Not very good. It's not very good to me. I guess not very good. Thank you. The final item of business is a member's business debate on motion 6631, in the name of Jackie Don barre on IWilWheak2022. This debate will be concluded without any questions being put, and I would ask those members who would wish to speak in the debate to please press the request to speak buttons, and I call on Jackie Don barre to open the debate around seven minutes please Mr I'm pleased to be able to bring forward today's member's debate, celebrating the hard work and commitment of the young folk across Scotland on I Will Week. I thank all colleagues from across the chamber who have supported my motion, allowing us all to highlight the volunteers and young people across Scotland who are making a positive change in their communities this evening. Presiding Officer, I Will Week was first established in 2013, bringing together 50 young people who wanted to make a difference in their community, with 50 organisations who could help them to achieve their goals. The I Will Week now reaches over 700 young I Will ambassadors in over 1,000 organisations, and it took place from 21 to 25 November this year. It has the aim of shedding light on the challenges faced by young activists and change-makers, as well as helping to encourage meaningful conversations among all those who work in the youth work sector on how they can continue to support youth social action in 2023. From primary schools to a clinical commissioning group in Faro and Furnace to FTC companies to Government departments, the I Will movement has gone from strength to strength. However, challenges lie ahead. Poverty, the climate emergency, worsening mental health and wellbeing, social and economic inequalities, racial injustice. Challenges that existed before the Covid-19 crisis have been further exacerbated by the global pandemic, and the future has never felt more uncertain. That is why I Will Week is so vitally important. It provides a platform through which young people can truly influence change. Social action is about people coming together to improve their lives and solve the problems that are important in their communities. It can include volunteering, donating money, community action or simple neighbourly acts. Through the commitment and skills of citizens, social action can empower communities and help people in need. Taking part in social action is also associated with higher levels of wellbeing and can improve folks' confidence and skills. It is also often reported to be the catalyst for people becoming involved in local democracy and national politics, areas in which we need more diversity. Our ambition as a country is to be a democratic welcoming nation. In order to do that, we need to empower our communities to take more ownership of the decisions taken and empower folk to have influence over their lives and outcomes. Social action is important at a young age, and young folks should grow up influencing decisions and communities that will shape their futures and spaces to make a positive difference. I Will Week is one way of celebrating the young folk across the country who are involved in social action and striving to make their communities better for all young people, as well as seeking to see and make changes to policies, which may have an impact on young folk at local and national level. Research suggests that high-quality activities will meet six principles, including being youth-led, challenging, having social impact, allowing for progression to other opportunities, being embedded in a young person's life and enabling reflection about the value of the activity. The higher the quality of the social action, the more likely it is to benefit both the young folk involved and the communities or causes they are trying to help. Presiding Officer, I want to give a quick shout-out and a personal thank you to Sian Gullen for the help that she has provided me in this topic. Sian has recently marked her sixth year as an I Will ambassador, and in those six years she has worked with YouthLink as co-chair of the I Will advisory group and has been involved in a lot of the planning around the I Will events in Scotland, as well as helping to ensure that the movement remains youth-led. She has also been working with other I Will ambassadors and other young people to help to progress the youth VIP recommendations to make volunteers more accessible for young people across Scotland. She is a true advocate for social change, and I know that others are taking inspiration from her work. Presiding Officer, I will end by strongly encouraging all members across the chamber to help to promote the remarkable work of I Will and I Will ambassadors in helping to make change for not only young folk but the wider communities that we, as MSPs, represent. It is important that we recognise the incredible work of young folk across our local communities, regions and right across Scotland. Children and young people and not to be cliched, Presiding Officer, are indeed our future. We must enable them to lead the way and we must listen to their viewpoints and we must support them to bring about meaningful social change. Today, I ask the Minister for a commitment that the Government will build on its record in that regard and will continue to support the advancement of youth democracy and social change. I now call Audrey Nicoll to be followed by Douglas Lambson around four minutes. I would like to apologise for my late arrival in the chamber. I thank Jackie Dunbar for bringing this motion forward today in recognition of I Will Week 2022, an opportunity to recognise the important role that youth volunteering, campaigning and mentoring plays in our communities, our neighbourhoods, towns, families. As Jackie Dunbar has outlined, I Will has grown over the years and I Will Scotland, supported by YouthLink Scotland, brings together over 100 youth organisation members all across Scotland. I Will Scotland supports a wide range of initiatives and work, which are important in enabling young people to drive social change. Celebrating International Volunteers Day, the work of the youth Scottish Parliament is looking at a variety of issues to ensure that the rights of young people are upheld. The work to support young carers and young adult carers by ensuring that they can participate in a survey to find out about the pressures facing young carers and what support they need. I am delighted to see some focus on disability. I have been working quite closely with an inspiring young constituent who is passionate about driving forward disability rights for young people on the important issue of relaxed theatre performances and quiet shopping times in shopping centres for young people living with autism, and I thank her very much for her commitment and her drive on that. I am sadly old enough to have had the privilege of doing my own bit with young people, spending many years as a volunteer with the Aberdeen Outdoor Award Centre, supporting the Duke of Edinburgh scheme and as a child protection officer for Aberdeen Grammar Rugby. Indeed, there are very different roles with one thing in common, to help children and young people to reach their potential, step out of their comfort zones, build confidence and resilience and just have fun in a safe space. My own son was a scout for many years and as an adult he now looks back on the experiences and opportunities that the scouts gave him, team building, problem solving, being pushed out of his comfort zone, cooking and even dealing with feeling homesick, and I have absolutely no doubt that this made him the person that he is today. However, not all children and young people are given the opportunities that they deserve. Many find themselves faced with circumstances, experiences or an environment that is difficult and challenging for them to navigate. Therefore, it is imperative that barriers and obstacles are removed so that they can achieve their potential and just have a good fulfilling life. The focus and support of I Will provides this effort as pivotal and I was pleased to note the key themes explored in I Will week 2022 included working together and what we need to learn about working across sectors, how can young people shape a place, creating genuinely enabling environments for young people and the role of funders in all of that. Important themes and questions and ones that we must all be collectively invested in answering in our respective roles. I very much hope that the outcomes of this week of celebration and focus on young people provide the I Will movement with a platform to take their work forward right across Scotland. To conclude, I again thank Jackie Dunbar for bringing this debate forward this afternoon. I want to end with a few words that I often used to remind my own family about how valued they were. What you are looking for is already in you.  Just never forget that. Thank you, Ms Nicol. I now call Douglas Lumson to be followed by Martin Whitfield around four minutes. Thank you to Jackie Dunbar for bringing this debate to Parliament this evening. We were councillors at Aberdeen City Council together and now MSPs together. We very rarely agree in debates but I'm glad we can today. Young people are part of society that deserve to be heard because they are here and they exist in the present. They are not just the future and the decisions made in Scotland and the UK affect young people today. Not my words, Presiding Officer. Those are the words of an I Will ambassador from Aberdeen. We are fortunate to have so many young people who are willing to come forward and be heard. As a Parliament we should be doing more to listen to their voices and hear their views on topics that affect us all. We are lucky in Scotland to have a vibrant youth Parliament and perhaps we should be working more to strengthen the links between those two bodies. As elected representatives we have the privilege of welcoming school groups into our workplace and I know that for many of us it's a highlight of our weeks. Young people have important things to say about our democracy, our policies and the issues that we discuss and they often ask the unexpected questions that others dare not ask. I Will weak is all about a celebration of those young people who get involved. It celebrates the social action that our young people are taking part in. It commends the huge amount of volunteering that young people do and the difference that they make throughout Scotland. Figures from Volunteer Scotland show that far from declining volunteering among our young people is actually increasing. Youth volunteer participation is double that of adult volunteers 49 per cent compared to 26 per cent. 17 per cent of our young people who don't volunteer say they will in the future and in the last decade formal volunteering has grown from 33 per cent to 49 per cent and girls are more likely to volunteer than boys. Our young people are active and vital members of our volunteering communities in Scotland. I Will weak