That's all right. Hi. Hey, this is our first take at recording this episode as far as, you know, people Tom didn't forget to hit the start broadcast button or anything. I don't know why you would think that or why I'm bringing it up Maybe we'll release that as a patron Gotta give them something for that money. Yeah, right Okay Here we go. Not again for totally the first time Quality content thrives for the support of those who benefit from its creation If you gain value from the Daily Tech news show consider joining others like me who provide support learn how to help at DailyTechnewshow.com slash support This is the Daily Tech news show for Tuesday December 27 2016 I'm Tom Merritt and joining me today my producer Roger Chang We're giving everybody else the holidays off Roger. Yes. Yes Everyone was totally exhausted from their Holly Holly Hollywood Hollywood day now that you live in LA area, right? You're everything's Hollywood. Do you I get it the holiday celebrations perhaps indulging in too much eggnog in Christmas cookies Yeah, but we are still here for you. We've got a special show and I'm very excited For the hosts of text message to join us. They are also fine reporters at their own technical outlets as well Ian Morris, thank you for joining us It's my pleasure. Thank you very much for having me on Absolutely Nate Langston also with us. Thank you for joining us as well Nate It is an absolute pleasure to be here after Christmas where it went above or below expectations Absolutely and Boxing Day as well in the past as we are doing the show right now on Tuesday December 27 Now do you have Boxing Day out there? I was led to believe this is not an American thing It's kind of starting to raise consciousness, but it's more of a like, hey, you know today's Boxing Day Oh, really? What does that mean? Not not really something that's celebrated Yeah, exactly. I think we should make it our revenge for us having Black Friday now So you have to suffer through Boxing Day or whatever it means, but no one knows Before we get into the the main topic of today Is there anything particular about Boxing Day that that we we must do for it to be you know To be shown to have caught on if you really want to follow the British model. You just get drunk. Yes I was gonna say get hammered. That's basically the routine. I think we can do that here I mean, this is the alcoholic Republic as one person So Well, we'll look into that. All right What we're going to do for you today though is underrated stories of 2016 if you've been following Daily Tech news show You know that we were asking for these from the audience earlier in the month And the idea is that when you listen to wrap ups of 2016? What's that? I think from the audience earlier in the month and the idea Oh, I'm carrying myself back to myself. That's that's what's going on there. I'm not sure what I came from So I think that what we're gonna do is cut that out of the audio version the video version people get to keep it So for 2016, you know that all the wrap-up shows are going to say Note 7's exploding Netflix expanding worldwide net neutrality battles in India and the United States and and and parts of Africa Brexits effect on tech all of that stuff is going to be in there But what are the stories that aren't going to be in there that you think are important that you think maybe are not getting enough attention That's what we're going to talk about. We have some great messages from folks in our audience who emailed us and first of all apologies To everyone who doesn't get on the show. We got more emails than we have time to read So we tried to pick a representative sample there covering lots of different items But we did read every one of them and we appreciate them very much. Let's start though with our hosts Nate What do you think is the most underrated story of 2016? Well, I've been thinking about a few things that I would consider the most underrated story of the year But the one that I picked because it's the one I keep coming back to in other conversations is the concept of 4k This was meant to be by so many people standards the the the thing of 2016 You know the year that 4k became big and for several really good reasons, you know one Netflix just huge amounts of original content tons and tons of new shows. It seems every time you load Netflix There's another new Original on there. All of that's shut in 4k You've got the same happening with Amazon's original stuff You've got games consoles coming out that are supporting 4k games like Gears of War on PC gaming You know all in 4k. You've got streaming. You've got 4k blu-ray and yet somehow It still seems to be terrible and and hasn't really fully caught on You know if it's streaming quality, it's not good enough And if it's blu-ray or something that's that is good quality It's not widespread enough for people haven't bought a 4k blu-ray player because they don't care and the consoles are sort of Kind of being announced but not really released and the games aren't good enough And it just feels to me like you know This is a year that we should have said it was 4k's year and yet somehow now we're saying oh that'll be 2017 Or maybe we'll bundle that in with HDR video and that'll be the 2018 sort of thing And that to me is the underrated story because it just feels like we should have been there this year and somehow we're not Do you include HDR in that because I know there's someone out there screaming like well 4k isn't very good But 4k HDR is No, I don't I to me HDR is is is a separate thing You know that we are purely talking here the the resolution the much bigger resolution of picture You know no HDR or anything to do with that at all Just purely big image stuff. It just doesn't seem to be here and and after everything happened with 3d We're sort of thinking well 3d was terrible That was an awful idea and whose idea was that and let's put that on the back burner and move on and 4k We're supposed to be the thing that we moved on to where we could say okay You sit someone in front of it. They get it. It's more social You don't have to wear stupid glasses for it This is the thing and this will be the year because you know broadband penetration is high enough And they've got Netflix putting loads of stuff out there, but it isn't and I don't really know fully Why it isn't because all the component pieces are in place even the TVs are now? relatively affordable as an upgrade idea, so It's not even that people can't necessarily go out and get a bargain of a 4k TV on black Friday They could have and it would have been a good opportunity And I'm one of the people that said you know what I'm gonna buy a 4k TV And I've got one I can tell you the three things I've watched in 4k on it One of it was the Martian the other was the Grand Tour and another one was stranger things and that's it And I the fact that I can count all the 4k content I've watched this year on one hand without even needing to use all of my fingers is a sign that it Something is missing. So that's my underrated story. At least you didn't forget what they were because they were so Non-significant But I wonder if the if the issue isn't HDR Which is why I brought it up because 4k while having more resolution isn't something you look at and immediately say Oh, yeah, I can tell that looks better the way HD did compared to standard death even 720 looked amazing compared to standard death HDR on the other hand does have a little bit of that splash. I mean, do you guys think that could change the story? Well, I mean, I would before I move it to Ian or Roger the very quick thing is I have seen some HDR and it does look amazing But it's one of those things where the the one before it has to has to come first And the fact that people haven't yet properly adopted 4k means that HDR is probably gonna be even later But Roger may completely disagree with me. No, I think I think part of it is that While it is definitely 4k and HR is an improvement for most people I honestly feel that it needs to be not an incremental or an evolutionary step It needs to be something revolutionary like if when we moved from a standard death to HD There was a there was there's many things that that kind of moved it up Not only was an increase in resolution. It was like the form factor side. It's different You could tell people hey now you can watch movies like in the movies in the cinema at home, right? You don't have to look in the little square box. That's shoved in the corner of your room And I think you know for people to really kind of pay out the money that going up to 4k 4k demands you need to have what Nate was saying you need to have the content But you also have to have the hardware in such a way that people feel compelled that they're missing out Right to see if they don't get it within the next six months. They're gonna be so far behind the back They might as well just be stuck in the Stone Age because the world is moving them by people don't get that sense, right? People even though Blu-ray adoption has increased over the past, you know, five six years It wasn't the same shift as when we moved from VHS to DVD where you saw like people like oh I'm gonna read by my entire library To take advantage of this new format because for most people what they had was just fine, right? It it's due to the purpose for what they needed and you know, it didn't necessarily give them a sense that yeah, this is a super big jump in quality and in Experience really when we talk people talk about quality and resolution and you know things like visual fidelity It needs to be an experience where it says yeah I'm willing to pay that and that's why some people are suggesting that the real jump is 8k not 4k Where when we move to an 8k screen we move to 8k resolution, you know people are gonna say well no that's That's the money, right? That's that's where I'm gonna blow ten thousand dollars to be the first one at Best Buy or whatever electronics store So I can haul you