Good afternoon. My name is Austin Davis. I'm the government affairs manager for the Lake Champlain Chamber, and this is live at 525 and today I am joined by two of my colleagues from the Lake Champlain Chamber, Amelia and Alex, and we're going to be talking about a chamber initiative, the Burlington Young Professionals Network, and some of the surveying they've done in the past couple years on Young Professionals and the challenges and positive notes of being a young professional in the greater Burlington area, and a few other things, but let's start with just a quick intro of who you are. Amelia, why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do at the chamber? Absolutely. Thank you. My name is Amelia Kayer. As Austin mentioned, we work together at the Lake Champlain Chamber. I started there towards the end of 2021 as program coordinator, served on the Steering Committee for Burlington Young Professionals and took over as manager of the program in January, and one of the first things that I did was co-author the report that we're going to talk about today with Alex here. And I'm Alex Bunton, the talent leadership manager for Lake Champlain Chamber, and I mainly run Leadership Champlain, which is one of our workforce development programs. And I also started the Chamber around 2021 and previously helped run BYP and put together the survey, and yeah, I'm excited to talk about some of the results that we got from it today. Awesome. Well, tell me a little bit more about the Burlington Young Professionals program network and what it entails and how it feeds into the broader chamber mission. Absolutely. I'll start with what Burlington Young Professionals is all about. I'll probably refer to it as BYP from here on out. That's how I say it. It just rolls off the tongue a little easier. But as Austin mentioned, it is a program of the Lake Champlain Chamber and the main goal is to to attract and retain young professional talent in Northwest Vermont. We aim to help Young Professionals build community because when it comes down to it, community is what is going to keep them here in the greater Burlington area. Networking, building connections, advocacy, professional development, education, those are all part of what helps YPs feel at home here in Vermont. Yeah, Alex, anything you want to add to that? Yeah, I mean, I'd probably just add the what would I add there? Just the connection piece. So I mean, yeah, as Amelia said, just trying to get folks to feel like they belong in an area. I lived in a variety of places abroad and the one thing that kept me there was the people typically. And so coming back home to Vermont here, it can be sometimes hard to crack the code on the Vermont social scene. Vermonters can be kind of hard to make friends with on occasion. And so our program is part of the just reason for folks new to the area or otherwise don't have a huge social group professionally or otherwise to make connections and find things to do. Awesome. So what are some of the things that folks typically do when they're trying to plug into the BIP group? You know, you've got a series of events. You've got one coming up at the end of the month, right? Yes. So we just had our first meetup of the year last week, actually, and we're really pleased with the number of YPs that came out. We had probably around 40 or so. We're excited to keep that momentum going next month. Actually, at the end of this month, we'll be heading to a Vermont Green Football Club match as a group, which will be fun. You can find details about that launching soon on our website. But yeah, so we typically have series of meetups, which are fun, casual, kind of more informal gathering opportunities for YPs. And then we're really hoping to add some more professional development and educational offerings to the mix this year as well. So there's a lot to look forward to. That's awesome. So the survey, this is one of the multiple times it's been done. And when did you start collecting responses? It opened in August of 2022 and ran until the end of October. Okay. So a little bit of a difficult time as we're kind of coming out of the pandemic, a lot of survey fatigue and whatnot, but still able to get a lot of good responses. What was the real just overall goal? What were you really looking for specifically in the survey? I think that as our workforce ages here in Vermont, the young professional demographic is going to be a really, is already a big part of our workforce and is going to continue to be. So attracting and retaining young professionals to the area is a really important piece of that. And we just wanted to better understand why YPs are thinking about leaving, why they're staying, how they perceive our community, what challenges they face, what they like about living here. And just kind of better understand how all of those perceptions about living here in the Greater Burlington area and Vermont in general drive their choices and actions. And it's so important. I'm tying into like the broader work of the chamber. I mean, something we're consistently trying to bring the alarm bell on in our advocacy is that right now we're approaching one in four remonters over the age of 65. And hopefully that's when folks are retiring. So there's a smaller and smaller pool of young people in the state who can, you know, do the jobs that we have around the state can keep generating tax revenues. The state can keep operating. So that's a concern that, you know, it's just front of mind for the chamber broadly. And this is a great way to take the temperature of how that community is doing. So what are some things that stood out to you? I would say the top three takeaways. And I'd love to explain a little bit about each of them. The number one kind of across the board is the cost that cost of living is definitely a concern for that demographic. It is the number one reason why they that age group is considering leaving the state. It's the number one factor that keeps them from moving to their desired town in the area, whether that's Burlington or Shelburne or Charlotte or otherwise. And it's definitely a concern, especially with a large percentage of YPs making at least 50k a year and actually 20% of respondents making above 100k a year, knowing that cost of living is still a challenge. I think that shows how serious it is for this group. I mean, particularly in housing, you know, I think UNH did a poll not long after I think its results came out in February. And it said that for