Welcome to the NTN Nightly, I am Penal Novel, this edition, Top Stories. The youth agri-enterprise program reaped a major gain, the head of the Commonwealth Hills Inclusion as a vital member nation. Prime Minister the Honourable Alan Shasne says the OECS as a region is growing in a manner that truly demonstrates inclusion. All that plus the latest in youth development, a sport and the NTN novel of the all. The Government of St. Lucia continues to secure the future of the island's agriculture sector on many fronts. Among the efforts is the engagement of the youth in the sector. Since the implementation of the youth agri-enterprise program, major gains have been realised in creating job opportunities for participating youth, increasing the knowledge base in the sector as well as providing assistance to farmers. More now from Anise Antoine. To ensure the sustainability and survival of the agricultural sector, the Government of St. Lucia in partnership with the Carecom Development Fund invested approximately 4.2 million EC dollars towards a youth agricultural enterprise program. Currently 80 young St. Lucia's are receiving training and support in areas such as the use of appropriate technology and application of best practices. Adelaide Nurovik, national coordinator of the youth agri-enterprise program in the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries, Physical Planning and Natural Resources and Cooperatives appealed to young people to explore job opportunities in the agricultural sector. We're looking at the creation of young entrepreneurs in agriculture. Also we're looking to develop that kind of mindset where the persons could introduce and embrace new technology that's using agriculture to move agriculture forward. We had problems with the age of our farmers, that's why we're targeting the young persons. The average age of a farmer in St. Lucia and the region is around 55 to 60 years. So we do have an ageing population among the farmers. And that is an impediment for introduction of technology and also for longevity of anything that we're planning. The youth agri-enterprise program has been operational for approximately six years. The program caters to farmers who own or lease private lands. Crown lands are also utilized. River Dory is our most diversified site where you have the greenhouses, you have apiculture, honey production, bees. You have all the different enterprise, all the different livestock enterprises that you could think of on that site. We have Rosso, where we have approximately 28 acres in Rosso. We have Lakaya, where we have 100 plus acres, we had 100 plus acres. Later on recently we have decided as a ministry to move most of the land into bananas. So the different activities that we had proposed for that area, we had to move it to private lands and elsewhere. So Lakaya is still with us because we still have some participants there. But these participants have been absorbed by the Banana Project. Eurovik explained that the SLDB has made terms and conditions of loans for farmers more lenient to encourage growth and youth participation in the farming industry. To date, the Ministry of Agriculture has recorded no defaults on loan payments. From the Government Information Service, I am Anisia Antwan reporting. Meantime, the success of St Lucia and Johanna Dujon in establishing the first indigenous biotech company in the region has been hailed by the head of the Commonwealth, His Royal Highness Prince of Wales. The strides by Dujon, Prince Charles noted, have helped position St Lucia as a vital member of the Commonwealth. His Royal Highness Prince Charles Philip Arthur George, Prince of Wales on the 17th of March 2019, made an official visit to St Lucia. The Prince was welcomed to the south of the island with a special welcome ceremony, schools rally and reception in his honour. The royal visit coincided with the island's 40th Independence Anniversary celebrations. The Prince during his address highlighted St Lucia as a vital member of the Commonwealth family, a family that binds together 2.4 billion people across 53 countries on six continents. He noted St Lucia's accomplishments. The people of St Lucia have so much of which they can be proud. Today, the name of this land, the only country in the world to bear the name of a woman, is known the world over. 1.2 million international visitors flock to these shores each year. Your sportsmen and women and your musicians are making a name for themselves internationally. As our young entrepreneurs, such as Johannan Dujon, whom I met recently in London and whose company, making organic fertilizer from toxic sargassum seaweed, the Caribbean's first indigenous agriculture biotech company is just one example of St Lucia's abundant talents and creativity. His Royal Highness Prince Charles Arden, that tackling the threat of climate change and finding ways of mitigating the risk it presents, is and must continue to be a top priority for the Commonwealth. Prime Minister the Honourable Alan Chastney, congratulated founder of Algas Organics, Johannan Dujon, on winning the Commonwealth Youth Award 2019 in London. He also explained the country's continued battle with climate change. The challenges that we face are many, crime, unemployment, and the need for improved social services. Among the greatest challenges that we face is the issue of climate change, and we're not in this alone. Climate change does not discriminate whether you are big or small, rich or poor. It affects us all. As a small island developing state, we're often paralyzed because when it comes to building resilience, we're not in control of our own destiny. We're constrained by global bureaucracies. This was most glaring with the rampage of the hurricanes brought to our region just two years ago. I personally want to thank His Royal Highness for taking the time to visit many of those islands after the hurricane. Despite this, we continue to approach the task with determination, but for us to be successful, we do require intervention. The Prince is set to visit other Caribbean territories including Barbados, St. Kitts and Neves, St. Vincent and the Grenadines and Grenada. During the 11-day tour, the Prince will spend a day in each country meeting local politicians and partaking in cultural and environmental events. Saving Lives is the key focus of an island-wide roads safety assessment project currently underway here. The IRAP as it is called adopts an evidence-based approach to prevent unnecessary road deaths and related suffering here in St. Gluxia. More in this report from the Communications Unit of the Ministry of Infrastructure, Ports, Energy and Labor. The Department of Infrastructure has formally launched an island-wide road safety assessment project to determine what interventions are necessary to develop safer roads for all road users across St. Gluxia. This project is an intervention of the International Road Assessment Program, IRAP, and aims primarily to save lives. Over the coming weeks, experts will utilize a specially equipped vehicle as part of a robust evidence-based approach to prevent unnecessary deaths and related suffering here in St. Gluxia. In addressing the gathering at the launch, Infrastructure Minister the Honourable Stephen King expressed great concern over the rate of road fatalities and carnage along the nation's roadway. According to the Minister, one night for last by vehicular collision or accident is one too many. The Infrastructure Minister says government is prepared to go beyond the rhetoric and make the investments necessary to ensure the commute of our roads is a lot safer for both motorists and pedestrians. Safer roads are not just a social justice issue. They also make sound business sense too. Dollar for dollar, they provide one of the highest possible public investment returns any country can make. I therefore today say that St. Gluxia is proud to welcome this investment and to thank all of those who are involved in the initiative and those who will engage in the application of the programme. The Road Safety Assessment Project is being financed by the Government of the United Kingdom through its Department for International Development, DFID. Resident British High Commissioner, Mr Stephen McCready says Britain will remain supportive of St. Gluxia's development and is pleased to have offered the financial support to safeguard the lives of citizens and visitors alike. The Caribbean is and will remain an important region for the UK and this project is a tangible demonstration of the UK's commitment to St. Gluxia, an important bilateral and Commonwealth partner and has come to experience over the last two years a very close friend as well. For the last decade St. Gluxia has lost 169 citizens to fatal crashes, an average of approximately 20 road deaths every year. In addition to losing so many productive citizens, this situation also places a burden on the health care sector. In 2016 St. Gluxia signed on to the Sustainable Development Goals SDGs to reduce the number of road fatalities and injuries by half come 2020. Chief Engineer in the Department of Infrastructure, Mr Albert Javati says the time is opportune for St. Gluxia to intensify momentum to reduce road fatalities in line with the SDGs. Road safety is a collective responsibility. It's not just the responsibility of the Ministry of Infrastructure. It's a responsibility of all. It's a responsibility of parents. It is a responsibility of the teachers and the responsibility of the various drivers associations, the driving schools. It's everyone's responsibility and until we get to that point where we recognize the fact that talk don't save lives, that is action that save lives will not see any improvement. So my appeal to us all is to work together, use that data which is going to come out of that exercise and put it to good use. So I hope that over the next five years or so we will see that data being put to use and we'll see a reduction in the number of fatalities and in the number of crashes on our roads. St. Lucia's Island-Wide Road Safety Assessment Project, IRAP, was formally launched on Thursday, March 14. From the Communications Unit of the Ministry of Infrastructure, Ports, Energy and Labor, this is Shalyn Mabon. Prime Minister the Honourable Island Shasne says the OECS as a region is growing in a manner that truly symbolizes inclusion of all. The comment comes following the accession of Guadeloupe to the organization of the eastern Caribbean state. Honourable Shasne has revealed that talk have opened with French St. Martin for a similar move. We have full-fledged members who benefit from the Monetary Council and also the Economic Union. We have associate members, some of them are participating in our currency like Anguilla, but the BVI doesn't, they have their own currency. Some of them are part of our Economic Union and others are not. And so therefore we're showing the flexibility of a proper functional corporation entity being able to move forward. The Prime Minister says with 1st Martinique and now Guadeloupe in the OECS fold, numerous advantages can be had for all parties. An immediate benefit the Prime Minister says is a more willing air from Europe, particularly France. In fact the OECS's direct French connection is being used to discuss EU concerns over the tax regimes of OECS state. We've made special request of both the President of Martinique as well as the President of Guadeloupe to facilitate a meeting with President Macron. France has been a lead on this harmful taxation regime and we