You can't stop the march of technology in time, and if you do, you become a backwater. This technology is going to progress regardless of whether or not the government gets it right. Absolutely. Why'd they let you into government at all? Chris John Carlo is an American attorney and the former chairman of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, one of the country's most powerful financial regulators. Last year, John Carlo co-founded the Digital Dollar Project, a private sector initiative that aims to advance the exploration of the U.S. Central Bank digital currency. The project plans to launch five pilot programs this year, narrowing the gap that still separates the U.S. from China, the digital currency race. Many fear that China may use its digital yuan for mass surveillance, and John Carlo wants the U.S. to take a different approach with its implementation. Our killer app, or our ACE card that the United States has, is only we have that Fourth Amendment protection. In this exclusive interview with Cointelegraph, John Carlo shares the current state of the Digital Dollar Project, explains why the world needs Central Bank digital currencies, and explores whether it's possible for regulators and innovators to find a common ground. Can you give us an update on how the Digital Dollar Project is coming along? I understand there's a couple of exciting experiments coming down. And over the last few months, we've put together a program, and we announced just a few weeks ago, that we're actually going to create a U.S. testing ground where we'll be able to operate these nine pilot programs. Working with some America's major retailers, whether they be big box stores or banks or payment providers, others to test out these different uses. In the next several weeks, we will announce two of five pilot programs that we intend to do this year, and hopefully we'll complete the full nine sometime next year. Everything we do will be made publicly available. It's technology neutral. It's vendor neutral. So what we want to generate is some real U.S. data that academics can use, that policy makers on Capitol Hill can use, that the Fed can use to make some core decisions. Yeah, God's work actually getting some real progress and real experiments getting done. Exactly. One of the sort of core aspects of the CVDC conversation is this kind of digital currency race. The U.S. policy makers, it seems the only way to get their attention, is by warning that China will get ahead of this. How scared do you think policy makers should be about the digital yuan, and is it this sort of national security issue that many people seem to be making it out to them? Yeah. So there are many constituencies weighing in on the development of a U.S. central bank digital currency, for some of them, the rise of China, the launch of its digital yuan is a concern. But I believe there are at least seven imperatives why the majority of the world's central banks, including now the U.S. Federal Reserve, are looking at developing a central bank digital currency, and geopolitics is only one of them. So let's quickly inventory those drivers. The first one before it was even talked about in terms of geopolitical was data capture. What got China started was the concern that commercial enterprises like AliPay and WeChat Pay were going to capture the commercial data of its citizenry. And in a single party communist state, that cannot be. The party must be the owner of all of that data. But it's not just communist central banks that were concerned about this. The announcement of Facebook's Libra got central banks in Europe and the United States very concerned about citizens' commercial data being captured by commercial entities, especially commercial entities like Facebook who had just been through a scandal about their data capture activity. So data capture was imperative number one and remains imperative number one, I think, for a lot of central banks. The second one is wholesale financial market modernization. Singapore, which has now been looking at this for years, as an offshore island financial center needs to maintain its technological edge in wholesale financial services and saw digital currency, digital payments as one driver in that. And certainly London, others, Europe, for example, or BIS are looking at this. Thirdly, there have been advocates for financial inclusion or under-inclusion here in the United States for a long time. But the COVID pandemic crisis really brought their voices to bear and conversations about Fed accounts, a digital dollar that was introduced by Professor Rick from Vanderbilt and a few others. Financial inclusion was another third driver. A fourth driver was benefits distribution precision. We saw in the COVID crisis the issue of paper checks to people that don't have bank accounts. So that now fifth is perhaps the rise of stablecoins. I think, you know, Caitlin Long recently talked about at a speech she gave at Cato that there's now $16 trillion of bankless financial transactions taking place through stablecoins right now. Certainly central banks have taken note of that and are paying attention to that. Stablecoins are on the agenda of the people at the very top of the regulatory pyramid in Washington, D.C. Then I would say maybe sixth is geopolitical concerns. Those central banks who have a reserve currency to promote and defend and who like their percentage of the world's reserve currency, whether that be the United States, the EU, Japan, look at China and say, will the development of a digital yuan shift that balance? Will it lead to the use of the yuan? And then another factor would be national security agencies. I think national security agencies think about how a digital currency could be used to fund illicit activities, terrorism activities, without having to go through the enormous global banking system which is Western dominated to which sanctions can apply, so a digital currency might bypass that. So all of those factors, and then I would add the one that I've been talking about for some time now which I think is the most important thing, and that is the value systems that's inherent money. Money carries with it values. The dollar's use over the last three generations have carried with it values of free enterprise, of financial markets free of clumsy government interference, of an economic zone of privacy provided it's not used for illicit purposes, but for legal purposes it's on a privacy. What's very clear that China intends their digital yuan to be an instrument of state surveillance and even further a social credit weighing system. And this is why, it's one of the reasons why the digital dollar project we're so animated because we feel that our new mission is to make sure central banks wake up to this and the US Fed wakes up that these social values that got us here, the rule of law, free capital markets, free enterprise, zones of individual economic privacy are ingrained in the new digital future of the US dollar and that we don't allow ourselves to be taken in by what China's doing and match that state surveillance approach. I think that's going to be tremendously difficult work to the extent that a policymaker is going to be more concerned with of those six or seven drivers. They're going to be more concerned with the national security implications or this largely unregulated stablecoin or DeFi economy than they are going to be with, as you say, preserving American economic values through whatever form potential US CBDC might take. How do you shift those priorities? How do you get them to understand, you know, the enormous good that a well implemented CBDC could have? How do you, you know, move away from maybe the eye catching headlines and into the deep rich policy? So, being a lawyer, I'll start with the law and we have a constitution and our fourth amendment guarantees a right of privacy against government interference and so the starting point and in