I'm going up Dallas. I'm doing a live event. I'm drawing live for three days. I'm doing what I did in Seattle, but it's for a place, for a convention. They said, oh yeah, they're asking me, what is your per diem? They want to know my day rate per diem. I'm like, honestly, I don't have a per diem because most of the time when people hire me, they just like, you go sit over here, and maybe if there's a buffet, you can eat that. It's like, many people don't get these per diems. They say, well, we'll give you a per diem so you have money to eat and stuff, and then they don't give it to you until you invoice later. It's like the worst. It doesn't really help. I mean, it helps a little. I have never worked on something where they give me a per diem. That's sad. Just to ask for it. Yeah, I mean, it's a nice thing to have, for sure. It's not a requirement. I didn't even think to ask because I just assumed, you know. Len, let's get you an agent. Yeah. Give me an agent. Her name is Jenny Josephson. Hello. I'll be an agent. Have to get Len an agent. Yeah. John, have you ever asked for it? Do you have a per diem? I guess maybe you do. I don't know. For how stuff works, it's a different thing because I work for a company, so we have our own policy about it. When it comes to a gig where I might have a speaking opportunity someplace, I am very much in the dark about what my value is and where I should negotiate from. Let's talk after the show. Let's talk. We're going to talk because I have a fusion of all these problems. You and me, we'll talk. We'll talk. We're going to talk. You have to figure out your day rate. The value of your own worth. Day rates work. I mean, it really depends on your field. I have a day rate. It's on a sliding scale depending on who it is. One minute to show. One minute to show. One minute to show. And I slid it right down to the bottom. One minute to show. All right. Yeah, let's just go ahead and do this. You guys ready? Sure. The guys have stopped their live broadcast, so we should be pretty clear on my end. Awesome. Here we go. Daily Tech News Show is brought to you by me. You're welcome. But it's also brought to you by over 4,000 other people who also find some value in it every day. If you listen for the next 30 minutes and get even a little bit of value out of it yourself, consider going to patreon.com and searching for Daily Tech News Show and giving some value back. Now, roll that beautiful theme music. This is the Daily Tech News for Friday, March 18, 2016. I'm Tom Merritt joining me today. Mr. Jonathan Strickland, host of Forward Thinking, Tech Stuff Podcast, worker of magic at howstuffworks.com. How are you, Jonathan Strickland? I am great, actually, though. I am exhausted. This is two straight weeks of work for me because I just got back from South by Southwest. But I am so excited to be here. Well, thank you for doing this, especially in the wake of the South by Southwest rush. That can definitely take it out of you. But thankfully, because you were there, you've got some interesting observations on robotics. Also, thankfully, because I was there, I was able to talk robotics with Shane Rosencrantz, who is a coach of one of the first robotics teams. Make sure I got this right. Reagan High School in Austin, is that right? That's right. Yeah, Reagan Early College High School here in Austin, Texas. I've been a coach for a couple of years now and ready to talk about it. We're going to get into what a robotics team in high school is like, what the kids get out of it, what kind of robots they use, all of that in a little bit. Len Peralta is going to attempt to illustrate this. We gave you something a little less abstract, thankfully. Oh, no, this is going to be a lot of fun. By the way, I want to say I'm happy to be back. It feels like it's been a long time since we've done the show. I guess it's been two weeks. Yeah. Two weeks. The one week, I had problems with my audio, so that was a little bit crazy.  And you've got a fresh USB hub, so your audio is clean. Yes, it sounds great, doesn't it? It sounds so good. All right. Yeah, before we get into all the robotics talk, let's look at the headlines. Sony announced a bundle for its PlayStation VR. $500 will get you the headset, the PlayStation VR headset, a PlayStation camera that is used to view the headset, two PlayStation Move Ones, and the PlayStation VR World's mini-game collection. PlayStation VR bundle goes on pre-order March 22nd, that's next week, at 10 a.m. Eastern Time. You cannot pre-order the headset alone yet from Sony. That is coming later in another wave of pre-orders this summer, at least we think so. Thanks to J.M. Bean for submitting that on the subreddit. Meanwhile, Kotaku's Patrick Klepec has sources that say that Sony has been around briefing developers on the release of a new PlayStation 4 with upgraded graphics that would be able to support 4K games, some more detailed VR experiences, and a few other things. Sources describe the briefings as exploratory, so it's not necessarily that Sony has decided to upgrade the hardware, but that would be an off-cycle upgrade to the PS4 and not a brand new PS5. Kind of an interesting deal there. Jonathan, do these VR helmets interest you? Absolutely. I mean, I've loved VR since before it was ready for prime time. I was one of those folks who plunked my $5 down and experienced the Dactyl Nightmare game. I don't know how many of you guys remember that, but there was a mall in Georgia that had it, and I would stand in line and get motion sick from looking at vector graphics, so it's much more exciting to see this level. I'm curious to see how Sony does in this space. We're seeing a lot of competition here, especially in the computer space, and I've seen some people criticize the move of Sony. Some people say, well, it's cheaper than things like the price for HTC Vive or Oculus Rift. I would argue the technical specs are actually a little lower, but then you also have the fact that Sony is going to be developing first-party games for the VR. It may end up being the superior experience, not because of the hardware, but because of the software, so I'm really excited to see how this all plays out in the next maybe two years or so. And I think Sony wanted to do the bundle, particularly to address criticisms that people were having that, well, sure, it sounds cheaper, but you're going to have to buy all these other things, and so now they're saying, look, we'll just give you the other things. Now you got a camera and two move ones, and it's still cheaper than an HTC Vive or an Oculus Rift, and it's way cheaper, even if you don't have a PlayStation to buy the whole package together than it is if you don't have a good enough gaming PC right now. But again, this is all about what kind of games you want to play and what kinds of machines you already have. This bundle doesn't help me. I have the camera for the PlayStation 4, but I don't have the wands. So I'll be, I would be paying for something I don't need in this bundle. I'm looking for the bundle that just has the wands, or I could go find the wands for cheaper than their $50 retail price and still save money. Now, Tom, let's look at the camera. I mean, that's a possibility too. There are going to be plenty of people who don't want to buy the bundle as it is. They're going to be willing to buy that camera. Buy that extra camera. Sell that extra camera. You're right. You're right. I could eBay that. Yeah, really? Do you need any of it, Tom? Oh, yes. No, it's a business need. It's a business expense. That's fair. That's fair. I have to keep reminding Eileen about this. She's like, we're getting that one too. I'm like, yeah, I need to compare them all. I mean, I have decided it's my job. All right. Those of you who are tired of hearing about security and privacy and Apple can take a quick couple minute nap here because we have lots of stories around this out today. Monday, March 21st, Apple has a press conference to announce new products. This doesn't relate to security yet. Mark Gurman from 9 to 5 Mac is actually so good at finding these things out ahead of time that I am going to call his report a spoiler. So spoiler alert. Here's what Mark Gurman says Apple's going to announce on Monday. His sources say a 9.7 inch iPad Pro will come in 32 and 128 gigabyte versions starting at $599. Which is more than the usual iPad comes at $499, but the usual iPad starts at 16 gigabytes. So there you go. Then the next day after that announcement Tuesday, March 22nd at 1 p.m. Pacific, Apple and the FBI will attend an evidentiary hearing. That means cross examination of witnesses and everything regarding the court order for Apple to create software to help the FBI get into a locked iPhone 5c. Apple's product security and privacy manager Eric Neuenschwander will testify. The New York Times interviewed Apple engineers and found that some of them have been considering quitting if forced by the court to create the software that could cause headaches for Apple and complying should it be ordered. New York Times article did not say how many Apple employees it spoke to. So we don't know how widespread this actually is. Hat tip to SP Sheridan and ambituella condolce for that last bit. But yeah, the the Apple encryption debate is about to heat up and not that it's really gotten that cold Jonathan, but it's about to heat up again. Yeah, this is something that I've talked about a lot here at how stuff works on my show on the live stream. We're planning on talking about again on a friend's show stuff. They don't want you to know. I've made my own biased opinion quite clear. People have actually yelled at me for not being quote unquote objective enough, but I have maintained over and over again that that in order to really be serious about security, you can't manufacture vulnerabilities, whether that's a backdoor, whether it's handing over the keys to another party. It is a slippery slope, plus it sets a terrible precedent if one government is capable of leveraging that kind of power and forcing a company to do that. Other countries that we very much do not necessarily want to have those keys could follow suit and I totally get the emotional impact of the specific story we're talking about and my heart goes out to those affected, but we have to tread very carefully here if we want to have a future where we can be reasonably certain that the encrypted and secure sources or services that we're using are actually secure. Well, it'll be it'll be very interesting to see what Judge Sherry Pym makes of Apple's arguments. There have been several filings from the FBI as well, including friend of the court briefs on both sides. If Apple were to be ordered to unlock the phone and if Apple's engineers either threw down their tools and did a work slowdown or quit and Apple couldn't provide its help as fast as it was required to, they could be found in contempt of court, could be fined. In fact, that's what happened to Lovabit. If you remember, Lovabit was fined $10,000 a day because it would not hand over encryption keys to its secure messaging email system to investigators. And now we know the investigators were investigating Edward Snowden court ordered attorneys to release all documents from the case, but also ordered that the identity and an email address of the subscriber in question be redacted. Wired reports that they didn't do a very good job redacting. The transparency site Crypto found in August 2013 document that was mistakenly not redacted and revealed that the subscriber being pursued was Ed underscore Snowden at Lovabit.com. Budlow posted the wired story on our subreddit. Thanks for that Budlow. Really not a shocker. A lot of people assumed it was Edward Snowden that they were after, but interesting to have it confirmed. Yeah, this was essentially confirmation of something that was widely believed to already be a fact in the tech sphere. Also, this is a great illustration of another aspect of that problem. I mean, the idea of these classified approaches where no one is allowed to even even indicate that they're being investigated. That they're not supposed to have any, you know, they're not supposed to express any knowledge of it whatsoever. It very much conflicts with the message we were getting several years ago from the White House about doubling down on dedicating time and energy to transparency. And it's all of this sort of stuff that is fueling a lot of, I think, distrust and certainly creating conspiracy theories that probably have very little merit in reality, but it definitely fuels that kind of stuff. And one fear, I would not say this is a conspiracy theory. I think it's a reasonable fear, is that if the FBI doesn't get its way in the San Bernardino