think it's critical at this time that as leaders of this region that we do have a one-on-one meeting with President Macron to discuss this. Prime Minister the Honourable Alan Chastney. This is NTN Nightly coming up the latest happenings in youth and sport with Ryan O'Brien. All the artificial flavoring, sweeteners and colors too. We consume and we don't spare a thought for the damage that they'll do. Think about the children. How will we save them? Chemicals and GMOs are not the solution. Use organic and join. Excessive agrochemical use, additives and genetically modified foods are harmful to health and the environment. Join the Good Food Revolution. Grow, buy and consume organic. A message from Rye St. Lucia and the Ministry of Sustainable Development with funding from the GEF Small Grants Program, UNDP. Welcome back. We join Ryan O'Brien for the latest happenings in youth development and sport. Welcome once again to your update from the Ministry of Youth Development and Sports on the NTN Nightly News. I'm Ryan O'Brien. The 2019 Mass United Insurance 50 Overs Under-19 Schools Cricket Tournament continued on Friday, March 15th with quarter-final action. Advancing into the tournament, semi-finals were current secondary, St. Mary's College, Sir Arthur Lewis Community College and Meku Secondary. At the Ballata Plainfield, current secondary completed a very comfortable 8-week victory over 2018 Mass United Insurance Joint Winner, Antipo-Secondary. Antipo-Secondary after being inserted by current secondary bore a lot for just 47 and 16.2 overs with Roy Spau making 22 and Efren Charles 11. Simbola McKeil Nelson was current secondary's best bowler with figures of 4 for 18. Good support came from Kendrick James with 2 for 11, chasing 48 for victory and a berth into the semi-finals of the tournament. Current secondary led by Captain Lee Solomon with 34 not out, easily got to their target, finishing on 49 for 2 in 4 and a half overs. The ticket taker for Antipo-Secondary was Roy Spau with 2 for 16. At the Gosele Plainfield, St. Mary's College led by a fine all-round performance by Weston Lee's under-15 player and team captain Akim Ogis registered an 84-run victory over Leone's Comprehensive Secondary. St. Mary's College batting first in a game reduced to 43 overs aside, dismissed for 201 and 34.4 overs with Ogis top scoring with a well-composed knockup 87, which included 12-4s and 1-6. Other valuable scores came from Destiny-Gate-Harrie with 22, Shaquane Prudent 14 and Zidane Arthur 11. Bowling for Leone's Comprehensive Secondary, Jadon Elibov picked up 4 for 58, Keegan Arnold 2 for 38, Udell Preveal 2 for 39, chasing a victory target of 202. Leone's Comprehensive bowled out for 117 in 30.4 overs with Keegan Arnold top scoring at 48. Denzel Albert 15, Udell Preveal 12 and Jadon Elibov's 10. The chief destroyer with the ball for St. Mary's College was Akim Ogis, standard figure of 5 because for 8 runs with his leg spin, a Mardi Vena back 3 for 34. At the Mindo-Philippe Park 2018 Joint Champion, S. Louis Community College earned themselves a comfortable 117-run victory over Beanfield Comprehensive. S. Louis Community College batting first in a 42-overs side game made 2-20 4 for 8 in the allotted overs with Rashad Gaston making 43, Terrell Chico 42, Chad Cipal 30 and Kyle Adonis 25. Bowling for Beanfield Comprehensive Secondary, Cards Roberts picked up 4 for 38, Chad Marcial 2 for 45. In response, Beanfield Comprehensive Secondary, dismissed for 107 in 31.1 overs with Jermaine Duggera making 15, Tyrone Theodore 13 and Cards Roberts 11. The main wicket takers for S. Arthur Louis Community College were Simeon Gerson 3 for 20, Greg Elyseer 3 for 23 and Terrell Chico 2 for 14. At the PI playing field, Mico Secondary got a bit of Sufret Comprehensive winning by 8 wickets. Sufret Comprehensive Secondary batting first, dismissed for 99 in 16.2 overs with Ajay Edward contributing 24 not out and Nick Jabati 17. The pick of the bowlers for Mico Secondary, Desherge Henry before standing figures of 7 wickets for 21 runs. Marklin Estefan learned good support with 2 for 24. Set a victory target of 100, Mico Secondary led by Jelan Justin with 17 finished on 101 for 8 in 28.2 overs. The main wicket takers for Sufret Comprehensive Secondary were Stefan Tiofan with 2 for 19 and Nick Jabati's 2 for 25. Following last weekend's completion of the quarter-finals of the competition, the Ministry of Development and Sports shared the semifinals for Wednesday, March 20, 2019. The matchup and venue sees St. Mary's College taking on defending champions S. Arthur Louis Community College at a grossly playing field and Gordon Secondary plays Mico Secondary at a wind-plane field, Monipo. Both matches set to ball off at 9.30 a.m. Pole Vault Clinic No. 2 for the year will be held on Tuesday, April 2. This clinic will be held at the Jump Center at Fitbutai Secondary School. Of course, it will be departing from Sufret at 11.30 in the morning and will serve students and teachers from the schools in Sufret, Chousel, P.I., Bienfield, V.F. Comprehensive, Mico, Ajay, Clinton Mason, Granivier. After the clinic finishes, the course will then return students back to their pick-up locations. Northern schools will be expected to make their own way to the Jump Center. Participating schools are expected to come with at least one female, one male, and one accompanying teacher. And schools are reminded that after a short break from competition, schools' volleyball action will be back on court at the VT Monipopa Sports Complex on Wednesday. In the last one of the matches played Thursday last week, female encounter, St. Joseph's Convent won over Sufret Comprehensive two games to love, 25-19, 25-17.  That's our update today from the Ministry of Youth Development and Sports. I'm Ryan O'Brien. Thanks, Ryan. Plans announced by Invest St. Lucia ISL to develop a number of residential areas, including approximately 11 acres of land in Bosia of Likoo, and approximately 5 acres in Boazoli, Denri are taking shape. According to Chief Executive Officer Roderick Carey, the Bosia and Boazoli Development are part of an overall development plan being conceptualized for lands vested in ISL. 59 lots in Bosia and at least 25 lots in Boazoli will be developed. Lots have been designated mixed use, which is a combination of residential and commercial. The lots range from 4,000 square feet to as large as 12,000 square feet and will be made available to residents of the respective communities at reasonable rate. According to David Daisy, Lands Administrative Manager at ISL, the proposal has been submitted to the Development Control Authority, D.C.A. for approval.  The main purpose is to make good health. It is absolutely necessary to wash your hands if you want to keep good health. Even if you do not wash your hands, it will make you feel better. Listen. Wash your hands often and clean them thoroughly after a condition that is 6 months 20,000. For example, after you have changed from your previous life to the type of people who are injured and sick, after you have taken care of the animals and after you have taken care of the animals. And if you do not take care of your life, wash your hands often and clean them thoroughly for 3 seconds. Wash your hands often and clean them thoroughly for 3 seconds. Wash your hands often We join Primus Hutchinson for the NTN Nouvelle, a quay all. Mr. Otter Genel Mr. Madame, Department of University of Stability for Information and the government set the CIS as a GIS for the NTN television for the Nouvelle, a quay all, for Primus Hutchinson. Set the CIS, you will see your Bo-Kut-Chapo-Hodd-Quest-Charles and your Prime Minister Alan Shastney for the visitation for Philip Marcellan in Vieux-Fort-Dimarche-Passé. The question is to start the visitation for these countries like the Alatea countries which are related to economic values, peace and democracy with the budget of the law of the European Union and also of the UK to address the high-quality pay which is established in Vieux-Fort but it is not particularly considered to be a progress for the economic and academic which has told us that since the Nouvelle it is the highest cooperation of the Western Alatea and congratulations on the way the country can address climate change and to mention Gen Gasson who has made it so much a progress on the way to address the problem in the future. I have been working for two days to make Algass Organic accept us in English with these geniuses of the Commonwealth who can initiate to address the problem of climate change. With Charles, congratulations on the way the country can address the problem of climate change and to mention the Nouvelle and to mention the Basque which is the highest cooperation of the United Nations of the two countries and to mention the Sena and to mention the Nouvelle and to mention the Nouvelle A spectacular welcome to the West Coast and the most beautiful city in the world to finish this activity in Philip Mastry Grounds on Sunday This city costs about $1,600,000 to start a project of the city to sell a lot of land Minister of Agriculture Joseph Anoseki Governor of the Ministry I have found assistance by the Taiwan government to sell a lot of land to sell a lot of land According to Joseph we are planning a first phase project to cultivate a lot of land to make sure that the cultivators can do this we are planning a DOS Pimadu Chuapporm Mulan Zanana So that is our objective we are buying farm support land preparation T-imo technology we are also doing our work We also do our job for provision to have it under contract So, um, we started the budget from here. And, um... We had to identify the farmers. We went through, because we were putting new technology into it. Because, somewhere that we don't have to do anything with it, it's the hardest thing for farmers to do on their own. Or to apply. Right? We have new technology, we can help you to do the research. Let's talk about that. I don't want to say that the Minister of Agriculture has been working to remove the agricultural waste from Edmond and Ambaso in France. He will continue to do the research. Otherwise, I don't want to do the research because he can assist the cultivators and farmers in the different communities in France but I don't want to say that the power of the farmers has to be able to assist the cultivators. That's why I'm here. What I want to do is to help the farmers and help them to do the economic activities that are common in the country. Thank you very much Mr President. We have a lot of new things to talk about and I want to thank Mr Otun for his invitation to join me. If you don't mind there is more information in the Vela Aquila, because I don't know if you've ever seen it in the past. Merci appeal primers, heros a look at what's happening to us weather-wise. Weak unstable conditions will bring a few showery periods over the northern half of the region during the next 12 to 24 hours. The Atlantic high pressure system will generate moderate easterly winds and generally fair skies across the remainder of the Los Angeles during the forecast period. Tides for Castries Harbor high at 2.42 p.m., low at 8.51 p.m. Tides for Vieux-Four Bay high at 3.49 p.m., low at 10.18 p.m. The seas slide to moderate with waves 3 to 5 feet or 0.9 to 1.5 meters. The sun will rise Wednesday at 6.08 a.m. That brings us to the end of the NTN Mindly. Join us next time at 7 p.m. with a repeat at 7 a.m. You can also catch up with us anytime on the St. Lucia Government Facebook page or YouTube channel. I am Genelle Norville.


