Yeah, basically your version of the bottle city of Kandor in Superman's Fortress of Solitude Why I couldn't find the words for it, but yes Hey Superman, what's that on your Christmas mantle? Oh, it's a chunk of my old planet that I keep in a bottle Because somehow someone shrunk them and I don't know how to reverse it. Yeah, I love I like miniaturized things generally like just like a tiny Little city Just sitting there bustling like you know people they're into trains like model trains like kind of that for me My dad was very into model trains. Yeah, I Believe we've sold off a lot of the stuff because it was nice collector stuff But my mom and I were like, yeah, we're not really setting this up anymore But yes, it was it was something that brought him great joy and Yeah, the kind of the whole eBay phenomenon back in the early days was like, whoa Yeah, you have some crappy store and hope they have what you need. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. In fact, I should ask her about that I don't know. We might have some of that like the real nice stuff But it was yeah, and you put the little droplets in the top of the chimney and it would it would make the smoke and it Smell a certain way. Mm-hmm. Oh, it was like it was just my I still have an engine that can do that I don't think I have any of the stuff anymore. Yeah. Yeah Yeah, yeah, but no, I can smell it right now. It was it like that was the most Christmas smell Ever to me because we know like the train did not Around Christmas too and I remember one year. I was really little I was like maybe eight Okay, and so I got to stay up to midnight and my big thing was like I wanted the train To be running at midnight so that it would have run from the old year into the new year Yeah, okay. Yeah, that's very cool And and and did you successfully do that? Yeah, I think they had to wake me up though Yeah, it's always the way. Yeah, it's midnight. Do you want to run your train? Yeah? I Why I don't what I need to understand today is why Tom keeps referring to himself as a 50 year old man when he's not Yeah, I just decided Scott, you'll understand this because you're close enough close to like just round. I'm just gonna start rounding up That way when I actually turn 50, it's not in any way a big deal some sort of Confing where you have to yeah, like have like a big party year. Yeah Yeah, I don't need to have a big party, but it won't be like stressful. I'll be like, you know I'm gonna help this way for a long just you know, it's funny just a couple months ago a friend of mine Who turned 51? I went up to his his party in Sonoma, but it was his 50th party And they and they did it he and his wife did it on purpose because they were like When I actually turned 50 it was kind of like we were just sort of going through whatever So this is my 50th party. It's just that I am actually now 51 But it was it was a big party. I mean we but I think it was like that much less stress for him specifically Because he'd already spent a year being 50 He was doing it like the like when you do a new decade people celebrate in the year 2000 But they should be celebrating in 2001 right? Yeah after it's been Scott would you read line three today? I would read line three with gusto and agreement Yeah All right, I'm gonna catch you in ready. Yeah three two one And I lost it. Sorry. There it is. All right. That's all right. All right. He's right. There's count me in again All right, here we go Three two one James Thatcher has supported independent tech news directly for almost five years. Thanks james be like james become a dTNS member at patreon.com slash dTNS This is the daily tech news for wednesday december 19th 2018 in los angeles. I'm tom merit and from studio feline I'm sarah lane from almost christmas salt lake city. I'm scott johnson And uh from somewhere on the border of nowhere. I'm roger chain the shows where it's also almost christmas Hey folks, we are going to talk about facebook. Don't worry Uh, we know your most, you know 65 percent of you are outraged right now. We're going to get to that We're also going to talk about AI generating faces that are almost indistinguishable from real photographs Um, but let's start with a few tech things you should know apple updated ios to avoid a sales ban in china with changes Exclusive to china that circumvents the company's patent dispute with qualcomm Qualcomm won a sales ban after alleging that apple violated a pair of its patents Now last month qualcomm won a court injunction the banned apple from selling iphone models including the 6s 6s plus the 7 and 7 plus the 8 and 8 plus and the 10 mac rumors reports that ios 12 point 1.2 Now changes the animation for when an app is forced to close and that avoids a qualcomm patent around app management Man, that's a fiddly thing. Uh google will now use mobile first indexing for more than half of its web page searches globally That's pretty insane favoring mobile sites over desktop sites in its search results for the very first time google started its mobile first indexing efforts back in 2016 And said it would shift over to using the mobile version of the website's content to index its pages The financial times reports that chinese bike sharing company ofo has cash flow problems and is considering applying for bankruptcy Ofo raised 2.2 billion dollars on the promise of its large bike sharing operations worldwide chinese bike sharing company mo bike recently sold off to one of its shareholders and china's blue gogo bike Sharing company recently went bankrupt itself Bike sharing model has often been used as a basis for the electric scooter business model Hopefully for the electric scooter people it works out better for them All right, let's talk about a cool feature coming to windows Yeah, if you're into windows microsoft will bring a feature to windows 10 pro and enterprise editions specifically This is going to be next year They're calling it windows sandbox and here's why when virtualization is enabled in the bios Users can isolate an app to the sandbox so it can't affect the rest of the system When you're done the 100 megabytes of that sandbox is deleted feature will be available for testing and build 18305 I am sure a hundred developers just heard me say this and know exactly what they're going to do with it Yeah, well, it's it's great if you want to uh download an executable But you're unsure you want to see what it does first you can do this with the virtual machine But the virtual machine may not perform as well You may not have the money to get an extra license of windows to run a virtual machine So this will let anybody who's got windows 10 pro or enterprise Just spin up a kernel in windows from windows with good performance And check out that executable safely and then Shut it down and it deletes itself doesn't clutter up your hard drives pretty cool stuff It seems so small compared to what a lot of apps are today in terms of their You know their executables are just bigger than this This isn't this is just uh firing up a kernel Yeah, you'd be surprised how small operating systems are compared to actual software A lot of times the operating system is is much smaller than than a suite of apps for sure In other microsoft news Former microsoft intern joshua bakita posted on hacker news that he believes microsoft decided to abandon the edge html engine in favor of chromium because Google kept making changes to its websites like youtube that broke the site in other browsers and microsoft couldn't keep up For instance, he said a hidden empty div tag broke microsoft's video acceleration right at the time that google began advertising chromes advantage of her edge in video playing battery life A mozilla program manager previously claimed that a youtube redesign made firefox 5 Uh fire firefox 5 times slower in both firefox and edge Google denies these claims says that the hidden div tag was a bug and it was removed after it was reported nothing more google also told the verge quote youtube does not add code designed to defeat optimizations in other browsers But we don't mind if it shows up accidentally In addition to that Uh, which is my best guess for what happened here is is they make changes and don't worry about whether it breaks things for Edge or microsoft and of course edge moving on to chromium Is not going to have that problem anymore But peter bright over dars tectica put together an opinion piece saying how this is really bad In a lot of ways because google controls the chromium project and because google controls the chromium project It has outsized influence over what happens on everything on its platform Which now includes opera safari and soon edge leaving firefox and its nine percent of the market as the only non google influenced browser out there Yeah, also Okay, i'm going to go back in time to a time when i was art director on a website and i had to work with programmers and The short of that story was If you if you had a an errant div tag just floating around in the code Page code generated dynamically coded didn't matter They would find it in seconds like that stuff never made it out the door So i feel suspicious of this explanation for some reason it's google hidden scott. That's why they couldn't find Yeah, but uh, i don't know man I don't like this stuff so that that part's weird to me and i'm not i'm not Someone hit it and someone else should be able to find it right here's an exercise Here's an exercise for the users come up Those of you who who work in the sort of thing come up with a reason that a hidden div tag might show up And you wouldn't know it in your code. Yeah, i'd listen to that because again I'm not an expert by any stretch, but i just remember these guys are so hardcore about weird little things like that And obviously we're a different scale here, but then they're talking about but And i'm not ready to say hey google.  I just It just feels a little fishy coming from google of all places, but yeah You could save that for facebook because that's our next story The new york times alleges that facebook provided access to user information to hundreds of tech companies around 150 Big companies microsoft netflix spotify etc without user permission Facebook says the access described only involves users who log into their facebook accounts On the websites involved for instance users who log into facebook on spotify Could allow spotify to automatically send a message about what songs they're listening to and even message with friends While they were in the spotify app or on the spotify website the new york times Describes this particular feature as facebook letting spotify quote read facebook users private messages Just technically accurate, but i think misleading in the wake of the report the uk's digital culture media and sport committee has issued A statement calling on competition authorities to open an investigation and to add to facebook's horrible no good really bad day The washington dc attorney general has announced its filing a lawsuit against facebook over the cambridge analytical scandal Saying it didn't take proper precautions to protect data and misrepresented third party developer's ability to obtain data Now this morning on tms. I talked to scott about why i think While facebook is not without blame here This new york times story isn't great and likely to cause an overreaction because what was happening here in my opinion Is not much different than what happens when an app says hey We want to be able to send messages or write posts on your behalf Is it okay to let this app do that and you get that moment where you're like I don't want it to just write anything But you realize oh it's doing a very specific thing that i want this app to do okay I'll give it that permission the only difference being and this is why i don't think facebook is off the hook Facebook didn't ask you they just said hey if you're signing into facebook on spotify Then you will just assume you think everything that happens on facebook is also happening there Yeah, my I'll go ahead go ahead sir. Well, i'm just going to say i mean from what i understand of the particular spotify example that you just laid out tom Tell telling Uh a company what i'm listening to is not the same as reading my private facebook message But they're not reading that makes it sound like somebody at spotify has a big cache of all your messages It can go through and read all of them what it allowed as far as i can tell is spotify To have the messages come into their servers so that they could show them to you while you're logged into spotify and send them back out And that is they weren't storing them. They weren't selling ads against them. This isn't third party data collection This is just access to it now now granted spotify You might not decide you don't trust spotify and that they'll they'll save those messages Uh and keep them for nefarious purposes, which is why you should be told Hey spotify is going to do this.  