Dear students, I'm going to present to you a very interesting concept, and that is the concept of a degenerate random variable. A degenerate distribution is a probability distribution, the support of which is only one single point. Now, let me say it again. A degenerate distribution is a probability distribution with support on only one single point. Let's talk about normal distribution, the most well-known distribution in the world. When you hear a normal distribution, what comes to your mind? You think of that bell-shaped curve. On the top, you can see the bell shape. But the question is, what do you say about the x-axis below? Obviously, you will say that the entire x-axis is involved, from minus infinity to plus infinity. The entire x-axis is on top of the bell-shaped curve, which we call a normal curve. It is drawn on top of that and it is on top of that. So that is the case when, which is just the opposite, I should say, of what I just said. That is the case in which the entire x-axis is acting as the support of your distribution. And what I just said is that it is such a distribution that the x-axis below is just one point above it.  So let me try to give you one or two examples. Suppose that I pull out a coin and interestingly, we find that on both sides of that coin, we have a head. Now if I toss it, what am I going to get? Obviously, no matter what I do, when I toss it, I will get a head. Another example. Suppose that I pull out one and we find that on each one of the six faces of that die, we have that same number. Then you find three dots. Then obviously, when you will toss it, so note that you are performing a random experiment. So that is why it is said that this kind of a distribution satisfies the definition of random variable, even though it does not appear to be random in the everyday sense of the word. Therefore, it is called degenerate. Well, degenerate actually, this is also the way to understand that the x-axis, as if it collapsed, it became only one point. And all the things we have are on one point. For example, what I just told you three, that there are three dots on each side of that die. This means that the number three on the x-axis, your distribution is on top of it. It is a vertical line, the height of which is one. Why? Because the height will denote the probability, so if it is one, what does that mean? The probability is one that you will get three if you toss this particular die. What does probability one mean? Don't you know that one is the probability of a short event, cent per cent, hundred over hundred, one. So this is short energy. If there are three dots on each side of it, it is a short event that you're going to get a three. So degenerate, the normal curve or any other distribution is the first one. This is your support, it collapses, it is only one single point. In this particular example, it is three. After this, note that if we formally call it using algebra, we will call it like this, that if the space of the random variable contains only one point k, for which the probability of p of k is greater than zero, then p of k has to be equal to one. Now, as I just explained, the mean of that random variable is equal to k, that is, mu is equal to k, and the variance of that random variable is equal to zero. Now, consider a third example. Suppose that a teacher in a classroom administers a test, and the test is out of ten. Now, in that classroom, suppose that twenty children are sitting. If every single one of those children gets seven marks out of ten, all the seven marks of the children come, then it is not obvious that the mean mark is also seven. Because if you add the number of seven twenty times and divide it by twenty, then 140 over 20, that will again give you seven. So, the number of each one is the same mean. That is what I just said, that mu will be equal to k. And the second thing is variance is equal to zero. Look, everyone has a number of seven. There is no variation whatsoever. There is no variation. So, how can variance be anything other than zero? So, as I said, it's a very, very interesting concept, the concept of degenerate random variable.


Good morning, good afternoon, whatever time it might be, wherever you're tuning in to us. Another fine episode of the non-profit show. And today we have back with us for a non-profit thought leader show, Ann McCauley Lopez. Welcome back, Ann. Ann serves as the SEO content writer for agency content writer. As you can see with her amazing background there. But today she's going to share three steps to stellar SEO content. So stay with us. Before we jump into the deep end with you, Ann, and we're going to learn so much, Julia Patrick and I want to remind our viewers and our listeners that we're here and who we are. So hello to Julia Patrick, CEO of the American non-profit academy. I'm Jarrett Ransom, your non-profit nerd, CEO of the Raven group. And we are so very honored to have the continued ongoing support from our amazing presenting sponsors. So I'm going to give those verbal shout outs to Bloomerang, American non-profit academy, fundraising academy at national university, non-profit nerd, your part-time controller, staffing boutique, and non-profit thought leader. So thank you so very much. You have kept us going and growing well over 600 plus, plus, plus episodes. And again, thank you so very much because we are allowed to have such amazing conversations. If you missed any of the conversations or you want to go back and listen to what Ann is going to share with you for this conversation, you can find us on so many channels. That includes Roku, YouTube, Amazon, Fire TV, as well as Vimeo. But wait, there's more. We're also on podcast.  You know, Julia, I've heard lately that we've become like the Netflix binge series. So if you're going to share with us like so much information, people are going to come to your show. And then hours later, they're still going to be, you know, watching the non-profit show. But we certainly want to welcome you back. And thank you for sharing your time and expertise with us. And thank you for having me. It's, this is always a great opportunity. I have found over the last few years, I truly have a heart for non-profits. The work that you're doing out there is changing people's lives. And if I can help get your website found, get your mission out there to more people, then I've done my little piece of it and you can take it around with it. So yes, it's exciting to be back. I'm excited to see both of you. Thank you. Well, you know, I always love your energy. And we were saying in the green room chatter, I always feel like you give us ideas that aren't intimidating. They're logical. They seem achievable. And so you kind of reduce that hair on fire moment for me at least. And so I really appreciate that, that steady hand and guidance. But one of the things that we wanted to bring you back on today to talk about is SEO. We're always talking about it. We always, you know, you need to do that. But if we could pull back a little bit and really dig down into what it is and what we can do that's actionable. And so I'm really excited to kind of get a deeper understanding. And I think I want to start with a question is, what is SEO content strategy? I know. Is this going to get my hair on fire? What are all these letters? Oh my gosh. No, don't catch your hair on fire, ladies. SEO stands for search engine optimization. And it's basically how is your website found on Google? So when we talk about an SEO content strategy at its most basic, it's really how is your website organized? Is it organized in a way that Google will read and understand Google scans websites and how Google scans them has changed over time? So our websites have to keep up with that. And the content strategy piece is what information is on there? Is it useful not only for the people who visit your website, but is it also at least some of it findable by Google? Not everything has to be optimized. And I want to make sure I stayed up from the outset so I don't forget. We can tell a story about those we serve, but we don't need to have all those key words in it necessarily. So that's it in the nutshell is how Google finds us and what's the content we're putting out there. Yeah. And I love that you said it's changed over time. So, you know, our search engine, so our website or internet or internet, whatever we refer to it as the worldwide web, it has changed. And so that has of course impacted how search engine optimization needs to change. And you work with so many organizations, different sectors for profit nonprofit, but you definitely have a love for nonprofit. And so I'm really excited to learn from you here because as you know, and SEO is not like our bailiwick for us nonprofit nerds like that's not typically why we go into the sector. No, not at all. And I think for for most of the folks that work with for profit and nonprofit, that's not your focus. That's why it's mine. That's why that's why we love you. Yeah. Yeah. And help me understand this a little bit more in depth. This is not like a one and done thing. You know, you work to get a new website up or change it. And then you're like, okay, we're done. Right. I mean, this is an ongoing thing, correct. It is, I'm sad to say it's a marathon, not a sprint as well. So we'll take a little bit for Google to notice you and we'll dive into what those details are today. But yeah, it's because Google changes, but honestly, it's also because your nonprofit's changing. You know, there may be a time of year when we want to highlight donations or we may want to highlight a particular program or kids are going back to school. This is kind of the season for that. And if your nonprofit is focused on that, then maybe we've got to have a different focus. We want to have donations of paper pens and crayons. I don't know for your nonprofit rather than, you know, fill the teacher's classroom rather than some other program that you have. And that's