Coming up on DTNS will Microsoft by Discord the coming wave of government cryptocurrency and Peter Wells tells us when searching online is good for your mental health. This is the Daily Tech News for Tuesday, March 23rd, 2021 in Los Angeles. I'm Tom Merritt. And from Studio Redwood. I'm Sarah Lane. I'm Roger Chang, the Shoes producer. And as I just mentioned, freelance journalist Peter Wells is back with us. Welcome back, Peter. Thank you, Tom. Thank you so much for getting up early for us again and bringing us your story to talk about. It's awesome. Oh, thank you. Yeah, it was a fun one to write. We were just chatting with Peter and Amos and Roger about windowing of movies and the fact that Black Widow is going to come to Disney Plus in July and what that means. If you want that wider conversation, get our expanded show, Good Day Internet. Become a member at patreon.com slash DTNS. Let's start with a few tech things you should know. Microsoft released critical updates to fix for vulnerabilities in Microsoft Exchange servers on March 2nd. Despite Microsoft urging immediate attention to these zero day vulnerabilities, FSECure reports that only about half of those visible exchange servers on the internet have been patched and criminals are attacking tens of thousands of them per day. The UK's National Cyber Security Center recommends those who cannot patch right now should block untrusted connections to port 442 and require access through VPN. Microsoft has an automatic mitigation tool for unpatched servers available in Defender Antivirus. Facebook announced it will hold a one day virtual version of its developers conference on June 2nd. It'll be called F8 Refresh. Just keep mashing that F8 key. Isn't F5? Anyway, VP of Platform Partnerships, Konstantinos Papa Militiatis will deliver the opening presentation. So no keynote from CEO Mark Zuckerberg is planned. Niantic announced Monday it's partnering with Nintendo to develop a new title based on the company's Peekman franchise. The app will be developed in Niantic's Tokyo office and will launch later this year, including AR gameplay activities to encourage walking and make walking more delightful. Oh, finally, someone disrupted walking. Just get on the walk. It's great. China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the state administration for market regulation and a few other agencies have jointly issued new rules defining what personal information is considered necessary for mobile apps and therefore can be required from users in order for an app to function. Necessary data includes things like your address for delivery service. They can make you give that because you can get your delivery otherwise or a phone number and location for ride hailing. Gaming and education apps may only require a phone number, which is used as verification of identity in China. And some apps like news or your browser or your weather may not require any information in order to work. The new rules go into effect in China May 1st. Amazon announced a new Montreal based game studio Tuesday with plans to create original triple A games with an initial focus on a new online multiplayer title. This is Amazon's fourth studio and run by Ubisoft's Tom Clancy Rainbow Six Siege team. All right, let's talk about the OnePlus phone. OnePlus announced the 6.55 inch one plus nine. There's also a bigger 6.7 inch one plus nine pro and a more budget oriented 6.55 inch one plus nine are the nine pro and the nine run on the Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 and the nine runs on the 870. All three models have in-screen fingerprint readers and a base level 128 gigabytes of storage. The main differentiation in this round of one plus phones are the Hasselbad cameras. The pro has a 48 megapixel Sony IMX 789 main sensor, an ultra wide 50 megapixel Sony sensor and a 3.3 X telephoto camera. There's also a fourth monochrome camera that helps improve black and white shots. The nine is almost the same as the pro just doesn't have the telephoto lens, but it does have the monochrome one. Both models get Hasselbad pro mode with pro control over fine tuning, so you can adjust ISO, focus, exposure time, white balance and more. You can also shoot in 12-bit RAW. Most of the time, if you do RAW on a phone, it's 10-bit. The nine are, if you're interested in the budget model, is only coming to Asian markets. So it's selling for 39,999 rupees in India, for instance. That's about 550 bucks. The one plus nine starts at $729 U.S. and the pro at $1,069 pre-orders start March 26th, shipping April 2nd. One plus also announced its watch, the one plus watch has a round screen, 46 millimeters, you can get in silver or black. One to two weeks on a charge, depending on how heavy you use it, IP68 water resistance. It connects through Wi-Fi or paired to your phone, no cellular connection. Although it can store up to 500 songs, so you can be listening to music while you run without having to carry your phone. It can monitor sleep stress, blood oxygen saturation and heart rate, runs on its own operating system, just like a Fitbit, and pairs with an Android app, with an iOS app promised to come sometime in the future. It can also work as a remote if you happen to have a one plus TV and can even sense when you've fallen asleep because it's got sleep tracking and then turn off your one plus TV. Available April 14th for $159. So one plus getting expensive, still a lower price for a flagship phone, but this is not the, you know, super mid-range priced one plus anymore. And they have a nice round watch, too. Well, and I think that the camera stuff is part of the reason that they can, well, perhaps charge what they're charging it and people will buy it. This is a very impressive spec, especially just for the pro model. This is, I mean, we're getting to the point where now, sure, there are other phones that put a lot of emphasis on the camera. But this is a very, very nice device. Yeah, the one thing I would caution on is the use of the word hassle blood. They've licensed their name in a couple of different mobile phones over the years, and it's never really improved the picture quality. I feel that they're a little bit loosey-goosey when it comes to giving their name away to sell phones. But yeah, I mean, on paper, everything looks amazing here. Yeah, and one plus, what I will add to all of this is one plus is now, I think, a player in the flagship market right alongside Samsung, Google, Apple, et cetera. I think these phones are good enough. Like I said, they're still relatively affordable, $729 for one plus nine is not bad. But that's not far off what you'd pay for the equivalent Galaxy phone or even an iPhone. The one plus watch, I mean, I'm not in the market for a watch right now, but it is right again in that perfect price point where it's not cheap, but it's not crazy expensive. And it seems to do all the things that, for example, my Fitbit Versa 2 does. So yeah, it'll be interesting to see what the uptick will be on a proprietary OS. All right, VentureBeat sources say that Discord has signed an exclusive acquisition discussion with an unnamed company and Bloomberg sources say that that company is Microsoft. Supposedly, the talks value Discord at around $10 billion. Bloomberg reports that no deal is imminent with one source saying that Discord is still more likely to go public than be acquired at all. Yeah, my rational read of this is Discord wants to go public. But to dot their I's and cross their T's, they want a really good valuation. And so they're going through due diligence of like, OK, if we were to get acquired, who would buy us and how much would they pay? And if that turns out to be a better deal than going public, we intend to follow through on that. But let's go through that entire process to find out. My guess is they will still end up staying independent and going public. Yeah, but who else would buy them? I mean, I think maybe Amazon, if they bought them and rolled them into Twitch, could be a good solution. But I do think that Microsoft is a good kind of parent company for Discord. They've tended to be very hands off in their acquisitions recently. So GitHub, they've left the community to itself. And yeah, so this was one of those stories where at first I was like, oh, I don't like the sound of that. But then I thought, well, you know, this is a new Microsoft. I don't necessarily, I wouldn't be too worried about this. Yeah, Microsoft seemed like, I'd never really thought about who's going to buy Discord until, you know, 24 hours ago. But once I thought about it, I was like, yeah, Microsoft makes sense. But there's Microsoft teams. So sure, those two could work in tandem. They're not exactly the same platform. But there's some crossover that doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. Amazon is another company. I mean, Google, the list is quite short for who would actually buy Discord if it were to come to that. Yeah, Apple's got the money, but they wouldn't do it. Google's got the money. Could buy it for Stadia, maybe. Facebook has the money. I don't think they want to get into buying anything right now with all of the antitrust investigation. So that really does leave Amazon and Microsoft. And Microsoft would buy it to put into the Xbox. This is not going into productivity. This is going in with Minecraft and Xbox and Game Studios and all that, I'm guessing. And no one uses Teams as a social platform. There's, you know, I'm on a couple of different Discord's and Slack's that a community run. I've never seen anyone say, hey, join me on my community teams. Like, so that product is so different to Discord that I think that there is room for Microsoft to have both. And, you know, I see people in our chat throw in shade on Skype and deservedly so, but they've also done a really good job with things like LinkedIn and Minecraft. And so I would guess out of all the companies we've talked about who could afford a $10 billion value-aid company, Microsoft might be one of the better stewards there. I wouldn't be shattered if that happened. I'm still hoping and I'm guessing that Discord just wants to stay independent, at least for now. We shall see. Bloomberg sources previously said a new switch was coming this holiday season that would have a 7-inch, 720p OLED screen and output at 4K. Now we know a little more about how that output would work. A