It's fine and spotify netflix microsoft The 150 companies are mostly all saying yeah, we we don't access your personal information This is just enabled features to happen when you were logged into facebook on our site However, uh, sure spotify not using my data for nefarious purposes fine great even if i believe you There are data breaches every day. So but you know the the fact that we live in that sort of a world That's more of the issue as far as you know Who are me? I think the new york times story where the new york times story goes is making it feel like the breach happened Rather than focusing on hey facebook had these features enabled how this works seamlessly Clearly make, you know, let you know that what was happening on facebook.com Would also happen on netflix if you were logged in To facebook through that feature on the other hand I you know, I don't think it's crazy to to think that most people might assume that but we've gotten into a world where You want to err on the side of transparency? And so I think it's fine to hold facebook's feet to the fire and say you should always ask first Don't just assume But I also don't think this is as bad as a data breach or as bad as data storage That could be sold to third parties, etc And I think this new york times story Exaggerates it. Yeah, and they're obviously in a position or facebook's in a place right now where they're an easy target And by easy I just mean they've set themselves up in other ways to for people to sort of jump the gun and freak out I think it's also a little bit weird that small services and sites are required to ask you if you're cool with it and For whatever reason these bigger tech companies were not asked that maybe there wasn't previous agreements They had previous partnerships. Yeah, I know that's that's not cool either. I agree with you there It's not cool. Um, but I'm I'm glad that you're you're at least talking about it in the in the in the in the sort of raw Truthy way here because I think it's important for people not to jump overboard Uh, even though I don't even really care that much about facebook's not an important service to me It doesn't really make that big a difference to me I'd say I've never seen tom really rely on facebook as a as a really important aspect of his uh You know triangulation with fans and people and friends So it's not like we're defending a company who's clearly making goofs and I think some of them Yeah, definitely not defending facebook But it's but it's just so easy to go The whole house is on fire when really one of the outlets went out and you just need you know, it's a fuse It's not a bad analogy actually Uh, yeah, they they should have made sure the electricity uh worked in the in the outlets, but the house is not on fire We're not finding them, but just let's wrap our heads around what actually is is the problem Yeah, and you know for people who are all jumping ship. I don't have a problem with that There's all kinds of reasons to jump ship off facebook I don't know that this is necessarily the biggest one, but it could be the straw that breaks the camels back for you So that you know, that's totally fair. Good being uh, well, all right tuesday night elan musk everyone's favorites future super villain Just kidding. I just think that's a fun thing to picture Demonstrated a car modified with retractable tracking wheels traveling at 44 miles an hour For 1.4. Uh, excuse me 1.14 miles in a test tunnel That he probably dug anyway The the boring company. Thank you. The boring company. Oh, they're so boring Musk believes he can make the technology work at 150 miles per hour over long distances He would like to create a system of tunnels under cities with a combination of private and autonomous cars providing transportation So another step in his quest to build this crazy or is it though? I mean really the technology showed off is that he can dig a tunnel Because sending a car at 44 miles an hour is something I could do if the tunnel's already there. Yeah But the tunnel isn't already there. That's the point That's what i'm saying like the tunnel very impressive the car going through it at 44 miles an hour And apparently really bumpy according to multiple reports that I read not that impressive No, but but but uh as you know traffic congestion becomes a bigger and bigger issue in certain cities The idea of of having a safe underground tunnel Very advantageous Los Angeles great example of that. So if any company whether it's elan musk's many I don't know whatever his ventures, uh, you know our uh, uh, however far they get As far as hyperloops and and boring holes under under the sea That's all great. But That's sort of the we either have flying cars or we have cars underneath cities, right? Because there are only two options. I'm not denying the idea is great and necessary Especially in a place like los angeles But the idea was great and necessary months ago when he first announced it Showing me a car going 44 miles an hour through the tunnel that we already knew was dug Just I don't know not blowing me away here All right, if he would if he just sent this through though at the 150 desired speed I would be more impressed because that is the goal here is to create High-speed travel not just a tunnel for your slow-ass car, right? You want to really go fast in there and I do get that part of what he was doing wasn't showing the speed But showing like here's how it will work once it's perfected if you want to see the the concept It's it's like a concept car in that respect I sort of get that but there were some some fairly Salivating headlines out there, and I don't know if it's just quite yet. Yeah, I mean 40. I'm just saying 40 is like I don't know. I can do that on a scooter. I think or something Yeah on a road All right, let's let's finish on an easy one security at the border Haizam el-sharkawi is suing the u.s. Government after being detained at lax airport when he declined to unlock his cell phone He's a u.s. citizen He was leaving the country on his way to Saudi Arabia on hajj and was pulled aside by customs officers for additional screening So far so normal like this could happen to anybody traveling internationally You might get pulled for a little additional screening However, he was asked to unlock his phone And he said he didn't feel comfortable doing that unless they told him why they needed him to So he was putting a holding cell Uh And he finally gave in and was like fine final unlock my phone an officer then looked through his phone and asked him about His amazon and ebay accounts Noted that he had lots of unread emails, uh, which i'm not sure what that indicates to people unless maybe it's they're looking for He's a normal human Seems suspicious to me So he's suing saying, you know, this was this was unlawful detention. You did not have cause Uh, and you you shouldn't have forced me just because I declined to open the phone I think I agree with him. In fact, he and I have a lot in common our email boxes are very similar And if somebody said to me, uh, your email's uh piling up pretty good there as a some sort of suspicious activity You should be more concerned about mr. Uh inbox zero 24 seven of the day That guy's the weirdo. Uh, I the whole thing is Super funky and I'd be mad if I was him. There's no way especially, you know, we we hear a lot about Uh, your google search history, you know might you know, link you to something bad Um, whether or not you actually did anything It's you know, it's it's indicative of what your interests are amazon and ebay search history or purchase history Could be something that law enforcement might want to tie you to it doesn't sound like they they had a leg to stand on in this case Um, and certainly putting somebody in a holding cell while they look through your amazon history is ridiculous, but um But yeah, uh, he ran an e-commerce company And and so likely they were fishing for some sort of import-export issue that's why they're asking about his amazon and his ebay accounts, but Uh, it doesn't appear that there was any cause for them to do that other than he ran an e-commerce company so and and even so like that would be even more reason to be like well There's probably a lot of like contextual stuff you don't understand about my history because I run an e-commerce company Yeah, and I would I would argue that he's also, you know I hate to put this part in there, but he's somebody from a different ethnicity And so that plays a role as well All of it's a racial profile and perhaps that yeah, it's all adding up to be real skeezy I don't like it Well, folks if you want to get all the tech headlines each day in about five minutes Be sure to subscribe to daily tech headlines Dot com now a paper published earlier this month was made public this week showing human faces Generated by a generative adversarial network a GAN machine learning algorithm the faces look real But they're not actually pictures of people scientists at invidia trained the GAN to make the images eight tesla gpu's took about a week to do it And used a method known as style transfer So you blend images together and it's not just morphing, you know like me and the president's face together to show What our baby would look like it's more sophisticated that because it can do not just images But multiple images and traits you can say blend all these images together, but make all the hair blonde No matter what color it would have come out otherwise stuff like that So you customize the faces in ways that they look very different from the originals, but they aren't actually people And yet they look very much like people Now artist encoder kyle mcdonald has had a medium post up for a while explaining what to look for to identify AI generated faces and he updated it in the wake of this because he's like wow this This got a lot better in the year since I I told you what to look for in the old Photos, but there are still things you can do to identify whether something is fake And this is going to be a new skill the way we used to look for airbrushing or photo shopping We're now going to have to look for GAN generated Images, so here are some of the things to keep an eye out for Physical objects that aren't quite generated properly So he showed some examples in these envidia images where a ghost of an earring was showing up because it had been in one of the pictures And didn't get fully rendered out asymmetry Uh, particularly where maybe you get two different ears on somebody or the eyes are not pointed in the same direction Uh, necessarily it's something called strabismus Misaligned teeth that are dentally improbable not just like oh he's got crooked teeth, but like a tooth in front of another tooth Hair that's not just messy but Really like unusually messy or disconnected either like a like a strand It's just on your forehead and connected to the rest of your hair as one example Or hair or clothing that looks painted. There's one example. He shows of a t-shirt that kind of looks like it's a matisse It's just sort of an impressionistic t-shirt and he's like those are the sort of imperfections that still show up even as good as this gets But it's getting good really fast And it's good. Oh my gosh, sarah. It's like watching I most of these fooled me.  