Facebook is a company that collects and sells your personal data. Now on top of that, they go out of their way to appease the right. And they do this not only by using an affiliate of the For Right News outlet, The Daily Caller to quote-unquote fact check news articles, but Facebook is also exempting politicians from any of said fact checking, meaning that if you're a politician and you are running a political ad, you can literally lie in that ad and Facebook will still take your money and they will still run that ad. Now on top of that, Zuckerberg recently held a private meeting with conservative pundits for whatever reason and he is actively assisting presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg who let me remind you would possibly save his company from other candidates like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren who have expressed interest in breaking up Facebook. So I mean in my view, we've gotten past the discussion about whether or not we should break up Facebook. We have these antitrust laws. We need to use them. If there's ever been a company that needs to be broken up, Facebook is one of them. And we need to go further than that and consider prosecuting Mark Zuckerberg because again, this is the data thief. Now I'm frustrated as you can tell, but another individual who was frustrated with Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook's antics is Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who I think shined during this entire hearing because she grilled him perhaps harder than any other lawmaker. And you can tell that he was visibly like disturbed. Like he didn't know how to respond. It was incredibly awkward. And you can tell that like the robot was malfunctioning. This was great. So enjoy. Under your policy, you know, using census data as well, could I pay to target predominantly black zip codes and advertise them the incorrect election date? No Congresswoman, you couldn't. We have even for these policies around the newsworthiness of content that politicians say and the general principle that I believe that. But you said you're not going to fact check my ads. We have, if anyone, including a politician is saying things that can cause, that is calling for violence or could risk imminent physical harm or voter or census suppression when we roll out the census suppression policy, we will take that content down. So you will, there is some threshold where you will fact check political advertisements. Is that where you're telling me? Congresswoman, yes, for specific things like that where there's imminent risk of harm. Could I run ads targeting Republicans and primaries saying that they voted for the Green New Deal? Sorry. Can you repeat that? Would I be able to run advertisements on Facebook targeting Republicans and primaries saying that they voted for the Green New Deal? I mean, if you're not fact checking political advertisements, I'm just trying to understand the bounds here. What's fair game? Congresswoman, I don't know the answer to that off the top of my head. So you don't know if I'll be able to do that. Do you see a potential problem here with a complete lack of fact checking on political advertisements? Well, Congresswoman, I think lying is bad and I think if you were to run an ad that had a lie, that would be bad. That's different from it being, from it, from in our position, the right thing to do to prevent your constituents or people in an election from seeing that you had lied. So we can, so you won't take down lies or you will take down lies? I think it's just a pretty simple yes or no. Congresswoman, I'm not talking about spin. I'm talking about actual disinformation. Yes, in a democracy, I believe that people should be able to see for themselves what politicians that they may or may not vote for are saying that they've got their character for themselves. So you won't take, you may flag that it's wrong, but you won't take it down. Congresswoman, it depends on the context that it shows up, organic post, as the treatment is a little different. One question, one more question. In your ongoing dinner parties with far right figures, some of who advance the conspiracy theory that white supremacy is a hoax, did you discuss so-called social media bias against conservatives and do you believe there is a bias? Congresswoman, so I don't remember everything that was in the question. That's all right. I'll move on. I'm wondering why you've named the Daily Caller a publication well documented with ties to white supremacists as an official fact checker for Facebook. Congresswoman, sure. We actually don't appoint the independent fact checkers. They go through an independent organization called the Independent Fact Checking Network that has a rigorous standard for who they allow to serve as a fact checker. So you would say that white supremacists tied publications meet a rigorous standard for fact checking. Thank you. Congresswoman, I would say that we're not the one assessing that standard. The International Fact Checking Network is the one who is setting that standard. I have seen this video now multiple times in preparation for this segment and it never gets old. It's so good because what she did there was just flawlessly expose him for the fraud that he is and think about how absurd the situation is. So she asked, look, can I literally run an ad against a Republican in a competitive primary and say that he or she supports the Green New Deal, something that they're obviously vehemently opposed to? His answer, oh, well, I don't know off the top of my head. You don't know. I'm literally not sure if we can outright lie about political opponents on Facebook. You would still take that money. Is the money too good?  Donald Trump can literally run an ad, hypothetically speaking, let's say we're at the general, Bernie's the nominee. Trump can run an ad against Bernie Sanders and say that he is a Satan worshiper. Conversely, Bernie Sanders can run an ad saying that Donald Trump regularly engages in bestiality. I mean, this is what you are allowing for if you exempt politicians from fact checking. So anyone can pay money to spread lies, to spread misinformation on your website. That is absolutely insane. That shows how greedy and money hungry Facebook is. Because if you have integrity, you say, no, we're going to scrutinize all of these ad requests. And before we approve anything, we're going to make sure that they're not just outright lies or spears. But that's not what they're doing. To kind of demonstrate how low they're willing to go, Elizabeth Warren recently trolled Facebook by proving they have no standards. She ran an ad saying that Mark Zuckerberg endorsed Donald Trump. And of course, that was literal fake news. But she was trying to prove a point about how they'd accept anything. And I mean, they proved her point right. Now when it came to the meetings with far right figures, AOC not only had him stumped like he didn't know how to respond, he was visibly uncomfortable. It's difficult to see any human emotion from someone like Mark Zuckerberg. At that moment, that was the most awkward moment. He was stumped on top of that. So she moved on and asked him why he named the Daily Caller as the fact checker. He had no persuasive response.  Look, this is about money. Facebook is a business, right? So they are doing whatever they can to make sure that they increase their profits, increase revenue. That even means that we allow any ads, including lies, to be spread.  I mean, this same bias, if it exists, it applies to everyone, the left, like the right. But since they're bigger crybabies, since they whine about it more loudly than these tech giants, they are more inclined to kind of appease them than everyone else. So look, I don't have much else to say about this. I just wanted you to see this because she took the five minutes of time that she had to question him and she used it brilliantly. Like, I don't think you could have pulled this off any better. She did everything that I would have expected and wanted. And this was phenomenal. Kudos to AOC. This was great on her part. She really did reveal to America that Zuckerberg is a fraud. And Facebook really should be broken up without question.