fact even maybe even our killer app or our ace card that the United States has is only we have that fourth amendment protection. Europe has GDPR that it's privacy protection but it only protects its citizens from commercial exploitation of their data. It doesn't protect them from government exploitation of their data. Commercial coins, their protection of privacy will be idiosyncratic. Some will, some won't. We know that a lot of commercial vendors want to mind data. That's how they earn a return. The government would be, our US government would be prevented from doing so and maybe even in a world where you've got a digital yuan, a digital euro, a commercial coin and the US dollar, the one where your privacy would be most protected if we get the jurisprudence right would be with the dollar. Who's doing it right, you think? Who's implementing these, you know, China is obviously the boogeyman and has, you know, turned the principles of blockchain on its head for very nefarious purposes. Who's doing it right, though? There's 56 other countries, 55 who are developing CVDCs. What are examples that the US should be looking to? So, again, you start with what's the mission and then you hopefully get the design elements right. So if China's mission is to surveil its citizenry and distribute their digital currency widely, they're actually doing quite well right now against that mission. It's early days, but you can already download their digital currency today and much of China. You can spend it in convenience stores in Beijing and at the Winter Olympics it'll be available to every visitor and every athlete that comes, not just in China but to take it back with them. And so on a practical level, they're achieving their goals. Singapore is looking at this to modernize its banking system. The Bahamas have a different mission. Their mission is they've got citizens on out islands that are mobile phone equipped but don't have access to banking services. Africa is now very much a leader in this because they have a similar issue, an underbanked population that are well mobile equipped. So again, what is the mission you're trying to achieve? And in the United States, money is as much a social construct as it is a government construct and we very much need to keep that in mind as we design a digital dollar. If it only is there to serve government purposes, it will not succeed. It must serve society's needs as well as serving government needs. I think that this is a realm that's particularly academically juicy. It's fun for grad student potheds and the like. What's one kind of niche use case that really excites you? I love the idea, somebody wrote about the idea of a digital dollar that during times of recession has an expiration date. It forces and encourages spending. These little niche use cases that governments can implement but individual projects might not be able to. What is a governmental scale use case for which programmable money could be varying? The notion of a digital currency, whether it be sovereign or non-sovereign, tied to smart contracts, allows money to solve the age old problem of being able to move it in place, i.e. move it around the globe as easily as you can send a text message, but also move it in time. Here to four, money was a temporal thing. But with a smart contract, you can say I want to program my money today to go to my unborn grandchild in the future once they graduate college. And all of those contingencies can be programmed in. Now how do we do that today? Do that today by relying a whole series of trusted intermediaries called trustees, called executors, called trust companies that say, got your instructions, it's clear. When you're dead, we promise you we'll make sure your grandchild gets that college degree.  But with programmable digital currency, you can program it today to move around the globe in space but move around the globe in time.  This is an interesting conversation for me because I'm already doing lots of this, right? I'm very active in the DeFi world. I do have digital savings accounts. I have lending, I have insurance. Many of the services in the traditional finance world are already being replicated through these unregulated finance experiments. I'm curious how a digital dollar would interact with a permissioned form of sovereign money, would interact with a more decentralized form of the experiments currently underway. And what you're advising regulators approach these really thriving, frankly, financial verticals. Like, how should they be thinking about them and does there have to be an adversarial relationship? No, there doesn't. The internet is doing to centralizers of value, what it's done to centralizers of information, what it's done to centralizers of retail. It's creating these defies. Now, what makes this so challenging is when the internet first sets its sights on information, information because of our First Amendment protections of freedom of speech has always been relatively unregulated. We don't have ministries of information in Washington to, in a sense, protect people and their information. But when you come to things of value, governments have long presumed and have had the support of their populations to regulate things of value. We don't have one bank regulator in Washington. We've got three, the Fed, the OCC, and the FDIC. So there's a huge encompassing bias when it comes to things of value. There wasn't that type of encompassing bias in the first wave of the internet. We took a first-do-no-harm approach. Now we're having, you know, and this has been the struggle over the last few years and the work I did at the CFTC was to be aware of that encompassing bias and yet be open to new innovation. And so this is going to be a challenge that's going to play out in the next few years. However, you can't stop the march of technology and time.  We in the United States have always been open to innovation and we must be open to this innovation as well in a prudent way, in a way that's in correspondence with our society that expects investor protections and a role for government. But we've got to work out what is that proper role for government in the face of this decentralizing, powerful, democratizing technology. And that's going to play out over the next decade and it's one that I'm very excited to be involved in. Your view of this placing DeFi and Blockchain in a broader regulatory history of the Internet actually makes me more hopeful that there can be sensible regulation than I think I've ever been. That makes it seem possible somehow. How do these conversations go with regulators? I imagine most of them just don't know what they're talking about. So how do you get into the meat of this stuff? How do you get them to see these broad movements and scales when what they probably see is just a bunch of kids speculating on dog coins? Regulators are pretty much like any other segment of society. There was a book written years ago called Cross the Chasm that talked about every society has got a bell curve. There's the early adopters, the big broad middle adopters and then there's the late adopters. The same is true in government. No political party has a monopoly on technologically forward-leading. They all have their population of early adopters, middle adopters and late adopters and the same is true in government. So some regulators I talk to get it, they understand. Others are like, I'm still using a quill pen. I use a flip phone. I don't understand what you're talking about. So there are always going to be skeptics and there are also going to be early. But most of the official sector, just like most of the private sector is somewhere in the middle and communication and message isn't really important. And my message to the crypto community yesterday at Bitcoin 2021 was let's lead with our best messages. I love where the pirates of tomorrow kind of analogy were off the grid. This time it's different. But the fact of the matter is political power is going to move into this space just like they've moved into every new frontier. And what we want to make sure is that the regulations that come out are well suited to purpose, that they work for this industry, that they enhance it, not deteriorate it. I mean you're calling for a balanced approach but ultimately it sounds like you're a fan of, a proponent of and believe that this technology is going to progress regardless of whether or not the government gets it right. Absolutely. Why'd they let you into government at all?


