This 10th year of Daily Tech News show is made possible by its listeners. Thanks to every single one of you, including Brad, Paul Teeson, Ali Senjabi, and new patron, Edward. Everyone welcome, Edward. Hey, Edward. On this episode of DTNS, people are mad at Bungie about developer layoffs at YouTube for blocking the ad blockers. We'll explain all of that. Plus, it was very interesting to see what search terms may Google the most money, even if the info is five years old. This is the Daily Tech News for Wednesday, November 1st, All Saints Day, the reason for the season 2023. In Los Angeles, I'm Tom Merritt. And from Studio Trisket Gang, I'm Sarah Lane. In Salt Lake City, I'm Scott Johnson. And I'm the show's producer, Roger Chang. All right, my friends, did you have a good Halloween? Everybody tricked and treated? Mostly treated. I hid in the back room with my dog.  We worked it out. Sorry to all the children who didn't get the Milky Way bar that you didn't want anyway. The one Milky Way bar that you had? Well, there were like little ones, but I'm like, nobody wants the Milky Way. Roger took kids trick-or-treating, I'm guessing. I took one kid trick-or-treating. 15 homes. I wanted 20, but eh. What would you do with the other kid? You wanted 20. Oh, the other one stayed home and handed out candy because she's afraid of going out on Halloween. Oh, really? That's so sad. Well, let's move on from that sad story to the quick hits. Representatives from government, business, and academic institutions recently met in the UK. From that meeting, they announced an AI policy paper dubbed the Bletchley Declaration, named for Bletchley Park, which Adam Turing and others developed computers in that broke code during World War II. It says, AI should be safe and human-centric, using the term frontier AI, which OpenAI already uses to refer to models that are in development already. The U.S. says an AI safety institute will live within the National Institute of Standards and Technology. The UK, which organized the gathering, announced that follow-on AI summits will happen in South Korea within six months and in France in a year. Yeah, so I agree. AI should be safe. Wall Street Journal sources say we work plans to file for bankruptcy. And no, this is not an old story. We work had not filed for bankruptcy previously. There were a lot of stories back in the day saying they were going to, they never did.  However, we work missed an interest payment to bondholders on October 2 and will be considered in default if those payments or other arrangements aren't made by November 2. Kenya's first domestic smartphone assembly plan is official and located outside capital city Nairobi. The plan is a joint venture between Kenya's SafariCom and China's Shenzhen Tele1 technology and is expected to create around 500 new jobs. Netflix announced it now has more than 15 million monthly active users on its cheapest ad-supported tier with around 30% of new subscribers choosing that tier. Starting in Q1 2024, Netflix is going to start selling more ads to them, but also showing less ads. Title sponsorships will be available for its premier properties, for example, the Crown. So if you're a viewer and you watch three episodes in a row, the title sponsorship will let you watch a fourth episode without ad interruptions. I've seen this kind of thing on other platforms like Hulu, for example. So Netflix is playing catch up, but it looks like they're serious about ads, making some money off it. Netflix also will sell ads that can be tied to a specific big moment in a show. Now back in August, India announced it would require licenses for companies that wanted to sell electronics in the country with the idea to encourage more domestic production. Well, some companies objected in a big way. In fact, India has since reversed the policy or at least changed it a bit. Now it's trying out a new system. Starting Wednesday, November 1st, as of this recording that would be today, more than 100 companies have to report the quantity and value of their imports to India with no restrictions imposed until at least September of next year. That would be 2024. After that date, the government will evaluate the data from those reports and consider a new import authorization plan. All right, let's talk about why everybody on the internet is mad. Where do we start? Tom, the internet has been mad for some time now and gamers sometimes the most angry of the mad. And that has been just what you have to do when you're on the internet. But that's not the news part. The news part is one of the latest reasons that gamers specifically are mad. On Monday, Sony owned bungee laid off around 100 people. That's not good. If you're laid off, of course, it's not good. But it's not unusual these days in or out of gaming. There's a lot of flux with companies trying to figure out their bottom line and trimming the fat as it's sometimes called were applicable. So we heard about the layoffs on Monday and then Bloomberg reported Destiny 2's the final shape downloadable content would be delayed from February to June. Bloomberg also reported that executives told bungee employees two weeks ago before the layoffs that revenue was 45% below expectations. CEO Pete Parsons said Destiny 2 was not retaining players as expected and pre orders for the final shape were lower than expected as well. There's a lot of talk on the IGN article about this that some of the employees had been saying we tried to tell them why and they wouldn't listen and then they went and laid us off. So yeah, I could see why there'd be some employee upset about this. But it seems like there's a lot of people just in general more upset about this particular layoff, this particular round of game layoffs from this particular company than others, some of them that were even larger like epic laid off 700 plus people. Scott, why do you think that is? Well, I think you could make the argument there's a final straw happening here, because it has been so bad to share in terms of layoffs in the industry. Mostly that's accentuated or made worse by the fact that this is one of the best years in the industry in terms of overall successful titles. Critically, it's one of the best years on record in terms of, you know, game reviews and things getting perfect tens and so on. So it just feels like such a weird dichotomy to players to hear about these layoffs, continued layoffs, and hear about the success the industry is having. And it doesn't make a lot of sense to a lot of people, especially if they're not, you know, extremely invested on how public companies work and how these sorts of things happen. But in particular with Bungie, my theory is Bungie is a bit of an industry darling and has been since a very, very long time ago. And they they are seen as a company that is very valuable, one that can do no wrong. They are the originators and makers of Halo, lots of stuff before that. And since then, the very successful Destiny games. When Sony bought them, a lot of people thought, well, this is great. They're getting flushed with cash. This will be good for them. Turns out maybe it isn't. There's still some quote unquote fat, as Sarah said, that needs to be trimmed. I hate that term, but it works. Yeah, I know. It's frustrating. It's not a nice term, but it's a term for a company saying, hey, we got to get rid of something. Yeah, we got to we got to do something, which, you know, again, your mileage may vary on how much that stuff is palatable for the common man or not. But the final shape, which is their next expansion for deal or for this game is now delayed, which means you got a lot of Bungie faithful whose main game is Destiny. That is their main game that was announced earlier this year that they're also working on a remake of Marathon, a game they made forever ago, decades ago, a very old game that originally appeared on on an old Mac. And it was awesome. I can't wait for this remake. But now that's been internally delayed to 2025 on top of this DLC delay for Destiny. So what you've got is a one game company currently, that's the one game they have out there. And that fan base is furious, because it not only affects the company they like, it not only affects, you know, them in all of those ways, but it affects them in they're not going to get the next expansion when they were supposed to. And so everything feels off and delayed and weird. I think that's a big part of it.  And the problem is, there are some companies that are benefiting wildly from some title success. And then there's some stalwarts like Bungie, where Destiny 2 is not performing as well as it used to the game's getting a little long in the tooth. It's time for something new, hence them working on the multiplayer only marathon follow up or remake. So there's a lot of potential there. It just I think gamers are getting to the point where it's like Bungie also like even Bungie's having this, what are you going to tell me that Steam's going to lay off everybody? Like it just starts to add up to a point that the dissonance between success and layoffs is starting to hurt. And I think it's perceived success, not actual success, right? There's a lot of people just reading other people's comments, you know, on Reddit or Twitter or wherever, and thinking like these guys are raking it in when in fact, as you pointed out, maybe some of them are even the ones raking it in actually aren't raking it in as much in this current economy as they used to be. And a lot of them like Bungie were not raking it in.  And yes, that is happening. It's always happening. But I don't think that's why you lay off people right now. I think it's because you lose money. People also have a tendency to lump them all into one place or one company. And it's not that way at all. And some of our older season developers names like Bungie like Blizzard like others are kind of at a dip right now. Like that's it's just different. There's different people who are in the lead. And so you can come out and say, Hey, Baldur's Gate 3 sold so many copies that they're hiring 500, you know, nobody's talking about those successes. And not everyone published Baldur's Gate 3. So you have to not publish Baldur's Gate 3. No, they didn't. It turns out. Yeah, they wish they had, but they did. Yeah. Well, YouTube is also the target of much ire today. YouTube has launched its ad blocker prevention efforts worldwide. Companies started testing the policy earlier this year. First, it did pop up reminders. Then it did more, I want to say more explicit warnings, but they weren't cursing. They were just, you know, very expressive, very particular, saying you're going to be limited to playing three videos. Imagine if they were like, you know, you better. No, they were just saying very, very specifically, let's say you get three videos. If you don't turn off your ad blocker for us, then that's all you're going to get. But now it's just everybody, everybody who has an ad blocker is going to get a notification that directs you to either allow YouTube ads doesn't tell you to turn your ad blocker off. It just says allow our ads in your ad blocker or pay for YouTube premium, which means we're your ad free and your ad blocker doesn't matter to us anymore. Now we talk all the time about like, Hey, if you have thoughts on anything we talk about on the show, send it to feedback at daily tech news show.com. And sometimes that feedback lends itself to a story just like this. This one came in from Josh who wrote, wanted to get your thoughts on this online outrage that's going on on YouTube about blocking ad blockers. I just don't understand the entitlement that people feel. Most of the comments on YouTube subreddit is that, Oh yes, the poor big company wants more money. And or how dare they make me watch ads. Josh says, is the current internet so used to free stuff that they don't realize that they're actually using ad supported products? YouTube is simple. You watch ads, you get free video, or you pay for an ad free experience. How are people expecting a free experience? Do they feel there'll be a turning point or do we, Josh kind of points the question to us on the internet soon where people realize that free doesn't mean free as other sites start cracking down on ad blockers.  