know a haul at a hundred inch curved screen in the back of my truck and mounted on my You know wall right of both the dinner table so we can all enjoy a classic Godfather's you know Godfather Movie while we eat, you know Italian food, you know, I did I actually came up with a reason as well Why I think this was underrated because the big difference between what happened when we jumped from standard depth to HD and then from HD Sorry from from like VHS to DVD and then DVD to HD is now we have the convenience issue Which is that people are now more interested in can I do it on the move? Can I save it to my device to watch it on a plane? Can I you know start watching it on my TV and then finish watching it while I'm traveling to work on the subway? And the fact is that that is more appealing than just what am I going to do at 8 p.m? When my dinner is ready, and I'm I'm ready to consume when the post is on the table Well, you know that is actually a really good point the convenience factor one analogy I can think of is soundbars on TVs right soundbars with the subwoofer Everyone in there and their grandfather used to sell a home theater in a box right get one from Sony You get one for Panasonic get one from Denner or whatever It's just a big box with like, you know five speakers and the subwoofer and you could have surround sound for a lot of people It was a pain in the it was a pain in the rear because you had all these wires You had to string around your living room looked ugly people got tangled in he might trip over it You can never really get the placement right because you need something to put the speakers on if you don't speaker stands, you need the shelf or some way to mount it and Soundbar for most people. It's like we'll live It's not true surround sound, but it gets me 80% of the way there I get a sound I Get a soundbar that covers my left right my center channel and I get a subwoofer that does the boom when things explode I'm happy. I don't I don't need it. It's convenient, right? It's one plug. I plug into the wall and they plug it into the TV. I'm done and For for many people, I think there's just too many hurdles to go through you need a TV You need the content and you know the content isn't all there So then you just be watching standard blu-ray, which you could watch on your standard 1080 HD TV standard HD TV situation your standard high-def. Yes. Yeah I think I do think as well There's a lot to be said for the fact that For brought I mean because I do a lot of video I make a lot of video now and one of the things I had to decide on was whether or not I was going to go down the 4k route for production or just stick with 1080p and When you're in that position what you start to realize quite quickly is that the costs of producing 4k are Quite a jump up from 1080p And if you're I mean if I probably doesn't apply to big movie studios or TV companies But even so I guess that the media industry is a bit pinched at the moment in terms of money And they might sort of think well It's a lot of it's a big step for us to move forward to 4k when actually people are pretty happy with 1080p And the costs are so much more but also I genuinely think that people probably would be happier with a switch to HDR And not worry about 4k and I'd say Roger going waiting for 8k or something like that because actually HDR on HD content would be phenomenal as well And there really wouldn't be a lot of point going to 4k because if you think about The screen size you need and the distance from your tv I'm already at a 50 inch tv here and I can't go much bigger without sort of dominating the room with tv screen And I don't sit that far away from it. So I can see and I'm an av guy So if I'm not pushed to go to 4k then the general public is you know, got no hope really Yeah, it's a it's a fair point. My wife used to work for youtube and when she was there It was interesting that they didn't want to spend the money to upgrade older systems to 4k Although they were going ahead if they they've built new studio spaces and using 4k And I think that's common and she's now working at fandango and they're you know making similar types of Of decisions now of like well, okay I guess I guess we future proof in some cases But there isn't a pressure to go retrofit like let's tear out everything what we have now And upgrade to 4k and I think that that may carry over to the populace You may see people saying oh when I buy a new tv, I guess I'll get a 4k hdr tv Because it's out there, but I'm not going to rush out and buy a new tv the way I did with hd yet Because I need to get hd content and that that's really comes all back down to that like Nate said I watched two things in 4k when we first got our 4k tv one was of documentary about the oceans Which documentary is a strong word it was pictures of the ocean that looked really pretty because they were in hdr Yeah, I was like and it's really good. You're like wow. That's an amazing calming relaxing picture of the ocean But it's it's not something you're going to put on every night to you know Follow the story of whether the spray continues to Look as beautiful as it did before the other thing we watched in 4k was transparent from amazon and honestly it I couldn't tell Like it just didn't it just didn't you know There's one other small factor that's worth mentioning before we before we finish on this is that people are now actually producing 4k content More than maybe they even realize, you know all the latest smartphones are shooting in 4k You know, I bought a sony camera In fact, I can see it behind me the sony a7 r2 Which was the most expensive camera i've ever bought but part of the reason was It's shot in really good 4k and I thought well, you know I want to capture family moments in the highest resolution best quality possible And I have definitely watched more content that I've produced myself in 4k than than any service like netflix or amazon That I pay for um and and yet still That isn't compelling enough for a lot of people to upgrade to a 4k tv I have to say you may have nailed the underrated part of this story right there Is that 4k is being led? From behind whereas hd came out it was oh your cable company has a small hd package You can get and then eventually you could get hd online and then eventually you could get hd in your devices It's almost the reverse where almost all the devices you buy now that are new certainly at the top end Have 4k recording and display capability But then it's the online services that have all the 4k content and cable Just doesn't yet for the most part It's it's the same here in britain as well All right, let's move on to you ian Looking back at 2016. What do you think is the most underrated story? It's a funny one. I know you may disagree that it's underrated But um, I was blown away by the inclusion of uh bash for windows Which is the linux command line interface and it sounds sort of insignificant when you sort of say it like that But I I feel like windows has lost I mean, it's still obviously the biggest operating system in the world But what it has done, I think is lost a lot of developers Um, most people have ended up on max and you know, I mean that's fine and max are great and everything But for microsoft, obviously they must be thinking. Hmm. What is it about developers leaving? Why have they gone and I think the simple answer was the os 10 or mac os as it's called now Had was built around linux or unix in fact. Um, and so people could access that core You know easily and they could interface with their servers and it made a huge difference Um, so for microsoft to bring in the ubuntu bash to windows was a kind of like a really I think Sort of important decision to sort of signal to developers that hey, we're still here We're still really into you. Uh, could you come back please? And whether and whether it works. I don't know. I have had conversations with friends who are developers who've been like This is actually very interesting and that actually could get me back on windows given the You know, especially the you know, the sum of the troubles that apple has had recently with you know The the pro hardware being quite expensive the connectivity being an issue for some people It may be that that's an area for microsoft to grab and with that amazing surface studio You know, there could be some real movement for microsoft in that area I'm not what I think they're struggling particularly But I keep seeing innovation from microsoft in windows 10 and I actually really excited about it for the first time in a long time If finally shed that windows 8 stigma I I think that ties into I think you better espoused Something that I was trying to use as an example when telling people to send us stories Because I would throw out microsoft joining the linux foundation Which kind of came and went one day and every a few of us were like, wow, that's crazy times Can you believe that but I it is emblematic of a titanic shift and I think the inclusion of bash is is the more practical demonstration of that What do you what do you guys think? Nate? Yeah, well, I mean I I was talking to Ian before before the show and I thought you know It's it's one of those things that's very niche But actually when you step back and look at kind of what it represents, you know It's kind of a you know, I don't want to say a seismic change But it is a significant change for a lot of people in a in an area that that is very important And and it reminded me at the time of what would also happen earlier this year was apple Getting microsoft on stage to demonstrate office running on an ipad Because it felt to me very similar in that you're sort of looking at these two On-and-off massive rival camps kind of joining together and apple was always the you know You think about the get a mac not get about the i'm a pc on the mac ads It was always the mac was always the fun call hip guy You know didn't care about spreadsheets and now you've got apple welcoming