case, that they would then ask the court to give them the source code to iOS in order to pursue solutions on their own. My argument, and I've been emailing with some smart people about this, my argument has been that if the court doesn't allow the FBI to get into the phone, they are not more likely to allow them to get the source code. The arguments that work against the FBI forcing cooperation would also work against getting the source code. But that doesn't stop the government from pursuing source code in other cases. A person with direct knowledge has told ZDNet that the US government has asked for source code and private encryption keys for software in civil cases filed under SEAL as well as in secret rulings from foreign intelligence surveillance courts. So even if they didn't go after it in the San Bernardino case, it's not impossible that the FBI, the NSA, or other law enforcement could go after source code in other cases. You may say, well, open source is always touting itself as more secure. Why is this a problem? Open source is more secure because everybody gets to look at the source code and you get lots of eyes on it. This is not that. This is one agency getting to look at the source code for its own purposes, not necessarily to make it more secure for everyone. All right, we're done with that for now. Mary Jo Foley reports on ZDNet that the first preview extensions for the Microsoft Edge browser arrived in Redstone Build 14291. If you're one of the fast ring PC participants or a mobile tester, that came out Thursday. The extensions are Microsoft Translator which has, I think, around 50 languages, Reddit Enhancement Suite to enhance your redditing pleasure. Yeah. And mouse gestures for adding some, you know, right click and hold gestures to your browsing experience. There are also extensions being developed by Adblock, Amazon, LastPass, and Evernote that should arrive later this year. First Redstone Windows 10 release is expected to be made generally available in June. So Shane, you're going to become a fast ring tester now? I mean, does that cost money? I really don't know what that is. I don't think it does. No, I just recently installed Windows 10 and the Edge browser came up and I thought this looks not terrible. And then I immediately installed Chrome and haven't checked it since, but now that there are extensions, especially, I mean, I was joking about Reddit Enhancement Suite, but really LastPass really simplified my whole life. So having that around might actually try it out. Yeah, it's funny. I don't think of myself as someone who uses a ton of extensions because there's all these whiz-bang extensions for tab management and things that I'm like, well, it's interesting. Play with it for a day and then I turn it off because it bugs things down. But I look at my extension board and it's like, well, I, yeah, I've got a password manager and I've got the Chrome Google Cast extension. Oh, right. It's saved to pocket. Oh, and broadcast this URL and privacy. And like, I can't, I can't really see myself using a browser without extensions. Can you Jonathan? No, I can't imagine living in a world using a browser without extensions until the until the perfect browser is built that has all these options where you can just go down a list of of checkboxes and click the ones you want. I absolutely depend upon extensions to increase the utility in my browser. Now like you, Tom, I try to limit them because I don't want to end up making the browser experience one where I'm just waiting forever because all the different extensions are fighting with one another causing stability issues. But I also have a password manager. I also have the Google Chrome Cast. I will neither confirm nor deny that I have ad blocker software. But if I did have it, it would be to protect myself against malware on major websites like the BBC. Sure, because, you know, not to single out the BBC, they're not the only one, but big name websites like that have been known to through no fault of their own sometimes. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's again, it's just another it's a vector for an attack and it wasn't intended to be that way. It was a vulnerability was discovered. It's just another one of those things where that particular like I cringe at ad blockers. I mean, I work on the internet and web advertising is a very important part of what we do. It's important part of a lot of businesses. How they depend on money, but it's one of those extensions that has has recently received a big boost for legitimacy because of that attack. Now, granted, that was a that was a one time thing. Hopefully that will be addressed. So we don't have to worry about in the future. Hopefully another thing we won't have to worry about in the future is huge Twitter posts. CEO Jack Dorsey told NBC's Today Show that Twitter's 140 character limit for public posts will remain in place. He said, quote, it's staying. It's a good constraint for us and it allows for of the moment brevity and all of my Twitter followers breathe a sigh of relief or brevity is the soul of it. 140 characters of sigh. Yes. Stripe is extending its stripe Atlas business payment service to Cuba. Stripe Atlas, if you don't know, let's entrepreneurs incorporate U.S. businesses even if they're not in the United States. Register with the internal revenue service to pay your taxes, access a U.S. bank account and receive payments from anywhere in the world. The service costs $500 U.S. Now, majority of Cubans don't have Internet access right now, but 70% of them, according to a Washington Post report, would like to start a business. So it's it's something that I think the White House has asked Stripe to do is let's get the opportunities there to help extend the relation that the diplomatic relations that have been pursued. Cephalana has launched online grocery ordering in Botswana in partnership with Botswana Post for delivery and Barclays Bank for payment. The service will start in Gabaron for 18 months and then roll out to areas outside the city. Delivery will cost about 50 Pula that's equivalent of $4.50 U.S. but be free if more than five people in one building order through the service. Pretty cool. And Domino's Group has unveiled a prototype pizza delivery robot known as or being called Domino's Robotic Unit D.R.U. The Australian newspaper estimates the D.R.U. cost $30,000 to build. It was constructed in Australia by Domino's D.Lab and Sydney based Marathon Robotics. The D.R.U. is one meter tall with a range of 20 kilometers features a LiDAR system for obstacle avoidance separate hot and cold compartments for up to 10 pizzas and drinks and can use both roads and footpaths. Customers will put in a code to access their order so that nobody else can steal it from the robot on the way and the D.R.U. is in trials in New Zealand. CEO Don Meji said he expects the robot to come to Brisbane in six months. This reminds me of the report from a couple of years ago of I think it was in the UK where they showed a flying drone delivering pizza. It was a it was a promotional video as I recall it wasn't meant to actually be a delivery service that was going to roll out. But yeah, I think this is pretty pretty interesting. I also thought it was funny. I saw someone on Twitter and I wish I could remember who it was. In fact, it might have actually been Roger who said it like why don't they dedicate some other technology to make their pizza taste like pizza? Oh now lots of people like Domino's I'm not one of them either. Enough of the students at my school are fans of it that I think this is a new marketing ploy for our robotics team. So I'm really glad that this is happening. Yeah, it's it's I mean, it is a bit publicity stunt but there's enough actual research here. Shane, I'm curious your perspective here. Like this is there also seem to be using some real robotics here. I mean, it sounds like it talking about sensors and just actually all the navigation. These are the kinds of conversations that I have to have with my students in the program. So I'm glad to see like is it really accessible story to like all the all my kids are all going to be excited about pizza robots. Well, let's let's talk about you know, but getting people children and adults as well excited about robotics. That's it for our headlines here. Submit your stories to us folks. Let us know what you would like us to hear. Teaglass 1976 submitted the Domino's Robot story. You can vote for him. Let us know if you like the Domino's Robot story or any of the other stories at Daily Tech News show dot Reddit.com That's a look at the headlines. Alright, let's talk a little bit about the first robotics competition founded in 1989. I'm sorry, probably yeah, in 1989 by Dean Cayman along with professor Woody Flowers Professor Meredith at MIT. The idea was to increase interest in STEM science technology studies and the first first the very first first robotics championship season was 1992. It has continued to grow and get bigger and now the first robotics competition for high schools is huge. The 2016 World Championship is April 27th through the 30th in St. Louis at the Edward J. Dome Jones Dome where they won't be playing football next season. They'll be they'll be doing robotics. And so Shane, tell me a little bit about how you got involved coaching robotics and what your team does. Sure. So I got involved about five years ago now because I opened my big mouth in front of the then engineering teacher who was complaining about having to teacher kids lab you didn't have a lot of experience with it. And I said that in college like oh I did some lab you she said instantly you're on the team you're in this so I was recruited ball and told as we like to say and since then I've just been keeping on you know with engineering stuff. My degree is actually an engineering not education. I decided to become a teacher and this is a way that I could to scratch that itch to keep the keep up with all my tech stuff. So what what subjects were you teaching before you did the robotics team then I'm a math teacher and I still am so the robot my involvement with robotics is mostly in like our after school program. There's another teacher is actually new this year who has a robotics class and a couple of engineering courses. I actually recruited him from an engineering company who's a mentor and now decided to be a teacher so we could do robotics stuff full time. So I think a lot of people who do know first of the project but tell us like what kind of robots are the kids building what are the competitions like how are they structured. Sure so most of my experiences with the first tech challenge which is sort of the the smaller version of the robotics competition. And in the first tech challenge students have to build a robot that has to fit inside an 18 inch cube. So in a foot and a half on each dimension it can expand afterwards against two robots and an alliance. So there are four robots in the field and make at any given time. It's a 12 by 12 foot field and the game changes completely every year. So every September there's a kickoff event. New rules and new game types are developed. This year's game is called rescue R. S. dash Q. And it's modeled after a idea that avalanche occurred on a mountain and these robots have to go in scale the mountain rescue the climbers clear the avalanche debris. So it involves an autonomous mode for 30 seconds at the beginning of the match. Students have to program this year to actually Android programming. So I've got kids that have essentially learned how to build Android apps to do this. Have to navigate obstacles push the correct button for the light all autonomously that kind of thing. And then the collecting elements off the ground avoiding one another there's a actual mountain on the side of the field that's increase at about a 30 degree angle then jumps up to a 45 degree angle robots have to scale that mountain and then latch on and hold on to a pull-up bar at the end which is pretty crazy when you think about a foot and a half tall robot that has to reach about four feet near. And and these are kids you know what ages of 16 that challenge actually is open to middle school is even ages seven through about 18 I'm sorry seven through 12th grade excuse me but the majority of my students for example are all sophomore age I have one freshman this year and a couple of juniors and seniors it's actually a big improvement for us over the past few years usually I've had a team full of seniors every year so it's getting a little bit younger it's pretty cool. And what I think what strikes me is you know and you're talking about the first tech challenge if someone is confused the first robotics championship for