You're also familiar with ad blockers. So who you sadden with here? It's funny. I as somebody who used to use an ad blocker on YouTube for reasons that had nothing to do with I did that and ads annoyed me. It was that I had stuff I wanted to do for show stuff and I didn't want interrupted video while I did the show. So I was showing like secondary screen stuff and going, All right, well, no ads here. It's just going to be pure. But the value proposition, I think anyway, so Scott's opinion, the value proposition that is YouTube premium these days is really strong. I not only get an ad free experience, but I also get YouTube music for free, which is my main music service now, and not for free, but it's included in there, as well as downloads offline and many other reasons playing it, you know, playing it in your app while the phones close that kind of stuff. There are benefits to having that service. And I really like it. It's one of my favorite subscriptions. So since then, I've had the same benefits. Get rid of the ad blocker. The whole time though, I kept going, when will YouTube instigate some sort of ad blocker, at least a pop up to say, Hey, we see you're using this, maybe you'd like our stuff more if you didn't or something, either some softball like that, or even something harder, like, well, you can use YouTube while you're using your ad blocker. And the fact that it took them this long is a little surprising to me, but I think that's why people are mad, but not mad that this doesn't make sense because it does. I mean, it does make sense. It's there. They're mad because they've been getting a thing without having to watch ads. And now they might not be able to. It's really simple as that. And I don't know. I don't know how those people are going to, how you're going to make it in the world, you know, past this point. But to me, to me it is, if it's, if the ads aren't too abusive or too hard for you, great, you're good. If you would rather not have them, there's a way, there's a way to pay through it. I don't pay for YouTube premium. I mean, I pay for YouTube TV. So YouTube is getting my money in some sense, but as far as YouTube, I don't hang out on YouTube enough for it to be more than just like a very minor inconvenience, you know, to like go past an ad or to see something, you know, that's mid role. It doesn't bother me that much. Sure.  I might check it out. And I would assume it to render itself useless very soon, because of course the company, you know, doesn't benefit anything in any way from me or anyone else using something like that. So yeah, there are workarounds. I don't expect workarounds to just work. And I don't expect a company to not try to patch those workarounds and get around those because they are in the business of making money, which is why we have the platform in the first place. I really do. I mean, listen, I'm always down for a good workaround. Let's just put it that way. At the same time, I feel like someone being up in arms about something like this is missing the point of the content that they wanted in the first place. I think you have to remember that it is quite frequent in humanity that people say things that are different than what they actually do or even believe. So you got a lot of people out there saying like, I can't believe they're doing this because they think they'll get supporters. But really, I think what most people are mad about is they put an ad blocker in place because the web can be unusable without an ad blocker. Certain sites just, it's really hard to see the content if you don't have an ad blocker. And so they put the ad blocker in place for those reasons and then didn't realize or didn't even care maybe that there was blocking the YouTube ads, but that was a happy side effects. And then YouTube comes along and starts giving them this problem, right? Instead of watching the video they wanted to watch, now they have to deal with making a decision. And if there's anything humans hate, it's having to make a decision that you weren't expecting. So this is to me more about friction. People are getting mad because they're like, I don't want to deal with this. And yet it also has to do with getting around ads and not paying and all of that. But it's mostly that this thing that worked and I didn't have to think about, I now have to think about it. I think that's, that starts people being mad. And then they add on rationalizations to that. And it's because the companies are greedy. I think that answers Josh's question is, I don't think these people don't understand how the internet works. They just don't think there's any consequence to them complaining. And they're upset because they had to change things and everybody hates change. Yeah, I think that's a fair way of looking at it. Also, if you're waiting for companies to stop being greedy, you're going to be waiting a long time. Well, I mean, and that's a whole conversation. Are companies being greedy or a company's just trying to stay in business, right? Well, yeah, what's the difference? It's your more profit company. Your bottom line is that's the goal. As a very small version of this, I have struggled every freaking day of this year trying to figure out how to make sure we treat our audience well while also paying the bills. It's not fun.  I'm like, yeah, you won't have the product if they can't figure out how to pay for it. That's just the way the world is. Yeah. So to me, it's really this simple. If, if YouTube's like, well, all right, now we have this premium option. It's really not that bad. It's relatively inexpensive. If we want more people to use it, one of our chief benefits needs to be a benefit and not a thing they can do easily for free. I think it's really that simple. They want that to be a value.  Well, I bet you have a thought about this. I bet you're like, Tom, you forgot to mention or Tom, you're totally wrong about this. You could send that email or perhaps even an email that supports what I'm saying. Any of them are welcome. Feedback at DailyTechNewsShow.com. We all know that Google makes money from search. People all over the world search for pretty much every word, subject, phrase imaginable on Google. And especially around this time of the year, the company itself will do lots of retrospectives to talk about search term popularity, words of the year, all that kind of stuff. But not all Google searches make Google money speaking of Google and money. The company itself has said it only shows ads on around 20% of total queries, which you probably don't notice. But now that I've said that, start paying attention. Do you get a sponsor with every search you do? You do a lot more searches than you think. It only runs ads on what it deems commercial queries. So if you're searching best new car 2023 or cheapest flight to Palermo, you're going to connect with advertisers with that. So they're going to serve you an ad. If you're doing something overly specific, like, what did boxer dogs eat in 1760? I haven't been looking at Sarah's search history, but I could guess. I'm not saying I did it and I'm not saying I didn't. You're not going to run an ad against that because it's not really a commercial situation. Exactly. So the ongoing US and Google antitrust trial is giving us some more insight into what Google actually considers the most lucrative searches. Now this is just for the week of September 22nd, 2018. So it's a few years back now, but this is fully based on what made Google the most money, not what Google wanted you to think were the searches that were the most popular. For example, iPhone eight, iPhone eight plus, auto insurance, car insurance, cheap flights, car insurance quotes, direct TV, online colleges, AT&T, Hulu, iPhone, Uber, Spectrum, Comcast, Xfinity, insurance quotes, free credit report, cheap car insurance, AARP and LifeLock. Now again, some of these, hey listen, Scott, some of us are getting a little bit older. Okay. So let's just be cool to the aging members of DTNS. Thank you. I'm right here. I'm a proud member of AARP. I'll have you. You know, aging happens. We're lucky to age. Okay. But again, going back to Google, some of these queries aren't going to surprise you, but it's the first time, because it was part of this legal dispute, we've seen this data from Google saying these are the queries that made us the most money rather than some sort of like cluster of popular terms that would be like a year in, you know, year in review type stuff. Yeah. Most of the stuff is actually pretty easy to explain AARP among them. Google likes to convince people that you want to be the top search term when someone searches for you. So the best way to do that is buy and add. That's why a lot of times you'll search for something like search for Apple, you'll see Apple in the sponsored results and then Apple in the SEO results. And that's because you know what, people do a lot of SEO stuff and you might not be the top result for your own search term. So that's where you get Hulu, AT&T, AARP. That's why you get so much money being made off iPhone because when this list was compiled, the iPhone 8 was new. So everybody's looking at the new iPhone. The ones that are, I think once you weed out all of that, like, oh, these are just popular companies who were paying to make sure they were showing up first, then you get all the insurance and it's like, oh yeah, people definitely comparing insurance. This is what people actually care about and search for. It's not like someone off like, hey, what celebrity did this thing? Although sometimes those searches are popular. It's more of like, yeah, like online college options. Right. Yeah. You know, like stuff like that. Somebody wanted to be the top online college, so they paid to make sure that they would show up on that. Also, I liked free credit report, which is really just trying to get you to pay for a credit report. So somebody was like, let's put our sponsor up there. I think freecreditreport.com is a service or it was, I don't know. I'm thinking of the commercial jingle in my head, which wasn't actually free after all. Yeah. See, that's the song even. It's funny though, because these are kind of evergreen, right? Some of these searches, most of these searches. And even though iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus would have been kind of. But cheap flights. Yeah, that's got to be consistent, right? Oh yeah. Heck yeah. I mean, the phone stuff I get, that's a little brief zeitgeisty kind of thing, but consistently, maybe every year the next model gets searched for a lot. But things like, I need insurance. I need a credit score. Like this feels like life stuff. So I'm not surprised. This is all, the Uber struck me as, I doubt people were searching for like, what's the latest with Uber? You know, is this a good company? What are the options? More than they were just being like, I want a car. Yeah. Because a lot of Google searches end up being just like, let's like, Facebook, Uber, you know, Apple, I want to go do that other thing. When you're