Good afternoon. I'm Paula Feldman, Director of Business Intelligence with PMMI, and I'd like to thank you for joining today's webinar on PMMI's latest report, Food Packaging Trends and Advances. Over the next hour, Jennifer Zeeman with Proactive Worldwide will provide perspectives of the Food Packaging Market Research Report. Jennifer's experience with Proactive Worldwide in the Consumer and Industrial Goods Practice began as a research analyst working on research projects for a wide array of businesses from QSR's Quick Service Restaurants to Fortune 100 CPG companies. She now serves as an associate director guiding the research process for proactive consumer and industrial goods team. Today's discussion will focus on market size and forecast, packaging innovation, key trends affecting the industry, equipment investments, challenges facing the market, and solutions equipment providers may provide. At the end of the presentation, which should last approximately 45 to 50 minutes, Jennifer will answer any questions you may have. So at this point, I'd like to hand the webinar over to Jennifer from Proactive. Thank you Paula. Good afternoon everyone. As Paula had indicated, today's discussion today will center on some research that was engaged by PMMI in the fourth quarter of 2015 that focused on the food industry, primarily in North America, although the scope of research also garnered insights on some of the trends that are occurring in other markets internationally as it may relate to trends that may affect the North American market. Today we will discuss a range of topics as Paula had indicated earlier in her discussion to discuss how those trends manifest themselves in the North American market. Our scope of research covered a wide range of areas in terms of multitude of segments within the food industry, covering everything from the convenience market to the meat market to snack foods to pet foods and everything in between. What was not included included dairy and beverages and things of that nature. So we were very targeted in terms of focused on food products and excluding liquid beverages. We also saw perspective from a wide range of respondents. Over 70 respondents provided perspective that ranged from food company personnel from packaging and processing engineers to marketing directors, equipment manufacturers, materials suppliers and food industry consultants. So we were able to gather a top-ranging perspective from everybody who touched into the food industry. We also spoke with 14% of those respondents outside of the United States and North American market to provide perspective, as I said before, on trends that were going into other areas that might affect the North American market. So again, it was a wide-ranging reach. That all played into our understanding of what the global market size and North American market size was. So as we look at the US market specifically, the US food market is growing at a very slow but steady pace. When we look at that and how that is affecting the food packaging market, that is growing at a compound annual growth rate of about 2.9%. And that's projected to be a steady rate all the way through 2022. So we're projecting that to be a $31.7 billion industry at that point in time. Now some of the factors that might affect that growth rate, while it largely follows the growth rate of the food industry itself, that 2.9% compound annual growth rate, there are other factors such as retailers and consumer preferences that could affect that growth rate for packaging. But other things such as manufacturer challenges in their own distribution and production can affect that as well. Technology and new regulations might also affect that compound annual growth rate. So there are a few factors that might go into that. And those are some of the things that we're going to talk about today as we go through this presentation. Some of the things that was of interest when we were talking with the respondents about what was going on in the marketplace was that there are two segments of the food industry, food packaging industry in particular, that are growing faster than the industry average. And those are the meat and related products categories and the snack food products categories. Meat and related products are growing at about a rate of 3.1% compound annual growth rate. And snack food is growing at a 3.9% annual compound growth rate. Meat and related products are growing regardless of what type of meat products you're talking about. It could be meat such as beef, pork to be poultry. It could be seafood. All of those packaging types are seeing strong growth rates. But where we actually saw a little bit higher than average growth rate in the meat and related product category was for egg cartons and specifically within the egg carton category with plastic egg cartons. And that was largely due to the cushioning and insulating characteristics of the cartons themselves, providing some distinct advantages that the companies preferred. When it came to some of the other attractiveness of what was driving packaging in meat and related products that food manufacturers were saying was creating some growth in that category in space was the fact that they're looking at new packaging options because they had not scaled down their packaging types as some of the other segments had before for one or two person households. And so that is starting to drive a need in that segment. They're trying to scale for aging demographics, for instance, and for the convenience trends that so many other segments had already accounted for. The meat and related products category had not yet accommodated for that growth and that's starting to be something that they're trying to accommodate for now. Snack food is one of the categories that has always seen a lot of change in growth over the years and it's continuing to do so. The portion control sizing trend continues as had been reported in previous PMMI reports. But other new introductions continues the drive snack food categories as non-traditional snacks such as cheese and nuts and that's going to continue to drive innovation in that category for new packaging types. When we spoke with respondents in the snack food segment we heard that nearly 75% of the products in the snack food segments are packaged in bags or pouches which also aligns with some of the trends that have been reported in previous PMMI reports such as the flexible packaging study recently completed last year. Pillow pouches and stand-up pouches seem to dominate the snack food packaging space. When we look at growth on a global perspective, although the U.S. market, the North American market tends to dominate the food industry as a whole in terms of scale and size, it is not the largest growing market by any means. Growth as a whole is being driven by some of the rabidly modernizing countries. We heard countries such as Argentina, Brazil, China and India as being some of the top markets for growth in terms of both packaging and the food industry as a whole. And what we heard in terms of growth for those segments were a wide-ranging number of categories. In particular, we heard growth in areas such as fruits and vegetables and baked goods and other categories of that nature, grains and those types of products were growing for those segments. In the North American market, however, we heard that snack food continues to be a growing product category. So does the candy and confection product categories, which is an interesting contrast to some of the other markets that we were studying abroad. The other thing that it was of interest that we found as we were discussing with respondents about what was going on globally versus the North American market was that there's some regional plays that happen in specific spot areas. For instance, with pet food. Pet food is a unique product that depends on the economic wealth of a particular area and how well supported it can be in a particular global area as to how much spend is being done on the packaging and product category. So spot areas such as particular parts of Western Europe and we were pointed to look at particular areas of France or in parts of Norway and parts of Germany as highlighted spots of excess of spend on pet food and over 30% of the people's economy was going towards spend on pet treats and things of that nature which was of interest to us because that was not seen across the broader scale of Europe comparatively where it was 3% or 8% depending on where you were looking in that market. Other parts of the world, pet food was not as broad of a nature at all. Globalized it was a 3% growth rate in total but for most parts it just depended up on where you were looking. If you were looking in parts of the United States you saw a regionalization of that play as well. There was some discussion about parts of the United States that had higher growth for pet food depending on the niche you were looking at. Again, treats seemed to be an area of pet food that seemed to have a higher spend and growth rate in the United States than certain segments of the pet food industry overall. When it came to packaging innovation, this was an area where we heard that many innovations were concepts that had been in use for other segments. So it was a case of people adopting or borrowing trends that they had seen applied for use in other product categories. A point in the example would be that they had seen say a case-ready meat use a rigid tray container with a film over it to display a meat product and the vegetable producer saw that product and thought that would be an excellent way to display a new cut fruit that they wanted to bring to market and they hadn't yet had that product out. They didn't want to put it in the bag or they didn't want to put it in a plastic tub container. So they were moving to a tray with a film over it or something of that nature. Those were the types of discussions we were getting into with a lot of respondents saying that they were just adopting products formats that may have been used for other segments but had not been used traditionally in their own segments. Some of the other things that we had heard was that when they looked to make changes on their own packaging, they're looking to really just enhance what they already have. So when they're out in the market and they're looking to find new things, they're looking for improvements to what is already existing on their own technologies. So they're looking for companies and partners that can enhance their own graphics or their own labeling systems. They're looking for new sealing options on existing products that they may already have. They may already have a pouch in place and they just need a new sealing system. One case in point that we have to highlight for that would be when we were speaking with some of the baked goods companies, they were highlighting the fact that they would love to have a self-closing or resealable package that they could use with their products but the problem that they had been running into with using the existing technology that had been out there was with the fine powder that they have in their baking process with using flour that that often interfered with the self-sealing tabs and that they weren't able to maintain a good seal because the powder interfered. So that is an example of some of the solutions that they're trying to find when they're looking and speaking about innovation. When they talk about innovations from other countries entering the marketplace, they're looking at things that have been tried and true in other markets. So case in point that they had provided was another example from the meat market. Meat manufacturers were talking about products that had been used in the UK market where there was a product that had been introduced in the UK a number of years ago that allowed a film to open during the cooking process where it allowed the film to open during cooking to allow the meat to brown and they thought that that was a fantastic product and were excited about that coming to the United States. Other examples that