Aren't we all but like, okay I see where they're talking about where it's something that's not quite right. Yeah Like where you look at the teeth of my hair showing up on your side. Sure. Like there are definite. There are definite Flags that you go. Okay. If you're paying attention, I see where you would notice this Nobody does We already know that nobody does Yes, though because we didn't photo Airbrushing used to fool people until we got used to it and then we started to just automatically be able to tell Fool's people. Well, it still doesn't a lot of people But it you it can get past people more Photoshopping fools more people than actual airbrushing. Well, sure. Yeah, we've come to the point now where we're like shopped All these technologies. Yeah when they show up fool everyone And then eventually get to a point where there's a lot of people who are like, yeah, no, I just know I know when I'm looking at something that's shopped and some people never can and that's fine But as long as the majority as long as there's a large enough number It's not going to be used to fool everyone. The hope is that machine-generated images will Have that same pattern, but they're getting better so fast That just could break the pattern. This is shocking to me. So I I went in there thinking Oh, they're showing the examples, you know, the black and white stuff I was like, oh, here's where his computer's really trying real hard But here's the goal they're aiming for which is these actual photos of this nice this nice pair of people here And then I read along and went, no, no, no, those are now that's what we're generating now. These Nvidia results are these And those are very convincing And so now that I have that in my hand, I'm like, well, hold on. I've already been fooled once fooled me once all that Let me really focus in And yeah, the eyes are a little too perfectly aligned um There are subtle differences, but that old and and cunny and cunny Uncanny valley screwed that one up That's not there right now. I'm not feeling that weird.  Yeah, and in some cases like good snapshots like I'm warm. You could put these same photos in an article that says the google pixels sure taking great photos these days and I go Well, and and yeah, and so then it comes into conversation of okay, if you used my photo, um in an article about how I, you know Uh, uh committed a crime and I'm like, uh, excuse me. That's me and I didn't do that You know, it's like there are actual people who can come forward Or at least someone on my behalf and be like that's wrong But if it's a person who doesn't exist in the worlds Then we have a whole other conversation to be had because who's who's gonna come forward for the fake woman who doesn't exist But looks pretty real Yeah We'll think of her. Yeah, like Who will come for the fake woman as someone is someone who follows in a super into Everything to do with uh game rendering, especially in video's role in this Um, it's always very interesting to me and I love to see what's next all this new ray tracing technology That's coming. It's so awesome. It's easy to forget that along with this will come the next level Of fooling everybody and we're just going to get cheaper and easier and more accessible tools as time goes on And we're going to have to deal with it the way we dealt with photoshop And in a weird way I find that comforting Because in some ways You know Once everybody can do it you can also get to a place where you realize everyone can do it and we can start spotting it So i'm not that worried about it But I am a little bugged at how much of a sucker I was today when I first looked at this article I'm looking forward to uh, it getting good at real-time video rendering such that uh, I will always look the way I look now from forever because you just cover up the way I really look I agree 50 years young Thanks everyone who participates in our sub reddit You can submit stories and vote on them at daily tech news show dot reddit.com We're also on facebook facebook.com slash groups slash daily tech news show We love getting your emails and we love reading some of them on the show Indeed we do in fact larry aka the geeky trucker rodin said You mentioned duck dot go all the time as a good security browser I've been using start page as a private search engine for years Have you ever looked at them? They used to be called ix quick started back in 1998 They changed their name for better marketing themselves just a thought I am not Yeah, that's a great suggestion. Thank you geeky trucker uh start page Didn't just change the name it merged With with the other one. So that that's that's how they ended up changing the name Start page uses only one cookie called preferences Which remembers your search preferences for future surfaces searches and is deleted if you don't visit start page for 90 days Otherwise, it doesn't do any kind of data collection The difference between start page and duck duck go is duck duck go always shows the same search results to everybody So there is no preferences as far as I know could be wrong about that But as far as I know duck duck go doesn't even doesn't even have search preferences So if you're like, I love duck duck go But I'd like to keep some preferences around then start page may be for you because it's very limited and is still very privacy focused Good good suggestion. Thank you. Yeah, thanks larry Keep on trucking Also, thanks to scott johnson for being with us scott. What has been going on since we saw you last Well, everything was great until that joke just now and now I started laughing and I can't stop thinking about it But um things have been going really good. You know speaking of duck duck go last wednesday We had this very brief conversation that I owned a domain We were talking about domains and who owned them and stuff I owned a domain called new duck dot com and tom's like, ah, you should donate it and I said nope I'm going to draw a new duck on there every day Well, guess which of the two choices I chose. That's right. I'm drawing a new duck every day So here's what you want to do just go check out new duck dot com And uh, just it's just a silly dumb thing. What's your privacy policy though? That's 100. Well, it's whatever the rest of my site is I guess New duck there every day most of them are colored and finished and ink summer just sketches I've only been doing it for a little while here But if you want to just see a new duck every day why new duck dot com is your place So go check it out at new duck dot com and the the whole site's there So you can see everything else I'm doing as well as my twitter account at scott johnson Man in a world uh full of people trying to get something from you I love that you just want to get in a world full of people Oh, it's almost Christmas. It's all given time. So I'm here to give and my giving is duck ducks. So enjoy them. Yeah It collects three cookies square space Two square space in one type kit. There you go. How that's not bad, right? You know, it's no duck. There go. That's pretty But it's but it's very solid. You don't have to put any search queries. Just look at ducks. That's right Hey everybody, uh, we're going to ask you for something your support If patreon is not your bag, we got all kinds of ways to support us a daily tech news show dot com slash support And you can find a nice new video there that shows you all the options you have For supporting the show keep us independent. Of course for us still the best way is patreon.com slash dtns And our goal is always to get one more Supporter than last year and that supporter could be you if you've been thinking about joining now is the time patreon.com Slash dtns if you have feedback for us We have an email address for you feedback at daily tech news show dot com is where to direct them We're also live Monday through friday at 4 30 p.m. Eastern 21 30 utc find out more tell a friend Share it with your loved one at daily tech news show dot com slash live Talk tomorrow with justin robby young talk to you then This show is part of the frog pants network. Get more at frog pants dot com I'm in club. Hope you have enjoyed this bro Duck That was a great show Roger you really outdid yourself duck and roger So speaking of ducks, um, it no nothing bad. Um, there's a little lake, you know At an urban lake at near me where I walk otis in the morning though lots of ducks Like I understand what like a mallard duck is but there are some other types of like Odd ducks that I'm I'm like, I'm pretty sure they're duck. They're not geese. They're not spawns like they're they're ducks But they're a weird kind of duck and there's one kind. I'm gonna take a photo Maybe I'll put it on lens When I walk around there either this afternoon tomorrow morning and I swear to you these ducks don't have wings No, weird Like they don't have wings or they're I'm sure they do But the way that they walk they look like quails, you know where you're like, I don't know like you don't seem capable What's the head teller of the duck They're like black with like little white sort of mohawks.  I'm like I keep waiting for you know one of them Enough to Topic Don't feel like it Okay, but like okay most ducks aren't you know, you're not seeing them flying around But you do see them like bathing in the pond like you see their wings being part of their body These particular ducks they all kind of walk in a file And they're real cute and they're kind of small And I I'm just like what what's going on with are they smoking galas? I don't know They're not vaping Although I saw a policeman vaping in a police car yesterday as he was passing me on the street Not even kidding true story. That's what you want Ops, babe. Yep Look, it's better my aunt vapes because she doesn't want to smoke anymore and I say more power to her I was hoping you were gonna say you saw one of these ducks in a police car No, I I I don't I I'm sure I'm sure a policeman I I don't know what I have no idea what the legality of that is I just found it funny when I saw him passing me It's obvious in Congress, right? The stereotype is kids vape, right? And if it's not kids hipsters vape Uh hipsters vape are not kids or hipsters. All right, right Police can be hipsters though. I imagine we have several law enforcement officers in the audience who will verify that Come up with an ironic reason why they're arresting you Yeah, it'd be very ironic of the edit. Oh what you're doing was so legal not Not saying it was illegal just and I was like How's this for a title AI's face value? Oh, that's good. Yeah, I like that done Hey, yeah That's right when I needed it. All right. I'm looking into duck species I think I'm gonna I'm gonna find out Duck and cover Duck and Roger Duck and Roger By the way, it's a great pair. Not it's not an actual parody of that song. It's a complete Thing of their own, but we were watching iron giant the other day and the um We love that movie here and there's great. Yeah, it's a perfect movie anyway, the The scene where they're all in school and they're playing these duck and cover videos They had to make up their own to do it, but theirs is almost better I think Brad Bird might be a genius is what I'm getting at. It's a really good movie If if listen anyone listening right now still who just has not seen iron giant You just avoided it for whatever reason you skipped out. Okay. How old or young you are? Stop what you're doing and watch the iron giant. All right So good. Oh Tom see you Yeah, hi Tom. Tom hasn't seen iron giant. Am I to believe that he doesn't like Tom's going to find something that's going to No Oh Tom I thought I thought Tom was going under the That's gonna pull out an iron giant I have an iron giant tattoo. What does that say? Tom we got to talk about that. Seriously. I know I know it's a failing in my education. It's so good You'd love it. It's all this 50s 40s Uh Cold war era stuff that they reference.  Yeah I think you'd love it actually not just like it. I think you'll go. Oh, right. Okay. Where do you watch it? Do you just own it? I own it in like four different formats, but it's also on netflix currently So it is okay. Yeah, you just watch it there Oh, that's where we were we were just screwing around on netflix and my kids go. Oh my gosh, dad. Let's watch it I'm like, well, we have it downstairs on blu-ray. It doesn't matter. Let's let's do it. It's right here This is my favorite movie growing up. I mean, they love it, but And it did it was one of those movies that like in the theater was Fair to middling performance and then it hit, uh, the dvds and stuff later It actually come out it came out in 2009 was the year But what? Oh, what month? I don't know I'm sure it's because This is the year I moved to san francisco and I wonder if that's why I missed it Maybe scott. I think it's the american witchen I think that's our vision. Okay. Is that not a is that a duck or a whole separate species of bird? It's a different color. I don't know.  