also encourages organisations and governing bodies to commit to young people and their participation in social action and decision making. We want to see young people more engaged in how policy is made at all levels of our society. It gives me an enormous sense of pride that tomorrow in Aberdeen, my home city, there is a policy convention taking place with over 200 young people attending. They are discussing youth works role as a rights respecting and rights promoting practice. Young people are key to enabling social action in Scotland and be the catalyst for change that young people will ultimately drive. I think that as parliamentarians we should invite them to come here to present to us the outcomes of that conference. I would also like to add my thanks to the many youth organisations and youth workers throughout Scotland who are passionate about working with young people. Youth League Scotland were leading the I Will weak in Scotland doing incredible amounts of work to build and strengthen our network of youth work. Youth work does indeed change lives. I know that colleagues would also join me in congratulating Angela Leitch in her appointment as chair of that organisation just this week. Presiding Officer, in closing, I would once again like to pay tribute to our young people. Their ambition, vibrancy, hopefulness and commitment to helping others is something that I think that we could all learn from and emulate. They are indeed part of today's Scotland and we are a far richer country as a result. Thank you, Presiding Officer. Thank you, Mr Lumson. I now call Martin Whitfield, who will be the last speaker in the open debate. Round four minutes, please, Mr Whitfield. I'm very grateful, Presiding Officer. It is a pleasure to take part in this debate. I extend my thanks to Jackie Dunbar. It's fascinating that a debate should follow on from the debate that we had earlier, where this debate allows us to highlight some of the real strength that our young people can show us oldies. The desire through the I Will movement for young people to fight your cause—we see it no stronger in young people than in climate change and in democracy—the I Will movement to lead the movement, to listen to the young people. Douglas Lumson categorised it so brilliantly in the fact that they sometimes ask questions that even throw adults. I would go further and say that they sometimes have the solutions that we are perhaps too narrow minded to see sometimes. It is important that we open up the opportunity to listen properly to our young people and not to hide behind tick box exercises where we just say, yes, we've spoken to them and move on. It's yes that we've spoken to them, yes that we've listened to them and we want them to be part of the change that affects their lives. Of course, the last I Will movement claim is to pledge your support. That is the opportunity for organisations to walk the walk as well as talk the talk and pledge to support our young people, particularly at this challenging time. As we move into a period of poverty, the likes of which I think many living people in this country have never seen before and perhaps have only read about, we have huge tsunami coming our way and we need to involve the young people in the solutions to that, but also to have them part of the discussions because sometimes their ideas can, as I say, help us oldies. I would also like to echo Douglas Lumsden's thanks to Angela Leitch, who I know so well from her East Lothian past. I know that she will be a passionate advocate for young people. She will make sure that those young people have a say at the table or, indeed, perhaps just in the library or in a walk outside so that those young people can express their ideas, their opinions and their views in a way that they feel comfortable to do. I think that it's a massive idea to invite those from Aberdeen to come and give their proposals here, maybe in this chamber or perhaps wherever in the Parliament they feel most comfortable to do it and to hold us politicians to account. I know time is short and I know there was huge support for that motion, but I can't go on without extending my thanks to the young people themselves. I would like to pick one aspect of the volunteering, which I think is very important for both this chamber to note, but I would also look to the Minister for ideas on how we can improve that. When you look at the formal volunteering, the group of young people who come from our hardest hit families from the lowest smid ratings are often the lowest to formally volunteer. I think about members of the Scout, Carb, Girl, Guide movement. I think about other volunteering opportunities they have, but, interestingly, they are the group that statistics show are most likely to just volunteer to help their friend, their neighbour and their community. I think that there is no requirement that everyone has to formally volunteer, but I think that there could be very productive work done in trying to work out why the young people from those backgrounds are particularly challenged to enter formal volunteering, which often flows from great benefits and ideas when, clearly, the passion to volunteer, the passion to help and, indeed, the passion to have the answers already exist. I would be very interested both at the end of the debate, but going forward, what consideration has been done about bridging that gap between the accidental volunteering and the more formal volunteering, which is much easier to recognise in statistics and data. In conclusion, I once again thank Jackie Dunvile for bringing this opportunity to the chamber tonight. We are talking about the most important people in our society, and I think that the I Will week has shown what they can really offer, and it is first oldies to listen to them. Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. Thank you, Mr Whitfield. I now call on Jamie Hepburn to respond to the debate. Thank you very much, Presiding Officer. I begin by joining others in thanking Jackie Dunvile for securing this debate, allowing us to collectively have the opportunity to recognise I Will week 2022. I thank colleagues for their contributions this evening, although I dissociate myself from Martin Whitfield's oldies categorisation. I want that very firmly on the record, but this has been a short debate and has been a very valuable one. I Will week is an important initiative for recognising volunteering, recognising fundrais and recognising the campaigning and recognising the mentoring work that young people are doing to benefit others. Youth Link Scotland deserves a mention for the activity that they do in that regard. In organisation, I have the highest respect for and engage with and work with regularly. I pay my thanks to Tim Frew for his leadership as the chief executive. Of course, I welcome Angela Leitch to her role. It is also important that we place on record our thanks to Lorna Hood, who has made a massive contribution to public life in Scotland generally, but not least in her role as chair of Youth Link Scotland over the past six years. It is important that we place on record our thanks to her. We should also thank the many thousands of people who volunteer or work in the youth work sector, who provide the support and provide the opportunities for young people to engage through the medium of youth work. Many of the examples of which we have heard here tonight and exist right across the country. We as a Government value the kindness and generosity of volunteers, volunteers who continue to make a difference in our communities across the country. It is important to recognise that through that, I will weaken the impact of all of our young people who choose to volunteer and who make a difference. That massive contribution is having a positive impact. It is improving the lives of individuals and communities across Scotland that makes Scotland at a better place. Scotland's volunteering action plan was launched in June of this year, and it aims to create a Scotland where everyone can volunteer more often and throughout their lives, and it includes supporting young people to volunteer should they want to. In that regard, I think that a fair point was made by Martin, which I feel about, trying to extend the opportunity for the fullest and widest range of young people to be able to take part in volunteering, no matter their background. As we take forward our youth work strategy, that will be a focal point for us to consider how we can better reach out and involve more young people. In the current situation, we should observe that volunteers have been at the front line of the response to the Covid-19 pandemic, and they are now a critical part of the response in the face of the cost of living crisis that we are now facing. Volunteers have provided a range of support. We have all seen that in the communities that we represent, and young people have, of course, been a critical part of that activity. In the context, because part of the motion that Ms Dunbar has laid before us, and we debate this evening, talks about the work to try and tackle poverty, poverty that young people experience. We know the impact, the real impact that the current situation is having on families living in poverty and the implications that it has for our young people. In March this year, we published our second tackling child poverty delivery plan, Best Start Bright Futures, and that sets out the range of ambitions that we have, the actions that we will take over the next four years and beyond to tackle poverty. That comes as part of our ambition to make Scotland the best place in the world for a child to grow up. The national outcome for children and young people is that children grow up loved, safe and respected so that they reach their full potential. In that sense, then in March 2021, we collectively made a step towards that when we as a parliament passed the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child in Cooperation, Scotland Bill, which is an important part of the landscape of youth work, because it enables and gives young people and children the expression to have their voice health, which is, of course, a fundamentally important right that they have. I am very grateful, and I have no intention of entering a note of discord, but on that point of the UNCRC, do we have a date when it will be returning to the chamber for reconsideration? I know that the Deputy First Minister has laid out to Parliament how we intend to take that, for that will be brought back. I am afraid that I cannot give the specific information, because it is not me that is leaning on it, but I will make sure that we pick up on it, and if there is information that I can convey to Mr Woodfield, I will be happy to do so. The youth parliament was mentioned by Audra Nicolle and Douglas Lumsden as well, and of course we have the children's parliament as well. Again, they are an important part of the landscape of youth work, but they are also an important conduit for young people to come forward and set out their opinion, their view on the world that we live in now. I thought that Douglas Lumsden made that point very effectively when he cited the ambassador that he quoted from. We have to think of young people, not just in the context of the future contribution that they can make, but in the contribution that they can make here now. Their voices should be heard, and I can assure all members that those organisations are a very effective mechanism for communicating the voices of young people to the Scottish Government. Having mentioned the youth work strategy that we are going to return to, we want to ensure that we continue to reap the benefits of the extraordinary activity of the youth work sector. In the vein of Jackie Dunbar's desire for us to restate the importance of youth empowerment, that is why it is important that we take forward that work to have the development of a new youth work strategy. That is very much designed to improve outcomes for young people through a stronger, better, connected system that offers opportunities to promote equality and equity, and it is inclusive of the needs of all young people. Our vision is for every young person to realise their full potential, regardless of their background and circumstances. Youth work can play a critical role in that regard. My aim is that the youth work strategy will enable that to be taken forward further still. We must actively give young people the confidence that their voices will be heard. Let us keep speaking to young people to ensure that, in partnership, we represent their views on the issues that matter most to them here in Parliament.