searching for that, that their link shows up first, which is why it's making so much money. Exactly. Yeah. I think it's worth point now before we finish up this conversation, that Apple having iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus up there at the top means that Apple was paying a lot of money. iPhone is down later on this to Google. And we already know from this same trial that Apple was also receiving a lot of money from Google. So I don't know if it ends up being a wash, but there's a lot of money going both ways in this relationship. And shake drugs. One other thing here, back in 2016, Google began shifting its search indexing to prioritizing mobile. Long time listeners of DTS will remember that very episode where we talked about it possibly. Well, Google announced Tuesday that after seven years, the switch is complete. They've finished moving search indexing to prioritizing mobile now and the company will reduce the crawling of the web conducted by its desktop Google bot going forward. If you don't have a mobile version of your site, you're going to be in trouble. So get that thing. Get that on there. Well, you might be taking a trip soon. And that trip might include an airplane. So if that's you, Chris Christensen has an update on how in-flight entertainment options are getting smarter and might actually help you on your next multi-stop adventure. This is Chris Christensen from Amateur Traveler with another Tech in Travel Minute. I'm flying to Malta next week and I'm flying through London via Minneapolis. And I wonder if I'm going to have on my Delta flight the new personalized entertainment system. So this is a seatback entertainment with a little bit of a twist here, because you're logging in with your Delta frequent flyer account, your SkyMiles account. And then it's keeping track of that you are sitting in that seat. And so the second flight I'm on, it might say, hey, do you want to continue that movie you're watching? Or it might know what my favorite movies and TV shows are because it knows who I am. It's personalized. It'll be interesting to see if that catches on. This is Chris Christensen from Amateur Traveler. I've got a Delta flight coming up, going through JFK to Brussels. And I'm hoping that I have this because that is useful to be like, oh, I don't know if I want to start a movie right now, but if you get another leg of a flight and you know you can pick right up easily, my only question is, how easy is this going to be to log in? Am I going to have to tap in my SkyMiles number or can I do a QR code or something? Hopefully they make it really easy, but I do love this idea that you could start Oppenheimer and not worry about the flight being too short, you know. Yeah, across my 18 hours of flying out and 18 hours of fact, I might finish Oppenheimer. You might finish Oppenheimer, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Long movie. Come on. We can't be expected to finish this. Too long. Or, uh, children of the, what is it? Something of the Flower Man? The Flower Moon. Scorsese movie. Very long, very long. That one's not available on the plane yet. All right. Let's check out the mailbag. Let's do it. Gerald passed along a story about a drone. Gerald said, heard this on the news this morning here in Cleveland, and I know Tom has been a supporter of Zipline for years. Thought you might be interested. So here's the story that Gerald passed along. The Cleveland Clinic is partnering with the San Francisco based drone company Zipline to deliver vaccines, blood, animal health products, and more to homes, hospitals, and businesses in the US and other countries. The clinic thinks that hundreds of deliveries a day might be possible from a central hub for things like lab samples, medical and surgical supplies, items for hospital at home services as a patient. You have to be at home to receive the medication and with every drone, only carrying one package at a time to minimize mix ups or abuse. Yes. I'm not a supporter of Zipline so much as a fan of making sure people know that Amazon wasn't the only one or even the oldest one doing this sort of thing, because Zipline's been doing this for literally decades now. But yeah, it's good to see them. They've got other US based operations going on, and it's interesting to see them come to Cleveland. To something as big as the Cleveland Clinic, which is not a tiny little corner store or anything. That's a big operation. Well, we thank everybody for writing in feedback at dailytechnewshow.com. The more we know from you, the more we know what you want. So thank you in advance, and thank you for the past as well. Thank you to you, Scott Johnson, for the past, present, and future. Let folks know, what is your latest? There was a time, not many years ago, where every year, no matter what, I was going to an event called BlizzCon, a little shindig thrown by Blizzard Entertainment. They've been gone for a few years. Their first in physical event is happening since then this weekend. I'm still not going, but me and my co-host from Core are going to be doing a co-stream for at least the introduction. We're not even sure how long it's supposed to go, because it's a little bit different this year. But we're going to cover a whole bunch of stuff that they show on stage during that event. If you would like to watch us and have a little bit of commentary along with that presentation, check it out this Friday. You can find the details at core over at frogpants.com slash core. And while you're at it, check out the podcast, because our next episode will feature a little segment with me and Tom talking about why he's going there. You might be surprised why. Yeah, stay tuned and find out. The answer may surprise you. Indeed. Patrons of the show, you're not done. You don't have to end this.   You are not done. There's no recess yet. We have more for you. The extended show, Good Day Internet, LinkedIn past a member milestone is offering some new tools, some AI tools for those who pay for its services. But just a reminder, you can catch the show. We do it live, Monday through Friday at 4 p.m. Eastern, 200 UTC. We're on demand as well, but join us live if you can. DailyTechnewshow.com slash live is where you can find out more about that. We're back doing it all again tomorrow with Justin Robbie Young joining us. Talk to you then. This show is part of the Frog Pants Network. Get more at frogpants.com.


I'm your hero for this afternoon, and I have the pleasure and honor to do it this afternoon. Your name is Plusea, and Plusea is actually an e-textile tailor. She's willing to do skills and all kinds of handicaps and swearing that she actually, and time that she lost while doing her projects. We'll really bring us this news. Hello, and thank you to the CCC camp for this opportunity to speak about my work. Before I introduce myself, I think I'd actually like to introduce the materials that I work with. So what is e-textiles? Who here has heard the word before e-textiles? So e-textiles comes from electronics and the idea is to integrate electronic functionality into textiles. In order to do that, one of the first starting point is to start with some kind of structures that both conduct electricity, but can also be used to construct electricity. The characteristics of normal clothing or textiles are a conductive thread. While wires are equivalent to a cable, which is mostly made of copper, and conductive threads are often referred to as textiles, so them and weave them and knit them without breakings. And one layer of material can be sewn with a thin layer of metals, so a lot of conductive e-textile materials are metallic. And these coatings on the threads, they work better. So a lot of these are synthetic threads, but another way to do it is to almost spin the thread from a combination of metal, that's not so strong with metal. So again, sometimes synthetic fibers or images we just saw, steel fibers, that's made of wool, and then some of them are made of wool, and then some of them are worked into fabrics, and some of them are first produced woven or knit, and then coated, but sometimes woven or knit, sometimes it's woven or knit, sometimes it's stitched, sometimes it's fabric, sometimes it's fabric, you can actually sense changes, you can notice changes when you pull these things apart, when you hold these materials in your hand and pull them apart, and these materials then have clear electrical properties that we can use. And I just mentioned that the metallic coatings and high-legged materials, and there are also polymer structures that you can use that also have useful properties for us. And we see that this structure was polymerized when you pull it apart, then you can see this behavior of the material, and that's why this fabric stays white, and that's the material with which I work a lot, and often, even when I just started doing all of this, I thought it would be a new thing, and then I realized that everything here is not so new, that it wasn't really used for electronic clothing, but for decoration pieces that were often used in the past. For example, if you think of the combat bands, so the combat bands, the jackets were also changed, and there was a German company that took care of things like this. And I wanted to tell you two projects that I looked at at the time, the story of electronics and textiles. One project was called Stitching Walls, and it was about creating a computer that was always being used, and it was also about describing who worked with this material and what for. And another project was a book, The Little Old Ladies, and she had the core memory for the Apollo space mission, and so this was a project that was used by the Apollo space mission, and so if you wanted to program a program that was going to run on this space mission, it would be kind of a program, it would be kind of a program, and it is hard to integrate these structures, with the magnetic poles. So these ideas and techniques are not so new. So those were the materials and a bit about their past, some of them were kind of talking about themselves, my name is Hannah Pennavisson, kind of becoming an E-tech storyteller I've been working with Mika Satomi for the last 13 years. I've worked with her a lot of times. Together with her I'm working with Zeichenwerde, which is also a co-working project with her. So as a textile tailor, you spend a lot of your time working on circuits. This is a speaker coil that I'm using. And I think what got me into e-textiles was, I was not so much into e-textiles. It's not the technology. I studied course design and I had to do a course on sensor technology. And it was shown how we could build our own pressure sensors, for example, an aluminum foil with a little bit of data between building it. And then I first learned or understood what was happening there. I could understand what an interface element was and I could adjust these interface elements and I could do new things out of it. And I could know that I could use the e-textiles components in circuitry and as I was preparing this talk, I started to think about what it means to be an e-textile tailor. And I thought quite a bit about the properties of the material. What it means to be an e-textile tailor. I thought quite a bit about the properties of the material. That's what I'd like to say now. An e-textile tailor should have, if you want to work with e-textiles, you should also be conducted. You should also be conducted. You should also be conducted. have if you want to work with e-tech cells is that you should also be conductive. And I guess on the one hand I believe to be electrically conductive. Interesting