It came out august 1999 august is when I flew to san francisco to interview for my job at zd tv I was just way too busy when it came out Yeah, I could see that and then I missed it. Yeah, I could totally see that another movie I think that got unfairly raked over the coals animation was, uh, titan a No, it's great. It's a great movie. Oh, yeah people hated that movie But it's a really I don't understand why like the story. Hold.  There is no Kind of there's not there's no song and dance in it, but it's story wise. It's cohesive No, it's a cool science fiction story and it's and it's um, what's his name who I love? Matt Damon. No, not The director Oh, uh, uh, uh, gary oldman not gary goldman. No No don bluth don bluth Oh He did like dragons lair the games and stuff and well, he worked with rick dire We had I had him rick dire and gary old goldman On screensavers to talk about all that stuff Good goldman gary oldman Gary oldman Cheating in front of the old man. Okay. You really are an old man. Tom Someone's a old man 50 years young I'm looking up lots of duck species. Sorry guys very busy right now The ruddy duck is That's pretty cute duck.   That's right I love that accent. It's one of my favorites. It is it's hilarious. I I don't feel like I can do it I like it too, but I wouldn't I wouldn't dare. Oh, that doesn't stop scotter.  There was a period of time where uh Uh, uh, who's the guy who did uh, mr. Smith goes to Washington. Um, jimmy stewart Jimmy stewart, right his generation. They all had that affectation Because it was a period of time where if you had it you were it was a signifier Of social status. I believe that is that not are you not referring to the transatlantic accent? well, so the That is but that's that's in some ways related to the way the boss and brahman accent All was also from it from a from an earlier period like 20 30 years before um Migrated over because it was it was a small status like ducks. He migrated like a duck. Uh, It's all I love duck. It's so delicious Although some people don't like it because it's too oily. It's oily. Yeah, pretty oily, but I still like it Yeah, well, tom should like it.  You don't want an oily blind date to be on an oily duck if i'm blind dating and uh I don't I don't think you want an oily date. Yeah, I know you're probably right But at least you know what you're getting into if it's when they're blind you're like, oh, geez you set me up They're blind. You mean it it's a blind date. The date is blind. The person is not necessarily blind. Yeah, that Well, someone set me up on a blind date That would be that would be one or not. That doesn't matter.  Just just going coming out of all pores Usually isn't that usually like teenager high school? Like I need my oxy queen. Yeah. Yeah, that's the oiliest or the youngest Yeah, exactly. Yeah, the oiliest are so slippery No, you can you can have oily skin older in life But i'm just saying the oilier you are the younger you look I have the I have the see right Lesson and first but oily go dry here oily here like I have an oily tea But they who are among us without oil cast the first cotton swab First cotton swab. Well, well like I have oily hair. I do if I you know if I don't When people say like I didn't wash my hair in a week I'm like, oh, I mean if I didn't do that we'd be in a world of hurt I would be I mean that's that's but it's but those are like They're here and you know just not using shampoo because there's a big difference between Not using shampoo for a week and not actually putting water on your hair for a week No, it's just well, I mean depends on the person and curly hair is different than straight I have really straight hair. Um, but like There there are folks who just you can you can preserve the hair better by not washing it Yeah, and and and No, no No Like a very like tight shower cap to not get your hair wet So, I mean and that's that doesn't work for me I can go maybe two days Because shampoo does dry you out if you use it too much it can Actually cause oil But not actually like rinsing it Get a nasty. Yeah, that's nasty I I actually do that because Depending on what kind of hair you have It's not nasty, you're right Yeah, sometimes getting wet is like that's like you might as well wash it at that point because you know now you're back to square zero So I gotta wash my hair after I the longest I can go without touching my hair or anything is three days I mean I could wash that man right out of it. I could do, you know dry shampoo exists and oh, we tried that for my daughter that stuff It's a penny it does come in handy But even even with that after three days I can't I just can't even if it like I was sort of passing For the rest of the world I would I would not be able to exist in a non Plumbing society like I would need running water to clean myself after like three three three day four Stretch it four days Without running water and just bathes like in a creek or something you'd be all right. Yeah, I just find a creek Yeah, there's a creek just around the corner You'd have to live near a creek Yeah in a van maybe Or You know, we're just Just sleep out under the stars. Maybe I'll shave my head and then I'll just can you use soap on your scalp at that point or no Yeah, why not? I think so Well, it's different skin, right? No, it's the same skin The the hair is what's different the skin is like a separate person growing up there No, there's no there's like you have different you have different skin like it's it's Like they're not I don't but so like if you know if if if a man or woman is bald I don't think you have to use shampoo on your head At that point you're just using you still gotta you still gotta wax it or something to protect you So you don't have to wax your head. You don't have to I don't know anyone who waxes their head video folks We understand uh that you have to go audio folks stick around for roger's secret hair care tips right after this


Welcome to In the Studio at Davis Media Access. My name is Audom lab a Renault and I'm your host today for this segment. Be sure to catch replays of this show and other In the Studio episodes on DCTV channel 15 on the Comcast system in Davis, 10 a.m. weekdays and also on menu 99 on AT&T's U-verse system. And really be sure to check out our complete archive at DCTV.Davismedia.org. We have in the studio stretching back quite a ways and they're a great encapsulation of what makes Davis Davis and what's going on here. Today I'm really pleased to have with me my guest David Loofborough from Sac Sings and that is the Sacramento Choral Festival and it's coming up April 23rd and 24th. Welcome David. Thank you. So glad to have you here today. Yeah. The event is produced by the Sac Valley Choral Coalition and includes four performances. David is directing each of the shows and he's also sings in one of the groups and he's going to tell us a little bit about that later but let's start from the top. Tell us about Sac Sings. Sac Sings is a festival of 20 choirs in over four performances that has become kind of the destination. We pull choirs from five counties all the way from Amador, from Nevada County and certainly four groups this time from Davis area. So we're very excited to offer this as a showcase to kind of give people a sampler, you know kind of like going to the wine place with a sampler. This is a choral sampler. All kinds of music and it's a lot of fun. A little bit of Grass Valley, a little bit of Davis, a little bit of, well there's a lot of genres I want to get into later but you've brought us a short video. So let's go ahead and watch that so people can see what we're talking about and then we'll get into some of the specifics if you cue the video please. Looks like a lot of fun, David. Yes it is. The voices. Two years ago before the first show launched, now where you're coming up on year three of Sac Sings, what have you learned, what's changed in that time? We went into it with a lot of enthusiasm and certainly well-warranted because so much talent is going on around the valley and we wanted to showcase that talent. We kind of bit deeply into the apple the first year and we had, oh my gosh I can't even tell you, 20 groups and 16 performances. The second year we scaled back some to really focus a little bit more and then we did some talk. We wanted to be a good experience for the singers especially so we revamped things. One thing we learned was that we needed to have it earlier in the year before the spring season so that people really could showcase their upcoming concerts so the audience members get a little taste and then they can see, oh I want to go see that concert and that concert. Like an appetizer. An appetizer exactly. Then we wanted to move the festival closer. We were at the Harris Center and we've moved it now to Sacramento City College Performing Arts Center, beautiful facility right in the middle of the Sacramento Valley. Nice. Now, I was reading through the website earlier today and in there it describes choral music as some of the best undiscovered music there is. Why do you think it's not known as well as you would hope it would be? That was really the motivation for starting this was all these great choirs of the Vocal Arts Ensemble right here in Davis, marvelous group, nobody knew about them. So we wanted to get that exposure out and it's still a challenge. We advertise, there's a lot of competition for music but that's what we're growing toward is to really showcase and let people cross-pollinate. People that would come to hear, let's say, Barbershop don't know how wonderful modern art music is and classical music people are finding out about Americana and fun music that many of the other groups. That was one of the things that really surprised me. So I am a huge fan of Vocal Arts Ensemble and I just want to mention the other Yolo County groups that are participating, which is the Davis Chamber Choir, the Davis Choral and from Woodland, the Woodland Chamber Singers. So we have four groups from Yolo County. The website also described a wide, they're performing a wide range of music, classical, jazz, Barbershop, Americana, okay, I didn't know that choral groups touched on all that. Yes, they do. And you sing with, tell me again. I sing with the Grass Valley Malevoice Choir. We sing what's called Americana. So we sing show tunes, we sing traditional American music. This time we're doing an all spiritual thing that's shaker music and African American spirituals and so forth. But normally we sing also British songs because our heritage is a Cornish Carole Choir. So the miners came and made this choir 150 years ago. Singing down in the mines. Rita Hosking, who's a world famous folk singer here in Davis, sings out of that heritage as well. And so she's told a lot of great stories about that. I'm going to read a quote to you. It's a little known fact, but there are dozens of independent choruses in the Sacramento Valley. A few are widely known, drawing thousands to their concerts each year, but what of the rest? Nearly 900 singers, 900 singers. That's right. So tell us a little bit about, because there's four different shows within this event. How does that work? Yeah. So the 20 choirs are divided up into groups of five. So Saturday afternoon, Sunday evening, Sunday afternoon and Sunday evening. Four shows, they're each independent. And each one has a variety, you know, a different music. So there might be a classical and a barbershop and Americana and a jazz and an ensemble singer kind of thing in each concert. So you mixed it up. So we've mixed it up quite a bit. And so each one's a separate entrance and separate tickets. So yeah, we're actually, our executive director is offering a prize to those that come to all four concerts. So he's calling it the executive club or something like that. I'm going to have you talk about how one gets tickets and how that works with four different shows. I'll just tell our viewers that tickets are available at saxings.org and you can get more information there. That's right. But how is that going to work? Yeah. Well, we offer our tickets through a ticket agency called Event Bright and you'll find the link on the website and the tickets menu. And so you can go there and order the tickets, one concert, two concerts, three. There's no discount for, you know, coming to multiple ones. So really a bargain price anyway. Right. So each show is a separate ticket. Yeah. So each one's separate. Okay. So what would you like to highlight? What's really exciting you going into your third year of producing and directing these shows? I am so excited. We added last year a, where all the singers sing at the end, not all 900, a building would fall over. But all of those from that concert show up 200, 250 singers gather on the same stage.  