Hello, welcome to Toffee TV. We were going to have a chat about what's going on off the pitch. We've had one about a young pitch stuff, but we need to have one about what's going on off the pitch and still reeling, I guess, from a point of deduction and a possible second point of deduction. Maybe even a third one next year, you believe that city fella? No, he's a clan. How can he predict what's happening next year, Stefan? Is the fella who city chased the city at 115 charges for not doing things right? Yep. He's got himself a nice little gift there. There's a handful of people out there who are being perceived by legacy media as experts simply because they get on a list and they keep talking to them, right? Fair play to them. But you know, we have got, there's a couple of big things. I mean, a points deduction day, we, us three have done it to death, so we're not going to be speaking about it but you. I mean, what have you made of the first one and then obviously the second? Stinking. No team should be supplies to forest, you know, lester under investigation, Bernley, Wolves, Chelsea, whoever. There shouldn't be any points deductions and they've said that in the, in the white paper or the independent regulator. Shouldn't be getting points deductions, particularly for the stadium. Yeah.  But you know, okay, there is a punishment. What that punishment is needs to be worked out with the relevant authorities. Unfortunately, the dealing with an authority were incompetent and obsessed with money and it's only got them to a point now where the game is, if not a sort of, it's not already broken. Then it's certainly a breaking point, particularly with the news this week about them not signing off the AFL. So, and it's the unknown, isn't it with the second point? Obviously the Premier League is struggling for a legal bandwidth because if it was me, I would have just wrapped it up with the appeal. If I'm Everton, and I know we talked about this earlier in terms of what you would have done when that charge hit, I would have gone straight to Cass. And just, I think it would have all been sorted by now. I think it's absolutely, it's just stinking, isn't it? You know, we're culpable. Yes, I'm not saying we haven't done anything wrong course, we have, you know, with creative accountancy and whatever else. And we've been run poorly, which is why we've protested. But to be hit with a points deduction and then the second one looks like incoming where there's no, not written down analogy used on this channel is the speed in one, isn't it? Yeah. And you're really relying on poorest, poorest. It's contagious. You started it to get a point deduction greater than ours, which can only be if they're saying it's not going to be more than nine, then it has to be eight. If it's anything less than eight, I think we're going to kick up a stink, but I think by then it's too late, which is why I said we should have gone to the highest court possible to just get rid of it, particularly with the regulator. They're just creating, you know, having a watching brief, aren't they? See what's going on? All of a sudden, one of the members goes out to a court to challenge them. And I think we've tried to work with them in good faith and that was part of it, wasn't it? Yeah.  Once they've gone above board and said, well, we're going to charge you, for me, all better off. I would have gone straight to cast and think this would have been sorted because in the city example it was sorted in five months. I think there's wealth. There's a couple of legal people saying that actually they're not laws. The Premier League thinks not law, so therefore everything forest less than anyone can take them to a court. There's this thing that you can't, it can't go any further, of course it can. It's affecting you as a business, it's out in the public. But everyone must have said we're going to the highest court, not accepting your decision. It's in the appeal, isn't it, that we mentioned it, the high court judgement or whatever it was, forget the word. And when it comes back to review, we have that review period, it's in there. It's referenced, then, like who's saying you can't go. My issue with it is, again, I've said it a lot of times, pointers and nonsense for me. Because you're affecting, this thing over here, you're taking these results away which makes you league, pathetic really, makes you league in non-entity, to COVID season, far as I'm concerned. It's not real. Disasterics is everywhere. It's all a note of nonsense and you're affecting the results of that being played. Everything has to be in black and white. I don't agree with points of directions, but if that's what you think is necessary, again I don't know why any club would vote for it, but anyhow, when the rules are there to stop your club going under, simply there's nothing to do. It says in the thing, it's got nothing to do with sport and a band, there's nothing. And the rules aren't there to balance the sport, they're not there. Because if they were really bothered about the competition and integrity of the competition, then everyone would be allowed to spend the same amount of money. No one would be allowed to run away with it. One team wouldn't be on television more than anyone else, getting the handouts every time they're on. There's that kind of thing. So they don't care about the balance of the sport, but the rules are there to stop you going under and if you've got back in, and people guarantee in it. In Edithon's case, a forest, let's use forest in that case. If they're on it, it goes, I will underwrite anything, keep this club afloat if not come after me. It's got nothing to do with the club and I know John said a lot of times, we'll make them put the money there then, that's almost in. There's the pot of money and if it's needed to be used. So I just find it all a little bit math, but as well as that going on, where are you with the takeover thing and the lent, and I'll bring obviously John and Peddan in a second, but the lent it's taking for this takeover thing to be resolved because... Well, spoke about this theory, didn't we? Again, this is another thing that doesn't seem to have written down anywhere that's only been quoted by the athletic. It should be 12 weeks. And then you two guys ironically put me right over. Guy who's took over at Manulai, they keep forgetting his name. Jim Rackliff. Jim Rackliff. That I thought that was done on a shorter time period than Everton, but it wasn't he when in June or July. June or July. So again... The new castle was 18 months. And this comes down to the legal bandwidth of them. Just either chase them or say, right, you're in. I'm not pro or against 777. I don't know. If you're depending on what cognitive bias you want to reflect in your own judgement. Plenty of stuff on search engines that you can go out to go one way or the other. There's got to be soft water there. There's got to be delisport. Did one about Genoa. Positive one. Positive one. But there's loads of negative ones. You can go and find it yourself. But they're venture capitalists who are here to make a quick book. There's no one waiting in the wings. I'm waiting to win the Euro million so I can pay right to media funding off. So we can have some bandwidth. There's no one there because they're looking to make money, aren't they? But I just want a decision because the club needs structure. Needs governance. It needs a lot of people getting rid of. We've just been jobs for the boys for years. It just needs a complete reset. Moving to the stadium should be that reset. But we need them people in place to make them executive decisions. Even just coming back to the manager situation. If you want him gone now into 11 games then there's no one there to make that decision. He's done it well. He's fronting up a lot of them questions. He's the only one. Because he's the only one, aren't he? So it needs resolving one way or another. Pro or not. You can't have a process that's gone for 24 weeks. It's longer now, isn't it? It is becoming a bit of a nonsense. Do you like to see a thing where you've got to satisfy this process by 12 weeks or 14 weeks? If you can't, you've rejected it for now. You said it doesn't mean you can't come back. The only should be on the people who are talking about football clubs, shouldn't it? The rules should be set out if you can't produce. But it should be transparent as well because we've had this loads of times. I can sit there and say, 777, haven't provided the documentation. John can say, well, I've received it. So we need someone to say, they've given it. They've got rid of it or whatever. They take them home, it's a T-set, she said. So how can you... I think that's reflected in the appeal process as well because it's another appeal board. Who knows? So you as Ped 777 could have sent it to John. But someone's ranged up me and said, no, I haven't received anything. Because of that stress on the legal ban, it just seems that they're not... And it's elongating the process, it doesn't need to be. John, we are where we are right now. I just want them to make a decision. If 777 haven't satisfied them, send them away to show off your pop. You're not taking over the football club. Do you think there should be something in black and white that says... If you were selling some... I know Premier League aren't selling anything. Say you were selling a house for argument. And I'm trying to buy it.  