So what do user experience designers do essentially at the core our job is to take technology and make them work with people. And I'm going to discuss the aspect of how we can make technology work for people with different kinds of disabilities. So there are varying degrees of disabilities and very different kinds which are all very different. And they have different plans on people. But I'm going to talk particularly about visual disability vision loss, whether it's color blindness or any piece of vision loss, and what's in the working area. So digital accessibility as a concept essentially means that whatever work we do, whatever web content that we put out, whatever even applications that we design, we need to make sure that it's accessible to all kinds of people. And particularly these are web guidance available which address the needs of people who can't see. So these are extensive documents that tell you exactly how to make sure everything's covered. But the problem with this is it says whatever you're working on, make sure it's accessible. I think we can go further beyond that and look at other problems that any problem that you notice can be solved with technology. For example, education at school level. I mean when you're probably not designing apps at that level. But then there is a problem for mentoring in terms of accessing education. And what about entertainment? Our movie is an entertainment, our gaming and navigation. There are most of the areas that you can probably find only if you went sort of the moment. So I had an opportunity to design for the kind of student design competition that we have mentioned. So I worked with the team and we developed a keyboard for text input. So if you're familiar with how security does work with mobile phones. So Android has top-back. And what top-back does is it cleans out the content on the screen. If there are pictures, then it would give an alternate text or description that you could read it out. And if there is an alternate text, then the content becomes inaccessible. So that starts with respect to content accessibility. But with text input, the way people would normally type is that it's the QWERTY keyboard. And on top-back mode, if you touch anywhere over here, then top-back would read out to you where your finger is. Or it would probably say QW, as you move it, it would read it out. When you have on the key that you want to end now, then you lift your finger or your double-tap. And that's how you end up with a single type. So prediction helps a lot. It speeds up the process. But then overall, you can imagine how this can be. You're quite difficult to type in. So an alternate method with the... This is an example. It takes a little... So our concept was that in the entire program, the problem is that there's no physical feedback. It's entirely flat, right? The only thing you can feel is the edges of the phone. There are some features in the edge, but that would vary with phones. But the constant feature is that you can feel the edges. And so, you know, what if we design the keyboard that you can type from the edges. So we laid out what the characters belong to the edges to. And it doesn't have to be individual characters. So we group them up. And so ABC goes together. So now the size of these keys is eight times as much as large as a difficult quantity. So that one step itself is even if you want it. And in fact, the there are the edges to me. That means that you can feel the edges and then type. It's a demo. So this is how you would hold it. And then both your thumbs have been typing. It's a multi-tap. And then... That was context cube. We do near typing. Most often, if you want to know where you are in the sentence, you look at your phone. So in the absence of that, then we substitute that with alternate way to react. And not exactly what you're typing in. And we also design of your gestures to move the cursor. If you're editing text, that's important. That's going to be a suggestion if you are particularly on... So it's not just enough for you to say a cursor left or cursor right to put it over. You also need to give context. What suggestions say... There are many more things we can do with a keyboard. It's okay. I'm not addressed the punctuation marks yet. But Zanyu keyboard is assuming a presence to it. So whatever work that comes up, I've got a prototype for testing in our browser. So when we tested it, within barely a few minutes of getting used to the new keyboard, we had a 70% improvement in speed. And so my work is currently up on this link. And I think with anybody who has any experience with Android, if you've been caught up in your piece, take it out and put it in. I'm also going to bring up a few more examples of how technologies are addressing these disability issues. So Flexi is another keyboard that you're referring to. So if anybody used Flexi, it's a very advanced keyboard that works with gestures. So if you swipe your finger, you can swipe across the screen, and swipe towards what you're trying to type. Flexi is one step further. You just tap anywhere on the screen, and it can detect what you're trying to type. And in fact, if you just turn off your... remove the keyboard, and then you have all your screen space, and you're currently able to type. So that project I'm bringing up, because it started as an accessibility project. It was an attempt to make it easy for people to type, and then now it's mainstream products. One of the most popular keyboards, ordinary keyboards to Android. So another concept with accessibility is sensory substitution. So the guidelines of accessibility can't be done either. There's an image or there's a graphic. The best way to make it accessible is to just describe it with text. Lots of images, lots of things that you can't really capture in words. So one technique is sensory substitution. So if you can't do it in words, you sound or any other sense that you can make it work. NASA has done something for students to learn math better. So you can put in an equation, and then set all your constants, and explore what it sounds like. Another example, you can add your own data and explore what it feels like. There's no limit to how much you can explore. It's also easy to work with, so students can themselves experiment with what they can do with equations. Smart Key is an application. It's a key in the developer, and they have a center called SS Tech, which works on an accessible route. And so it's a very simple thing. So it just uses an IR sensor on the game, and it senses any obstacles nearby, and it sort of buzzes when something comes in the way, and it buzzes more when you know how close the object is, how close the obstacle is. And yeah, it's available in the company. This is something I really discovered very recently. So nature is an integral startup, and what they've done is they've made, they've made our shoes that are available, and they've connected the phone, and they've given us a happy feedback. It was respectful navigation. So it was, again, developed, which is like you can mine, but also mainstream market products, where you can use it. So nothing you feed or guide you where you want to go, especially indoors, or it would be pretty exciting. And also Kunal has a demo for the developer. Can you put your hand up? So if you want to check it out, he can give you a demo. And there's another area which is really exciting for audio games. So any game to make it accessible, you can sort of, it's a very creative process to make, to make entertainment and gaming in an audio channel. And if you've got VR and VR and all these emerging technology that has something to do with the feedback people, then I mean, I'll show you how it can be used. It's a great look. Which improved people's lives. And one of them was this idea of something that could tell you at any moment what's going on around you. I think he's a man jumping in the air doing a trick on a skateboard. I teamed up with Wet Minded Tears to make it out, which lets the who and what is around you. It's based on the Microsoft Intelligence APIs, which makes it so much easier to make this kind of thing. The app runs on smart phones but also on the pivot head smart devices. When you're talking to a bigger group, sometimes you can talk and talk, and their response and think, is everyone listening really well, or are they out of sleep? And you know that. New faces, 40 year old men that they're looking surprised. 20 year old woman looking happy. The app can describe the general age and general people around me and what their relations are. Which is incredible. That's most useful about the app. Here's the ability to read out text. Help me out. You can have one of my phone to take a picture of a venue and it's going to guide me on how to take that correct photo. Move camera to the bottom right hand way from the document. And then it'll... Technology, whether it's image processing or So a lot of... The same technology will go into virtual reality, it'll also be applied. And this is like this. And what I'm currently working on is interactive tactile graphics. A tactile graphic is basically an embossed version of a textbook graphic or any digital graphic. And they're particularly useful for school kids, for really young kids. They can feel what things are like and they can't rely entirely on descriptions on real text. So what I'm doing is making these tactile graphics interactive by using your version and gesture our emotion. So as students are exposed to tactile graphics, the phone also understands what the student is looking at and what they're touching them on. Building a lot of interactivity on top of it. So those are the few examples and just to sum up, I'm just going to say that the sort of technology that we have available today, whether it's open source or really inexpensive APIs and the sort of hardware that we have today, we really have no real excuses to say that something's impossible to handle. All it takes is that you'll find connections, you'll find a need or find a problem and then you can see the right technology that can help out with them together. And one way to think more in those terms, in those lines is to diversify the user group. So typically when you start out waiting for someone else, like middle of the morning, we tend to not look at our disabilities, but if you just put them along with the group, you just put them, so when you're looking at going through the types of people that you design for, just have them have different kinds of disabilities along with the mainstream, what you normally consider, and then we think we'll improve a lot. Thank you. It's accessible to everybody. Is there any idea, at least with some of the technologies that you already have? Yeah, I mean it's been about for some time, but the problem I see is that it's actually not in reaching the market. So when you see it a little bit about what it is, it's getting to the market to get all the people onto the team and it's very remind me that it does cost money. So it's a question about accessibility of high-end health services. So I spent my summer with the Xavier's Results Center Provisory Challenge where that's a resource center where many people can go through having individual challenges and you can use the software. So they have like special copies of all the really expensive technology, access technology, so what I know there is that like you said, a lot of work has been done with very expensive individuals to buy. So some of the screen readers of the OCR readers have put three lines each and so there are one model is that you have resource centers. The other is that what Xavier's does is actively promote Indian startups because things that are made locally tend to cost a lot less and they're not more affordable or more accessible in the country. So it's used in the heart of the portion of the world and trying to solve our own problems here. I just wanted to add one of these questions I just wanted to provide one I'm sorry I'm sleeping I'm part of Accessibility Microsoft. So especially when you look at softwares and websites it is more there is no extra cost involved at all when you're treating it for softwares and websites. All it means is that you need to be inclusive as well as as long as you look at from inclusive perspective you can take care of everyone as well as the Chinese you don't need any extra money. Can I add on the question a quick question since you're an Indian and a college student and you're an industry why should Accessibility be a separate topic? Why can't it be incorporated among the education accessibility in the heart of the industry and other industries? Why should they have an Accessibility it should be. So from the development perspective we have done that so from the time development starts Accessibility is one of the things in Microsoft but yes we need to still motivate people and when new people come in we do give them a training on how to make sites Accessible from academia and more but I think yes and only maybe you can make it a part of that What's backing you on board? So we have a little bit of industry Accessibility often turns into an advocacy sort of this is training people and a lot of times I've heard that the Accessibility requirement or the need to make it accessible comes to the end of the process and it becomes much more challenging to solve it and that's what we are doing in the software we are saying Accessibility is not going on but it is something that you need to be from the start from the design Thank you Chandni Thank you for being there Thank you