actually, and I think we don't think about it enough, but our water and salt, the reason we can handle a lot of these things is because of the resistive skin. So these three to five volt circuit cell I work with, if I didn't have the skin to protect my innards, they would actually be quite dangerous. And I ask myself, is it productive to be active, and to be dangerous, if I don't have the skin to protect my innards. But it's also important that we can be conductive. So that's one thing. The other two things I do at night, you have to be a bit romantic when it comes to e-tech cells, if you want to be in a studio for some material you want to work too seriously. So to be romantic and conductive, and then also to be romantic, electrically conductive, and critical. Aware of why you're in. So for me, in the camp is to do what you're doing. For me, my experience in this field was creative expression, like, yeah, creative expression, power, but I have also seen that many of the things that I do in my work are made by people who are not so happy. The whole electronic industry is built up on this exploitation of work and other things. So what I would like to do now is to talk about some of these projects that I worked on in the last years. But before I do that, I want to see if I can get these to work. Let's see. Cool. Going on the time. So I was thinking maybe I would... Okay, I need to adjust these a bit, maybe. So I'm going to talk about these the last kind of last 10, 13 years of my project work. Not maybe not a romantic relationship, but a relationship. I met them through my first project, to work with them. And so maybe our first way drug to e-tech sales was massage. They might say, yes, because they feel obliged, but we were observing, though, that gamers, you know, for a few minutes, but not very long. But then we found out that video gamers have a lot of similar, no problem, very similar movements, hours of the same movement with their game controllers to play some games. We thought it would be a logical thing for both of us to combine the massage in the back of somebody else. And we built game controllers, which work with the back of somebody else. You can see the action. You can see that the video is a little bit small, but you can see how it works on the back of the person. So we also didn't have anything hard. Just the textiles to the game controller. So back of the people, we didn't want to have any textiles. And how we could solve the e-textiles to handle them, so we could get out of them. And it worked very well as a game controller. People were very motivated to play this game. But as the receiver of the massage, it wasn't the best massage. And here you can see some of the things we found out and produced. But in the end it was a relatively simple hack. We have the controller with the tissue and we didn't know anything about e-textiles yet. But in the process of making the game controller, we also found other material and possibilities. Here are some textiles that we developed for the project. And that was a phase of the relationship where you completely fell in love with the game controller. So we had a lot of fun with the game controller. We had a lot of fun with the game controller. We had a lot of fun with the game controller. This was a phase of the relationship where you totally fell in love and everything was exciting and you tried a variety of things. And here are some demonstrations of no, sensors with some capacitors and sensors and from all of these things that we have developed, we have looked at different projects, here I have developed a chain, with these stones that then send signals to contact and that is a relatively new project based on an idea, based on the idea that you have a pressure pad on your arm that you can use to control processes and that is when you control things and on the left we have a data glove with which you control the position of the hand system, that was the fun phase with where we have researched a lot, tried things and what you do when you are often, well, what you do when you have met someone and everything is wonderful and then you want to tell the whole thing to other people and that is why we have packed it on our website and the whole thing has grown over the years and whenever we have started a new project or something new, we have published it and we wanted that and in 2013 we organized the first e-text part summer camp that is not necessarily like the camp here but it is about people who have used e-text parts to exchange their experience and to meet together and everyone could submit to design of their own and you could reach more and then we tried to exchange the projects and everyone worked on the projects of other people and when you look at the materials and documentation online you can see that there is a lot of technology or methodology behind it and here on this website you can see a lot of examples of it and then kind of coming into this relationship at some point you need to stay together for longer and if you want to stay together for longer then you have to leave something else and this is a project that you have done at the time, it is an open source robot, a robot skin and we have tried to build the human skin and for the robot arms, we have the robot arms and then with the help of light and non-light materials we experimented and then there was a skin layer with the columns and then there was a skin layer with the columns between the rows and columns I am rubbing my leg so in these videos you see the robot arms and what is very difficult was to distinguish between the arm itself moving relatively difficult was to distinguish if the arm moves itself or if the arm moves from an external object on the left you see how the arm moves a little bit and on the right you see how the arm moves and on the cilinder you see a push of the arm itself which was a project that I did as a commission from someone else this was part of my training which I can do other things that don't make money money to work with other things so that I can finance these things without money working with e-textiles, it kind of came that we started thinking about what tools would make this working with materials, and we were able to do this rather than with these things, taking into account measuring the resistance, we could actually measure that resistance and continue in this case. So this is a hookwork somewhere, and here I had the experience, it's one electrode that the needle, the other, had, I can clip on with the ellipse, and then I had a two-fold switch and I could clip this little display on it, and then I can hook on with it, and at the same time measure the resistance of the fabric that I have. It's a little, small, with the resistance of the thumb potentiometer so that I can set the tension part so that I can get different experiences. That was one tool, another tool that we built, came because we were working quite a lot with optic fiber. Every time we made a project like this, we ended up doing it every time when we made a project like this, we found another strange solution to mount the LED directly and to mount the end of such a light leader, and then we thought, let's find a solution that we could use again and again. The best solution that we found were these somewhat hummel-like connections. We have the LED in, in, out, and we mounted the circuit from the LED around the tube that you can then also, like, couple of tubes. They were so elaborate to make, it took me a minute to make one of these. So I was thinking about how to build one of these. We could edit the design with something more mass-manufacturable. The first products that led to an idea that this is going to be the first prototype, but when we actually had a side, we kind of flipped the PCB back up again and we get used to it now. And so it took me a while to translate that idea, and then last year we had no mistakes when they worked. It's just a breakout board, but the tolerance is very small. So they work and I actually have some with them. Use some of them later. I think we'll do a bit of a workshop with the controller to control what we're going to make some light-up elements of your show and it's also nice for you to shine from either end. You can mix colors in the Okay, so coming back to this relationship analogy, we have to kind of sustain our practice and work on repeating aspects of the relationship. It should be a video. Oh well, there was a, then came a point where we got a bit disillusioned, the ride with the textiles. We started, because we were designing things as well as the young ones. We're actually starting to go into the world. We actually started to take our way into the world and wearable technology became something that was not so far away and futuristic anymore, but companies really tried to get a bigger thought going into when these materials were going into the world. We didn't really think about what's going to happen when this material goes into the world. What effects will it have on the environment? What kind of environment do we have to have with them? What's the economy with them? We produced a fictional commission set in the future and we called it the Crying Dress and we wanted to do this where we were going to do this future project, which we're going to practice in, but also the future of the craft, but also the future of the materials that could be in the world with these materials. At that time we didn't know that six years later, we didn't know that a tailor shop would actually open a real investment in what it could mean to make a custom-made and handcrafted product. So 2000, we had two big rooms, one was for the showroom and exhibition and what kind of equipment was there, what kind of material was there, and another room was the workshop where we worked to realize the things that the people from us ordered. So this is a bit of what it was like in the workshop. We had a price list that was not based on any realistic or maybe because we didn't want it to be compared to how we were going to have this. We was more than willing to tell anyone, can I do that? Can I do that? Or did you want to support our labor time in part in terms of our time in the project? And the price list was more symbolic about a exchange and a part of the material we used. In total, we were open all year. In the year, 14 people came to us, and they had ideas for things they wanted to have. We just put them together, and that's just a pair of them. And some of these 14 people wanted to have something, so that they can feel their body and that it becomes light. I would make a pair of these commissions a little more detailed, but here is Boris, who plays the Poesone in a street band. And in the band, they started to add LED lights to their instruments. And when our store was over, he made this connection, that he would like to have a costume for himself, that he would have to carry in his street band, so we started to make him into dice. What kind of challenges are there in terms of work? How wearable it has to be, how robust it has to be. And in the end, we have decided to make an asymmetrical vest. Based on the sketches, we start making a bow. We have used a prototype that we can use as a prototype in parallel. We have developed the electronic parts, which in this case are LED strips. We have basically made our own strips where the strips are kind of placed and then we have these strips in a kind of slanted pattern so that it doesn't go straight to the front, but seems to be coming out of your folds. At some point someone made up of this orange material to make as much of the vest as possible out of