And I keep not providing you with the stuff. Surely you would say after a period of time, like, go away. And if this is still up for sale, you're entitled to put a different offer in at a different time when you've got the stuff. Because like Ped said, I had no idea whether... They're saying they give the Premier League everything. We had Richard Masters saying they were still waiting for something. Then they had a head-to-head meeting, a face-to-face meeting where we thought we were going to hear anyway. If this entity hasn't provided everything or doesn't seem good enough, why hasn't it just been, like, kyboshed? Or if they are good enough, why haven't they been giving the green? Like, what's going on because we're suffering as a football club? I don't know. OK, there you go. You say you always want short hands. Well, just a little bit longer than that one. In all seriousness, there's always two things, right? I like people who use the phrase cognitive bias because I think to myself, I don't see no Andy McGregor, right? Because he's the ultimate source of that phrase, right? The PIF. I find it fascinating personally, right? Ped said, you know, I might say that 777 haven't provided all that. I didn't say it like that. That's how you talk. You did, right. I might say that they haven't provided all the information. John might say, yes, they have.  You always say ped don't listen. The point is, and this is the question, right? Is an answer or a version of an answer, right? You don't know, I don't know. You call it cognitive bias, which is, if you choose to listen to the people to the left of me, it's all 777's fault. If you choose to listen to the people to the right of me, it's all the Premier League's fault, right? And you distill it down to a very simple question, right? Some people are quite fond of saying, well, how could Masherry could stop this tomorrow? So could the Premier League, right? So we all end up second guessing going, hang on a minute, whatever Tony is like, we'll count down whatever, right? We go, you have to prove to the Premier League that you're a soundbody of mine and all that rubbish, but that you've got the funds to buy the shares of Fahad Masherry. This is you. That you've got the funds or the backing, whatever you want to call it, to run this business for three years, right?  Fit and proper owner part of it, right? Once you've done that, we'll let you buy this football club. But the regulator, in this case the Premier League, and at the end of 12 weeks, when we want to make the decision 12 weeks later, and you're right, there's no time limit on it, part of the Premier League's problem is things get done when they get done. They never do today. They should have done yesterday. They'd rather do it tomorrow, right? So the Premier League has just said publicly they haven't provided the information therefore they've been disbarred or stopped the process. They can come back when they've got the goddamn information. I think they should have done that. They could have done that at any time, right? The thing is, why is it all playing out in public anyway? You know my view, and I was told about it on the desk over there, in other industries you would have a pre-qualification process where you personally could rock up to the Premier League and say, right, what do I need to do to prove I'm a fit and proper owner of a football club? I'm thinking about it. I haven't picked one yet, and I don't know which one I can afford, but can I pass your test? So at least when I go and speak to Farhad Mishiri or I go and speak to the glazes I can say, I've already passed the fit and proper owners test. Oh yeah, well these other guys are interested. Yeah, but they haven't passed the fit and proper owners test in my app. But that's all bog standard in other industries.  We've seen it played out with PSR. They're going to change it, right? They changed it a matter of months ago to do a fast track process to get stuff done in this season, right? And now they're going to change it again. Richard Masters said it was select committee. No, no, no, no, the PSR is going to stay there for at least a year, maybe two. Now we hear Sky, whether briefed or not, saying it could be changed as soon as the summer. They're going with knock-up, but now it's getting changed in the summer. Have the Premier League said that? Yeah, Premier League have said it. Well, they're fools, complete and utter fools, because you don't replace a dysfunctional process that doesn't work, hasn't passed stress testing and all that sort of stuff in other words, when you try and use it, it doesn't work, and then rush through a new answer, right? So devil's always in the detail, right? If the Premier League says we're going to change this before the start of next season, right? Then right now, as we speak, lawyers from Everton, lawyers from Nottingham Forest and lawyers from the Premier League must be talking to each other because at least one of those clubs should say, we are going to take you to an independent court outside of your jurisdiction and we're going to sue your ass because it looks to me like you've known for a while that this process was not fitting proper. Forget the owner's test, your own processes are not fitting proper and you've tried to make them work. You've already made legal mistakes, as the appeal board said, and the appeal board is trying to operate within the rules but laid down a foundation to say, come on guys, get a grip, right? Now the thing is, and this is the fun, right? They haven't changed in the last 48 hours of the Premier League and said that they know exactly what the new rules are going to look like. People are assuming that because it's based on the squad ratio thing that UEFA have had for a while now, while in Premier League terms, right? Because that doesn't do points deductions per se, it's all financial penalties that people are going, oh, because it's based on a squad ratio, there won't be points deductions? Well, no, the bit based on the squad ratio is, it's not 105 million, it's a 70% turnover. That's the same as squad ratio. Now what it clearly does, the new rule, if they're basing it like UEFA, is say it's actually about constraints of excessive spending on footballers, not excessive spending full stop, right? Just on footballers, so hence it's a luxury tax if you like that phrase or it's a salary cap if you choose to do it that way. And they're saying the money you spend on players, be it wages, agents fees, and obviously the transfer fees themselves, you are constrained by your turnover on how much you can spend. Which means the haps, as per my MTAG article, stay the haps. The have nots like us, ever in small turnover will end up with less spend on players and so on and so forth, right? You wait for doing a transition process, right? So over two or three seasons, they're going to get to where they want to get, we don't know what the Premier League are going to do, we just know they're under severe pressure, that PSR doesn't work, so they're saying something better is coming along. What those other 18 clubs I think at their board meeting are spooked by, they're not spooked by the 105, because they've all come within that, they're spooked by the sanctions, which are big points deductions. So unless they announce anytime soon, by the way, and they'd be foolish to do this, wouldn't they, if you think of Nottingham Forest and Everton, by the way, we're not going to have points deductions anymore, then Everton and Forest don't get points deductions now, because it's not fair if they do. And if they don't get points now, what the heck are they going to do with the 0.7 I've already had? You cannot not give Forest points deductions because you know it's wrong when you've already given them to Everton. Probably after just being there in the summer. If 0.7 or any other entity, by Everton, if 0.7 are giving the green, then you'll have the big spam. Touch on that a minute, because one thing that seems to be overlooked is they've already got two approvals, haven't they? Which was a Christmas. Now, what's dramatically different in the FA1 and the Premier League one, is that they're an affiliate of the FA, as such. It is the Football Association Premier League, exactly. They've got the FCA one, which is the big one. Surely that's proven with points. By the way, predominantly about the women's teams, that's what it's doing. I just want to get for this, because we're going to finish in a minute. If they're giving the green light, or if it's another group, for you, what should be like the first steps? They take to improve where we are, because we seemingly have been without a plan for a long time, without real. With a plan, I mean, we don't seem to have followed any path. Certainly since Farad Mishiri took over. So, for you, what do we need? Structure and governance. They're the first two things. We need people in the right positions, not Colin trying to do seven jobs, not Richard Kenyon trying to do 12 jobs or whatever. Get rid of him, definitely. If we need to improve our commercial performance, then get someone who's got a reputable distinction in the industry. Track record. We're going out and chasing, because it's going to come down to revenue. So, we need better commercial performance. You can't be having poker pies and people in from town coming in to just sponsor you for your quid. We've got the bargain basements, although it's a lot of money, in terms of sponsors. We need to boost that, and the stadium will help. But you need, as well, destruction in terms of the plan. Okay, Kevin fell well, you're going to have this budget. Get on with it. Your job. If you fail, then you fall on your sword. That's how it should be. Then everyone's judged by their department. We don't put out media. Why have we got so many media people? The commercial part, I keep touching on it, but it's terrible.   