Good evening. My name is Kevin Davani, total podcast, total Bitcoin podcast. I'm going to introduce, even though you already been introduced except Sven. I'm gonna do a brief interview, brief introduction. Sven, I'm gonna start with you with the youngest one, 23-year-old Sven Schneeters, who has a spectrum of research interests and is a writer of really fascinating articles and essays, partially also based on Austin Economics, limitless curiosity.com and his organizer of the Bitcoin Vienna meet-ups. Mr. Mark, Justin Wallek from Liechtenstein, you are from incrementum, wealth management and investment funds and you bring out also, you know, you publish serious reports in gold with trust and crypto research. Um, Manuel Anders is is one of the senior economists, FX analyst of Bayern, Landesbank. His research interests is Bitcoin metrics or Bitcoin metrics and he has a degree in economics, master's degree and also ranked as one of the best FX analysts worldwide by Bloomberg several times. Torsten Paulait is one of my favorite authors and and scholars and researchers. He is his latest book, which I really can recommend is Mit Geld zu Weltherrschaft with money to world dominance and yeah, you're the chief economist of the GUSA, the largest precious metal company in Europe and yeah, so what I want to start off is we've been we've been having, you know, great presentations on Bitcoin and gold. So I would love to start off with the with a quote from the Austin Economist Hayek, which he said a couple of decades ago, I do not believe we shall ever have a good money again before we take the thing out of the hands of government. That is we cannot take it violently out of the hands of government. All we can do is by some slight roundabout way introduce something that they cannot stop. So that was Hayek and just demonstrate his comprehension of the root problems, the structural problems, which also your book with money to world dominance with razor-sharp arguments really demonstrates and with logical and rational arguments. Would you like, Mr. Pollet, maybe start off, what what kind of monetary properties, fundamental properties, should a money have in order in a free market society? Well, I think most people would prefer a kind of money that is scarce, that is homogenous, so it's of the same quality, each unit is comparable and it is transportable, it's durable, it's transportable, mintable, so divisible in small units, and it also has to have a relatively high exchange value per unit. That is at least what we can learn from monetary history. Whenever people had the freedom to choose their money, they were looking for these kinds of properties and in the competition among goods for serving as money, people decided on gold or silver or even copper because these precious metals in comparison with available other goods back then obviously were the preferred means of payment. And now we live in a world where we have lots of technological innovations and for instance Bitcoin has to to some degree all these properties as well like precious metals and gold, for instance we have a constant supply soon or later as far as the output of Bitcoin is concerned. The thing is beyond government reach like gold, you know, you have to produce it, it's costly, governments cannot increase the supply of gold at will and so there are strong similarities. The big difference is of course gold is a physically available unit whereas Bitcoin is a digital unit and from my point of view, I think the matter can only be decided by a free market in money to give people the free choice what kind of money they would like to use in their daily transactions for storing of value purposes for the means of deferred payments. So free market in money should, for my point of view, decide the matter and the free market in money is nothing fancy so to speak and I try to outline that in my talk because a free market in money is basically what I call monetary enlightenment where people are free to decide what they would like to do with their financial assets, with their lives and I think exactly the concept of a free market in money should settle the issue. Do you think the fundamental problems with gold, maybe some other participant can contribute to this discussion when it comes to divisibility, fungibility, transferring via electronic mediums such as the internet, can I do this with gold? So maybe one of you could compliment this discussion. Mr. Walli. So I do think that the transferability and the divisibility is not such a big issue. It sometimes is brought up, but gold can be divided into very small increments in reality. So I think that's not a huge edge relative to Bitcoin. But what I do think is it leans itself and also again that I think one can learn from monetary history. It leans itself more to centralization. So it is generally or it always was more centralized going back to a bimetal standard, which then was, for instance, the US, there was a movement during the turn of last century to actually go to the gold standard. But not because there were such hard-money guys, but I think that people and banks and influential people wanted to have basically the hands on the gold and it was also the time when they started to make this huge 12.5 kilobars. Nobody can carry this thing around. So that I think would be an advantage of, for instance, a digital gold. But other than that, I think technically speaking, gold has no disadvantage in that on that end. Mr. Anders or Mr. Schneiders, what do you think would be the fundamental problems with when we look at the commonalities and differences, fundamental properties, monetary properties? Yeah, I think I agree with all what has been said already, but I think the decentralization aspect is extremely underrated. So if you look at monetary history and you see the current system, the fear system we have right now is at least in my view and many others, the result of the failure of the gold system. Because you cannot verify gold, as we've heard already in some great talks, you cannot verify gold by yourself cheaply. You have to trust a third party to do it and if you want to sell large amounts of gold, you have to trust the bank. So these two really big problems, which I don't see how gold can overcome because it's just because of the physical need to have gold, these two problems lead to decentralization, as we've heard, and that's where the government comes in and just can pressure these central points, these few central points and then the gold standard basically ended and we cannot get this control back as we've heard with this great probe. There is no, we don't have the means violently to take it out of the hands of government. That's a really naive view and obviously the government won't adapt the great monetary policy, so that's also not an option. So I think the only option, as has been argued, to get this free market and to really have this awesome economics world we want is with Bitcoin because only with Bitcoin you can secure your coins by yourself and you also can verify everything by yourself with your own note really cheaply and that's the major difference. I haven't seen anyone basically argue against it or bring up any innovation in gold which would basically like make it on par with Bitcoin, let's say. Thank you. Mr. Anders, do you have any comment? Yeah, I agree with that and actually what you see with gold that it's the technology, the innovation is going in the direction that it's getting easy and easy to fake gold, so it's not even getting better, it's actually getting worse. So and as I said in my talk, I mean the only real way to validate whether you have real gold is with smelting furnace and I don't know whether you have a smelting furnace for your gold or whether whoever does this but yeah, but if you want to compare full validation, you have to compare apples with apples. So if you want to validate or if you compare it with the full validation of a full note in the Bitcoin network the only analogy is smelting furnace, there is the full validation. If you're talking not probabilistic, saying okay, this method for like a few hundred euros or something with electricity and stuff like this is 90% correct, 100%. So it's about the real-time validation that everybody, anybody who has a full note can verify validate compared to gold. I mean the question is how do I say how to validate the purity, authenticity of gold every time? Maybe next time you're in Frankfurt, I'm going to invite you to our people who make sure that the gold that is being bought from customers and is being sold to customers has the right fineness and it's pure gold. It's a relatively easy undertaking and you don't have to smelt all the bars and coins to prove whether it's 100% quality of gold that you would expect. And on top of that, I said I'm not going to talk about my book, you did it. I love it. Ten years ago, roundabout ten years ago, I did a book, it's called Monetary Reform and in that book, I tried to outline how a free market banking industry would look like where you would have credit banks on the one hand and deposit banks on the other hand. In a world where we would have, let's assume people would decide to go for gold then you would have gold deposit banks. You would just deposit your gold in the form of bars or coins or whatever and then you would get on your iPhone or your Android Sony system an application where you can actually see how many ounces or grams of gold you have in your account and then you can easily bank without moving any physical gold. That's basically the underlying idea. Of course you have a counterparty risk but then you have competition and these deposit banks would compete for reputation, for best quality like it is in the case of, let's say, holiday traveling and aircraft producers, etc. The point I think you raised is a very important one and that is the role of government. You know, it's very unlikely that we get sound money if we don't roll back the state. If you support Bitcoin, you may know or you may not know that you actually have to advocate the rolling back of the state. The state is the territorial monopolist of coercion. It is the final decision maker about conflicts which occur amongst his people and the conflicts between the people and the state itself can be decided by the state and you can imagine what the outcome will be the state will become ever more powerful and that is, I think, an aspect that we shouldn't ignore if we really want to advocate for sound money whether it's Bitcoin or gold or silver or whatever we have to roll back the state. In the format we know it today as a territorial monopolist. I think that is basically the real challenge of the issue we discuss. Can I just add something? I will invite gladly Professor Paul Aitunumbak who is doing the validation of gold and we are doing it like this. I know we are not supposed to shield any business but the binary is also one of the biggest gold dealer in Europe so I didn't