new report from a Bloomberg source says Nintendo will use an NVIDIA GPU that features DLSS, Deep Learning Super Sampling. That you may recognize from NVIDIA's RTX 20 series, GPUs. DLSS is great at upscaling, though it can also output 4K native as well. Games have to have code that supports DLSS in order for it to work. So it probably would only work on newer games. It has to have some code in there. But when it does, Roger Chang, our producer, was pointing out in our pre-show today, like sometimes it looks better than native 4K. Like it really does work well. The new switch would also include, according to Bloomberg source, an upgraded CPU and some more RAM. You gave me a heart attack there, Tom. I'm so excited for a new switch, a new 4K switch. And at the start of that story, I thought you were going to say that it's not coming at the end of the year. I'm really excited because I've only got a switch light, and I miss being able to plug it into the TV and play it with my kids. So yeah, bring on that 4K switch. I want to play me some 4K Zelda. Linked 4K, absolutely. Yeah, I think this is, I mean, obviously this is still leaks. This is rumors. It's not even rumors. It's leaks, but it's from reliable sources. So it does feel like we're definitely going to get a new Nintendo model. It's going to be capable of 4K. I think it's fascinating to see the Nvidia GPU talk in here because that's got everybody guessing, like, okay, is this going to be an RTX 20? It makes sense that it would be DLSS because then you can get a more power efficient GPU in there that doesn't have to do full load 4K, but it can do the upsampling. That way, Nintendo can keep battery life and power consumption and cost of goods down. Yeah, and the original switch shipped with off the shelf Nvidia products in it. So again, that all makes sense that Nintendo aren't the kind of company or at least modern Nintendo don't seem to be the company that wants to reinvent the wheel every time. And that's one of the ways it keeps the cost of its hardware down over years is it really has embraced that idea of just buying what's off the shelf to keep those prices down. It's going to have a cute name too. It's not going to be the Switch 4K. It's going to be like the Switch Ultra or Pro. Everyone has Pro these days. Yeah. Switch Plus. No, Nintendo never goes with the expected though. So I don't know. Send us your ideas. Switch Cute. Switch Cute. Switch Super Cute. What do you want to hear us talk about on the show? One way to let us know is in our subreddit. You can submit stories and vote on them at DailyTechNewShow.Reddit.com. Well, Peter Wells, we're so happy to have you on the show today, especially because you just wrote a column for the Sydney Morning Herald called How Searching for Help Online Can Be Healthy. And I think we all agree that the last year has affected us all sometimes not in the greatest of ways. Mental health is a big concern. So if you want to help yourself, do you search online? Well, aren't you supposed to talk to a doctor? Isn't it kind of dangerous to self-diagnose? But Peter, you found some recommendations that searching for help with mental health online isn't always a bad idea.  Yeah. Yeah, it's really important to kind of evaluate the sources. Like anything on the internet, if you're... There's going to be fantastic advice out there. And there's also going to be really, really terrible advice. So the trick is to figure out how to tell those two bits of advice apart. I was reluctant to kind of name any sources as being... You can trust everything that these people say because I'm not a doctor myself. So I felt very uncomfortable offering that advice. But I guess the rule of thumb that I found in the last week looking at this stuff is just ignore the stuff that says that, hey, we're going to cure you of your anxiety or your depression by the time you get to the end of this YouTube clip or whatever it is. Anything that says that it's going to be an easy fix, I think starts to feel a little bit kind of self-help guru-y and not so valuable. But I found that there were some really, really great sources. And to be honest, this all did come about because Google did an update to their search product where if you do a search on depression in both the United States and in Australia, you will be presented with this nine-question questionnaire which is used to screen potential patients at psychology departments around the world to see kind of where you fit on the depression and anxiety scale. And so it's a really useful thing that Google are throwing in there to say, okay, these are the symptoms you've put in. Here is where we think whether you need to speak to someone else. And I think that's the key thing is the speaking to someone else has to be the next step. You don't want to spend weeks, months on end just Googling symptoms and thinking, oh, I've got that. Oh, I've got that as well. Because actually, I spoke to some therapists as I was writing this story. And they said that in first year, every psychologist gets to the end of first year and thinks that they have every disorder that they studied that year. Because you can see yourself in anything, really. So there is definitely a danger in spending too much time kind of researching. But I think the nice thing about some of these tools out there is there is still that stigma, there is still that anxiety about going to seek mental health help. And so at least when you're looking on your phone or listening to a podcast or watching a YouTube video, you're doing that privately. No one else has to know. And if that's the first steps that you take to get some help, then that's fantastic. Yeah, I think one of the things that I thought was interesting is, like you said, even with physical ailments, you've got a sore arm. You start searching sore arm. And the next thing, you're certain you have some wild, rare disease that you'd never heard of before because you're searching. But with mental health issues particularly, taking the step to even search or to talk to someone is important itself. Like that is helpful in itself to kind of getting you out of the issue and starting to deal with whatever your issue is and helps you to feel less stigmatized. So like, oh, maybe I shouldn't complain or maybe I don't have a problem. Yeah, totally, totally. And the other thing I found really interesting was I jumped into so many groups on Facebook to see what kind of advice was out there. And it's not going to surprise you to hear that you get a really mixed bag of advice on Facebook. And so, you know, I've said in the article something like, in the same way, I wouldn't necessarily trust vaccination information I found on a Facebook group. I wouldn't also necessarily trust any of the recommendations I would see in some of these self-help kind of or support groups that I found on Facebook. But the very nature of just joining into one of those groups and seeing that you're not alone in any of the anxiety or depression that you might be feeling because this has been a really trying year. As you said, Sarah, that this, it's not surprising if you're doing it tough at the moment and there is absolutely no shame in looking at that, admitting that and seeking help. And yeah, whatever you can do to take that next step, I think is probably a very, very positive thing. I know one thing that I always do for myself just because we do so much news gathering, specifically tech news gathering, you know, for the show and some of the other podcasts that we all participated in and produce. But it's, I try to think of it the same way. You know, it's like my shoulder hurts. My shoulder still hurts. I'm a little worried about my shoulder. Well, let me go online and see if I can get, you know, some help from an expert. Well, does the shoulder expert who's telling me what I should do have credentials? Do they work for a publication that I like and trust? You know, is there a history of information in the past that has been helpful? It's like, it's all kind of the same thing. And it's easy to say, oh, we'll just do it that way. But I think for a lot of folks, it's an ongoing process. Totally, totally. And, you know, the final thing I would say is just psychology and therapists can seem very, very expensive, but I didn't include this in the story because it had to be for print, so it had to be shortened. But you go to psychology in your state and do a Google search there. You'll find there are always kind of free clinics or free support out there. And quite often universities will have low cost people that you can see as well. So, you know, explore what is out there in the physical world as well as online, but online is a great place to start. The Federal Reserve Bank of Boston and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology will publish their research on prototypes for a digital dollar platform coming up in this July. U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has said such a project could help Americans who don't have access to the banking system. This is a way to make digital payments work for the unbanked. Several banks, however, are lobbying against this effort, while companies like Visa and MasterCard want to make sure any new currency works on their networks. They're fine with it as long as they get a cut. And lawmakers, the U.S. Treasury and the Fed, have not approved any rollout for digital currency or determined how it would exist with the global payments network, so any implementation would be years away. But multiple countries are investigating similar systems. The Bahamas launched its sand dollar last year. That's an actual cryptocurrency. Brazil's digital real is expected to start circulating in 2022. Sweden is piloting an e-crona. China is piloting its digital yuan. These efforts take advantage of cryptocurrencies technology, things like Bitcoin, in not needing a complex behind-the-scenes transaction that you currently need for digital banking. That includes things like instant settlement. Right now, if you transfer between your banks, you know it really takes three days. They have ways of faking it, but the actual transaction takes three days. This would speed that up. There would be fewer opportunities for fraud because there would be fewer chains in the system and public ledgers like blockchains are hard to alter. But it would not have the uncertainties