microsoft on stage to talk about how they could use spreadsheets on an iPad and I was like this is crazy like this is This is so bizarre and and in a similar way. I think what Ian's getting at is it's that Bizarreness, but in a way that makes total sense and And it's a sign that that somebody somewhere has their head screwed on about the future of that platform Well, I mean it had some credit must surely go to satya. He's the guy is Running that company in a completely different way and I think You know, maybe some of what apple lost from steve jobs is you know, like that's kind of Microsoft has got someone in charge again now who actually kind of has a vision for the company And balma was okay, but he had all that baggage from being around for so long and that developers developers developers thing Which is Over linux and calling linux eve a cancer. I think is what he said. So yeah He had tunnel vision. He had definitely tunnel. I think one of the One of the most interesting things is that it's kind of in many ways kind of a desiloing Effect of these companies where they're like, well, you know, we we really can exist as our own island unto ourselves and expect the market to Remain the same the same way as it has over the past what two decades And so what you're seeing is they're reaching across the aisle so to speak to use a political term To and you notice it's not wholesale. It's just you know bits and little bits here and there Strategic but not necessarily a whole sale of okay. We're just going to be one giant happy family Just they're going to have disagreements. It's going to be issues But what it does show is that there is an increased flexibility Within within microsoft but also in companies in general In their mindset on how they approach these things it isn't an all or nothing kind of gambit Which which I think what the what yin was saying with the the pc PC versus apple kind of debate that's been you know been around since I was a kid, you know apple versus pc Is meant, you know, you always had these two kind of two camps that were always at odds with each other, right? And they would never meet You know, they tried it with the track star 128 board which let you put a apple in a pc But you know outside of those really niche cases. It was never really like a full-on You know handshake kind of thing even with even with microsoft office on the os 10 Well, that's also I think it's a it's a big thing because it says that For for apple and microsoft they're both their enemy now is google really like apple for apple apple's been trying to get rid of google for a while And I that's obviously, you know, android is such an enormous force It the biggest platform in the world, isn't it for mobile? So I think for apple it's about strengthening the ties with the companies that can help and microsoft has that position And and and for that matter microsoft may see amazon as more of an enemy as well as google because of cloud services One of the reasons that microsoft is willing to do these things like put office on the ipad Put bash into windows is they don't see windows as their moneymaker for the future. They see cloud services is that And so they they really need To get out there and push azure against amazon and if apple can help them do that by Getting into the enterprise with office on ipads, then yeah, they're going to partner up with them And it's a maybe interesting to see won't it whether or not apple because apple's already got a big cloud Offering itself and I know it's not quite the same, you know microsoft is more about an amazon more about cloud computing Aren't they and you know Processing in the cloud whereas apple's more about storage, but it's uh, it's it's certainly an interesting time All right roger, uh, when you look back on 2016, what do you think is the story that is most underrated? I think the e-waste so There was a story a story a report published by the un The middle late middle of this year Reporting up to 90 of the world's electronic waste was illegally being dumped. I mean that's a that's that's 90 of what 41 million tons Moving up to 50 million tons by next year I think it's really important because with all the discussion about environment and The change climate change and things affecting humanity I think having a bunch of pile of old hardware where people are literally melting Boards to get at the the copper traces get the cold get the you know In an incredibly unsafe environment in a hugely toxic environment. I think it's super under reported considering how Depended technology at least the technology marketplace. It is today Getting people to upgrade or at least on an upgrade cycle if not every year every two or three years and we just have literally amount of waste the two biggest of course exporters of e-waste are the us and china and followed closely by the eu at third and Yeah, it's just like you don't really hear about it except in in little pieces here and there from you know Either there's a sidebar or something buried in the science You know, it's not something upfront But if you think about it's it's a lot of it's a lot of hazardous material that you need to store somewhere But also need to dispose of in a responsible manner and people literally have the out of sight out of mind Oh, I dropped it over at the place that says, you know, we recycle electronics and I don't have to worry about it again and it ends up in some you know Location in a developing country where people are literally making Blessing poverty wages, you know trying to extract whatever wealth they can from from the trash Yeah, I think that is a an excellent example of an underrated story partly because there isn't an easy news hook, right? There's there's no announcement of new e-waste arrived this week. Uh, you know apple doesn't Doesn't do an e-waste keynote They do try to put out their environmental announcements about you know What they're doing when they build them but not what happens afterwards But that's what's interesting So I found this really intriguing when we were going through the note seven recall process Two and a half million note sevens to be recalled What what do you do with two and a half million devices like that? I mean that is a lot of stuff to dismantle Just you know and and to dispose of safely because they don't know necessarily what was causing the faults in these devices There's no guarantee. You can say okay. Well, it was absolutely Irrefutably pointed towards this bit therefore we can take all of these bits and use them for something else Um It's basically like these are dead to us. We have to get rid of them. How do you do that? I mean that is a whole story waiting to be done. Um, and is basically it's basically an e-waste story in that sense I just I like a lot of environmental stuff It's it's just not glamorous enough or interesting and it's not shiny And you can't you know, like everyone's just wants a new phone every year Don't they even though there's actually really no justification for that in terms of what you get and Like like a lot of things it's just somebody else's problem, isn't it? It's something we ship off and don't think about again And eventually it will come around. I mean, it's you know, whether it's that, you know that giant plastic Circle of garbage that circles the Pacific that ends up on the shores of Hawaii And if you ever see pictures of it's pretty pretty disheartening you have birds Sea animals including turtles and another endangered species being caught up in it and it It it does have an impact and it's you know, it speaks to a larger issue Not just waste but exactly when we produce and consume you know When we talk about things like paper or or other recyclable products like aluminum cans We talk about reduce reuse recycle, right? Those are the big thing But so far all companies have really talked about is recycling They really haven't talked about reducing other than energy usage, right? They haven't we're going to use 10 less glass So it's like oh, we used a lot more aluminum this time. We used a lot more blah, blah, blah And it's it's a very odd conversation because we've had this one before we've had it with Automotive parts like what do we do with all these bits from old cars? We can scrap them, but there's all these, you know toxic chemicals like oil Any freeze and stuff that we have to figure out to get rid of we've had it before with chemical plants, right, you know, you have super fun sites The what was it the love tunnel not the love tunnel the love canal Yeah, there you go You know, and so there's a lot of things that I think Are coming around and they're they're growing in intensity And it's always kind of at least disheartening to me that people always always get it after it bites them In the backside and not before like oh, I see this coming Like it's a giant baseball bat swinging toward your head and you decide right after you get hit that it was a bad thing Yeah Well, do you think there's anything? I mean like so google canceled its modular smartphone, didn't it and that is That's sort of an example of how perhaps technology could be used to Reduce the amount of waste we generate but the problem with that is it was never a desirable enough product You'd never be able to sell that to normal people. It was never efficient from a quote-unquote manufacturing standpoint and that's How people measure things right people don't measure like oh, how easy is this to get rid of once we're done with it? right and it's one it's it's it's really interesting to see because pcs at least You know from the from the beginning we're always kind of an open architecture like I need a new video card I can just take that bit out leave the rest of the pc alone and stick a new one in We saw it, you know with home entertainment systems. Uh, you know my my my amp is fritzy I'll just replace it, but I keep I'll keep the receiver. I'll keep the rest of it. I'll keep the speakers everything is kind of