okay, we can work with that. So it's really, it's really about being flexible. I remember one of our early conversations, Julia, we talked about, you said, well, if I fill out my editorial calendar, what if I have something else? And so we want to allow for that as well as we're as we're planning out the content we're putting there. And this conversation is really hyper focused on how do we do that strategically, both for the organization and for Google? So I have to admit, Julia and Anne, I always thought it was a set it and forget it. And you just blew my mind in this, like, it can be seasonality or themed based off of what's what's most important for the organization. But I have to admit, I always thought SEO was a set it and forget it, like, let's just do it every year, let's update it, and let's be done. But to have it based off of what's going on in the priority of the organization, never would have thought of that. Yeah. And we stick to, we stick to those, you know, the keywords that that we identify and we'll we'll dive in on that a little bit. Yeah, I mean, there, there can be some strategy and also while telling the story, right, we always want to tell the story of who we're serving or highlighting our staff or whatever it is that we're doing. I've got a client now and he's got an basically like an agribusiness and he's got a different style of farming. And so we're writing about that and he sends me an article and he's like, oh my gosh, all that we were talking about the weather in Arizona right now. I'm in North Carolina now. And and he's he's in Utah and he's like this weather in Utah is weird. I'm like, so is Arizona. And so we said, well, how does that impact the business and how does this impact the mission of your nonprofit? And he's like, we've really got to get this information out to people. Right. So even the literal weather in this case is impacting the content that we're going to put out ever changing. I love it.  What does technical SEO mean versus just SEO? Well, I think I've come on here before and said, I don't want to put good content on a bad website. And I don't mean that your website's bad. I mean, maybe it's out of date. Maybe it needs some tweaking. And where I want to start and and where I've seen great results is on the technical side, which is the back end of the website, that part of the website that nobody wants to touch. We want to set it and forget it. But there are some things that need to be monitored. We need to make sure the website's being updated. We need to make sure that it's loading in a particular time. All the things that the search engines count as high priorities. We want to make sure our websites are doing as well. That's the technical side. There's also some SEO kind of coding for lack of a better phrase that we need to do on the back end of the website. I know enough on this topic to know it's important and that I am just slightly dangerous. So I actually have a website partner and all they do is build websites and technical SEO. And they have wonderful maintenance plans. Because then what that allows me to do is partner with them and say, okay, here's what I see on the front end. And here's what we've got on kind of more the creative side on the front end of what can we do to enhance what you've already done on the back end to already have this good website. How do we put that great content on the front to really mess them together and create a beautiful marriage of tech and storytelling? Oh, someone write that down. That was good. The thing this is recorded. Yeah, no, that it's a listen to it again. Yeah, that website optimization is step one. And you're right, like, like looking at the back end, because I can't tell you how many times I've been to a website, including maybe my own, and a link didn't work, right? Or the pic, the picture didn't load or there's so many different nuances.  And I know that that definitely is not static. It's constant. Yeah, yeah. And it really it impacts how Google scans the site. If it's not loading enough, then that's everything else could be great. You know, if it's not something else, you know, if things aren't updated and stuff like that. So yeah, it's and that's one of those things you can farm out. You can have some you don't need somebody on your staff to I don't have I hire my website partner. I called her up one day and I said, you know, the stuff I'm selling and telling people about I'm going to need that. She's like, I've been wondering. It's a bit of an embarrassing conversation. Yeah, but you know what? It's a really interesting conversation because so often the nonprofit sector, we struggle to get going with that great website that can do everything. I mean, our episode yesterday or on Monday was all about the donation experience, the donor journey on a website. And yet we're it seems like we're doing it once and then letting it go and not being engaged. So I appreciate you bringing that up to kind of help us understand we need to keep investing in this, you know, for a lot of reasons. Step two, you talk about the impacts of keyword research. And again, what is that looking like for nonprofits? There are some tools out out there. SEM raw school suggests I got uber suggests keywords everywhere, ask the public, all sorts of research.  I put in the main idea, do a search and go to people also ask. That will give you a very good idea of literally what people are asking. So take it around with it. That'll give us a good idea about what to use for keywords. We can get I spent a year looking for someone who knew SEO, and I came across a lot of scams. And a lot of strategies that I thought, gosh, that doesn't quite sound right. It sounds like you're writing fake reviews or doing these other taking these other tactics. A lot of that probably is still happening, but I don't go near those folks anymore. What I found was that if we're answering questions, common questions about our organization, we are understanding what are people asking about the organization? What do they want to know? What's the story we want to tell? We can even tell a story and infuse those keywords. We have to be, you know, you kind of have to be strategic about it. But again, not every piece that you put on your website has to be, has to have all those keywords. So I start and I do an overview. And if we're not going and doing like paper, click ads and stuff like that, I understand what the volume is. I don't need to know the cost necessarily of those keywords for really what we're doing, which is fairly basic keyword research and SEO, you know, search engine optimization. From there, once we've built that up, then we can go and we can say, okay, and we can go to my guy who does the in-depth research and say, okay, how do we build this from where we've gotten it and make it even more powerful of a website? If we want to do so, what if we have the budget for it? Because that's going to cost more. But for me, it's really about strategically creating those stories and using that technical piece and what we know about Google and what we want to say about what we're doing. So I go in and I do research. We find those key words.  Do they call it hydroponics farming or do they call it farming with less water? Do they call me a content writer or a freelance writer? And we write to those words. And that's really what it means. You know, like, Jared, we were talking about the homeless, it's not homeless people, it's people experiencing homelessness. So if it's those kinds of tweaks, how do we help people who are experiencing homelessness during this, you know, during the pandemic, during the whatever, now.  People tell Google a lot of things, right? Like we do a lot of things. And so we can pull up and really leverage that to help us determine, you know, truly what those keywords need to be or key phrases to incorporate for our SEO.  Right. Kind of, yeah. Don't tell anyone now, Jared. Now, I have a follow-up question. When you talk about this in terms, and let's just address it through a blog, a blog post, are you talking about actually using that vernacular and those specific words in the content and or plus putting it in the backside? So for example, I know like on our website, if we do a post, we have the opportunity to, on the backside, input those words as well, whether they're in the actual content or not. So could you help us with that to understand that? I do both. I use, typically I'm on WordPress websites, so I don't know what others use. But there are two plugins, Yoast or RankMath, that are utilized, that I utilize on those websites. And I know on Yoast, it's a green light and RankMath gives you a score, which is like getting a test score. I'm like, oh, I got a C plus. Oh, I got a B. Right, right. And it helps give it that extra question in addition to everything else that's in the background. But yes, it definitely helps to have it in both places, also on your images to have that keyword on the images. Yes. That's what I'm telling you. All my secrets today. What is that? I had the flu. Everything's coming out now. It's because you love our nonprofits so much. I'll tell you all my secrets. I love it. I'm asking, is there a difference between using keywords or key phrases?  