This is the Daily Tech News Show for Wednesday, December 30th, 2020 in Los Angeles on Tom Merritt. And from Studio Redwood, I'm Sarah Lane. Salt Lake City, I'm Scott Johnson. From Canada, I'm Jen Cutter, my Christmas set. From Studio Colorado, I'm Shannon Morse. And from the Pod Feed Podcast, I'm Allison Sheridan. And I'm the show's producer, Roger Chang. If you think this collection of people seems familiar, that's because this is our end of 2020 Predictions Results episode. Each one of these people on the show made predictions at the end of 2019 for what kind of technology stories we would see in 2020. And now we look back on the predictions we made and see how they actually turned out. We thank all of you for your bravery. Because man, this year more than most was very unpredictable, I feel. Yeah, who had who had massive worldwide virus on their bingo card? Not me. Didn't have that. Yeah, darn it. Darn it. I was gonna, but I didn't. Should have. December 2019. What a long time ago. We were such springtime children. Then no idea what we were in for story. I had optimism. Yeah, yeah. Exactly. Well, let's look back at on what these younger versions of ourselves are thinking. Scott Johnson. Let's start with you. Your first prediction from 2019. What was it? Well, I'm a little, I'll be honest, I've done this a few times now and I'm a little surprised how much I nailed it with my two predictions. So I'm just gonna gloat a little at the top here and just say how proud I am of this. Also, I will admit they're low points. They're low hanging fruit. Easy predictions to make. I think they were kind of 50-50 or maybe better. But anyway, I predicted first of all that the VR market share would continue to grow for Oculus in particular, but they would begin to sort of dominate the space and they would have a smaller, faster Quest 2 out in late 2020. What did you know, Scott Johnson? I know. I'm winded I know it. Yeah, I was, I'm, I guess I'm not surprised. My name called the Quest 2. Although in our notes, you, we have a Roman numeral instead of the numeral 2. That's really only half the point then, right? Yeah, exactly. I still think it looks cooler.  But my, my thing that I didn't get right or didn't consider at the time is I was looking at Oculus Quest. The first Quest success as, all right, a thing that Facebook owns and helps fund. But really, this is Oculus. This is just them untethered with all the resources they need to make a really cool thing. And I didn't know that in a year, we would sour even more. When I say we don't mean us as a group, but you know, the world would sour as a whole toward Facebook and they would be so criticized for inserting themselves into the Oculus side more in terms of branding and having to have a login now and all this other stuff. And I think it made that launch a tiny bit of a bummer for the tech set, maybe who are paying attention, but for the rest of the world, it's like, Hey, VR, that seems neat. What's this new white looking Quest 2 thing I saw? Like, I still think that is a dominant platform will continue to grow, but I didn't quite expect all the backlash because up till then Facebook was kind of hands off and now not so much. I don't know. I mean, yes, backlash for sure. But a year ago, I had never really played around with the VR more than just, you know, a little demo at CES here and there. I got the Quest that the, well, I guess second gen first version Quest that I played around with for live with it segment mid-year and loved it, still love it. So I'm still, I'm still not rocking the Quest 2, but the the original Quest form factor. But a year ago when you said this, I was like, yeah, I mean, whatever. It's kind of one of those things that until you have one, you don't realize how great it is. And I was definitely one of those people who when I when I finally got it and started playing around, I was like, oh, this is way cooler than I thought it was going to be. I don't know what I was thinking, but you kind of just have to put one on your head.  And and there are some less technically inclined folks that, you know, I was like, I promise you, you will love this. I promise, you know, and everyone says the same thing. It's like, oh, wow. Now I get it. So yeah, that, you know, that I think the whole kind of coupling with Facebook is going to upset some people, but people who are just dipping their toe into VR have been really pleasantly pleasantly surprised and Oculus has become sort of the household name for VR. Yeah. The other the only other thing I would complain about my prediction would be when I said smaller and faster, I I meant more significantly. So it's really not that much smaller and it's not that much faster. So I if I was, you know, wishing more in my prediction success, it would be that it would truly be, you know, we would we would get there quicker. We would make a bigger, more exponential leap towards smaller, wearable VR. And it didn't really do that. It's still sort of the same thing. It's lighter, sure.  So yeah, if I'd gotten that part right, I'd have felt better about maybe buying it too. But at this stage, I'm more like, I will see what they do with the three or four, you know, I'll hang on to my first gen for a while. Alright, what about your second prediction? Okay, so this one was even lower hanging fruit. I said that Sony will have a strong launch for the PS5, but they'd be forced to do more in services, streaming and PC ports to compete with Microsoft through 2020. And I still hold to that. And I think that the early weeks of launch for both consoles has started to prove that out a little bit. Microsoft has had a better handle on back-end stuff like these games are now capable for the next gen console. So they're just going to roll in updates without you having to do anything. But on the Sony side, it's been more complicated. You got to download the original game and then patch it and then re don't download another patch and people with bandwidth caps have been complaining. They've had some bricked consoles early on. They don't really have a plan to compete with Game Pass. They just don't have a service that's to that level. I mean, Game Pass is ridiculous in terms of its value. So I think we're at a point where Sony has to really dig in hard to compete on those levels and Microsoft will start to see a better turn out for themselves this run than they did last time around. Maybe still not in certain markets like Japan. Japan for whatever reason has been cold shoulder to Microsoft and since the beginning. So I don't think a big strong uptick there and Sony will do fine, but I do think this is shaping up to be that generation where the series X and S and services in particular will end up giving Microsoft the edge and it'll take a few months to suss that out though. Yeah, that's kind of a lot of a I was right and I still predict it. How about that? Yeah, no, I'm entirely for it. The one thing that Sony surprised me with was the PS Plus collection that they gave out for people for the free games on their five and four and Sony's not big on giving away huge chunks of games like that. That was a really great start to make up for, let's say less than stellar. Array of launch titles and I agree with you on absolutely everything else. I think you nailed it. All right. Are we giving Scott full credit for this one? Yes, he gets an A. Yeah, I think Tom, can I can I take a half a point of credit though on on Scott's first one because I asked for a half a point possibility on someone on DTNS who would say VR is in early days and on February 22nd, Tom Merritt said VR is in its Commodore Amiga days. Wait, wait, wait. Way to bring up the seats, Allison. I know we're not. I know we're not on mine, but it's not listed. So I just didn't want anybody to forget that when I thought maybe it would fit in here. So you want to pull a half point off of Scott because you got something right. I'm not sure. Give Allison a half a point when we get to her. Oh, got it. Got it. Got it. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, Scott still gets you this too. That's still cool at two for two. All right. Yeah, it's not it's not it's got you win 2020. Look at that. All right, Sarah Lane, what's your first prediction from 2019 about this year? Well, I wasn't as successful as Scott. My first prediction was we would see the first deep fake in question in a court case, meaning someone says I wasn't at that coffee shop when there was the shooting and they say, but here we there's a video of you here saying that you're there at the same time kind of thing. Something where experts would need to determine whether or not it's real in order to determine an outcome of a legal case. To my knowledge, this has not happened. I mean, I suppose it could have happened, but I think we would have heard about it. Um, the whole deep fake thing, I think maybe a year ago, I was thinking it was going to become more of an issue than it has been. And listen, we went through an election year in the U.S. It's certainly you saw these sorts of things crop up, but they were pretty quickly shot down as that's clearly fake. Everyone knows it. So I don't think we're there yet. I love this prediction though, Sarah. I thought this, I thought this was really innovative in terms of predictions. And I think the problem is nobody went anywhere. So how could they have gone and robbed that that liquor store, right? Because they couldn't leave their house. So I don't think this one's your fault. I think it was a fabulous prediction. It's also interesting too that you're not wrong about all the attempts that would occur during an election year because they did, but they ended up being a lot more traditional than deep fake. A lot of dumb Photoshop and crummy gifts and, you know, that stuff was on point, but it was all the kind of thing we're already doing, you know, misinformation, the good old fashioned way and not necessarily, you know, a video that was meant to be to be real. It's almost like I could be wrong about this ultimately, but it's almost like deep fakes have deep faked themselves into a corner to the point that we're all set to recognize it when something goes south and we're all going to question it immediately. And maybe that's a good thing. Maybe we're ready for it and more ready for that than we thought. So maybe your prediction not exactly happening is actually maybe it's a good thing. June 9th 2020. Child custody battle in Britain. A woman said her husband was dangerous and she had the recording to prove it, except the husband's lawyer revealed that the woman using widely available software had doctored the audio to make it sound like his client. Okay. All right. There. Yeah. Nailed it. There. Yeah. I mean, that's deep fake enough, right? And if you're in audio, yeah, if it if it was realistic enough. Okay. So I am I am being deep. Yeah, how deep is it? How deep is your fake? Ah, such a good show title for another day. Someone write that down. All right. So so what about your second prediction? Second prediction. This was really based on my personal hope that Apple would come out with VR glasses or AR glasses, I guess would have been the better way to put it this year didn't happen.  