you very much indeed. On the inflation, I will only say, I share entirely the views. That being said, I will strike myself that core inflation on both sides of the Atlantic is now exactly the same figure, which says something and gives credibility to the fact that they have the same goal, they have the same definition of price stability, which is reassuring, all taken into account, even if, as you said very wisely, the challenges are still there, of course. So thank you very much.