of cryptocurrencies value because it would be backed by a government just like paper money. The MIT Boston Fed project will include at least two prototypes that show how to move, store, and settle transactions. And when they release them in July, everyone will be able to look and see and build on that code. It's just meant to show what's possible. It's not trying to do a recommendation of policy. I welcome the e-dollar, whatever we end up calling it in the future. As far as folks who are unbanked and need more options, this just makes sense. It just makes sense to me. And the whole sort of like, yeah, you got to wait three days. That's how banking works. And the fact that some banks are pushing back on the idea of this because, of course, it's not surprising. This is where we are going in the future. Some countries are farther ahead of it than others. But this is what's happening, everybody. Get on board. Yeah, it felt like this was always the end game for the Bitcoin idea. Because the idea of Bitcoin of like, why does it make sense that we value things based on gold in a vault is on paper, something that does make a lot of sense. But Bitcoin always felt like something that was, I don't know. I mean, I've been proven wrong for the last decade. But it felt like a flash in the pan. And I really wish when I was listening to Buzz Out Loud, back in the day, I should have bought some of that Bitcoin that you guys kept talking about. But, well, here we are today. Research scientist Janelle Shane used OpenAI's language generator, GPT3, to generate pickup lines. Yes, that kind of pickup line for people looking for love using DaVinci, Ada, and Babbage models. Shane previously created pickup lines by training a neural net on a host of human pend lines that already existed. Of the latest experiment, Shane says, quote, I've resisted trying neural net pickup lines again because more competent means more human-like, which in this case means worse. Or would the neural nets might even copy existing human pickup from internet lists, which would also be terrible? Human-written pickup lines are that bad. But, by the way, one of the pickup lines poetically read, this was by the DaVinci model, the AI model, was, I will briefly summarize the plot of Back to the Future 2 for you. DaVinci had some of my favorites. Like, you have the most beautiful fangs I've ever seen. It sounds like Shane is nicking the AI here. So I think actually Shane is just trying to pick up the AI. Yeah, there's, yeah.  Okay, Pete, tell me if this would work. DaVinci sidles up to you at the bar and says, I once worked with a guy that looked just like you. He was a normal human with a family.  Well, you struck out there, buddy. How about, do you like dot, dot, dot pancakes? Well, yeah, no, okay, you help me there. I mean, that might work on me. I'd be like, aw, I do. That was maybe the most effective one. Kind of? Yeah.  That's a cure.  Sure, they're, you know, they very wildly, but the, the AI version, someone was like, I want to summarize the plot of Back to the Future. I'd be like, all right, I'm listening. Try it. Yeah, let's see, you know, are you good at this? You know, we might go out for pancakes afterwards. All right, let's check out the mailbag. Let's do it. This one comes from, oh, who does it come from? I forgot. Didn't put that in my notes. I will check in a second, but was talking about, if we had heard about the PACT Act, P-A-C-T Act, this poorly acronymed, because there are others, Bill, is another set of proposed changes to CDC 230, sponsored by the Thune, by Thune. He's a Republican in South Dakota and shots a Democrat in Hawaii. Not read the bill, but one that I write up that I saw, by the way, this comes from Mike. Thank you, Mike, for showing yourself in real time in the spreadsheet. Good stuff. Mike says, I haven't read the bill, but one write up that I did see was it was good only if you graded on a curve comparing it to other bills that wanted to gut the law. It requires companies to have acceptable use policies, human manned 800 numbers, a site for tracking disputes, and a whole lot of other administrative burden, as well as requirements to take down court-directed illegal content within 24 hours and 14-day responses to UAP violations. Mike also links us to more about the PACT Act, which we will have in our show notes. Thanks for a heads up on that. I know there's a lot of efforts like this out there, but we appreciate Mike putting this on our radar. Indeed we do. And if you have anything that you'd like to be on our radar, questions, comments, all the good stuff, feedback at dailytechnewshow.com is where to send those emails, and we thank you in advance. Also shout out to patrons at our master and grand master levels. Today they include Brad, Ken Hayes, and Tony Glass. We also got some brand new bosses. Shonda Benak, Sean Sartain, and Christian Sauchler all just started backing us on Patreon. So thank you to our new bosses. You're the best. Also thanks to Peter Wells for being back with us today and telling us a little bit more about what you're up to. Where can people find the rest of your work? Follow me on Twitter, Peter Wells, or check out the help desk wherever you get your podcast. It's a daily tech podcast, but it's short and right to the point. So get on in. Excellent. Hey patrons, did you know that your ad-free RSS feed from Patreon can have just DTNS or just GDI, or both? Check your tier on Patreon to see if it says DTNS, GDI, or all in the name of the tier that you're backing us at. And if you want to change, just change to the tier that has what you want to get in your RSS feed. You don't even need to change your RSS feed. Just change your tier and different stuff will show up at dailytechnewshow.com slash Patreon. We are live on this show Monday through Friday at 4.30 p.m. Eastern. That's 2030 UTC. And you can find out more at dailytechnewshow.com slash live. We are back here tomorrow. Don't miss it. Scott Johnson will be with us. Talk to you then. This show is part of the Frog Pants Network. Get more at frogpants.com. I hope you have enjoyed this program.


OK, so let's do the writing of this reaction quotient and finding the overall k. And we've got some elementary steps here. So this problem says, understanding reactions involving normal components of air is essential for solving problem sealing with atmospheric pollution. Here's a reaction sequence involving nitrogen and oxygen, the most abundant gases in air. Nitrogen dioxide is a toxic pollutant that contributes to photochemicals tomorrow. OK. So the elementary steps, or the two reaction steps that we see up here, have qc's themselves, OK? So let's figure out what those qc's are of these two reactions. So we'll call this reaction 1 and this one reaction 2. So qc1 is going to be the concentration of anano squared. Everybody OK with that? Divided by the concentration of n2 times the concentration of o2. Like that. qc2 is going to be equal to the concentration of anano2 squared divided by the concentration of anano squared times the concentration of o2. OK, is everybody OK with that? So let's go ahead and figure out what this overall reaction is. Do you guys remember how to do that? Don't remember it from yesterday? What do we do? If there's something on this side of the reactants and on the reaction and that side of the reaction, what do we do? It's canceling. I'm glad we remember, OK? So nitrogen, is that on both sides? No. Oxygen, no. What about this 2-n-o gas? Yeah, so let's get rid of that one. And oxygen, no, and 2-n-o-2, right? So this would be the overall reaction. Let's add it up now. So n2 gas plus 2-o-2 gas goes back and forth to 2-n-o-2 gas. Is everybody OK with figuring out what the overall reaction is? This k here, so we'll say kc1, kc2. This is going to be k, we're going to say, of the overall. And what is that going to equal? You guys remember? How are we going to figure it out? How about that? kc1 times what? kc2. That should give us that k, OK? So let's figure out what the q for this reaction sequence is, or this reaction is down here, the overall reaction. So I'm going to say q overall down here. And I'm going to, right on the top, n-o-2 squared, denominator times hydrogen times o-2 squared. Would everybody have written that one? Wonderful. OK, so I want to show you something. If I take qc1 and qc2 that we've gotten here, and I multiply those together, I should get the qc overall, because that would be the same similar thing as doing this, OK? So if I don't get that, then something has gone wrong, OK? So let's do that, squared, like that. What do I get on the top? 2 squared, like that. And on the bottom, n-2 put 2 squared. Does everybody see that? Notice it's the same as this down here, OK? So you can figure it out either way. So that's what this one's saying. Show that the qc, the overall qc for this reaction sequence, is the same as the product of the individual qc's for the individual reactions, OK? So does that prove that to everybody? Is that OK for everybody? Wonderful. You guys are doing awesome. OK, I'm going to have to erase some of this to do the next part. Is that all right? Everybody got this stuff written down? So that's the qc over all. And we don't know if this reaction is at equilibrium or not at equilibrium, because we don't have any values of the concentration units, OK? But we could figure out what the overall k would be by multiplying the two k's together. So k overall is going to be exactly what we showed there. kc1, so 4.3 times 10 to the negative 25 times kc2, which is 6.4 times 10 to the 9. That's going to equal 2 6-pigs, right? So I got 2.8 times 10 to the negative 15. So remember, kq is one of the few things in chemistry that don't have units associated with them, OK? Even though, if you could imagine, this would be molar squared, right? This would be molar, this would be molar squared, right? So even though you're going to have all these different kind of molarity units, you're just going to get rid of them at the end. So there's no use in trying to keep your units. So I know those of you who have had me for two semesters now have been busting your bonk, this is about keeping your units, OK? But this time, you're just going to wipe them clean, OK? So no units on this one. So don't put per molar for this one, if that makes sense, OK? Any questions before this dies? OK, one.