Okay. That was sort of first iteration did some great things, but didn't ultimately capture a consumer market. Snap spectacles still exist. Don't know anybody who uses them or wears them regularly. It's a niche product still cool, but not a mainstream thing. What like what is our smart display Apple Watch AR glasses thing? And I thought it was lofty. It was a lofty guess that maybe Apple would give us that this year. They didn't they give me a nice M1 MacBook Air. So I'm not mad, but yeah, this didn't happen. Not that companies haven't been iterating on this. They continue to yeah, there's been a lot of attempts this year, right? It wasn't for lack of trying. There's been all kinds of different companies coming out with with eyeglass products, but none of them caught on none of them caught on and we're we're still in those early days, I suppose. And I think this we're going to get there, although at this point, I'm like, you know, it probably makes more sense to bundle this technology into, you know, contacts or something so that people don't have to wear glasses and unless they specifically want to, I don't know. I think I think we'll get there. Didn't happen in 2020. Now, Roger didn't put this in our doc. So I don't know if he was trying to silence you, but the doc from last year said baby Yoda would get a plushie and become the hottest selling toy of all time. This is my third prediction. It was kind of one that I threw out and I and just goes to show you how long this year has been because I'm like, wait, baby Yoda was happening in December of 2019 because that's why I would have been thinking about it and it was like new and cool and everything. Yeah. Yeah. So whether or not this year has seemed longer short, it's, you know, time is a flat circle, but baby Yoda, I had predicted would be get a plushie, you know, it's like a Mattel toy or something like that and become the hottest selling toy of all time. Now, I'm not exactly wrong. There's not one particular product that, you know, that ran away with last year's Christmas season and that's kind of where I was going because we were doing this last December. There are a lot of plushie baby Yoda toys though. There are, there are. Yeah. Look at Allison's even even got a knit version or himself. Yeah. A fan named Leslie Passman made this one for me. So I think it counts. Oh, that is so cute. That's mostly what you're going to get. I love it. That's mostly what you're going to get because because Disney's been slow to actually make a lot of merch. Baby Yoda love is decentralized. Yeah. Well, and that was the whole thing, right? Last year, Scott is that Disney didn't realize. Oh, gosh, this was a big marketing missed opportunity because people went nuts for them. What were you going to say, Shannon? There were some baby yodas that sold out at Disneyland. Oh, that's right. In a sense, it was the hottest toy at Disneyland. So you could say in that way. All right. All right. All right. So no go on Google Glass, but what are, how are we ruling on the deep fake and the baby Yoda? I say she should get the deep fake. All right, an extra quarter point for the baby Yoda because of the Disneyland angle. Yeah. I mean, the problem of the deep fake is not the problem, but I usually think of it as a video related thing. That's how people are positioning it these days. But technically, it's true. Like it's a technically and I I definitely did think of it in video sense, but I will take my points. Yeah. Now, when I went back to check Allison's claim of a third prediction that wasn't in our doc, I found the baby Yoda. I also found Scott. You had said people will be able to get a permanent temporary tattoo in 2020. Yeah, I couldn't have been more wrong about that. So you don't have a perfect record. I, I, how much were you paying Roger to suppress these other picks? Well, I was paying him very little and in the year 2020, it wasn't enough. So I could, I could have gotten paid for that. You have to remind me what a permanent temporary tattoo is. So my idea was, okay, so I saw this thing. Actually, I think it was on Disney plus things being on the Mandalorian where they were talking about a technology that they were working on. They're not there yet, but a way to do tattoos that were a hundred percent like a legit tattoo that a machine a lot like a 3D printer would give you and then a year later, if you're like, you know what, I don't, I'm not dating that guy anymore. I want to take his name off my arm or whatever you could do it and you could do it easily and simply with that same machine and you could either go back to nothing or replace it with a new tattoo. So I'm still convinced that's coming. Yeah, yeah, basically reversible without the current reversible, which is horrible laser surgery and awful grafting and all that. I think the reason Roger didn't put these third picks in is you were only supposed to have two picks each and so it was a, it was a penalty for breaking the rules. Let's see what Jen Cutter did last year. Jen, what was your first prediction? Um, I feel like I should apologize to the world for this. I had predicted that this would be the year eSports investors and sponsors start kind of questioning their ROI resulting in events getting canceled and you know, teams being penalized, you're consolidating, you know, whoops. What did you know, Jen? And when? Yeah, so this is not how I saw a change in eSports going down. Thankfully, like to argue against my own case here a little bit, some eSports did actually manage to have a pretty good year and fill the gap created by the complete nutter lack of real sports for a while, like for racing, 1.3 million people checked out that NASCAR race online, which had just as much drama as an actual NASCAR race. So they had that going for them. But other communities like the fighting game community, they were hit really hard this year. In-person events are kind of huge and moving it to online. Well, there's kind of a short list of games that have acceptable net code for high level play and what got hit the hardest this year were venues. The big eSports place in Toronto could not make it. Who can survive an entire year with zero revenue because, you know, the whole thing that they were selling was the in-person experience and that's really hard to deliver. What kind of a world are we in? Where Jen's trying to talk us out of giving your credit for this one. It's like, no, no, I don't want this one. Can you cut me back to a half a point or so? Yeah, I just I feel brutal about that call. I honestly thought it would be just more like, yeah, the rich people got bored and left, but no, like the investments are kind of picking up again. But like this year for eSports was still, I think, mostly a dark year, but they'll be more resilient for it. What about your second pick? My second one, I kind of swung hard and yeah, I said Google Stadia would do a bit better in 2020. That sounds soft, I know. But I also said that Google would come up with and launch, successfully launch a new feature they hadn't talked about yet. So the free trial that they had is still good and a lot of people took advantage of that during this time when we're all kind of stuck at home looking for something to do and judging by my feed, a lot of people forgot to cancel that free trial as they were all complaining when it got hit. They're giving away free stuff. It's finally coming to iOS, cyberpunks available on it, crowd choice went live. So like people can tell their streamers what they want to do and then finally earlier this month crowd play launched in beta so that you can actually like get in line to play with your favorite streamers who of course have to be streaming on YouTube and have this enabled, but I can't take any credit for any of this because this is all stuff they talked about launching in 2019 and they just kind of got around to it. Again, you were predicting there was something they hadn't mentioned before. Yeah, I thought for sure, like, hey, they know the other consoles are launching this year. Surely, surely they have something up their sleeve to try to compete with that. But no, nothing, not even rumors of something. Just, yeah, more games are coming. Like, yeah, okay, great. That's the whole point of a console. Groundbreaking. Yeah, and then you two had a third prediction. It seems about Canada's regulations for social media platforms. Yeah, and I think it maybe would have happened this year barring, you know, everything else. Like I'm happy the government focused on stuff like Serb so that, you know, we didn't go all broken our homes earlier this year. What did eventually happen or is currently happening because it went through second reading is we have this Bill C10 to kind of redo the licensing of the Canadian broadcast standards in Canada and it's this huge omnibus bill and my prediction was that we were going to have the social media laws kind of like your iPad. We didn't quite get there because we're working on this other law first and it is laughable, which was my prediction that it would be so bad. It would be torn apart and then the government would have to walk it back. And that's kind of what we're doing right now to Bill C10, but that doesn't actually cover the social media companies. So like we just we haven't gotten there this year. It got backburnered. It's looking like late 2021 before we have our own specific social media law. Do you want to make this one for next year then? Sure. Like hopefully let it ride back to normal. So how are we? How are we going to score Jen here? We're giving her one out of three. Is that we're going to have to give her the one she didn't want, right? Yeah, a regretful three. Sorry, Jen. Oh, well. All right. Well, let's move on then to Shannon. Shannon, what was your first prediction from last year? So the first one I had was that ransomware would evolve and become harder to protect against. And I also thought that ransomware would still depend on large scale on phishing attacks or tactics, but we would start to see customize ransomware made for specific sectors. And I feel that I got this one 100% correct on all of those different factors for that one prediction. So the first part was becoming harder to protect against. And yes, they did evolve. In fact, a great example of that would be Trick Bot, which recently evolved to have 100 different versions, which includes ransomware and they have been focusing on specific sectors. So that would be an excellent example of one that has been very hard to protect against to the point where Microsoft even tried to take down IPs for their centralized servers and it's still growing. So that's an active attack that's currently happening. So that's a great example. Ransomware depending on large scale on phishing attacks, phishing is still a very, very popular way for ransomware to get in. One example would be the healthcare sector. There are state sponsored attackers who have been targeting healthcare and