this. We have decided to make as much of the vest as possible out of this corset with a little knit strip. And then when he puts the best lights up in his sensor and when he breathes in the light, the vest gets brighter and when he breathes out to play the sound, the light gets darker. This was one of the last tests with Ben, who had it on Boris, and we tried it on Boris. And that was the first sound. But yeah, he's playing the trombone. And you can see the lights light up. If it's possible to get sound, it would be great if you could get it on. It's okay. Okay, yeah, it's okay. Okay, so now I presented quite a few. And now I have presented some projects. If almost like me, this E-Tech-style tailor, using these materials to have ideas, put them out into the world, become a bit more aware, though, of what is actually happening in this process. That's a bit of a different perspective. What is the relationship between me and the materials that I'm working with? This feeling started to turn more and more into an idea that maybe there is something more happening and it's so much of my ideas and translating them into objects in the world. But I think also the materials are trying to tell me something. I decided to break rule number eight in this year, so I'm trying to analyze and create some different processes. And I embarked on a month-long to come up with a new material for the movement that changes colors and temperature. And I just kind of explored it, and I wanted to combine it with other materials and combine it with other materials. And while I was doing this exploration, I was taking a lot of notes and making sounds. And then at the end I went back over everything and I made almost like a time-lapse of how these videos were made for me. And I think I recognized what I think but I didn't know really about that at all in all of my practice in the last years. And the first one was that I think I followed the materials much more of the time than I think with something that was going to be a good process. I think I need to be good at listening to what the material, what properties it had and that's maybe the second thing is that thinking and making were very much embedded and connected to the properties of these materials. And the third thing is that I'm really not very skilled at actually transitioning between the things that I wanted to be making them. I spent a lot of time thinking about the things that I wanted to be making them. I spent a lot of time thinking about the things that I wanted to be making them. I spent a lot of time just sitting around trying it and then I'm trying things. But I know I'm trying to... I'm coming up with ideas, but then how to actually do these things. Yeah.  First thing was that I'm following the materials a lot of the time. So I can go to the stories that I was becoming from the material that I'm also that from the material that I was making and the fourth one that I'm really skilled in any kind of making. So you go up by yourself coming up with the idea that it can be very alluring. I find that I can get very lost in that process and it can be very nice to get somewhere. But then at the end you can also feel very lost and even people or you want other people to tell you what you're doing is making sense. And other people to see what you're done. And what you're doing is having a connection back to this reality which you're embedded in. So I'm trying to really noticing these four things. I started to find out about these four things. And one project, so to speak, and that was... I got to do a big machine shop in San Francisco, Compure 9. And it's 24-hour access to all these kind of five-axis mills and like leather cutters and kind of an impressive space to be allowed to use the software. And so yeah, I spent time learning to 3D model from machines, cutters to cut off small slices and 3D printed speaker coils. I used the shop bot, which is a big scene, to mill out rings and the holes of the mill. I used the shop bot, which is a big scene, to mill out rings and the holes of the mill. But all this time that I was working with these machines, I really missing this more hands-on encounter with the little scissors. And in the sewing table, there's a nice sewing table. And on the sewing table, there's a box with just rings. And I used to be playing with these pins and I would poke them through. This is from the Encyclopedia. Adam Smith, who analyzed the labor, took the pins by the laborer, took the pins by the laborer, took the pins by the laborer, took the pins by the laborer, took the pins by the laborer, the minimalistic but also very wonderful representation of what a tool is. So a pin has like one end that is shock absorber, that's intended for the maker, all these other tools I was working with and all these other tools I was working on even if I sat on a computer and used complex software to use a CNC milling tool to mill a wooden milling tool. It's all tools, and this is one of these experiments to use the needle as a material and not only as a tool. OK. I have to hurry up a bit, too. My time is running a bit slow. I have to hurry up a bit. My time is running a bit slow. Now I have to click through all of them. I have to click through all of them. I even started thinking about, yeah, what happens if the pin flips around and puts it to the side? Then I started coming up with this idea for a dangerous thing that could be this 3D pin to the bone, a 3D printed structure with needles that all go into the body. But then something happened. I was in the studio one morning. I was early in the morning, and I was in a rough.  And I just pulled out my sweater, and this needle kiss, and one of the needles went into my hand. OK. So it stayed in my hand for quite some time, because it took me a while to get an appointment to actually do the job, to take it out of your hand, because it took me a while to get the appointment, to be able to operate this needle out again, because this whole process brought me to think about what was actually happening. Or was it more that it was in the wrong direction, or was it more that it was me and the needle that replaced the place? And I'm just a material. For me, the whole time, the difference between material and make-up, maybe this works. Yeah, maybe it works like this. So they did manage to cut the pin out. I think go back and have more X-rays taken afterwards, and it looks like the pin is still in there, and it's still in there. So this last. So, this is the last one. Wow. Great, Hannah. Thank you for your time. Thank you, Hannah, for your fantastic lecture. Oh, yeah, it's still there. Yeah, I see. It's still there. It took me a while. We have a couple of minutes for questions. There are a few microphones here. Please, stand up. It's really still there, huh? I can see it. Yeah, I still see that the needle is still in there. Do you want to explain to us how they work? How does the needle work? I don't really fully have a clue unless it's meant to. I don't know how it works myself, so. OK, that was a nice question. So when I was putting on the leggings you saw in the background, there was a video playing that was actually the process of making it only two weeks ago. In the beginning, you saw a video where I did something. It was actually the process that I did these leggings. I worked with a few friends who were doing a process to polymerize our own fabric. Everything you see here, what's black, that is lead-like. And the more you press together, the more lead-like it becomes. And we're a little bit out of it. What's the reason? Is it because the polymerized layer is pressed together or because the polymerized fibers are pressed together? But what was really nice was that we put out that this polymerization process works to wrap it up, and I made little, and everywhere where the string is, it didn't match the top. And you can, for example, make here underneath these leggings and everywhere where you see something light, there was a thread around it where the color didn't come into the fabric. And when you're sitting here under these leggings, I'm wearing some very pretty fabric in these leggings in the light-fake, the terminals where I'm measuring the resistance changes. Someone else has a question. OK, next question. Thank you very much. That was really great, wasn't it? What are you planning to do? A workshop, you see? Do you have a workshop to offer? Together with Julian, actually... Yes, actually, together with Julian, I would like to... What's the name of the... ...the badge tent. To offer a workshop in the badge tent. We don't know yet, but we will announce it on Twitter. We won't be exactly sure, we'll put it on Twitter and post on the badge account. And then there will be at least one workshop that will offer light-fake threads in the arm-band of the badge tent, a net. No. OK. Another question. There, in the audience, out. Do you have any e-textile clothing that you're wearing in your everyday life? This is one of the first steps for an answer is no. It's not because I don't want it to be, it's more that I struggle to... It's more that I have problems with things that I actually need in my life, and that I can use it in my everyday life. What I did is that I did bicycle lights, but they just didn't last long enough. Electronics will always have to be made for one person. I definitely think it's scalable. But my interest in this handcrafted, handmade thing is, because I see that the industry is already taking care of how to do something, that a lot of people are using it, but nobody is taking care of the things that are handmade for individual users. We have an idea that we want to have, and we're not going to the media market to buy, but to implement our ideas. Okay, of course. Thank you. Oh, here's another question. One last question. Okay, last question. So you mentioned the future of the individual garments, and that gets me wondering, what's the future of the individual or individual muster? What can we do to make sure that nothing is wasted? I think it's bound up. It's a very good question. I think it's the whole fashion textile industry itself. The same question as the whole fashion and textile industry. And also we see people buying and leaving textiles, and also electronic scrap and e-waste. We have to make the producers more responsible for the things that they leave out in the world. We have to make things more repairable, and people are willing to repair them themselves. I think the solutions that I've heard go along these lines are just thinking of, okay, how can we make sure that we can separate and recycle, but also that the product itself has a longer lifespan, and that we're not going to get away from this idea of buying something and only using it for a short period of time. That you have something that you can use for a longer period of time and you can repair it yourself. Okay, now really the last question. Do you also have some clothes for surveying for the thing? I don't have it. No. It could be very interesting to... General masks are... general masks are for surveillance. I feel like a mask is wearable for the face. I've made some masks not for anti-surveying purposes, but... I'm also part of the program committee. There's a talk by Adam Harvey on Friday. There's a talk on Friday on exactly this topic. So if you're more interested in that, so face recognition, listen to the talk on Friday. Give a warm applause. Okay, cool. Thank you very much. A big applause for our speakers. Applause. Great. Okay, cool. Check out Macedon or Twitter. And please look at Twitter and Macedon in relation to the workshop. Thanks guys. Thank you very much.