people noted in the world market that they thought were going to be coming to the United States in the near future were sizing and packaging differences based off of locale. And what I mean by that is urban versus rural packaging changes. And that's something that's been really predominant in China and in Brazil where the market demands are so different between the urban areas of a major city versus the rural areas and what basically the economy can afford in those marketplaces that the package packaging is scaled differently for those types of markets. And they say that the US manufacturers were saying that there's a need in the United States for a similar type of adoption depending on what segments and area of the US that people are looking at. And they could see that that could be adopted depending on that. They could see that being adopted depending on what ethnicity people are targeting as well. Some of the other things that they were also talking about adopting from other markets might have been things of the nature of a product that can go directly from the freezer to the oven to the table in a single package without transferring to a separate dish. And that was something that was brought up as a common product option that was seen in Europe. And that was something that was talked about a lot during the frozen food discussions that we had with some of the segment leaders there. When we talked about some of the most innovative segments and we asked our peers to spotlight who you think or who do you see in the food industry as being some of the most innovative segments, some of the ones that were highlighted tended to be snack food, meat and related products, fruit and vegetables and pet food. And one of the reasons why fruit and vegetables was highlighted is it tends to be because of the clear and tactile films that they're using to make customers actually stop and actually touch the fruit without expecting the fruit itself, without actually causing any damage to the product itself. It's still getting the sensation of touching the fruit. The films that came up and were talked about, that was a big discussion point and frequently mentioned in a lot of segments was this tactile film. And they were talking about using that as overcoats on a lot of products. And they said that that allowed for a lot of higher end eye popping graphics. And that was something that was seen as a very attractive feature for many of these food companies. Some of the other things that were innovative that people thought would be trending into other segments eventually, but not necessarily right now, but these companies saw that these segments were innovative right now because of it, was like the active labels that the meat and related products are starting to adopt such as that indicated when products were past their prime. And then again moving towards more recycled materials in their products. As we go on in our conversation today, we'll hear a little bit more about both the active labels and the recycled materials and some of those benefits and challenges to both. When we asked about general trends that were affecting their business and their packaging in particular, sustainability, convenience, flexibility, technology and safety all came up as major themes with all of the companies. These are major things that have come up time and again when we've talked with these food companies, not just for this report, but in previous reports. But what was new in this report is as we were talking about things such as sustainability, the emphasis has shifted slightly. No longer is it just about light weighting product and going towards thinner gauge material, but it's also more about the emphasis is on how to incorporate those recycled and biodegradable materials and how much emphasis is being put on incorporating those materials, but how much they know that that is actually going to be a feasible option for them in the future. As a firm we've been working with PMMI for a number of years and have had an opportunity to look at the food industry for PMMI on this particular topic a few times. Over the last four or five years this topic in particular with recycled and biodegradable packaging has come up. In this study it is literally the highest percentage I have heard of respondents actually saying that they are interested in using biodegradable packaging. When we first began looking at this topic it was probably around 40% of people saying yes they were interested in biodegradable packaging. Now it's up at 80% of people saying that they are interested in biodegradable packaging. That is a strong growth trend in just that short period of time. There are still some concerns about getting that implemented into their businesses costs obviously is a prime concern, but the concerns over safety are the bigger hurdle. The sanitary barriers in the packaging format still need to be proven to be sustainable and the shelf life longevity has to be shown to be effective for their purposes, but I think over the next year or two you are going to see a greater degree of adoption and I think that that will be proving those points to their peers that those objections are going to go away faster and faster and greater adoption is going to be transpiring. You are also seeing and I don't have it mentioned here on the slide but you are seeing a greater adoption of the plant based polymers largely in the liquid based products but also in some of the food based products as well. So that is also gaining traction in this space. Largely this is all being driven by demand from the retailers and the consumers especially the millennial consumers to incorporate more of this material and biodegradable packaging. There is still a little bit of hesitancy on the material being right next to the food product for the recycled portion of the packaging material but the biodegradable portion is growing in great traction. When it comes to more flexible and convenient packaging this was a hot topic for all of the respondents we were speaking about and it was born forth in PMMI's own flexible packaging study just a short six months ago. Flexible packaging has grown nearly 8% since 2012 and bagged in pouches itself has grown 3.5%. It is such a strong attractive packaging type for all of the segments. We heard baked goods, frozen specialties, fruit and vegetables, meat and related products, pet food, snack foods all say that they are incorporating even more flexible packaging into their products. Reasons were because of the way they could showcase the products, the freshness, the size options, there was just so many benefits that they saw to flexible packaging and I can't highlight strongly enough the ability to showcase products. One of the major trends that came up time and again as we were speaking with food companies and industry experts was that there is such an emphasis right now on transparency in showcasing their products. People want to be able to see the food products that they are purchasing and so food companies are trying to find a way that they can show their products even if their products are something that aren't easily shown. So even companies that would have a package in a can normally are moving to clear plastic jars so that they could show that that product is a healthy product or show what the product looks like. We even had one major global food company tell us that they are transitioning 25% of their products to transparent packaging over the next year. That tells you right there how strongly that transparent packaging theme resonates with companies and the way that they see that movement moving and being driven throughout the industry. Transparency also came up with the discussion on labeling and the need for clear, clean, easy to read labels and some of that is being driven by regulations but some of that is also just being driven by the fact that they don't want anything that can detract from being able to see that product. So if they are going to have a clear transparent product or a container that showcases the product they don't want that label to be cluttering up and prohibiting the consumer from being able to see the product through the label. Now a lot of benefits were shown and showcased about the transparent, or not about the transparent but about the flexible packaging. They did highlight a few issues that flexible packaging still has to be worked out but for the most part most everyone was very positive about flexible packaging. When it came to technology this was a very interesting area of discussion with sources that we were speaking with. There is a greater use of technology in food packaging today than has ever been incorporated before. Not just in packaging, it's also being used and incorporated in the food processing area as well. The use of robotics is growing as well. Earlier I had spoken about the greater incorporation of recycled and biodegradable packaging being a greater percentage in this study than in past studies. The same is true with robotics. When we were speaking with respondents about robotics and the adoption of that into their food processing and packaging system, we are hearing about more and more people adopting that into their processing lines due to the shortage of labor. They are starting to see the ROI actually make sense to their lines. For years we had heard that the ROI did not make sense. They couldn't justify the costs, that the food industry, the margins were too thin to allow for robotics, things of that nature. Now we're starting to hear that the costs of the robotics will start to pay for themselves because the costs of labor have increased. They can't find the skilled workers that they need, or people are not wanting to do some of the manual labor that is required for their processing lines or their packaging lines. So that is making robotics a much more attractive alternative for them to incorporate into their businesses. One area in particular we were speaking with frozen foods. The frozen food specialties were saying that they now incorporated robotics into their operations and have for the last several years and have seen the ROI completely justified. That was one of the segments that had been crying saying that the costs weren't justified just a few short years ago the last time the study was completed. The other industry that we spoke to about robotics that was saying that they would love to incorporate more robotics into their industry right now is baked goods. The problem that they see with robotics though is due to the delicate nature of their products. They're not completely sold on the idea that the robotics systems would be able to handle the baked goods in an efficient manner and keep the products without being damaged and moving the lines fast enough. So there's some issues that they still need to be convinced on to see that the robotics systems might work in their setting. When it comes to other technologies being incorporated into businesses nowadays we're hearing more about active and smart packaging. This ties back to the comments earlier about the meat and related products using things like the smart label to indicate when a product might be past its expiration date, using sensors to indicate or sense the gas levels building up inside the package to note that the product has rotted or gone past its point of safety. So that is something that is being incorporated in some limited extent and is of particular interest in a lot of segments that have very highly perishable products. So we were hearing more and more companies looking towards that. They don't think it's quite at its peak just yet, but it's something that companies are trying to find a way to incorporate greater use of. One other thing that they did note on this particular topic was how to also use this technology for non-perishable or alternative product categories. They don't see how that can be quite broadened to other segments just yet. So they think that that has a ways to go yet before it could be applicable to every food category. Interactive packaging or technology being used to further marketing events