They're technically long, long tail keywords. And yes, I use them interchangeably. Is there a difference nominally? Yeah. But both are ultimately the same purpose. Okay, the same purpose. I will say too, I will add it's important. And this is always the first question I ask is who's your target client or who's your target audience for nonprofit? Like, are we talking to donors? Do you need volunteers? Do you need a sponsor for your big events? Who is it that we're trying to reach on this version of the website or within this blog post that we're doing or this series of blog posts so that we can then, I can dig a little deeper in the keyword research. So if it's children with leukemia versus adults with leukemia or, you know, mothers with children who are experiencing homelessness rather than just homelessness in Phoenix or homelessness in Charlotte, you know, whatever it is, we want to dig down a little bit deeper so that we're capturing that audience as well. And again, it can change depending on what we're writing about. Like, what is that that we're highlighting for the nonprofit? So it's a little bit different. I mean, I think business in the for-profit world, it can be the same. You know, always, you know, you want to focus on a service maybe rather than a program. But the idea, the idea is the same is that we want to highlight, highlight something and use the keywords and know who we're talking to, which kills me like, who are we talking to? Like, I don't know. Right, right. Honing in on that niche audience, honing in on that niche terminology, both of those are really complementary to one another. And I just want to call out, you know, because Julie and I learned this from you, Ann, is SEO is also built into blogs or can be built into blogs. And that's one of the things that you provide our great sector is really that blog writing, in addition to content writing for websites is how we can build in the search engine optimization, use those keywords in blog articles. And I just, I had to call that out because Julie, thank you. We learned that from you. And that's why we wanted you to kind of dovetail that into how that is strategic content. Because absolutely, I always thought that that was just kind of like an extra that didn't flow out as much. And it wasn't as powerful, but maybe it was just more of an ego driven kind of thing.  Oh, no, no. It's actually one of the easiest ways to gain that. They used to say Google juice, the Google love. So one of the things I've done is, and I, I'm pausing because I'm putting new packages together. So I'm kind of like, okay, let's talk about this. So one of the things that we can do, I know I'm very, very, very excited. So one of the things that I have noticed is whether it's for profit or nonprofit, we have a lot of websites have a lot of content.  And how can we create something? Because what Google's done is they want relevant content that answers people's questions. Again, I thought that was just kind of why we did all this on websites. But no, it's not intuitive. People were just kind of throwing content up in some, in some instances. So the first thing I like to do is just take a look at the website. There is a, it's either called a cornerstone or a pillar blog post, which is a longer form post. And it starts interlinking all those articles. It's one long article. The one that we'll mention later that's on this topic that's on my website is, I think is one of mine. And then there's another one. There's an ultimate guide to hiring a content writer that I've used as both really as pillar cornerstone blog posts. It starts linking pages of your website together, which gets us that Google love. And it's really simple because your articles are there, right? Like, if we're blogging on American Nonprofit Academy, let's pull in some of those podcasts related to that topic, because it signals Google. The other thing that we can do that Google likes, which is another big fat secret I'm telling, we should call this all my secrets. Top 10 secrets I have is to take an article from, to link to an article outside of our own website. So you link it back to mine, you link back to Jared's, you link it to a nonprofit professionals website. If you're a nonprofit, link it to Julia's, right? American Nonprofit Academy. So that, and it's related, it's not just a random link, but it's related to something. So you can start building authority online. So Google notices, oh, you've got our attention. We see that you're interlinking. This website is about this. It's not about all the other stuff. It's about this. And it really, it really boosts that. So then once we have that pillar post created, we have other topics that we can write about. So I love bullet points. It's so easy. Like, here's what, here's what we know. And I'll take one of those words and say it's like freelance writer on mine.  I'm going to link it to freelance writer from my pillar post so that the blog posts are talking to each other. And then from there, it's fascinating. It is. Like Jared, I'm going to the world talk later. Julia, we'll talk later. And it's fun for me. You love nonprofits and fundraising and getting all the right people in all the right places. And I love looking at content and putting it all together. So yeah, I just jumped up in my seat because I'm excited. You love pillar post. I love it. I'm thinking, I need a pillar post, but I'm going to blame the sweet tea that you're drinking in Charlotte. And I think that's why you're divulging all these secrets. And I love it. Oh my gosh, I am. I am. Oh my goodness. You know, next time I'll have to do my top 10 secrets. I don't know. I know. I think we've gotten through it. Hey, you know, what's really interesting about this is that in the nonprofit sector, and we do have a lot of information that we learn from our own experiences, but from the sector. And so it's, I love what you said about really becoming that online authoritative voice. And because I've got to believe that when funders or donor investors are searching, and they, they find you, maybe that elevates or builds a new relationship. Are you seeing that? It drives new, new contacts to drive new content. Oh, for sure. For sure. And I think too, for, for you ladies, you are thought leaders, you know, so let's, let's put some of what you've learned. You go, you know, maybe you've gone to a conference or speak at a conference or speak to a group. And here's what we discuss. Like, I don't feel like we're giving anything away. I think for a little while, people thought blogging was like, we're giving away the farm. And I go back to the auto mechanic. And I've probably said this before on here, but you could do a video about how to change the oil in my exact car. And I will not do it myself. I'll go, wow, that guy really knows how to do it or that gal knows how to do it. I'm going to go to them. Right. So you're not giving anything away, you know, how to put a board together and encourage them. Well, I, great, Jared, come in and help us do that. I'm not doing that. Yeah. So let's write about it on the blog and then for that big pillar post, which is like 1500 words probably, then we can, we can think of a strategy. We'd say, okay, here's what we've got and here's the direction we want to go and different articles that we need to maybe fill in the blanks of some of the information that we've talked about, but also we want to be sharing events and sharing where does the money go and sharing family stories. In some cases, we can probably weave in some of those key words for sure. Um, subtly, I feel like that if you want to talk about superpowers, that's my superpower. So we can, we can certainly do that, but not everything does. You could have someone on your staff write an article and let's get that up there. It's not all SEO, but it is important to have some of that.  I love it. You know, I always learn so much from you and I want to make sure that everyone gets to know that they can go to agencycontentwriter.com and you have a fabulous article. Want more website visits? Three step SEO content strategy. It's a fascinating read. It really helped us to talk about what we wanted to talk about today with you and my colleague Lopez. Just amazing. Again, it was the agencycontentwriter.com. We have a comment for a viewer. I've got to share this with you, Anne and Jared, because it's great. This, this viewer writes in, why do I leave the nonprofit show with so much personally imposed homework? Yes. I think that's just great. I really do. Yeah. I mean, it's really cool and you always give us a strategy and a framework with not only how to do something, but why we should be doing it. So that's super powerful for us in the nonprofit because as our, our viewer just, you know, wrote in, we do have so much to do and we add things to our plate every day and sometimes we have to make a judgment. What's, what's the highest and best value? And so thank you, Anne, for sharing that with us today. Again, we are just always amazed when Anne can come and visit us. Anne at agencycontentwriter.com is her direct contact information or again, go to agencycontentwriter.com and as she says, call me. I will help you figure this out because it's a, it's a big task. Again, I'm Julia Patrick. I've been joined today by the amazing Jared Ransom. Jared, can I say the newly affianced? You may. Yes. It's been a lot of fun. Thank you. Thank you for the support. And I have a feeling, Anne, you're going to have a lot of people calling you or writing you to say, I want a pillar post. Like that's just what I'm leaving. They are going like pillar post. Okay. I need one of those. I mean, yeah, totally. I've probably already written yours, Jared. Oh, what? Oops. Yes.  It's fantastic. So from one nerd to another, thank you.  So we are honored to have you not only on the show, but in our sector at large. Absolutely. Absolutely. I enjoy seeing both of you speaking with both of you, nonprofits. This is like the nonprofit year for me. I'm telling you. I just love it. So it's been really fun. And I think I'll see you again one more time. So this is wonderful. Yes, at least. Well, we want to make sure that we thank all of our sponsors before we leave our viewers and our listeners today. Our gratitude goes out to boomerang, American nonprofit Academy, your part time controller, nonprofit nerd, fundraising Academy at National University, staffing boutique, and of course, nonprofit thought leader, and my colleague. It's been really, really amazing. And as we like to end every episode reminding ourselves, our viewers and our listeners to stay well, so you can do well. Thank you, ladies so much. Have a great day. We'll see you back here tomorrow.