Hi, I'm Jesper from the TestGFX team. In this video, I'll present a couple of new features that we have added to the TestGFX 4.23 release. To do this, I go to the Create New Application tab. I want to base my application on the 8735 board, so I select this one and I create my application. The first feature is about programming your board from within the designer. So up until now, you have these three options in the right lower corner. So you can generate your code, you can run the simulator, or you can program and run your target. The program and run target command is based on the configuration of your build commands in your project. The configuration can be seen in the configuration tab on the build. Here we can see the flash target command, which is the command that is being executed when you press the button program and run target. So what you see here is the setup that is done for the 8735 board that we selected. So here it executes a command in our make file. However, in some projects, flashing the entire board can take a long time, especially if you have a lot of images or even some videos. And in some cases, you might not even need to flash the external flash, for example, which contains, in most cases, the images and videos. For example, if you have only changed your code, or you have moved a button or something in the designer, and you want to flash again, well, you haven't changed any of your images, so why should you flash those again? This is exactly what the new feature is all about. So we have made a selection down here where you can say, I want to program all, or I just want to program the internal flash. And if you select program internal flash only, then you can see this button changes to a program internal flash and run target. What it means is that it will execute this new command here, so flash target internal command instead of the flash target command. This is a really nice feature that can save you a lot of time, especially while testing or debugging. But beware, you need to know what you're doing. If you have, for example, changed some images, added some images, or something that goes into the external flash, and you only flash the internal, well, then your program will not work or do some strange stuff look very weird on the display. In that case, you need to go and program all your board instead. Here again, we can see that the TBS for the H735 has this command here. So again, a make file command. In your build setup, it might be different. And you need to configure that to only flash the internal for your setup. The next feature I would like to mention is the support of vector fonts. The fonts are rendered in TouchDFX by bitmaps, so when you build the characters you need are converted into bitmaps and drawn directly as these images by TouchDFX. This is both a fast and effective way of rendering characters, but it has one major drawback. It can take up a lot of flash since you need to store the image representation of each of the characters that you want to display. One way of handling this is to have a vector representation of your characters instead of a bitmap. However, this takes a long time to render, so that's a trade-off there. Either you want to use a lot of flash and have very fast rendering time, or you can have a slow rendering time, but use less flash. And rendering vector fonts is slow on microcontrollers, even though some of them have hardware acceleration for vector drawings. So in most cases, bitmaps are the preferred choice of users of TouchDFX. However, there are some situations where you really, really need to save flash and rendering time is not an issue. In this case, you can go with vector fonts and achieve what you want to achieve. The saving in flash can be quite significant, especially if you use the same font in different sizes in your application. Especially if these sizes are quite big, then the savings of a vector representation versus a bitmap representation is quite large. The way you do this is in the TouchDFX generator, you enable vector font rendering for your device. And then simply in the text tab in typographies, you can select if you want a bitmap representation or a vector representation of a particular typography. You can mix here, so you can have the same font in a bitmap representation for a particular size and have a vector representation of that font. That is useful if you, in some places, do not need a fast rendering, but you need a lot of characters, go for the vector font, and if in some places you need to scroll or animate the text, well, go for a bitmap representation. That was the two features that I would like to tell you about. Please go ahead and try them out. You can go to our documentation and read more about them. I hope you will have a good time using the TouchDFX 4.23.


Five Super Bowl Sunday Rob Gronkowski kick of destiny. You pulled John Cena this year? What? Yes, John Cena is like my kryptonite throughout the commercial. He's always telling me I'm gonna miss and he wants to be the guy that actually does the kick but I come through again and I let the executives of FanDuel know that I am gonna make this kick this year and that's why they chose me again. John Cena, take a backseat baby because I'm gonna make that kick. I love that. How's it going? Give us the update. We're gonna do this weekly like temperature checks check-ins. You know, we have to all make a pick for the kick of destiny. Will he make it or miss it? Where are we at? It's going really good. I've had about four practice sessions in the last two weeks. I actually had another practice session tomorrow and I'm doing this rapid fire kicking style where I just have someone, you know, set the ball up on the tee and then I kick it and then within five seconds I do it again because I'm just trying to build the strength of my leg and get my leg condition just so it's ready to go for any circumstance or any situation I have to deal with out in the middle of the desert, out in Vegas. So it's going really good. I made a 40-yarder the other day as well. I'm making 30-yarders, but the kick is gonna be 25 yards and I'm gonna make this kick and I'm gonna put the football right through the uprights. You made a 40-yarder. I like seeing that. I'm in the make column right now after hearing that.  Are you embracing those elements? Do you have like wind fans on you for all of this? What do you got? I actually got to do some practicing outside of every single kicking practice so far has been inside, but I have wet the ball a few times just in case if it's raining out. So Coach Belichick loved to do that. Coach Belichick's favorite thing was when it was under 32 degrees, he would walk up through the football, he would get two water bottles, he would spray the water bottles and make sure they were slippery and you got to hike the ball before the football turns in the ice and then you would watch Tom Brady try to throw the football and he looks like a four-year-old trying to throw it because it was just slipping out of his hands on every throw and Coach Belichick would just be in the corner chuckling, laughing at that, he couldn't complete the pass up. All of the conditions I'm dealing with right now is why I'm prepared for this trick. Maybe we need to get Bill in this corner. Bill's not busy, he isn't doing anything. We need to get him there. Can you, what is that, what's your best impersonation of Bill's laugh? Chuckling, Bill Chuckling I've never heard.  I love it, not bad. Listen, he's not laughing, he's trying to find a job, he's ironing his best suits, he probably has three suits of that man and he's obviously had some time with the Falcons so did Mr. Harbaugh, trying to find a job. I try telling you he's not coming back every week of this year and you could not believe it. Did you know and you lied and just had a good poker face or were you actually shocked? No, I was actually shocked. I was not believing it until I saw it and then I saw it so then I finally believed the game but I truly thought that he was gonna be there for another year. I was not putting my poker face on. I felt like Coach Balacheck was grandfathered in, I mean six Super Bowls. He puts his players in the best position every single week to win a football game so it was just tough. I mean, it was emotional to see him go. It really was, I mean, the greatest coach of all time. I wouldn't be where I am right now to this day. We would not be talking, Kay, if it wasn't Coach Balacheck. He drafted me in the second round and if you go back and if you see his interview about him drafting me in the second round, the pre-draft visit, him talking about it, he said he was taking a chance and he sure was and I appreciate Coach Balacheck for taking the chance on myself and taking me with a 42nd pick overall and actually training up for me and trade it up with Oakland Raiders so he can get that 42nd spot before the 43rd spot because that was the Baltimore Ravens and they were gonna select me there. So I appreciate you, Coach, for doing that. My nine years were very, very special in New England. I wanna have change of thing. If I could go back, I would do it all over again and he's gonna be successful in the future as well. I mean, he's interviewing for jobs right now. The Atlanta Falcons job is out there. The Los Angeles Chargers job is out there. He's gonna do a great job wherever, whatever situation he goes into next as well. A little schnoopy reverence moment out of Gronk for Bill Balacheck. I love that. I know I saw what you were tweeting, I mean, everybody has nothing but respect for him.