the first robotics competition is is different that that is an industrial size robot right and I think if I'm right the the game this year is called first stronghold which like a castle defense game yeah but but they they do more sports like competitions it seems like whereas the first tech challenge seems like it's more problem solving is that fair to say I'd say I think that's fair it's a it's certainly a smaller scale which means it's a bit more affordable and accessible the first robotics competition you can imagine as like the varsity level competition it is the it's the big leagues as big as you get I believe that's three robots on three on like a basketball court size field so that's just to give you a sense of scale that's that size the tech challenge you can imagine it's like the JV it's you know you get to different challenges though in that with the size restrictions rather than and I think a lot of early teams in the first robotics competition they have less of a size constraint so they can they can think bigger and and less about you know the types of micro-architecture not the right word but you know small thinking small and Jonathan what strikes me is that these are robots being created by high schoolers and in some cases middle schoolers that are way more complex and capable than robots what you know five or six years ago to me the thing that always inspires me is that when you get students of that age the most valuable aspect of that and I mean these guys and ladies too I've met some amazing students both male and female who who work on first challenges the thing that I always find inspiring they don't know what the limits are they don't know they don't quote-unquote know what's impossible right when you are dedicated to a field and you've been in there for a while you start to learn what the limitations are and then you stop pressing against those limitations you just you just factor that in as that's a barrier I can't get beyond but kids don't view it that way and often they come up with elegant brilliant solutions to problems that you would have never considered and the the result is something truly inspirational and often can be something that you can port over into practical applications beyond what they had created the robot to do and it's one of the most amazing things to watch we've had a lot of the first competition stuff happen as well at Georgia Tech which is right down the road from where I am so it's one of those things that I've personally witnessed and found really exciting to watch and I would mention before that I went to by Southwest earlier of course a lot of the discussion in the intelligent future track of programming was on AI and robotics and I love seeing that kind of thinking too because I I see the younger generations incorporating some of the lessons that adults are just now learning but they're doing so intuitively it's not that they had to learn it it's that they just immediately assume this is something that we need to build into our our design whereas we adults are just figuring out like oh yeah if we want to have humans and robots interact with one another maybe we need to have the robots react when they succeed or fail not because it helps the robot but because it helps the humans who are interacting with the robot understand what's happening it's key because if you're going to talk about a future where humans and robots are working together within the same environment we humans have to be able to pick up on the robots social cues just as much the robots have to pick up on ours so I love I mean obviously I'm gushing so I'll just say I love this stuff a lot right there with you I it's it's one of the things that has made deciding to be a teacher really really amazing so you mentioned so many things that I was just hoping that would come up for example this year a third of my team is is girls they're interested in learning about programming they have learned how to write simple apps in Android using MIT app and dinner it's small things that have just become so empowering and world-opening you know over the past few years we had a lot of students who would come in who were very interested in mechanics and in being working on machines but didn't really have the idea that they could move on into you know designing machines rather than working on machines not to say there's what anything wrong with either one but just opening up the possibilities I don't know that I could have the types of examples without having a robotics team to point to do have they ever surprised you significantly in coming up with something or adding a function or or making the robots do something that you didn't expect so yeah pretty much every day I find myself often with the the sad role of saying like oh I don't know if we can do that there's we might not be able to make that happen and then I look away and turn back and they've made it work I had a few years ago I was actually I think my second year I had a student who was determined to create a linear slide out of a bunch of essentially a rector set pieces not designed for any right for a linear slide at all made this huge massive heavy machine that essentially worked like a forklift and basically built it from scratch basically built a miniature forklift from scratch with twine and a motor and a bunch of pieces of metal that I didn't really think is even possible it's just fascinating stuff that's so cool and I wonder like first in the United States anyway it has taken off like crazy it is also spreading around the world it's not as prevalent in other countries but but it is there it is a worldwide competition especially places like Mexico I think Israel has a pretty big presence as well how do you get a program going like I know was I think yours was already existing when you joined it right if you if you had to tell somebody who's interested like I'd like to bring this to my school what do they do well first has been really helpful in rookie teams and even have grants for returning teams year after year where actually our teams are mostly grant funded from year to year but getting that first rookie grant is as simple as filling out an application online and sending it to the right people the there's an organization first in Texas that was instrumental in us getting things started and keeping things alive they essentially hooked us up with grants from people like Dell 3M free scale foundation just to name a few and it's it's surprisingly easy to start it all it takes is one adult with the the right mindset hopefully connection into some kind of engineering field with some other person and you know as few as three students could really make a robot work and if you hear about like well you have to do the fundraising as a team and it has to be 20 people that's the first robotics competition which you can work up to but you're talking about other other programs like the first tech challenge which will be easier to get started right last time I looked I believe a starting budget for a first robotics competition the larger one for first years around five to fifteen thousand dollars whereas for a an FTC team the smaller version you can get by with about fifteen hundred dollars and most rookie grants at least in Texas most if not all rookie grants totally cover that which includes supplies all kinds of stuff do you ever do bake sales and other typical um having a big sales we did a few years ago um get access to a plasma cutter and cut out some cool key chains sold nice that was good mostly it's a t-shirt sales robot you get a robot baker going then you can have the robot make the big that I'm going to write that down that's happening well excellent folks if you want to find out more about first check out first inspires.org that's the official website for all the first competitions including the FRC and the if the FTC uh an unfortunate acronym that does not mean the Federal Trade Commission uh but needs the first tech challenge thanks for for sharing your experiences with us Shane appreciate it man oh thank you so much for having me on giving me the opportunity let's get to our pick of the day Tim would like to recommend SciTechDigest.net weekly digest of the top ten advances in science and technology research for that week if you're a fan of STEM topics you'll want to check this out it's correlated by a for a person named Mark Bruce in Australia Tim says I've been following it religiously for several years now and it persistently blows my mind to see how quickly areas like machine learning nanotechnology genetic manipulation etc are advancing big topics that frequently pop up include CRISPR graphene DNA origami organic electronics photonics brain computer interfaces anyway between this blog and your show I find myself generally being better informed than pretty much anyone else I come in to contact with which is very useful as I work in a bleeding edge part of the tech sector well thank you Tim I had not heard of SciTechDigest.net and I'm going to plop it down right next to howstuffworks.com in my ability to understand the world around me did you get the chance to look at that by the way the very first one the computers made of biomolecules with using I saw the headline but I didn't get a chance to read it no it's fascinating it's just all the my degrees in biomedical engineering so seeing things like oh let's just throw some my some proteins on here throw some ATP on it have a calculator like totally blows my mind I had no idea this stuff happened so thanks for sharing well big thanks to Tim for sharing it Jonathan you're going to put this in your rotation absolutely I mean anyone who's seen my show forwardthinking.com that that show is all about looking at future what will the future of X be like this is the sort of stuff I research constantly so that I stay informed about what is on the horizon what's happening right now and what is the potential so this is going in my my bookmarks right now send your pics to us folks feedback at dailytechnewshow.com you can find more pics at dailytechnewshow.com slash pics few emails before we're out of here mink said that he was trying to get his mom to encrypt something I think her phone before it was default spoiler alert that didn't work she wouldn't change it to encrypt once it was default she did it to me the really interesting aspect wasn't just that she went with default but that her statement went from well if I turn on encryption what happens if things go wrong won't I lose all my data to well it's on by default why wouldn't I want to encrypt that different wasn't anything encryption wise it was just her assuming that if it wasn't default it was at your own risk so making encryption default just changes people's comfort level with it thank you mink for sending that along also thanks from the warm beach weather of Florida wanted to bring to our attention that while the official announcement comes from NASA on Monday yesterday NASA released the names of the winners for ground tournament two in the NASA cube quest challenge he says I know you all are interested in these types of events from your numerous mentions in the podcast but also from the lengthy discussion you had with Andrew Main I suppose this is where I add the disclaimer not that my wife works for YouTube but that we're obviously one of the teams competing hoping you'll give a nod to the competition itself to continue to bring awareness to just one of the many great centennial challenges NASA is sponsored sponsoring the cube quest challenge is is pretty cool and they would they've got the they've got the winners so best of luck Alex and that's it for this show thank you all for joining us big thanks to Jonathan Strickland of course forward-thinking tech stuff howstuffworks.com where do people best go to follow all your great works golly howstuffworks.com is great now dot howstuffworks.com is our take on the the breaking stories of today and our explanation of those and of course you can follow me at John Strickland on Twitter I post a lot about tacos you do and I enjoy that because I am a fan of tacos I had them last night now I'm hungry for tacos let's all go get tacos big thanks to Shane Rosencrantz as well you can follow him on Twitter Shane E-R-O-S that's S-H-A-N-E R-O-S Shane R-O-S the school also has a GoFundMe Chromebook Challenge going on right? right so GoFundMe contacted us a few weeks ago they chose nine high schools in the country in the United States to do this thing they're calling the Chromebooks Challenge and so the school with the most Facebook shares at the end of these two weeks gets a 100 Chromebooks which is fantastic and they've also committed to matching the first $5,000 raised for each of these