It's a joke. And then just having them and communicate we've done well in the last couple of months. Better communication from the fell well and how dice that have fronted up a lot of press conferences. But it's not really about that, he shouldn't be fronting up off the field issue. He's just managing coach. We need the figureheads. Not people just at a loose end or doing the stadium tours that were then promoted. Can't have jobs for the boys and that's what it being. That's what held us back for years. I know ticket prices have gone up again. But it's got a fall in line with where the club wants to go on it. Football is massively too expensive as it is. It's going to go up and that's just what it is. It's just part for the course, isn't it? But just to assemble into a plan will be nice. For you, whoever it is you take over. What's the first step that you want to see? We keep saying it's like we're stuck in one season. That's lasted three years so far. I've been a road down. Now like days ago I'd get rid of the culture that's within the club. You have to get rid of people sadly. It's just life, isn't it? There's a culture within this club that as a mentality that I can't get behind. We've seen it recently. That means you have to probably and John would be better at this install somebody to put that culture into the club. He's not just a figurehead he's actually somebody who you know. Do you want to see that straight away? I've heard that for quite a few years and I know maybe financers have hampered this but getting a CEO is actually a really good CEO. Not like somebody who gets it by default because they work with charity. Literally that is the culture of Everton Football Club. We have to move away from that and got to go and get the best of the best of whoever. I mean obviously it's all to do with affordability and creating a new culture of are we just watching Liverpool chasing what they used to have to come in and run the football operations. He's going to be the CEO of football. To me it sells you everything about the two different clubs. They're trying to get multi club. Exactly, but they've gone that back and they haven't took no for an answer. When they were struggling they went and got Peter Moore who was the best fella not only because he was red but they believed and he hadn't worked in football as in football club and knew all the partnerships knew all all of them and got everyone and said we're going to do this and do that and you knew all the people in the room buying mewn ago to people from Adidas because they know all they go and get the best people who mightn't be to do with the actual 100 football club but they've got all the connections and they've done big deals John Blaine is the obvious answer isn't he but you know what I mean I've tapped into the NFL and now there's been it was NFL London now they've got Jamie and it doesn't have to be a football person so on this similar to what we've said about the players you want someone you can have John Roberts or Robert Robertes from Ren for a million or you can have Neil Mopey because he's played in the Premier League he's comparable isn't he because he's probably well better he's well better but he's got no Premier League well what does that mean in terms of life doesn't mean anything to me I remember Tops Frank being asked about Premier League experience and he was like you can play in the Premier League John I'll leave the last way to you then whoever's rubber stamped whether it's 777 whether it's Billy Fred and John we've got money from somewhere I look like they're getting they're acting together a little bit and changing that and like Peds said how would you change the culture if it was dead easy then with the commitments you would have thought it would have happened already I think the culture as Peds says is completely wrong and that's a product of many many years and it's quite clear that there will be people in the organisation who are not capable of changing so ends the sound bite of the people but I think part of the challenge is that as a football club they've been stuck in this doldrum for so long you actually I think it's a bit excessive to say burn it down but it's a good graphic way of describing what needs to be done we all know what the problems are you need better commercial income you need more matchday income you need that you need the other but saying what's needed and doing it is what the football club fundamentally needs in my mind is it needs the ability to be decisive in decision making and it needs to be able to effectively communicate with its key stakeholders one which for far too long it's frankly insulted with its relationship which is the fan base and I think that's started to get fixed over the last couple of years communications is still in my view piss poor but above the parapet every three months might be better than not doing it at all but a bit like the footballing side lowering our expectations of what best practice is isn't the answer and Conte said it didn't he he said it in Italy or whatever it might have been really when they're doing the media after it it's the sporting director isn't it all that right so don't lower expectation and then make something which is barely average can I pause you there if you haven't got an opportunity then whoever it is to come in to set a new where you're doing stuff then just because eight other clubs don't do it like this could we go in and go like you said if Peds the sporting director Peds speaks to the media once a week or once a month whatever it may be could we should we be doing that and taking it on look we haven't got billions to spend but look how good we do this there are huge opportunities I think me and Peds have talked about that in the past for football clubs Premier League football clubs to be the first to do stuff which is actually box standard in older industries and therefore not quite letting the media crawl all over your training ground all the time but get far closer than anyone could imagine and the culture you get into change the culture what kind of culture do you want have a challenger culture that feels that their views are going to be listened to have a very objective performance based culture which frankly I often say about my past day jobs back in the day 20 years ago when I was in the pomp doing what I did for a living I earned lots of money or I got the sack one or the other and I was cool with that because guess what I kept earning lots of money and I just think there isn't anybody at the football club right now capable of reshaping organisation from what it is to what it needs to be nobody nobody at all so whomever it is say it's a 777 just because they're the guys on the step at the moment I don't think they have the slightest idea what they're walking into but if they can make an announcement on day one and this is the chief exec and day one this is the chief engagement officer I like that phrase but the guy who's going to do all that comp stuff and clearly a very strong and experienced finance director and none of those perhaps with the acceptance of the chief engagement officer needs any prior footballing experience in my view they just know how to run businesses they know how to turn businesses around they know how to stimulate changes in behaviour and cultures and they actually are proper leaders that people are prepared to follow they do that first 30 days will do then I think we would all lift we would all lift up we'd all be more prepared to buy stuff from the club we'd all be prepared to suffer increased ticket prices because that's inevitable because the people who are long since have built a too small stadium and so on but the culture has to be we are everton we're going up if you don't believe that the doors over there and lots of people will self select there's going to be a huge shock for lots of people at the football club that if you like they're going to have to work for a living but a positive shock probably for almost the same number of things Alla you, Lluia I can now use all my skills use all my experience and see it making a difference so the only winners and losers in the culture change thing are the people who are not prepared to change everyone else will have a ball go on one of the things you just like you'll be close to this to me just business basics was the last time we had an AGM I can't even remember when the best thing that's come out of the club communication wise has been Julia's series and it's brilliant I genuinely build a new building a Finch farm a trusted media building every single day there's a press conference with a different person absolutely right because you chain out stories every day you chain out that are positive or you speak to Leighton Baines every day or you speak to someone else every day next minute all every creator every influencer every journalist is satisfied there's enough content out there get rid of all the noise that gets fills in all the space but you can't do any photo shops but when Roberto was here I'm all used with him and all the fan group and Alan Myers was there and now we've got plenty of people make use of all of it make use of all those people who's presenting the pregame for everything you get Julia and you get all those people and every day you get an invite every day one o'clock you can come down to Leighton Baines tomorrow which is the captain of the women's team the next day it's going to be Seamus Coleman the next day it's the manager and every single day it's half an hour with somebody the content would go through the roof and evidence name and brand will be everywhere and the key there is the brands that we have deals with they're all on screen more often they're all getting more bang for the buck the price goes up Seamus Coleman had actually physically came out in front of people and gone this is my brand new shirt I'm going to go on to show you Seamus that's your very own shirt oh my god flood of tears this is on sale right now all that stuff this is all the stuff that we should be doing just because nobody else is doing it doesn't mean it's wrong but the sponsors could have each day as well so you could go tomorrow is James Vaughan because he's in and it's brought to you by Christopher Vaughan so we go in and written people and whatever and it's all like we were at the Christopher Vaughan sponsored and the sponsors are getting there now Imagine a world where our football club perceptions can be changed a lot faster than truth in reality right went from being we talk ourselves down so we talk ourselves up let's have toffee fest every year you pick a period of time be it in the bloody what to call this week the MNS arena whatever and you end up with this city flooded with 25, 30,000 Evertonians spending money like it's Billy O and everyone immediately goes nah that's never going to happen what happens if we don't sell all the tickets Pedsview would be give me the stadium I'll fill it for a legends game rather than worrying about whether there's going to be empty seats we don't look good on telly you've got to have a positive outcome Jane Form is a perfect example got a new job this week what's your job and what are you going to do how did you get a 2D statement with a picture no that would just give you the story one online thing pay for how's that fair on the rest of us how's that fair on everybody else how's that fair on somebody who works for the echo you know who will get it I'm not saying but you know who will get it I'm just saying how's that fair on the fellow who works for the echo but imagine because you're right because we're on a roll now aren't we if you want tickets for the Bournemouth game you have to have 67 credits that's like your evidence that you've been following Everton for at least 3 years home and away and no one can argue therefore you should get the ticket if you're doing what he says which is you have an effectively media event every single day, morning and afternoon in the media centre at Finch Farm bla bla bla you suddenly get to the end of a period and you go times have been six times the echo have been 187 times softy cv have been 497 times who's actually committed to this football club who always turns up now make it like the west wing we'll just stay there we've seen it a couple of weeks ago with the thing at Everton too didn't we and they changed the time on the day his own goals and there's no we've talked about 777 but there's no shortage of companies who want to throw money at the Premier League for documentaries and specials and even on YouTube I watch a lot of American stuff and it's all paid promotion but you get on there and it's free in association with whatever so there's lots of relaying you play in the Premier League you've managed in the Premier League you normally have to pay for advertising but if you do an Amazon documentary they pay you to advertise your company to everyone in the world take all of them ideas let us know what you think we've got loads more whoever takes over great potential what we'll convince you that things are trying to move in the right direction if you think in the comment section below subscribe if you haven't see you later