Welcome back and today as I told you earlier we are going to talk about the film, the entrepreneurship in the film industry. Kenya has produced or been a location of the film since the early of 90s rather than the future films in with fiction contact. Kenya has mostly produced documentary films often relating the conditions of the people and poverty in the main cities of Kenya but today we are going to talk about the how to make money from your talent in this film industry and today I'm joined by Naftali Mughire and also Daisy Mba. Naftali Mughire is a film entrepreneur and also animation and motion graphics designer and also Daisy Mba is a special effect artist. Welcome. Thank you so much. Yeah and so I will start with you Daisy. You know the special effects artistry is quite young but it is gaining popularity here in Kenya so a little bit tell us about your journey in doing the special effects is that and how did you end up here? Yes to be frank at first I'm a fan of movies since my childhood and they always fascinated me to see the fake ones sometimes before I thought it was original ones like it was really happening but as I grew up I went on researching more I thank my parents they've helped me that journey a lot also they introduced me a lot too knowing what is really happening and later when I came to learn about the real artistic in it and the art in it so I got interested in it so I did some little bit of film and now understood the fact that special effect is a base and it's a stand on its own and like makeup is also made but special effect is on its own and it's something that can make you go far so I took my time I went to school I started the whole makeup first then I went and specialized in special effect yeah so that is how my journey was and it was swift I can say that. And how long have you done in this the special effects? Probably I'm missing I'm getting to three years. Wow that's quite a big long time yeah and I'll ask to Naftal how did you get also to you in this industry and what motivated you to dive into the motion and graphic industry and first of all you can tell all of you what is animation and motion graphics because we can assume that everyone knows. You know animation is very broad as you have said we have two types of we have like three types of animation we have 2D animation 3D animation and motion graphics and when I say 3D we mean you see that thing in three dimensions you see it all around but when I'm talking about 2D animation you only see it in two dimensions okay and let's say let's talk of the first first Kenyan films or other animations were done in 2D and then when fiber came in that's everything that many people know that's now done in 3D and most of the adverts that you see that are done with Safari come most of them are done in motion graphics. Motion graphics is whereby you admit text text to you give life to text yes okay awesome and what motivated you to get into this industry when you know me I started as a DJ first and then went to school that's interesting I started as a DJ when to school did mass communication after mass communication they wanted to film production and later went back to school 2D animation the reason why I did animation is because at that time there were no people doing animation and it was an open mass for anybody who can jungle in and step in and do something different because people used to say we can only see the fiber advert that's the only thing that is animated in Kenya so I had to come in cut that gap and produce other things that people can look at you've said that long time ago there were not many people who are doing in the in this animation and motion graphics industry and for now does it pay for you as animation and motion graphics producer to invest in the film industry sure sure I can tell you for fact for one second we can charge a slot 5,000 shillings per second so that's if you give me an advert of 50 seconds all six adverse are done in 15 30 for 560 so you can see how much you can make in that gap if you're charging 5,000 per second yeah so animation is really paying it's something that people should look at because it's very broad it's like a market wherever you're selling onions or tomatoes there is no way you can tell me me me Nikona what one work was here so it's a very broad market that people should go into it and try to be very creative and produce new things mm-hmm wow that's nice and you for your daisy you know the film industry is very very big and yeah it's broad and why do people think and assume that ladies will tend just to do the eyebrows makeup rather than you automatically want to work on eyebrows why do people mostly think of that I think to start off saying is we pass that error mm-hmm people should just see a women and men there's no difference in art mm-hmm art is something that you're born in with mm-hmm I can be a very good visual artist mm-hmm and doesn't mean I have to be a man mm-hmm no that is art in me the art in me sure so not necessarily every woman has to do their eyebrows frankly speaking mm-hmm I cannot sit down and do my eyebrows myself wow because I've done the whole makeup thing but it is not there yeah my art is on the special effect yes I can do them but I can take like five hours no if I get that perfect thing yeah yeah but you want when it comes to the special effects I can jungle my shortest time on it mm-hmm so let us take that mind off that ladies and art ladies are so perfect we have the perfect eye yeah we can say that sure we have the perfect eye on art mm-hmm and colors who doesn't know ladies with colors yeah and you know when it comes to the special effect mm-hmm there is that touch is that look and is that feel feel that once yeah so if ladies venture in it mm-hmm it's it's like attaching to them yeah mm-hmm well that's nice on the rather the fiction side of the makeup the makeup yeah that's great it's not about the eye lashes and art no they's more about it okay that's nice and also as the producer tries to drop the some of the works that you've done what are your favorite signatures that look and how does it set you apart from makeup from other special makeup artist mm-hmm I can say my choice of they my job my choice of set mm-hmm what I use mm-hmm because frankly in Kenya getting the equipment is a little bit expensive yeah but being creative is not expensive mm-hmm yeah so I can say my signature is a what I use mm-hmm to make these special effects mm-hmm yeah because I literally make them myself mm-hmm yeah awesome awesome that's great and also as the as the director tends to to put the makeups that you've done and which are your big projects that you've done you know because this it's it's a big industry like this one you can see such oh my god actually I got frightened at these sites yeah that's just scary those are just and actually let me talk about this a little bit that's a man yeah um what creative did you use it is just thinking of something crazy mm-hmm just as I said it's about what can you create personally what do you think mm-hmm what do you personally yes want to achieve at the end of the day mm-hmm because that time there is an institution we are going for a showcase mm-hmm so we had to show I was going to show up on students on how to just think out of the box and get your own thing out yeah well that's great that's very very good let me go