campaigns so if you've got a chance and you feel like donating that's awesome but if nothing else like give it a look share it out how go a long long way getting some kids some new Chromebooks Alright we're going to get to Lens Art in just a second but real quick Nate Langson from text message in the UK has an interesting new startup to tell about us tell us about who is it Nate? What do self-driving trucks tax breaks for ride sharing services and world-leading 5G wireless networks all having common you might think I'm talking about Google projects but we're actually going to look at where Britain's government thinks it can challenge the world with tech next year and beyond that's this Sunday on text message at text message dot code at UK or just tech podcast dot UK Alright check it out tech podcast dot UK Len Peralta you've been drawn the robots Yes thank you for giving us robots to draw today or us I talk about us and the royal us I guess the royal Len the royal now this may not be what the robots look like from the first program the chain is involved with I'd like to think that maybe possibly they are um obviously the robot this is a kind of homage to for those of you who can't see the video this is an homage to a robot coming in first place he's saying first but you know what this this little robot coming in first place is sort of a jerk because near his feet is another little robot talking about another little story at earlier pizza bot and little looks like he's coming in second as he's saying pizza bot must deliver pizza first pizza bot must win where he will be disassembled and uh the the big jerky robot saying he's coming in first and he's saying take that pizza bot I showed you so I see I see if someone who looks very similar to Shane over there on the side as well Shane Shane is he controlling pizza bot is he controlling the robot I kind of left that vague so so he's who knows who he's going to back in this race I personally you know I really like think pizza bot must win and that's the name of this week's drawing pizza bot must win I do like I do like that the that the humanoid robot appears to be working on cassette tape you know that is a that's my kind of go-to robot thing that always goes on there there kind of a you know yeah 80s throwback there to kasingles and stuff like that so that's showing my age but Shane can you confirm or deny that kasingles are still used in robot robots yeah no we've moved on from that I got to know clamp technology has not changed about the really captured current clamp technology I like it pizza bot there you go check it out must win Glen for all to store.com folks go check it out even if just to look but you can also take it home or have Len send it to your home actually that's right or you can go to my patreon patreon.com forward slash Len you can back me there and you can get each one of these images I draw for DTNS as a high-res print so you have some options there folks all right thank you all for supporting the show we do this because we enjoy it and we hope you enjoy it and we hope you support it to keep it going Daily Tech news show.com slash support so you're looking for somewhere to give gofundme.com slash Reagan chrome books and and help them help them get that project funded as well this Saturday from three to 5 p.m. at the Farmers Market in L.A. by the Grove and and already got one emails like where in the Farmers Market just do a lap you'll find us we don't know exactly where we'll we'll we'll find a place though DTNS meetup in L.A. that's again 3 p.m. Pacific at the Farmers Market by the Grove our email address is feedback at Daily Tech news show.com you can give us call 51259 daily that's 5932459 catch the show live Monday through Friday 430 Eastern at alphakeekradio.com and DiamondClub.tv and visit our website DailyTechNewsShow.com back on Monday with Veronica Belmont talk to you then this show is part of the Frog Pants Network get more at Frogpants.com DiamondClub hopes you have enjoyed this brover great show thank you guys thank you it's really fun that was really good Shane thank you thanks for having me on really it was a fun stuff always fun talking about robots and of course Jonathan a pleasure as always thank you you're too kind I am not I'm not kind enough well considering that I'm going to spend all day tomorrow getting stabbed by swords you're very kind I did not in fact stab you in any way you're right sounds are rubber swords or what are they now there's slugger blades which are made out of a blend of aluminum and steel aluminum slugger that just sounds lewd it does it's funny because for a long time they were impossible to find and I know a lot of people in stage combat who were bemoaning that fact it was very difficult it meant that you had to keep using older swords for productions which makes it less safe because they start to chip over time but yeah I the guy who I'm standing in for he was actually the fight choreographer and so I was talking to him last night and he said listen Jonathan I just got to tell you everybody else this is their first time I said what you're throwing me in with first time as soon as you realize it's been 10 years since I've done stage combat he's like you'll be fine so what should we call this the episode titles are topics as a mom's first rule of robot robot club pizza bot must win not your mom's default jv robotics and pizza oh wait that's pizza bot as one word is separated from pizza bot as two words you know uh precise price of the prize a lot of peas spoiler there will be iPads in a world without extensions pizza robots 140 characters are enough from last to first take that pizza bot I like from last to first but pizza bot or as a mom seem to be getting the popular acclaim I would go with as a mom just because it's more with the main topic mm-hmm yeah pizza no one can deny the popularity of pizza I mean it's it's no taco no no I disagree with you if you take a pizza pie and you fold it mm-hmm it is does not become taco like I'm pretty sure I'm pretty sure that gets you banned from New York city if you do it that way well you know what I don't understand that you have to when you get a new slice of New York pizza folding yeah no it's too big and floppy otherwise like how you and you certainly can't use a fork and knife that will get you run out of the state and then can't be I seriously I seriously became absolutely addicted to torches tacos while I was there yes torches is the best oh so good the Roscoe the Roscoe their taco of the month oh my gosh chicken and waffles taco oh good so as as a mom's first rule of robot club Shane as as the resident robot coach in the group do you have a preference I I really did like the asthma all right you said that nothing everything paled in pairs all right done motion carried cool sorry pizza fans pizza but you know too much pizza is not good for you anyway that's right and you can you know what if you like the pizza bot thing go to my online store by the pizza bot print that's right the best of both worlds so this is the thing about people don't know about pizza bot it just holds the pizza so you could easily substitute on the food item it could be like a vegan bot and give you hot steaming that's right yeah could it deliver tacos certainly right oh yes as long as you can fit it into the pizza bot little pan and like real tacos don't like the taco bell heart shell taco it could be a burrito bot sushi bot you know if they combine it with one of those t-shirt guns you could have it shoot out burritos like so if you're like on the third floor of an office building you see the pizza bot or a burrito bot the bb you'll have a bb gun you know just shoot you the burrito the burrito they should do that at arenas man could you imagine if they were throwing burritos up in the air that'd be pretty high speeds that's a that's a that's a pretty heavy slug slug of delicious flour tortilla and meat fillings this is a lot of food to be discussed and Jenny not saying anything hmm oh my printer just became an artificial intelligence and started like throwing out so many pieces of paper that I had to be being and became sentient it's like it really like was offline for a while and it's a clearly had a lot of stuff gashed and it just I had to put on mute because it was just like here's everything you ever wanted printed at the time maybe it's just throwing you a ticker ticker take parade maybe oh wait is there a domino's coupon in there somewhere no sadly just a lot of IRS forms wasn't that one of the things like there was a printer was a printer something that would just automatically print you coupons thinking like was like they could get decade ago or something of some sort idea to give you home coupons sounding a lot like my mom right now though hmm but every time oh yeah every time I run into her she's like here's another book of coupons like oh good another thing for me to throw away like is her mom Shannon Morse my mom is not nearly obsessed with coupon as Shannon's extreme coupon Shannon Shannon has taken it to an art form she has she's good at it the thing is with those coupons it's never the stuff I really want or use yeah I gotta tell you like there's only so many bottles of head and shoulders I can use I can't use head and shoulders anymore I'm surprised she hasn't been on one of them one of those shows the coupon the extreme couponing show I'm no longer affiliated with discovery so I can't put in a word for her so hey Tom are you doing a show next Friday what's the deal next Friday yeah why oh no no like is it like a regular show it's a yeah yeah yeah is there is there a holiday or something Easter week Easter week oh oh good Friday yeah no we'll we'll do a regular show on Friday okay do you are you gonna be around though I think I I think so I'll let you know I will know no worries alright nice yeah Johnny Jenny are you ever gonna be on the show again hi yes I'll speak in sneak in please sneak in on Friday so I on me I'll show up like when you least expected yeah you're infected you look you look in a mirror and say her name three times she appears behind you it is Jenny Joseph's son hey um we still gotta do that show you got a you got a we do yeah give me a month you're still you know I'm busy too alright cool thank you everybody bye Lampereld store dot com go buy it bye bye so I'm still waiting for John and Jenny to start their agents talk yeah no I was waiting for Jenny I wasn't gonna be so go she has to start it by saying I could really use the health uh yeah well so the always the thing and this was for is it's hard to represent yourself you it is very hard for you to ask for what you actually need yeah um to to be comfortable and not take a loss on a business trip yeah someone would like you to come speak at and so that is why you need a representative just in general to look at your interests you know let me tell you a story um yeah so and I don't mind telling the story it's it's one of those things that just happened because of the the corporate structure we were in uh back when uh when how stuff works was part of discovery communications I got a cold call uh about a big tech conference going on in Germany and they were interested in me coming in and being a keynote speaker at their conference and the previous year they had Ray Kurzweil and I thought wow you're really downgrading year over year but I'm very flattered and so I've reached out to the communications team at at discovery to try and find out okay what's our next steps because I would love to do this if it's something the company will allow me to do arms team player and uh finally got news back from them that said alright well you can totally do it you're free to do it you're it's up to you to negotiate everything and I thought whoa I have never done that in my life I have no clue where I would even start and uh ultimately it didn't matter was a point because by the time it had gone up the ladder the decision had been made and communicated back down the ladder to me they already had booked another person because they couldn't wait which I totally get I don't blame them at all I was just I was just literally lost here's what you do okay you can either get an agent who like a like a an appearance is a like a not a book agent but like what's what's the word speaker speaking agent right uh who just deals with that you can join the speakers bureau you can do any of those things you can also figure out exactly what you want in order to leave your home and your actual job and go somewhere put those down on a piece of paper and then give it to a friend and when the people call you and say hey would you mind talking to my representative and then they call your friend and your friend just says