Daily Tech News show is made possible by its listeners. Thanks to all of you, including John Atwood, Pat, Mike Cortez, a shout out sponsored by Matt Zaglin for Grover T. Muldoon, plus two new patrons, Jamie and Joe Catskill. On this episode of DTNS, I think ARC solved AI and search. Am I right? Plus, why are robot vacuums still not that good? And Chris Ashley gets the conversation started on electric battery generators. This is the Daily Tech News for Monday, January 29th, twenty twenty four in Los Angeles. I'm Tom Merritt and rocking down too close to your nation's capital. I'm your boy, Chris Ashley. And I'm the show's producer, Roger Chang. You are our representative to the nation's capital from Daily Tech. You should. That's right. I take it all. Bring it to me. Exactly. All right. Let's get right into the Monday News with the Quick Kits. We talked last week about efforts to stop people from posting or at least being able to find some lewd, deep faked videos of Taylor Swift on X. We mentioned that the Deep Fakes originated in a telegram group that made videos like this regularly using Microsoft Designer. Now, we didn't talk about the fact that Microsoft doesn't make that easy. It blocks a lot of these kinds of creations, but members of these groups have figured out workarounds, alternate spellings, keyword hacks, things like that to get around those safeguards. 404 Media reports that Designer now stops users from creating any kind of celebrity face. You put Ariana Grande or Chris Ashley in there. It's just not going to come up with anything. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella is also going to appear on NBC Nightly News in the United States on Tuesday to discuss what else Microsoft is doing to combat deep fakes like this. Interesting. Well, Watchmaker Fossil announced it will stop making Wear OS watches altogether. Yeah, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer Jeff Boyer told The Verge we have made the strategic decision to exit the smartwatch business. That makes the 2021 Gen 6 the last Fossil smartwatch. Fossil says it will keep the existing watches updated for the next few years. So translation, get new watches. Wearables is still growing, though. So is this a more about Fossil than it does about smartwatches? I would think so. I think just Amazon and, I mean, sorry, Android and Apple are just killing it. Last week, we reported that the George Carlin estate is suing the makers of Doodzy over that YouTube special, the hour long YouTube special that was hosted by an AI version of George Carlin. One of the contentions in the lawsuit is that copyright was infringed when Doodzy or the makers of Doodzy trained the model on George Carlin's copyrighted works. So the best defense against that accusation, if you're the Doodzy folks, would be to admit there was no training, right? Well, a spokeswoman for the Doodzy folks told The New York Times, quote, the YouTube video I'm glad I'm dead was completely written by Chad Kultgen. Chad's one of the co-hosts of the podcast that has Doodzy on it. That's pretty unequivocal. That's that's not a lot of weasel words there. They said it was completely written by Chad Kultgen. That will now have to be proven in a court of law, because it's actually in the Carlin estate's best interest to prove that the special was not entirely written by a human, but in fact, generated by a machine that was trained on Carlin's works. Unless they prove that Chad studied Carlin's lines and used that as their basis, then they could probably say unless they can prove that Chad was an AI. You get good point. Another tactic. Good news, though. Remember, we told you about Japan's slim, a.k.a. smart lander of investigating the moon, which landed upside down so its solar panels weren't pointed at the sun. Well, the sun's position in the lunar sky has got to the point that it's hitting the solar panels and charged battery. Slim lives. Science operations have started and they have the first photo from slim itself of a nearby rock that looks like a toy poodle. If you squint really hard anyway. The two probes, Lev one and Lev two that successfully were launched from slim on landing have the Ginn investigations as have begun their investigations as well. That's good. That's good. All right. I've been rooting for slim. I was sad that it it actually technically struck a precision landing. It just did it upside down, which that's a higher difficulty level. I feel right as a handstand. Yeah. Finally, Therat is one of the few outlets that notice something positive tucked in a way in all of Apple's announcements about changes to its developer policies last week. We are guilty of that of everyone in focusing most of our attention on the third party app stores and direct downloads and Apple requiring you to still share revenue, even if you don't go through the app store and all that, but also changed. Apple now says and here we'll quote the developer guidelines. Developers can now submit a single app with the capability to stream all of the games offered in their catalog. Apps will also be able to provide enhanced discovery opportunities for streaming games and that change is worldwide. That's not just an EU change in slightly related news. Apple News Bloomberg's Mark German says iOS 18, the next version of iOS, is quote seen within the company as one of the biggest iOS updates, if not the biggest in the company's history. So it looks like it'll be a fun WWDC this June, Chris. How cool. And one side note, one of my favorite tech pictures of all time, Mr. Therat himself getting ready to plant one on my cheek. That's a good picture. Make that happen again. You can't recreate that easily anyway. Also, big news today, Amazon will not acquire Roomba Maker iRobot after it became clear they weren't going to get approval from the EU. The European Commission found that the acquisition was likely to restrict competition from iRobots rivals as Amazon controls such a dominant section of retail sales. And there just wasn't anything Amazon could do to say, well, what if we agreed to this? What if we agreed to that? The EC was just like, no, you're too motivated to not abide by those. So we're just not going to approve the deal. iRobot as a result will engage in another round of layoffs, not its first one in the past year. This time they will be letting go 350 people, including CEO and chair Colin Engel. Executive Vice President Glenn Weinstein is going to take over as temporary CEO. The company will also pause work on all of its non-floor care products. So they have vacuums and they also have some scrubbers and things, but they've been developing air purifiers and a lawnmower. So they're going to end that. They're just going to stick the vacuums and scrubbers to reduce costs. Amazon is going to pay iRobot a $94 million termination fee. But in a company that size, that's that's not enough to cover all of its cost cutting and it's not an ongoing payment. It's just the one time fee. Tech crunches, Brian Heater asked a pertinent question in his article about all this is the future of the home robot in jeopardy. I Chris, I think that's a great question because what this means is that iRobot saw being acquired by Amazon as a way to protect its profitability and allow it to continue to develop things. And without that shield, it doesn't see itself as profitable enough to continue to do research and development and expand into new arenas, which then made me think how much has the Roomba even changed in the past 20 years? It's been around for 20 years now, and it's not all that much different than it was 20 years ago. Twenty years ago, we were using iPods like we didn't even have iPhones yet. So there there are a lot of products that have made bigger advances than the than the robot vacuum. Yeah, I'm starting to wonder if this is one of those cases where we just got out of head and got lazy because, you know, if you think about the one major thing that changed is the price went up and up and up in this. I've been watching these things for a long time. This is one of like those guilty pleasure gifts that I want to get for myself and just never pull the trigger because, you know, if I hire my cleaning lady, she comes out for one hundred and twenty five bucks. This thing is ridiculously expensive. And I think that is the major problem because you would think if you want to drive adoption, you need to get it into more households and to get it into more households, you need to drive the price down, not up. Yeah. So, you know, how they have not done this is crazy to me. Yeah. And I think the capability has been slow to come, although we are with all of these generative models at the point. And we saw a lot of people pitching this at CES where the robots can be smarter that can do a lot of things that the Roomba couldn't do before. So right as they're hitting these skids, we are getting the kinds of tools that could at least make them better than they have been at avoiding obstacles and figuring out where the dirt is and mapping your layouts and all that. Yeah. But that's not going to bring the price down necessarily. If anything, it might bring the price up if you have to go to the cloud to use it. So I think you're right. I think it's just we're waiting on that innovation that makes this more efficient and therefore able to be sold for cheap. Yeah, I'm looking at their website right now. Some of these, I mean, 799, 899 and 1399. And I know that even shark jumped out there a little bit with the, you know, I think they have the somewhat lower price point, but not that much because Samsung's got one out there too. And you can find cheaper robot vacuums, but then they aren't reviewed. They're reviewed at the level of spending a couple hundred dollars versus several hundred dollars, right? Yeah, for sure. And yeah, and I'm wondering what other innovation they would put into flooring. You know, it's not going to strip and relax the floors. Or maybe it should. There's