All-encompassing where you like for breaks. You just got to get a whole new one, right? durable That's so interesting because that's another underrated story of the year is the increasing inability to replace internal parts in any form whether that's batteries or storage inside phones Whether it's batteries or ram or hard disks inside laptops, whether it's any of this stuff that you're talking about that is a that is a Thing that is a tom. It's a thing If there was still a show and there may yet be one day that would be a thing Remember one of the big criticisms of the iphone's are you can't replace the battery like you can with a samsung galaxy? And now a galaxy you can't pop them out either and it's just you know, come on really Well, but you want that. I mean, maybe you don't roger But people want that people responded that they're like I don't really care about replacing the battery if it makes it so shiny and slick And and easy to use and apple says oh, well we'll replace the battery for you But it does offload the reuse part of the equation to the companies And out of sight out of mind which perpetuates this whole whole issue In some ways, I think some tech doesn't I think I worry So a good example of the AV receivers thing is that sometimes you get a load of progress, don't you? And dolby atmos for an example So you have an old dolby digital receiver then you get dolby atmos and you You know, it would be possible wouldn't it to just change a component a process or something like that and get an upgrade But of course that's not in the interests of the manufacturers. That's how they generate the more revenue So perhaps legislation might help solvus, but I can't see it happening anytime soon. Yeah you know and sales But but if everybody's Locking their battery in if everybody starts soldering their ram to the motherboard in their laptops It becomes harder to vote with your feet And it's one reason why I'm so key sticking with my 2012 macbook pro It's because I can change the battery I can change the ram I can change the hard drive And the optical drive All right, let's get to our viewer selected underrated stories. We're gonna Run through these you guys just throw out your impressions of them as we go starting with chris Who thinks smart home normalization is an underrated story? He says the specific catalysts are the amazon echo dot for $50 each Same echo dot being sold at multiple brick and mortar retailers for less $40 here in the us on black friday I don't recall that market penetration getting any reporting tp link smart plug for $18 An alexa specific deal number of smart light smart thermostat doorbell and camera ads I'm seeing and hearing weekly to me It feels like 2016 theoretically deserves the year of the smart home title If journalists were still willing to make any year of declarations And the very least a lot of pieces are both gelling and coming down to no-brainer costs at the same time I was saying earlier that that tonight. I think that my kids love Alexa more than they love me because I just love asking alexa stuff. You know alexa what can we do? Careful saying her name out loud on the show because it does trip a lot of some people's This is what I was gonna say mine just went off. I haven't got my computer. I can hear her talking to me But fortunately she didn't start a spot if I played this that time.  Your bath is ready, you know And what what's happening is that people are kind of a la carding their smart home, right? Oh, these are the things I want smart. I want my lights to be smart, right? Oh, I want my thermostat my nest to be smart because I need to have the temperature adjusted So it saves money, but that's uh, but at the same time keep keep the house. I bid they're just putting in the pieces Yeah, and eventually I think what you'll see and this is this is the big the big jump is then when homes Automatically just feature that right when you go into a new construction or a condo or a townhouse Starting to see we occasionally pop into houses that are in our neighborhood and there's a ton of them That do open houses. I'm seeing nest thermostats You know, I haven't seen an amazon dot or an echo In any of them yet, but that is becoming a thing for sure All right, let's get to our next one here from philip and desmond Philip says I think that while vr and ar we're certainly not shy story This is this year I feel like too much of the coverage was about relatively shallow advancements Like how they will change amusement or minor convenience Not enough time was spent diving deep into them and thinking further ahead In very good say helping disabled people and possibly very bad privacy issues criminal activity lip service was given to these deeper issues But the bulk of all the coverage was on very short term effects science fiction Which we and probably much of the dtns audience has imagined in many different ways in which vr and ar change society Perhaps ideas from certain novels and movies could be used to examine how possible that vision is to coming true In short, I feel like vr and ar is an enormous revolution on a completely different scale than the digital pc revolution has been up to this point It's the first real transformation from computers as machines and tools To us integrating them much more fully into how we literally experience and change the world And desmond says there's been a lot of talk about vr But i'm interested in how it's changing education and the classroom that has started this year, but its potential is amazing You think vr and ar could actually be under reported because all we talk about is games and movies I think it might be I think I think I think other aspects of it are under reported right because You know what we were saying before people you want to hook and people are hooked by flash me flashy amusements They want to be entertained. They want to know how to have a life changing experience I think um What we see with what what we will see how vr and ar actually changed world Has yet to come. I think we can kind of posit ideas But I think there's going to be a girl or a boy out there who finds a use for it that no one really thought of initially As a way To kind of use that technology technology as a fullest right for the longest time We've always kind of interfaced this technology as a user interface Experience right how do I interface with the the internet? How do I interface with the virtual world? When it should be like how does the world? How will I interface with the real world using this technology right as I go between? You know people people have these fantastic ideas of surgeons operating literally halfway across the world using robotic Arms, but they'll interview they'll they'll interact with them Through vr and they'll be able to perform a surgery say in japan all the way from britain or new york or wherever Without physically having to be there which would be a boon To to medical advancement because now you're not needing to fly someone to a specific location To receive a specific type of health care Well, that's that's that would be my was going to be my response to this Is that to me vr and ar have never been massively appealing in terms of gaming or entertainment because I find them still either Either a little bit too anti-social for what i'm trying to do or they involve too much movement Which is you know, I know it sounds idle, but I don't sit at a desk in order to spin around quite a lot And some of the most interesting advancements in vr and ar that are definitely going under reported Are what's taking place in the medical world? You know, there are airlines that have used Ocular systems to help people have a fear of flying You know, they put them in these very immersive scenarios where they're you know Quote and quote transported to a very different place and why that where they feel calm and relaxed in that home um, it allows them to sort of Remove themselves a little bit from that feeling of being on a plane You know the next step of that would be for it the device to know when it's moving up and down And so it can sort of simulate something in your vision That you don't Feel is because of a plane. It's because you're on the back of a I don't know a train or something a bit more calming Similarly, you know, these things have been used for a long time in treating things like post-traumatic stress People returning from battlefields and having, you know, terrible experiences that are being relived and they're they're trying to get over that And or deal with agrophobia or dealing with panic attacks things like that again these systems Are perfectly tuned and they don't have to be graphically intense. They just have to trigger something in in the in the patient that they want to You know, uh deal with if you like and that is you know, an enormous field that's actually been in development for quite a long time now I One of the things I've always wondered and thought about is ar augmented reality And how would that work in an everyday to day basis because so far people have talked about like you're gonna be thrown ads as you walk down like a Like a like a like a shopping mall. You'll get like you get sales and stuff But how would it interact in a in a more personal scale for example in the in a job interview, right? So someone's talking to you And the guy's just weren't you know the guy who the interviewer is wearing these glasses It has all these all this information Just being thrown at thrown at him as he sees you talking about like Oh, how was your experience as the general manager of you know, whatever supermarket and as you're talking Your record of of what you say is being showed up on the right Yeah, yeah has a little register of you know, your heart rate and like all these things We're like well, yeah, maybe it's not such a great thing because now you're not just being interviewed You're being interrogated in a way or uh politics You know if you have ar and you're using it in a way where for