all the things that you want right but it's your friend so nobody knows different that's great I I think that would have backfired in this case because I'm not sure how many tacos there are in Germany that's true but it's kind of deal breaker and guess what I'm saying is nobody should ever negotiate for themselves and I break this rule all the time but so I'm a terrible example of it but your time from like my mother's boyfriend a long time ago was a legal expert right and so he was a scientist and so he he would charge from the moment he left the door to the moment he returned to the door for his time for everything now obviously that you're not doing that right so your time like your travel time is already free so you better get a per diem now look major network news per diem is like thirty two dollars a day so we're not talking about a lot of money but you shouldn't have to take the loss to eat convention food right like we're past that so just give just put down the things you want the next time someone asked you to come speak and give it to another human being give it to who's sitting next to you and they say oh yeah John would be happy to do it but he's going to need this sounds good to me there you go problem solved and you could really get an agent there's also the Cory Doctorow thing where he he has said openly he's like I'll speak free at places that I believe in and really want to support and I will charge ungodly amounts of money for places that I don't really care about yeah he's like always always set your price based on you know what would it take to convince you to do something that maybe you'd rather be doing something that's an actual term right that I believe it starts with an F and ends with a U FU tax well got it I mean it's it's one of those things like would you have gone or helped them outside of any monetary consideration initial like before like is it something you would I mean one of the things I've always done is just kind of make a spreadsheet of how much it actually ends up costing you to do all that just say leave how much you actually get paid but actually just map out what the costs are and that's the limit you don't go below ever that's sure that's sure makes a lot of sense yeah and when I was working for CNET and for twit when I had a regular salary in other words I would take that salary and I would say okay well if I worked a day at my regular job I would get paid this much including you know the amount of my compensation package with benefits and before taxes and everything and then that sets your baseline of like well that's you're not giving it up but like that's how much your time is worth right now and you should probably ask for more than that but don't ask for less for sure yeah all good advice from someone for someone who is completely clueless yeah believe in yourself believe you're worth it that goes a long way I mean I think a lot of it just has to do with you feel you feel you don't want to you don't want to impinge you feel like you're going to be overbearing like some kind of jerky guys like I want this I want that and that there's that part of you I mean Jenny's right it's really hard to do it when you're when it's you because you tend to take you you don't actually see yourself outside the way a third person sees you right you and you want to be accommodating and you want to there's the there's the fact that you know there's most I think most people their reaction would be flattered to be asked to present at something even just initially it might just be flattered and then you look into and think ooh that's not really my thing so that wears off pretty quickly but it still is a factor plus yeah I don't want to get the reputation of being a diva I mean it's already here in the office just making your day right you're already still good looking and talented you don't need I know worse it's um there's a there's a well-earned reputation for it here in the office I don't need that getting out to the wide world all right well now now folks let's talk about me no I'm just scared I thought we were nope okay so we have a title did we pick a title yeah it's the asimovs okay we are we are done we are I'm out of the post there you go we're all done sweet we're all done so I don't want to get too schmaltzy because Jenny's still working on the show I'm still going to be talking to her all the time in the slack and on the emails but Jenny we are going to miss having you here every day on the hang on the hang on the hang on the hang on the hang I'm going to miss being here every day this is like my favorite place to be like there are so many times I don't have to be here to do a job particular job at this time but I always want to be on the post show because it's so much fun and I know the first couple of weeks at your new gig you've got to like impress them and make them you know trust you but once you've you've gained their trust you sneak back into the show yeah just gain their trust and then then amuse it oh I can already see my first HR meeting starting we'd like to talk to you about what happened in the post show on Friday well seriously though thank you like this thank you to Tom I'm not going to say like schmaltzy goodbye because we're going to have a meeting next week but like the hink you to Tom for creating this and creating this place and thank you to the patrons and the listeners and everybody for hanging out with us like every day sometimes they're live sometimes their time shifted sometimes they're in another country like I've yet to find someone to write us from space but I'm very helpful like it this is an amazing place to hang out and spend time and I couldn't be happier that I got a chance to do it for two whole years so I it's like wherever I go I'm going to carry the post show around with me oh hey well I can't the first surprise visit from in a luchador mask there probably be at your front door yeah probably alright thanks everybody have a great weekend bye guys right


Welcome back to Classic Replay. Now the Nintendo Switch is hard to believe was released worldwide in 2017 and the console has gone from strength to strength. The focus here with this video is the arcade archives. There are over 241 games with 108 of those being the ACA Neogear. Rumour has it also that Nintendo want to build the arcade archives up to over 400 titles and I'm not sure how true this is but the Nintendo Switch reportedly sold just under 120 million consoles and on that bombshell please join me as we bring back the classics on Nintendo Switch. These are the top 15 games. Number 15 in the hunt. I seem to remember the arcade of yesterday. There was loads of submarine style shooters but this one caught my periscope but seriously it's two player. There's a good challenge here and it looks and sounds brilliant. Every console needs a quality conversion like this and without question this is a top-notch shooter man. I do miss the arcades. I wish they'd come back. Number 14 Sunset Riders. Step on the wrong edge of a pit fork and knock yourself out. Now I'm not sure how many four player games there are in the arcade archives collection but this is one of the best. Set in the Wild Wild West you are a bounty hunter. Unlike the Milky Bar kid you make your living by catching big time out rows. You start out with a trusty pistol, two fire buttons, you must horizontally scroll your way from Santa Fe to Boot Hill. Yeeha! Number 13 Track and Field. Another four player game although I'm not sure how four people would play at once and I've not been able to check that or validate that because I've only got two controllers but this is 1983 action for the family in 2023 and it's fantastic fun even now and you just use the assigned run button and jump button and it's as simple as that but as you can see true precision comes with the timing. Number 12 Riger. This one was released way back in 1986 and is better known in Japan as Warrior of Argos. No that's not Captain America's Shield. This weapon is known as the Disc Armor. It's fast, furious, frantic fun with loads of sprites on screen at the same time. If you enjoy your punishment and love finger-pumping action Riger is a great side-scrolling blaster from the past. Number 11 Yeeha Kung Fu. Not only one of my favorite kung fu games from back in the day and this is just a pure arcade conversion which is exactly what I wanted. So we've got to hop, skip and punch our way through a numerous amount of baddies. It's old-stamp, it's as old school as they get but it's highly playable and you won't be able to put it down until you've finally completed it. So lots of old-school action for your hard-earned money it won't disappoint. Number 10 Donkey Kong. Released way back, all the way back in 1981. No list like this should ever be taken seriously unless Donkey Kong is part of it. This version also incorporates the early version, the later version and the international version and looking at it now the construction site has never looked so good. Hurry up though, don't keep lady waiting. There she is. Wave, smile. Bye. Number 9 Vandetta. Often overlooked but this four-player beat-em-up classic is no happy family. As you scroll through the city you're going to have to knock a lot of Tifa. All this because your girlfriend Kate has been kidnapped. Honestly you should keep her on the leash but there's three of you so you're all gonna gang up and do something about it. Anyway the graphics look fantastic. Oh and listen to that sound. Number 8 Gradius. I'm told Gradius 3 and Gradius 2 are better but for me you just can't beat the original. And if you like those games, those other games, you can purchase those after you've completed this, it's that simple. And that way if you're new to these types of games you can experience it as intended but don't let better graphics fall you. This is easily one of the best shooting-ups ever made. A sci-fi cult classic. Number 7 Pac-Land. Speaking of cult classics, the memories. Taking pills, chasing ghosts, in that order is easily better in the real world but you'll still have loads of fun with Pac-Land. You'll need your head testing if you miss this one as it really is great value for the money. And they've absolutely nailed the emulation and the arcade controls. For the first time in a long time I can actually get past the springboard sections. Pinky promise, you'll love it. Number 6 Vigilante. Very similar to Kung Fu Master, Double Dragon but better. The villains come at you big and beefy and the plot's a little bit weird in the sense that Madonna, the singer, has been kidnapped. It's blatantly obvious Sean Penn put them up to it. I remember this was 20 pence ago back in the day and for around £2 I was able to complete it. The graphics and sound are really good and there's a good challenge here. Number 5 Ikari Warriors. Now don't laugh, I had this on the Amstrad CPC back in the day and it was a bloody good conversion but honestly nothing gives or delivers so much fun as Ikari Warriors in the arcade. They had a sequel as well, Victory Road and I think Guerrilla War was very similar but even now, even today, you've got to give this ago in two player mode. It's a wonderful experience on the Nintendo Switch. Number 4 Double Dragon. I wanted to put Double Dragon 2 in, it's definitely the better game but I can't recommend it because the moves are more difficult to pull off. They didn't screw up the controls but they just made it more difficult so beware choosing 2 over this original. Number 3 Life Force. And get this, you can play 2 player with a friend. There's both horizontal and vertical scrolling and this version has some of the most memorable retro music of all time although some will argue that the NES has slightly better music but that's just crazy talk. Life Force is a definite classic, it's one you'll come back to time and time again as a fantastic challenge and my god it's on the Switch. Number 2 Shadow Warriors. Ninja Gaiden, I'm not sure. What I can tell you is it's one of my favorite beat em ups of all time. It's 2 player and it feels like a step up from Double Dragon. You can run, jump, somersault and kick the living daylights out of Jason from Friday the 13th. The path of a Ninja Warrior is much much easier with a friend. These are the ones that almost got away, not on my watch. Number 1 Contra, better known as Grisor in the UK. Without question and in my humble personal opinion this is one of the best games ever made and I'm going to sneak this one in there. It's one of the best games ever on the Amstrad CPC. If you liked this video please subscribe because we're trying to get there, we're trying to get to 5,000 so please like, comment, ring that bell for further notifications and until next time, bye!