If you're a meeting partner that works with site selection firms to close business, this video is for you. We're going to talk about some myths that exist about site selection professionals and how you can work better with them to close your business. Partners, it's Leanne from leancaldorwood.com. We're talking about site selection professionals today, which is a topic very close to my heart as I am a site selection professional. And when I came on the scene about 11 years ago to work in site selection, I was actually moving from the meaning planning world. So I was not in a hotel and had any preconceived notions about what site selection professionals' perceptions were in the industry. I just joined this vibrant, industry in this vibrant challenge of growing a business with site selection. So over the years, started to talk to people about some things they believed about site selection professionals. And in all honesty, I was so saddened and disappointed and a little bit shocked about what some people think about our rules in the industry. So that's what this blog post is today. It's a bit of a touchy subject because it talks about some of the myths that exist about site selection professionals. Now, before I dive in, I should preface this by saying there's a chance that you have worked with some of these site selection professionals who live the myth. And wow, for one, I apologize that you've had to put up with that, unfortunately, less than ethical behavior. But certainly, it's not the norm. So there are exceptions to every rule with everything in this world. And the same goes for site selection professionals. But the truths I want to share with you today are things that we, a majority of us, that's how we manage our business and manage our relationships, not only with our meeting planner clients, but also with you guys, our meeting partners. So let's look at some of the myths, tackle them, and then maybe turn them around into truths about working with site selection professionals. Myth number one, hotel site selection professionals do it for the money. Now, there is a little bit of truth to this because our income potential is unlimited. We can take on as many clients as we can manage and those clients might be big in nature, leading to some pretty nice paychecks. But if you would have said I was doing it for the money during the first three years of my business when I wasn't making any money, yeah, that's a little farfetched. So what I prefer to, how I prefer to describe site selection professionals is they don't do it for the money so much as they do it for the challenge of building a business. And with great risk comes great reward and that's where the income potential kicks in.  But if you join the firm because, a firm because of the flexibility it allows and you can choose your own hours to work and you don't do a lot with the time in your day because now you're working for yourself, you are not going to make a lot of money. So the chances of all hotel site selection professionals making a ton of money is pretty slim because you need to be a very hard worker. The difference is we're working now for ourselves and we got to self motivate to get going to earn that money. Myth number two, hotel site selection professionals steal our clients at networking events. I love hearing this one and here's why. I think networking events and receptions are a terrible way to pick up new clients. I think there's a lot more effective formats but that's not what I don't like about this myth. I think what concerns me about hearing this and I've heard this several times is that there's a perception out there by hotel sales or even destinations or even by site selection professionals that we own clients and that they are our client and no one owns a client. So if I was to walk into a networking reception and I hit it off with someone that works with you and your property or destination and that meeting planner feels that they have a good working relationship with me or want to start working with me. Is that me stealing your client or was that client already on the move to find a different fit for their working style? So we don't own clients. I've lost clients over the years just as much as I have found clients and that's on me. That's not because some savvy hotel person swooped them out from underneath me. No, I obviously did or did not do something to nurture that relationship and so that client has moved on from my services as well. So when we're in networking receptions we're doing what you're doing is we're networking and we're meeting new people and we're finding like-minded individuals to hang out with and learn from and yes, the potential exists that we find a new client there. But my experience has been finding clients in other places and it's certainly not top of mind when I walk into a networking reception to see how many clients I can get out of this place. So I hope that one helps. Myth number three, hotel site selection professionals have no industry experience. I don't know about all site selection firms but I know the one that I work with, they are very strict about who they hire and a majority of them need to come from either hotel sales experience, DMO experience or they are meeting planners themselves and that's kind of where I fall is. I came from the meeting planning world into site selection. Now, I have seen some firms mine included that hired sales people and while I think that's a great strategy because sometimes the characteristics of a strong sales person are hard to teach, hotel industry lingo is easier to teach. So if you find the right individual that has a strong sales background or strong relationship background, it's easier to teach them how to look at a hotel contract and how to understand all the hotel lingo and even partner them with another site selection professional that has that background. But no, a majority of us come from the industry and we know the lingo or at least a good good chunk of the lingo which makes starting up our business a lot easier to do. Myth number four, hotel site selection professionals are biased in their recommendations. Oh, this is a big one, right? Are we an unbiased resource or are we a biased resource? Well, here are some resources that are biased in their recommendations and that is hotels, right? They're going to toot their own property, which they're supposed to if they're a good sales person. Hotel brands who are also going to toot their own properties if they are good hotel brands. Destinations, they want you to visit their destination versus other destinations. So we are actually the unbiased resource and our unbiases stem right from the beginning when we start a search for a property or destination for our client. Because we're looking at the goals and objectives of that client and we include places that they A have probably never even thought of or places that don't pay into a DMF or aren't branded hotels. So we're turning over rocks and looking in nooks and crannies for things that meet their goals and objectives that potentially other suppliers may not have thought to recommend to them. So we are not biased in that way, but here's where our biases fall is if a property has gone to pot and they really need a ton of renovations, I do not want my client going there and I will tell my client that. On the reverse, if there's a property that is looking fantastic and the service levels are exceptional and all of my clients are having incredible programs going there, your darn rights. I'm telling my next client about that because that is where our value proposition is is providing that kind of biased information so that we are setting them up for success in whatever hotel or destination they go to. So does that help? I hope so. And the final myth about hotel site selection professionals is we are not suppliers. Now you know personally I struggle with the word supplier, I don't even think anyone in the meeting industry is a supplier. I prefer the word meeting partner. So hotel sales professionals are meeting partners, DMOs are meeting partners, AV companies are meeting partners, site selection professionals are meeting partners. But if you have to characterize the two and we're going to do the planner supplier thing like we've always done, we actually don't fall on the supplier side, we fall on the planner side. And here is why is it's the program's goals and objectives that are driving every decision we make as our clients advocates. And so that's why we fall on the planning side is we are looking at the contract, the proposals through the lens of the planner and through the lens of the delegates. So what is the flow of a property and how are the delegates going to flow through this program? And that's the planner head. That's not the suppliers take on it as they're trying to potentially fit square pegs into round holes. We need to try and fit round pegs into round holes, square pegs into square holes, and so on. So we really fall on the planner side versus the supplier side. So again, I hope that helps. All right. So those have been my five myths about hotel site selection professionals. There's probably others that you have heard, and I would be so curious to hear them as well. So if you could comment on this post or this video below and let me know the myths that you have heard in the industry. And the resource I created over at leoncaldardwood.com about attracting meeting planner business that actually applies to site selection professionals as well. So take a look at that resource because there might be some nuggets of information in there that help make your job easier as a meeting partner in trying to attract me to purchase some of your goods and services. So I hope you enjoyed this video. Have a great week and we'll see you next time. Bye for now.