It was a commission piece that we did, had commissioned just for us. And we have the exclusive rights for it. So nobody else does that version. And then we all sing the audience sings together as well at the end. So it brings people into that experience in a wonderful, wonderful way. So that to me is the highlight each time. It just gives me chill bumps. I start crying. One of those goosebumps moments. You know, I asked you a question earlier and you said that's an interesting point. Choral music hasn't seen the big elevation or the big bump that acapella got, for example. With acapello a few years ago, we had movies like Pitch Perfect. There's been TV shows that really elevated it. What do you think is going on with choral music? Do you think there's an opportunity like that in the wings? Well, you know, it's a spectrum. And acapella music, for instance, I'm actually developing a seminar on this topic. Acapella music started way back in Gregorian Chance. You think about it. That was, you know, in the milieu of religious worship and so forth, 200,000 years ago. And it has evolved through barbershop, through jazz singing, through a variety of choral milios.  Pentatonix. Pentatonix are big. So we hear a little of that in our concerts and that's a part of what we want to lift up. And we hope it'll draw people kind of like the Harry Potter of music is that they'll come for one thing and understand that, find that there's just a wonderful variety of music that you can enjoy. So, good. Well, take a minute here and tell me a little bit about the group you sing with. Okay. So I sing with Grass Valley Mailboys Choir and that is, let's say, the group was founded 150 years ago during the Gold Rush when the Cornish men came over to work in the Deep Gold Mines. And that group was in existence for, well, actually there were several groups. They ultimately became one group, became kind of famous. They sang on the radio and NPR did a recording in the Deep Mines clear up through the 1960s, early 60s. So the Gold Mines closed and the choir faded away, but it got revived in the 90s. And so we're about to celebrate our 20th year. We're going to Cornwall next year as a, to be a part of a festival there. Well, that's pretty exciting. I can just imagine those voices down in the mines and that kind of gives me goosebumps. Yeah. It is a sound. All right. It's a unique sound. We're almost out of time, believe it or not. So anything else you would like to tell people about the upcoming Saksings event, April 23rd and 24th? Yep. April 23rd, 24th. Get on the website, Saksings.org, and you'll find everything you need. All the groups are listed there and how to get the tickets. And we really hope that you'll get out and see what music has to offer. I mean, it's not rock music. It's not going to be rock and roll. No. There are a couple groups like the Sacramento Gay Men's Choir that do a pretty rocker show. So it's a lot of fun and you will not be sorry. Sounds like a lot of fun. David Loofborough, thanks for being our guest today here on In the Studio. Appreciate it. Thank you. Once again, I'm Autumn. I've been hosting you on In the Studio here today and be sure to turn and tune into the whole archive, DCTV.DavisMedia.org. Thanks for watching.


ng. C-H-A-M-F-E-R. Sorry, C is in Charlie. Yeah. Can for the planting bed. Instead of M is in Nancy, it's M is in Mary before the F. Oh, sorry. It's okay. Thank you, Rachel. I couldn't spell leader. Right into my plan. Fine. My spell check wanted it to be Darfur. Chamfer the planting bed. At the corner of Mass Ave and Clark Street to generate, to create additional space. On the sidewalk at the corner. On the sidewalk. Oh, okay. Is this seeming like what you were trying to get at? Also, if you don't have to add. Create additional space for the handicapped ramp. Is that what you want to say? The ramp is fine. The ramp fits in there. Just when you turn that corner. I want space. Between the power pole and the corner of the planting. It's not enough space for a handicapped person to turn. You want to give them a little more space. Added this. Okay. I'd like, oops, sorry. I'm sorry. I just want to read how I amended that. Create additional space for accessibility and maneuvering around plantings and utilities. Okay. Gene? I thought David was going to say something. Oh, I was going to ask whether we wanted to add a condition to not sure how to word this to somehow limit the operator from accepting reservations for guests with cars in excess of the available parking or do we cover that already somewhere?  We're going to come up with a plan for you. Is that the TDM plan? No. That's the offsite parking plan. So if the valet gets full, they have an agreement with other parking areas too. Okay. Oh, for guest valet parking as well? For overflow guest valet parking. Yes. Okay. I didn't understand. We have that identified clearly. And not in, it says for, this is what it says actually is number three. So. We should just add a line about including the TDM plan. She'll finalize all available offsite parking for employees, tour buses, comma, and overflow guest valet parking. Is that me, David? Yeah. I mean, I think as long as they've got a way to deal with it, that satisfies me. I mean, my intention is to prevent guests from parking on the street because the valet parking's full. So I guess that would address it. Jean, did you have another thought? My thought is it would say something like the hotel shall not accommodate any guests arriving by car that would result in exceeding the capacity of the rear parking lot. Well, can I say this that we'll come up with a plan and the plan may be that. That we will tell prospective guests, the parking is full and you cannot utilize a car. I don't think you should foreclose the options of what we may find in the interim for other alternatives. I would be reluctant to say that they can't, that they can't do that. I think I'm gonna agree with Mary and Jim here. There are other alternatives that, otherwise they're end up with empty rooms. There's nobody parking right now, you know that. So you can't park the street overnight. Right. And we're not allowing them to park on Clark Street. So I don't know where would they park. That's the point. We might make an agreement with some other larger lots and park them offsite. Yeah, agree with you. I think there are a lot of offsite options that they could look at. I don't wanna... This is just requiring that those offsite options be articulated in the TDM. Yeah. That I'm okay. Well, if this means that anybody who arrives with a car when the lot is full, they have to take the car somewhere else and not park it on the street, then that's okay. Yeah, I mean, that's the responsibility of the valet to take that car to whatever alternate site. So the applicant or the operator has worked out. Okay. David, are you okay with that? I think so. I mean, it creates a mechanism for dealing with the problem. I guess there's no way we can guarantee that no guests will ever try to park on the street, but this creates a mechanism for handling overflow. Yeah, I'd like to suggest one. I asked this a couple of times, but it was never done. And that is the driveway, the little semicircular driveway in Mass Ave. I think there should be no left turns coming out of it. I think it should only be right turns coming out of it. Or else it's gonna be crossing two lines of traffic and going right toward Appleton. I don't know that I agree with that restriction, given the volume of traffic and the ability for people coming out of almost any other business on that section of the street to be able to make a left turn. I would agree with Rachel, Jean. I just don't think there'll be that much traffic coming out of there.  So it's gonna go right. The only time I can see is when you're leaving. And I don't see that being rush hour traffic. Okay. I don't know. If it seems like a problem, we can always revisit it later. I mean, my concern would be if someone can only turn right and they need to reverse direction, how are they gonna do that? They may go down Clark through the neighborhood and come back down on, what's the next street East? To come back to Mass Ave? Well, they may take a left onto Appleton Place and try to return. Well, yeah, there are any number. All of the options are bad, I think, for reversing direction. All right, so I'll withdraw that. I'll suggest another one. I think the buses, when they leave there, should not be able to make a right onto Clark Street and don't go down Clark Street. Because if they can go either way, if they can either make a left or right out of... I think that's already in that, that it's prohibited to have a right turn onto Clark Street from the rear parking lot. That's from the rear parking lot. I'd like to suggest and the buses can't do it from the Mass Ave driveway. Are we talking with four buses? The tour buses. Yeah, that won't happen, but I'm not opposed. If you want to reduce that to writing, I have no problem with that. As long as what we're saying is that they will not be going down clock into the neighborhood, I have no problem. Yeah, I think we should say that. Not going to happen. Tour buses shall not be allowed to turn onto Clark Street. Perfect. OK. You might need an operator to ensure. Yeah, the owner shall ensure that tour buses will not be allowed to turn onto Clark Street. And travel through the neighborhood. In order to travel through. OK. So there was one other item in the response. To the TAC report about the repair of the sidewalk and curb between Mass Ave and the project along the site frontage of Clark Street. OK, so I think we should put that in as a special condition as well. Can you can you read it or create? I'll just read it verbatim from just for me to type it. The repair of the sidewalk. Wait, hold on a second before you go any further. I think it's out of here elsewhere. I don't remember seeing it. Yes, you you've covered that, I think, in your first year, the first year, second one. Yeah, I thought it was up here. Because you and Mary were going back and forth in terms of getting the clarity that it was going to do the entire sidewalk on Clark and Mass Ave, but we were not doing the other side of Mass Ave. That's right here. The owner is responsible for repairing the sidewalk. OK, all right. I thought there was something else. The curb, not the actual. Got it. Thank you. OK, so this is this is covering it, right? Yep. OK. Sorry, it was starting to sound familiar. Is is the other condition that was agreed to for confirming the driveway slopes for compliance with the ADA? Is that adequately covered by the ADA condition? I said all, you know, the program and building components and all outdoor areas, including parking. Yeah, I think that's fine. Do we want to say do we want to say something about the trucks using the. Rear the rear parking lot shall not exceed 18 feet in length, because that was what we asked them for. What was the maximum? How would the garbage trucks work down, Jean? Well, well, that's what the garbage trucks are less because we specify specifically asked them, what's the maximum length of truck that could use that driveway and then turn safely onto Clark Street? And he said thirty eight feet. If you have a minute, thirty eight, thirty eight feet, Jean, I think you you mentioned 18 in your initial car. No, no, thirty eight, thirty eight. So I could just say service service trucks using the rear