I welcome everyone to the 17th meeting of 2019 of the Social Security Committee. I remind everyone to turn off mobile phones or put other devices to silent mode so they don't disturb the meeting. We don't quite have a full compliment yet, hopefully we will have, but no apologies have been received. I move to agenda item 1, Poverty and Equality Commission. The committee will consider the nominees for appointment as members of the Poverty and Equality Commission and the content of a draft report. Prior to this meeting this morning, three members of our committee met with nominees for appointment to the commission. The committee agreed at the very beginning of the recruitment process that this should be done in private to ensure the process was, and as I say this, we needn't have worried, but it was the right thing to do that the process was not intimidating and off-putting for applicants with no experience of public committee meetings. I have to say that it was a hugely positive meeting. We will say more about that in a second. It's important to note that the nominees have already passed our rigorous public appointments process. We were not interviewing the applicants earlier on this morning. Our role was not to interview them again but rather to confirm that as a group, working with the chair, Bill Scott, that they would be able to fulfil the functions of the Poverty and Equality Commission as set out in the act. Before I say any more, I was joined by Jeremy Balfour and Alison Johnstone. I don't know if Jeremy or Alison wants to make any comments at this point. Thank you, convener. I was pleased to be part of the meeting this morning. It was a welcome opportunity to get to know the nominees better and to hear from them directly. It was noted in the meeting that individually they have a wealth of experience and expertise, and I think it's fair to say that they will, as was suggested, be greater than the sum of their parts, because together they are a formidable group. They will challenge politicians. They will be stridently independent. They won't sit on the fence and mince their words. They reminded me that poverty is not an intractable issue, that we do have policy choices. They spoke to, off the fact that social security is an area where UK and Scottish policy meets, and it often diverges. There are challenges there in that some of the policies that are made at Westminster impact on what we may choose to do here, but we also discussed the fact that we do have options. There are things that this Parliament can do, too. I'm very welcoming off the appointments, and I think that the nominees individually and in their combined force will make a real difference to the ability of us all to tackle poverty and exclusion and inequality. I think that it was a really helpful hour together where we could just learn about some of the skills of the new commissioners. We do bring a diversity veil, which is something that we were very keen on the committee to get, but we are a veil or a merit as well, which I think is really important. I think that how the process has worked is something that, hopefully, other bodies can learn from, that we do get that diversity, but yet we get that expertise. I do hope that they will be able to bring my independent scrutiny and challenge not only Scottish Government but challenge the Parliament and this committee over the next few years. Thank you for those comments. I'll make a brief comment. I was hugely impressed by the diversity of the appointees, the skills and the talents that they will clearly bring to the commission. I think that Alice is absolutely right that they will be greater than the sum of their parts. Already, it was really important to see that the candidates were seeking to be challenging and inquisitive of each other, as well as committee members, which is precisely what we want. It is for the commission to be fiercely independent, to be challenged to the Government, to be challenged to this committee and, without fear or favour, to look at the hard reality of poverty as it impacts the communities that we all serve in this country. It's worth pointing out their direct lived experience of poverty within the appointees and a huge range of talents. I was very struck by comments around it's not just about how Governments seek to implement manifesto commitments, it's about the why of why Governments are doing what they're doing, not just that they've said they will do it and what the outcomes might look like, but also what might make the biggest impact in relation to tackling poverty. It was a privilege to meet everyone and it's great that they're in the public gallery here this morning. I thank them for coming along with Bill Scott, chair of the commission. I don't have any other comments to make, but comments or questions from other members or deputy convener? I want to echo everything that has been said so far. I would also like to put on record that the fact that we've arrived here with such a fantastic commission with individuals that you would have hoped to have is a testament to the parliamentary process here. It seems so long ago that this committee, and I think it's a testament to the robustness of the committee system that we pushed hard for it to be an anti-poverty and inequality commission. Through ingenuity of the Government ministerial team in Geneva and Campbell, in particular when Angela Constance was the minister, we found a way forward and I think that I should not be forgotten that that's where we started off. I know that we've arrived at a point where I think that the commission and all of you who are going to serve on it will have one of the most important jobs to do in a Scottish public policy. We've read through all the CVs and I just think that we've arrived at a tremendous, and as Bob said, a really diverse group of people who have got fantastic CVs. For my part, all of the individuals that have been appointed to this really important role show the lived experience, all of the things that you would have hoped from a commission that's going to take forward the work of people of Scotland. As Alison Johnstone rightly says, this is achievable in our country. It might take some years to do so, but I just want to put on record to convey my thanks to all of the individuals who have agreed to take forward this important role. Thank you, Pauline. Any other questions or comments, Michelle? Obviously, good morning and I'd like to echo the sentiments. I've read through the CVs and haven't met the members of the commission yet, but it is an impressive array, a good range of experiences. I'd just like to ask one question really just to check. In terms of when you were speaking to everybody, was anything raised in terms of any gaps or was everybody satisfied that all the skills were present? I know we talked a lot in the run-up to this in terms of making sure we had all the skills we need. I couldn't spot any that we're missing, I have to say, going through the CVs, but I just wanted to ask that question. Were you comfortable that they were all there? I don't know what Jeremy and Alison are thinking, but I was struck by when we were having a private conversation, but it's not given away any secrets we were talking about. The child supplement might look like going forward. The commissioner is having a discussion about international comparison, greatest impact, data analysis, but you can do all that, but what will that mean to the lived experience of those who need that money as quickly as possible in their pockets who are experiencing poverty now? That absolute double check, if you like, to make sure it's not just about doing the academic piece of research and looking at the data, it's about what will that mean on the ground, what is the reality on the ground, that there seem to be quite a broad range of skills and everybody seems to be covered from what I could see. It's pretty impressive that Alison and Jeremy want to add anything to that. I think that it's from the nominee CVs to meeting them in the room, you can see that there's a great range of diverse lived experience and academic expertise, so I think that there's that mixture of people who really, really know what they're talking about, but also a desire to make sure that any actions are evidence-based, that we're doing all we can to improve data collection, what we're looking at, why we're looking at it, and how we can use that to get the best outcome, so I feel very reassured after this morning that this group can make a great difference. Any additional comments? It might also be worth finally saying that it's part of our discussions. I thought that the commissioner spoke very well about not just analysis and scrutiny, but coming up with constructive solutions towards Government, as well as analysing what Government are doing in terms of their policy intent and implementation of that, so I thought that it was really, really interesting to hear as well that it was appropriate to put on the record this morning. There would be no other questions or comments from members. The committee has asked to recommend to the Parliament that the eight nominees should be appointed. I'm going to put on the public record their names and then I'll seek good agreement. That would be Linda Bamford, Yvonne Blake, Alex Cobham, Lindsay Graham, Katie Schmucker, Shona Stephen, Morag Traynor and Douglas Wright. Is the committee agreed to recommend to Parliament that eight nominees should be appointed? Agreed. I thank you for that and I thank the nominees for their time this morning. The committee has also asked to agree to give authority to the convener and declare to prepare what will be a short factual report to inform Parliament of our recommendation. Is the committee agreed to that? There being no other business before us this morning, he says looking is clear to make sure I've not forgotten of anything. We can now close the meeting. Thank you all.