back to you now tell yes you know in the film entrepreneur it's very very broad and what does it take to be a film entrepreneur here in Kenya you know at first you you must stand out you must create something that is on top notch mm-hmm people people tend to say that film is not paying I'm a little bit of money's gotten from it which is no which is not true yeah okay mm-hmm because the first thing is what the clients if you really give out what the client needs mm-hmm you're there because most of the crimes that I can tell you in film industry don't know what they want mm-hmm let me talk to those who want to do advertisement because major we have measured in doing advertisement okay many crimes really what they know what they want but they don't know what they want mm-hmm so the moment you get to juggle in between what they don't know and what they want you are on it mm-hmm that's the moment you start making your good money mm-hmm yeah mm-hmm wow that's nice and also there's thief competition in the film industry and also the special effect makeup how do you deal with that after because we we have really put our name out there we have done the best projects we have we have worked with a lot of companies we have collaborated with a lot of companies to produce these products that we give out okay the first thing is most of the Kenyan artist later producers are very mean they don't want you can't get two three companies coming up together to come to do a project mm-hmm and we have really cut down that mm-hmm for us we really much different companies we come up together to produce the best product so that once the product gets out there it really cuts across what it was to market mm-hmm yeah well that's nice what about you Daisy in the special effect industry uh frankly speaking the special effect industry is not yet so really out there mm-hmm not many people believe in us yeah and not many big producers believe that they have special effect artists they only know we have makeup artists yeah yes because my friend our Kenyan girls can do the makeup yeah they can't they can't but they're not believing in us that we can do more than that eyebrow more than that shade of the eye shadows or what so I think it's but currently it's picking up because I can say I mentioned like I've done a few movies and I'm so proud of myself and my team that one of the movies that we did one the best feature story feature series in Kalasha wow where I was proud of that because at least please tell us which one I got I collaborated the k-university to do the gg wow the gg film wow so I did the makeups I did the special effects and everything and it was fun it was and winning was even the girl power we are talking about yeah it's not about the eyebrows again yeah yeah awesome awesome and as I go back to you naftal you say that making the the five minutes no the two minutes first something of the motion can lend you to get the five thousand shillings yeah but um how how how are you making money other than that how are you making much money in it and marketing your work you know marketing should not be really an issue to end artists because once you produce the best thing it will always market you wow yeah there's no need of you spending a lot of money starting to market your projects just do the best project derive it put it online customers will just stream in the issue that we have here in Kenya is we only want to cut short we don't want to do the right thing and the right place you get somebody's getting a job he wants to because of the cost of production everything he doesn't want to use money so that he can make money and that's where we go wrong and we don't want to invest in this in this field yeah because it's very expensive yes but the moment you invest in it have the right equipment have the right people working under you have the right team give your team motivation motivate your team because the moment you don't motivate your team that's the first failure that you're going to in this field because this field needs a lot of you have to be with the team the moment the team feels like they're making money for you that's the first place that you're going to lose so the only thing that I can tell people is let us be one thing let's let's come together and see what we can do yeah this is one of your works that you have done actually the picture that has gone I was among the best student in multimedia university and animation I was being awarded by our by our chancellor this is what I did for John Falmer yeah and the the whole thing about this thing this is my CV so this CV is trying to tell people that you can do it yeah awesome awesome that's great work over there this I did for border TV this emotion graphics this actually the logo of the the logo identity for the TV for the TV yeah well that's great work that you have done there let me get back to you daisy since you've gone to school and now the dynamics of the job do you plan to train people now that's on the spatial effect makeup yes I plan to do it and I've been doing it and I'm also planning on a bigger platform to do it because I'm planning on December I want to get some few youth and people to come in and help get this youth to know what they ask they can do in life because people out there think it's waking up in the morning and maybe go to the salon or anything but it's not about that lady that on the sitting there at the salon waiting for you to come and do your nails this lady can do a different thing and then there are those people because I want to major mostly on the young youth both genders there those that have lost hope in life sure so I want to major with them mostly and give them a training of a month and let them go and explore the world wow yeah well that's nice of you and getting back to you and after not many film animation and and motion graphics makers are aware of the importance of marketing and distribution and also you tend to find money and someone tends not to to to get those funds to do your work how can you explain about that the first thing that you must do is you know I can't give you a guarantee that I will give you money if I'm not seeing what you're doing first of all try to come up with something just have a synopsis or a pilot of what you want to do the moment it's very impressive you will get donors will come in and your work will be out there but most of us wants to come just have a story without anything and then you want money to be put in and that's what most of us are doing because personally I was a carpet of that I wanted to start an animation studio I've done only one thing I wanted to go all over tell people that I can do this but people ask me give two to three things that we can look at and see how we can invest in these projects okay yeah yeah that's nice and what advice can you give to the entrepreneurs in this film industry what I can tell them the film industry is very big it's a very big cake that we haven't even eaten three-third of it we have only taken like a quart of it come out big big great what big portion is there the big portion that we haven't touched anything the thing is let us creatives come together collaborate different companies in there because different companies have different strengths for example we can have a company that is very good in shooting and editing but they don't have graphics so you have a film that is very plain that will not go anywhere so if this company approaches us I'm just giving an example we give them graphics on the on the film it will be a very perfect film so let different companies come together collaborate for bigger projects okay okay that's nice and as I come to you Daisy as we close where do you want to go next and what are you working on right now and as you close on your final remarks I don't want to say that I want to go to Hollywood or what I want to create my own Hollywood here here in Kenya yeah that's what that