parking area shall not exceed thirty eight feet in length. That's fine, Jean. I thought you said 18 the first time. If I did, that was my mistake. It's getting too late for me. So it just says service trucks using the rear. Where are you? Which which number are we on? I'm sorry. You could do a new number in special conditions. Yeah, just it feels like it ties to one of these other ones. So I'm just wondering if it's an add-on. If it's not, then I'll happily create another. That's fine. I'm not sure. OK, there was something in there that talk they could use the front and the rear. I just forget where it was. Was the hours of delivery and stuff, too. Yeah, that's that's what I was getting at. Oh, number five, number five. This one, that's about right. But that's about just about trash. This is any service truck. That's right here. Let me race to the site between eight thirty and two p.m. and shall require that the delivery vehicles accessing the site can utilize the front or rear driveways for loading and unloading. They're bright. OK. So we should set a sentence that says service trucks using the rear parking area. So not a service trucks using the rear parking area shall not exceed thirty eight feet in length. And you include service trucks to mean trash removal, correct? Yeah, OK. Well, we could be more specific and say trash removal and delivery trucks accessing the rear parking area. If you say service and trash removal. Yeah, that's what I was just thinking. And I'd say accessing not using. Right. So what's not in here, I think, is the reduction from 50 to 48 units. That would go in the in the early part, the sort of upfront overall decision. So I would make that clear. OK, great. Yeah, the number of beds. OK. There's there have been other changes as well. So that that's basically the edit to the the overall memo. And I will absolutely make sure to do. So just to be clear, we're reducing the number of units to 48 and shifting the outdoor space on the roof to the Clark Street side. Actually, corner. Yes. OK. I just wanted to make sure I understood. And the public access space will be reduced as well. Correct. What will it be reduced to, Jim? I didn't think it was going to be reduced. That's why I'm asking what was going to be reduced. I apologize. Your question, public access space. It's going to be a public access space. Right. Per the discussion we had with Ken, it would come down because we're dropping, I estimated about 700 square feet between the loss of the two units there. So if it's 600 square feet, then it would be the corresponding drop. In other words, the 210 that I was required to do for the twenty one hundred square feet, we agreed was going to contract based on the reduction in the area. So what's it going to be? What's the square footage of the space going to be then? I don't. I don't. What I'm saying is I don't have the map if it or if it's like 700 square feet. Then now that is substantially smaller than the twenty one hundred square feet. I think I think, Jenny, you probably just need to work that out with them before the decision goes out. It's going to be some number between two ten and six seventy five. Yes, that's very good. And it's going to be closer to six seventy five and two ten. No, I don't think so. I do not just so just so it's it's clear. OK, the six seventy five did not have anything to do. Right, right. You give some extra space. A tremendous amount for four hundred and sixty five square feet extra. Right. So what I'm suggesting is just the opposite. We're not we're not doing these to have a second vote later, because we're not in agreement. We're taking a lot of time here, so let's be honest with each other. It is going to be much closer to the two hundred than the six hundred. Absolutely. And we are not going to be able to do and you can play the tape later. I'm not backtracking. I've been consistent. And this is why Ken and I spent a lot of time on this twice. We're not going to be able to do all the hosting, Jean, that you and I spoke about up front. And I agree with you. That's what we said. Correct. I think reducing the mass and having a garden up there was well worth the trade off of that space there. Right. We just you, Jim, you just need to give or Jim or Mary, Jenny, what the number is going to be. OK, no problem. We'll do. Oh, right now. No, no, no, no, no. It was a while, so I thought that's you were waiting on us. No, we just all trying to stay awake. Is that anything else? I don't have anything else. I do not. Jim, anything else? No, I'm fine. Very appreciative of all your time. Andrew, Jean, did that cover everything that was on the list you said you had? I think so. Some of the things are subsumed into, like, number one of the general conditions. I had some stuff about lighting, but that's in one of these. So. Yeah. I put that in the exterior. I just put that as part of this exterior lighting. Right. It covers a lot. Right. One had a couple of the others in it. Andrew, you there? I'm here. It sounds like we're all in agreement here. So close the public hearing on this matter at docket number 3602 and we may move to a vote. Was there any other comments? You will so motioned as all the conditions we spoke of that we agree to. Second. OK, we'll run down the list. Ken. I. Rachel. I. David. I. Jean. Yes. And I vote yes. Thank you all for your hard work on this. Thank you all very much. We appreciate it. And Mary, thank you for the long work you've all put in. Thank you. Thank you. And I'm going to stay on if you're going to discuss eleven sixty five hour mass of if you have any questions. OK, but I'm going to have another public hearing that we need to handle. Sure. But then we'll move to that item. So all right. So 30 docket 3602 is closed. And we are moving on to thank you. Well, thank you. Jenny, can you give me the number? I seem to have closed out of my my file here by accident to move move desks. It's thirty six thirty one. I have it. All right. So moving on to docket number thirty six thirty one four seventy three mass app. This is a special permit review and application related to a citrone at four seventy three mass app by go to who I apologize. I probably put your name completely. Perfect. You got me guys. Yes. Yes. Go ahead. How are you? Good. Thanks. Thanks for your patience. Thank you. Thank you. It's been about three hours, but that's fine. You know, we've been right here with you. But I just found out there's a new hotel going into town. That's great. I didn't know about that. Anyway, my name is go to Hula. I run a citrone and when I first opened it, we just put a big banner up there with the biggest name and so everybody to see which has basically faded over the years.  I need to change this. It was orange when it started. It's white now. So I definitely want to change this and listen. Just sitting at home all this time for the last like four or five months and looking at the walls and painting and this and think about like improving and giving us a new look. So, you know, we painted inside of the floors and everything. And I think this is the last thing that I want to do is, you know, that curb appeal. I'm going to get a nice little sign out there. I did not need a permit when I did this. And what I'm going for is like much smaller actually. So I don't know what, you know, why I needed to do this. But anyway, we'll go through the process. So what we're doing is we're basically going with a half sign and like a little awning at the bottom of it, you know, the bottom line is I just wanted to look nice and a little elegant. I don't think these drawings that you're seeing here does perfect justice because the materials that I've chosen, you know, it looks like way, way more elegant, you know, something that I saw in Oaxaca and Mexico when I was there. And it looks so pretty and so authentic. The bottom line is I wanted to look good, you know, I want the center to look good. Looks pretty dead these days. And this brings some life back over here, you know. So I didn't know about this special permit that I need. So when was the local guy, Falcon signs, give the business a local guy. And he told me that, hey listen, you know, we need to do this special thing. And here we are, you know. So I really want to change this faded banner that we have up there and go with something a little more like backlit, a little more subtle, a little more elegant. But also keeping in theme with Mexico, you know, the little swirls on the sides and everything, you know. So that's the plan, guys. Let me know what can we do. The whole project is basically on hold right now. This depends on your approval, I think. If you guys say, okay, we can go ahead and make that new sign. But basically overall, it's going to be much smaller. I think when we first opened, we just went with the biggest thing and, you know, and that's what happened. The colors are a little off here. You know, don't take this color for, it's exact kind of value.  I don't think these drawings are the perfect thing, but that's a general idea. So for this, yeah. All right, so we'll take, we'll turn to the board for questions and comments. I'll start with Rachel. Go ahead. You're here with me all the time tonight, Andrew. So I appreciate that you're changing up this sign. You're right. I think it is just about the largest sign in Arlington Center. Right, right. Which we didn't need a permit for. I don't know why. Now I'm going down. I understand what we've been trying to make sure that the signage is of the highest quality. And I appreciate again that you're looking at doing something high quality and improving what you have there and the investment that you're making in your business. So thank you. I think that my, so I went and I took a look at the building facade a bit today. So the current proposal is actually larger than what's allowed in the current signage bylaws, which is a maximum of 40 square feet. But what's interesting, and again, I couldn't tell because the entire signage panel, the signage band is covered by the awning that's currently there, is really what the condition is behind there. So I couldn't tell there's kind of a gray band. And Jenny, I'm not sure if you can pull the photo up of the existing conditions. There's kind of a gray band that runs across. And I couldn't tell if that was actually the signed band. But if you look at your neighbor to the left of what we're looking at right here, it looks like on their facade, there's just kind of a, either a stucco or a stone facade. So I'm not sure what condition it is behind there. You know, I'm inclined to require that the sign be the 40 square feet, which would mean because it's a sign pan that you would need to pull the entire thing in from the edges, but I quite frankly think that that would not be as aesthetically appealing as what you have here given the awning below. So I'm a little bit conflicted, so I'd like to hear the opinion of my colleagues. Can I explain that quickly? Sure. Why are we doing that? So what's happening is if you look at the building itself, right? There's some really messed up concrete that's kind of like peeling off, and it's an older building, you know? So what we need to do is we just kind of need to like put a background to cover that concrete. If we leave any edges on the side, it's that concrete will show, you know? And if you bring the sign in a little bit, I'm talking about the edges, it becomes even more prominent that concrete, you know? That was my assumption, yeah. So what we're trying to do is just cover that concrete with the background, but make the letters smaller. So, you know, the elegance is in that lettering, which is the focus, you know? No one's gonna see what the background is. The background kind of like, you know, it's in the darkness, you know, there's no lights on it. The lights will be behind the letters. So the focus will be on the letters, which is much, much smaller if you're in proportion to that sign, you know? So when you talk about the actual square footage, you know, we have to go with the edges.  So we just, that back thing is just to cover it, but the lettering is much smaller. So the focus is on the lettering.  And that's all.  But that's about it, you know?  