get this information from random sources but from those people who are really into it. Perhaps we will talk about this later but the point is full validation 100% is the only way, there is no other way then you don't have 100%. What are you doing? If you want to have 100% validation of gold what are you doing at Degusta? We sell bars with the imprint of Degusta and they get the best prices. When you come and sell a bar to Degusta the imprint is Degusta, you are fine. If you come with a bar with the imprint of Comerzbank or UBS or Bayern Elbe we are going to smelt it. But not because we don't trust the fineness or the weight of the bar but just because we cannot resell it. It is like branding. I am sure UBS will do the same. They are going to smelt our bars. They are ways to test the quality of the bar. We buy for instance Krugerans and Philharmonics from Austria and we don't smelt them. We buy from the German Kaiser Reich lots of coins, thousands of them, we don't smelt them because our numismatic experts can exactly tell you about the quality of these coins. Yes, they can approximately, it is probabilistic. We are talking about 100%, if you want to compare it to the full node you probably don't know the full validation process of the full node. I don't know, but we are talking about 100%. And of course you are not doing this probably Bayern Elbe is also not doing it only on demand because it is not economically viable to do this. If you have an imprint and you are trusting in it of course you are not doing it. But his point was that this is the major advantage between gold and bitcoin that you have a way for 150 euros to have 100%, certainly 100% and with gold it costs 700,000 to have 100%, probably less for 60%, 70%, 80%, 90%. I think you are not an expert at the end of the day in terms of proving the quality of a certain piece of personal metals nor I am. We are going to settle that. I come to your place and you come to my place. You don't want to talk with our gold dealer. He is not a nice guy, I have a lot of discussion with him that is the only thing that we agree on because he is unhappy with our bitcoin research. But he is going to love to talk to me, I am sure. But be that as it may I mean there are various qualities a good must have to become money. The quality and the fineness and the weight of a certain piece of gold or silver is one issue. The other issue is for instance the time-tested qualities. For instance gold is with us for more than 5,000 years. There were many innovations as far as the monitor system was concerned and is concerned. We simply don't know. I take the position of advocating a free market and money. You would never find me in a talk or presentation calling for a gold standard. You wouldn't as far as I remember and I am over 50 now. Maybe when I was young I did it but I don't do it anymore. I think that issue should be decided by the free market. I cannot give you the answer but I think it is important to have a free market. Personally I have a certain inclination and that is towards precious metals. We are all biased somehow so I am a bitcoin biased. This is why I wanted to go through the fundamental monitor properties because if it is a free market the people will then be attracted towards the best money which has the best monetary properties and that is definitely finite scarcity or in gold's case relative scarcity fungibility, divisibility, portability, recognizability. There is a list of that is actually you listed also in your book and what I find interesting is that Mr. Pollet you say in your book you mention sort of cryptic in this case Bitcoin is something revolutionary and it could mean the end of the state which the opposite would be a feared world currency and a feared world government and the potential is there if there is not a spontaneous emergence of a free market would it be gold and or bitcoin? Maybe one more aspect you talked about the validation of the quality of underlying precious metal that is one issue certainly from the point of view of money users another important aspect is of course the increase in the quantity of money there might be people who would love to have a money that increases at relatively small rates over time like gold for instance the gold supply on this world increases by around about 2% on average in the last 100 years it may be that people decide on having a money that increases slightly a quantity of money that increases slightly that they would prefer such a money over a constant supply like bitcoin I don't know I'm just saying that is another aspect which will decide about what money will be in the market and yes, I think if bitcoin would really get its breakthrough and people would flock to bitcoin and all transactions would be would become anonymous the state would no longer have the possibility to tax turnovers incomes and whatever the state as we know it today as a tax receiver would basically come to an end that would be a private contractual society a private society then a completely new system would be put in place that's for sure I would agree and I wanted to add what has been said before that we won't have a new monetary system let's say a gold standard without rolling back the state as was said here but I don't I think it's naive to think this is possible with let's say the conventional mechanisms we have so we cannot vote to make the state smaller we can try but it's really difficult and I think naive to think it's going to happen this way that's why people who are advocating for bitcoin are basically saying the state doesn't have any more money to finance itself and then it's going to shrink by itself because no money is going to be given to the state and thinking it's going to be the reverse order that we can shrink the state and then implement a new monetary sound money system I don't think it's feasible and to the raised point that some people might prefer is that it might be true obviously and everyone is advocating for free market money competition is great but as we've seen I don't understand why someone would hold an asset over a long time which has an inflation rate of 1 or 2% if you could hold an asset which doesn't have an inflation rate at all which will be bitcoin when all the 21 million will be mined for even 1 or 2% inflation rate but that's probably going to be proven if we have this free market which I'm obviously advocating also for right I have a bunch of questions myself but I think we should maybe transition to the questions from the audience I'm just going to take the first one get it out of the way how does mining of gold how does mining of gold compare to mining of bitcoin in terms of negative ecological impact actually I with the presentation concerning this and there are estimates that the mining currently of gold takes around 3 times the energy compared to the mining the energy that is spent to mine but obviously this could change and also rough estimates but just think that gold is just mined like this for me the more interesting point here is the difference that with gold you have the case that you need to carry your energy to the mining facilities to the mines and with bitcoin you are actually mining where the energy is the cheapest the excessive energy that is actually used in mining cases right so the also what kind of energy is used also very important so it's first amount is less much less and also what types of energy are used it's more in favour of bitcoin because of the last reason that I mentioned I agree and I would add you have to not only look at mining mining gold and mining bitcoin you also have to look at transactions and transactions obviously cause a lot of energy in bitcoin and it costs to really take the physical gold and ship it somewhere that's really costly and this is also something that is often forgotten if you look at the impact of mining only I think it took three years to get gold back from that I'm told it could have been made possible in three months but now Mr. Wing I realise you know to put in these bitcoin propaganda people you know just facts you know I think it's very naive to come up with numbers about what does it cost to produce a certain good I mean we live in an economy where people have a certain demand and producers try to serve the customers you know like people love to go for holidays to South America and we have airlines who offers flights from Frankfurt and London to Buenos Aires for the enjoyment of the people and you may well say okay you do not like people travelling from Frankfurt and London for making holidays in what was that Argentina you know but if you come up with such a statement you come up with a dictatorial statement because I don't like that you travel there and therefore it is bad what you are doing I mean if sound money has a certain price you know if you dig gold you would do that only if your return on investment is at least as high as investing in whatever Apple stocks or production sites in China it competes the production of gold competes in a free market with the production of all other things and just as a return to your provocative statement I mean do you know how many people how many families make their living in working in mines earning incomes earning incomes to sustain their families and if you I don't know I couldn't answer that question as well and I don't know about the toxic exposure what I am saying is we are talking about a free market product so to speak and there are people who love to demand gold and there are people who love to produce gold and mine gold and make a living from it and this is the fair situation as far as I can see I think if you point out it is a certain bill to be paid for producing gold that leads us into a completely wrong direction I mean I don't know why this just stating the facts is I didn't so the point is for me if you have two sound money technologies and you have one which uses a different set of energies which are more beneficial less risks then why don't you choose the one with I mean not on a personal level I think society or humankind will converge anyway towards the more efficient one but I found it extremely interesting because I was actually expecting when looking at the numbers there that Bitcoin would use much more energy than gold so I think generally speaking you don't actually need new gold mine to actually sustain a gold standard because the fact that the new gold which is mine is only so small and relatively speaking to the already existing gold you're not dependent to have this gold but it will be a byproduct if you reinstate theoretically whatever if the market if we ever have such a thing for free money chooses gold then the monetary premium will rise and then these activities will be here obviously I guess but to your point and I think it is a valid one or an interesting one I think it's good to state in regard to Bitcoin mining that is excess energy which is consumed so the total number of what so whatever the energy consumption is in my view not the relevant number the relevant thing to look is what kind of energy is consumed and energy cannot be transported electricity cannot be transported easily through long distance it cannot be stored and so on so one can see Bitcoin also to some extent as like a global energy arbitrage so if some at some places there is a very cheap energy which cannot be transferred to urban places you mine it and you have a monetary value which is basically like energy I think and you can transfer this energy very easily via the Bitcoin network and this is I think interesting thought which I just wanted to also stress here but on the other hand I agree with Thorsten this is something which is overlooked I know somebody who wrote the so-called Schwarzbuch Gold so very critical analysis on the mining situation and even she the author said the situations aren't fun there but a lot of countries who are dependent on that that if you would take that away from them you wouldn't actually enhance the situation of the local people so these are quite complex questions I think one shouldn't look at this too simplistically and again I mean there are many things we consume we produce where I'm inclined to say well is that really necessary is the energy we use up for producing these stuff really