is my dream and right now we're collaborating with a few people and we're doing some Kenyan things we want it to be strictly Kenyan touch meet with graphics meet we make up anything should be strictly Kenyan and we also pushing to use the Kenyan product you want to be a Kenyan touch that is how you're going to bring our own Hollywood here wow that's awesome your social media platforms as we close at facebook you're going to find me at daisy asha kare or daisy sfx then on instagram at kare daisy yes that's the only place you can find me those two places awesome what about you naftal we are located in rear room okay spinners and spinners that's where naftal production is in all social media platforms you can follow us at naftis productions we call ourselves film motion graphics and animation gurus awesome awesome that's nice that's nice so that's what we had for prepared for you today um the film industry it's a little bit of the portion that is taken when we have a lot a lot to do and so as we come to our close i want to give you a small quote that says life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood so as you remember to keep to be clean out there wash your hands with warm water and soap um and also sanitize yourself and wherever you are going so my name is john degua blessed night god bless


Coming up on DTNS, why India and Nigeria may give birth to the next big tech companies. Tesla wants to build a humanoid robot and drivers start their own ride hailing company to compete with Uber. DTNS starts now. This is the Daily Tech News for Friday, August 20th, 2021 in Los Angeles. I'm Tom Merritt and coming in from DTNS East, Maryland. Chris Ashley and I'm the show's producer, Roger Chang. We're just spending a good time on good day internet talking barbecue with Chris Ashley. If you want to get that conversation and some tips to go with it, become a member, patreon.com slash DTNS, where you can join our top patrons like Jeffery Zilx, Tony Glass and Phillip Less. Let's start with a few tech things you should know. The UK's Competition to Markets Authority or CMA published an assessment of NVIDIA's proposed acquisition of chip designer ARM from SoftBank. The government will now need to decide if the CMA should carry out an in-depth probe into the proposed acquisition. Concerns from the CMA include whether the merged business would have the ability and incentive to harm the competitiveness of NVIDIA's rivals by restricting access to ARM's IP, which is currently used by a lot of competitors to NVIDIA. Loss of competition could also stifle innovation across a number of markets according to the CMA. The CMA's National People's Congress passed an online user data privacy law stating that gathering personal information must have a clear and reasonable purpose and limited to a minimum scope. The law also sets out conditions for collecting personal data and requires regular audits to ensure compliance. The legislation goes into effect November 1st. Alright folks, time for another edition of What Has Google Killed Off Today? In a memo to employees, Google announced it intends to break up its health division planning to split its various projects across other parts of the company. Insiders sources say Google Health Chief Dr. David Feinberg will leave the company to be CEO at the electronic medical records firm Cerner. This is not the alphabet health company, this is the health division within Google. But Google also confirmed its ending support for Android Auto for phone screens starting with Android 12. But all of the functions from that separate app can already be found in Google Assistant driving mode, which you can find in Google Maps. So at least it's pretty much still there. Motorola announced a new $700 Edge smartphone, offering a Snapdragon 778 5G system on chip. The same 108 megapixel camera found on the Edge Plus, a 5000 mAh battery, and rated IP52 water resistance. It uses a 6.8 inch 144Hz LCD screen, although it features a flat rather than curved screen like Lasher's model. It's available unlocked from US retailers now coming to Verizon and Spectrum in the coming months. And Duolingo announced a family plan, get this, six people can share the benefits of Duolingo Plus for 120 bucks a year, right now a solo plan cost you 80 bucks. So that's a fairly decent deal if you've got enough people to take advantage of it. Duolingo Plus gives you unlimited access to lessons, some additional features that you don't get in the free version. And one new feature that they announced coming to lessons is the ability to teach alphabets like Hangul and Cyrillic and a bunch of others. All right, let's talk about robots. Tesla showed off an idea for a five foot eight tall 125 pound humanoid robot called the Tesla Bot, which will use the same tech in autopilot. This camera's Tesla's full self-driving computer to move around, but not very fast. It'll move no more than five miles per hour. A presentation slide said Tesla Bot is designed to handle dangerous, repetitive and boring tasks CEO Elon Musk said he would like a prototype to be ready sometime next year. Important point, it was a drawing and a mannequin, not a prototype. Prototype isn't even here yet. The announcement was the capper on AI Day, where Tesla goes deep explaining how its systems work, both in cars and factories, hoping to attract top talent in the area. And yes, Elon Musk likes to announce things that don't always turn out to be real products, but for every robotic snake charger, there is an actual Tesla car in existence. So who knows? Maybe this will be real. All right. So the first thing when I see something like this, I wonder is how many laws will it have? And then after that is, you know, I get bummed out because when they use terms like, oh, we're just building this for boring and repetitive jobs, those are people's jobs that people are doing today that you're replacing with. So please don't trivialize the fact that you're yet again, technology is, you know, moving in a direction that is costing people jobs. Now, I get it. It's the way we have to move as a society and hopefully they can be retrained and do other things, but I just, I hate that minimalizing of terms that are used. But with that being said, if it's successful and it works, and especially for dangerous jobs, okay, you know, now you got me there. You don't have to send people down to do things that are, you know, putting their lives at risk. Yeah, I'm all for that. Yeah.  And I always point, I think I used this example earlier this week already, but I always point to computers came in, eliminated the need for the humans that were originally called computers, and those people became administrative assistants and project managers. And there were things that you couldn't afford to pay people to do that suddenly you could pay them to do because you were saving money because the computer came in. And I think that happens a lot with robots. I think that's going to happen a lot where a company will not just cash out the savings and replace everybody with robots, but realize like, oh, humans are really good at this, but we couldn't afford good customer service in the past. Now we can. We can actually have a human talk to you. Like, I think stuff like that might happen. So I'm fairly optimistic, but that said, I take your warning of like, but that's not going to be 100% true all the time. So we need to pay attention to it. Yeah. And I'm always happy to be more optimistic than anything else. Yeah. Meanwhile, what it would before we before we move off this, what do you what do you give the chances that we ever see a Tesla bot? No, you know what, on a scale, on a scale of a snake robot charger to hyperloop to Tesla Model S. Where do you where do you put it? I'm going to give it 50% chance. You're going to you're putting in the hyperloop. I'm putting in a hyperloop. All right. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, I what about you? I was probably going to say hyperloop to, but I'll just go full on Model S. We'll see him. All right. It'll take 10 years just like the model. It'll take a lot longer, but we'll get him. I don't know. All right. So Microsoft announced the first office 365 pricing increase since the service launch in 2011, starting March 1st, 2022. Microsoft 365 business basic goes up one buck to $6 per user per month. Most other plans are increasing two to three dollars a month with the Microsoft 365 E3 tier that includes a version of Windows increasing four dollars a month to thirty six dollars. These increases only affect commercial subscriptions. Consumer and education prices are staying the same. But if you're a commercial service, you might be interested to know that the Document Foundation released Libre Office 7.2. Adding support for Apple Silicon improved compatibility with Microsoft Office file formats and better handling of large files and images. In the released announcement, the Document Foundation also urged the increased number of enterprises using the free volunteer maintained version of Libre Office to switch to Libre Office. Enterprise versions from partners. I always chuckle when I hear we've got more organizations that are using our software, it's like, oh, yes, you do have more. But Earth is using Office for the most part, you know, Earth business. You know what I mean? And yeah, I love that Libre Office is still around, you know, that it saved itself when when Sun took over open office. It's still kicking. It sounds like it just gets more and more feature filled. And I do think it's interesting. They're like, hey, could you use the enterprise version if you're an enterprise? Because otherwise, we may not be able to continue to maintain this because you're right. Everybody just uses office. And one of the reasons is they haven't raised prices on this three sixty five in 11 years. I mean, by the time this price increase goes into effect, they're telling you it's a price increase, but it's not happened until next March. I mean, that's right. Not bad. And if you're already in office three sixty five, are you going to purchase on the officers? If I plan and then purchase Libre Office Enterprise, probably not, you know what I mean? You just get Microsoft is going to pressure you to go with the bundle. They're like, oh, if you're already here, you might as well just do this. They'll even discount it for you in the first year or two. And then, you know, once you're in, you are in. You're not going to be like, all right, we're going to switch to something with less functionality that has to build compatibility with what we were previously using. And then, yeah, we're better off there, you know, schools and stuff like that. OK, you know, they have Google Docs, so that's another leap they'll have to get past. So I but I don't want them to go away. Don't get me wrong, because they're there. You know, the more in the in the space, the more pressure it is to get better at your software and what you can do and what you bring to the table. So I'm not I'm just saying it's just it gives me a chuckle every time a software says, oh, yeah, we've been picking up steam when the enterprise is like, come on. If anybody out there is like, no, no, no, I usually braffas enterprise. There's a partner. It's really good. Let us know feedback at Daily Tech Newshow.com. We'd love to hear about it. But yeah, I mean, this price, this price increase. Usually I see a price increase story. I'm like, OK, here comes the hate. But this one is like only a couple bucks. It's only commercial. And there's plenty of notice. I mean, this once every 11 years is not bad for our beds. And the funny thing is, you know, I was talking about this with some co-workers and they're like, but wow, they really haven't raised their prices in that long. And then we just think it was like, well, look at it. It's news headlines. We're all talking about it. And so, yeah, that's why, right?  So it makes sense, I guess. Well, folks, if you want to know where to look for some of the next big ideas in tech, you know, where's the next Microsoft? Where's the next Apple? Where's the next Facebook, for goodness sake? A couple of articles out today you might want to pay attention to. Bloomberg notes that India is on track for a record year for IPOs. Zomato went public in July with shares rising 70% afterward. And now India's most valuable startups are all in one stage or another of IPO planning. Online lodging, Booker Oyo. We might think lodging right now, horrible business. And Oyo's no exception. But the fact that they've weathered it as well as they have has caused a lot of people to go like, look, if Oyo is doing, you know, they're not doing great, but if they're able to survive through this, what happens when people start traveling again? Anyway, they're aiming to file in October. Bloomberg says e-commerce giant Flipkart, which is controlled by Walmart, but is planning an IPO in Q4. Digital education company Byjuus is in early talks with bankers about its IPO and Paytm filed its documents and estimates it might end up being the country's largest IPO ever. Ride, Hailing Service, Ola and FinTech startup Pine Labs are also reporting that they might consider IPOs and Payments company Phone P, also owned by Walmart, is considering shifting its corporation from Singapore back to India to get some of this local investor attention that's going on. Some of the boom is thanks to China, to a Vendus Capital Executive director Pankaj Naik told Bloomberg, India may not be as attractive as China in the broader economic sense, but it's looking like a safer bet because of all the tech crackdowns and uncertainty that's going on in China. Now that's just India. If you're into FinTech, you need to look at Nigeria. The Financial Times notes that FinTech companies in Nigeria have brought in a billion dollars in venture capital in the last two years. Nigeria has 200 million people, 60 million of whom don't use traditional banks. It's a huge market for these kinds of systems. Startups are filling the gap with network payment services and both the Sub-Saharan Africa unicorns are in Nigeria. Payments company Flutterwave, topped a billion dollars valuation last year and payments processing company InterSwitch reached it after an investment from Visa this year. Mobile money, digital-only banks, microlending and more are driving all this growth and the central bank of Nigeria helped kickstart it as well. There's some concern about what they're doing lately, but they started to drive toward electronic payments back in 2011, introduced a bank verification number to make credit easier in 2014. And while cash is still predominant in paying people, folks are paying friends, mechanics, food stalls and others with a mobile app way more often in Nigeria than they are in most Western countries. And it doesn't hurt that 70% of Nigerians are younger than 30 and mobile first as far as online goes. That's all led to a rise in agency banking where people can store and transfer money at a phone credit stall. Don't need a bank account.  