example a translation device, right? You listen to someone speak korean You don't speak korean. You'll have a subtitle Going on as they speak so you're seeing and reading at the same time and it's it's I think Really how all this will unfold is how it will allow interpersonal communication between people From perhaps different cultures where language and for example like customs are not the same for example It's like oh this society you need to bow and it's just flashing you in your glasses or your wearer's like bow Oh, yeah, and it could give me a level where it's like you want to bow to this person You want to bow to here and it just flashes red when you hit the spot I and like we can't be very far away from you know contact lenses with you know this kind of screen it OLEDs make that quite easy. I would imagine them in probably not easy But you know like it's certainly possible And I would love to have something that just told me the names of people who I've met before whose name I can't remember that would be that would be excellent for me Barry how are your children? That would totally help people with Parkinson's Like oh you forgot how to get home. This is how you get home. Oh Alzheimer's you mean. Oh Alzheimer's. Yeah, sorry Sorry, I thought about that in the past with with shoes is that I think you know It is amazing that we've got to this point It's something that everybody buys not one of but several things of Where why are we not doing more tech to do with shoes? Whether it's you know Guiding you down a street so you don't have to hold a phone out from for maps You know that the right shoe vibrates when it's time to turn right, you know other things like that We've not seen a great deal of that kind of development At that kind of thing it's because no one wants to charge up their shoes I expected it. Well, you just built it into the sidewalks. So there's charge as you walk That's not a bad idea actually it might be bracelets like ankle bracelets like the can you get when you have home detention? Right easier to make someone have home detention. We're already I think part of it is because the way shoes fit They're very custom and they're also coming out a wide variety Of shapes and sizes and also they're kind of gross, right? You know, if you've been sweating your shoe You definitely definitely want to dig out the battery replace it In your hey, well, we don't we already decided we're there's no more replaceable batteries anyway Just another problem to solve like that's just how do you make shoes not a horrible thing to have to deal with And and the other thing I should point out is we are the that is not happening that is almost certainly going to happen Is our entire western society is now based on looking down at a phone. Why do we not have more floor based advertisements? You'll see it. You'll see it. Yeah, that's that's one for the predictions episode Jonathan from houston doesn't think that enough people covered the hear one wireless earbuds at here plus dot me They're a wireless listening system two smart earbuds. There was a Kickstarter for them They are Essentially a similar version to the AirPods from Apple, which everybody's talking about They amplify speech. They access Siri and google now selectively choose what you want to hear with some smart noise cancellation Jonathan wants to point out. He does not represent the company that makes those earbuds in any way This is just his personal opinion Well, actually Because we just talked about AR but you could do sort of AR for your ears So you could have the same sort of services provided a translation being the absolute key one Information I tend to walk around if I don't know where I'm going I'll have a Spotify playing music and google will tell me where to go and that actually works brilliantly It's like you're a some sort of drone being directed about where to go But you know that would be an amount and you know wire free is the best way really So yeah, I might check these out. Yeah, shout out for the hear ones Jordane sent us an excellent email We're not going to read all of it But I will put it in the show notes about all the things happening in archaeology and history A couple things i'll pull out here to mention. He says Best exemplified in 2016 with the scan pyramids project This project is a team effort by three universities in egypt japan and canada They've used several bleeding edge technologies to explore the inner depths of the pyramids of egypt Especially the most famous ones at giza like the great pyramid. They're doing cd scan 3d scans. They've sent drones in And you can read about it at scan pyramids.org and then from the macro to the micro He says another historical tech story this year is the scanning of a completely burnt dead sea scroll from 1400 years ago With the help of tomography and computer modeling that let them read Previously unreadable parts of the scroll because they passed it through a very high resolution ct scanner giving a 3d Image of the internal layers of the scroll So much of the same as to ben carson, you know to say knows what the pyramids are all about Well in archaeology is one of those things where people love hearing about especially when it's an ancient civilization egyptian greek You know a pre columbian civilizations and I think a lot of the technology Is in many ways so Like even the stuff we use right now like just everyday stuff our smartphones and stuff has been a boon for a lot of A lot of research because hey, you know what? I don't know what this is I'm gonna take a picture of it and send to my colleague in illinois Even though i'm in the middle of the desert in egypt and he's sitting in an air conditioned office And I can get a response he can look at beyond that you can see things in both of these examples You can see things that you couldn't see before Yes, because of technology. Yeah And you get to you get to see it in situ right you get to see it In a way that is undisturbed Which is the which is like the holy grail to be able to uncover a lot of information Yeah, that's you know be able without necessarily necessarily Adulterating whatever you're touching even though eventually they do well Yeah, I know and the Dead Sea Scrolls is a perfect example of that if they had tried to unroll these It would destroy them they are that fragile and old So there was no hope of seeing what was inside of that scroll in any other way Norm who calls himself norm the bummer from visalia Says what will we do when technology takes away everyone's jobs? He's this isn't I think this is getting covered But I think what he's saying is it's underrated how big of a problem this is What is society doing to prepare for the next level of automation? I hate to say I don't have much faith in where things are going I you know it's it's what I saw this I saw this email And I was thinking about it because there really actually has been a big discussion about the coming Uh, uh kind of I wouldn't say crisis But the churn as automation takes over a lot of jobs whether it's something in a factory or self-driving cars But really there hasn't been as broad of a discussion on Ways to cope or ways to do something about it people have talked talked, you know talked shallowly about things like What's the what's the universal weight or not universal wage? What's the basic income basic basic income things like that? But they they haven't really kind of expanded expounded on it That isn't necessarily addressed that that's something that's that is addressing a lot of problems For the people who propose it I think norm is right is there's a lot of reassurances of oh, we've gone through this before Society ends up Creating new jobs. Basically. I mean everybody thought the same thing was going to happen with the industrial revolution Like well, we've got these machines. We don't need people to put together the parts anymore We don't need people to provide the energy that makes things happen anymore What are these people going to do? We found new things for them to do that. We were willing to pay for that because don't forget Money is there's a certain amount of exchange of goods and services that happens no matter what and if you don't have to pay Someone to do we're lifting a wheelbarrow You you'll be able to have that money To pay them to do something else and you may be willing to pay them to do something else I think the main question though is what do you do in the meantime? When there's always there's always this transition period where technology has Eliminated this group of people's jobs and they don't have the skills to go do the new jobs that are being created It's um, I read it. I did read a story about transportation and something like a you know It's a huge industry and a lot of those jobs will go. Um, obviously it it will eventually be all right But there'll be a bit in the middle where it's pretty desperate I think and I don't know how you get around that. I think it's that transition is especially for people are probably I mean, I guess we're all sort of not dissimilar ages Uh, if you know if if journalism gets replaced by ai in the next 20 years, which it might Then I don't know what I'm gonna do. You know, I've not qualified for much else. So it's a problem It's uh, it's it's okay. It'll be interesting. I think part of it is that there's a uncertainty That is well, and I think it's not just the uncertainty. I think you're absolutely right about that But it's also no one's talking about What to do right everyone's like, well, that's gonna be really hard and I think that's the underrated part Yeah, but the yeah, we're the salute. What are the solutions? We're the viable ones that we can come up with The solution is to have no money so that you don't have to pay for stuff so that you don't have to work I think the I think the solution is to send people on five-year missions aboard spaceships Because that's what they are That that's how that I mean, you know in star trek the earth is even more pie It's like 31 billion people live on the planet in star trek What are you gonna do with all those people right? You just send them on starships out to the four corners Of the federation has the solution. Yeah, I mean if you think about it In the eighth grade golden age of colonization That's what they did with all their excess people put them on ships and say hey go find us some new things to To monetize and we'll just pack you in and send you off Nate do you have any thoughts on that before we get to our last one? All right Well, I was gonna I was gonna kind of say what you what you said about I mean you liken it to the industrial revolution I was going to say that you know, we do have this idea in our heads that you know Maintaining the status quo is the only way forward and actually, you know, once you once you Take away the fear that giving robots our jobs once you move away from that What you're actually doing is saying well We're a lot of people with a lot of great minds, you know, what can we what's the next great thing?  