The worst nightmare that anyone can encounter is going over budget and that's the reason why today we're going to be covering the top five critical expenses for your small business for your restaurant that you should be aware of in order for you not to be blindsided in order for you to stay in budget. So keep watching. Hey guys, it's Wilson here. Make sure you guys subscribe along this whole journey to get more strategy, tactics, and tips in growing a small business and growing a restaurant. I see this again and again where you have your business plan, you have your proposal and forecast, yet after the launch of the project, you're over budget by 50 percent, by 60 percent, by 80 percent, and these are the moments that are unnecessary stress that's adding to your business even before you open and you're going to be hustling to get more money and fundraise and all this before you can even prove your concept. And that's exactly what happened to us when we first started our ice cream shop.  The number one startup expense you should be aware of is the equipment expense. Equipment expense is basically all the equipments that you need in order for you to do your production. Depending on the niche that you're in, you need specific equipments. For example, with an ice cream shop, soft-served in particular, we need a soft-served machine and for us, we need to make sure we identify that right from the beginning and to buy the right model. And that is super crucial to your success is because when we first started our ice cream shop, we neglected the equipment expense. We thought that, hey, know what, starting an ice cream shop, it's simple. We go to the manufacturer, we ask them for a machine and it's good to go. But little did we know about all the specs that are go into the machine. We bought the cheapest version available and in turn, it was not able to withhold the demand that we're having in our place, which is the reason why within two months of operation, we spend more than $30,000 swapping out that machine for a better one. So identifying your specific equipment for your specific production is crucial to your success. So in that way, you don't need to spend extra swapping equipments out. Another thing that you need to be aware of is that whether to buy a new machine or to lease it or to buy an old one, there are definitely a lot of different options available. The pros of buying a new machine is the fact that, hey, you don't need to pay interest on it. But the con is that you're going to have to fork out a lot more investment to buy a brand new machine, which is the reason why a lot of restaurants out there, they decide to lease instead. Why is leasing a better option? It is because it allows them to have more cash flow to play with in order for them to actually have more flexibility to run their business. Now, the cons of that is that you need to pay higher interest for that, which is the reason why I would highly recommend for items that are not directly responsible for producing your offering. I would recommend buying a secondhand option from either auction sites or from secondhand shops that actually warranties these equipments. That would be able to save you a ton of money. Another point to add is that small appliances do add up. We're talking about items such as a POS system, items such as spatulas, containers, and all this can add up to thousands of dollars, which you have not accounted for, which is the reason why identifying these right from the get-go is super, super important. Another note to add is understanding the fact that after you identified all your equipment that you're going to be having in your shop, it actually changes the way your electrical goes and runs within your layout. And that's the reason why identifying it right from the get-go allows your electricians to pull enough power for each of the outlets. So then that way it doesn't jump any of your electricals. A lot of people, first-time restaurateurs, face this problem is the fact that they don't forget the fact that, hey, you know what, a boiler machine would take power from one outlet. But then yet they're just stacking up different outlets and little do they know that's the reason why they're always jumping and they have to get an electrical, electrician to come in and to reroute everything. That could cost thousands of dollars. An actionable tip for you guys is identify and map out all the different equipments that you're going to have and what you're going to need. And actually go through the logistics of you preparing the food. Map it out visually to identify where everything goes because it's crucial for you to understand where each equipment goes because all the power and rerouting would take a ton of money if you don't account for it, if you don't budget for it. For example, with our ice cream machine, because of the fact that we swapped out a smaller ice cream machine for a bigger one, in turn we needed to actually take out part of our counters in order for us to move the machine in and out. Second thing was we need to reroute our electricals in order for us to have enough power for the new machine. And that itself costs us more than $5,000. So if you want to make sure that you have and stay within budget, make sure you map everything out and make sure all your electrical maps are done as well. The second type of expense to look out for is your staff expense. And this is something that is crucial as it accounts for more than a quarter of your overall expenses. So in this video, we talked about the four different restaurant concepts out there and the type of talents that's needed. So make sure you guys check this one out in order for you to identify the talent that you may need for your staffing. Because, for example, if you're running a bubble tea or a cafe, the level of talent is much lower than if you're running a fine dining experience. And in turn, you need to be able to budget accordingly, depending on the concept that you're going for. Once again, check out this video to see the four different types of concept and to actually budget accordingly to the talent that you may need. Another thing that you would want to consider is the shifts and the pods. And what I mean by the pods are how many people and how many staff do you need in order you to facilitate the number of customers that are coming in? For example, if it takes four different talents, for example, a cashier, a bartender and two servers in order to generate and for for you to be able to run your service for 50 people, then you know if you're going to have 100 people walk through the doors, then you need additional waiters. You need additional bartenders in order for you to fulfill that amount of traffic. Vice versa, if you're running at only 20 people, then you may be able to cut down on your bartender. You may need to be able to cut down on additional staff as well. Having the metric to understand how your volume and the traffic comes through allows you to budget and allows you to schedule your staffing accordingly, which will save you tens of thousands of dollars over every single month. And that money, you can actually put it back in your pocket because that's directly the profit that you can possibly take home. An actionable tip for you to budget accordingly is to have tracking, have tracking on your POS system that allows you to see how your traffic is like on every every single day from Monday to Sunday. And what are the times that you have peaks that allows you to actually budget accordingly for your scheduling and allows you to have a really big picture about, hey, you know what, when are your peak hours? When are your slow times? And then you can schedule accordingly. A lot of people don't have this type of tracking and don't have this type of insight, and thus they schedule based upon their gut. And a lot of times gut is just not good enough. If you guys find any value whatsoever in this video, make sure you smash the like button. So then that way I know this is the type of content you are looking for. Let's get back to regular programming. The third startup expense you should be aware of is the build out expense. Build out expense is crucial to determine how much money you need to start the whole project. And that really comes back down to the space that you're looking at. And it varies tremendously. We're talking about it could vary from a space that is completely empty and completely gutted. You need to build your own washroom.  And that could cost tens of thousands of dollars versus a location that has their washroom built out, the counters built out already, all the electrical is already all done and all you have to do is just go in and put in a layer of paint and you're good to go. These two different build out expense and renovation expenses are night and day difference, which is the reason why you need to understand the budget that you have to play along with the location that you choose. If you have a big budget, you want to create an additional experience for your customers, then you may want to redo the whole thing and start from scratch. Whereas if you have a small budget and you just want to try out and improve your concept, then you may want to look out at stores or locations that already have the infrastructure that you're looking for to begin. So identifying the type of business model that you're going for is crucial to the location that you're looking out. Is it are you trying to tailor to a grab and go experience or are you trying to tailor to a dining experience that, you know, a couple will come in. The men is trying to like impress the other half with like a dazzling experience. You really need to identify the concept that you're going for in order to identify the experience you want to provide your customers. An actual tip for you is that every time you scout for a new location, bring your general contractor, bring someone that is going to be doing this whole renovation process for you to look at the location. Ask them if the concept that you're going for, how much would it cost for this build out of the whole place? And they're going to give you a rough estimate of how much it would cost.  They don't have the regulation. They don't have the items to fulfill the regulations. They need this counter here. They need this electrical here. And in turn, they'll tell you how much additional you need to pay in order for you to be at that space. And that would allow you to actually budget much closer to what you have accounted for. The fourth startup expense that you should be aware of is the marketing expense. And this is something that people don't talk about too much. You need to identify how you're going to market your restaurant. And that is crucial because are you spending money on Facebook ads?  How much are you accounting for these type of marketing expenses? A lot of people don't account for it because they need to build up their restaurant and then they start looking at ways of bringing traffic in. But then we need to actually account for that right from the beginning to understand what is the strategy we want to employ in order for us to bring people in our doors. That is crucial in understanding how much we want to budget and how much we need to budget for marketing expenses. An actionable tip for you is to actually allocate a percentage of your revenue that goes directly to marketing. OK, and why do we want to allocate a budget specifically for it? It is because, first of all, if you are the type of owners that tend to overspend, this will allow you to know, hey, you know what? You only have a budget of $2,000 that you can spend on marketing. Now, with that $2,000, it's up to you to be creative with how you want to allocate it, whether it is hiring a social media expert for $800 that does all your social media and $1,200 for running ads on radio stations or running ads on Facebook. Facebook, this would allow you to work within a certain budget and not spend $4,000, $5,000, because everything is so nice and shiny on the other side. On vice versa, if you are a little bit more frugal, if you don't like spending on marketing, this allows you to and pushes you to actually invest in marketing dollars. So, for example, if you're already committed with 5% of your revenue every month that goes into marketing, you know every month that you need to spend, let's say $1,200, then it really pushes you to test different areas out and to actually bring in even more sales instead of playing defense. And you're now learning to play offense, which is the reason why, regardless of where you are on the spectrum, having an allocation for a marketing budget is crucial to your success. Last startup expense you should be accounting for is the tech expense. Tech expense is crucial in today's age, especially if you're building a new restaurant. It is because with the world now today is shifting a lot more with delivery as an option, with understanding the statistics in order for us to budget accordingly for our labor and all this can be can be actually collaborated into a few different items that can help you out to make it more efficient. For example, it's very difficult for you to actually go through your receipts to track down, hey, you know what? How many people came in at what time, how much money they spend. And in turn, it's very, very difficult, which is a reason why having a POS system that you're investing money in and this type of technology is so, so important.  It sounds counterintuitive by spending money in order to save money, but it is truly the case if you know what you're doing, which is the reason why investing in tech, investing in like delivery as an option is also super crucial for your success. Because as we can see amidst this whole crisis, this whole COVID-19 thing, everyone is having and trying to build delivery as an option and as a core in their restaurant business. Because who knows, there could be another virus that hits next year. But if you don't have these things in place, it becomes very difficult for you to pivot and for you to adapt into that ever changing world that we're living in today. An actionable tip for tech is to understand the outcome of each technology and not subscribing just because of a shiny object syndrome, not subscribing because of whatever salesmen are selling you. For example, subscribing to a POS system is crucial for your success because it would allow you to save money in the future, allows you to see basically what's happening within your own business. That is something that you should subscribe to. So depending on the needs of your business, subscribe to technology that allows you to save money in the long run. So there you go, guys, the five sort of expenses that you should be very, very clear on right from the get go because it's going to save you a ton of money. I really hope you enjoyed this video. If you guys have any more questions in learning how to start up your restaurant or your small business, make sure you guys check in the description below. We have tons of resources to help you out. We even created a course that marks from A to Z, from location scouting to actually developing a team to actually being profitable and getting acquired in the future. Once again, it is in the description below. Leave me a comment and let me know what you thought about this and any questions that you may have. Otherwise, I'll see you guys in the next video.