is something that is definitely of interest to all food companies and is something that is broadly used in the labeling area and the print technology that is being used with many of the packages that are being produced. QSR codes have been used for a while, snap tags. But some of the newer things that we were hearing about was using clickable paper in part of the packaging materials. Clickable paper was a technology that was invented by a particular company that actually allows the material to actually connect with the smart phones itself. So that is something that companies are starting to explore and seeing how more they can incorporate just the material itself to be all over used and not just confining the space of the media to one little tag on the package but making the entire package itself an area that the consumer can click on and get some sort of interaction with the company. So those are all sorts of technology uses that people are looking at and trying to incorporate. There are out there ideas that people also came up with. I don't think that they are necessarily feasible in the near term. Things like 3D printers to handle obsolete parts or drones to handle supply chain issues for delivery. Those are things that respondents mentioned, but those are not necessarily things that are in the works just yet. But those are things that people are talking about and thinking about. So those are things that everyone should be aware of. The thing to note about the 3D printers in particular is if equipment manufacturers are going to be concerned about any point, I think that one would be one to be taking note of because you don't want to be cut out of your parts replacement cycle. And that would be one that I would at least pay attention to as that industry continues to grow and make sure that that is something that you are able to address as you move forward. Other trends regarding safety that came up, regarding food safety in particular, were the topics of regulations governing the move to new materials, largely around things of topics like moving away from VPA in plastics and things of that nature, moving to clean materials in packaging. VPA free was a topic that came up quite often when we were talking with people about not just consumer related demands, but also government related demands. And they highlighted not just what's going on in the United States, but also what's going on internationally regarding this topic. We were told that VPA free markets existed in Canada and in Europe and that the U.S. market was behind on this topic. And interestingly enough, as I was preparing for this webinar today and talking about it, I had heard on the radio this morning on my way in that Campbell's was just announcing today that it was going to be removing VPA from its linings on its canned products, from all of its canned products moving forward. So it is a hot topic for a lot of the food manufacturers and we had heard that in our study that companies are considering it, but they have not yet decided how they were going to address it completely. Some are immediately forward. Some are still contemplating how they're going to address it. But I think you're going to see this as a topic that's going to continue moving forward. Other issues that have come up with one that we talked about with regarding the labeling and making sure that consumers know the information about what's going on in their products. The transparency of fee-to-fork that the FMSA regulations are driving forth is something that is going to continue and there's going to be increasingly degrees of focus on. One area of particular contention regarding some labeling is that made in the USA stamp that some companies choose to put on their labeling. It could be just as easily what's called natural or what is called organic. You hear that debate go on quite a bit that the FDA is trying to settle right now. But in this case, made in the USA, there's different regulations depending on where you live in the United States as to what is defined as made in the USA. California, we were told, has the strictest definition of what it made in the USA is. So it is very frustrating for food companies and how they're trying to adhere to labeling depending on where they are. So they have to adjust their labeling depending on where they're selling their product or they have to go to the strictest level if they want to sell and just worry about one label across the United States. So it is something that they are very much aware of and trying to manage and deal with at the moment. And then there's, again, the topic of active packaging came up again here when we were talking about safety and how the solutions might be active packaging to solve some of the safety concerns that they've come up against relative to issues that have gone on in their businesses remark related to food safety and how to prevent some of the challenges that they've encountered in the past. When it comes to equipment investment, most of the companies we spoke with generally prefer to do upgrades over purchases for new equipment. That being said, new equipment is added slowly into their portfolios or into their lines, the production lines or their packaging lines. Respondents did say that on average their life cycle of their equipment is 10 to 20 years and they are pressured by their management to extend the life cycles of their product and to do more with the equipment and machines that they have or to maximize the ROI of those machines that they've just purchased faster. So that puts a lot of pressure on equipment manufacturers to show the ROI and demonstrate that ROI that the new equipment is going to provide to food companies. If you can't demonstrate an ROI within two years, chances are the food company is going to start looking elsewhere at a machine. If it's definitely, if it's not within three years, you're probably out of the ballgame. A lot of the food companies that we were speaking with are increasingly looking at lower cost equipment providers from Asia as another bid when they're looking at machine purchases. They were telling us that they have to find ways to lower the cost of their equipment purchases. However, what keeps them coming back to the U.S. equipment manufacturers is the fact that they know with some of these lower cost Asian equipment machine providers is that there's a lot of post-sales service and support issues. So what we heard is the benefit that they're seeing with the U.S. companies are the service level that they receive with purchasing a new piece of equipment. That said, some of the things that they want to see when they invest in that is greater automation. They want to see more flexibility. They'd like to have some greater solutions to specific pain points. So I guess greater customization might be a better way of saying that. When we asked what specific pieces of equipment are mostly demand in your business, they gave us a list of things, a lot of which relate back to the flexible packaging that they're looking for. Vertical form steel machines were stated time and again by multiple businesses that that's the type of piece of equipment that they're looking for. Mostly followed by the horizontal form steel machines. Flow wrappers, again all the flexible packaging, pre-made pouch machines, thermal forming equipment. Then when we asked what else do you want from your equipment providers, what else can they do to help you provide better service or other things for your equipment? Some of the things that were highlighted were things that we've heard time and again, flexibility, speed, sustainability, automation. So I think what I take away from that is that if you continue to focus on the things that you do right in terms of service and continue to provide the products that meet those needs and focus on the automation piece as you heard earlier with the trend towards the robotics, I think that will resonate with the customers if you can get it in the ROI time period that customers are looking for. What comes to some of the challenges that the U.S. food packaging market is experiencing, the age of their equipment is one of the top challenges that people highlighted for us, that they're having difficulty sourcing parts for their products.  They were saying that there's often times that they go to their equipment providers and can't find a part for a product any longer because the machine itself has either been discontinued or the equipment provider goes to their own providers and can't source a part any longer because that part's no longer available. So the equipment providers themselves have challenges maintaining an inventory of stock on products that are so old and have challenges keeping up on products when their providers discontinue parts. The most common parts that we were told that is discontinued tends to be servo motors. Finding skills labor isn't just a challenge for the food companies. We've heard that it's been a challenge for equipment providers. When we were talking with several of the equipment providers that are providing products into the food companies, they actually laughed and said that that was a challenge for them as well and that finding skills labor to actually train and provide as much support that the food companies want can be just as much of a challenge because they're running thin on their own staff. Flexibility of equipment. You heard earlier that they want to be able to do more with the existing equipment that they have and finding equipment that can be easily modified to accommodate different material types or sizes. You know equipment providers stated that they could easily provide products that could do that but it's always a cost based scenario what our food companies willing to trade for that in terms of cost and it's always a struggle to understand what the cost benefit ratio is going to be. Sourcing is a challenge regardless of what industry you're in. Food companies are no different. They have disruptions and variability in their materials. Namely we heard challenges in getting things like paperboard in when they want it to be in or the quality of a particular material. Sometimes the plastic films that they've received may be too thin or may be not of the quality that they need and then we heard that that can cause problems for the equipment providers because of the quality of the materials that they're using on their packaging lines aren't up to standards and they're putting it through their packaging lines. It can cause problems with the machines and of course who do the food companies call? They call the equipment providers say something's wrong with your machine not blaming necessarily the material supplier where the problem actually resulted from. Distribution, they have rising freight costs and things of those natures. In particular one thing to highlight in that area that came up during the study was a problem that the meat and related product segment is having with distribution. They're having problems with their box integrity being compromised during product transport. There's temperature fluctuations that are occurring during transport and what really needs to happen is they really need to have products that are boxes that are of thicker gauge materials but they know that the retailers aren't going to pay for that added strength and neither will the consumers so they can't pass those costs on so they stick with the thinner materials and then they end up with either damaged boxes and then products that are not keeping to the correct temperature during transport. Other things that are happening during transport is just higher costs so there's no necessarily good translation for that but they can see it at this particular point in time. Equipment providers also have challenges with distribution and developing solutions with running the lightweight materials that are being used nowadays during the distribution run and having to use these lighter weight materials without using the excess waste or causing excess waste and that sort of thing with the products as they change and shift gauges or gauges