The curb appeal is like probably the most important thing for us, you know? We want it to look nice and not bad, you know? So if it looks bad, promise me, I'll just take the whole thing down, you know? So that's what that whole thing is, you know? What about moving the curls in tight to the letter? To kind of... Right. The visual impact of the sign even more without uncovering the ugly concrete underneath. Yeah, you know what, David, that's a pretty good idea. We can bring those twirls in, you know? But the reason why we went with this is that's the logo of the restaurant.  That was the logo. But if you want us to bring the twirls in, you can bring it in closer to the lettering, you know? But the background, ladies and gentlemen, you know? If you can allow me to do that, I just want to cover that concrete at the back, you know? It just doesn't look good, you know? But let's leave the focus on the lettering, you know? Because that's what people are going to see. So we're not going to do, we're not going to go over the goose, you know, those goose neck lights. These are going to be backlit letters. So you'll be removing the existing goose neck lighting then?  So if you can imagine that, you know, the goose neck lighting kind of brightens the whole thing in the front. So that'll go away. And the focus will be on just the lettering which is like much narrower compared to, compared to the left one, you know, the before one, which is like humongous, you know? So I don't even know who designed that like nine years ago, honestly. Can I just interrupt for a minute? I just want to keep this going, okay? And it's, I'm going to groom your ratio. That's a big-ass sign you got there, okay? And I like to see what's behind that thing there to understand better what we're hiding, okay? Because I believe the top portion of that sign is hiding a lead-coated copper disc that's been patinaed for a while. I'm not sure what kind of shape it's in. Right. So I would like to say, if you want us to approve something today, I'm going to say no. But if you want to wait until the next meeting, I have no problem going out there and looking at it and see what the background is. Okay, that's fine. You can do that. But when you come here- Whoa, whoa, whoa, it's all down. Let us speak first and then you can come back, okay? Sure, go ahead. I'm talking with all the board members.  Oh, okay, okay. I agree with Ken completely. Okay, I agree with Ken as well. I think that's a good point. I'm looking at the site on Google Street View and there may be some benefit to showing this building, which is really a pretty interesting looking building that caught attention drawn to it now. And it seems to me the only way we can approve the larger sign is if it's in the public interest and we won't know if it is until we see what it's behind it and what it would look like. So I agree with Ken. Okay. And Ken volunteered to go out and look at it too. I was very excited. Yeah. Oh, jeez, I thought you were going to go- Mr. Ken, what I was trying to say is when you come here and if you look at our neighbor signs with Punjab, right, they've got that same building background which they've covered like all the way across. Okay.  Okay, let us take a look at it and see what's truly what behind it here, because I really think, I see that all the time. I'm, you know, I gave my haircut down in the square there and that is one big sign you got there, okay? But this one is big, but the one, the new one that you go won't be that big. Well, the awning is still the same. I consider the whole awning the same. The awning will be half the size, like half of what we have right now. So the top part is like a metal background and then like the whole thing is like seven feet. So the top part is about just where the letter goes is about two and a half feet, I think. And then the awning is only four feet coming down. So right now we have seven feet top to down. So the awning will be only half of that because the top part of that will be just backlit letters with, you know. Okay, I am totally confused now, okay? Because when I thought you're new after photograph, okay? That you have there is just the same awning frame. No, no, no, it's not, no, it's not. So you're saying that the light orange or that yellowish is actually a sign that's backlit? Yes. If that's a box that's backlit? It's a box, yeah. And then below that box, then that's your awning. It's a three feet, three and a half feet awning, yeah. That's all. I think if your sign guy included a section of that, that would have helped a lot much. Because when I look at that right now, I don't see that. I just see this, you just put a new cover over your frame. No, no, no, no, that's not how it's going. That's not how it's going. I can't tell. Right, right. Maybe the drawing's a little, you know, it's confusing for me too. But what we're doing is like a three and a half feet box on top, right, with the backlit letters. And then at the end of that box at the bottom, there's like another three and a half feet awning. So it's basically the awning is only three and a half feet. It's not as big as this is crazy. So what's the square footage of the box? Oh, the box is probably like 25, I think. 66 square feet. It's in Jenny's memo. Oh, yeah, it's 66 because it's three feet by 22 feet. It's still too big. Yeah, right. It has to come down to 40. Or else you're way out of compliance. But that's why you're going to look at it. OK. Thanks, Jean. Let's continue this. And Ken, you can go pick up dinner and take a look at it sometime this week. And I don't want to. OK, I'll look at it. OK, that's fine. Please come by. I think the other thing too, you know, Ken will take a look at it. I took a look at it a little bit again. I'll take another closer look. But if you can have your signage, Guy also cut a section through the sign so that we know what the, you know, again, what the construction of the box is, that would be really helpful. OK, I don't know what he's doing to the box. So I think it's something that would be helpful for us to know the depth of the box.   Those types of things. It's a I think front to back the box. I think about three inches, maybe like two inches. Just to have the two heads like right to sit. I mean, you know what to do, right? Yeah, in fact, I think I see them on tonight so they can they can interpret what we're asking. So I'm going to motion to continue. Second. It's to September 14th. Sorry. Continue continues to September 14th. Second. OK. Ken. Hi. Jean. Yes. Rachel. Yes. David. Yes. I vote yes. All right. So that hearing is continued to September 14th. We'll see you then. OK. Thanks very much. Have a good night. Thank you. Good luck. Thank you. All right. So we're going to move on to the MIRAC property and I'm going to turn it over to Jenny to walk us through what we're looking at here and what we're being asked to do as far as providing comments. One minute. Let me just a lot of things here. All right. So so what you are what this is actually open. You don't have to do this. The select board provides a comment letter to mass housing, which is something that they're asked to do by mass housing when an applicant files a comprehensive permit for a project eligibility letter. And as part of that process, they ask the local community for comments or support or both. So that's what the select board was discussing this evening as well. I've learned that they've planned to continue that conversation so they didn't finalize anything just yet. But they've also asked if other boards or commissions would want to weigh in. So I figured I would ask this board if you wanted to weigh in and provide any sort of very preliminary comments on what you have looked at that was filed with this agenda. Or if you also happen to tune into when the applicant made a presentation of the select board earlier the summer last month, actually, about the mechanics of the application and their proposal. So the question is really, it's kind of on the table. We didn't really talk about it a lot at the last meeting. But if you want to make comments, we can make those comments in a letter. And we'll submit it with the town's overall comments to mass housing. And they could cover any number of things. It could be very basic. Like we are interested in learning more as this proposal develops. We are very interested in greater affordability. We are sort of picking things. But it could be also some concerns that you might have that you just want to express in writing. You're not required to do this. It's not an application that will come to this board at any point in time for review because it is a ZBA permit. So this is really just up to you. I think David and then Jean. So is there, I'm not familiar with the project except very broadly. Is there any commercial component to it? There's no commercial component. No, it's all housing. The only commercial that's on that site is Workbar, which is existing. Right. And that's not part of the project. So I guess thinking about the economic analysis of the industrial zones that we've been doing, I would say I'm deeply disappointed to lose more property where commercial development could happen. I agree with that. That was the exact point I was going to make. I think our goal of expanding housing affordability is important. But I think that this concerns me as too much of a removal of existing commercial space where some valuable commercial use could go in without a lot of effort. I would agree with you. This is just a lack of balanced development that we're doing here right now. I know we don't have any say in it, but this is 40B housing. And I think we need it. I applaud having more affordable housing, but we're losing the space here. And I was wondering, why can't we attract some commercial people in there? Is it because of the lack of transportation, the lack of parking, or the difficulty of getting stuff permitted? We should all ask ourselves that as we go through this and say, hey, what happened? We lost the space. We lost this opportunity. Could I, Andrew, if you mind, I represent the MIRAC. Mary O'Connor, I represent the MIRAC family in Spalding and Sly in connection with this development. The MIRACs have owned this property for nearly 100 years. And recently, they've put over $2 million into redoing work bar. I'm sure you've all seen that project. They will ultimately own this 40B when it is completed. They will buy out the joint venture. They did look at highest and best use of developing this area. And the highest and best use was this type of development. There's an incredible amount of infrastructure that needs to be done. The building needs to be rebuilt. It's going to be a very costly project to build. And they did do an analysis of that. I understand the board's concerns, but they did spend the money to debut somewhat as a mixed use because they'll have work bar on that site as well, along with the housing. So it's kind of a living and working environment that they're proposing. Mary, this has come from me. I am not blaming the MIRAC folks. I'm just stating the fact that what this community is happening right now, and what we're trying to do and move forward with development in the city, in this town, sorry, I'm getting a little tired from being so late. And the missed opportunity we had that we didn't take advantage of or we didn't enable the landowner to do more with it than just plain affordable housing, which is not bad either, but I don't know. Certainly. Yeah, I would echo that. I don't think it's a bad project. I just, I think it's a shame to lose more commercial space in town, but. Yeah, I think it would be a good project for somewhere else in town. I'm just with my colleagues and disappointed that it would be in the industrial zone as opposed to other places. I'm wondering what's the possibility of having that building also be mixed use in some sort of way or have live work spaces, something like that, so we don't lose all of the commercial aspect of that building. That was a question, Mary. I can't respond to that, you know, I think that my client and the joint venture partners, Balding and Sly, looked at it and it was an economic decision. And you all know that the MyRacks have a considerable amount of commercial property in this town and they have been very good stewards. They keep their properties up and they have been very philanthropic and generous to this town. So they take their role in this town very seriously and they are probably one of the biggest commercial property owners in town. Yeah, I don't have any doubt about that. I know they've been very good. I know that all of what you say is true and I don't think any of our problem is with them. It certainly isn't mine.  