pretending to be like CEOs of companies and sending phishing emails in order for people to open attachments for like invoices and stuff like that. So that's still a thing to this very day and humans have not learned yet. And then lastly, of course, we would need to put yet. Can you put ever at the end of this ever? Yeah, I know, right? Humans will never learn. We are our worst enemy when it comes to security and privacy and of course customized ransomware made for specific sectors. Healthcare was a huge one this year, which I didn't even think of healthcare in December of last year, but I was thinking more industrial like infrastructure, power plants and things like that. But it ended up being healthcare was the biggest one that we saw a lot of ransomware starting to spur up and starting to attack different different hospitals and different organizations even to the point now where we're seeing attacks on cold storage and cold transportation of COVID vaccines from state sponsored hackers. So it's definitely a huge deal. And even though I wasn't thinking of the healthcare infrastructure, it definitely ended up being that way. So yeah, that one was right. High difficulty level to get to put out three parts and get all three right. Yeah, entirely crazy. I was not expecting that, but that's how it worked out. But my second prediction was completely wrong. And I thought this one would be the one that was correct. I said legitimate hacks on connected election systems would happen like voting machines and they would be implemented during the election season and recorded and investigated. So I specifically spoke to recorded and investigated because I figured if this was to happen, we would need some kind of public facing information about this so that we could report on it. And as a matter of fact, the government, the U.S. government came out different agencies and they said that there weren't any major attacks on election infrastructure during the election season, which now in hindsight makes sense given that a lot of companies like Dominion, for example, who has been in the news quite a bit lately, they created a bug bounty system earlier this year for different cybersecurity professionals to help them strengthen their machines and they have done so. So I thought that one, we would definitely see hacks. We didn't see any. So I definitely got that one wrong. You were right in December last year that the fear was that this was going to happen. And I think what happened is so many people were thinking along the same lines that people finally took it seriously and actually worked to combat it in multiple ways. Right? Yeah. So I'm glad I got that wrong. Yeah, I have to imagine most people involved in that industry had to have been so mindful of that where it reminds me of the 2K bug thing that turned out to be nothing hardly for a lot of people. But everybody, nobody wanted to be that group that was not prepared. Yeah. And this is like the biggest election. It's all this stuff, all this hubbub. There's no way they wanted to be that company. And so maybe those attacks were attempted and nothing worked because everybody prepped. So maybe you were both right and wrong at the same time. Well, if we're going to blame Jen for eSports going in the toilet because the prediction and the way it happened, then Shannon gets credit for none of the systems in the election. Thank you, Shannon. Yeah, thank you. No problem. Happy to help. I'm so happy I was able to protect our election system this year by stoking fear. You have saved us. Thank you. True American. Well done. All right. And then you had a third one. You also broke the rules and had a third one. By the way, before she gets to that, I don't I think we were all told pick three. We may only get through two. I don't think we all broke all on roof. Or yeah, or it was that or it was like picking out Landish one. Maybe we'll use it or something like that. Yeah. All right. All right. If we get to that sounds right. What was your third one that we did get to? Um, I don't even know if this is really outlandish, but I said foldable screen phones will go down in price and we will see a newly released one on the market for as little as $1,000 USD. And I want to mention I kind of got this rates because I didn't necessarily say under the wire. I didn't necessarily say in my prediction that it would be right at release. I just said newly released. So the Motorola Razr 5G. Originally it started in October when it was released around 1399 and we saw it go down to 1199 and on December 8th. If you purchased it through Verizon, you could get it for $999. Oh, does that count? How does it count? Totally counts. If that was a price, that was a price. Yeah, great buying it. So they have to drop the price and it ends up in the bargain basement. $1,000 phone category. I don't know. I mean, the phone did go down in price and it was newly released this year. Only two months old. Newly released and it is obtainable for less than a grand. I think I don't have to trade in a phone, but you do have to get a service with Verizon. So I'll leave this one up to you guys. I think this is a yes. Because because Shannon didn't say the foldable phone will be released and it'll be the mega hit of 2020. She just said this is going to happen and it's going to be sub $1,000. Yeah, if you're a living constitutionalist, you might think Shannon is wrong. But if you're an original list, you're going to go like, look, these are the words she wrote in December, 2019. So we're giving Shannon two out of three. All right. You got a yes. No, yes. Y'all technically ties her with Scott. Yeah. Remember, correct is the best kind of correct. We can have an escort right now and fight it out. No, that's not true. Allison, you already told us about your third one. VR is in early days, which I. I mean, there might need to be an investigation of whether you paid me to say it, but I definitely didn't say it. It only it only took until February. By the way, if I'm on the next prediction show, I would like to just say it again next year. It's going to happen every single year. All right. What about your first real prediction? Remember the old days when I swept them and I got them all right?  I said that Amazon will get into wearables with a smart watch with the A lady in it. And I said, I didn't think they'd call it Firewatch. Maybe Echo watch and I did release Halo. Is that a is that a watch? Because I have time on it, though. Oh, but I said, well, I mean, smart band. Right. Tell you what time it is. Counts. Yeah. If you ask it, it'll tell you, right? That's true. I love that. I can't see it. I have to ask her how it is. So it's just accessible is all you're saying, right? Right. You might be technically correct. Is that what you're going for there? Well, and I think Shannon just said it beautifully a minute ago that technically corrects the best kind of. I think it was Jen maybe. Oh, Jen said that. Sorry. Yeah. I think we'll have to go to the judges on this one. Does the Halo count for Allison's prediction? I think so. Yeah, I think so. I do consider it wearable. I think what you were thinking of Allison did not come to fruition, but I think you get a pass. Yeah, you got to tell you got a technicality point. Yeah, because because you can ask it. Okay. Well, I appreciate the generosity of the judges and I'm glad I was nice to you guys a few minutes ago. So that could have turned out very differently because I searched everywhere for did Amazon come out with a smart watch with a lady? I mean, they came up with out with everything. I mean, I think my toothbrush has has a lady in it now. So I can't believe there wasn't a watch. Okay. So the next one was where Tom made me go. He made me dig deep on this one. What I said originally was Apple will come out with a new health feature on Apple Watch. That's not as amazing as blood sugar, but more useful than the decibel measurement. And you said, yeah, nice. You got to tell us what it's going to be. And so I went with epilepsy. Now, I sure wish I'd said O2 saturation come out with that. They did come out with something we needed, but they did not come out with epilepsy. They actually came out with fewer new watch health features than they usually do, right? There had been a string of like EKG and stuff like that. And this year, the O2 thing was at least in my opinion, not as as as big of a like, oh, as it was with the EKG or the pulse monitor and all detection. Yeah, the other stuff was stuff nobody had done. But but I think Samsung had already done the O2 saturation long before Apple did it. So that wasn't exactly groundbreaking, but it is more useful than decibel measurement. Man, the decibel measurement goes up every time. So you're the dog barks. And it's right. He is very loud. So we're going with two out of three for Allison. Yeah. Yeah. All right. All right. We got a three-way tie. Yeah. That brings you to my predictions. My first one maybe, maybe I'll let you all decide. I said there would be a push for limits on data science because the GDPR was all about collection, but didn't say anything about data processing and profiling, model transparency or holding data scientists accountable for the consequences of their work. The closest we got was Europe proposing. And remember, I said a push, didn't have to be passed. Proposing new legislation aimed at creating an EUI data marketplace for industrial and government information, which is essentially where most of the data science happens.  You got this one. I mean, well, of course I do. But like in a wishful thinking way or a no, I got this right. I really was thinking it would be more about data processing and saying like, look, if a data scientist, you know, pushes forward on this sort of thing, they'll be accountable, but this is like halfway into what I was talking about, this industrial stuff. I'm going to push for a half point. Do I get a half credit? Yes. Definitely go half. Yeah. If we can do increments, you get half for sure. All right. Five or pat on the back. The next one is even more of a stretch. This was my my bolder prediction. I said Apple will buy a live streaming video service and I used to zone Fubo and Philo as potential targets. Apple did buy a company that broadcasts sports and music next VR, which is not at all what I meant. I meant for Apple TV Plus. They bought a live streaming VR company. They do NBA and Wimbledon and stuff. And they live stream and they live stream live stream and it's video just because it doesn't have a made up sounding name like Daz and Fubo and Philo. I see that as a full point. Why wouldn't that be? Oh, Allison, how much do I owe you? Specifically, those you said like one of those. It I think this is a point. Really? Okay. This is what I thought. I mean, you yeah, you didn't necessarily think of it this way, but it fits. Yeah, I agree. Like we gave a point for someone thinking of a thing that or it turned out different than they thought. All right. All right. It still works. We're all originalists here. Good. Well, and Apple still didn't put other stupid glasses to use next VR technology, which would give me another point, but that's right. They just put out something. Yeah, you know, it's just it's in early days, Sarah. Yeah, I know. 2021. Come on. Now, uh, I, uh, there is a third one written here. A virus will cause a lot of trouble. Hold on. Let me look at that. Was it there? Yeah. No, this was literally added. The problem is I wrote it in last year's doc two weeks ago, but right. Yeah. Before there was a virus that caused any trouble. So I don't think I get any credit for that. What was funny is I wrote it in there as a joke because I knew Roger was going to be going in and looking at these, uh, to make the new doc.  