of material type. And then food companies are having challenges with regulations and that is something that is not just with FMSA they also cited challenges with OSHA and Employee Safety Regulations. They challenged sustainability regulations with having to keep up with reduced emissions and waste and recycling challenges depending on what market they're working in or even what town it could be and they all have different regulations depending on where their plants are located so their machines might have to have different electrical or different water usage or different regulations depending on the utilities that they have for power and consumption of that nature. So those are all the different types of challenges that they're trying to manage when it came to regulations. So what does it all mean when it comes to the end of the day for equipment providers and the potential solutions that you could offer as you're looking at the industry and what you might be able to provide as potential action? When it comes to the age of the equipment there's a grandfathering process that you might be able to employ to let and notify people of when equipment is going to be becoming obsolete. You may be doing this now where you're notifying a customer six months, twelve months down the road that a piece of equipment might be scheduled for transition out of the line but you might need to extend that timeline in terms of letting them know. Letting them know two years or so before this continuation gives them time to plan, gives them time to look at their inventory and either build up a stock of replacement parts or implement the costing process that they need to begin to transition to a new product or new machine. The other thing that you might consider is offering service contracts for those particular machines over a specific period of time where you say you'll support them for X number of years after this continuation at a certain rate. It builds in a revenue stream for your business and it gives them an extended period after a discontinuation that they can feel some comfort knowing that they don't have to transition immediately thereafter. Another option for a continued revenue stream that has been done in other industries is to sell the machine design to a third party partner who can continue to produce only spare parts, not produce the machine itself, but only produce spare parts for that machine. And then the third thing is invest yourself in a third F3D printer so you can continue to produce obsolete spare parts on demand without having to have it run through your entire production line and worry about having to keep it in stock inventory. See if that might work for your business rather than letting your customers actually invest in the 3D printer if that technology actually ever makes its way into greater use for those particular parts. Then in terms of finding retained and skilled labor, we've talked a lot about automating their own lines with robotics but incorporating it into your own lines with robotics. That also would be a great use of your own technology to keep your own businesses running smoothly but also helping your clients understand where robotics makes sense and finding out which processes of theirs are the most manual and incorporating the use of robotics where it makes sense. Take that case study of the baked goods that we related earlier in terms of the delicate products and figure out solutions to those types of challenges when your customers present those to you and figure out solutions around those types of problems areas and that might be the number one solution to that shortage of labor. Then the sales team issue about not enough time to focus on training your clients in the field. Well, train the sales team to be actual trainers and support people rather than have steel technicians out there training and taking up their valuable time. How the actual sales reps do some of that training service and hold refresher trainings while they're on sales calls. It might just free up some of your field technicians so that they don't have to be as tight up on training when they're trying to make field service calls and allow your sales reps to lift a little bit more and build a little bit closer connections with the companies that they're calling upon to build that client relationship a bit. When it comes to the flexibility of equipment, with the problem of wanting to have machines do more and handle more types of different material types or different sizes, the thing that might be most beneficial is allowing customers to really see what that means to them and have them price it out themselves. Create an app on your website that allows them to create their dream machine. First off, it allows you to see ahead of time what customers want in their machine. It gives you a little bit of a heads up in terms of what is the most in demand features or most in demand product specs. And then secondly, it helps customers come to a realization ahead of time as to what things realistically cost. And then you can from there have negotiations and discussions about, well, let's talk about what you really need and let's scale it to what's most appropriate to what will work for your situation. A lot of times that might be a great launching point for discussions. And if you have customers who are, what I'll call lucky lose, who kind of come on the site and play with that tool, it might be a great way to initiate discussions with clients that you hadn't even thought about approaching before. Some other thoughts about sourcing, there's not much that I don't. I think that you'll be able to offer customers related to sourcing and helping solve their challenges. The only thing that might be beneficial is coming around to offering solutions on key relationships and building solutions in that aspect. Same with the division, there's not much in that aspect. But with regulations, I think you guys are going to be just as much key experts in that space. So you're going to be able to help them with some of the power and product solutions and finding solutions in that area. So I think that there's opportunity, very much in that area, to find solutions and work alongside them to help reduce the wasted material during runs, as well as finding increased ways to reduce power solutions and power emissions in that area. And that brings me through my discussion today. Thank you so much, Jennifer. You already had some great information on that. It's a lot more detail in the actual report, but all of this information can be found in the report, which is on PMMI.org-flash-research. Right now, I'd like to open up the session for any questions you may have. So there's a chat box in the left-hand bottom corner of your screen. Please enter your questions there. Also, at the end of this webinar, you'll be receiving an email, which is an evaluation of how today's webinar went. Just a very quick one to two-minute evaluation, letting us know how we're doing, giving us some information on what topics you might like to see in the future, and any other information that you can share about webinars that might be of importance to you. And right now, I'm not showing any questions. Once again, I just want to mention that this is available for download. The webinar will also be posted on PMMI.org. I would say by Monday or Tuesday of next week, so that you can share with anyone within your organization. And I would say probably by Tuesday is when the webinar will be posted up. I want to thank everyone for their time and effort. And on behalf of PMMI, thank you also, Jennifer, for doing the webinar today and conducting the research for this report. And thank you again. Have a great day.


This 10th year of Daily Tech News show is made possible by you. Give yourself a big old pat on the back. Thanks to all of you, including Mark Gibson, Reed Fishler, and Larry Bailey. Coming up on DTNS, the guy who made Meerkat wants to take down Discord. Google wants to stop Canadians from reading news. Plus, the U.S. Copyright Office says you can't copyright A.I. generated works. Folks, the A.I. copyright wars have begun. This is the Daily Tech News for Thursday, February 23rd, 2023 in Los Angeles. I'm Tom Merritt. And from Studio Redwood, I'm Sarah Lane. From Austin, Texas, I'm Justin Robert Young. And I'm the show's producer, Roger Chang. Hey, big thanks to our subreddit.  Welcome to the Party Wall Street Journal, which noted it today that Netflix has lowered its price in more than 30 countries. Now, let's get you ahead of the pack on some other tech news in the quick hits. Samsung announced a new standardized 5G non-terrestrial network modem, which offers two-way communication between phones and satellites, opening the door to sending calls or texts and data without a cell network. Yeah, it's similar to what Apple's doing for its emergency SOS system. Samsung plans to integrate its modem into its future Exynos chips. Interestingly enough, though, Samsung isn't using its Exynos chips in the Samsung Galaxy S23. Maybe they could integrate it into Apple Silicon and then sell a bunch more. Qualcomm would not be happy with that. Alright, lots of coverage has focused on Apple and others diversifying their supply chains away from China, moving things to Vietnam, India, Brazil, the U.S., Europe, etc. But we have a significant story about the opposite thing happening. Nikkei Asia's sources say Apple plans to use a China-based supplier named Lux Share to finish development of its upcoming Mixed Reality headset. That would take it away from Taiwan's Pegatron. This also would mark the first time Apple would use a Chinese supplier for a first-gen product. In another part of the world, allowing third-party payment system is all around the Google Play Store. On a support page Thursday, Google wrote out the steps that developers can follow to offer alternative billing systems in India. If a user pays through an alternative method, Google reduces the cut it takes by 4%. Google was fined $161 million by the competition commissioner of India last year and in order to make changes, including allowing third-party billing. YouTube expanded access to multi-language audio tracks to more creators, like foreign language dubs. So let's say you recorded your video in your native Urdu. You can now add a dub in BASC. These can be added through the subtitles editor tool and existing content can be updated with tracks as well. So you can go back and do your old stuff too. Videos with multiple tracks will default to the viewer's language preference. The European Commission requested that employees delete TikTok from their work devices, just requested, didn't demand, as well as any personal devices that they use to access official apps or email systems. The EC said, quote, this measure aims to protect the commission against cyber security threats and actions which may be exploited for cyber attacks, end quote. ByteDance said that directive was misguided and based on fundamental misconceptions. Yes, it's a request. You don't get us. That's a strongly worded request. All right. Who I am. Let's talk about Ben Rubin. Ben Rubin, if you don't recognize the name, is famous for having good ideas that have not quite fully caught on. He's had successes, but nothing you can point to right now. For example, he founded the mobile live streaming app, Meerkat, back in 2015, darling of South by Southwest, but almost immediately couldn't compete with Twitter-required Periscope and shut down a year after it launched. In 2015, Rubin's House Party, a social group video chat app, was acquired by Fortnite maker Epic Games and shuttered in 2021, even though it was downloaded 17 million times in March 2020 alone. Lockdown boredom, anybody? Rubin is also behind the tool Slack Talk that seeks to replace meetings with faster decentralized conversations. That one has yet to gain super traction, but who knows? However, he's up to something new. Tell us about it, Sarah. Yeah, so Rubin's latest project is called Towns, like the town, T-O-W-N-S, and it's built within here, not their labs, sort of an incubator for