What's up everybody? Jason here for jazby's casebrace.com. We're gonna give away the last six spots in contenders optic team random Number one with this 2021 mosaic football sell a one-pack break random teams number four So first guys, we're gonna do the break everybody gets around and team the NFL randomized because our names teams should be the hits out Then at the end we'll take all 32 names randomized on the top six get into the team random for picking number one of contenders Optic guys we are guaranteed a team and it could be as high as the pages were 750 and jets at 350 plus So let's do the break first. Let's roll it. We got ourselves a snake eyes just two times just how I like it quick dice roll so one and two Perfect two times victor down to hand there's that two times one two Dolphins down to the saints All right, so again stick to what you got. Of course. This is just a quick little pack filler. So No need to trade or anything like that. I'll give you like 15 30 seconds to look at your teams right now though Um, and the sheet right there perfect Now let's run the quick pack filler guys. Here we go Rodney Harrison actually I kind of hated this guy Growing up a Eagles fan will to win Derbyn Jayans Marcus D He was sent us on to Sam's Jr And here we go Josh Jacobs nice trey lands And DK mech have put a little trey land stairs 49 is Matthew Slade solid hit right there Very nice very nice awesome Then again guys the main Thing that people are here for guys top six get into the team random Good luck. Everybody roll it Six and a two for eight times. Good luck One two three four five six seven eight Six two eight. So like 26 sad people Matthew Slade just missing out there. Sorry buddy. Hopefully you are in the top six though. I know you got multiple spots Juan you're in Matthew you are in on one spot Adam cuperman you're in Matthew in again Juan and Juan. Wow. There you go Top six.  So Coming up next is the team random and then uh, we'll break open that contenders optic


James Slemming, Precinct 3, article proponent. These are two pictures of the Aeronaut beer garden hosted in Arlington Center, taken in 2018 and 2019. The town allowed the use of Whittemore Park for the event, and it was a hit. Over a thousand people attended the beer garden when it opened in 2018 and 600 when it opened in 2019. Local restaurants sold food to ice cream, musicians played, and residents enjoyed themselves. To me, this is a great example of the town using its public space to create a fun place to live and support local businesses. This is an excerpt from the zoning bylaw that describes some of what is allowed to happen in the open space district, which includes all parks and some other spaces in town. According to the director of Parks and Rec, this table is used to determine what is not allowed in the parks. This proposal would allow two new rows, one to allow outdoor recreation, such as a fitness class, and one to allow cultural arts and entertainment activity, such as live music or a theatrical performance, both for and not for profit. This is similar to the temporary rules the town adopted to allow businesses to use town parks during COVID. This proposal would more or less make them a permanent feature of the town bylaws. Another thing to note is that some of the rows in this table were labeled as SP but changed to Y. An SP means that the use is only allowed by a special permit, which is administered by zoning boards. By way of example, if an event were to request a special permit, it would take about two months, which can be useful if a permanent change is being considered like adding a parking lot to a park, but it seems like an unreasonably high bar for a temporary event. The outcome of this process is also not determined by Parks and Rec who control the land. Why was this not a problem for the beer garden? The beer garden was possible because Whittemore Park is controlled by the select board, which voted to allow it. Changing the SP to a Y means that a special permit would not be required for temporary uses here. Removing the special permit requirement and allowing these new uses does not mean these events would be unregulated. This is a summary of Title IV Article 1 of the town bylaws, which describes regulation on activity in town parks. In a park, you cannot have alcohol or make an enormous amount of noise and advertising is allowed only with permission from Parks and Rec. According to the Parks Department, someone who wants to host an event would be able to go to Parks and Rec for permission and the Parks and Rec Commission would determine the rules for the event. In general, there would be no circumstances under which someone could do something without permission from the associated department. In summary, this proposal would allow more types of activity in parks with the Parks Department determining the what, where and when of events including prioritization of uses and any fees. You should support this because the town has successfully used public space to foster community and support local businesses and we should do more of that. Thank you.


I'm sure no one would eject any early. All right, three after. Let's get started. Let me move the window over for a little so I can see it better. Okay, let's see where are we. Okay, community time. Anything anybody want to bring up from the community that's not on the agenda? Okay, SDK. I think we did have a call last week, but I don't think there was anything worth mentioning from there. Clemens or anybody else that was on the SDK call, can you guys think of anything worth mentioning? Because we all decided that we didn't do our homework or read out Scott's notes. There you go. That was the most. Yep, that's my recollection as well. Okay, so moving on. So when was it? Tuesday, I think it was. We actually did our proposal to go to incubator status for the TOC. Mark was on the call there helping field questions in the chat. I'll let Mark speak for himself, but I think it went really well. We really didn't have that many questions and definitely, I don't think we had any hard questions or it seemed like anybody was questioning our existence or why we're even going for this. I think the next step in the process is for us to formally make the request through a proposal file in the TOC's getup repo, which Mark and I are working on offline, which hopefully will be done either today or tomorrow. And I believe the next step from the TOC's perspective is to actually start the formal vote, which I'm not exactly sure when that starts, but hopefully it'll be very soon. I know that Chris Anicek is very eager for us to not only get to 1.0, but to also have this next status for us to go to incubator so we can do a double announcement both at the same time and get even more press and excitement around our stuff. So that's kind of what happened there. Mark, can you think of anything that I'm forgetting? No. I thought that it went very well. Thank you for putting together all those slides and doing the presentation. You did a great job. I'd say the one area that or the one question that came up that we didn't have an answer to was a protobuf spec that we had explicitly excluded for now. But aside from that, I don't know that there is any questions that didn't make sense and that we couldn't answer. Yep. All right. Any questions from the community on the meeting or proposal that I put forward? All right. Cool. Moving on then. Kukan, nothing worth mentioning there. I don't think anybody's made any changes to the outline for our sessions. Obviously we still have time so that's not an issue. However, I did want to mention that the Surplus Practitioner Summit CFP is now live. I don't know why a note wasn't sent out. I expect one will be sent out soon. But if you actually go to the website for the, I think it's called day zero co-located events or something like that, you will see that listed there. And here is a link to the CFP if you guys do want to submit one. It closes October 4th. So we don't have a whole lot of time if you guys want to do something. If someone thinks that there should be something there from our group, please speak up. We can obviously put something together if we want, but we obviously have our sessions at Kukan itself. So I don't feel a little bit awkward about repeating things, but it's been done before. So think about it. If you guys want to do something, we can always do that. All right. So with that, before we jump into the PRs, are there any other sort of community related topics people want to bring up? All right. Moving forward then. So there was an outstanding issue about, open by Evan, about how to handle extensions in binary format. In particular, when the extension has its own serialization, meaning for example in the HGP case, it won't be prefixed with a CE dash. And I believe on last week's call, I don't remember where we left, actually I don't remember where we left that last week's call, but I believe either through that call or offline, the group has kind of agreed on a around a proposal that basically, let me see if I have this here. Basically, there's a couple things. One, it says that all extensions, in fact all attributes with a couple of minor exceptions, but basically all attributes including extensions must be serialized with a CE dash. That way, receivers know that there's always one particular way or one particular location in which extensions will be serialized. And that's including the binary format and that includes things like the trace extension, which has its own serialization. However, to allow for extensions like trace, we do allow for a secondary extension. So they may have a secondary extension, but they still must also have the CE prefixed ones, if that's what the transport calls for. Okay, so that way we still have the consistency of a single serialization for extensions and a single location, but the data can be replicated someplace else. However, if upon receiving that data in two different locations, if that data differs, then the extension must explain what to do in that particular case. And barring them not saying anything, the assumption is the receiver will just pick up the CE dash version of the stuff. Obviously, if it's an unknown extension, they won't even know about the other stuff to even worry about a conflict. But in the tracing case, I did add some logic there that says both should be passed on to the application, but make it clear that they are two different properties. One is more of a transport level one and one is more of a cloud event level one. And it represents what was originally provided when the cloud event was first created. Okay, so the actual changes that I made basically represent what I just described. Most of the changes in the documents are talk about how things can't have a secondary mapping, serialization, whatever you want to call it. But then they also say they must also include the previously defined primary mapping. That's most of what all these changes are just repeated in each type of serialization or spec. Let me just make sure I'm not missing anything here. Okay, yeah, so here's what I talked about. Here's where I deal with conflicts in the tracing extension. Oops, I'll fix that type a little later. Yeah, so here basically talks about how the CE version one is the one that's supposed to be used as a cloud event attribute when you create this cloud event object as a receiver, but the secondary one may be picked up and offered up to the receiving application as additional metadata. Okay, ACP transport does the same thing. Let's jump down to the spec. That might be the other change worth mentioning. Let's see what is this. I'll add some kitty spec. Okay, so the spec here, what did I change here? Okay, this one makes it clear because I think you might have been Alan who was asking about this that all extensions must use the same must use our type system attributes. They cannot just define some random type. I think that's what we were implying before, but we weren't as clear as we should have been just and this just makes that clear. This here just talks about how they can have that secondary or extensions could have a secondary serialization. Nothing new there, whatever we're talking about there. And I think that's basically it. Oh, down here. Kathy