necessary this is my personal point of view but I would never ever come up with prohibiting these things in a free market society the question is what kind of consequent damage is this the fiat system it's the right of the consumer and the producer to come up with the production of this good this is what the free market is all about and if Bitcoin causes a lot of energy and people love to get hold of ever more of Bitcoin so we have to agree to machines taking up a lot of electricity that's it I wouldn't come up with a moral judgment about it this is the result of a free market society and if you don't want a free market society then you go for communism and in communism you can go for prohibitions you can put people on campus who would love to get hold of Bitcoin that's the alternative this argumentation this is just my purpose to lay bare the underlying principles but back to the money thing again we don't know the technological properties people would prefer and getting a free market and money is really desirable and if you say we cannot roll back the government then we are in deep trouble and you are a young guy and I was a young guy many years ago and there was still the Berlin Wall and my teachers in school told me oh this wall you know will never come down of course he was a communist teacher I realized that many years later and then I was in Portugal and then on the 9th of November 1989 I was looking I was on the beach, you know cafe bar and there was a TV and I saw many people on this Berlin Wall hammering down the plugging holes into the wall and I couldn't really understand what was happening and sometimes things happen because they cannot be sustained and it catches most people by surprise when it occurs and all I am saying is I cannot promise you that this is going to happen but if we adhere to the idea of enlightenment like the Prussian philosopher Emanuel told us and if we want to improve the living conditions on this planet if we want higher living standards for many people fewer wars better health for the people then we have to get rid of the state as much as possible and so I encourage you all of you to embrace this idea that this might be possible someday and hand in hand the opportunity for better money would arise I completely agree I think my argument just was Bitcoin is actually fulfilling this role Bitcoin is actually trying to trying to shrink the state trying to get some freedom back for the people I don't see I mean I hope there is but I don't see any other way to do it I don't see people in power giving up their power voluntarily because they think it's such a great thing that people should have more liberty I think Bitcoin is the only way and this is I'm not obviously against shrinking the government I think my root is different let's say if I may add something also I agree but I think from a practical point of view we are nowhere close to getting rid of the state and I also am not 100% convinced if that is actually the right way to put it and I would I guess you would agree but I would say I would emphasize on decentralizing governance which is probably a similar thing but I think it's less radical for a lot of people who cannot imagine that there is no state but you actually want to localize governance and that's why I'm more sympathetic to Bitcoin from that point of view because it's obviously a decentralized system and that's what you want to have on a monetary view and that's what you also want to have on a government point of view Well let me just add something because there's a question maybe I want to tie this in with my personal question because your book Mr. Paulett lays out the real structural problems without euphorism it doesn't circumvent it there's no, you know, there's like rational logical deductions and facts so it's a waste of energy fighting against the established system so we create new structures and systems so the old ones become obsolete so we have principles of aggression, violence and coercion committed by the state and the government in collusion I don't know who owns what whom is it the central bank in control of the governments or the governments in control of the so it's a holy grail or the holiest grail of all taboos so the fastest way to defund the state by Alex Vetsky, thank you for the question what is the fastest way to defund the state peacefully Well if you guys come up with a perfect Bitcoin for instance, we have it already we have it when we are close when we are close, fasten your seatbelts well I would say you know an economist which influenced my thinking very much comes from Vienna from your city Ludwig von Mises and often I'm asked, you know what did this guy do what impressed you most and I'm inclined to say well he understood that our actions that human actions are basically driven by ideas we do things because we have a certain idea of how it plays out you know, we embrace socialism once we get convinced that it creates a better world a more social world then people go for socialism and if they have the idea that a free market system capitalism brings peace and prosperity they will go for it so at the heart of human action at the heart of human development on this globe are ideas that would be the answer given by Ludwig von Mises and I think he is right for logical reasons and we have to change the ideas and what you guys do at your conference is hammering home better ideas you are in the business of spreading and making spreading better ideas making people familiar that there are other solutions better solutions for the problems they would love to solve and I think that's the way forward if we don't succeed I think we are going to end up with a world currency and a world totalitarian state I think this is pretty obvious and this is not a gloomy scenario it's just a logical deduction if we continue on this planet the way we handle political issues the monetary system, the banking industry we are going to end up in deep, deep trouble and so more than ever it's important to come up with good ideas and that's one reason I think it's very important to support the Bitcoin community or the crypto unit community because I think they play an essential role in providing good ideas to spreading good ideas and it doesn't matter whether I'm a gold fan or a silver fan or Mark Warlech is a determined gold bug it's all about changing ideas changing ideas I think that's the most powerful instrument and tool we have and from little what I gathered in the panel discussion this morning it seems to me that central banks and government representatives don't have convincing answers they have certain phrases they repeat and they do it greatly and effectively but they don't live up to the to our convincing argumentation and that is something I realize so we are in a stronger position and if we succeed in getting better ideas making the greater public aware that there are better ideas we're going to succeed and you are a young guy what Mark Warlech said is the first step towards getting rid of the governments that we see secessions like we see in the European Union Great Britain gets out and maybe we see something similar in Spain maybe the Scots I don't know maybe Bavaria in Germany for instance in the United States in the Sessionary Development Burglian in Austria maybe that is the step towards rolling back to the state I agree I share the same hopes and I do think with events like this we can convince more people our ideas are better our arguments are better that's obviously what I think but the beauty behind Bitcoin is that you don't have to convince everyone you can build this alternative monetary system and even if all of the central bankers come here and listen to all of these beautiful arguments and they don't believe it they are not convinced it doesn't matter that's the beautiful thing it cannot be stopped even if all of those great people think it should be stopped it's the wrong idea it doesn't really matter thank you so much to all the panel discussion participants I think we have really empowered and educated our audience and the general public on the principles of Bitcoin and Gold thank you so much


Coming up on DTNS, it's CES 2020, so we have smartwatches, we have smart toothbrushes, we have LG, Samsung, ASUS announcements, it's too much, we're going to start down. This is the Daily Tech News for Monday, January 6th, 2020 from the Las Vegas Convention Center. I'm Tom Barrett. And I'm Sarah Lane. And I'm Allison Charidan. And I'm Richard Gunther. Oh, and I'm Roger Chang off camera. Hey, folks, we were just talking a little bit about what our travel was like on the way here, prepping for getting this broadcast together from the show floor in CES. You can get all that and much more by becoming a patron and subscribing for good day internet at patreon.com.dts. Let's start with a few tech things you should know that are not from CES. Samsung confirmed it will hold its next Galaxy Unpacked product announcement event in San Francisco on February 11th, expect the Samsung Galaxy S11 and possibly a new foldable model as well. Samsung used a lot of folding imagery in its video tweet about the announcement and told the Verge there will be more than one device announced. A lot of 120 Hertz rumors out there, too. Amazon's head in Germany, Ralph Kleber, told the newspaper Weltum Son Tag that Amazon is considering opening retail shops in Germany. Kleber said the fact is that we know the customers shop offline and that they like variety. Following a settlement with the FTC, YouTube has officially restricted targeted ads on videos aimed at children. Kids videos also won't have comments. Few other former community features are going to get pulled as well. YouTube says that this will have a significant impact on business due to reduced ad revenue, but it will start running promotions for YouTube kids. That's the separate app which launched back in 2015. The FTC defines kid content as videos that emphasize kids' characters, themes, toys, games, and more. Okay, the CES coverage begins. Now, TCL announced it's going into phones with the TCL 10 Pro, 10L, and 10 5G. They hope to price the 5G phone less than $500. More details coming up Mobile World Congress on those. TCL also announced the Alto 9 Plus Dolby Atmos sound bar with full integration for Roku TVs using the Ray Don's reflector technology to provide a wide sound stage. Reviewers said it actually works pretty well. Shipping in the coming months, no price on that yet, and TCL's 8K Roku TVs will come this year as well. NVIDIA announced new GeForce drivers for 2020, letting you set a frame rate limit across all games, whether the game itself offers the option or not. And Qualcomm announced aptX voice devices will get 32kHz audio with a flat 16kHz frequency response quality as part of Bluetooth hands-free profile, so you get that HD audio. Qualcomm's 8K Roku X voice is now available on the Snapdragon 865 and 765 mobile platforms. Qualcomm also announced its car-to-cloud service, which lets car companies connect their cards to the cloud. Let's begin the official CES 2020 coverage by highlighting some of the CES announcements getting the most buzz, and we'll start with Lenovo. I'll give you what Lenovo announced and then we can have our impressions of it. The CES 2020 was the foldable ThinkPad X1. It's a 13.1-inch tablet that folds up into a 27.8mm thick black slab. When it's open, the bezels are 7.8mm thick. The whole thing weighs less than 2.2 lbs, is 2048x1536p OLED with a 4x3 aspect ratio. In the 90-degree laptop mode, you can use the on-screen keyboard or you can pair it with Lenovo's Bluetooth keyboard that magnetically attaches to the bottom of the screen, making it more laptop-like. It has Intel Core processors with UHD graphics up to 8GB of RAM, a terabyte PCIe SSD, 11-hour battery life, and CAT20 LTE. There are two USB-C ports, one of them is Gen 1 and the other is Gen 2. Sadly, no audio jack. ThinkPad X1 fold with Windows 10 arrives mid-2020, starting at 2,499 years. Lenovo also announced the 13.3-inch ThinkBook Plus, a dual-screen ThinkPad with a 10.8-inch E-ink display embedded in the cover. You can write and draw on it or read documents and get alerts. The ThinkBook Plus arrives March 2020, starting at 1,199. And the company introduced the Lenovo Smart Frame, a smart digital display that also doubles as a digital photo frame for $400, the SmartTab M10 FHD Plus second Gen, a full-featured Android tablet with a 10.3-inch 1080p display and a smart dock that becomes a smart display. That's $189. And Lenovo announced Connected Home Security, a new cloud-based solution from Lenovo Vantage that will, you know, do your home security for you. So there you go. The foldable ThinkPad X1 seemed to be really capturing people's eyes. What do you guys think of that?  