projects. Co-founded by former Microsoft employee Brian Meek, so the two are working together on this. Now, at first glance, or at first description, it sounds kind of like Discord, Rubin told TechCrunch. This is a new way of thinking about social networking as a network that's owned and operated by its constituents. Now, Towns is a protocol, and it's also a web-based chat app that lets self-owned and governed communities set up their own rules, run their own content moderation, and even handle monetization using an Ethereum-based smart contract system that also supports end-to-end encryption. It counts as what people call a DAP, a decentralized app. Now, if you go decentralization, Ethereum, DAOs, that stuff doesn't excite me, at least I don't really know where I fit into this, Rubin does say the Towns app takes all the technical things that the protocol implements and makes them available in an open source, end-to-end encrypted, delightful chat experience. So you might go, okay, well, I like chatting, and I feel like I have some kind of decentralized chat options. Rubin says the Discord comparison is something that a lot of people are making, but he notes anybody who's running their own Discord server, you have a lot of control, but you're still renting the experience from Discord itself. So if you want something that takes it a step further, Justin, how do they do it? Oh, Sarah, I'd be delighted to tell everybody. You can sign up for an invite to try the alpha version now with a beta planned in September that will let users create their own groups. A mobile web app is in the works with native apps thereafter. Right now, you need to log on with your own crypto wallet, I think it's lined up everybody, but Towns plans to add support for Apple's next gen login pass keys. All right, so file this one as one to watch, because right now if you need to take your crypto wallet along to log in, it's going to limit the appeal. Bunch of you are going to still do it. They're like, ah, it's not that hard here, you just do these seven steps, but it's going to keep a lot of people from, even if they know how to do it, bothering to go through it. As soon as they add pass keys, we'll see if this thing takes up. But I think the interesting thing is that Ben Rubin gets a lot of press, obviously that that's why he got written up by TechCrunch. He has great ideas, House Party and Meerkat were both excellent ideas. They just got the timing wrong. And so the idea of a decentralized social platform is ripe right now with all of the talk about mastodon and Twitter and everything else. I'm not saying this is a lock, but maybe this is the time he gets the timing right. Yeah, go ahead. You first. OK. Number one, of course, the fastest way to a bearded man's heart is through his crypto wallet. So certainly it's going to have a certain audience that will immediately jump on it. But I do think that the idea of taking a lot of these technologies and putting a sheen on top of them that makes them more user accessible is something that is forward thinking, even further than that. If we are looking at the Internet and saying that while we understand that mass market social media networks, Facebook, Twitter, the like, have created a desire for smaller social networks where we can talk to fewer people, then this would be something that I do think that needs to survive. And comparing it to Discord, I think in 10 years or at least a technology like this will look a little bit foolhardy. Yeah, the whole crypto wallet thing, you know, people you're right, Tom. A lot of our audience is like, that's not hard. I already have one. I have more than one. No big deal. Other people will go, well, this costs money. No, thank you. And I don't do crypto anyway, because I don't understand it well enough. And Ruben has mentioned that down the road, because we're still in our early stages of towns, that the company is going to take a cut of transactions made through crypto, because everybody's crypto wallet or, you know, some other version of being able to access money would be used to govern different networks. And again, that can be set by the networks themselves and who is running this particular Dow and that also town says, OK, now we said, if you're using Discord, it's not as decentralized as we would like to be. We want to help you get off the ground. Then you make your own decentralized autonomous organization. And we just kind of go, you know, we just sort of go back into the hedges and maybe just take a cut of transactions. They're going to take a cut. I think that's the most fascinating thing. If they can get this working, if they can make it invisible, that it's crypto on the back end and you're just using a past key to log in. If they're able to make their money on the crypto circulating behind the scenes on that proof of stake system that they're eventually going to transition to, there's a lot of ifs in the in these statements. But if they can do that, then they could have a system that looks free without ads, but is actually making money on the back end. Can I can I be the rain on the parade guy? Please do please rain on my my parade has pulled out its umbrellas. Go ahead. Let's say there is fully decentralized content, which means that things that may be illegal and might be horrifying are happening on that platform, profiting from that by an automatic proof of stake situation might not bode well for them in the future. But that is me being a doomer. I don't want to be the the dark cloud that that passes over a parade. So forget I said anything. No, that that would be the one way that they they would be involved. And this Tomna versus Twitter case is all about monetization off of controversial content. That's the one we talked about yesterday about Section 230. So the way they rule on that could have implications for this. That's a really good point. I also just wonder, OK, I mean, I do a lot of chatting on a variety of platforms currently just kind of depending on where everybody else is. And we're not passing a lot of money around between us. Maybe we could in the future depends on the server and the, you know, the point of of, you know, why everybody's there. But what if you don't do that at all? Because that's not how the crypto gets. That's not how the money gets made. The money is made on transactions to run servers and trade information in a blockchain environment like that. You're not making the money off of people sending money back and forth. You are going to places to buy things because this is an easy way to. So there'll be a subsection of the of the group that are running servers and exchanging crypto that way and cashing that crypto out. And you will never have to know about them. Though they'll just be doing their thing in the background. Well, you know, who else does their thing? News organizations back in December, the Canadian House of Commons passed the online news act, a.k.a. Bill C 18 on to the Senate for consideration. Now, like similar laws in Spain, in Germany, in Australia and elsewhere, this one tries to force big platforms like Google and Facebook to negotiate with news publishers to pay them for linking to their content. Now, in the Canadian bill, access to any portion of content from a news business is forbidden without an agreement by a qualifying digital news intermediary. So what's a news business and what is a digital news intermediary? You might ask an eligible news business must be produced for Canada and must be general news, not industry specific. So, for example, not just a sports blog or a tech blog. Digital news intermediaries are search engines or social networks, but they aren't messaging platforms. So, Tom, where are there some exceptions? Yeah, this is where it gets interesting. The act applies if there is a significant power imbalance. That's how it said in the bill between the digital news intermediary and the news publisher. Who gets to decide that? The Canadian Radio, Television and Telecommunications Commission, the CRTC, the FCC of Canada gets to decide that. The bill says that the CRTC will take into account how big the platform is, the Google or the Facebook, how big they are, as well as whether its market position is not only dominant. So it has to have a dominant market position but also has a strategic market advantage over the news publishers. So, obviously, Facebook and Google are going to meet all these definitions. Bing, I don't know, it's not that dominant. Maybe, maybe not. And your personal blog probably does not meet this definition. So you might ask, why are we even talking about this today? While the Canadian Senate is considering this bill, so it passed the House of Commons, it's now in the Senate. Google is preparing for its passage. It's running a test in Canada right now in public that limits the visibility of Canadian and international news to varying degrees. Google says a random sample of about four percent of users in Canada are subject to the test. In other words, it's blocking news content for about four percent of Canadians to some degree. So, Justin, is this Google being petulant or reasonable? Because, hey, they might have to do this or something else. Google to Canada. Surrey, I do think that this is something that there are two cataclysms that have happened over the last five years. Whether or not you have, thank you, sir, whether or not you have realized that they have happened. Number one, Google has seen their golden goose lay less golden eggs. Not stop laying golden eggs, but digital ads have slow as a market. Long ago, we saw advertising begin to slow for newspapers and including newspapers becoming more and more dependent on online traffic for digital ads. Digital ads slowed down a lot over the last two years as well. When you combine both of them, there's an old phrase that I believe is coined by Henry Kissinger, that the smaller the pie, the sharper the knives. This is two very entrenched, very entitled organizations that are going to fight each other, tooth and nail for an ever shrinking pie of money. It's going to be ugly. And I would say not to get into a political theorist element of this, but when you are leaving that much distinction up to the judgment of a governmental body, then you are asking for both sides to game their argument so they can make the best case to that judge. We usually end up regulating something as it's dying. This could be another example of that. For instance, the Morning Consult just reported that 14 percent of Gen Z adults in the US, not in Canada, but, you know, they're pretty close. 