Okay, so I'll make this presentation on the county climate change fund mechanism that has been piloted and being rolled out in Kenya. For the benefit of all the participants, mostly those were from outside, just to say that we are organized in terms of the national level and then the next level is the county level. In Kenya we have a total of 47 counties, below the counties we have the sub counties and then the world level which is our lowest planning unit. In terms of the county climate change fund mechanism, I just want to say that this mechanism is designed to channel climate finance to the lowest level to finance priority climate change interventions. As you can see from the diagram on the left, it's designed to attract funding from both public and private sources, national, international and local sources from example the budgets. And in terms of planning out to use and the condition on the use, we have the world level committees at the lower level, which have a role of mobilizing the communities to identify and prioritize the interventions. They work together with the county level committees which I'll come to shortly to see if they meet the prayer grid criteria in terms of identifying what to invest in. And as we've been employed or implemented this is that majority of the funding is dedicated to the lower level. That's the world where we have 70% of the total kitty, 20% catering for things like policy and the county level and restricting expenditure on administrative overheads. In terms of how the mechanism looks like or what consists of, it consists of four components for interrelated components that work to reinforce each other. I'll just explain this briefly. So the first component is a county fund, which is established through a county legislation used to finance priority climate change activities. As I have said, it's designed to attract funding from the public that's through the budgeting process, private sector donors, etc, etc. And the key thing for us is that county governments, which is our sub national governments also allocate a percent of their development budget each year to the kitty. We have been allocating a minimum of 2% one to 2% some are now doing three, which is great. And this man is used based on the prayer grid criteria to finance those interventions related to the committees is that to the fund is the committees, we have committees at the lower level, which are truly the pillar of this mechanism at the world level, the lowest planning unit, but work with communities to identify what their challenges are climatic challenges prioritized based on the valuable budget, which they know in advance to invest in a particular year, and then share these or engage this with the county level committee that support them technically to ensure they meet the criteria and finance those investments. The key thing for these mechanisms that the relationship between the lower level and the higher level at the county level is more facilitating rather than vetoing what's coming from the lower level. The third component being a climate change initiative is about the focus on climate information services and other tools that help us integrate both community and other forms of knowledge. We have our agencies, the meteorological department, supporting the process of coming up with a strategy to provide tailored climate information to users at that lower level, so that this informs the assessments that committees carry out the implementation, the design and location of investments. So, this is to ensure that they deal with both current and also the future is that people are able to pick up. I don't know why it's jumped. Sorry, something happened. It's just jumped to the next slide. I don't know. The other bit is about ensuring that we also track what we are doing in terms of where it started way back in 2010, and our then Ministry of Noban Kenya, which felt another glance which felt that those areas were actually being impacted and the feelings that they could not wait any longer. The idea was to come up with something that could be tried and then integrated in the government planning system. So, the work started way back in 2010 with participation of a number of agencies, national and local ones. Later, apart from working in the initial county of Isiolo, we later after stock taking moved to additional four counties with support of a number of development partners, but the key thing for us at that particular juncture was the fact that the was the fact that the national adaptation plan actually picked this up as a good lesson that was worth replicating. So, first forward, the fact that in our new planning cycles, counties now legislated to ensure that this is properly institutionalized, we had rounds of investment for the rounds of investments. And also we took some time to learn from our mistakes and see how best this can be taken forward, especially in our national planning change action planning processes that's going on. And of course, to date, where we have Victor, sorry, sorry to interrupt, but I was hoping that you could be able to put the slides back in presentation mode. Yeah, thank you. Excellent. Yeah, sorry about that. So what makes this sort of the business unusual though it was initiative piloted by a number of actors I think the decision to ensure that we look at the current the planning system that we had and see how best we can reform it to ensure to respond to the challenges that we're facing at that particular moment and also going forward. So instead of piloting outside the government, we worked within the government to ensure that we addresses the weaknesses with the planning at both lower level at also at the national level. Another bit is that we the committees have talked about the world level committees. These are the, the cornerstone of the pillars of this mechanism, but they're elected by community members. And they decide in terms of where to use their resources that have been allocated in a particular year. This one is giving us the opportunity to ensure that whatever is prioritized whatever is invested in actually respond to the needs of the people. The affected people, most of the modules groups that are usually left out in the process. The board government agencies, NGOs both international and local development partners also ensure that we harness to have a stable benefited from their different knowledge resources and capacities, but I don't think would have been possible. We'd only maybe only government or only in just doing their work separately. And also, the fact that we are creating a fund mechanism that can pull funding from different sources also help us in ensuring that we have targeted and well coordinated mechanism going forward. Achievements. So as I've said over 10 years, going forward, we have the 15. As of now we have 15 counties that has established the mechanism that was for components, but the beauty of it is that, apart from the fact that they're nationalized. We are seeing the world committees, the communities who are driving this process engaging in the wider planning and budgeting process so they're not only influencing the climate change work, but the broader development work in the county. Of course, we have investment done with the resources that we got from the development part of the government, ranging from the infrastructure type who are likely working areas of most of them are on water. But you also have other ones like community for broadcasting climate information and other development information. We also have a regulatory for quicker and timely diagnosis of diseases, healthy livestock. We also worked on strengthening those customer institutions that we felt were very critical in ensuring that we manage resources sustainably going forward. And of course, strategies and plans also developed. The other key thing is that this was new and therefore documenting for the benefit of those who are coming or getting into the process. We thought also was very critical. So some photos there on your right. One of the important point I want to emphasize on this particular slide is the picture on the right, the water point where you see communities decided to turn our challenge into a solution to a benefit. This was a big rock, which was channelling rainwater into the community land costing gullies, heavy Russian, but they felt that if it was, there was an impact mentor a barrier created, it could be the water could be channelled into water tanks that can be used to supply water to homes for different uses so you see the benefit there. So how are we aligned with the, the locally led principle. So fast about devolution, which for us is critical in terms of decision here actually being made at that lower level by community representative elected by the communities. And therefore, what we're seeing is that the investment are very relevant pertinent to their issues. Of course, in terms of, we've also tried in the design. And also in the legislation is recognized that you need to actually ensure that the marginalized the minorities are included in the process, otherwise you'll hear their voices. So that has been done. But as you'll appreciate some of these challenges are deep seated in society in our cultures and practices and therefore it's going to take a long time before they are actually there to be adequately. So while we are doing that I think a lot still need to be done. We've had the advantage of working on this this for some time also taking time to reflect the still learning and inform future development. And therefore I think the beauty is that we now appreciate why it's good to spend some good time and get some funding to continue doing the work that you are doing. Additionally, the fact that community what's in the kitty for a particular financial year help us in terms of participation decision making, and therefore the only work with what they think they can do and avoid directing long list that are never acted upon. The other bit is about, as I said, it was a concert brought together. And the key thing is that we're looking at what's going to be the difference. So how, how can they support the initiative and how can this be taken forward. We had agencies concerned with the planning, playing a critical role in terms of how to reform planning process. We had both dealing with climate information among others. The other bit is about uncertainty going forward as far as climate change is concerned and you'd appreciate that with the debt challenge then you need to adopt a staggered or a stepwise process where you can start small, take your lessons strengthen the institutions based on the need that is realized and then go forward. And therefore that flexibility in programming is required as you respond to these issues. Of course, there is the need to ensure that we also have been built accountability mechanisms for us, election of committee members are transparent. There are people who have shown good leadership roles in society and therefore very much accountable. How do we ensure that we effectively support climate risk management? As I've said, we are using climate information, the different products like seasonal forecast, the updates, a couple of years, but our agency, the meteorological agency is also working to provide long term projections to ensure that we inform the interventions well. The other thing is that we are also building on the strength and experiences of community or customer institutions so that we harness on their local knowledge, local practices. And also we do things in a better and coordinated manner. Of course, in the process we have therefore embedded tools and process that end up with that to happen that we can harness that community knowledge into the process. Of course, as we, one of the things that we've noted as we work to integrate or make use of climate information is that there's a group, the ultra poor that are often left out of the process, more so because they don't belong to most of the networks that are being used to disseminate the information. Some of the challenges as it had not been just smooth running. The one of the challenges that we've actually seen or experienced is that dealing with the political politicians or the leaders, which we have to do, is a challenging that they want quick and visible results. So things to do with the hardware, hardware infrastructure makes sense to them, but in certain cases communities have prioritized things to do with the strengthening governance which most people are not sometimes not happy with. So balancing that has been a challenge, but is a journey that we have to work together. Thank you so much, Victor. I'll request you to wrap up now, just so that we don't overrun the schedule. Thank you. Okay, in terms of, this is my last slide, going forward. I think I said that we are now moving country, countrywide the 47 counties, where this process now being led by our national treasury in support of development partners, as well as our government here. The only thing is that for most of them will get both readiness, money to prepare the ground, put the necessary institutions and mechanisms in place, then invest later. The two counties, the Nairobi and Mombasa, which are largely cities, I think are the only one excluded from the investment grants because there are a lot of other programs going on for investment. Then we see this is part of mobilizing resources to our national climate fund and linking it to the county climate change fund going forward. So what treasurer is doing now is to mobilize pool funds together at the national level under the national climate fund and then channeling it to the lower level. Thank you. Thank you so much, Victor. That's a brilliant, brilliant overview of another otherwise 10-year lessons and programming on county climate change fund. I have a quick follow-up question for you, Victor. Now, at the moment, we are experiencing hunger and starvation in some of these counties that you're talking about in this country, in Kenya. And so the question is, how has CCF been helpful and what lessons can we be able to draw to support communities when really the challenges such as lack of food and hunger and starvation becomes imminent? How can such a fund be able to be useful and move quickly to be able to alleviate such problems in those arid and semi-arid counties as well as the coast? We are seeing news everywhere of people really starving from lack of food. Yeah, I think if you look at the counties that have CCF functional and those without, I think we see them doing better in terms of numbers affected, whether it's due to the water for livestock, water for domestic use. So I think, but we are going to solve every problem in one or two years using the CCF. I think the beauty with it is that once we pull this together, together with the other interventions from other arms of government, then we can really deal with the different challenges and hopefully we can ensure that the numbers that are impacted or affected by these events leading to pharma in ETC can reduce significantly and on a more sustainable basis going forward. So we are dealing with it, but it's something that's going to be gradual, not solving one or two years, but over time with sustained investment.