Nigeria had 18,000 of those agents at the end of 2017. It now has 600,000. And even VC funding is going mobile. Financial Times talked about early-stage seed rounds for Nigerian companies, values around $200,000 or more being closed over WhatsApp regularly. They're just using the mobile app to talk and make the deal. So Chris, I don't know which of these might end up being the next big thing, maybe none of them, but it's kind of interesting to keep an eye on that because you don't hear about these as often. Yeah, for sure. And I love the fact that there's just yet another area where new technology can be fostered, right? And no matter why it's happening, I love seeing new technology hit, especially if it becomes useful to me because it's fun. That aspect is still fun to me. There's so much of it getting in the latest OS on my phone updating my computer and suffering through bugs and stuff. Not so much, but anytime something new comes along, I'm like, ooh, that's cool. I can use this and I can see how I can incorporate into my life. I still like that. So if there's more money out there to make this happen, I'm all for it. Yeah, one of the things that's happened in China, we've seen a lot of money go into China. They've built a lot of domestic companies like Alibaba and Tencent, and those are the ones getting cracked down right now. But those companies have had a harder time making an impact worldwide. You're seeing Alibaba with Aliexpress and even Alipay make some good decisions worldwide. But when you're talking about worldwide companies, you're still talking about the same ones, Apple, Facebook, Google, et cetera, Amazon. When people say like, when's the next one gonna come? I mean, TikTok and ByteDance, a Chinese company, is sort of the next one on the horizon, but it's really the only Chinese one that is considered truly worldwide applicable because they bought musically, because they acquired TikTok. So it's interesting to me to look at this because Nigeria and India won't have the same hurdle of having to have a version that runs in their home country and a version that runs elsewhere in the same way. Obviously there's localization, there's language and issues, but in China, you have to have a separate company run your local thing. You can't even use the same company outside of China. Yeah, so with those rules being a bit easier for these companies to foster and develop, you could truly see something come out a lot faster and a lot better. So yeah, definitely something to keep an eye on. Hey folks, don't forget, starting next week, starting this Monday, Experiment Week on DTNS. We know a lot of the world vacations in the summer, so we're swapping out our normal DTNS show and trying out some new show ideas hosted by DTNS producers and contributors. We got Jen Cutter with video gaming, Rob Dunwood, Tech John with Terrence and Stephanie, Rich's Ask a Luddite, and Chris Ashley gonna bring some barbecue tech to us. I'm looking forward to that, man. It's good. It was a lot of fun to record. We did a little early, but I really think that people are gonna enjoy some of this barbecue talk and some of the tech that I use, the tech of the barbecue itself of the smokers and as well as some of the tech that we use to make it better. So it all starts next week, Monday, August 23rd with the Tech John with Rob Dunwood. And on Friday, you get barbecue tech with Chris and Rod and it finishes up with Jen and the video gaming show on Saturday. And you don't have to do anything. If you listen to this, it's gonna show up the same place you found this in all the DTNS feeds. So check it out right here. One of the big criticisms of ride hailing is that it exploits drivers, keeping their earnings just high enough to keep them driving, but without all the benefits of a full-time job, low pay and low benefits, not an attractive situation, but for a lot of folks, it's better than nothing. The Ubers and Lyfts of the world argue that, hey, it's just economics, but what would happen if the drivers ran the company? Would they get more pay? Would they get better benefits? Well, the drivers cooperative is putting that idea to the test. Protocol has an in-depth look at the effort. It's using Crowd Investment Platform WeFundr to raise $1,070,000 to start a driver-run ride hailing business. Not even start, they're already underway. They just wanna build out their app, build out their service better. It's close enough to its goal that by the time you hear me say this, it may have already funded. And a quick note about WeFundr, this is not Kickstarter where you get a sticker and maybe a book or something. WeFundr returns your investment. It's actually a contract. So for drivers cooperative, it will split up 2.5% of the revenue each quarter to divide amongst its WeFundr's investors until each investor has made 250% of their original investment. Drivers cooperative is positioning itself as a platform that does right by drivers, but also they say they think they can deliver cheaper fares. They pay drivers $1.64 per mile, which is above the $1.26 minimum that New York City sets. The platform takes 15% from the fare to operate. So how do they keep the fares lower? Well, Uber takes 21.5% by comparison. And it's co-op. So the drivers are also the owners of the company. Each driver gets a voting share in the company, one voting share. Drivers also get points for completing rides, recruiting drivers and passengers and attending co-op meetings and a few other things. And those points are used to determine how profits are split up amongst the drivers. Some of it goes to the WeFundr's, but the rest of it gets split up amongst the drivers. The co-op was founded by black car driver Ken Lewis, originally from Granada, Alyssa Orlando, former operations manager for Uber in East Africa, and union organizer Eric Forman. The drivers cooperative does not consider its driver owners employees though. They're still contractors, but also owners. And it doesn't provide health insurance, which is one of the big things that even some of the bigger ones like Uber have started to do, but it says it wants to. It needs to get more riders first. It wants to do insurance, it just can't do it yet. The app launched in May, has 40,000 registered users and 3,400 drivers. I love everything about this idea. I would love to see this be successful so that other industries can follow this model. I really would like to see our businesses in this country, and in every other country really, start being more owned by the people that actually do the work as opposed to some CEO who's just sitting on the board of another CEO company and then they're just helping each other out with these golden parachutes and this other nonsense. I think they have an important opportunity and if they were to spend any money anywhere, it would be in the marketing, not so much of the company, but of the idea behind the company.  So if you can ride that wave and really get people to understand like folks, support a company that is owned by the people. And I think if they could make that, get a good message out of that, I think they could see some real success. Yeah, it's one of the things they wanna use that 1,070,000 from WeFundr4 is that kind of marketing. I think that is important. I think, I don't know, I'd feel nicer riding in a car if I'm like, hey, I know this driver is gonna get there, they're just deserts, they're an owner in the company, they're not being exploited. However, this company still has to deal with all the things the others deal with, which is like, do they do background checks? Do you know, they're not doing insurance yet, right? They're like, we can't do it yet. Should they be required to anyway? That's what you're saying to other companies? I mean, I think their approach is good. Their approach is we just want to compete. We don't wanna drive Uber and lift out of business. We're not saying they're evil, we just wanna compete. They think if they get 3% of New York City, that they'll survive. And my guess is if they can get to 3%, they'll probably get past that and then start to operate in other areas. I think they could become a player. I think they could become a competitor and they could push your Ubers and lifts into being a more high-end service, a more like black car, limo type service while drivers co-ops could take over the true ride sharing. We call it right at the very least. Push those companies to do better by their employees. Add that too, yeah. You know what I mean? And so, and I think it'd be, I think honestly, I get why they didn't, they don't have the insurance right now, but that should be a priority for them. Because if they can then have the insurance, then it's easier to attract even more drivers. You'll get people that'll, yeah, I'd