14 percent of Gen Z adults in the US turned to TikTok first for news. Morning Consult says specifically, quote, to boost their chances of counting Gen Zers as paying subscribers. News publishers must distribute more compelling content that lives outside of their own websites. So the one thing that I would point out there is that I do believe that that is a reaction. And we've seen these kinds of polls for the last 10 years, 15 years really since the death of the nightly news and the morning newspaper. That had a fairly unquestioned range of reign of dominance. And since then we have seen a migration year, like, you know, by years and years and years that it was late night television and then blogs and then Twitter and now it's TikTok. I presume that the the large let's pay attention to it group of people that are getting their news somewhere else will be somewhere else in five years as well. Yeah, because the other side of this is 86 percent are not turning to TikTok first for news, right? But I do I put this next to the fact that people search for information on TikTok and YouTube first as sort of a trend that people don't turn to search engines as much as they used to for answers because the answers aren't always that good or reliable. And we've got AI over there in the corner going, hey, I'll answer a question for you. So, you know, and that's that's the other element of this is that will 2023 we're going to get into an AI story in a little bit. But will 2023 be the year that we see gigantic strains upon that the search industry, just as all the governments are like, oh, by the way, it's more expensive to be a surgeon. Yeah. Yeah. All right, folks. We get a lot of our best ideas for stories from you. It has sometimes by email, sometimes in the discord or the chat. One way to let us know is in our subreddit. You can submit stories and vote on them at dailytechnewshow.reddit.com. And I encourage you to do so. On September 15th of last year, Christina Kastinova posted on Instagram that her comic book, Zarya of the Dawn, had been approved for copyright registration in the US. Now, she had used Mid Journey to make the art for the comic book. And she wrote that she wanted to set a president that we own copyright when we make something using AI. And, you know, there's a lot of debate about that going on right now. The US Copyright Office saw that post and said, we did what? Yeah, because the Instagram picture was of her registration. While Mid Journey was listed on the cover of the comic book, the Copyright Office says there was no other reference to AI in her application. So it followed up and asked a few more questions about how AI was used. Once it got those answers, it withdrew the registration for the images part and reissued a new registration to provide copyright just for the text, the selection, coordination and arrangement of the works written and visual elements, but not for the images themselves. The office wrote a thorough analysis of legal precedent. This is not them not getting it. They actually described like, OK, this is how Mid Journey works. We figured it out, but this is what we think they wrote. The fact that Mid Journey is specific out but cannot be predicted by a user makes Mid Journey different for copyright purposes than other tools used by artists. In other words, this isn't Photoshop. You know what Photoshop is going to do when you press a button. Mid Journey, you never know what you're going to get. So really what they're saying is it comes down to the value of that prompt that you write is the prompt that you write to the tool enough of a creative input to make the work original. Copyright Office says no, that's a modicum of input. That's how they put it in their letter. On the other hand, Ms. Kostanova's lawyer says these are instructions to pull from an artist's chosen place in its massive table of probabilities to drive the generation of an image. What say you, Justin? Before we get into this specific case, let me make a bold claim that I believe prompt that word prompt will be a phrase that you will hear a lot. People will be adding it to their LinkedIn profiles. They will be defining their entire careers on what they can do and how talented they can be with prompts. And in this case, while I respect the fact that the US Copyright Office went to the lengths that they did to define why they made the decision and I respect the fact that they did grant the copyright for elements of her work. I think not that they are ignorant. I do believe that they are on the wrong side of history with this because the prompt what from where we are right now in February to where we will be in December at the end of this year, I think we are going to find a lot more worth in what it takes to do it. Whether or not we look at it as being simplistic now, there is no art without the prompt. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. If you say, show me girl at river with tea in hand. OK, you're going to get a bunch of different options, but that's not extremely descriptive. You can make it much more flowery and say, well, look how artistic I was. I mean, not everybody could have written a prompt like this. There's still prompts. Well, and what we run into on Sword and Laser, where we use Mid Journey, the exact same tool to make our album art, Veronica will say, you know, give me four images of Clark's world flooding. She'll look at those four and she'll be like, no, no, no, more water. OK, hold on. Make it make it lighter. It's a little too dark. Like those are the prompts. It's not just a prompt, right? There are multiple generations and you're choosing from multiple versions of like, oh, OK, take the upper right one. Now expand on that. Take the text out of it. Do stuff like that. That is the part that I think you're right, Justin, needs to be appreciated as the creative input. Because I do understand what they're saying is it's not that the image isn't copyrightable. It's unique. The the issue is, was it created by her or was it created by something else? This goes back to the monkey question. And they cite that in their letter, which is if the monkey took the picture, then the monkey would hold the copyright. But monkeys can't hold copyrights under our law. So nobody gets the copyright. Same thing here. Mid Journey doesn't get to hold a copyright. It's a machine. But the copyright office is saying, but you didn't create it. It did. And also, I have not checked the Yula, but I don't know if monkeys are allowed to generate art on Mid Journey. That's a but we please have that story next. Please. Well, the the next reason about monkeys specifically, but it is about what experts say and they say a lot, don't they? This time, they're saying that within a decade, around 39% of Houseburg chores and things like carrying for loved ones could all be automated. OK, a little bit more specifically, researchers from the University of Oxford in the UK and Japan's Okanomizu University came up with the number after they asked 65 artificial intelligence experts, some in the UK, some in Japan, how much automation for things like unpaid domestic work might take over 10 years and then they published their findings in the journal plus one PLOS. The chore category of getting groceries was expected to cut down 60% of time spent by humans due to automation, but caring for, let's say, a younger or older person in the house showed the least potential growth at just 28% of time saved. As far as robots in the home, researchers pointed to things like vacuums, which many of us are already pretty used to and have become pretty ubiquitous and found that when asking folks about more robot automation in the home, male UK experts were more optimistic about domestic automation in that category than their female counterparts, although the reverse was found by researchers and experts in Japan. That last part is very interesting. I did to speculate why the flip flop between UK and Japan. But I imagine that people who actually do the cleaning more often are less likely to think that the robot helps because it doesn't do it right. Or people who don't do cleaning are underestimating how hard it is. And like, oh, a robot probably just, you know, makes it makes it a snap. Having having had a robot vacuum that I had to vacuum behind, I kind of get that. Oh, man, I'd be lost without my room, but fully lost as a person. I'm with you, Tom. I've never had a robot vacuum that didn't just live to get caught on my carpets. I mean, mine gets caught under everything and it's really not very smart at all. But it still is cleaning. It's cleaning. It's cleaning for however long it's cleaning. And every time I dump that into the trash, I go, look, it's not on the floor anymore. And I didn't do a thing. That's a very Japanese perspective, Sarah. I suppose it is. Yes, as a female, I, you know, I belong in that team.  So you are you are probably a more cleanly person than I am. Well, a lot of this has to do with optimism and pessimism, right? We could be looking at the exact exact same situation, which I actually think Sarah and I are. And I'm like, yeah, it didn't help much. And Sarah's like, yeah, but it helps some like the glass half empty glass.  I can't deal with this. It helps. Yeah. Better than nothing. All right. Let's see who helped us with their insights. Let's do it. So earlier this week, we were talking about the large number of Gen Z folks. Those are born after 1996 using iPhones. And why Peter from Brampton, Ontario, speculated, he said, you know, my kids are in the group that they had their first phone, but it was an iPod touch. My kids who are 23 through, you know, 18 years old, so they're they're in that Gen Z category all had iPod touch devices. And I didn't want to pay for a phone plan at the time. So they're kind of used to that form factor. Adam from Fairport, Harbor, Ohio, echoed that sentiment from Peter, wondering if the kids grew up with iPads as babysitters and iPods as Wi-Fi phones. And now they're just used to them. I think there's something to this that that parents are more likely to choose an Apple product because whether it's true or not, the perception is it's easier and it's safer. It's like unpaid home automation, right? And so you pay for it. I don't know if I want to get that Android thing because I read a headline that said it wasn't secure. I'll just get the iPhone for them. I mean, and look, I've made this joke on a bunch of shows, but I will repeat it because it's very funny to me that I always joke with our friend on this show, Darren Kitchen, that despite the fact that he spends more on his phone that I do, and there are always Android devices, I call his phone a poor people's phone. Like there is there is a there is an element of needling that comes along with the open source nature and the wide strata of Android phones that creates I mean, its value, its brand is that it can cost less and do almost exactly as much. And, you know, almost exactly as much when it comes to a brand definition sometimes means that the thing that can do everything gets that brand hierarchy. Well, folks, if you've got thoughts about this or anything else, especially that mid-journey stuff, I bet you got thoughts on that. Email us feedback at Daily Tech News Show dot com. And indeed, thanks to you, Justin Robert Young, for bringing the knowledge today, as usual, let folks know where you've been up to and how and how they can keep up with it. First things first on PX3 this Friday, Jimmy Carter, the president of the United States back elected in 1976 is in hospice in his home in Plains, Georgia. And so before he leaves this mortal plane, we are honoring him on PX3 on Friday, categorizing his 1976 win. So listen to that when it comes out. But this Wednesday, if you are in the San Francisco Bay Area, go to Eventbrite where not wrong. My podcast with Jen Briney and Andrew Heaton is live at the Piano Fight Theater, my favorite venue. It's closing down in San Francisco, and I would I love it so much. I'm coming back across the country to do a live show. Head over there right now. Get your tickets. It's Friday, sorry, Wednesday, March 1st at 8 p.m. Piano Fight Theater where not wrong go on Eventbrite.com to get your tickets. Sounds like a fun show. Not too far from me, in fact. Maybe you should take a trip down south. Maybe I should. Yeah, down south. 90 minutes in a car. I think I could do that. But first, we want to thank our brand new bosses. We're kind of on a streak this week, and I don't want to jinx it, but I do want to thank our bosses, Ricky, Wild West Dan and Deed Co, who all just started backing us on Patreon since our last show, which was yesterday. Thank you, Ricky. Thank you, Wild West Dan, and thank you, Deed Co. Ah, the three awesome folks. In fact, Wild West Dan set off a howdy meme in our discord today. Jump it in. So thank you. Thank you, all three of you, Ricky Wild West Dan and Deed Co. You are now patrons and you get to stick around for the extended show. Good Day Internet. Justin is going to herald our post advertising future as he explains why he loves using AI in notion, which is now available to everybody, not just elites like Justin. You can catch this show live. Did you know that? Well, I'll tell you the deeds. Monday through Friday at 4 p.m. Eastern 2100 UTC. Find out more at Daily Tech News Show dot com slash live. We're back doing the show again tomorrow. Nika Monford is going to join us and tell us all about mathematician Melba Roy Moulton and her work at NASA. Don't miss it. This show is part of the Frog Pants Network. Get more at frogpants.com. Diamond Club hopes you have enjoyed this program.