Yeah. You can put it at 90 degrees and you've got two, yeah, a laptop shape with a screen on the bottom. Okay. And on the top, obviously. And then you can lay it flat. You can also use it as a tablet. Oh, okay. That's interesting. I like the idea. I have been burnt twice, though, by first-generation Lenovo Windows tablets. So they're saying a lot by putting the X1 brand on it, though. So they must have a lot of confidence in it. Well, yeah. And it's an interesting trend I'm seeing at CES where people have teased concepts before. We've seen Lenovo tease this, but now they're coming out with the specs and the prices and the release dates at CES, which is sort of counterintuitive in a way when we kind of consider CES to be the more conceptual part. But I like that we finally got some details on this and a price and release date. It also makes a little more sense to me than the folding phone because something just getting longer seems weird. But this is a case of where you've got a big tablet and it's really hard to fit into things. Right. Fold it in half. That could be handy.  That could be cool. All right. What else has the tech press taken with Sarah? Oh, Tom. The tech press seems to be quite taken, in fact, with the Samsung Galaxy Chrome Book. The Verger's Deader Bone, in fact, called it the nicest piece of laptop hardware I've touched in a very long time. Wow. It is a 13.3-inch 4K AMOLED display, supports HDR 400, although Chrome OS can't support DRM to get HDR from all sources. It does use Google's Ambient EQ Tech, which is the same as in the Nest Hub, to adjust color temperature based on ambient light. It also has an Intel 10th Gen Core i5 processor, has a fingerprint sensor, two USB-C ports, a microSD slot, and rotates 360 degrees. 360 degrees, rather. It includes an S-Pen stylus that you can store in the device, has a large trackpad, and is 10 millimeters thick. Comes in a bright orangeish red and gray for its aluminum bodies. You got some choices there. The 49.2-watt hour battery should last about eight hours, and it's the first Chromebook to qualify for Intel's Project Athena specs. So when's it coming? How much is it going to cost? The Galaxy Chromebook arrives Q1 of 2020, starting at $999 for eight gigs of RAM and 120 gigs of storage. You can get up to 16 gigs of RAM or one terabyte of storage, although the company didn't say what the price increase would be on that. So let me make sure you understand this. In this teeny-thin little Chromebook, they can get an SD card slot in it, but Apple can't get one into a MacBook Pro. Can't or won't. Yeah, I think it's probably possible, as we can see here. You can get an SD card slot on your MacBook Pro. You just need a dongle. That's all you need. Did I hear you say it had a headphone jack or no? There was no word on that, at least with the article. But when I saw the red model, and I know that it's a color that stands out, and sometimes people like a flashy laptop, man, that's ugly. I would never have that. Hey, it's cool. Everybody thought I was crazy. Oh, that's awesome. I like that. It's the color of my car. I'm in the minority. I'm in the minority. I also get black luggage, and then I can never find it against other people's luggage. So there you go. But otherwise, this does seem real nice. It's cool. I just have a hard time with the concept of a $1,000 Chromebook. That's the thing. You still got Chrome OS. And all the benefits and detractions of Chrome OS apply, no matter how pretty it looks. I wonder whether we're running asymptotic to all of a sudden. We'll turn around and go, oh, wait, that is fine. Do you know one of these days? Because we're getting closer. Yeah, because when they added Android apps that made it better, and then people started complying, wow, but Android apps aren't the same as desktop apps. So who knows? Maybe they're going to tweak Chrome OS pretty soon and make it worth it as well. I use it a lot. I use Chrome OS a lot. And it's great for just stuff, but occasionally I'll run across something where I'm like, I really wish I had a full laptop. But it's just not meant for that. That's a desktop replacement kind of situation or media production kind of situation. Right. So 15 brands will launch Roku TV models this year in the UK, Mexico, and Canada and the United States. Roku also announced a Roku TV ready program that's getting a lot of attention. These products are meant to be easy to set up with a Roku TV, mostly sounders. They include on-screen access to sound settings in the Roku OS and use one remote. So if you're using your Roku remote, you can use it for the TV and the soundbar that you bought separately. Among the first partners for Roku TV ready are TCL and Sound United. Sound United is the parent company of Denon, Polk Audio, Morance, Definitive Technology and Class A. Denon and TCL plan to start their integration in upcoming soundbar. So you should get those this year early. They're still burning it up, huh? Still getting, sneaking it everywhere. Yeah. And I think people like the Roku TVs. The TCL Roku TVs are extremely popular. And the idea of saying, oh, you know I can buy a soundbar, plug it in. The settings, it'll all work well. Appeals to a big sector of the population, yeah. I like the idea of not being Android from a, you know, non-Google perspective. It's, you know, an option. Right? Yeah. And Android is a good point. It has not really had success in the home entertainment space. You've got some Android TVs out there, but not a ton. Yeah. I mean, Roku is doing well with these TVs. I think people like them because like you said, they are easy. They're certainly better than a lot of the other smart TV interfaces that are out there. And it's something that's familiar to a lot of people already. All right. Facebook has a booth. Yeah. You know, nothing says CES like Facebook, right? It's like, what are they going to show off? Facebook does have a booth showing off its new privacy checkup tool because they really want us to know about it. This was first launched back in 2014. And it's the company's attempt to make sure that its users all feel very clear on how things work. There are now four topics. Number one, who can see what you share? Number two, how to keep your account secure? Number three, how people find you on Facebook, which has always been a bit of a question. And number four, your data settings on Facebook that you have control over.  It enables two-factor authentication and also reviewing third-party app permissions. You know, who's got your information and what they're doing with it. The tool doesn't offer controls, however, overletting Facebook or advertisers see information only other groups and users. Yeah. So this is not about ad tracking. Right. And Facebook's trying to say, look, we respect your privacy, which is not wrong, that this is a privacy control, but it's not that kind of privacy. You have to remember, like, if you're mad about advertisers tracking you, this doesn't address that. No. This addresses, wait, my friends could see this kind of data. And it does tangentially, therefore, address groups collecting data. So you can stop groups from knowing data, which is one way that companies get data on you, but it's not the only way. Yeah. I mean, listen, Facebook privacy settings and how other users can get a hold of you, if you really want to understand it, okay, it's not that hard, right? But I mean, just the other day, somebody that is in my family, who will remain nameless, posted his new address because he and his wife are moving. And I'm like, that's our public post. Oh my gosh, change that immediately. Like, I don't even want to see that. So this is something that the company still needs to work on, especially as its user base grows. All right, folks, to get all the tech headlines each day in about five minutes, be sure to subscribe to DailyTechHeadlines.com. We'll get into the first of the big collective announcements from folks like Samsung, LG and HP in just a second. But first, here's a few other CES stories that caught our eye. Yes, in LA, electric vehicle maker Fisker showed off its mass market electric SUV, the Fisker Ocean, priced starting at $37,500 for a base version. With an 80 kilowatt battery pack, there will be multiple drivetrain options included in the performance version that can go zero to 60 in 2.9 seconds. Take that Tesla, Fisker says that the ocean will get 250 to 300 miles per charge in part with the very slight help of solar panels that are on the roof. The company is also promoting it as a sustainable model with recycled carpeting, interior materials made from recycled plastic, repurposed rubber waste. The ocean will be on display here at CES and is promised to arrive at the end of 2021 or the beginning of 2022. So we've got a little time left. Fisker showed off the Emotion sports car at CES last year, but switched from a sports car to an SUV in March of last year, might recall. So I noticed this, this Fisker, is Fisker Incorporated started in 2016 by Henrik Fisker after Fisker Automotive went bankrupt and was revived as Karma Automotive, which makes the revero. Makes perfect sense. Doesn't it though? Yeah, it's, well, you could be forgiven for being like, what's going on? Weren't they doing something else? And the Chinese electric car maker, Byton has a 48 inch wraparound digital dashboard screen, AKA the Byton stage. It's in your front seat. Yeah, that's right. It's coming in the M byte SUV. To put stuff on that screen, Byton is launching a developer program to encourage apps that can run on the screen. They're working with companies like Access, AccuWeather, you know, give you the temperature, iCudo, Cloud Car, Road.Travel, you know, points of interest, navigation, Xperia. Byton's also going to partner with ViacomCBS to bring video content info to the screen. But don't worry, the video can only be viewed when parked. The M byte is expected to go into volume production later this year, sell for $45,000 coming to China in the second half of 2020, followed by the US, then Europe in the first half of 2021. Well, I can't imagine that this would all be touchscreen-based, but imagine the fingerprints on a wrap-around video screen in the front of your car. Otherwise, and that Tim Stevens had told us about this when he was on the show before we got here to CES last Friday. And I thought, oh, that sounds pretty cool. So yeah, I'm looking forward to going into what is it, the West Hall, or wherever all the cars are. The North Hall, the North Hall. You know, the Model 3 only has a screen and has nothing else, and it's actually, there's a big part of that I don't like is that everything has to be done through the screen. So you're always looking at the screen when you'd want to do something like... You can't just feel for... Yeah, you can't feel for anything. You can't even change your air vents without going through the screen. And there's something... So you've got that sort of sleek look, but not necessarily the right form or function. Wi-Fi 6 is turning into a big trend here, Sarah. It is. TP-Link updated. It's a deco line of mesh routers with support for Wi-Fi 6 and WPA3 security. The Decor X90 comes in a two-pack for $449, covering up to 6,000 square feet. Can handle up to 200 device connections and packs a 2.5 gigabit per second WAN port for support of gigabit internet. Woo-hoo! Two-pack of the deco X60 runs $269, covers 5,000 square feet, and up to 150 devices doesn't have as much bandwidth coverage between the two units. So it might slow down a little bit sometimes. The deco X20 comes in a two-pack for $189 or a three-pack for $269, but has even lower throughput than the other two models. The new system don't support power line backhaul offered on the current deco DP9 system though. TP-Link also announced the