some waxing actually that I have seen. But yeah, I don't think they the stripping for you. The Ufi Robovac is the choice of wire cutter and that's two hundred fifty dollars. See, see that that right there is all you need to see why these guys might be looking to get bought out. And, you know, Amazon, I'm sure was not buying it because they want to help people clean their clean their houses. All right. Simply, there's got to be some more personal data available that you know, with the mapping of the households and stuff like that. I think we talked about this when they first made this announcement. So I'm actually shocked that it didn't go through because I was starting to think that none of these deals get blocked anymore. I feel the opposite. I feel like we're seeing more deals get blocked than we used to. I mean, Microsoft didn't get blocked, but it had to work. It was hard at it. And this is one where in the past, I would have expected Amazon to be able to say, like, OK, we'll agree not to preference iRobots products in our Amazon search for 10 years. And the EU would have been like, OK, great, we'll be auditing that. And that would have been that. But instead, EC just put a hard line of like, even if you agree to that, you're you're you're not going to be motivated to do it. We just think it's a bad precedent. So I feel like the the line is starting to get harder. I hope so. I hope so. Because, you know, the other option is the Amazon basics. Vacuum robot. Yeah. Robo rock is another one. It's like four to seven hundred. So it's still in the price here. But it's not quite serious here. But yeah, I don't see why there can't be a $99 version of this bad boy that literally just bounces off your walls. It's got super rubberized outside. So yeah, it's not going to be as smart as the other ones, but it's not going to destroy your your toes and your furniture either. Just bounce around, do your thing and go park. While we wait for someone to to find the big innovation in robot vacuums or robotics in general, I mean, we didn't even get into the fact that like we've had Astro from Amazon and all these other attempts to bring you a home robot. None of those have caught on either again, super expensive things. Here's something that does seem to have finally solved something that was promising, but nobody had delivered on. The browser company has a new iOS app out called Arc Search. Now it's called Arc Search right now because search is its big main feature. They say that eventually it'll just be called the Arc app. It is the Arc browser on iOS. It can do a straight Google search for you and it can also just browse to a website for you. But if you are typing in a search and instead of pressing return, you choose the browse for me button. A machine model will then look for relevant websites, interpret the info on those websites and create a page of information for you to satisfy your query. So I did a search for when is the Super Bowl? That's going to be the top search term in a week. I get a splash page from Arc Search that shows me what web sources it was looking at. And then after several seconds, so this isn't as fast as a search. I get a page that says when is the Super Bowl? 2024 tells me the date February 11th, 2024. The time 3 30 p.m. Pacific because it knows I'm in Pacific time, so it gives me Pacific first. It tells me where it is in Las Vegas. It tells me the teams based on yesterday's games. It tells me the halftime performer is usher. It then shows me some links to top search results followed by more details on those initial pieces of information. If I want to find out a little more like, you know, when is pregame start versus when did the game start? It tells me where it sourced all this stuff from. And I also did other searches. And in those other searches, I got a dive deeper section with links to more stories. So I was set, Chris, to go into this thing and say, you know, the Arc browser, it's like the modern day opera. Like it's very cool. It has its vertical tabs on the side, but it's kind of a hipster thing. Not everybody's going to love it, even if it is technically superior. I looked at this mobile app and I was like, this works. This this thing, it may not be perfect. It's not, but it works way better than I expected. Oh, I'm definitely about to be using this thing a lot. And my initial reaction was it was extremely intuitive, which is which is a big plus, right? Because if you're looking at it, you're not exactly sure what you're doing. But, you know, the button, I wish they made the browse for me button a little bit more obvious. But, you know, when you hit it and you just get this array of information, it's like, whoa, this, this is doing like 30 searches in one that I would normally have to do. It gave me a great summary because I actually search for a generator generator inverters and it gave me like the top generator inverter. That's the top ranked generator inverter. It gave me why people liked it. It said it gave me like a typical price range, even though the price range was a bit vast, but it did give me a price range of what I could expect to spend. And it just gave me an array of information that at the very least would get me well, probably like, you know, an hour or two into searching for this type of information, a jumpstart, you know what I mean? So I really like that aspect of it. And then as I looked at it more, I realized that these guys have an opportunity to save our social interactions, I think, big time. And it's something that they're wrestling with, but for me, it's pretty simple. If these guys keep the information strictly off a search and keep the personalization out of it, I think they have a chance to eliminate one of our big problems in our search engines today, which is this confirmation bias that keeps showing up. Because it's not personalized. Instead of showing you what you want to see, it just shows you a more, quote, unquote, objective result. Is that what you're saying? Exactly. It's looking for, you give it a search term and say, here's the top results of information that I was able to find. Here you go. We don't care what you looked at before. I don't care what you think is the information right here. And I look at that as a huge opportunity because I like, I like the position that they're in, right? They're like, hey, we're going to combine all these different type of searches for you, we're going to aggregate this information for you and present it to you right up front. And if people can get on board with that and be like, you know what? This search engine is not giving me their hocus pocus on it. They just give me the raw information, which I think a lot of people do enjoy having the ability to have their information presented to them without a bunch of fluff. So I think you've got to have an opportunity to wade through a bunch of SEO game to links, right? Right. And that that overlaps with what you're talking about, because some of the bubble stuff that you're talking about isn't even just because of personalization. It's also because people are like, when people are searching for this term, they believe this.  And this circumvets that and says, well, that's clickbait headline. We're not going to bother with that, but we're going to show you reasonable sources that are reliable. And the question is, can it do it well? And I've only been using it this morning, but so far it does it really well. I've tried it with some niche searches of my own that usually end up failing on Google and it handled them really well. Yeah, it was able to say like, oh, yeah, these are the niche sources that are reliable. I recognize them all instead of me having to wade through a hundred results on Google and go, OK, there's the one I'm looking for. There's the one I'm looking for. This found them for me. Well, I had the same experience because I've been, you know, doing generator searches for like the last three weeks. And the information that it presented was pretty much the conclusion I came to over that time frame. So I felt like it was pretty accurate as far as I was able to corroborate what it was telling me. So I thought that aspect of it was really, really cool. Now, there's some UI things I hope they add to because I feel like each result should be actionable as opposed to going all the way to the bottom for to find the more information. But, you know, because I was like mashing each each section. I was like, give me more, give me more.  But, you know, that's just a UI thing that they can do pretty easily. But it's pretty new. So that's, yeah, yeah. But I am going to start using this really heavily because I just I love the simple presentation. I love no extra ads and fluff and puff. Just give me data so I can run with it and do whatever I want. And then I like the ability to kind of drill down a little further. And because it's a browser, the searches stay in their own page. It's basically creating a web page for you for your search results. So you can go back and refer to them. You can keep them around if it's a topic you're following and reload them and refresh them. The biggest things they're going to have to deal with are the cost of running this. So if they're they're running a machine model in the cloud, that that can rack up costs if it gets popular. And then, of course, once you rack up cost, you need to make money. So how are they going to make money off of this? What's the what's the business plan for it? Do you get people really excited about it? Catch on and then try to make them pay for it. Browser company doesn't seem to be interested in selling ads or monetizing you as a product. So they're limited in what they can do. And then finally, over the long term, you're going to run into the same thing if you get popular enough that Google and Facebook run into, which is news publishers are not too happy about somebody getting in between them and their information. So what about the publishers that are creating all this information that you're scraping and creating this web page? You know, how do you compensate them? How do you bring them in and keep them involved and not cut off their revenue source as well? Because then they'll go out of business and you won't have any information to aggregate anymore. Yeah, those are definitely all legit challenges. These guys are going to have to overcome. I, you know, I'm I always get torn whether pay now or pay later type of innovations because, you know, they clearly both work. But sometimes you get into the point where it starts out free and then all of a sudden you're forced to attempt to keep it free. For me, I would absolutely pay for a what I consider to be a premium search experience. And I think others probably will as well. The problem is, you know, are you locking out the people who need this type of search experience the most? Yeah, you're going to your scale is going to go down real fast if you make people pay for search without some special something coming along. But but people are used to getting