You know, could I achieve something and we're talking about doing that on a societal level over a great number of years And actually that's more exciting to me than than anything else and but I think you hit it on the head by giving a real example That's basically what happened in industrial revolution. It's why we have computers now Uh, finally, michael kepper says one story that's underrated and seldom talked about is how public libraries are pivoting into new technologies He says here in southern illinois Even the small public libraries have at least one pc for free public use for internet access as well as microsoft office Often they have public wi-fi available for those with phones tablets and e-readers the heron city library Which serves 12,500 people has six pcs for public use with internet access printers for black and white and color printing and scanners public wi-fi Public asex computers are used by an average of 30 people a day We also offer ebooks for home download at the library the ebooks collection numbers about 10 000 titles We provide fact service still at average about a hundred pages a month at a dollar per page And even the smallest libraries are finding ebooks to be more affordable and are joining consortiums Which help them offer free ebooks to their communities public libraries are a free option for those who can't afford the devices And do or do not have internet access at home He says i was the director of the heron city library for 23 years and a librarian for 43 years I've seen many changes in the library profession since set 1972 mostly in the area of technology I'm retired now, but i still volunteer at the heron city library You know libraries along with schools. I think are the foundation of any functional society Like you need to have them. They're not an optional Thing they need to be required Because access to information is one of the one of the key aspects Of not any just a democratic society, but of any functional society being able to educate or learn Uh as you need to being able to access and not everyone unfortunately has access To internet even not even the slow dial-up kind well Also, it's important at this but this year if there's one story that we've learned is fake news If you want to do some research and be sure that you're going to get good information then go to the library Look at the books that have been fact-checked by subs who know what they're doing and editors who you know do research and And ask a reference librarian to help you find those sources, too Yeah, and you know, it's it's weird because people have always positive. Well, you know with with With with the advent of the internet the vet advent of e-readers ebooks Uh portable computers and stuff. You don't need libraries to house all your dead trees You know in hardbound editions and that's not really what a library. It's about it's about access to information, right? If you the books are kind of initially how they started, but doesn't mean they can't transition to a more, you know, 21st century mindset, and I think No, it's a hunter's funding. I mean, that's that's the key aspect I'm always kind of worried because you know libraries are one of those things that cities or Municipalities always cut when the budgets get tight And I think it's sometimes the wrong move because it is a very important aspect Of a community, you know, that is fascinating. I haven't thought about libraries for a very long time And this is really really interesting I mean, I remember being I remember being taken to libraries by my mom a lot when I was a kid You know, I have I can I can picture several different libraries that I've been to in my life And and always remember being very happy to be there and and you know checking out books and getting my own library card was It was a weirdly proud moment to have my own library card. I remember Whereas now I sort of my gut reaction to hearing library is kind of a relic Like it's an old thing that doesn't really need to exist anymore But but but I also think that they should exist And I hope they always do and I would always imagine if I had children I would take them to libraries for what is a library going to be and if it was the place where you could get information If maybe in future they're the place where you get some semblance of truth, you know If information is is everywhere, but you don't know which bit of information is accurate or correct or believable A library or somewhere you can go is a place where they've verified some of that stuff. You can get some answers They're also serving as maker spaces in a lot of places like helping people get access to 3d printers And stuff like that. So there's there's all kinds of things that can be done Thank you Michael For sending that and thanks to every single person who sent us whether we read your your email here or not We really appreciate getting those insights. Like I said, they do stick in our brain and they may bubble up Somewhere else at some time Also, big thanks to you guys for joining us Let folks know not only where they can find text message, of course But where they can find your other fine work starting with you, Nate Yeah, well text message podcast that Ian and I do every week It's most easily accessible by going to tech podcast dot uk That's a an easier url than the real one And I am at Nate blankson on twitter, which you can find the spelling of that on tech podcast dot uk most easily Ian, uh, what about yourself? Yeah, uh, you know, I'm uh, I'm on twitter Ian Morris. I'm a number seven. I'm a number eight Which is a brilliant user name obviously, but they're all gone Aren't they especially when you've not Nate's all right because no one's got his name But there's loads of Ian Morris's in the world and all of them cleverer than me Uh, and I'm on Forbes a lot as well, uh forward slash sites forward slash Ian Morris something like that. Uh, you can google it Check it out. Go take a look Roger Chang. What about you? Uh, you can follow me at jolly roger on twitter I don't have much else At the moment or you can find me on facebook eventually All right, folks. Thank you again, uh for sending in your suggestions for listening for supporting the show There's all kinds of ways to support the show whether it's to just go online and thank one of the people who also Supports us if you're not able financially to do it. That's fine somebody'll pick you up Go on twitter and thank a boss Or if you can kick us a buck or two patreon.com slash Dtns is the place to go our email address is feedback at daily tech news show dot com We're live monday through friday 4 30 p.m Eastern at alpha geek radio dot com and diamond club dot tv and our website is daily tech news show dot com We'll be back tomorrow with our listener co-host show talk to you that This show is part of the frog pants network get more at frog pants dot com Diamond club hopes you have enjoyed this bro


This is Mises Weekends with your host Jeff Dice. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back once again to Mises Weekends. Very pleased to be joined by a returning guest today, Alan Mendenhall, who was actually just on the show a couple of months ago after the Trump election, but we wanted to have him back today because we are talking about the nomination of potential Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch. If you recall, Alan is the head of the Blackstone Center at Faulkner University here in Alabama. He's an attorney. So I think a PhD, is that correct? That's correct. So you share that in common with Neil Gorsuch, which is one of the unusual things about him. There's not a single, at least current, and I think Judge Napolitano said he doesn't think there's ever been a Supreme Court Justice who has a PhD. What do you think of that? I think it's very interesting and I think that's a correct fact. And what's also interesting about Gorsuch is he studied the new natural law under John Finnis, which makes him unique. I don't think we've ever had a philosopher up there on the court, somebody that's actually studied natural law and jurisprudence. And it will be interesting to see how that plays out in his confirmation hearings because I remember when Justice Thomas was asked during his confirmation hearings if he believed in natural law and he said something to the effect of, well, yes, but it doesn't affect the way I interpret the Constitution. Well, it will be interesting to see if Gorsuch will have a similar answer. I don't think he will because I think he's got a pretty extensive record as a new natural lawyer and it will be interesting to see how someone who's a positivist who believes that all law is positive and that only what the Constitution says is what the law of the land is going to be and obviously interpretations of the Constitution. But what happens when you have a Supreme Court justice who is actually embedding natural law principles into the textual record, who's actually embodying or who's actually incorporating natural law into constitutional opinions so that the natural law becomes the positive law of the land? Right. But we should suggest, I think to our listeners, a lot of people imagine that there is a philosophical talk in law school and really there isn't.  