TP-Link Archer GX90 is a 8AX 6600 tri-band Wi-Fi 6 router with speeds of up to 6,600 megabits per second. Goes on sale in late Q2 this year for $330. All right, let's get into a couple of things that I know Richard might be interested in because they're involved the smart home. First, Ring has expanded its security cam lineup, including the access controller prom, a wall-mounted box that pairs any electrically controlled access gate with a Ring camera over ethernet or cell connection. So you can get it within the Ring app and allow key by Amazon couriers to drop packages inside the gate for you or let people in. It's available now for $299 or $398.99 if you wanna stick up cam battery. Ring also announced Amazon Assistant enabled LED light bulbs that can do standard smart bulb stuff, but also can turn on if a Ring cam detects motion that's coming to Amazon Ring and Home Depot on April 1st and there's a solar floodlight, step light and path light that's part of the Ring system that you can put out in your front long. Ring also announced a new section of its control center will offer the ability to manage which devices can access feeds and block access to clips requested by law enforcement. Yeah, a lot of good stuff there from Ring. I haven't had a chance to see any of this yet, obviously. I'm hoping that we'll get a preview of it tonight at tonight's press event. The thing that I find really interesting is this idea of integrating it with some sort of gate system. That's kind of been what literally the barrier for a lot of delivery services and any sort of ability to talk with people through a really easy to use app like Ring, so I'm excited to see that. Yeah. And then we've got another floodlights. Yeah, speaking of floodlights, Arlo announced its Pro 3 floodlight camera that offers a built-in floodlight wirelessly. It can record 2K video with a 160 degree field of view, HDR and color night vision. An ambient light sensor adjusts the floodlight brightness based on available light, and you can have it set to save battery as well. You have to recharge the battery periodically, though you do have the option to wire it into your electricity if you like. There's also two-way audio. The Arlo Pro 3 floodlight comes this spring for $250. The smart service offers 30 days of cloud recording storage and upgraded object selection and detection for an optional $3 per month for one camera or $10 a month for up to five. I love our floodlight cams and backyard front yard or kids have them. We love them. They're really, really cool. And we're gonna see a lot of this kind of home stuff. It's good to see more than just the big, big names. It's good to see Arlo in there as well. Yeah, Arlo has a good reputation from a security perspective, so that's good. Right. Intel announced the Ghost Canyon NUC and you see that lets you swap out the CPU, GPU, memory storage and ports with minimum effort. It's as small as game consoles are. They say it has five liters of volume. You can swap out the CPU as a compute element cartridge from Intel and it supports discrete graphics cards as well. It'll support Intel's laptop grade H series core processors. Intel also made an announcement that the Core i7-H series 10th gen processors will pass five gigahertz. That makes them faster than the Core i9-H series, which so you can expect the new Core i9-H series to be announced soon, but getting faster and faster. So if you had that little nut thing, you could swap it out. That's right, yeah. Exactly. Good timing. You can go with that Core i7 until the new Core i9 comes. Weber, you know Weber. The grillers. Yeah, people who love barbecues. Weber is partnering with June Smart Oven Folks, peaks my interest, on a new device to help you with grilling on any grill. The Weber Connect Smart Grilling Hub includes ports for connecting up to four wired temperature sensors to monitor meat as you cook. Data is sent to the Weber app on your phone and it'll send alerts when your food reaches the temperature that you want or the temperature things you should have. It also will give you step-by-step instructions, including a notification when it's time to flip those things over. New features and future software updates will include support for Amazon Voice. It has come into 30 countries in early 2020 for $130. This is really cool. We knew that they had some sort of licensing agreement but we didn't really know how they were gonna use it. So this is a really practical way of using this technology to help with grilling. I just, why the wire? Aren't we past the wires now? Last night, even on Yale, we saw that Yumly was working with locals. Yeah, we'll talk about that in a bit. We've got that in the show later. Yeah, yeah. So, but why not wireless? Why the wires? We need to get rid of them. Well, folks, we're halfway through the show. Normally we'd be two thirds of the way through the show but it's CES. We haven't even got to the big names, the big press events. Let's start with Samsung, announcing more details about the previously leaked bezel-less 8K TV. It's the Q950TS as TVs are always snappily named. The bezel is actually there but it's 2.3 millimeters thick so it's barely discernible from any distance. The TV itself is 15 millimeters thick total along with AI assisted upscaling and adaptation to brightness and contrast based on the room conditions. Samsung announced AI ScaleNet which works with partner streamers to prevent data loss by downscaling 8K video to 4K for delivery then upscaling it again for playback, essentially a compression algorithm. The first partner for that will be Amazon Prime Video so maybe getting some 8K content from Prime Video is what it sounds like. The Q950TS does have speakers, they're in the back and they use object tracking to try to position the audio to follow the on-screen movement. Another feature of this TV is Q-Symphony combining the TV speakers with soundbars so you can go all the way up to 9.1.4 surround sound. Sports Bixby, Amazon and Google voice assistants compare with an Android phone for mirroring by tapping the screen and finally it has 14 different ways to split up the screen thanks to multitasking in the Tizen OS and why not have a health app for fitness content in there as well, sure. Samsung also announced its 2028K QLED TVs will include ATSC 3.0 tuners so you'll be able to get over the air 4K broadcasts. New models of the frame TV, remember the Artie looking Samsung TV we've talked about before are now larger as well as at 75 inches, you can also get smaller ones at 32 inches. You can now choose beige and burgundy bezels as well. There's a gapless wall mount option that helps it look even more like an art frame. Art mode 3.0 will automatically curate art pieces to show on the screen when it's not being used as a TV and it'll only cost you 4.99 a month to get Samsung's art curation subscription for your television. There's some improved ambient light sensors in there as well to adjust the image better to the room conditions kind of like that 8K TV we talked about at the top. Modular micro LED TV, the wall now comes in 88 inch, 93 inch, 110 inch and 150 inch fixed screen sizes. That's that one that you can just put as many together as you want to make a bigger screen. That is in addition to the existing size options, no price or release date for the new sizes. The Zero TV, the one that goes from landscape automatically to portrait mode when it senses portrait video, that one is coming to the rest of the world. It was only available in South Korea but now it's coming to global markets. Samsung's introduced a new app for its TVs called Privacy Choices to let users see what data is being collected and let them opt out. And Samsung isn't done. The official Samsung press event is Monday night at 6.30 p.m. Pacific. So who knows, more Samsung stuff to come tomorrow. This was just the televisions. Holy cow. Take a breath, Tom. I really liked, even though I don't totally understand how rear speakers would do this, but the object tracking to follow action on a screen, if it works, I'm into it. I don't know exactly how it would, especially because I'm just used to what surround sound is set up as, you know, or some form of it, whether it's 5.1 or 3.1 or whatever, but it's intriguing. Yeah, I like that. Presumably they're using some sort of computer vision to figure out maybe where people are. Where, yeah, no, it's the AI, exactly, yeah. Well, Tom, Samsung was not the only one with a few announcements. LG announced new TVs in its consumer line, including the first 48-inch 4K OLED, the CX line in the CX line, which is good for folks who just need a smaller TV or maybe you want a higher pixel density so you can sit closer to the TV. The existing paper-thin OLEDs with an external box are still here in 2020 now in the WX line at 65 and 77 inches. A new line called GX Gallery is around 20 millimeters thick so it can hang nice and flush on a wall, but the GX doesn't need the external box. An indent provides space for the wall mounts and the GX series will launch in 55-inch, a 65-inch and 75-inch models. An 88 and 77-inch 8K model will sell under the ZX line. LG is also announcing that it's bringing Dolby Vision IQ support to its OLED screens, which adjusts settings to adapt to ambient room light. The company will support the UHD Association's filmmaker mode for a one-click setting to disable post-processing like motion smoothing, noise reduction, sharpening. It can be switched on manually or triggered by an app over HDMI. 12 OLED models will get Nvidia G-Sync compatibility, including 4K gaming at 120 Hertz and are the first TVs to support HGIG mode developed by the HDR Gaming Interest Group. HDMI overrides can allow access to features that PC gaming cards might not support normally through their HDMI 2.0 ports. LG's WebOS also got some updates, including an Apple TV app for models going back to 2018. Sports alerts in the US will give you notifications when your favorite teams are about to start, letting you switch to the proper channel and input with a single click. Who, where, what can pull up information about people and places on screen? Kind of like how Amazon X-Ray works, but it includes identifying clothing and even where you might purchase that clothing. In fact, the Alpha 9 Gen 3 processor in LG's TVs can recognize what genre of content is playing and switch to the appropriate display for sports, movies, standards, or animations. You can also use, I don't know, right? You can also use a Bluetooth speaker as the front speaker or the rear speaker or the stereo left and right. Oh, yeah, and that rollable screen, remember LG's rollable screen, the one that rolls up and down is officially in the RX series and will supposedly go on sale this year in a 65-inch model with a microphone for voice control. I don't believe it. That's the one that rolls up that we've seen for two years in hasn't shipped, not the one that rolls down that we saw. I feel like they were like, we're really sure. In 2019, you'll see this. Well, LG Display couldn't get anybody to buy it. This is LG itself saying, fine, we'll buy it and we'll put it out. So I think there's a good chance of that happening, but yeah, we'll see. And it strikes me that we're finally seeing the application of AI. We've seen this in Samsung. We heard about it in TCL and we're seeing it in LG where they're using AI to automatically notice what's going on on a screen and adapt your picture, adapt your brightness, move the sound around, tell you what's on screen. It seems like that one shouldn't have been that hard, right? If you see a big green field, it's probably sports. Well, it is harder than you would think. I mean, you say that, but then humans can do things that computers can't. So it's good to see automatic stuff. Big green field could be Anna Green Gables too. Right, yeah, that's true. If you want the dingy look for soap operas, you really gotta think that out. How do you tell what's going on screen? Amazon announced partnerships with Lamborghini and EV car maker Rivian for putting the old Alex person inside there. Amazon Voice Service is going, GM already has this, so they'll be joining them. This will happen in the first half of this year. Also, Amazon plans to bring Fire TV to BMW and Fiat Chrysler Entertainment System. So more