that for free. So or maybe they go to Wikipedia model, right? Pay if you want to. Yeah, yeah, maybe they will as I would be something like that or pay for power users. You know, if you want to do more than X number of searches per day or something like that. Yeah. Yeah, I love this though. Yeah, I whatever they end up doing to try to figure that out will be interesting. But right now I give them a win on day one. This is this is a useful app for me today, which is not usually what I'm saying. All right, we think we have a useful new show for you today. Apple has lots of power users, has lots of hipster users. But what about the rest of us? Sarah Lane and Eileen Rivera have put together an Apple podcast called Apple Vision Show to talk about whether Apple's vision matches what you want, what they want. Get subscribed right now. Don't miss it. It's getting off the ground today in beta and launches officially next week. So you want to be in there on the ground floor and say, yeah, I was there on the Apple Vision Show from the beginning. Go check it out. AppleVisionShow.com. Interest in home generators as a backup source for electricity has increased not only as climate change has caused power outages to get more frequent, but also just all kinds of reasons that power outages have become more frequent, but also because the prices have come down and they're easier to maintain as they become electric batteries instead of gasoline powered motors or petrol powered motors of various kinds. This year, CES saw a lot of new solar generators and power stations from lots of manufacturers. And we're not setting ourselves up as the experts here, but we are both enthusiastic about this space. So we're going to kind of share our enthusiasm with you. And of course, if you are an expert out in the audience, please let us know feedback at DailyTechNewShow.com. Chris, you have bought the Anker Solex F3800 portable power station so far. How's it going? And what would you tell people who are like, OK, I'm interested, but what do you find it out so far? OK, so I did grab this thing. And, you know, I was looking to have like some. I've been obsessed with backup power since I was doing I was smoking a couple of briskets and I've gotten to the point where I'm pretty comfortable going to bed and waking up and, you know, taking the meat off and wrapping it or whatever. And I had a power outage and I didn't hook up my backup battery by my small battery to the to my devices. And, yeah, in the first time in a long time, I actually, you know, messed up a brisket. It was salvageable, but I was a super annoyed that, you know, that the power had won out and it didn't alarm when it was time to wrap. So I had started looking at backup capabilities and I started going down this path. And then I saw and on a side note, I'd always been interested in a backup for the house because now that my mother's here and she's older and we're taking care of where a caregiver for her, I want to make sure that we're able to handle any scenario that cops up with that.  I could just plug in to him. So all of these things together really got me kind of searching and searching. And I came across the the anchor Solix and then realized that, wow, they're about to drop the F3 800, which is like a full on battery powered generator. And so and then the the EcoFlow had one as well. But I was just kind of a little bit more with anchor. They seem to be on par with each other, but I just went with the anchor. So I would tell people first and foremost, it's it's expensive. So if you're going to go this route, just be prepared to drop some coin. It is definitely expensive initially. But the cool thing is they they're often like a pretty massive discount. And I'm not here to stump for them at all. I'm just telling you what I came across. And so and they give you kind of give you different options of how you apply it. So whether you get the generator itself and then the or you get the generator plus an extra backup battery or you get the generator plus a solar panel. And that's the good really cool thing that I liked about these two options. The EcoFlow and the anchor is that they both support solar panels and in a pretty big array. So the the anchor one supports up to like 2400 watts, which is like, I think, eight panels, which is crazy to recharge in. And if you can actually plug it in and recharge with the solar panel and off the off the grid at the same time, which is cool, too. So when I when I've realized that the potential here and then I'm like, oh, wow, they have a panel where I can, you know, extend my house breakers and now I can use it as a whole home system. So now the possibilities, even though I bought it just for, you know, regular outdoor use, not necessarily outdoor use, but use with my smoking and, you know, maybe more portable. Yeah, stuff. I was like, man, this is pretty cool and it's quiet. You know what I mean? I've done tailgating with generators before and you have to put them like in another parking lot away from you because they're so loud. They're burning, they're burning fuel and, and, and right. And smoke and making that motor sound as they burn. And you feel bad pointing it at somebody else. But yeah, man, we got to eat. So yeah. So, you know, there there's you're supposed to be making. They're making those a little bit quieter, too. But I love the fact that this thing has no noise. You turn it on. It's got Wi-Fi capabilities. You can see how long it's going to last. And that just got me thinking. It's like, man, are other people starting to look into this? You've seen all the power outages going on in Texas. Even this year already, they've had a little bit of that already with the weather and stuff.  Even though it's underreported, I think last year they made a big splash both of these companies, EcoFall and Anchor.  And you have one that you have the ego. Yeah, about five years ago, right after we got our solar installed, I was thinking about getting a whole home, like a power wall from Tesla or something. And the solar folks actually talked to me out of it. They're like, the amount of times it'll come in handy versus how much it costs at that time was not. They're like, it's not worth it. If you have a bigger house or you're in a neighborhood where the power outages are unusually frequent than maybe, he's like, but you're not in that situation. So I didn't go with that.  And I've used it twice during power outages. I did not ever have to be in the situation where I thought, you know what, I need to plug my fridge in, but I could have. Like it was big enough to do that. I just used it to like, you know, charge up phones and keep the light, keep some lights on and stuff like that. It was good. I also have a solar charger for it so that if it needed to be recharged over a long period of time, it could, but that was five years ago. And these things are so much more powerful and so much more versatile. And like you say, can do things like, you know, charge your breakers and act as whole home backups now and modular. I'm starting to wonder if maybe that should just become, you know, the outdoor power source somehow. And I should look into getting one of these for for the whole home backup so that it can take advantage of that solar power I'm generating. Well, one of the biggest convincing factors, too, that I needed to take this more seriously as well, aside from the stuff that I mentioned is that Tom was doing the show with you and my lost power. And, but, you know, aside from not having a screen because I couldn't power my screen, but everything else stayed on internet computers, everything because I had to regular battery backups. And so I was like, man, you know, just having a another system to switch into would would have been even better. And then I would have I could have powered the screen screen to stay down. Yeah. And this thing is massive. So, you know, the thing I would caution people as well is even though they do have like a kind of a luggage style pull handle. They're extremely heavy. I think just one alone is like one hundred and sixty pounds.  I can lift it. No problem. I can throw it on the back of my truck if I need to. But it is heavy. I would caution people that, you know, the rolling it is super simple. You can lean it over and roll it. But if you've got steps and, you know, putting it on a truck and in and out. Yeah, get ready. It's pretty darn heavy. Yes, that said, it's not as it's that semi portable. Yeah, but I was messing around with it over the weekend and I plugged in a a hotspot to it. I have a separate AT&T hotspot for devices and I plugged that into it. And it literally said it would run that little thing for like twenty two days. That's impressive. Yeah, it was crazy. So I thought that was pretty cool. I did plug in a 50 amp plug into it and I was able to run like a refrigerator off of it. No problem. And the refrigerators actually don't use as much power. You know, things like heaters and tend to take up more. And it kind of put my truck in perspective because I can also plug stuff into my truck. Sure. And of course, you know, the one thing that these guys are starting to use as well is the same type of batteries that are in vehicles so they last longer, they can charge up more. The other innovation that I'm seeing that these guys are doing is multiple ways to charge it. So you can buy an adapter cable for both both the eco flow and the anchor and you can plug it in at like Tesla chargers or at CCS chargers. You know, they have adapters for that now. So you can charge them, rapid charge them, but they're also powerful enough to charge your vehicle.  But it might give you, in my case, I needed seven miles. You know what I mean? And I could probably just get just about get that out of my charge. So I don't know. The same as that spare, you know, gallon jug. Exactly. Right. Exactly. So I just thought it was interesting. Yeah, folks, like I said, you know, this this is that we're both interested in and exploring. So if you've got thoughts about on this as well, feedback at Daily Tech News Show dot com Chris Ashley, before we get out of here, where can folks find more of your brilliance? Normally, I send you to eat. But this week, come check us out on SMR podcast, me, Rob Rod, and we had the great Alison Sheridan on last week with a really fun debate going on in that one. And that was a lot of fun. We're still doing our thing over there, still kicking it. So come check us out on SMR podcast. Indeed, patrons, stick around. There's more show if you're supporting the show directly. We thank you by giving you an extended show called Good Day Internet. We're going to talk a little bit about how Zoom is going to work on the Apple Vision Pro spoiler. You get to be a 3D avatar and turn other people into virtual people as well. Doesn't that sound fun? You can also catch the show live Monday through Friday, 4 p.m. Eastern 2100 UTC. You can find out more about that at dailytechnewshow.com slash live back tomorrow.  Talk to you then.