SCP-526-1 is a hill in Northern Norway. SCP-526-1 is easily identified by a ring of 9 stones, approximately 2 meters in height, with numerous runes inscribed on their inward surface. Every day at sunrise, give or take 15 minutes.  These individuals usually appear to be temporarily displaced, but all individuals within a single instance of SCP-526-2 will be from the same time period, and appear to in fact be from the same military unit.


Highlights a solid additive assisted layer by layer, SAALBL, processing was developed to facilitate the inter diffusion between polymer donor and acceptor and optimize the morphology of quasi planar heterojunction for high performance organic solar cells, OSCs. The pre-phase separation between fatty acid and polymer donor, easily tuned via controlling the cohesive energy, is critical to form the desired vertical phase separation morphology. The SAALBL is generally applicable to various OSC systems and enables the record efficiency of 19.02% among the binary OSCs. This article was authored by Guan Yu Ding, Tian Yi Chen, Meng Ting Wang and others.


Hello Columbia, and welcome to This Week in the City. Highlights brought to you from the public relations, media, and marketing department with the City of Columbia. I'm your host, Alicia Uxy. This week in the City, on Tuesday, January 14th, the Board of Zoning Appeals will meet at 10 a.m. at City Hall and Council Chambers. For agenda items, please visit our website at columbiasc.gov. On Tuesday evening, please join us for one of the Columbia Compass public meetings, starting at 5.30 p.m., ending at 7.30 p.m. On Wednesday, we have another public meeting. On Wednesday evening, please join us for the Public Education Forum regarding Utility Line Tree Trimming. This regards tree trimming procedures that will be implemented throughout various neighborhoods in the City of Columbia and partnership with Dominion Energy. If you have concerns or questions about tree trimming in your neighborhood, please join us for this public meeting on January 15th, starting at 6 p.m. at the Eau Claire Plant Building. For additional information, visit our website at columbiasc.gov. As we move through the week, on the 16th, we have another Columbia Compass public meeting, starting at 5.30 p.m. that evening. This is your opportunity to gain information about the Columbia Compass long-term plan and give your feedback as a citizen in our City. As we roll into the weekend, we want to make sure that you're prepared for MLK activities throughout the City of Columbia, as the City prepares for Martin Luther King Day on January 20th. Please also note that on that Monday, January 20th, City offices will be closed in observance of Martin Luther King Day. However, emergency personnel will be on call, and you can call 911 for assistance. Also, please join us on Monday, January 20th for the City's annual Martin Luther King Day Commemoration. The ceremony will be held Monday, January 20th, at 4 p.m. at King Park. For details regarding the ceremony, visit our website at columbiasc.gov. You can also call our department at 545-3020, and please follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram for all information regarding events and meetings here in the City of Columbia. We hope you have a great week.


What's up everyone? It's your girl Kenzie here from Layton Sports Cards and I'm ripping a personal for Han S. We've got two of the 2022 Tops Gilded Collection baseball hobbies. Thanks so much for hopping in Han. Let's see if we can get you. Starting off hot with Gilded. Super Fracture on the very first box.  It was Forrest who pulled the Harry Ford, I think it was. First up we've got Rookie of Jackson Reets. That one is 86 of 99. Jackson Reets. We have White Sox. Tim Anderson. White Sox 84 of 99. Our auto is going to be a Keep It Ruiz Nationals. Very nice. 39 of 99. I believe we've got an extra auto out of here. We are just talking about him. How about a Rookie Auto O'Neill Crew. Six is beautiful on the blue etched autograph. My gosh, that is absolutely disgusting. He signed that huge too. Wow. Gilded is starting off hot this morning.  Nasty. And we've got a Wayrave Mini Machado, 18 of 25. Gosh, what a pack. What a pack. The Padres is a beautiful color match with this too. All right, time for the Framed Auto. What do we have here? A Fergie Jenkins, 8 out of 25. Another Emerald Gold Framed Auto. Nice little Fergie there. All right, and that's just the first box. Fantastic first box there for you, Han. Good luck on the second. Again, last time I checked, there were only three more of these left up on the site. And that's after Elaine already added some this morning. He added some and I saw a couple more orders come in for some. What's up, Toke? How's it going? Here we go. Oh, first we have a Matt Manning Rookie, Pirates. That one is 90 of 99. Pretty rough. Oh, no. Well, I got you in my thoughts, man. Hope everything gets the better for you. Matt Olson for the Braves. That's the worst, man. 79 of 99. That's the worst. Sorry to hear that, Toke. And we've got a Blue Edge Rookie Auto Rodolfo Castro. We got both Pirates Rookies coming your way, Han. Very nice. That one is 42 of 50. We've got an extra auto out of this box, too. I read Detmer's. That one is two out of 25. On the Rose Gold. I love the Rose Gold look. Wow. Read Detmer's to 25. Now Ripken Jr. 48 out of 50 on the Mini Diamond Parallel. Wow. Toke, the Super Bowl's next weekend. It's not tomorrow. We've got to wait at one more week. 13 years. Yeah. That's a long time. All right. Here we go, Han. We've got a Rod Kuru 4 out of 90. Wow. 4 out of 90 on the Gold Frame. What another gilded box there? Here is your O'Neill Crews all magged up for you. Beautiful head again. Congrats on this, Han. Thanks so much. We'll get this right out to you.