etail shop I actually think that this is a more even spread of revenue sharing across the landscape because you can imagine that there you know are is going to be a wider distribution of growers and labs and wholesalers and manufacturers across the landscape that there will be for the distribution of retailers so you know from from the perspective of my community I could see having more more of an even revenue spread across the state that question but the other side of the thing is the thing that I've always been concerned about is the addition to have the sales right well this is this is the next stop of the bill on the floor for the house to adopt it after that we will have to sit down in conference with the senate who has a different scenario of taxation than we do and so that will be an interesting conversation I anticipate that you know this bill is for on the floor this afternoon we will have a conference committee and I think one of the things that will be hotly debated in that conference committee is local taxation given you know I've heard that from the senate I mean I think that is one of their concerns so I mean with this bill as it comes out of the house so you know there's still another step in this process assuming this gets passed on the floor this afternoon where we will have to say because we'll be part of that conference committee process we who vote for it another problem I have and I understand I know why the fees haven't been set anyway the problem is that I see is we have no idea what these fees are going to be and we won't until the the cannabis control board sets these fees so these fees could be thousands of dollars of these fees could be hundreds of dollars we don't know yes we're setting the fees they're making a recommendation true okay and that's fine I'll stand corrected on half of that but we set the fees but based on their recommendations but but today I do not know what these fees could be that's fair so this could be a $50,000 integrated license fee or it could be a $500 integrated license fee and that's a big difference yeah well let's look at what did I get I'm trying to represent the term the because my constituents in my town because we have the largest medical it's right now it's medical marijuana and dispensary in the state and who knows that could expand well the dispensary's fee licensing fee today is $25,000 that's the recommended and there's no taxes so there's no ability to collect a option tax on dispensary sales on this so what you're saying is I take you're saying John is your again we don't like to use whatever so but we need to assume here because we don't have setting so we're going to assume but that the let's let's say an integrated fee which is the biggest and the best and the largest fee which is going to get the most money is going to be at least how much I think you know you could model it after the integrated license I mean not the dispensary fee that is currently charged because it's 25 I think right right and that and that 25 all that 25 will go to all that will go to where it will go into the cannabis regulation fund to support the cost of the cannabis control board so what what part is good what with the amount do you think it's going to go to the top well there's a separate fee that will be set for the town again we don't know we don't know but we don't know any of these fees but ultimately here we decide and you have input into that process we continue all right the only other amendment that I know of was an amendment to the appropriations section of the was an amendment to the appropriations amendment which essentially takes out you want to describe that to us so it does not it does not designate where the six percent sales tax revenue goes it just dumps it into the ed fund okay we voted on that look yes I'd love to know what you we voted to find that amendment not favorable on 11-0 and I just said in my hand too just an update for those that are going to be selling the the newest fiscal note of the board cost over three years so we'll have that on our desk from ways and means but I don't know if we need to hear from the sponsor if we do we can wait but otherwise I would move that we find the back amendment unfavorable I don't maybe it's not even for us to it's an appropriation money so maybe it's so it's a it's a data point that might come up and so I think it's fine for us to struggle it it because it was an amendment to the work that the appropriations committee did he presented it there so if Jim's motion is to find back unfavorable so yes means now do you find the back amendment unfavorable all right do you find it favorable are you abstaining sorry I'm sorry it's it's lunchtime no it's not much I made the motion to make it unfavorable which that we don't like we don't want the amendment I mean you'll just get put into the education fund and who knows where it goes I think it's what the appropriations kind of goes into that money which can always use more but it will get lost right so if you vote yes it's going to go into the education fund and if you don't know what's going where no if you vote yes it's not going it's going into the afterschool program right and that's what I like okay so you're voting you're with everybody


this 10th year Daily Tech News show is made possible by its listeners. Thanks to every single one of you, Kevin, Paul Teeson, Ali Sanjabi, and brand new patrons, Mike, John, Natalie, and AA. Thank you all for following us at patreon.com slash DTNS. On this episode of DTNS, Sony pulls discovery content from people who paid for it. Yeah, it's kind of as bad as it sounds. Could X go broke? The BBC has a level-headed look, and PC Mag's IaaS Aktar tells us what the best Android phones are. This is the Daily Tech News for Monday, December 4th, 2023 in Los Angeles. I'm Tom Merritt. From New York, New York, I'm IaaS Aktar. And I'm the show's producer, Roger Chang. IaaS, how do you feel sitting in the seat of judgment over Android phones? It's quite a great seat. I enjoy it very much.  You are you're the right person for the job. Others would have been like, well, no, I don't know if I'm like, no, I love it. Judgment is for me. Yeah. Yeah. No, it's your thing. That's good. I can't wait to get to that segment. All right, let's start with the quick hits. Spotify announced its third round of layoffs this year. The first was in January. And then they had about around 1000 or so, 6% of their workforce in June. And now they have eliminated 17% of the workforce. That's about 1500 jobs. Spotify laid off a few 100 employees in January, 6% in June, and CEO Daniel X cited the economy and rising costs as the reasons for this round of right sizing, as they call it. Spotify recently announced a rise in monthly active users and operating income and its first quarterly profit in more than a year and a half. But the margins are still thin. Yeah, a lot of money and less people working. Excellent. Anyway, Google DeepMind discovered that if you asked ChatGPT 3.5 Turbo to repeat a word forever, it would repeat it a lot, but then reach a limit and start to spit out raw training data. Over at 404media.co, Jason Kohler has found that OpenAI now limits the response to a few dozen repetitions followed by a notice that this request may violate the terms of service. So don't do it. Yeah, that's not good. You'll now be able to send uncompressed photos and videos as a document in WhatsApp for iOS in the latest update. This is an alternative to the default compressed version. It's rolling out over the next few weeks. If you don't notice it right away, you should get it soon. When it does show up, you'll tap on the plus, choose document, and then after document, choose photo or video. The recipient will get the full photo, but they won't get a preview thumbnail. The file also must be smaller than two gigabytes. That should be plenty, though. The feature has been in testing for the Android WhatsApp version since September, so it shouldn't be far behind coming to Android as well. You know, if you wanted to invite your entire office to your home theater, you can do that pretty soon. If you have an Apple TV of a certain kind, Zoom posted an app to the Apple TV OS store that lets you use an iPhone as the camera to take Zoom calls on your TV. Yay. Apple's own FaceTime works in the same way on the Apple TV. Now, Zoom works on the Apple TV 4K second gen or later, so enjoy. Just be careful where you put the phone down when you're taking a break. Eurogamer is among the first to review Sony's PlayStation Access Controller. This is an accessible controller for folks. It is similar to the Xbox Adaptive Controller. However, the PlayStation Access Controller is a full controller, so no need for external input devices. It is supported by dedicated accessibility software, which has come out to rave reviews as well. Eurogamer did note that it's only got 16 buttons, so it cannot fully replace a dual-sense controller and probably works best paired with one, mostly because it doesn't have enough buttons, but you could pair it with a second access controller. You just got to pay twice and get 32 buttons, and that should be enough if you can't use a dual-sense at all. All right, folks. That