okay so floating panels well it's been a while and I've actually been working on it and I had some issues that's why I didn't post any update but I now want to share what those issues are and I think we found a solution for them it's not really a solution as I'll explain and I'll try to go on I've had some more issues but again we'll get to it so the first thing which I actually talked about in the last video is that I wanted to do a panel that's floating but still preserves usability in the form of fit slow so if you try to go all bottom left with the mouse and click you should always be able to trigger the app menu as an example and what that means is that we need a bigger window compared to what the dock actually is so that all of the input input that's around the panel gets redirected inside of it so we need a bigger window with inside of it the panel and all outside of the panel is transparent which is what we did in the last video if you haven't seen it go give it a watch and the issue was that the shadow of the window is managed by Kevin and it was drawn at like the larger window which means that we have the shadow and then empty space and then inside of it the panel which is a problem because the shadow was not actually attached to the panel which is what we want so the basically only way to solve this was to use csd shadows and those are a mess like a latte doc does that I honestly did not want to add to plasma the burden of csd shadows so after a bit of thought and talking to other plasma people I've decided that plasma floating plasma panels would not support shadows like at all you wouldn't have you wouldn't be able to have shadows so you do have your floating panel but no shadow and I think that's not so controversial because most of the setups that I've actually seen that use floating panels do not actually use any shadow if you think of something like that tries to mimic iOS or that sort of stuff they don't use shadow so it's a bit of a limitation but there are very good technical reasons for it so sorry about that so having decided that it was much easier to actually implement it so I went ahead and write a bunch of code I did actually write the code to turn off the shadow because it would be weird to have like the floating shadow so I just turned it off and that was done so it's actually already if I'm able to I want to show you but there seems still an issue which is quite a big one not really luckily that is that everything I worked on on the last video well I accidentally threw that away that was honestly an accident I didn't like check it on the committed sorry to a different branch so it was gone but it wasn't that much so it wasn't an issue but when I actually tried re-implementing the same things that I did last time they didn't work for some reason so what I'm going to do now is show you what I did new and then try to make what I did last time work again with this one so first of all we open up the correct repository which is what I'm trying to show you again the shadow which is frameworks so frameworks in plasma frameworks and to turn off the shadow no it's not frameworks sorry it's workspace because I want to go to plasma workspace where is it workspace source kth workspace plasma workspace so many directories I always feel lost and it should be shall and then panel view so what I did and no thank you but I did not want to use this application and let's see if I can pop it up on the console so we go for get diff and there's nothing get branch and we can see that there should be a branch called floating panel which is whoops the one I've been working on sorry about that so oh come on so we check out that brand so get check out the branch like that we shouldn't still have any gif but in log we have the last commit which is at code read panel floating values and what is that we can show that commit I'm getting better at get like I didn't know how to do all of these things like a couple of months ago but anyway so we have all of these things so this is not very interesting stuff the interesting stuff is this one so basically what this does is when I update the floating status whether it's floating or not well this one checks for the panel element of qml the qml sorry panel element and if there's no qml panel then oh no let's just return and that's it we should always I think have a qml panel in hand and if there is a qml panel then we read the property floating and we converting to a boolean which is either true or false and if we are indeed floating then we remove the shadows else we add them in this way we are guaranteed to always have shadows when the panel is floating and never have them when it's not so this was the nice code the very easy one in plasma workspace now what I had to do I mean all all that I didn't show you is just calling that function at the right moment nothing too interesting but the interesting part is now that we have to actually make the panel floating from a you know ice point of view that you can actually see that is floating and that was what we did last time and now I'm actually unable to do it anymore which is weird to say the least so I think I do have a lot of changes here which are lots of lots of them and we'll get into that in another video it's very interesting I'm let's add everything and get commit which is tough I'm trying to make the panel better I'll do an entire video about that but right now what we're interested in is I think just master I didn't create any branch for it so check out master get pulled because it's always nice to get pulled whoa lots of stuff this is going to take a lot of compiling nice and now we can actually try to do what we did last time which is to just add some margin around the panel when in the QML panel file which is in containment's panel contents UI main QML no it's the other one sorry there are two QML files for the panel if you don't know which one is which I've done a video about that too I'll just link it in the description or something is in desktop package contents views panel this one we've got both just for sure now the idea is we have this containment parent element and the only thing we really need to do is to add some margin around it I mean it's a bit more complicated than that but it's a start so we feel parent but with a left margin of I don't know five right margin of I don't know five and bottom margin of I don't know five then that we can go back and open up the build directory which is same but with build instead of source KDE workspace Plasma desktop make install like this and this is not probably the time where I have to cut the video because it's going to take years okay now it's done so we source the prefix here and we see if it worked or not Plasma shall replace I didn't do that long I thought worse okay so it's throwing away the bug info that I was working on but still it should be a mess okay so it makes sense as you can see there is actually the margin I was talking about you can see that I mean there is no margin as far as the background goes but the inside does take account of the margin so we now need to add the margins for the SVG elements as well which is I think here frame SVG item the translucent item and the opaque one both of this again we replace the anchors I mean we add sure parent but also bottom part I mean we can just copy paste that at the one it's easier that way and just by doing this it should like work out of the box and it did work to be fair last time I tried it then sorry in the last video I've done but when I actually tried it again well it didn't work as you can see I was like rewatch rewatching the video to see if I did anything weird but I didn't so let's see what happens this way and hopefully we'll actually get to see anything working let's throw a pseudo at it and what didn't work is that I actually got some weird well the background contrast effect and blur effect were not the same size and shape as the panel which was so weird in this case we're kind of there are some issues I can see well the first one being shadow but we knew about that already I didn't yet actually do the floating variable so that we knew about and but except that what's this blue weird thing over here why is this blue if we get into panel edit mode well it's still there and that looks weird and even before when the panel was maximized like that there is this weird ah yes okay I know what that is yes as I was telling you you can see that the contrast effect is going a bit crazy this blue part actually comes from the background which is taken blurred and contrast affected to become blue so that when you actually overlay the panel it gets bluer as well however it shouldn't be there it's in the wrong position compared you can even see here that we are actually lacking something it's this is wrong and it's annoying what happens if we maximize a window okay so the transparent svg is in the same place of the other one which in theory should make everything work which it doesn't and there's no other svg that could like break this and if we I don't know let's say we only consider the bottom margin like that we should get like in this situation where it's just floating it's already a bit better than last time I tried it but it shouldn't be there though so we restart the plasma shell and let's see where this takes us and this looks good and believe it or not this actually looks good because knowing that we'll actually take an account the width of the margin down here into the panel height well we also need to make the bottom corner rounded I think I did that last time in the video it's not that hard but of course it shouldn't it should also work if we had some left and right margin anyway that was actually just everything I wanted to say for the update this was not like a fully fledged devlog it just I just want to say I'm still working on this and hopefully it shouldn't take too much I hope like a week or two until I am in a state where I can actually propose a merger quest and could be worse I don't know see you next time