added this text a long time ago when we were talking about extensions. And I was going through there, I noticed that we have the word should here and talks about how the event provider should also add data someplace else. The reason I changed this from a should to a would and remove the normativeness to it is basically because this is an example and having normative text in an example is not appropriate because they're not actually mandating people actually do stuff. This is just an example. So that's the only reason that change was made. If anybody was wondering about that. All right, so let me pause there and ask if there are any questions or concerns, comments, whatever. Really? Nothing? We already spoke about this for two weeks. I know, I'm just checking. That tells me that, you know, people should have at least some thoughts on it. I made comments to you and you addressed it. Okay, yeah, I should mention that. So offline earlier today, Mark did mention that the wording was a little funky when I started talking about secondary serializations and some of the format specs because the word secondary just sort of popped out of nowhere. So I made a change to those documents so that every time or the first time I reference a secondary serialization, I changed that secondary serialization wording to be a pointer to the extension section in the main spec so that people understand what we mean by secondary serialization. No narrative changes in the commits that just went in. It was strictly syntactical just to give people a pointer to reference this notion of secondary. But thank you, Mark, for those comments. That was good. All right. Anybody want to raise their hand? Otherwise, I'll ask the question. This is too lazy. Okay, any objection to approving? All right, cool. That was actually the very last issue for issue NPR for version 1.0. Now, before we jump to Evan's PR, which is or is other PR, which is not required to 1.0, what I'd like to do is jump down to actually I don't have a formal item for it. I guess kind of do what I'd like to do is see if people think we are ready to go to 1.0 release candidate 1. Is there anybody have any concerns? Because that has always been our plan once we resolve all 1.0 PRs. But if you have any concerns about that or lingering doubts, please speak now. Okay, let me ask the formal question. Is there any objection to two different things? Okay, let me do it one at a time. Is there any objection then to cutting into release and calling it v1-rc1? Okay, so I'll make those changes tonight. Yes, exactly. Second question. According to our schedule, we are supposed to start a two week review period for 1.0. That does not mean we can't make changes, even large changes if we want to. And as we make those changes, we may want to reset the timeline if we so choose. But what this meant to do is to basically put nagging pressure on everybody to review the spec because hopefully at the end of the two-week review period, if there aren't any changes left for 1.0, we will shift 1.0 in two weeks or start to vote for 1.0 in two weeks, I should say. And then one more week for that offline vote. Okay, any objection to starting the two-week review period? Should we have it be a little longer than two weeks? I don't know, to be honest. My initial reaction is to start with two weeks, and if we need more, we can always extend it. Okay. The only reason I put it that way, I'm concerned if we make it longer, people will wait until the last two or three days anyway. Then let's make it a week. We could do that if we wanted to. Is that a formal proposal? Yes. One week. What other people think about decreasing it to one week? Everybody okay with that? I've lived in two weeks. Yes. Okay. I heard some definite two weeks or better comments, but I also heard just a yes pop in there. Was the yes to the two weeks or the one week? Yes to the two weeks, if it was my yes. Okay. Okay. Thank you, Koss. Okay. So Scott, you okay with the pushing two weeks? Yeah. I was just trying to follow your line of reasoning. I know. I know. Don't get in my head. It's a scary place. Okay. So start to talk with you two weeks. Any objections to that? All right. So starting two weeks. And that means we start the vote on October 3rd, if all goes well. Okay. Now, let's go back to... So can I assume that there's no action that we need to have for SDKs to support AV 1.0-RC1 and that we should just hold on that until there's a formal 1.0? That's an excellent question. What do SDK people think? I say we hold for 1.0 because having the syndrome thing is likely not a good thing. I would tend to agree. But my plan was to try v1 and then have it be kind of maybe a branch that's kind of breaky until it's fully approved. I already checked in the 1.0 support. Sorry. Okay. Well, it sounds like everybody's in agreement with you basically. But you mean the proposed tentative 1.0 support? There you go. Yes. Yes. I already checked in the proposed tentative 1.0 support. That's correct. You guys are funny. Okay. I think you got your answer, Mark. Okay. So before we go back to looking at the nice to have issues in PRs, anything else about our roadmap or plans? Since those are kind of important topics. Okay. So, Scott, I want to pick on you for a sec, since not only because this came from Evan and he's your compadre, but also because I think you've actually looked at this one. Would you like to talk about what might have changed recently in this one that people should be aware of? I think there's just been a bunch of clarification and trying to keep up with some of the other changes that have come into the spec. Okay. Evan notes that it will be have to, it's probably going to be some updates for the, I think it's like 585 or something. Oh, even 508, the one we just approved earlier today. Yeah, that's right. It'll have to be updated to reflect those changes too. Okay. I guess that implies then we cannot approve it today because he thinks there are changes to be made, right? That's right. Okay. In that case, let me do this. Does anybody have any questions on this PR barring the changes that need to be made for 508? I made a comment to Evan that I would like to see what the user provided data was for each of the examples. When you say user provided data, do you mean extension or something different? No, I mean like, what did the user intend to send and what did it, and this is what it looks like on the wire. Interesting. That might be useful. Yeah. But it sounds like it, okay. So either way though, I don't think it's appropriate to vote on this one and there are no questions that people have. So there's nothing to discuss. I think we just need to wait for Evan to come back with another revision based on 508 and possibly your comment there, Scott. So I think we can move forward. Any disagree with that or move on to the next topic? Okay. Okay. So Alan opened up a, actually I guess I think this is an issue for PR. He opened up a PR just a second ago that I didn't want to necessarily talk about. Yeah. That was just an issue. Okay. I think he opened up this PR as a result of that issue, which is modifying 508. We can't vote on this one right now because he just opened it like an hour or so ago. I believe however he wasn't necessarily planning on this being normative changes. I think these were just clarifications. That's why I marked it as nice to have it for 1.0 but not a requirement for 1.0. But please, when you get a chance, take a look at this and put any comments you have in the PR itself. So I just wanted to bring it to your guys' attention. But since it is related to the extension stuff, we should probably give it a very careful review since that is kind of a tricky area. All right. Any comments on that? Okay. I think the SDK PR is still out there. As Clemens said, we all had some homework that we didn't do. But I think that's actually it relative to open issues. Let me just check one thing here before I even suggest we end the meeting early. That one? Let's see if there's any open issue you want to talk about. Okay. So there are a couple of open issues. Okay. I think there's this one. That one's already done. This one. This one. Okay. I think those are taken. So of these three that I just checked, it would be really nice if somebody looked at those and decided something for version one, whether it's to add some more clarifying text, add an example, or even suggest that we close those for version one. I don't honestly spend time on those on the call here. I don't think that's a great use of our time. It's just a nagging reminder that we have these as things, someone at one point in time, but it would be really nice to have it for one point at all, but I don't think anybody has taken the action item to actually make it a reality. And then that means open a PR or suggest to close it. So please, when you get a chance, somebody take a look at one of those, or I guess all three of those. For example, Clemens, maybe the web hook, one might be of interest to you since that was your spec. Yes. Yep. I don't know who wrote the petition key one. I opened the issue, but I was going to get someone mentioned it during a call and he might lose track of it. So maybe if you're interested in the petition key extension, you can look at maybe doing an example there. So anyway, take a look at those three. If you want to jump on and own one of those, that'd be really nice. So we can close these things out. These try for v one issues. All right. And with that, we actually might be done with the agenda. Okay. Now while I ask, thank you.  That is quite amazing. Amazing. Yes. Anybody have any other topics? All right. In that case, let me do final roll call. Kyle, are you there? Yes, I'm here. All right. Klaus, I heard you. Jeff, are you there? Yep. I'm here. All right. Jim, are you there? Yes, I am. Excellent. And Evan, are you there? I wrote in the chat. Oh, okay. Cool. Ginger, are you there? I am. Excellent. Fabio, are you soon here? Fabio, are you there? Yep. Excellent. Did I miss anybody who joined the call late? Oh, yes, Scott. Thank you. How did I possibly forget, Scott? All right. Anybody else that I miss? Okay. In that case, one final note before I get to mention. I'm going to have a vacation for the next two weeks. I'll send an official note to the list asking for an official leave of absence. However, Mark will be running the call on October 3rd, I believe is the date, so in two weeks' time. Next week, depending on who is actually able to make it, the order of potential people running it will either be Clemens, Heinz, or Ginger, depending on whether they're meeting or whatever it is right before this call, runs late. So we do have somebody lined up to cover it. Okay? Yep. So you guys get a break for me for two weeks. Gratum finally taking time off. Only Clemens was taking time off. Yeah. Clemens took a lot of time off, too. I get to explain for that. Clemens has a healthy work-life balance. He does? I think we should cherish. You should all aspire to that. Is that what the outcome of this meeting is? Aspire to be Clemens? No, no, no. You should aspire to Clemens work-life balance. You should not aspire to be me. Ah, okay. Well, on that note. Hey, Doug, one last thing. With respect to in two weeks, that's October 3rd, I believe. Yes. And I believe that's a German holiday. So as we go to a vote for 1.0, which I believe that we would want to do that offline so that people have a week after that to be able to approve or disapprove. Correct. That vote will be an offline vote. Okay. Yes. Just wanted to clarify so that we can take into account people that won't be on the call at that time. Correct. So that means for the German folks or anybody else who may have a reason not to make the call that week, if you have any issues with the spec going to 1.0, obviously raise them offline in some fashion, preferably in PR form so we can just approve the PR. But then, yes, the vote starts and you have a week after that to vote. So even if you can't make the call, you still get to vote. All right. Anything else before that Clemens gets to his soccer match? All right. In that case, we are done. Thank you guys. This is so exciting. We're getting so close. I am super excited. Yep. All right. Cool. Thanks guys. We'll talk next time. Bye everybody. Thank you.