The idea that if you went to a top law school like Harvard and Yale, which I might add all of our current Supreme Court members attended those two schools, talk about non-representative, but this idea that you get some sort of a lot of theory or philosophy in law school is false and don't you think some of these people are in that sense less educated than the public imagines? Oh, I think that's absolutely true. I think in our law school, we do make an exception. We have a foundations of law course that goes from Aristotle up to the president and you study all sorts of schools of jurisprudence, but that's the exception rather than the rule. There may be an elective course on such a thing, but federal judges are generally not philosophers and even Gorsuch's opinions, I had a chance this morning I was going through some of them looking for the smoking gun and I couldn't really find anything. It looks as though he only considers arguments presented by the parties. His holdings are narrowly tailored to achieve the limited purpose of resolving a particular issue before him. He'll dispose of cases on technical grounds before tackling big issues with sweeping impact on existing law. He's concerned about whether issues are properly preserved for appellate review, whether the statute of limitations has expired or whether a cause of action has accrued. These are not big momentous philosophical issues.  He's not, I think, somebody that the Democrats would need to be worried about for big sweeping changes in the law. Of course, it's different when you're in the Supreme Court since Supreme Court opinions necessarily entail major views and you're the highest court in the land so anything you rule at the Supreme Court level has an effect on all lower courts and all laws throughout the country. Well, we're trying to talk today about Gorsuch from a libertarian perspective. Not all of us share all this enthusiasm for the Constitution, but this is the world we live in. When you bring up that he's considered an originalist, a textualist, but you also mentioned he's got a grounding, a PhD in philosophy and understands natural law. But I want to go back to what you said because it was interesting. Are you saying that an originalist, in other words, someone who really sticks to the four corners of the document, which most right wing judges claim to do, that they are by definition positivists because that's the document and it was written by man. It was written by a legislature of sorts, the convention, because we tend to think of ourselves or people on the right tend to say, well, we're not positivists. We believe in common law. Well, that's an accusation that was actually leveled against Justice Scalia. There are people out there that think Scalia was too positivist because he adhered to the text of the Constitution and at times that was intentioned with theories of natural law. That's also a common criticism of Judge Bork's position was that he was too much of a positivist and too dismissive of natural law. Now, from their perspective, the judiciary was at a different state back then where for the conservative viewpoint, you had judges who were discovering new rights and so conservatives were looking for ways to rein that in. Now, it's interesting to think about what is the Supreme Court justice supposed to look like from a libertarian perspective. One of the reasons why Gorsuch's nomination is so momentous, so big, so controversial is the stakes are high because the U.S. Supreme Court has irrigated to itself so much power as an institution, so much power that would have been inconceivable to the founding generation and the Supreme Court now enjoys the power to affect nearly all kinds of activity within any zone of human experience. You may say one thing on a sidewalk that you can't say two steps. If you take two more steps, you can't say that thing. So I think it's tough to assess from a libertarian perspective what the ideal libertarian judge would look like or mode of judging would look like. I do think if you look at an originalist, at least you're looking to somebody who is adhering to the United States Constitution, which was drafted in a more libertarian time, I think there was a libertarian ethos at that period of American history that is absent today. So at least you have somebody trying to adhere to that and the role of a judge is sort of different because the judiciary analyzes and interprets legislative statutes according to the letter of the Constitution, which means a judge doesn't look at a law and say, oh, that's good, oh, that's bad, oh, that's wise, oh, that's unwise, oh, that's libertarian, oh, that's not libertarian. A judge looks at it and just says whether it's constitutional or unconstitutional. And that seems to me to be a different exercise from, you know, it's not a second legislature, in other words, you wouldn't have justices up there striking down laws for being non-libertarian or creating laws. You wouldn't have judges creating laws because they were libertarians. So it is always sort of tough to evaluate judges in our federal system and on the U.S. Supreme Court because the institutions themselves can be at odds with a lot of libertarian ideas. Well, but also things that move so far. That's why it irritates me to hear someone like a Chuck Schumer say that we're going to reject any nominee who's outside the judicial mainstream because we're so far afield at this point. Now, when you mentioned the Supreme Court sort of inserting itself into parts of life it was never intended to insert itself into, here's what bugs me out and is that we just muddled through this horrific election where people were so psychologically devastated if the wrong person won because I think fairly we feel that there's a lot at stake. The executive branch is wildly powerful beyond its constitutional bounds in my view and now Supreme Court justices too have become this life and death epic battle. It divides Americans along left and right lines along socially liberal social conservative lines. It becomes this epic culture war. I mean, isn't this all just a terrible symptom of the Supreme Court gone amok? I think it is. It's funny that you say that I was talking to somebody the other day in Philadelphia and he was saying, you know, I miss when Facebook was Halloween pictures and spring baked pictures and then it was then it was, you know, babies and now it's Armageddon every day. And I think that politics is sort of seeped into every level of our lives and it becomes hard to, you know, have have a drink with somebody without politicizing your conversation. Now with with the Democrats, you mentioned Schumer, by the way, Schumer, Obama, Biden, Hillary, Leahy, Feinstein, they all they all voted to confirm Gorsuch to the 10th Circuit on a vote voice vote. It was a unanimous decision. So it'll be interesting to see how they try to walk back that at this at this juncture and see what what's changed between now and then that would make them have a different view of Gorsuch. But one positive thing I see about all this is that now that Trump's Trump's choosing who's going to lead these agencies, these administrative agencies. And now you've got some skepticism coming from the left about the size of these agencies. I mean, for a long time, it's been the right talking about, Oh, the massive power of these administrative agencies, we need to, you know, we need to roll back the administrative state and curb bureaucratic excesses. And these agencies are staffed by, you know, they're they're unaccountable agencies populated by unelected government bureaucrats with high salaries and low stress jobs and great benefits all paid for by the American taxpayer. And, you know, that's been sort of the conservative line. And now that you've got, you know, Rex Tillerson at state and John Kelly at Homeland Security, who are going to be in charge of enforcing and administering Trump's executive order and immigration, for instance, you're going to have the left really decrying the powers of these administrative agencies. They may think, Oh, these agencies shouldn't have these powers. But for a while, they haven't been in a position where, you know, their key issues have been under threat by by administrative agencies. Well, I mentioned this in a show I did with Tom Woods a week or two ago when we're talking about politics and hypocrisy and and Schumer and Feinstein voted to to appoint by Voicewood Gorsuch five years ago. Now they're changing their tunes. What you have to understand, I think, is that politics is war. It's war by other means. There's no right and wrong. There's no fair or unfair. It's like saying that a flanking maneuver in a battle is unfair because we didn't see it coming. So I think we have to take all this in that vein. It always strikes me as odd when when people go on and on about the hypocrisy of the other party because there's no fair in politics, just as there's no fair in war, but that's that's an aside. Let me ask you this, since we're on sort of this political intersection with the Supreme Court, talk about this idea that that the seat that Gorsuch potentially might occupy is a stolen seat because for the for the last not quite year since Anthony Scalia died or for part of the year as a lame duck president in his final year, Barack Obama wanted to nominate or did nominate Merrick Garland and this nomination was never considered by the Republican controlled Senate. So is this true? Is this the case that the Republicans stole a ninth seat from Obama? Well, I think it's a it's a brilliant rhetorical move by the Democrats. I think it's something that they're throwing out there to see if it catches. You know, at these moments when you have big transitional things taking place, you try to figure out what rhetoric is going to catch on and and and really flow through those channels of communication, the best way in social media and all that sort of thing. And I think it's a good choice of words. I don't think it's an accurate one necessarily. There was there was nothing that prohibited the Republicans from doing what they did. In fact, you know, there's not you can't say that anything they did was unconstitutional.  