is our quick hits. Let's talk about another Sony story that is less good than the Access Controller. Sony's been emailing users and put up a page on its website to let folks know that some Discovery TV content they paid for will be removed from their libraries after December 31st. You heard me right. If it was a Discovery show on a list of around 1,000 titles, whether you paid for it or not, and you wouldn't have access to it if you didn't, you won't be able to play it after December 31st because of an expiration of a licensing agreement between Sony and Warner Brothers Discovery. Sony wrote, due to our content licensing arrangements with content providers, you will no longer be able to watch any of your previously purchased Discovery content, and the content will be removed from your video library. Links to a page listing a few thousand shows. So you don't own that video, and apparently neither did Sony because they can't keep it around either. Keeping in mind, last year, Sony removed some content from Studio Canal from users in Germany and Austria due to licensing issues. The company stopped selling TV shows and movies back in 2021. They did say at the time that you'd still be able to access your existing purchases, but that's only as long as the content licensing agreements allow them to provide them to you. Now, despite this being the kind of horror story that people bandy about a lot when discussing buying cloud video, it is pretty rare. You can count on one hand the number of times this has happened. You might need a second hand, but you won't need more than the normal two hands, which makes it all the more significant that Sony not only sent this note, but didn't apologize, didn't say sorry, didn't offer refunds, didn't offer workarounds. This is something recently Google started removing magazines that you had bought from them and gave people the opportunity for a refund for these magazines. Those haven't been sold in several years. So Ayaz, what do you think? I mean, obviously, you should have known you didn't really own it from the beginning, but a lot of people probably didn't realize that. Yeah, I don't think this is something people think about when they part with their hard earned money.  I don't think people are thinking that when they purchase stuff, especially going through Sony's television service. So you basically had to choose which retailer to go to or online retailer and then you paid them stuff and then stuff disappears. I would argue that Samsung not Samsung Sony is particularly thinking about its response. It's like, well, if we say an apology or say we're going to give you money, we're setting up a precedent. So the next time we do it, you want more money, you want more refunds.  It's like, Oh, well, these are gone. Now a lot of this stuff is on, I believe, on Max and Discovery Plus. Now if they offered like a free month of that, maybe you can watch your Mythbusters and how the universe works. But it's kind of depressing to see this because it was really psyched when movies anywhere came out. You buy a movie, it's available in multiple services. That it was not applicable to TV shows, which always bothered me. And now this bothers me a tiny bit more. Yeah, I think there should be, I think it would be good for the consumers. Let's put it that way to have an analog of movies anywhere for television shows. And anybody who doesn't understand movies anywhere, you log in and associate the platforms where you own movies. And then those movies become available on all the platforms you have associated. So if you associate Google, Apple, Amazon, Voodoo, then every movie you've bought at each of those stores is available on each of those stores platforms with a couple of exceptions. There's still one or two studios not participating. But for the most part, most movies will be available. And even if a platform goes away, like Target used to have their own video platform, when the Target platform went away, because I had movies anywhere, my movies stuck around. They are available in Apple and Google, etc. And so situations like we're having with Sony today don't happen with movies anywhere because of that. And I believe Sony is part of movies anywhere. So it would be great if you had the version of TV shows, a TV show version of that, but we don't. So we end up having to hope that the licensing agreements to sell these videos was better than the one Sony struck because frankly, people are mad at Sony and there are reasons to be mad at Sony. But I would also be mad at Warner Brothers Discovery for insisting on terms that allow them to pull these away. As the provider of the content, it would be nice if they weren't insisting on a term that said, oh, once you buy this video from this platform, we can revoke that license in the future because that that is ultimately Warner Brothers Discovery doing this. They could grant a waiver and say like, oh no, the Sony stuff can stay on indefinitely, but they have not because they want you to subscribe to Max. That's right because Warner Brothers Discovery in an unprecedented mood is making another bad move. You heard it here first.  And the weird thing is it doesn't matter what the studio is or the streaming service or even if you quote unquote buy a video, they can disappear left and right. And that's like one of the reasons since the streaming stuff was changing so far. So recently, I was like, okay, I got to make sure my servers are up to date. I've been getting my own stuff. I've been buying physical media, ripping them myself. Now, check your local laws if you're allowed to do that, and obviously don't start, you know, distributing it. But for me, I want to make sure that for some reason, let's say Max loses it or Sony decides to like just lose their license or Warner Brothers pushes a deal whomever because it's not just Warner Brothers, just tons of studios that want to make their own money and there are tons of places that are trying to do this. Having your own stuff as your own backup and I like a server over physical media. It's just easier to work with. I highly recommend it if you've got the time to kill. Yeah, I have always looked at these even the movies as long term rentals, right? There's a rental that usually expires after a week or so. So if I'm like, you know, I might want to watch it more than once over a year, then I'll buy a TV show and I will think of it that way. I will think of it as this could go away. I'm not collecting it. There aren't a lot of people though that think of buying TV shows on a platform as collecting and I would rush to add in the most cases, they're right. Like if they've bought something from Apple, that has stuck around with a couple of very minor exceptions in a couple of countries where there were a couple license issues that I think got resolved. So for the most part, people don't know this has been a problem. This story is going to change people's minds and it's actually going to depress sales of digital video because people will say, maybe I shouldn't buy this here because I heard about that Sony thing where things will disappear. Maybe they don't make enough sales on digital items to care, but if they ever want to, this is a bad precedent that Sony and Warner Brothers Discovery are setting. Sony should be better about the communications and the policy aspect of this. Warner Brothers Discovery should be better about the licensing aspect. If anybody's listening to this from those companies, listen, you want to make sure the cost is low because when the cost gets too high or the stuff's too expensive, it's hard to find. People go and they sell the seven C's. Don't make it hard for people to get your stuff. Don't. Speaking of money, let's talk about a BBC article called, could X go bankrupt under Elon Musk? Now, those of you who are fans of Musk, I know, are immediately got your back stuff, right? You just felt that. Oh, that tingle. Like, ah, here we go. Another hit piece. This is not an overhyped hit piece. It's a fairly level-headed evaluation of this question that leans toward no. They probably won't go bankrupt. It's actually telling people like, those of you who think it's going to fail, here's why it probably won't. But I would submit it does show how far we've gone with Twitter that this is now a serious question that deserves a serious level-headed article. So to summarize, you should absolutely read the article. But the actual danger is that Insider Intelligence estimates that X's ad revenue is close to $2 billion and that Musk has cut staff costs down quite a bit, but Reuters estimates X still has to pay $1.2 billion a year on the interest of the loans that Musk took out to buy Twitter. So 1.2 of the $2 billion ad revenue is being taken out for interest. You also got the cost of operating and 90% of the revenue is estimated to come from ad revenue. So there's not a lot more than the $2 billion. The options that Clayton lays out in this article would be that Musk could put in more of his own money, and he absolutely could, but doesn't seem like he wants to. He could renegotiate the loans to reduce the interest payments. That seems like the most likely thing that would happen if it runs into trouble. And it's