video systems coming into cars too. Auto specific voice activation skills and new markets for the Echo outside the US starting with India, January 15th. So the Echo Auto coming to India, January 15th. Among those new skills will be the ability to pay for gas by voice at all 11,500 Exxon and mobile stations. You just say, Alex, pay for gas. There are also integrations with Bosch Navigation, app companies here, TomTom, Telenev and Melco. And on top of all this, Amazon's going to partner with BlackBerry and Unity Technologies on accessing vehicle data through AWS. BlackBerry owns QNX, QNX is a big operating system for a lot of car systems. There's a lot of security data and system data that goes through BlackBerry systems. So putting it into AWS, making some good use of it there. That seems like a good partnership. And finally, Amazon partnering with Canalac and Zero Lite on new car buying features to help you through the process of buying a new car, a little smart assistance along the way. That's just the car stuff. That's all that they came up with. Do you want the fire TV stuff? There's a little bit of fire TV stuff in the car stuff. Amazon also announced the fire TV OS coming to TCL soundbars, the Alto 8 Plus in the US and Canada and the TCL TS8011 to the UK, Germany, France, Italy and Spain soon. And later this year, soundbars with fire TV will get a software update to support Dolby Atmos, HDMI switching, far field microphone and device control. Far field microphones makes the voice assistant work better. Amazon is expanding its fire TV edition program. That's the one that certifies TVs. It will now certify operators. So like your cell carrier or a certified solution provider like an auto integrator or a cable box manufacturer that this is optimized to work with fire TV OS. Amazon announced fire TV now has 40 million users letting it brag that it has more users than Roku which last reported Q3 numbers at 32.3 million. But hey, Roku's Q4 numbers are yet to come. So it seems like the buying of a television is getting just a little bit complicated. So we've just talked about like all the different form factors, all the different technologies that we've seen. Set every CES commentator ever. The wall where you put all the little pieces together, now you've got to decide in like a different axis, do I want the one that's got Roku in it? Or do I want Android TV? Or do I want fire TV? It's a good point because the choosing is becoming more complicated while the operation is becoming less complicated. There's less need to go dig into the settings and be a geek about all that stuff because the AI is starting to figure out like, oh, the color temperature in your room is this. We'll make it look right. But which one do you buy? I don't know. Two engineers in our house with master's degrees and spending about four days trying to get 4K to come out of our TV or Apple TV. I can't resonate to that. All right, we got some follow up announcements from Acer this year too. Yeah, following up on its concept, D9 laptop from last year, the company showing off the concept D7 EZL with a smart 4K display down from 17.3 to 15.6 inches still rotates this year in five directions. Tent, laptop, tablet, display, and floating where the screen hovers right above the touchpad for easier touchscreen use. So it's a bit of a transfer. The screen has a color accuracy of Delta E under two, less than two, my goodness. 100% Adobe RGB color, 400 nits of peak brightness and included Wacom EMR pen. Also comes with Intel 10th Gen processor Nvidia's RTX 2060 or 2080 TEI cards, two terabytes of PCI storage or a pro version with Intel Xeon processor and Nvidia Quadra RXT GPU. All of that runs at less than 40 decibels of sound. Acer also announced the concept D700 desktop with an Intel Xeon E processor, Nvidia Quadra RTX 4000 GPU and a wireless charging ad built in into a Fox foe wood top panel. The concept D7 easel starts at $2,699. No date of shipment. The pro starts at $3,099 available in July and the concept D700 comes to Europe first in March starting at 1,699 euros. You know what, I'm just gonna make a call here and say Acer also announced a bunch of new monitors with Nvidia G-Sync. Yeah. Details in our show notes. The predator line. Yeah, the predator line got some OLED updates, got some G-Sync in there and 360 degree spin laptops, the spin three and the spin five. Spin three is the bigger of the two, by the way. Oh, yeah, funny. That's spin three and the spin five, so weird. Vizio announced its first TV with an OLED panel as part of its new lineup of 4K TVs, though the majority of the lineup is still LCD. There's a new Vizio voice command system coming in the remote for basic TV controls. There's also 65 and 75 inch P series. V series goes from 40 inch to 75 inches. So a bunch of new sizes and FreeSync, AMD FreeSync and 4K gaming up to 120 Hertz in the pro. Vizio also announced the Elevate soundbars. You know, a lot of soundbars at CES with 18 total drivers, a pair of channels in the main soundbar point forward for 5.1 sound but rotate up to deliver better effects for Dolby Atmos and DTSX audio. Can work with any TV or dock with Vizio's new OLED TVs. So you can use it with your non-Vizio TV or docket with the Vizio. A wireless 8 inch subwoofer and two satellite speakers complete the setup. Vizio also announced mid-range speakers in the M series and Vizio's lower end systems will come under the V series name. All right, what did HP bring this? Updated its month old Elite Dragonfly laptop to now include options for 5G and Intel's 10th gen processors along with embedded tile chips for locating a lost laptop within Bluetooth range or connected to other tile tags. The Spectre X360-15 got some of the improvements that already came to the 13, including a smaller top and bottom bezel, new 4K OLED screen options and options for the latest NVIDIA GPUs. It also uses a Windows Precision Driver for the trackpad now. The smaller bezel and new thermal management system make the Spectre X360-15 13% smaller than the previous model should be arriving in March starting at $1,599. The company also updated its 31.5 inch 4K NV32 AIO all-in-one with an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Max-Q inside. It has new Bang & Olufsen speakers, which can act as Bluetooth speakers for other devices when the desktop is off, that's kind of nifty. The base of the all-in-one includes a Qi wireless charging pad that works when the PC is off as well. The HP NV32 AIO is available now starting at $1,599.99. Putting that wireless charging pad, we saw that in the ASIS you were talking about as well into a computer. The Qi people have done a good job getting desktop makers to include wireless charging pads. It's kind of nifty. Yeah, ASIS showed off a real 360 Hertz, 24.5 inch 1080p gaming monitor. This is for real with NVIDIA G-Sync, the ASIS ROG Swift. So if you have a powerful enough GPU and you're good enough at CSGO or Overwatch, you might notice the difference. It's available later this year. We don't know what the price is. ASIS ZenBook Duo now has a smaller second screen version. Remember, ASIS ZenBook Pro Duo was the one that had a second screen in the keyboard section. This new ASIS ZenBook Duo is lighter. It's only 3.3 pounds and it's coming in Q1 with no price. ASIS also updated its Vivo book series with 10th Gen Intel CPUs. And ASIS has its own Chromebook certified for the Intel Project Athena, the Chromebook Flip C436 coming in Q2. We'll get more about Project Athena from Intel this evening as well. All right, we're gonna finish up with some of the stuff we saw at the CES Unveiled Press Announcement. This is the last stretch of CES announcements for today. There's so much stuff. We'll start with Connected Cats. Well, you know, I know the other day you had a show called The Sea is for Cars with Tim Stevens, but actually, I think the sea is for cat litter. We've got five separate companies here who brought us automated cat litter emptying. We've got Pluto, Lulupet, iCuttle, Litter Robot, and Lavibot. Wow. And I plan to cover them all. For complete cat, smart cat litter coverage. You go to podfeet.com. Alison Sheridan at podfeet.com. That's amazing. And these are all like with apps and connected. Yeah, yeah. So do they empty themselves? Well, it's not just cat litter. Sarah has questions. It's not just cat litter. There's one that's got a food thing so you can monitor exactly which cat got up there. It does AI to figure out which of your cats and stuff and it's measuring input and output.  Something like some automated form where she's not overeating and not going hungry for too long would be great. There have definitely been auto-litter removal options. Everyone I know who's ever had one is like, uh, it's loud or it breaks or it scares the cat. Or it's too expensive or it scares the cat, you know, that sort of thing. So if that can be tackled in a way that is more pleasant for everyone involved because cats are lovely, but scooping litter out of a box is just not my favorite thing. Not lovely. Then I'm all for it. So another trend I thought that was definitely alive and well unveiled was the sort of like meditation slash sleep better type stuff. So we saw several sleep better solutions. Hatch, which is known for its baby sleep products in the past now has a microphone free. They were sure to tell me it's not a smart speaker. It's not gonna listen to you, but it's a sleep light slash clock called Restore with various lighting and meditation and white noise settings to help you get to sleep. Ergo Knight is a company that makes a headset kind of almost looks like headgear.  So you don't wear the whole thing when you're in bed. You wear it during the day. I said that it's like brain hacking. You kind of, yeah, like 20 minute intervals. He says after 15 sessions, this was the founder who was talking to me that I should see results. So I was like, you know what? I could try that out. Why things now includes sleep apnea detection and it's newly announced scan watch. There's a smartwatch which uses onboard SP02 sensors that transmit light into blood vessels. And then notes, hey, this wear isn't getting enough oxygen, which is often a sign that you might be having sleep apnea which can lead to other health risks. There are a lot of people who have sleep apnea in fact the National Sleep Foundation estimates that 18 million Americans do suffer from the condition, but don't know that they haven't. The scan watch is set for a Q2 release for $249. All right, now we get to the Whirlpool-owned Yumly that we were mentioning earlier. Yes, the people who do the recipes online announced a wireless smart meat thermometer. That's what we were mentioning earlier. The probe grows into the meat, communicates with the dock of both sides. They can tell you the temperature of the meat but also the temperature of the oven. The probe senses the temperatures and sends them back to the dock and based on your settings alerts you through the app when your goose or other item is cooked. It also can let you know how much time is left and adjust that even if you open the door. It'll notice the temperature change from opening the door and adjust the time. The dock has a range of 150 feet and doubles as a charger for the probe. And later this year we'll pull ovens through a firmware update I confirmed with them will be able to communicate with the probe and adjust temperature and bake broil settings automatically. So then you won't even have to use the app. The oven will just be able to do it all on its own if you have a Whirlpool oven. Yumly smart thermometer available early this year for 129 bucks. Love this. It was one of my favorite things there. With wires. No wire. Oh, this was. Because it's wireless, right? Yep. No wire. Okay. The June oven that I have is, well, first of all it's smaller than what the Whirlpool oven would be.  