Yeah. I mean, if you would have said a virus would cause a lot of trouble, December of 2019, we all might have been like, probably. Yeah. So if I had thought about it in a, you know, a virtual sense, if I had said that and met computer virus, but didn't make it clear what I have got credit for. That's sort of the opposite of technically correct. Right. I mean, it doesn't say about us that we can all chuckle about this. Like, ha, ha. What's funny?  I like to call it where you're crying and also laughing. My grandma used to say the good ain't forever, but the bad ain't for good. Oh, I like that too. Yeah. That could be your sex. You make it better than a window. My dad used to say, I'll cut you off too short to hang up, but I never understood what that even meant. Yeah. I don't know what that means either. That's just word play out of my room. All right. Well, how do y'all feel about your predictions? We had several two out of three's here. Good. I'm pretty good. Yeah. I think we, we finished strong there and I feel, I feel bad for Jen, but I think she, she nailed it. Esports is making a comeback. I think next year will be good. I really do think next year will be good, whether it's good physically or not. I don't know yet, but all the online leagues are going pretty well and there's tons of stuff to watch. You also could open maybe a, a, a psychic shop. Right. And just be like, I kind of, I'm good at this. You want another? Well, I don't know if one out of three is, is enough of a hit rate, but I also don't know how actual psychics do it. So maybe it is a good hit rate. Right. Yeah. It is kind of ironic that something called electronic sports was hit so badly. Right. You would have thought that would be the one that did really well. Right. Right. It's, it's, it's because they count on it being so much of an analog to real sports, not real sports in this negative sense, but you know what I mean? Like we'd like the arena as we like shower. We like the sports maybe we'd like to foam things like making a lot of noise. Yeah. The spectacle of it is not there this time. So just slow things down. I agree with Jen. That's going to make plenty of a listen. They put cardboard cut out people in baseball stadiums. They can do it for eSports. Yeah. And they use cheering sounds for a while. Which is just weird, but they try. Bless your hearts. Well folks. Listen, thank you so much for being willing to come back and confront your predictions from last year. Let's let everybody know where they can find more of what you do. Shannon Morse starting with you. Twitter dot com slash snubs. That's where you can always get in touch with me or share your own predictions. If you want to share those with me as well as YouTube dot com slash Shannon Morse is where I put out all of my content creator content about tech content, content content Scott Johnson. What about yourself? Well frog pants dot com is always a place to find all the shows and everything else I have going on. So if you're looking for art, comics, podcasts, 15 years of content, it's all there frog pants dot com. Allison, Sheridan, where can people find you? Well, if you're looking for the fine pod feet podcast, you can go to pod feet dot com. And Jen Cutter. What about you? Best place still Twitter, which is at Jen Cutter. That's Jen with two ends and for 2021 for a not actual prediction, but a goal. I'm going to try to use Instagram more because I hate photos and I need to get over that. So Instagram is also at Jen Cutter and you can come see what I'm up to there. That's excellent. Thanks to everyone for helping support the show out there. We could not have done it without you. We love patrons that stick with us. That's why we're happy to offer Patreon loyalty rewards. You can get a unique sticker mug t-shirt or hoodie every three months as long as you stay a patron. Used to be you got it after three months and then that was it. Unless we came out with something new, but each one has a unique art from Len Peralta featuring the DTS seven year anniversary logo, as well as Roger in one of them, Sarah in one of them, myself in one of them. Get the details at patreon dot com slash D T N S. If you'd like to send us feedback, we'd love to have it. Our email address is feedback at daily tech new show dot com. We are live Monday through Friday for 30 p.m. Eastern 21 30 UTC. Find out more at daily tech new show dot com slash live and we'll see you tomorrow for the last show of 2020 with our tech predictions for 2021. Talk to you that. This show is part of the frog pants network. Get more at frog pants dot com. Diamond Club hopes you have enjoyed this program.


Welcome to Data Doctor's video, Suggestion 572 Find a Grave, Linked Grave Not Matching Profile This index lists the beginning times of each segment. So you can fast forward to any of particular interest. First a word about the wiki tree, Find a Grave Template. In its basic form, it is a pair of curly brackets. Find a Grave Text, Vertical Bar, The Memorial Number, and a closed pair of curly brackets. That means the memorial belongs to the wiki tree profile. Any significant difference between the profile and the memorial will generate a suggestion. There are two other versions. Between the memorial number and the closed brackets add another vertical bar and type same as equal yes. This means the memorial belongs to the wiki tree profile, regardless of the name and dates in the data section. Differences will generate various suggestions. The third version is the same except it has same as equal no. This means the memorial does not belong to the profile member and any differences will not generate a suggestion. Suggestion 572 is triggered when the most likely memorial referenced on the profile does not match the profile closely enough. It has several causes such as when the wrong memorial has been added to the profile. Be sure it doesn't belong to a relative before removing it. The name or dates don't match the memorial even though the memorial belongs to the profiled person. The memorial is for a relative or the wiki tree profile has more than one link to find a grave memorials. Here is the suggestion report for George Thomas Elmore showing one suggestion 572. As you can see the name, birth and death columns do not agree. Here is the public view of George's profile. The sources section shows a find a grave memorial listing George Beard not George Elmore. Check the biography for any reason the incorrect memorial is linked before deleting it. It might belong to a relative. However in this case there is no explanation for George Beard's memorial so we need to find the correct one for George Elmore. On the right click the root search link. Root search offers several sites to choose from. Let's start with find a grave. Find a grave has one listing for George Elmore. Click on his name. The memorial clearly identifies him as the man of this profile with names and dates matching exactly. Go to the bottom of the memorial and click source citation. Copy the text that appears. Return to George's profile and click on edit. In the biography section paste over the incorrect find a grave link with this one. Add the wikitree template and delete the first URL in the citation. Click on preview to check your work. Make sure that the inline citations are properly showing in the biography and sources sections. Go to the middle of the profile page and explain your changes. This is strongly recommended for all wikitree users and is required for data doctors. For me I identify myself as a data doctor. Copy the suggestion number and name and explain what I changed. Save your work. Return to the suggestions report and on the far right click on status. On the suggestions status page make sure your wikitree ID is showing. Of the five status options choose one. In this case correct it. Leave a comment from the comment tense or make one of your own. Click the update status button. The last screen shows the status history has recorded your changes. And you're done. Here is the suggestion report for Margaret Thompson showing 572. The date of birth and of death match however the name is different. Here is the public view of Margaret's profile. As you can see her current last name hasn't been changed to her married name of Payne though her husband is listening. Confirm that her current last name is Payne by looking at the sourced death record. Also double check the find great memorial to ensure it is indeed a match. Since Payne is correct click on edit. In the data section change her current last name to Payne. Below that as before explain your changes. Save your work. Return to the suggestion report and click status. On the suggestion status report select a status. Leave a comment and click update status. As a note if you can't find documentation to change the name on the profile but you are sure the memorial is correctly linked add same as equals yes to the find a grave template. Here is the suggestion report for Submit Dickinson showing 572. None of the information matches but the memorial could be that of a relative. Here is the public view of Submit's profile. It states that the memorial is for her son John. Click on edit. Change the memorial ID to the wikichui template. Adding same as equal no. Delete the first URL. Preview your work. As required for data doctors explain your changes. Click on status on the suggestion report. As before select a status. Leave a comment and click update status. When you see the status history box you know you're done. This is a suggestion status report showing several memorials on one profile. None of them belong to the profiled person. The first step is to look for the person's memorial and if found add it to the profile. A good place to start is with a relative's memorial which often has family in the family member section. In our example click on the memorial link of David Chadwell. We are taken to his find a grave page which gives a link to his father John's memorial. That should be added to his wikichui profile. Otherwise if the profiled person's memorial can't be found the suggestion would be corrected as we just did for one relative. Except all find a grave links for the relatives would be marked same as equal no. You are invited to like this video and even leave a comment if you wish. Also keep up to date with new videos by subscribing to our wikichui YouTube channel. On behalf of the data doctor's project, thank you for watching.