not necessarily going to run into trouble. But if it did, that seems like what would probably happen or Chapter 11 bankruptcy would do the other. So not bankrupt go out of business, but bankrupt, let's restructure the debts. However, at that point, the banks might actually push for management changes, and that could result in some very public and costly court cases. Even then, though, X would continue to operate, because if it shut down, creditors would have a good case to put a trustee in charge and turn it back on anyway. So it does look like it's probably not going to go bankrupt. It's probably going to renegotiate loans. But it also, none of these were talking about profitability or increases in monthly active users or anything like that. Yeah, what's not to it? It's been less than a year. So the whole deal starts off in April 2022. It closes in October 2022. It's 2023 in December. And these are real questions. And I'm sure Tom mentioned it just make reiterating this. This is from the BBC. This is not something like kids blog, and he's losing his mind or her mind. This is responsible for reporting discussing whether or not the service can continue. I don't know if Musk has the, let's say, the humbleness to call it a loss and sell it to some companies. They've been looking to get into social media forever, Google, Microsoft, Apple, and look at U3. I don't know if it would be humility or exasperation. If he sold it, it would be because I'm done. You all have ruined it. I'm done. I'll finally sell it. That would be the only way I see him sell it. Yeah, so he'd have to make it about him and he succeeded. You know, you guys didn't buy, you didn't want it because of this. I give it back to the people, basically, Bane from Dark Knight. He'd have some spin. Yeah, but that's the thing. It does go to show that we've seen this a lot. I feel like we've been covering this forever. These ebbs and flows of like, this giant can never be toppled, and then it does get toppled. Whether it's bad management or another service comes in, it's really about the cost to entry. The thing is, if you're looking for a microblogging service, that's not hard to replicate, because Twitter itself was even a copy of the old aim away messages. That's all this is. Granted, the ton of goodwill that Musk has thrown away with posts instead of tweets, X instead of Twitter, it's mind blowing how somebody could dis-tank this. So it's a real, it's very important that this stuff is discussed. But the other thing is like, if news sources are moving away from the, let's say this, I'm going to lack a better word, the stink, the stench of Musk, the stuff that he will say, and that the f off to advertisers, all of these very poorly thought out, poorly managed and sometimes offensive things he's doing, it's not that hard to go, you know what, I'm a big advertiser, I'm a small guy, I'm going somewhere else because it doesn't cost me much to leave, even though you might lose your thousands of followers, but whatever. Yeah, I think it's significant that, you know, a few years ago, the pieces were all about, can Twitter get its monthly active users up far enough? Can Twitter increase its revenue beyond advertising enough? And now we're talking about, can Twitter make enough money to not go bankrupt? I think that's very telling. The other thing it can do is bring in new revenue sources. So that's worth considering. Subscriptions in Musk's own estimation could only make up 100 million, so that's not going to solve it. It could help a little bit, it won't solve it. The new revenue sources could involve turning X into a banking app, into a money app, which Musk has talked about, that's going to take a long time. It's going to take a while to get adoption, especially when you have a chunk of your audience that doesn't trust the platform anymore. I wouldn't write off a surprise product of some sort. It is the kind of thing Musk does where you think he's down and out, you don't think he has any moves, and he pulls something out of his hat, the hat that he sits on, and suddenly it's working. And he gets to see, I told you so, as if he planned it all along. I'm not saying that's likely to happen, but I wouldn't count that as a 0% possibility. I'll put it somewhere lower than Tom was saying just because this has only been a year. You're supposed to go slow in the beginning. This is amazing. I have to look up stuff in history. Anything has lost value this much so quickly, not involving a government shutdown. There have been a lot of things lose this value this quickly, but probably not as big. Probably not as big as this at the start. Well, folks, follow us on X at DTNS Show. Or if you're someone who's like, yeah, I'm not over there anymore. We are also at mstdn.social on Mastodon, DTNS Show there. We're daily tech news show on TikTok and DTNS pics, DTNS PIX on Instagram and threads. The OnePlus 12 comes out Tuesday, December 5th in China. OnePlus continues to steadily trickle out details ahead of that announcement, including 100 watt wired charging, 5000 milliamp hour battery. But if you're not in China or you don't want to wait for the OnePlus to come to your market, IaaS has been looking through all the other Android phones out there to determine the best of the year for PC Mag. Now, IaaS, we've got these broken up by kind of user, which I think is a useful way to do this for folks. Where should we start? I want to start with the most fun stuff, and that's the foldables, because you know, if you've seen a phone in the past, I don't know, 10 years, they've looked pretty much the same.  And I've been using the Galaxy Z Fold 5 as my daily driver for a while now. It is very expensive and it's insane. They're going to charge this much money for a phone, a better replace, your phone, your tablet and your laptop. And this thing tries to do it. The fold, the Z Fold 5 tries to do this between decks. You can use the optional S Pen with it. And yes, the front screen is a little thin. It's a little strange as a form factor, but it works really, really well. I know you've got the Pixel Fold, Tom. What do you like it? What I like about the Pixel Fold, and I haven't lived with the Z Fold, but I like that it looks like a phone when it's folded up. Like I can use it like a candy bar phone. There's no compromise on that. And then when I open it up, it folds flat and works like a Pixel, and pixels are good phones. I'm curious what gives the Galaxy Z Fold the edge in your... Yeah, for me, and no pun intended with edges here, when it comes to the Z Fold and the Z Fold 5 and in general with Samsung phones is they really put a premium on productivity. They're charging you a lot of money, but you can use this like a full computer. Yes, you can write on it. You want to run more than three to four apps on the screen at one time. Samsung lets you do that.  If I'm using the tablet space, the 7.6-inch internal display, I'll have at least three apps open. Maybe it's like a chat, my email. Maybe I'm sketching notes with the pen in another corner. Might be a video player. This is absurd usage. And I think if you're doing that, you should not be... If you're going to charge like nearly $2,000 for a phone, you should not be limited. The Google Pixel Fold lets you have three apps on the inner screen. You want to have two apps on the first screen? Check out my review at PCMag.com. We would explain how you do it. It's a trick. It's not technically or officially a thing. I just figured it out. So, I just have a really hard time being handheld when paying that much money for... Handheld by your handheld. That's right. It's in there. No, that makes sense. The Fold can be used for bigger and bigger things, whereas the Pixel's better at being used as a smaller thing, which is less of a reason to pay that much for it, right? So, yeah, I do get that. And that's a weird thing. I'll be talking pixels, by the way. I want to talk about this, because the pixels... Look, if you're like, hey, I want to take photos from my phone, you can't really go wrong with any Pixel. 7A, 8, 8 Pro.  