It's just a regular oven. Yeah, I gotta put a big old turkey in there because that's what I'm doing every Sunday. But also not having wires. The June oven does have a wired thermometer and it works really well. But it is just one more thing for me to clean and not lose. And make sure I'm using it correctly. Oh, well, you thought we were done? We're not. Sunto, that's S-U-U-N-T-O. If you haven't heard of the company, first smart watch, the Sunto 7, is the company's first Wear OS watch with GPS tracking, offline outdoor maps, heart rate sensors, an altimeter, sleep tracker, and more than 70 exercise modes with 48 hours of battery life. Or 12 hours if it's in GPS, Glow Nascala Leo tracking mode and uses the same Qualcomm Snapdragon Wear 3100 chip as other recent Wear OS devices. It's available at the end of January for $499. Apparently it's just pretty as hell get out. That's why people are liking it. It's slightly bigger. The battery life is pretty good for the size, but yeah, it's a good-looking watch. Your local news is gonna be covering these next two. Smart Dental Care is all over CES so far. Colgate's Plaquus Pro won a CES Innovation Award. It's the usual Bluetooth connected electric truth brush but it includes sensors in the bristles to detect plaque and a light ring turns blue when the plaque is detected, white when the plaque is cleared. It also creates a map of your brushing to help you overcome the habit to miss difficult spots. There's no price or release date but it should be around the 200 buck range. Then the Oral-B I.O uses some machine learning to be good at detecting those 16 zones of brushing to help make sure you didn't miss a spot. Also has a quieter magnetic drive to better get those bristles going without as much noise. And it also has a pressure sensor that turns red if you're brushing too hard, green, when you hit the right pressure. French company called Fastisse showed off its now-shipping electric toothbrush called the Y brush that is basically just a retainer lined with bristles. So it's not a thing you hold in your hand.  I, you know, it just seems like you wouldn't be trying hard enough but maybe it's just because I'm just used to doing things the old way. You know, it was funny, I had unveiled last night, I was looking at, I believe is the Oral-B version of the new toothbrush and a couple of gals next to me, you know, looking at each other and they go, an electric toothbrush, we've had these for years. There's a lot more going on here. It sounds like you gotta use it the right way though. With the Y brush, you gotta replace that brush at every six months, they sell those for 30 bucks a pop. Baseline brush costs $125, which includes the handle, the brush, the charger, the toothpaste applicator, and a storage container for your toothbrushes. Now lock that uses NFC with Apple's home kit looks like a key and then you put it into a lock and turn it like a key, but it uses Bluetooth and NFC, not teeth, to unlock that door. To charge the locks, you just use the app to reprogram which keys you want it to also use. Keys can also be programmed to unlock different numbers of locks. One key, for instance, could do just the front door, another could do the front door and the garage, you know, so maybe you got someone coming over and you don't want them to have access to the whole house, just one or two doors at once. The lock runs on four AAA batteries or is powered by micro USB. It doesn't offer cloud unlock though, you can unlock it using the app though. There's no subscription service, you just buy the lock and then you use the lock. The Natomo smart door lock and keys includes a look and three keys if we're in between at 350 euros and 400 euros. Extra keys are expected to cost an additional 100 euros. The look is coming to Europe in late 2020. So, Richard? Lock rather. It's offline. I'm scratching my head on this one. I'm scratching my head on this one. You still have a key. Can't get hacked, can't get hacked. Yeah, and also your locksmith is gonna be no help with this one whatsoever. No, no, it shouldn't be, right? Cause it wouldn't be a help with the smart key with the smart lock that doesn't have a key anyway. This is just NFC. The key is just a form factor for NFC. Yeah, this is strange. This is by the name of the company is Natomo. They often come out with some strange designs or things. This is unusual and it's certainly groundbreaking. I'm curious to see this myself. It's so crazy it just might work, but it also might not work. Yeah, I think it's a little too different for me. All right. How about this one? Make sure it showed off the Juno, a chiller that uses the Peltier effect to cool a soda can down in two minutes or a bottle of wine in five minutes. It can also be used for fruits and vegetables. There's no app, no Wi-Fi. It's basically just a Peltier effect machine, which we've had these for years, but it has an LED that can tell you when the chilling has taken effect available for pre-order on Indiegogo for $199. I actually love this. Yeah, do you? Yeah, I do. I think this is a solution for people who have wine cooler or who have wine collections, but don't have the ability to keep the red wines or the white wines that they want always at the right temperature all the time. Well, you can buy this already. It's just electric and it doesn't have the LED though. This is just a very nice version of it. This is a really nice version of it. All right. Nice version for people who like matcha green tea. World matcha showed off its Kuzen matcha drink maker that grinds matcha leaves fresh into powder to make fresh brood matcha shots. In fact, Tom and Roger and I had some last night. Alison, Richard, I don't know if you guys got to that booth, but it was real good. The device is available for pre-order now for $290. That price will go up in about a month though. So you got a pre-order if you want the good price. No ship date yet though. I want to say to Kuzen matcha Oishi desu, this is my favorite product of the EES so far. Honestly, I'm not even kidding. It's true, Tom was like, you got to see this and I was like, a tea maker? It's so good because it's real leaves, but it's the convenience of a pod. Yeah, so it's a maker and dispenser and it's very cool looking as well. And finally, Alison, oh, I'm sorry, Richard. You have a green tea thought. I don't even know what this is. You know what green tea is? That's all you need to know. Alison, you saw a couple of the things last night at CES and failed. Yeah, the two big things I want to talk about that excited me was one is called the Y Charge. It provides wireless power delivery with an infrared beam so it's directed. And since it is that collimated beam, it's much more efficient than other methods that kind of flood the whole area with energy. And one of the use cases they talked about was what about like an airport restroom where we've got a whole bunch of battery operated soap dispensers and you're paying somebody to change out those batteries all the time. You could provide energy to those devices with this. Another example that gave was smart locks. You've got to, they can only do Bluetooth LE because they've got these replaceable batteries that you could power that directly with a beam from this thing and then you'd be able to. Oh, the Natapmo smart lock. We were just talking about the NFC. You can be powered by that. Yeah, you can power the whole thing and that way you don't ever have to change out the batteries and it can do wifi so you don't have to have a separate device to pick up the wifi to connect it. So that was really cool. And something on just a super practical basis was a product called Facetto. It's something you run on, say your laptop and you create a hotspot with it and everybody in the room that's listening to you gets your presentation on their screens and anybody with a web browser can do it. So they can jump onto the presentation with you. They can send you questions while you're chatting and they can do polls. Looked really cool. It's like 10 bucks a month for the lowest end plan and goes up from there depending on how many people are gonna be in the room. Yeah, nice. Well, there you go folks. Always Monday at CES is our super sized episode because there's so much going on but big thanks to everybody. Absolutely and big thanks to everybody who will be in our subreddit learning us to stories that we might not see otherwise. Hey, we're trying our best. We need to work. But there are always more. Submit stories and vote on them at dailytechnewshow.reddit.com. Also join in our Discord conversation. Nice and lively this week. You can join by linking to a Patreon account at patreon.com slash D T N S. Quick shout out to our patrons at our master and grandmaster levels including Andrew Bradley, Tim deputy and Kevin S. Morgan. Also thanks to Allison and Richard for being here. You're our first guest of, well, I was about to say the week. It's only three days, but boy it feels like a month. Where Allison will start with you? Where can people keep up with your work this week? The best place is over at podfeat.com. Very good. Richard, what about you? Yeah, for us at the digitalmediazone.com covering gaming, media and connected home tech. We have all kinds of cool rewards for backing us on Patreon but backing us on Patreon, the biggest reward for us is being able to come here and look at all this stuff and talk to you about it. So thank you for supporting the show at patreon.com slash D T N S. If you've got feedback, our email address is feedback at dailytechnewshow.com. We are live Monday through Friday as usual even though we're on location for the next couple of days for 30 p.m. Eastern 2130 UTC and you can find out more at dailytechnewshow.com slash live. Tomorrow, Sony, AMD, Samsung, Intel press conference and more from CES 2020 in Las Vegas, we'll talk to you then. This show is part of the Frog Pants Network. Get more at frogpants.com. The club hopes you have enjoyed this program. Ha, ha, ha.


Item number SCP-569 Object Class, Euclid Special Containment Procedures SCP-569 are currently contained at Bio-Research Site-66. Contain instances of SCP-569 are to be sealed with a 1m³ steel crates and immersed in ice water baths when not under research. If containment is breached, aggressive instances are to be neutralized through application of aerosolized liquid nitrogen. Aggressive instances are to be herded back into a containment crate and returned to containment. Personnel injured by SCP-569 may be treated via amputations of affected surfaces. Severely affected personnel are to be terminated. Matter produced by agitated instances of SCP-569 is to be ground into powder and utilized in site construction. Description SCP-569 appear to be a collection of 46 animate, disembodied floating human heads. All instances are identical, resembling a bald man in his late 40s. Analysis reveals that SCP-569 are sculpted from silicauga marble. No further anomalous materials are present. SCP-569 would usually congregate into a loose swarm and float aimlessly at a mean height of 10 meters. Individuals were randomly shipped between several identical expressions, ranging from apparent joy to considerable distress. No pattern or probable cause for these ships may be found. They are hypothesized to be simply random. In addition, instances of SCP-569 appear to react to temperature variances. Temperatures below 4 degrees centigrade render them inert. If an instance of SCP-569 is assaulted by a human, a sudden movement is perceived in its direct field of vision, or a sufficiently sudden loud noise occurs in the immediate vicinity. The affected instances will transform into an aggravated state and attempt to destroy the source of aggression or noise. This transformation involves that instance seemingly dissolving into the shape of a human skull, then launching a colorful material spray in the general direction of its target. This material will rapidly harden into colored marble, coating the target in a heavy, sharp shell. This marble produced from SCP-569 is chemically similar to the normal silicauga marble that SCP-569 consists of, but contains simple pigmentation to lend to its various hues. In addition, the colored portions are fused solid sheets of marble. No seams, cracks, or similar structural flaws are present after setting. SCP-569 will continue launching this material as target until the target has been completely covered. Material will fuse at the molecular level to the target surface. At this point, the instance will revert to its calm state and resume aimlessly floating. Addendum, cross-testing. Due to recent developments, proposals regarding cross-experimentation with SCP-2860 have been suspended.