So I'll just sort of jump right into it. So the goal for today's talk is, you know, we want to start developing, this is a line of work with Gerard Ben-Rus and Reza Ghysari and our goal was to start developing sort of a classification theory for lost landscapes for the performance of natural gradient type algorithms. You know, the question would be, you know, you're doing some parameter estimation problem. You know, can we start to understand which problem should be easy, hard, or sort of on a sort of a critical boundary in various kinds of planet estimation problems, not sort of from a general perspective, but more towards for specifically like gradient type algorithms. Are there sort of simple quantities or invariance you can calculate that sort of lead to natural bounds on performance guarantees or refutations? So the focus for today's talk will be specifically on SGD, but many of the results I'm talking about now are also true for gradient descent and that'll be the subject of a forthcoming paper. So, okay, so what's the question we want to consider here? You know, a lot of people have already spoken about SGD and its performance and estimation, high dimension.  So just to quickly get to the sort of the heart of the matter, you know, the general question many people are considering in this field is, you know, given some estimation task, how many samples do I need to be able to estimate by my favorite gradient type algorithm? Say, stochastic gradient descent, gradient descent, some batching, things like that. You know, questions of sample complexity and time complexity. For today's talk, I'll just focus on stochastic gradient descent. So sample complexity and time complexity are the same. And so, you know, this is a conference on high dimensions, but first I should mention, you know, there's a very like large, well-developed theory for fixed dimensions in these settings where the dimension is fixed and then you send time to infinity. You know, there's works on sort of limits, functional central limit theorems, the ODE method. There's even stronger results on rates of convergence once you start adding extra assumptions like convexity. And a lot of these works, you know, the idea is, you know, since n is fixed and t is large, basically, you ignore sort of a burning period for the algorithm. And then you really only care about its behavior after a certain phase where the algorithm seems to start behaving in a regular fashion. More recently, you know, a lot of people started focusing on the high-dimensional perspective where, you know, the standard results don't immediately apply. There's been a lot of sort of model-by-model results in this direction, and I'm only sort of mentioning very few here. But so, you know, what we want to talk about is, you know, the following, the focus for today's talk is also the high-dimensional setting. And our hope is to start to develop sort of a general framework for this, just in terms of geometric properties or analytical properties of the last landscape. And sort of, let me first, before actually stating what we study specifically, let's just think about what stochastic gradient descent does. You know, so typically people feel like there's sort of two phases in stochastic gradient descent. There's an initial search phase for the algorithm where the dynamics is sort of, you know, the algorithm's sort of wandering around in this landscape, which is highly non-convex. And then hopefully, after a certain amount of time, you've entered sort of an effective trust region, and then the algorithm enters what's called the descent phase. There you can sort of treat the landscape as sort of effectively convex, and you hope to start winning off of things like momentum terms and these things like that. And sort of one of the things I wanna get at is, you know, these convexity-based analyses, you know, really do naturally lend themselves to understanding the descent phase, but in many problems that we're interested in the initial search phase, you know, this convex non-convexity can be really pronounced. And so what I'd like to do for today's talk is focus specifically on the search phase. And there's sort of three motivating questions for today's talk. One is, you know, given some lost landscape, how do I tell if it's easy in the sense that I have linear sample complexity? It's sort of almost easy or critical in the sense that you acquire quasi-linear sample complexity. So instead of, you know, order n samples, you need n log n or n log squared n, or sort of the third regime where the problem is hard in the sense that you need at least polynomial sample complexity in the dimension.   So the question is, you know, how much time do you actually spend in this search phase? We're spending so much energy understanding it, you know, maybe the fraction of time you spend in the search phase is quite small. And the last question we want to think about is, you know, how does this difficulty change as you start to vary the loss function? For, you know, these general linear models or neural network models, you know, in our statistical sort of toy models for understanding these, we sort of pick specific losses and analyze things. And the question is, if I change the loss, you know, in a way that seems sort of very small or trivial, can this dramatically change the performance of the algorithm? So first, you know, before I get to things, I just want to emphasize, you know, why is it that I'm focusing on the search phase? Well, the thing is, you know, once you've sort of exited the search phase, which once you've weekly recovered the parameter, sort of in the terminology of other talks, the performance of the algorithm is very different. In fact, you can sort of treat them all as effectively in a sort of easy phase. So for example, you know, you can prove things like path-wise laws of large numbers, not just for stochastic gradient descent, but also gradient descent, batch gradient descent and things like this.  And just to sort of emphasize that, here I'm showing sort of two plots. So the top is the performance of phase retrieval, firstly from a warm start and then from a random start, where the red curves will always be SGD, the green curves will always be the population dynamics. And you see sort of law of large numbers behavior here, but when you have random starts, things start to deviate a bit more. And then these things can get really pronounced when you start changing the activation of it. So in certain hard models, you know, there's certain models where you can show that the activation will, you know, be in the hard phase. There again, you'll still have a law of large numbers behavior. So from the perspective of n to infinity and then correlation to zero, there won't really be a huge difference in complexity between these problems. But now when you start looking at the performance from a random start, you see that the stochastic gradient descent algorithms just completely unable to recover the signal even though even the population dynamics eventually sort of has a transition to recovery. So okay, so with that in mind, I wanna focus on a fairly simple setting. We'll focus on what I'll call rank one estimation in high dimensions. So what do I mean by this? So we'll focus on the specific case of, you know, let's take the sphere in high dimensions and we'll assume that the population loss, which is to say the expected value of the loss under the data distribution, is a nonlinear function applied to a linear observation. Namely, you take the correlation between your estimate and the true parameter as defined by a normalized inner product and then the population loss would be a function applied to this correlation. Right, of course in our settings, we don't actually have access to the population loss, but from a theoretical perspective, you know, this is gonna be our assumption. And just to sort of understand that this isn't a completely artificial setting, a lot of interesting models fall into this class. So for example, generalized linear models in the sense of like Nelder and Wetterburn fall into this, sort of the GLMs that have been considered earlier in today's talks, sometimes called single layer networks, things like phase retrieval, multi-component Gaussian mixture models, matrix and tensor PCA. So this setting does capture a large class of problems that many people in this audience consider. And the algorithm we're gonna consider is stochastic gradient descent. I just wanna sort of define it exactly since from talk to talk, sometimes that can vary. So it's a problem where you have some input because it's an iterative scheme, you have some input, a loss you're trying to optimize, M data points and some step size and what you do at time T, you do a gradient update and then you project onto the sphere since we know that we're always living on the sphere. And then the output of the algorithm is after I've run through the whole data point, we're out. And the question we wanna consider, formally, we wanna understand what it means to exit the search phase. So in high dimensions, natural initializations typically have correlations that are ordered like one on the square root of the dimension. And typically in a lot of these problems, you enter an effective trust region once this correlation is order one. So we'll say that the stochastic gradient descent weekly recovers the parameter that you're trying to estimate. If for some positive epsilon, the probability that this correlation is bigger than epsilon tends to one. And sort of specifically for this talk, what we'll talk about is how many samples, how large does M need to be with respect to the dimension to be able to weekly recover from a uniform at random start. So the key quantity that I'll show up in our analysis is what we'll call the information exponent. So what it is as follows.  And so given a sequence of data distributions and loss functions, we'll say that in the large dimension limit, they have information exponent k. If the non-linearity that shows up in the population loss, remember we assume the population loss is a non-linearity applied to the correlation. We say you have information exponent k, if the non-linearity is sort of zero at the origin, its first k minus one derivatives is zero at the origin. Its kth derivative is strictly negative and its k plus first one is bounded. This is just to say that, if you do sort of a Taylor expansion of this quantity about the equator, we're assuming that the sort of kth order term is the first non-trivial term in the expansion. And then finally, we have to decide what kind of scalings we allow. So we wanted to make pretty broad scalings. We didn't wanna necessarily force ourselves to work with Gaussian models and things like this. So we'll just assume that this sort of data loss pair satisfies the following bounds. We'll assume that the gradient of the sample-wise error, that is the difference between the loss and the population loss, we'll assume that the gradient of that in the direction of the parameter you're trying to infer has order one on root n fluctuations. And we'll also assume that the norm of the gradient is sort of order one. And these are sort of just natural assumptions that come from assuming that, this would be the natural scaling of just assuming the gradient is a random vector. And so again, these sort of fit into the sort of interesting sort of boundary regimes for many different models that people are studying. And so what we find at the end is, under the scaling, why are things complicated? Well, here, you're sort of exactly in a critical regime where there's this non-miniarity term, which is m to the power k divided by n basically, which when m is order one on root n is very tiny, is competing with sort of the landscape itself, the noise and the noise is of an order of magnitude, which is order one on n. So these two only really compete with each other once you're weakly recovered. But before weak recovery, this term is the dominant effect. And so what we find is there's three regimes, sort of an easy regime, a critical regime on a hard regime. And sort of we have formal statements, but just sort of speed things along. I just wanna sort of get to the summary. What we find is the following. So if you run SGD in a landscape that has information exponent one from a uniform or random start, you need linearly many samples in the dimension. If you study a problem that has information exponent two, for example, phase retrieval, SGD would require at least n log n to be able to recover and will require most n log n squared many samples to recover. And if you're studying a problem that's say in the hard regime, then you'll need at least polynomially many samples in the dimension and the exponent depends on this information exponent. So that's sort of the first result. And the second thing, just to get to the second question, how much time do you actually spend in this weak recovery phase? And one of the upshots we wanted to get at is that as a consequence of that law of large numbers, once you're weakly recovered, you're kind of always in this easy regime. And so you see if you look at the fractional time I spend, which is to say the fraction of the data I use in the search phase in either the critical and the hard regime, the ratio of the total of the time I spend in the search phase to the total time is essentially tending to one. You spend essentially no time, or which is to say the amount of time you spent in the descent phase to the search phase is tending to zero. You spend the vast majority of your data just trying to find your trust region in this high-dimensional setting. And sort of the last thing I just wanted to get at before we sort of run out of time is I just wanted to give one example of how this this result applies to sort of interesting problems. So just to as a reminder, we'll be considering, so here I'll talk about, we have these supervised networks or GLMs as in Antoine's talk where you have some observations which are some activation function applied to a random pattern inter-producted with the true parameter you're trying to infer. And you have loss sort of L2 loss that you're trying to minimize. So here you can sort of exactly classify the information exponents for a lot of different problems. So for example, standard activations like Adline, Sigma, and Relu all have are sort of in the easy regime where the problem has information exponent one. Things like phase retrieval or monomials would have information exponent one or two. So they're sort of in this critical setting. But any polynomial, any sort of more complex polynomial, specifically functions that have, when you look at their Hermit decomposition have no first or second order terms, these would all be in the hard phase. And so to see why that could really mess with things, one thing you could think about is the following. Suppose I have data drawn from one of these GLMs. So it's some non-linearity applied to a Gaussian pattern.x. And what I'll do is I'll see I have two different sources of data both with the exact same draws of the pattern but with different activations. One of them is a cubic activation and one of them is a cubic activation minus a linear term. And what, you know, as a consequence of a result, what you find is there's actually a dramatically different performance of these two estimation tests. If what you're observing is actually just a cubic, then you're in the easy regime of information exponent one and you'll recover quickly. And so that's what's going on in the screen curve. But if what you're observing is, say the third Hermit polynomial, which is just the cubic minus a linear term, then you're in a hard phase where you'll need tons of data to be able to sample, to be able to estimate efficiently. So for example here, what I'm plotting is the performance of SGD for these two different links with the same patterns in 4,000 dimensions with 300,000 samples. And you can see that, you know, while the cubic does really well, this Hermit polynomial is not doing well at all. So I think since we're running out of time, perhaps I'll stop things here. And if there are more questions about precise results, I'm happy to answer in the Q and A. Okay, thank you. Thank you, O'Cosh. Thank you all three speakers. I guess we move to Q and A.