rather drive for them and even more work for myself and actually own something than just drive for one of these other guys. And so that should be a priority for them is to get that insurance going and get their people taken care of. Yeah, and I think that's a real good point about one of the benefits. And I think the founder even said that, one of the benefits is like, if we get Uber to give their drivers more of a stake in Uber, we'd consider ourselves a success, yeah. Huge win. Well, tell us about this Epic Google thing that we heard about. Yeah, so just real quick. Newly unredacted documents from the Epic Google lawsuit show that in 2019, Google ran a premier device program which offered Android OEMs a greater 12% of search revenue instead of the standard 8% if they agreed not to pre-install third-party app stores. Some OEMs like LG and Motorola also received an additional 3% to 6% of money spent in the Play Store as part of the program. These agreements include a provision that restricted companies from making public statements about the program. Epic claims the premier device program was not publicly known and Epic only found out about it during discovery for trial. Epic claims BBK, which makes Apple, Vivo and OnePlus phones designated 70% of its new devices as premier. Sony reached 50% and Zelmi, 40%. Consider also that an internal Google report from 2017 found that 4% of app downloads in the US were from the outside the Play Store. All right, let's finish up with some Lego Japan news. Lego Land Japan and Toyota Gazoo Racing have built a life-size model of the Toyota Supra GR sports car. From wait for it, 477,303 Lego bricks. The Lego model took 3,000 development hours and additional 2,400 building hours for a total of 5,400 hours to make. It weighs in at 1,885 kilograms which is more than the actual car weighs. The wheel, driver seat, gauge cluster and badging all come from an actual Supra. So does the electric drivetrain that they added so that you can actually drive this Lego car up to 28 kilometers per hour. That's more than twice as fast as previously built Lego Bugatti which you could also drive. You can see the Lego Supra in person at Lego Land Japan until October 11th. Super cool, really cool. I'm glad that they keep doing this. I wonder who gets to ride in it, right? They're not going to be driving this thing around a lot but they built it to be driven so somebody's going to get to drive it sometimes, right? Yeah, they'll probably have one person drive it in and one in that same person drive it out and everybody's just going to go with it. Yeah, it's a demo like look, you can actually drive it. I mean, you can't actually drive it but this person can actually drive it.  I was floored by the fact that it would actually weight more than the real car until I realized they'd put a drivetrain and some of the other stuff in like the driver's seat. I'm like, oh, okay, that does bring up the weight but man, Lego bricks are heavy. Had no idea. I guess they definitely glued it together though, right? Oh, then last time. Especially if they're driving it around, right? Yeah, they definitely. I can't imagine they wouldn't have. I know it's only going 28 kilometers per hour but a couple bricks come loose while you drive it. Bricks flying in the air. Not a good look. Oh man. Let's check out the mailbag speaking to driving around on Wednesday's show. We were discussing a lack of jobs for truckers to easily transfer into if and when automated trucking takes over. That's when I was talking about robots taking your jobs earlier this week. All right, Matthew wrote in and said, I've been driving trucks for over a decade and dealing with the industry for my entire life and honestly, it's not something I'm worried about. Mostly due to the severe lack of drivers and a large portion of drivers nearing retirement age. As of right now, the lack of drivers is increasing driver pay with the counter of shippers not wanting to pay more for freight. This is compounded by regulation limiting how long drivers are allowed to work in a day and in a week. If automated trucks would be allowed on the interstate we could be far more efficient. Interstate driving is boring and simple. Let computers do that. Let us focus on the complex driving so the automated system can't handle yet. Still, I suspect it'll be five or 10 years before we start to see a major shift in the trucking industry. Super interesting point of view, especially from somebody that actually drives one of my closest friends is a driver as well. And honestly, if I wasn't doing the IT work that I do today, I would definitely be trucking. Yeah. Something that's always interested me, yeah. Would you automated truck? Would you just be like the human supervisor just hanging out? I wouldn't have a problem with that afterwards. But much like I would approach smoking food, you got to do it first and then you do the easier method. Then you can do the techy thing. Yeah, you do the tech thing. Because you got to know how to do it and be able to withstand all the ins and outs and the nuances of it. And then you just take it easy and not only adjust as needed. Hey, thanks, Matthew, for sharing the insight. Really appreciate that when people have expertise and write in to feedback at dailytechnewshow.com. Also, two days in a row, we got a new boss. Thank you, Will. Will just started backing us on Patreon, man.  We're gonna make a big deal out of it because we appreciate every single patron that we have. So all you existing patrons, welcome Will into the tent. Thank you, Will. And thank you, Chris Ashley. Obviously we talked about the barbecue tech thing coming up next Friday during experiment week. What else you got going on? You can always check me out on SMR podcast. Check us out over at smrpodcast.com. Me, Rob Dunlow, Rod Simmons, three homies talking tech and other social issues that we may come across that affects us. It's a fun show. You feel like you're one of our pals. And man, I just rarely find anybody that listens to the show and doesn't enjoy the conversation. Come on, hang out with us. Two great things on this week's SMR podcast. One, Rod's explanation of the Windows 365 vulnerability was so spot on and so well, well discussed by y'all. And two, you hear Chris jump to Elon Musk's defense. Even though I'm not a fan of the guy. I know, I know. That caught my ear. I was like, what is going on? All right, folks, we're live Monday through Friday, 4 30 p.m. Eastern 2030 UTC. Find out more at dailytechnewshow.com slash live DTNS off next week for the regular show to make room for experiment week. We start the ball rolling Monday with The Tech John hosted by Rob Dunwood. Tune in for that. This week's episodes of Daily Tech News Show were created by the following people, host producer and writer, Tom Merritt, host producer and writer, Sarah Lane, executive producer and booker, Roger Chang, producer, writer and host, Rich Strafolino, video producer and Twitch producer, Joe Coots, associate producer, Anthony Lemos, Spanish language host, writer and producer, Dan Campos, news host, writer and producer, Jen Cutter. Science correspondent, Dr. Nicky Ackermanns, social media producer and moderator, Zoe Dettering. Our mods, Beatmaster, W. Scottus One, Biocow, Captain Kipper, Jack Shit, Steve Guadirama, Paul Rees, Matthew J. Stevens and J.D. Galloway. Mod and video hosting by Dan Christensen. Video feed by Sean Wei. Music and art provided by Martin Bell, Dan Looters, Mustafa A, A-Cast, Creative Arts and Len Peralta. A-Cast ad support from Trace Gaynor. Patreon support from Stefan Brown. Contributors for this week's show included Scott Johnson, Justin Robert Young and Chris Ashley. Guests on this week's show included Belair Bazarich and Annalene Newitz. And thanks to all the patrons who make the show possible. This show is part of the Frog Pants Network. Get more at frogpants.com. The Diamond Club hopes you have enjoyed this program.