And I think the board, this board and its subcommittees ought to continue on with economic analysis, analyses of the larger industrial and commercial zones that remain to be sure that they're being used to their highest and best value. And the outreach is done to property owners and other developers to make sure that we don't continue to lose that tiny sliver of tax base that exists. If I could just add to that, in the letter and the proposal that we were given, it made mention to amenity spaces for the new housing development and to echo what my colleague said, it would just be great to see that looked at that amenity space as potential commercial property that could serve not only the new housing that's being created, but the community at large, given especially that work bar is already there and attracting so many people to the site already from the town. I'll pass those comments along Rachel. Thank you. Thanks. Anything else on this agenda item? So just for the sake of the board and I'm gonna draft a comment letter which I can circulate and share and you can just provide me with comments individually so that I can finalize it or this is due on September 7th, by the way. So the or would be that we choose another meeting date between now and then to finalize something. It is getting late just respectfully but also we still have one more agenda item, technically. So I'm sure there are other things that we could include in this letter as well. So you might want to have the benefit of looking at something a little bit more thoroughly when you have a fresh mind. Alternatively, I can just take everything that you stated which is primarily about your, it certainly helps to achieve a goal of expanding affordable housing. It's needed a new plot it but the primary concerns of this board relate to the commercial space. And if there's any way to either incorporate that or focus on the public amenity spaces as being an opportunity that that would be the request of the board. I mean, I think given the amount of information we have at this time that might be one way of approaching this and then you'll be happy to weigh in at other points during the process. So what would you desire which path? Is there another meeting between now and September 7th? No, not for this board, no. So you'd have to schedule another meeting. And this letter just goes to mass housing, right? A copy to the select board. It's just to the, it's just to the select board actually. The select board is, it's collecting the comments and it'll go with their letter. So the conservation commission already created a letter which will go in the same package. Yeah, so I think we should do something along the lines that you just mentioned, which is basically what we all just said. Yeah, okay. I know there is at least one person who wishes to say something but I thought we could maybe finalize this first before we get there. Well, do we also want to say anything about transportation issues and in particular making sure that they're encouraging biking, walking and transit because I did look at the niche engineering traffic analysis that, well, I was a little confused by it because it indicated that over the next five years there'll be significant negative impacts at some of the intersections there but then said it wouldn't be because of this project.  So I don't know if we wanted to just flag the transportation issues at all. Well, won't we have more opportunity to comment when we get to see more of the project than this? So I'm not sure whether this is the appropriate time. I'm sure there will be another point to weigh in during the actual hearing process, like similar to what is happening with the Thorn Dyke Place development. So yes, the board and other boards and commissions are likely afforded that same opportunity in departments as well for town. So I'm happy to just make that clear that that's a priority of this board for it to be that it should be paid attention to. I'm not sure what I'm specifically, what you're specifically requesting, David, but could it just be a statement about, you know, generally speaking, we want to ensure that it encourages a range of transportation options for now. Yeah, unless we wanna go so far to say that we are concerned about potential transportation impacts of a project that size at that location. We would ask them to, there's a lot of continuation of these issues. So I'm not sure that they won't be thinking about that in relationship to lots of other things that are happening. There's also the connection to the bikeway, which is important. Absolutely. There's many things that I could enumerate here, but I wanna try to just hear what your ideas are. I don't have any specific ideas other than the connection to the bikeway and a general concern about exacerbating traffic issues that are already projected to get worse in that area, according to their own engineering studies. So, you know, I think, as you said, when it gets to the design phase, we'd have more opportunity to make more specific comments when we have an idea of what they're proposing. Right. And I'm kind of thinking along the lines of the more detailed comments on the other 40B project. Yeah, and we'll have, there will be another, you know, the same sort of added third-party review of plans and the same, so we'll have additional information to review as well. There is a traffic report that was posted as well that I shared, but I think, you know, more detail is needed. Okay, Jenny. Yes. Once we get this, if this 40B happens in Arlington, is there a three-year or four-year moratorium for another one? No. Or we still make the criteria? No. You keep it happening? The town could go back to the 1.5%, but not under, not as a, not in relationship to the number of 40Bs. I see. So we're still at Jeopardy for other industrial zone areas for this happening. I mean, I suppose for any place technically because it's not about particular area of town. Okay, I'm just wondering, you know. Yeah. Okay. I think that, I think the conversation about commercial is something that's important to capture and that seemed to be the primary concern for all of you. Yes. So I will, I'll draft something. And Andrew, I'll, I'll hand it back to you and I'll send it around. Sorry, I didn't finish that. All right. That's it, Mr. Holman. I'll allow you to make your point during open forum since you're moving into that. Go right ahead. You can speak first. You need to unmute yourself. Can you hear me? Okay. Aram Holman, 12 Whitmore Street. I wanted to respond to your discussion. Just now, three points. I'll try to be very quick. I moved to Barlington. The weekend I moved to Barlington was the weekend that Myrack announced the legacy project publicly. I have heard the, we can't find commercial we need to do housing before. So I heard it a little over 20 years ago. I think you can count on the Myrack's as well as being good stewards to do what is most profitable. Count on that. Second, regarding the question about 40B, no, there is nothing to prevent another developer from immediately applying to build another 40B project on somewhere on that same site. You might call this the camel sticking its nose in the tent where the camel is more housing development, gobbling up the tent of industrial area. You are absolutely right to be worried about it. And if you are concerned about the planning future of Arlington, yes, you should be very concerned about that. In terms of your letter that you have the option of drafting to mass housing, I think that should be an expression of concern that you should include, I hope you will include it. Thank you. Thank you. Don Seltzer, go ahead. I thought Steve Rebelak had his hand up first if you wanted to speak first. It doesn't matter to me. I called on you first. Okay, thank you. I just have a quick question. Earlier this evening, you deferred a number of decisions and issues to the building inspector. Could you be specific as to who you mean by that? It's the Inspectional Services Department. Yeah, but by building inspector, could you be specific as to the individual? Ask your question. The reason I asked that. I have a question in the office. I don't know. What? Ask your question. Okay, my point is this. Early in this process, the head of Inspectional Services recused himself from some of the decisions because of his personal connection to the developer. Is he going to be playing an active role in deciding on these? Yeah, I was going to ask him. If he's recused himself, if he's recused himself, he's going to have to ask him and he's not in this meeting. That's a matter of real concern. Take it up with him. Okay, thank you. Can I do that question for you? Ken, Jenny? Nope. Can or the assistant can? Ask and answer. Steve, go ahead. Good evening, Mr. Chair. Steve Rebel at 111 Sundayside Avenue. I just, after hearing your discussion, I just want to make a few brief remarks about commercial space. The first thing I'd like to point out that is, is that of Arlington's zoned acreage, approximately five, slightly over 5.6% is zoned business or industrial. So in this is, this is a small portion of town where commercial uses are allowed. Now, I, so as, if you consider the zoning map as a matter of policy, you know, as, or the zoning map is a policy statement. We are not a job center. We're not a job center. We're not a job center. We're not a job center. We're not a job center. That's, that's what the map says. You know, there is a very small sliver of town where one can own a business. We're not a job center. It's basically to provide for amenities, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. I'll note that if one were to completely eliminate. Commercial zoning, you know, all commercial uses from town, which I mean, well, it'll never happen. It'll never happen. It'll never happen. It'll never happen. It'll never happen. It'll never happen. It'll never happen. It'll never happen. But that would be a residential tax increase of about 6%. And I should note that this is less than the debt exclusion. We just passed for the overall, you know, for the, for the new high school. So I mean. Our commercial tax base is effectively rounding error. I understand and appreciate the desire to have a larger market value for commercial development. We can't have an increase of $1 in square feet. So that either means putting more intensive. Development on the existing sites. Or finding ways to take. Sites where commercial development is not allowed. And allowing it.  That's one way to go. But, you know, if one is, if the board is, would really like to, you know, increase is interested in seeing more business, more commercial development. We have to, I just suggest that we need to accommodate the land for that. So thank you. Thank you. All right. Anyone else wish to speak this evening? No? All right. Good night. Thank you. Oh yeah, me. I do want to see you, Andrew. I do want to say on behalf of me and the board, we really like to appreciate your time that you spent on the board and, you know, and I think sometime after this pandemic, we would love to take you off for a drink. We can have a socially distanced cocktail at some point in the future. I will, I will miss those of you on the board. I will miss you, Jenny and Erin, and thank you for all your hard work. I'll reach out to each of you individually when I am not so tired. It's a pleasure to serve with all of you and everybody else that's been a part of the board over my tenure. I had remarks prepared, but I don't want to. So it's bittersweet. I will miss you all. It's been fun and good night. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Somebody make a motion. Second. Who made the motion? I made the motion. David made the motion. Ken seconded. All right, Rachel. Yes. David. Yes. Ken. Yes. Jean. Yes. All right. And I wrote yes. Good night. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Andrew. Bye. Bye.