Well hello everybody and welcome back to my channel. Today we are doing a grocery haul as well as a personal slash household haul as well. But we're starting out with the groceries today. I went to Cub and then I went to Target as well. I got all my groceries today at Cub and all my personal household things at Target. So let's start over here. I got some plain Cub wheat bread. I got some tortillas, shredded lettuce, white popcorn, the jolly time. This is the best popcorn for using like an air popper. I got some small little tomatoes. I normally don't buy four you know things of Coke but they were on sale. If you spent $25 in anything else you got four 12 packs of Coke for 10 bucks so it was a pretty good deal. So I figured why not stock up. Also they're McDonald's. Wow I've got McDonald's on the brain clearly. I've been texting with Jodi a little too much today. Okay so the spirals were on a like 88 cent thing or whatever like a little coupon. So I decided to get a couple of them. Also I got some pasta sides because I am completely out and I've been out for quite a while. I did get more of these. I got five total of the yo-play. And then when my friend Kristen was in town last weekend we or not we she finished up the folders that I had so I figured I'd get another one of those to have on hand. I don't drink it. And then also I got a half gallon. Is it half gallon? Yeah I'm losing it today. A half gallon of milk and then I got some just like little packets of potatoes. I was completely out of my English breakfast tea. This is my favorite kind. And then also I got some carrots because carrots are delicious. And right next to the carrots for good measure we've got some dove milk chocolates because we got to have those right. And I'm going to be bringing these to work. So that is it for my grocery haul and y'all have been asking for pricing and I forget every single time but I have it here today. So my total for all of the good stuff right here is 51 dollars and 65 cents. So let's go over to the personal side. Okay so here is my haul from Target. I got some shipping tape. I got some Nivea lip balm because I need it for work. I also got this hand food for work. Got my favorite cleansing cloth. I can't talk today. Seriously I should have just like not done this video today. Anyway this cleansing cloths. These are my favorite ones. I also got these dressing containers because you know I like them and they're nice. I already have a set of them but I figured I would get a total of six in my arsenal. I actually got a navy blue shirt you guys. Like this is a big deal and it's got a red stripe in it. I felt like it was kind of festive. This is from that and other stories. I believe this one was 1999. And then this one was on clearance as well. Also from and other stories got this really cute little tassel on it. And if I can find these I'll link them down below but I'm not sure if I can find them because like I said this one's on clearance. This one I might be able to find. I'm not really sure. At Target I really don't like track my spending with this stuff. I don't tend to overspend in this category for like my budget and things like that. If you guys are interested in any of my budgeting stuff I will put it up in a card somewhere here if you guys want to see budgets and things. But at Target I spent $58.83. These were definitely the budget killer on those but you know what whatever. And this was I think like $15 or $16 for three of them. It seemed kind of expensive but I really needed it and it's always better to have more tape than less tape right guys? But anyway that is it for my haul today. I hope you guys enjoyed. If y'all have any questions feel free to put them in the comments down below. If you like the video make sure to give it a thumbs up. Feel free to subscribe and I will see y'all in the next one. Bye guys. Well folks it's time to kick it old school so you can feel cool.


So we got a second trailer to pixels. I can't wait to watch this cuz y'all know I love the first one Post the link in the description if I remember if not just look Tyrone Magnus pixel and then it'll come up.  He's so sweet Good boy That's definitely for 80's kids. Definitely If anybody can go see it, but we're it's gonna have a special place in our heart watching it Just like uh, what was that? Why do I want to say drop dead friend? That's not the right movie. I know what I'm talking about. It's a video game movie Yeah, I know what I'm talking about Anyway, uh post comments down below Let me know what you think if you enjoyed my reaction hit the like button subscribe and share if you did not Hit the like button subscribe and share One million subscribers


The Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, says a total of 1,322 ad hoc staff have been trained for the coming elections in Kujie Council of the FCT. The election would take place on February 12 elections in the six area councils of the FCT. The INEC electoral officer Zainab Waafi urged citizens to obtain their permanent voter cards and vote for candidates of their choice. She expressed confidence in the measures so far put in place by the Commission for the smooth running of the poll.


Hey gang, welcome, welcome to the Marlar House Productions studio weirdos. Let me close that door, that doesn't look very nice. Also, my bride might come home soon. So I wanted to share something with you. The folks over at Creepycrate, there actually it's the lineup.com but they have something every month that they send out or I think it's every other month called the Creepycrate and they had an extra one from October, so they decided to send it to me. I have not opened this I've never seen one of these before but it's a subscription thing. By the way, they're not sponsoring this video I just thought it was really cool that they said they decided to send it to me So I thought I'd share it with you as I opened it up because obviously you people love Creepy stuff. So Right off the back. I love this box. I Don't I don't know where they got box like this But that is just too stinking cool. They should Just an idea for anybody out there who wants who's looking for a business idea Fine do a do a subscription a subscription box That's just full of other boxes.  That would be really cool. All right, so Gotta figure out how to open this thing Okay, there it is. Let me Let me grab my We're not sophisticated enough here at Marlar House Productions to have a An envelope opener. So we use a butter knife Maybe one day, you know, when I get really really famous Then maybe an actual letter opener Okay, so I wonder if this is gonna be I'm gonna pull this drawer out just as a little table just to be safe. All right So open it up Again, I've not I've not seen anything like this. This is the first time I'm seeing it too Opening it up And holy cow this thing is pat Okay. All right. Well, I'll see. I don't know if you can see everything here right at the top. I could see it says Netflix stranger things There And it says hot Did I catch it? Oh, I barely caught it and on the other side it says Hawkins public library Opening the doors of curiosity So you get a so it's a library card from the stranger things universe. How cool is that? All right, so I'll move that over to the side um Here also on top Uh, we've got Oh, cool. All right. Hey, uh, if I wanted to actually get creepy crate Or I guess maybe if you guys want to maybe I think you could probably use this as well You can get 10 off if you use the creepy the creepy crate 10 promo code When you go to Fright dash rags.com Fright dash rags.com So, okay. Yeah, right dash. All right. So apparently they're in cooperation creepy crates its own thing So maybe fright fright rags.com is another box. Maybe I don't know off to check it out coupon expires the the end of the year though, so better better get it pretty quick Okay, well now I got to check out fright dash rags.com. Okay, so moving on um Oh something else from the public library of Hawkins from stranger things It's the actual library card If you for anybody who actually goes to libraries, you know that uh, well at least it used to be this way I haven't checked out a book from a library It's so long It used to be that you actually had to one of these cards and your name would go on it and the Library and would keep it and know that you were the last person to check out that book and here it says uh Gina McIntyre is the author of this book and the title is stranger things worlds turned upside down And it was checked out October 30th of 2018 by Dustin Henderson Here you go. Let's see if I can get you to see that right there. That's really creative. That's really cool Okay, so now we have the library card and we have the library checkout card. So all right, move it on Okay, this is All right feast your eyes on a box full of horror. Okay. I think this is what comes with each box Uh, kind of gives you a I think I think if I'm guessing correctly It kind of gives you a layout of what you'll find in the box So feast your eyes on a box full of horror. It's our creepiest crate of the year Which would make sense being October. Uh, we partnered with mega popular youtube channel top fives To conjure a box packed with with killer goods Join us as we celebrate the sinister season Huh, I'm subscribed to top fives too on youtube. Oh, cool. Okay. First is All right. Uh, first is the hh holmes murder castle t-shirt So I bet this is it. Oh, this is that that's what this is. I'm gonna set this down. It's a little hard to I'll pull things out as I talk about it. Okay. I think this is Yeah, okay. So here's the t-shirt they were talking about Right there, uh, welcome to the world's Colombian expedition 1893 chicago illinois. There's hh holmes right there on the front It's pretty cool. Extra large shirt that they sent so it won't fit me. My bride might wear it I don't think she'll have any idea who hh holmes is but uh, okay. Uh, so next on the list is A warmed over death tarot card mug limited edition rise and shine From your oh, I didn't I'm sorry. I didn't read the the rest of the description on the the murder castle t I'm sorry care to stay the night This exclusive t features notorious american serial killer hh holmes. Okay, so I was right about that Who lured an untold number of victims into his murder castle during the 1893 chicago world's fair If you don't know anything about hh holmes, it really is interesting stuff You might want to do some research on that maybe I'll find a A couple of articles about him for weird darkness to share because it's really creepy stuff Okay, so this is the number two is the warmed over death tarot card mug limited edition Rise and shine from your eternal slumber inspired by the death tarot card This is a one of a kind drinking vessel in the perfect companion for those chilly autumn mornings So This is it. How do you get it open? Oh my gosh. I may have to edit this video Because I might get me 30 minutes to open this And I didn't like that. Okay, there it goes. All right, there you go. All right All right warmed over tarot card There's the mug nice Nice, we get we never really could have enough mugs at the Marlar house Especially my bride. She goes through mugs constantly.  