What's the word y'all? This draft class had a lot of really good rookies. Now we only two weeks into the NBA career, but a lot of them have impressed me and today we're grading them. Not all 58 picks, obviously, but the top 12 players we're going to be grading. I do want to say this is based on the first couple of weeks. So this is not a projection video. A lot of these guys have a lot of potential. I'm not here to put a ceiling on any of them, but I'm saying based on what I've seen with these eyes, where do I have them right now? Leave a like, subscribe. On the Kenny Beats podcast, we did this exact thing, but with off-season acquisitions. So Damian Lillard, Slash Your Holiday, Porzigas. The link will be in the description. Go show us some love. We are the seventh-rate sports podcast in the world. We're trying to get to top five. So show some love. Thanks. I don't want to show you who we have on the list just, just yet. So we're going to take it one step at a time with a big fella, Victor Webonyama. What can I say if we're going S through D tier because nobody's going to be F tier.  I'm going to put him in S tier. Hype has been real. He's been great. Sometimes they struggle to get him the ball when it matters the most. And yesterday, Zach Collin's got a lot more touches than he probably should have. But for the most part, he has lived up to expectations. The 38 point game we dropped the video on in this channel and he's been very, very good offensively and defensively. So he's an S tier. And y'all, and y'all, I gots to say, Chet is too. Chet is shooting like 60% from the field, 60% from three. And he's averaging like two, three blocks a game. If we go strictly off the first two weeks of their careers, Chet has been amazing as well. He's exceeded all of my personal expectations. And though he's not a 2023 draft class guy, he's been in the running for rookie of the year so far. I think most people probably give it to Wimby. And I think Chet will be a solid second at the moment. Who knows what the season's going to look like. But I got to put some respect on Chet because he's been way more than I expected. Again, 60% from three is not something that's going to sustain itself. But if we're just looking at the first two weeks, yeah, it makes sense. Will those be the only rookies to hit S tier? Spoiler alert, yes. Those are the only two guys that's S tier at least. Let's talk about the second overall pick in the 2023 draft, Brandon Miller. A surprise for me as somebody that doesn't watch a lot of college basketball. I heard a lot of people talk a great about school Henderson, school Henderson, school Henderson. There's no way Brandon Miller could go number two. He's not going to be good. The first two weeks, he's been very, very good. He got his first official start of the season today as I'm recording this video and he looked pretty good, man. He has a nice balance of all three levels of the floors for our scoring goals. Defensively, he's really nice. And I like some of his finishes around the basket. He's been impressive. Like 13 points per game, which I think is third amongst rookies right now. So he deserves to be probably an A tier. Let's do it, Brandon Miller, A tier. Third overall pick in this year's draft was school Henderson. And schooled is out on injury right now, but in the sample size that we have of him, it did not look good. Again, I mentioned this before, when we were talking about Wimby, I don't overreact to the first couple of weeks. So I believe that school still has the potential to be an absolute stud. But again, great on the first couple of weeks, it didn't look pretty. It's going to take us some time to adjust to the game, the speed of the game, which is crazy because he's super athletic. But there are a lot of moments when I've watched him in the few games that he played before his injury, where I genuinely questioned his decision-making offensively and defensively. Got lost on both sides quite a bit. Given time, luckily he's playing for the Portland Trailblazers team that is empowering him to be him. And with time and reps, he should be fine. But based on now, I think I got to put Scoot down here, man. Just based on the first two weeks sample size. We'll do this again halfway through the season and I'm assuming he's going to be a lot higher than this. But right now, this is just where it is. Next on our list is going to be Amin Thompson, who was the fourth overall pick to the Houston Rockets. The Houston Rockets have so many players in the roster that he's kind of get lost in shuffle, where he's averaging about 14 to 15 minutes per game. And in those minutes, there are good signs. There's bad signs. He's also missed a couple of games now with an injury. So I don't really know if they released the timetable or anything, but in the frame that we've got, it wasn't super impressive. He does obviously still have all the athletic tools. He has the playmaking that we really like. The big question about him and his brothers was their shooting ability and both of them have not showed that a ton so far. But because Amin's reps have been super limited, we haven't really been able to see him play to maybe the place he can be. I'm struggling with this one, man. I don't know if he goes here or he goes here. I think I'm gonna start off him. Shout out to the guy. Y'all know I'm rooting for him and his brother quite heavily, but again, I gotta be realistic here. So I might have to put him down in D tier based on the first couple weeks of his career. His brother though, his brother is doing everything outside of shooting the ball. Get into the basket, block his shots, stealing the ball, playing defense, rebounding, assisting. He has been empowered by the Detroit Pistons to play his game and he's starting and he looks amazing as well. Like he looks like an all defensive caliber player and two weeks into his NBA career, which you can't say that about a lot of people.  I think Wimby's number one, he's probably number two and Chet is probably number three as far as how fun I have while watching him play ball because he's everywhere all over the court. He just had a four by five game yesterday. A four by five, he was one steal, one block away from a five by five. When he had a five by five since Youssef Nurkis did it what, seven years ago? He was two stats away from it, which is crazy. So I'm putting him in the A tier, man. If he can only learn how to shoot throughout the course of his career, he's gonna be such a dangerous player on the court. Next on the list, I'm gonna get Anthony Black. Now, some of these guys, now I'm rethinking that I'm in Thompson down here now. And the reason I say that is because Anthony Black also falls into the camp of players that have him and getting a ton of opportunity. But in the opportunity that Anthony Black has got, he's been really good. He has basically not missed much from the field. He got his first official NBA start there the night against the L.A. Lakers. And in it he was like a plus 32 from as far as own off goal, which is insane because the game, I mean it wasn't a close game, but it wasn't a super blowout either. But he hasn't had a lot of time. So I don't wanna put him down here because he's not wily in a rotation at the moment. So I think based on, everybody's scale is going to be different. Have I mentioned that? Based on the sample size that we have of him, I'm impressed. How about that? I say the same thing about Derek Lively. Based on the sample size we have of Derek Lively, I'm extremely impressed. The first game of the year, he went against Victor Wibbanyama and for most of it he was the talk of the town over Wimby. And though his minutes have fluctuated between like 15 minutes in a single game versus like the other day we had 28 minutes, like it changes a lot with Jason Kidd and the system and stuff. When he does play and he does get good minutes, he has looked really, really good. So I'll probably put him in B tier. Also in B tier, ooh, B tier. See, okay, I'm thinking about Kason Wallace. Kason Wallace was the homie. He was what, the 10th overall pick to the OKC Thunder. The man has not missed a shot this season. I mean, that's not technically true, but he doesn't miss. He hasn't missed and he's playing good defense, but it would feel weird to put him on the same tier as Brandon Miller and Asar Thompson. So I'm gonna put him in the B tier. He's looked really good, you know, making the real rotation as a rookie in OKC when they have so many young players is a feat and he's doing that. So I'm gonna put him in the B tier. Bilal Kula Bali. Bilal has showed us real good stretches of really good defense as well. Also a guy that is not getting a crazy, crazy amount of minutes. His offensive game is a lot to be desired. I've changed my mind. Scoot, you're going to the C tier. With these other fellas, with Bilal Kula Bali and Amin Thompson, because they just feel so harsh to do that. That's just, I'm just a generous guy. I'm just a generous guy. How about that? Kiante George is next on our list. I think I'll also put him C tier. I was so excited for his play from Summer League and obviously he's not tearing it up like that because the play is different between the Summer League rosters versus the real NBA rosters, but he's been really solid and they've given him a lot of opportunity to kind of place a point guard, which we really, really like. He's got a lot of points, a point guard, which we really, really like, but I couldn't say he's on the scale of these guys. So I think he'll just be high in the C tier. And lastly, the sleeper, I think of the entire draft so far at least, is Marcus Sasser, who don't even, him and Kiante George don't even got pictures of themselves in the real NBA jerseys. But Marcus Sasser has been incredible. So good that Killian Hayes better count his days because I think Marcus Sasser should be starting over him. That's how good Marcus Sasser's been. Or that's how bad Killian Hayes has been. It's one or the other. But these are the top guys.  But I'm excited about this class. As you can see, two S tiers is rare. I mean, I can't say there's a lot of draft classes that have two S tiers through the first couple of weeks. The A tiers I love, the B tiers I love, and the C tiers just give them more time and more opportunity. I'm sure they'll be better. But we also got like Jairus Walker or Taylor Hendricks who were top 10-ish picks and haven't been given opportunity outside of garbage time. So that's why they didn't make the list. The Jack Howard also has been getting a ton of time. Grady Dick has got a good amount of time. Actually, I should put Grady on the list. Actually, it's probably better than I don't. It's probably better than I don't. Just struggle to start off. We also have seen a good amount of Jordan Hawkins. He also started a game this season. So shout out to Jay Hawk, one of my guys, known as a shooter, struggling to hit his shot, but he's got all the confidence in the world, which we love, and he's playing decent defense, which we appreciate, because that was one of the biggest question marks. Hameh Hawkes also has got a good amount of play, but I haven't sat down and watched a ton of his film enough for me to put him on the grading scale just yet. And as I look through the rest of the rookies, those are the ones that have played the most minutes. I don't think I'm forgetting about anybody, which is great, unless there's some crazy, undrafted player that I just completely look past. But I don't think that's the case. So let me know what you think. Where would you rank these rookies? Did we do good? Were we too generous? You let me know in the comment section. I'll be down there as always. See y'all tomorrow. Peace.