It doesn't matter. All right, Google's really fantastic when it comes to their software. And they've they've really pushed the envelope when it comes to what can the phone do to an image that's captured? Because at some point, basically, the hardware is it's becoming homogenous. It's the same stuff. So, how are you going to get more detail out? What are you going to get? What shadows are going to be there? What are you going to actually have separation between your background and your foreground? What can you possibly do? Every pixel device I've used, including the Fold, the 8 and the 8 Pro, just phenomenal pictures, a little oversaturated. Yes, you can remove that because that's people kind of like that Samsung does something similar. But I got to say, Google's got great phones. And if you see my reviews, basically, I'm getting kind of bored saying this, like the image quality is excellent. Optically, image stabilization, fantastic, always good. And the 8, by the way, is just, I think is almost a steal at 699. Now, you also have Galaxy S23 Ultra listed in your list alongside the Pixel 8, Pixel 8 Pro, Pixel 7a. I get what you're saying, where the pixels and the Fold probably doesn't count because it's so expensive. But the pixels are good if you want the best user interface, the best camera for the price. They are great phones. What gets the S23 Ultra on this list? The S23 Ultra, I like to say, if you speak iPhone, this is like the Pro Max. It's the biggest, it's the most expensive. You can do everything. Basically, it's the Fold without Folding. That's what it is. And you don't have to spend as much. And you've got a little bit tougher materials because you've got like Victus 2 or whatever special version Corning makes with Samsung. Again, you've got just boatloads of power. The form factor is a little large. The corners are a little sharp. So if that bothers you, that's something you should really know about. It's essentially carrying a tablet in your pocket at 6.8, 6.8 in screen. But it's good luck trying to make it crash or good luck trying to be overly productive. You cannot, well, maybe somebody's going to take me up on this, but like it's very hard. It's very hard to push that thing beyond the point of usage because Samsung is thankfully still using Qualcomm chips in the U.S. and those chips, the Snapdragon 2 Gen 8, if I got that right, or maybe Snapdragon 8 Gen 2. That's 8 Gen 2. Got it. That is really quite amazing. Okay, so I like the way this is breaking down. The Pixel 8, 8 Pro and 7a for most users, right? From general use, the S23 Ultra, the Z Fold 5 for power users. I want to use my phone almost like a laptop or at least a tablet. What about the Flip, not the Fold, not the Pixel Fold or the Galaxy Fold, but the Galaxy Z Flip, the small compact case form factor? Yes. I don't know if this is the industry term or it's just what we've been calling it around the office, but we've got the Book Style. That's the big Fold. That's the big one. Then there's the Clam Show. So we've got the Clam Show. Even though arguably the Book Style one is Clam Show, but it makes the most sense, because you can close it with one hand. Now the Book Style, you close with two. I've got the Z Flip 5 on my hand here, and I've got a Razer Plus on my other hand here. Depending on the day, I will recommend either one, because these devices are quite cool, but they operate very differently because of the software. Hardware wise, Samsung's hardware is outstanding. It's got tougher materials. It can handle more water, but it's not dust proof. The Razer Plus is actually IP52 rated, so it's not really good with water, but it can handle dust better, which is kind of interesting. But the thing is, I hate to say this, the software is better on the Razer Plus. This is the way I put it, though. If you want to basically use the outer screen as a mini phone, and then you choose to open it, that's the Razer. If you're like, hey, look, I just want to use this. This is the Flip 5. If I want to use the Flip, and I just want to look at the screen as essentially like a glorified smartwatch, or that kind of thing, then this is fine. You can easily carry a 6.6 inch device in your pocket. So if you want to, the Razer Plus is basically a 2-in-1, and the Flip 5 is about two screens for one phone. It's like a form factor with a nice outer screen. Yeah, it's kind of like those old days where the LG had a little strip on the top. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The Edge devices with the lights. It's like, yeah, it's useful. It's way more useful than strip lights or whatever. Sure. And you can make it operate similar to the Razer Plus if you jump through a lot of hoops. Again, check out my review to explain how to do that, too. But Samsung wants to give you that Apple-like experience where every app that runs on this small screen works really, really well. Motorola will warn you saying, hey, look, that might not work great, but then they're like, but you can use it. One holds your hand. So you can do it. Yeah, great. Modus is like, go for it. All right, let's wrap it up with budget. Somebody is like, you know what, I don't want to spend a lot of money. What's the best phone I can buy? Okay, so this will change per year because Samsung keeps updating them. This is the Samsung A14 5G. Samsung has this excellent style of taking their high-end features and bringing them down and down and down in line. So this has got 64 gigabytes of storage and you're like, hey, that's not great. But this has expandable storage, which I know in 2023 is not a thing. But so you can do that. So you don't have to worry about that. The display is quite good. You've got modern cameras like Samsung's cameras are really good. So this is the other thing, even when you have a lousy Samsung, these A-series phones would have been like flagships, I'd say approximately, you know, four years ago. So if you're like, hey, this phone stinks, it's 200 bucks and it's basically excellent for the price. And because it's Samsung, you usually get updates for about four years of OS, five years security, the A-series, I got a double check. But in general, Samsung supports their stuff quite well. So that is a great way to get a budget device that can last you a couple years. All right, we'll have links to all these in our show notes at dailytechnewshow.com. And of course, read the full reviews at PCMag.com. Let's check out the mail bag. On Friday, we talked to Tristan Jutra about creating GPT chat bots. Bodie from the Kilowatt podcast has been trying these out and wrote in with some observations. He says, at first, the GPT does most of what you want it to do. Over time, the GPT gets creative. And again, in my experience, goes off the rails. If someone is just starting out playing with GPT builder, I think it's helpful. But when you're ready to create a useful GPT, switch over to the configure tab and manually type your instructions, manually type custom instructions, stay closer to the overall intent of the GPT. It takes some trial and error, but the overall GPT is better. And he's made a couple of chat bots that if you have the GPT service, you can try them out. We'll have links in the show notes as well. One was created as a way to run a simulated residential house fire as an incident commander for fire service training. But if you're not in the fire service, he created a similar GPT that just gives you over the top scenarios that you can play around with. So go check those out at dailytechnewshow.com. Also, Andrew writes, offices have never been great places to actually get work done. But when I first started working more than 20 years ago, it was bearable. People taking calls from their desks was infrequent. And if so, in hushed voices. Most of the noise across a cube farm was from collaboration from your team, which you might want to tune into if you could help. But then the open office plan came along, he talks about the how it's noisy. And he's like, it's no wonder people want to work from home. He says remote work could potentially drop even further if all teams were local and had adequate workspace. I know in person collaborative time is still what draws me into the office when I do go. But most companies I've interacted with either keep hybridizing teams because they can't figure out the right talent locally or don't have dedicated team areas for collaboration or both. So he's saying the office isn't designed for people to want to come back to work. It looks like we might need a new revolution when it comes to the design of offices like you were talking about open offices, kind of great for the the the the renters of the place or the people leasing it. But for humans working there, it's stuck. And now we've got the we've gotten used to like having stuff at our own time our own pace. It'd be nice if somebody could redesign what would draw somebody the office. And I'm not talking about Instagram backgrounds like look it looks like grass on the wall. Right. Right. No, it's a it's a good point that if you wanted people to want to come back to work, keeping the open on floor plan was probably one of the big reasons that people wanted to stay away. I don't think it's the only reason I don't think it's necessary. I don't know if I agree with them that if they didn't do it, it would bring people back. People complained about cube farms quite a bit back in the day. But yeah, it's it's a point worth considering nonetheless. Thank you, I as actor for being with us. Where should people go if they want to follow more of what you're doing these days? Well, you're welcome, Tom Merritt, an audience of daily tech news show. You can find me at PC mag.com and reviewing all kinds of things, usually phones, tablets, mobile networks and all kinds of fun stuff because they keep coming up with phones. And I got to keep reviewing them. So check them out at PC mag.com. Patrons stick around for the extended show, Good Day Internet. The band Kiffs is continuing on as digital avatars. And if you're like, well, that sounds familiar, ABBA, the 70s supergroup has been doing it as well. Is this the future of rock and roll? Is this how rock and roll never dies? We're going to talk about it. Stick around. You can also catch the show live Monday through Friday, 4 p.m. Eastern 2100 UTC. Find out more at DailyTechNewsShow.com slash live. We'll see you tomorrow.