I'm using one of these big big puppies Uh, it's uh, well, I'll I'll tell you about that a little bit later on. I think I did a video on that sometime back. That's good Okay, so uh, anyway, it keeps hot that hot stuff hot hot cool stuff cold plus It gives me a red tongue when I'm drinking red stuff. Okay So there's that Okay, next A newly released hardcover horror novel all sweet Okay This month your crate contains one of the two terrifying tales that will keep you reading well past the witching hour Dr. Cool not Dracula, but Dr. Cool Uh penned by bram stoker's great grand nephew dark, uh Day dayker stoker day three day for stoker All right Dr That's how it's spelled. D. A. C. R. E Okay, anyway, uh as well as j. D. Barker. They both penned the uh novel together It is a prequel to the novel uh Dracula cool, uh, the chilling tale follows the original author bram as the experiences supernatural experiences as a child That haunt him until he comes face to face with pure evil Cool um devil's day the sophomore release by Oh, okay. That's right. There's two tales in one. Okay In the same book devil's day the sophomore release by andrew michael hurley weaves a suspenseful tale of perturbing traditions and the english countryside The full core novel finds itself at the intersection of inexplicable events human behavior and demonic influence and draws a conclusion that will leave readers unsettled so But I cool I wonder if they need somebody to narrate this Even immortals have their beginnings Wow, that was a lot of reading Part three Wow very cool I love hardcover too. That's uh Well, that's really classy They could they could just so they could so easily have just sent you A paperback or even you know sent you a link to a pdf that you would download or like for kindle Which I know people like that kind of stuff nowadays, but it seems so cheap to me This is classy. You get a hardcover. That's pretty awesome. Okay, and then um Number four my favorite holiday is halloween tote bag Okay limited edition declare your devotion to the creepiest holiday of the year with this halloween inspired tote bag And definitely halloween inspired movie halloween inspired tote bag That's pretty cool Okay And that's uh, is that everything? Stranger things library bookmark, which we showed you earlier And then uh horror movie inspired key tag. Do I have oh, I guess there's one more thing The key tag Uh, we know horror is the key to your heart carry your undying love of the genre Wherever you go with one of 12 different horror movie inspired key tags ranging from motel hell to texas chainsaw massacre this one This one is from camp crystal lake west x county new jersey cabin number three Rest and relaxation since 1935 That's clever. I like that That's really cool. Well, that's the uh, that's the creepy crate nothing else in the box. No, that's it. So that's really cool stuff So thank you guys. Thank you to our creepy crate for sending that to me. I really appreciate it All right, so what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna upload this video to youtube and then I will post a link to it on the weird darkness twitter feed and if you just uh, if you like if you like the the uh weird darkness and then uh retweet This particular the uh, that particular Post that has the video of me opening this creepy crate Um, if you retweet that I will choose a winner from all of those retweets At the end of the month. All right, so that gives you a little bit of time and uh That's for your friends to do it too. I'm sure that'd be really cool All right, so that's what that's what I'll do. I'll give it away to a random retweeter of the twitter Post that I post with a video of me opening this. All right So I'll be looking for that at weird darkness on twitter all one word at weird darkness.  All right


Welcome to the Wallach Way! I'm Jessica! I'm Emily! And I'm Kevin! And today's video is going to be a learning on location. So we recently had the pleasure of going to the Crayola experience and we attended the location in Orlando, Florida. And we had a blast! Oh, definitely! Without a doubt! It was the best! Yeah! Okay, so we're each gonna tell you our favorite part and then share some clips from our trip. And hopefully you can go too! So Emily, you want to start? What was your favorite part of the trip? My favorite part of the trip was the drip art.  And you got to speed it up or slow it down. And you did a lot of that. Yes, you did! My favorite was the rocking paper. Oh, yeah! That's like my second favorite because I really like where my things were basically they color these two portions of a character or whatever they put them together and then they put them on a stage and with I guess the vibrations of everything that things are jumping up and down is it was a trip. It was amazing! It was really cool! And what were the two things you did you color two different things? What did you color? The only two they had was a frog and a pterodactyl and I colored both. But the cool thing about my pterodactyl was it was different on both sides. And on my frog I made a tree frog. I loved all of the crayola experience.  I think the thing I found the most interesting was the factory show where you actually got to watch them make crayons from start to finish and then learn more about the making. Oh, yeah, and the smell. Yeah, it was definitely crayons. It did. It like brings you back to your childhood. Crayola has a very distinctive smell. No doubt. And the cool to the gift shop, I got to get a ton of big like a giant tub of crayons which was the cool. Yeah, that was pretty cool. They have different size containers and they have a wall of crayons. And you can like take your favorite. She just kept going back and forth just kept layering them in until she filled up her whole container with some pretty cool crayons. Hello everybody! My name is Megan and I'm a crayonologist from the Crayola Crayon Factory all the way in east of Pennsylvania. Right here in the west egg, we make the crayons that are used all over the world. Our factory makes two and a half billion crayons. Every year, if you were to line up each of those crayons from end to end, they would circle the world almost six times. This type of equipment dates all the way back to the early 1900s. And Crayola still uses some of these machines. And their factory today, a non-toxic paraffin wax mixed with a high quality clay, and lots of different colors called pigments. So if we red pigments, what color crayons are we going to make? Red crayons. That's right. When Crayola crayons were first being made, workers like me would have to scrape all that poopy wax off about that. But now we have these handy machines available for us. Oh, I'm sharp! Great observations, Scarlett. The sharp tip of a crayola crayon is made that way in the molding table. Now I want you guys to get a closer look at these new boards so we're going to bring them around the room. That face is so cute. We're just starting to open their little eyes. That one just so you don't want it so precious.  You do? That's how we make sure that these crayons don't just look perfect. We test our strength and their colors too. Our new crayons are here in the harbor. This bed holds all the labels. Did you know, even though we make over 200 different colors of Crayola crayons, we only use 13 different colors for all those labels. So we use a special kind of non-toxic glue that's made out of corn starch and water. And when I start this machine, the crayon is going to turn and get covered in this sticky glue. Then the crayons will be guided down the chute and loaded onto the molding wheel so they come out like this. This is the packaging machine. We put together four crayons and one box. These dispensers are filled with the new crayons. The crayon will go onto the little wheel, turn it around the wheel, look down below. And drop onto the box with the others. So this part of the machine will take that box out and open it up. By that, the crayon is going to push those crayons into the bottom of the box. The machine will then close the box on the box until they're all safe and sound inside. Oh, what about when you made the crayons yourself and named them? I thought that was pretty cool too. Oh yeah, that was really delicious. And I put a little star on that. Would you recommend it? Would you tell a friend to go? Totally. 10 out of 10 if there was 100, 100 out of 100. I think it was pretty cool, especially if you have a creative kiddo because they have the drip art, the melting mold. They have the model magic and all of this for the most part is included. Because when you go in, you get a certificate and some coins and that's part of your admission. So you get all of that with admission. If you want more, you can obviously purchase more coins to do more. But you get all of it as part of just your standard admission. And it really is a ton of creative outlets for kids.  And I've got to say it was pretty great. You got to walk through and experience everything about crayons. But they also had a play place. They gave the kids somewhere to expend some of that energy, that built up energy that they've had. They have snacks and drinks on site so you can pick out pretzels or whatever. And I guess the last thing I would say, coming from an artist's standpoint, remember there's a quote that they say in the manufacturing portion when you go sit in there that says that crayons are basically ran on brain power, not batteries. It's really cool. Let your kids play. Crayons don't hurt anything. And they're made of stuff that's not going to hurt them. So let them color, color, color. It'll build that ability and give them an outlet for their art. Two thumbs up.