They can filibuster. Of course, it's just nominees and there are mechanisms in place for the Republicans to invoke cloture. And, you know, that process is happening in a way that is lawful. So I don't know why I don't know that you can call it a stolen a stolen seat in that sense.  And I just don't see that being the case. They just may have been outplayed politically on on that score. Well, let's talk about Gorsuch, Neil Gorsuch himself. He sits on the 10th circuit, which apparently includes Colorado. You'd think that apparently he does not have a bunch of cases dealing with takings or land use or water rights, that sort of thing. You mentioned he does have some cases dealing with criminal procedure, that sort of thing. So is does this guy have libertarian-ish impulses or is he a crypto Nazi that we should all fear? Well, I don't think he's a libertarian, but he has some good positions on criminal law. He's he's in favor of strong Fourth Amendment protections from unreasonable searches and seizures. Seizures. There's evidence that he dislikes prosecutorial abuse, and that he's in favor of limiting qualified immunity that protects government officers from liability for actions they've taken in the scope of their duties. And he really makes an effort to avoid criminalizing innocent conduct is just one example from a case I saw this morning. There was a 13 year old child who had been prosecuted under a statute that made it illegal to disrupt public education. And and Gorsuch had dissented saying basically that this child had not his what he had done. He was fake burping that he so he was fake burping and had been arrested. It was like a PE class and and Gorsuch said, well, you need something more than just class disruption. You need some sort of physical invasion that disrupts the actual functioning of the school, you know, just fake burping in class is not enough to get a 13 year old arrested. And amazingly, amazingly, Gorsuch was actually writing a dissent in that case. And there's there's another case. It's a criminal. There was a criminal statute that prohibited the knowing possession of a gun by a felon. And Gorsuch said that he believed that the alleged violators of the statute must not only know that they possess the gun. So the the issue here is whether we're talking about knowing possessions, not only know that they possess the gun, but also they have to know that they're actually felons. And he said with some language that could actually be interpreted as supportive of the Second Amendment, that the mens rea element of the crime must be proven as to each element. You have to prove knowing possession and knowing status as a felon. Otherwise you're criminalizing innocent conduct. So because the Constitution itself is very protective of the rights of criminal defendants, I think having an originalist is helpful from a libertarian perspective. Well, of course, there's a lot of controversy about judicial activism and whether a court ruling represents legislating from the bench or whether represents some sort of noble protection of of hidden constitutional rights is a matter of one's perspective. Do you think he's an activist judge? I do not think he's an activist judge. No, I don't I don't see evidence for that. I mean, there's evidence that he wants to roll back the Chevron doctrine, the Chevron doctrine. He called it a behemoth. Chevron doctrine derives from a 1984 case. And its basic principle is that courts should defer to administrative decisions and the expertise of administrative agencies and their interpretations of the statutes that they're charged with enforcing. Well, of course, if the agencies are in charge of making judicial-esque interpretations of their own power, well, they're going to keep letting their power expand ad infinitum, you know, they're just going to keep growing and growing. And so Gorsuch has advocated for judicial intervention into those areas and to pushing back against that inevitable growth of the administrative agencies. And as I said earlier, this may be something under a Trump administration that the left can actually agree with. In the past, maybe not, but now they may be seeing some of the drawbacks to administrative, vast administrative power. So when someone like a Schumer questions or at least brings up the idea that Gorsuch is outside the mainstream of judicial thought, I mean, talk about that. That seems like loaded terminology, especially from the left, which seems to which seems to apply well. Of course, Roe v. Wade is sacrosanct and it's settled law and nobody could possibly think that that Roe is bad law or that abortion is an issue that ought to be left to states, which I think a lot of constitutionalists make. What does it mean now to be within the judicial mainstream? Well, that's a good question. You know, I think a lot of the the conversation about mainstreaming things is a way to try to marginalize somebody. It's tough to marginalize Gorsuch because he is such an establishment figure in a lot of ways, you know, with this, with where he went to school and, you know, he worked for a white shoe law firm in D.C. He's clerked for the, he's clerked for the U.S. Supreme Court, two U.S. Supreme Court justices. He clerked for a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Court. So, you know, it's hard to say how that's not mainstream. And there's nothing that just jumps out at you about about his opinions. As I said earlier, most of his opinions seem to be somewhat boring. They're actually well written. They've got some pithy lines and he, his factual narratives tend to be kind of fun to read. But for the most part, there's nothing, there's no smoking gun yet that I've seen. But the thing that I think that they may be looking at is maybe his book, his positions on euthanasia and physician assisted suicide. Some of his things on, some of his ideas on that may lead them to infer positions, for example, on life and Roe v. Wade and those kinds of cases. But I guess, you know, everybody seems to be calling everybody outside the mainstream these days. And it's hard to tell, you know, what the parameters of acceptable opinion are supposed to be, according to the political figures. I don't think Trump wants Roe v. Wade overturned. I don't think people in his administration particularly do. I don't think social issues animate him. I don't think, I think Trump's probably indifferent to Roe v. Wade. I don't know that he really cares. Now he may care about having support and having political support. And to that extent, he would care. But I'm not sure, you know, as an individual, he really cares either way. Well, I'm going to ask you one final question this time about immigration. Obviously, Trump's travel ban has been in the news, his proposed border wall has been in the news. Judge Napolitano in the past has spoken about how immigration could be seen from a constitutional perspective as a matter for states. Obviously, the Constitution itself in Article 1 talks about naturalization, but doesn't talk about immigrants or immigration per se. So give us some of your thoughts on this issue. Maybe Gorsuch will face something. Maybe there'll be a challenge to Trump. He may face something. It'll be interesting because I guarantee you he'll be asked about immigration during his confirmation hearings and it will be interesting to see how much he says about it because you can't say a lot about something that's going to come before you in the court. But I think Judge Napolitano is right. I think letting these immigration laws fall to the states would be a good thing. I mean, I'm all for decentralization, diffusion, dispersal, devolution of power, checks and balances, separation of powers. You know, I'm all for those things and I think that would be a step in the right direction. Well, we're out of time. We need to wrap this up. But talk to us about how we can find out about the Blackstone Center, how people can follow Allen Mendenhall and a little bit about what you do. Oh, well, thank you. My personal website is just www.allanmendenhall.com and my first name is A-L-L-E-N. The Blackstone and Burke Center is www.blackstoneandberck.com and that's A-N-D, not Amperstand. And I'm Executive Director of the Center and we run conferences and fellowship program for students who want to come to law school. We will be giving them full tuition fellowships and they'll be working with me and we'll have reading programs that are sort of extracurricular. We'll be going through things like, you know, High Ex-Constitution of Liberty, for example, and other sort of landmark texts and discussing them. And you'll be helping with a judicial college if you are accepted as a fellow and we'll be doing those every year, once a year, and we'll be bringing in state court judges. We don't want to focus on federal judges. We want to focus on state court judges and we want to educate them in topics like natural law, natural rights, economic freedom, religious liberty, private ordering, the common law tradition, and these kinds of things. Well, ladies and gentlemen, I encourage you to follow him at Alan Mendenhall on Twitter because he's got a really interesting Twitter feed and I tend to spend too much time clicking on some of the articles he links. Alan, thanks so much for your time today and ladies and gentlemen have a great weekend. Subscribe to Mises Weekends via iTunes U, Stitcher, and SoundCloud or listen on Mises.org and YouTube.