Okay, we're in the home stretch now. In the last video, we got our sample application building for .NET Core. So that means that we're ready to go on to the last step of the migration process to get our bean trader sample running completely on .NET Core 3. As you remember, I described the migration process as having four steps. First, you prepare for migration by understanding your dependencies, both framework dependencies with the portability analyzer, and third party dependencies by just reviewing them. And you get your NuGet package references into the new package reference format, which is used for .NET Core projects. In the second step, you create that new CS Proj. You decide whether it's going to live next to your existing one or in a different folder. You add all of the resources, the custom build steps, the NuGet packages, so that your CS Proj has all the right content in it. And you also, at this point, can update your NuGet packages to make sure that you're using a version that supports .NET Core or .NET Standard. In the third step, which is what we did in the previous two videos, we fix build time issues. So we make sure that our project can actually compile successfully against .NET Core. We go in, we fix up small API differences between .NET Framework and .NET Core in the framework itself, as well as maybe in the NuGet packages we're depending on. So we make sure that we can build both the new and the old projects. Also in this step, you may remember we regenerated our WCF client to be generated by an updated version of Service Util, which will support .NET Standard and .NET Core. And so at this point, we can build the project. A lot of people might think we're done now since it compiles clean. But in fact, there's a fourth step, which is important. That's running and testing the app. Because there are a lot of differences, maybe not a lot, there are some differences between .NET Framework and .NET Core that only manifest at runtime. You may get not supported exceptions or something like that. And we actually have some analyzers to help with this. If you come look at github.com slash .NET slash platform, compact, these are Roslin analyzers that will identify APIs and code patterns in your project that might build successfully, but will cause issues at runtime on .NET Core. It also identifies APIs that are supported by .NET Core on some platforms, but not other platforms. So, you know, that's not something you would need for a WPF app. But in other scenarios, it may be useful to know how cross-platform your solution will be. So those analyzers can help. Let's go ahead and do this with our bean trader sample. Okay, so here, here's our nice clean build we had last time. So now we would actually run it. So I'll hop over here and let's, okay, I've made sure that my .NET Core project is a startup project. I will hit F5 to run. Let's see what happens. And we hit an exception. It says configuration system failed to initialize. There's an inner exception here, unrecognized configuration section, system.service model. Okay, so something's wrong with our app config. And this makes sense if we come look here. You remember in the last video, I was talking about one of the differences in using WCF on .NET framework versus on .NET Core. Is that in .NET Core, the WCF client is not configured using app configuration. None of this is respected. You have to do it programmatically instead. But if we look at our client that we generated, the new WCF client coming out of, you know, the connected services or .NET service util. This will actually be done for us in the client based on the end point we select. So here we're setting up our endpoint address. Here we're setting up the binding. So all of the stuff that was being done through configuration is now done through code in our WCF client. So we actually can remove this. Now, you know, the difference between doing something by configuration doing any code is something you may see somewhat regularly with .NET Core. Because this configuration system where we're using the app.config and we access the values with the configuration manager, this works on .NET Core and we can use it in our app. And in fact, we are using it to read these app settings. But libraries that want to run on all .NET standard platforms can't depend on this because the same configuration APIs aren't all available on .NET standard. They're available on .NET Core, not on .NET standard. So that means things like, you know, system service model, WCF. If WCF wants to work across all .NET standard platforms, this can't be the way that configuration is done. So, you know, if you want to configure using configuration file, you still can have app settings and you can programmatically set up your WCF client using those settings. But in general, you're going to see less of an emphasis on app.config just because it doesn't exist on .NET standard. Instead, in .NET standard, you might use the new espionet core style configuration using Microsoft Extensions configuration because that does work on .NET standard. In this case, though, we're only running on .NET core, so it's safe for us to use configuration manager and app config. We just can't use the WCF specific parts of that. Okay. So let's go ahead and hit F5 again. See if we get a little farther this time now that we have removed that config section. By the way, that's another reason that it's good that we have our .NET framework and .NET core versions of the app both using the new WCF client because if only the .NET core version was using it, the .NET framework one was still using the old client where we were reading configuration from app config. We'd end up having two app config files, one for .NET framework with WCF stuff and one for .NET core without it. Anyhow, we have hit F5 and our app has launched. This is good. Let's go ahead and log in. Ah, another exception. Operation is not supported on this platform. So we can take a look at the stack trace here. Function begin invoke. What turns out that delegate.begin invoke and end invoke are not supported on .NET core. There's a good discussion about why this is out on GitHub if you want to go read up on it. Got lots of details. It's in the .NET core effects issue number 5940. Basically what it comes down to is these APIs have a dependency on remoting infrastructure which just doesn't exist on .NET core. So you can't use them. But there are a lot of more modern alternatives that are better anyhow. So it shouldn't be too big a deal to get away from begin invoke and end invoke since it's not possible to support the .NET core. Now, one interesting thing about these is that they don't turn up in the API port report. So you might not realize that you had this dependency even though because the portability analyzer didn't call it out. The reason for that is because these are defined on the delegate types and many times delegates are defined in user code and they will automatically have a begin invoke and end invoke method that was generated by the compiler and those still won't work even though they're in user code but because they're in user code API port doesn't see them. So anyhow, point is we can't use begin invoke. But like I was saying there are better ways to do this now. First option, if you're calling an API that has an async alternative just do it just await an async call. In fact, in this case, I'm, you know, this is a little bit contrived. I'm using begin invoke to call a delegate on a method that's actually an async method which is not something you're likely to see in the real world because of course the trivial fix for this is to await trading service dot what was it we were calling get current trader info my intelligence is slow but get current trader info async like this you know and we can say current trader equal. This right here is the correct way to do it because in general async methods are going to be superior to calling begin invoke. In the worst case they both just go run it on a different thread and a lot of cases if there is an async alternative this is going to actually be non-blocking which begin invoke typically isn't. So if you have an async alternative call the async alternative. Now in this case I'll pretend like I don't because a lot of times you won't and I want to sort of show what that looks like. You can use task dot run as an alternative task dot run is able to run some action or some funk on you know on a different thread for you in the same way that begin invoke would but it does it without using that remoting infrastructure under the covers so it continues to work on dotnet core. So all you need to do is you can replace your begin invoke with a call to invoke because that should work so I can take this same delegate this this user info retriever funk and I can still use it but I don't want to call begin invoke instead I just call invoke in a task dot run and this now is going to be equivalent to calling user info retriever dot begin invoke. Now in this case we take the result and we do something with it so there's different ways I can either await that here I can say you know var task is this or you know we'll even call it result so that we get the same naming as before and I can await result. Another option is we can say task dot run dot continue with and continue with will provide a continuation task for after this one this initial one completes which is very similar to what's being done here where we're invoking this delegate and then after it completes we run some code so we can actually do almost exactly the same thing here we're gonna say continue with get our result and I can just copy the exact same code we had before but drop in result instead of end invoke and this should be equivalent because now we're running the invoke method asynchronously with task dot run and when it finishes then we run our follow-up here instead of calling end invoke I just get the result as a parameter you know in this continue with expression so at this point okay it's complaining that I need a task scheduler which I will add and okay this should be equivalent code that doesn't use the begin invoke and end invoke APIs which aren't supported on core so let's go ahead and f5 again see what happens actually I should probably just delete this code we don't need to comment it out it's not allowed you know what I want to get rid of that so let's delete it and f5 okay it's building it's launching it's doing stuff okay here we are our app has started up I'll log in as Mike it is logged me in we are communicating with our WCF backend we're displaying data I can accept trades here I'll accept this trade from Daniel okay I now have five more green beans and 20 less blue beans I can make my own trades maybe I feel like I want to get even more green beans do this I can I can cancel trades let's see if we can sign out we sign out sign in again accept a trade sign out sign in at this point I think we can say that our app is working correctly and the most important part is it's working correctly on dotnet core if I come over here to the debugger and I look at the modules you can see that these modules are all loading from dotnet shared Microsoft net core app 3.0 so this is in fact running on dotnet core not dotnet framework and you know I know that this was a longish series of videos but really I mean if I wasn't talking through it this would have been an hour and this again it's a simple app but you know hour hour and a half of coding we've taken a WPF app that uses WCF client functionality it uses Castle Windsor my apps Metro and so on and we have ported it to work exactly the same on dotnet core hope this was a useful overview just to review here's the steps we went through I'll be sure in the comments below to link useful docs as far as the migration process a blog where we talk about all of this some of the tools like the API port analyzer and the compact analyzers but hopefully it gives you an overview of what the process looks like for moving from dotnet framework to dotnet core


His future prospects were full of promise, but his circumstances at the time, like those of many college students today, were fraught with moral dangers. For Carthage was notorious for vice. Augustine recalls, to Carthage I came, and a frying pan of disgraceful loves sizzled round about me. My soul broke out into open sores, miserably longing to scratch itself against things of the senses. Still I found it sweet to love and to be loved, especially when I could enjoy the body of the one I loved. And so I polluted the springs of friendship with the filthy things I craved.  Has any man ever been so eloquently honest and clear-sighted about the sins of his youth and their fearful consequences?