Good afternoon everyone, welcome to the Open Data Institute. My name is Ellen Broad, I'm the head of policy here at the ODI. For those of you who this is your first time joining us, just a couple of housekeeping things. The hashtag if you're following on Twitter and you want to contribute is ODI Fridays. This lecture is being live streamed and recorded so you're aware in case that affects the questions you might ask. There will be time for questions at the end and I think I can now just jump straight into introducing our speaker today who I'm personally really excited about. It's John Griffin, the founder of ACHI, a digital consultancy and of Data Seed which is what he's going to talk to you about today. I first came across John actually via an introduction from James Cattel. What I love about Data Seed is A, it gives you a really simple way of visualizing data but it also has been a really useful tool for showing back to people how you can improve your spreadsheet management and what good data practice and bad data practice looks like. I've just found it incredibly useful not only as a tool but as an educational tool as well. So without further ado I'm just going to turn straight over to John. Thank you, Ellen. Hi everyone, thanks for coming. So yeah I guess I'm going to talk to you today mostly about some of the issues that our customers of Data Seed have come to me and presented to me about using open data really and I want to start off first of all running through an example, a specific example which is quite a good example, actually this is when things go quite well. So this is a customer of ours called Kate who runs a small business and wants to find out more about G Cloud. So for those who don't know G Cloud is a government procurement framework. The idea is it should help small businesses do business with government easier. So in this scenario Kate wants to find out a bit more about okay who's selling on G Cloud, what are they selling to whom, for how much. So let's go along this journey. So first thing she does is a Google search for G Cloud statistics. The first result here that's not on ad is this one and going into this page it's a nice clear government UK page that gives us at the top some sort of totals and then straight away we've got lots of links to download CSVs. So also on this page is linked through some of these charts here. So these are performance dashboards as they're called and these are really good. I mean you know for a start you can see straight away the total amount that's being spent on the G Cloud framework by different company sizes etc. So it doesn't give you is the insight into exactly who the customers are, who the suppliers are that sort of thing. So we go back, we download one of these CSV files and we pull it into Excel, it looks like this, it's pretty regularly laid out, seems sane, but it's about 70,000 rows so we want to visualize it. So in this case we're going to use data seed to do that. It's a pretty simple process of just dragging the CSV file in. Other data visualization software is available I should say, but I want to just kind of show you this specific example and it applies you know all over the place. So this is excuse me a visualization that's been created with data seed of this dataset. So you can see all these charts here are showing the total amount that's spent so we can see in the top right the line chart here is showing us the total amount spent is going up over time. In the bottom left hand corner we can see SMEs have slightly larger proportion of business than large companies so that's good you know G Cloud is kind of doing what it should be doing in that respect to an extent. So this is good I'm going to pop out of the presentation now and go into the browser so that we can get a bit more interactive with this and follow this through a bit. So this is the same visualization just the interactive version. So what Kate might want to do at this point is to look at some particular suppliers that are competitors of hers. Her business sells CRM software so we might look up sales force in here. Find sales force we can just filter down all these charts the clickable so we can filter and see straight away okay so there's a really lot of money there being spent on sales force 580k. The biggest customer is London Borough of Hounsler Council so they spent 621k in total. So if we click on them we can see one transaction back here 1st of June 500k and another transaction so that was 2013 there. Another transaction here 1st of June 2015 for 120k so not really sure what the reason is behind that you know maybe they just realized they were paying far too much in the first place. You look at some of the other customers down here they're paying you know generally kind of 50-20 down to a few thousand pounds here. So this is all really good information that Kate can use to make business decisions on should I go through the pretty kind of it's a pretty epic sign up process for GCloud. So you know we can decide whether we're going to proceed with that based on the data that we can look at here. So this will work pretty well this is an example of getting some open data getting some answers out of it and doing that all pretty quickly with minimal pain and friction really. But we need to ask some questions before we can kind of draw conclusions. So is there any missing data how is the data collected now on that page where we downloaded the CSVs it's pretty good about giving us information on this it tells us that the data was submitted by suppliers so if you supply on the GCloud framework you have to self-report how much you're getting paid for things. So okay we trust that people are doing that we have to how are the terms defined well they also define what an SME is they don't really define any of the other terms but you know it's pretty good sorry go back what's the license so it tells us also it's under the open government license which is a pretty permissive license and allows us to use this data in various ways. So this is by all means a pretty good example here. These are all issues of data quality and data quality is it's not you know perfectly defined term people kind of use it to mean different things but what we're looking at here now is the results of a study done by the ODI and I think you know the question here was two businesses who are making use of open data which factors affect or you know influence your decision to use open data by the look of this here you know people please feel free to correct me if I'm wrong about any of these things. So you know these are all important factors that you know most of which I would put under the banner of data quality the accuracy of the data we can't do much if it's not accurate licensing can we use it how can we use it ease of access I mean that sort of comes down to how easy is it to find and then to reuse that you know does it change over time how it's published and the format provenance of data where did it come from what process has it been through before it gets to us and the format of the data this is what I'm going to focus on primarily and you know specifically how machine readable the data is because I feel like this is really a low hanging fruit and this is you know specifically what our customers complain about the most really or you know where they get stuck when they're trying to get some insight out of open datasets so a bit harsh but you know what is standing in the way basically why can't we always just go through that process that we just did with the G Cloud datasets and kind of get some answers pretty quickly I mean there's lots of problems obviously but I'm going to focus on spreadsheets and the fact that they are basically just a collection of cells and you can do some pretty horrendous things with that freedom so CSV files specifically we talk about because you know there's lots of ways of publishing data obviously and I don't have a problem with CSV files I've done a lot of work with link data in the past and you know there's some great formats out there which you know solve all these problems but the problem is they're not really that well adopted so you know CSV's got a lot going for it's open simple everyone can open them really with software they've got on their computer already and we're already using them but yeah they allow you to put anything in them so that's the bane of our life basically so yeah I want to kind of run through some specific issues which come up again and again and you know there's only five or six of these and I guess you know these are things that I feel could be quite easily solved and indeed are being solved so I'm not kind of proposing anything that's not already a solved problem here today it's more about encouraging the adoption of solving these problems or the technology that solves these problems so problem number one red is bad by the way green is good sorry if you're red glee green color blinds the top one is bad so having multiple files or having to deal with multiple files is an issue for a lot of people they simply won't go beyond that so you know the first thing is if we can have just one single file that really helps of course it might be massive the reason people split things up you know you might only want to look at a section of the data and that's fine you know both is preferable but you know for people to stitch files together in a lot of cases if they have to write some code to do that that's going to be a big blocker and they're just not going to get past that second simply character encoding just use utf-8 is really the short answer so yeah moving swiftly on I've called this non normalized schema which is a bit of a mouthful but what it really means is you know the top example here we've got columns here for each year and you see this quite a lot and you know what do these numbers mean so I need to go and look at some metadata or something to interpret what these numbers here are telling me you know presumably they're sales right so in this case so we could transform the data into how it looks beneath where we have a column for year and this schema is never going to change then so you know the number of columns is never going to change that means you know it's machine-readable in the sense that whatever we do to read that data doesn't have to change over time which is really handy yeah this is another one as well which is kind of annoying introduction text or any text before head a row you know it's a convention that you just have the head a row at the start of your CSV file and you know introductory text is metadata essentially which should live alongside the data set rather than in it empty cells see what I did there so yeah this is you know the probably the most egregious error because it's a data accuracy issue you know we could perhaps guess that in that space there it should say SME but we're guessing and you know we might get it wrong duplicate terms here yeah so you'll see on the left hand side we've got education spelt in various different ways presumably they should all be grouped together you know they're all the same thing but again some data cleanups got to happen at some stage here you know we've got to group these things together somehow and you know if you visualize this straight away these are all going to show up as different categories it's just unnecessarily annoying really so yeah so these are the kind of things that we just see time and time again constantly and are all really easy to solve ish or you know there are initiatives solve them already so I mean it's a practical sort of stop gap solution yes we can use tools like open refine so you know if you're coming across this issue now then it finds a great solution to that but ultimately the situation that we're in is everyone's doing this cleanup themselves and we're all duplicating this effort and be much better to sort of get this right at the source so yeah I just you know I want to sort of just point out some of the ways in which people are already solving this problem it's not a new problem by any means you know this problem has been around as long as data has been around to be fair I imagine some somewhere or another so CSV link is a really great tool it's a it's available online you know at this address is csvlink.io but it's also open source so you can download it run it basically what it is it's a schema so you know you have a separate file which is a JSON file that lives alongside the CSV file and that describes what the CSV file should look like some things are you know simply best practices that people should be aware of already you know head a row at the top you know number of columns throughout the table should be consistent things like this it should be utf8 but it also does things like check the type of each field so you know you might have a date field or you might have a text or a number and it'll check that that's consistent throughout so or you know you might have fields which are required so we don't get those empty cells there so really this pretty much solves all the issues we just looked at apart from the duplicate terms so the duplicate terms really require us to have another list of you know which terms we're expecting to see in that column so I mean solutions here might be using registers which are canonical lists of things companies buildings etc or you know there's lots of other vocabs from the link data world that could be used here so again this is a sort of it's really a problem that's existed forever in database design relational databases it's really a foreign key to another table without getting too technical you know there's we basically just want to reference from our data set a list of other things so you know some way to do that would be really great and of course then tools like csvlint could check the integrity of that link and make sure that we're not having that we are kind of linking to genuine things and rather making up terms on the fly and this spreadsheet just kind of gets out of order the other thing I want to mention is ODI certificates which already kind of cover all this stuff in a sense you know they cover a lot of the data quality issues which we talked about earlier they also you know make reference to the machine readability of the data so it kind of seems like if we were to see a more adoption of you know all of this stuff then the quality would increase immensely you know overall why is it important well because you know at the moment we've got we've done really well on the quality on the quantity problem you know we've got lots and lots of open data out there but and you know companies are actually making use of open data to just kind of clean up that data and to make it presentable to ordinary citizens you know and that kind of feels like to me that it should be something that you know it's something that there are kind of you know many important people you know Francis more there are many kind of pieces of legislation like this that talk about open data being for citizens for citizens to be able to understand you know what the government's doing and be able to have access to this information in order to make better decisions at the moment I feel like you know these issues are really getting in the way yeah it's the low hanging fruit basically you know it's it's kind of easy to solve these things I feel and that's good news so yeah if we were to solve these things and really we could make open data more accessible more useful to millions more people yeah so that is all that I really want to say I'm gonna wrap up there and then we'll take questions afterwards thank you