Vermonters, not just the greater Burlington area, but for monitors as a whole, the largest issue was housing. And the second was affordability broadly, tracking with what you have. Obviously, those things are hand in glove when it comes to affordability. But it really is that they are showing across all income levels. It's hard to find housing. Is there anything good takeaways on housing? That was actually my next key takeaway was housing. It's probably no surprise. We have a really tight housing market here and a lack of affordable housing availability. Kind of the same story as cost of living. It's definitely a big contributor to why young people are considering leaving, why they cannot move to Burlington specifically or any of their other preferred towns. And more affordable housing was on the list of the top items that would attract and retain young professionals to the area. So that's definitely a priority or should be a priority if we want to keep YPs here, increasing the housing stock and just the affordability piece as well. The houses, single-family homes that are on the market, which there are very few of, many of them are out of reach financially for this age group as well. And as folks start thinking about starting families or needing more space, they're running into issues finding those single-family homes. I was on Zillow the other day with someone who was trying to relocate just looking and there's, in Manuski, where I live, one square mile, two listings in one of the most densely packed parts of the state. And just absolutely incredible to see only two listings there. One of them would require a considerable amount of work and the other wasn't much for your money. Right. Yeah, it was interesting in the survey that I think the majority, maybe not surprisingly, were from Burlington and the majority, if able to live anywhere, would live in Burlington, which I thought was kind of interesting that some folks as they get older would want to move to more rural areas. But it seemed like I think the general trend is that people want to stay in here in Burlington in a walkable area in a kind of more densely populated area, which is a... Yeah, were there any indications of what kind of housing folks are interested in or anything of that nature? Single-family homes, so it's definitely the number one. Yeah, which is why. It's surprising, I guess, because there's not a ton. There are single-family homes, but there's a lot of rentals in Burlington, so it's not as possible, I guess is what I'm getting out there. Yeah, I remember when we had kind of done some focus groups on an earlier version of this, we basically landed on YPs want Essex. They want a single-family home that's within a walkable downtown and, you know, with good pedestrian infrastructure, and yeah, it's certainly a difficult market for that, and there's not a lot of that out there. You know, I am a bit curious about where Essex fell on the rankings this year. It wasn't even on the top ten. Interesting. Well, 11% of respondents currently live in Essex, but that was not one of the top ten preferred towns, which is interesting. Yeah, Burlington, Shelburne, Richmond, South Burlington. So, I mean, that's getting to some of it where, yeah, Shelburne's a little bit more rural. You have to drive everywhere. Richmond has a little bit of a downtown. South Burlington, a bit more built up, and then after that, Charlottan, Cold Chester. Interesting. And I think anecdotally, the folks that were interested in living further out, it was because they wanted more space, more land, a yard. I think those may be some of the people that already had children or were thinking about having children soon. But yeah, the majority do want to be in more of an urban environment. Did you have a third takeaway, right? I did, yes. And I sidetracked. So, the third takeaway also goes hand in hand with the first two, and it's the lack of adequate wages or perceived wages. It was kind of the same story of people feel that they could find much better-paying jobs in other states, and that the wages of the employment opportunities here do not match the cost of living and the housing prices. And basically, there's a gap there. So, a temptation for folks to potentially go elsewhere, unfortunately. So, we covered a lot of negatives, I kind of feel like, with those three things. Were there any positives so we can not lose any viewers at this point in time? Well, give me something positive. Maybe we'll drift back to negative. Why people stay here? There actually are a lot of positives. I'm so glad you asked. We asked them for reasons for both, so that, yes. Yes, exactly. So, the biggest positives, as I'm sure all three of us can relate to, and hopefully some of the viewers, the community, we have great people here, access to outdoor activities, the mountains, the lake. A lot of people literally responded, lake. The natural beauty, the activities, just being on the shores of Lake Champlain is a big selling point. Our restaurants, people even throughout breweries. We all know these are high points. Yeah, more breweries per capita than anywhere in the country. It's funny, we did a previous one of these shows, and we had Jeff, our colleague, Jeff Lawson from Hello, Burlington, to talk about what the area has for assets. The lake, it was just something that kept coming up. They talked to outside groups and what not, and landed on how unique it is to have a lake with a sunset in the east coast. Just how that is psychologically something that we're all drawn to. Maybe you don't want to use the west coast of New England moniker that was once. I still think that's classic, I still quite like it. I kind of like it a lot myself too. There's certainly a lot to offer in terms of outdoor recreation and what not. Kind of back to the conversation with Jeff, we think about all of these communities that folks are saying they want to relocate to. It's very different communities from Burlington, but as a lake chamber, as the greater Burlington Young Professionals Network, if you look at this as a metro area, and a lot of places people would think when they're in Richmond that they're still in Burlington. Someone visits from out of state, so it is pretty incredible when you look at all of those assets right in our backyard. One good reminder that I think we hopefully emphasized in the survey was just about, yes, a lot of people highlighted some things they dislike about the area, but almost 70% would recommend living here to a friend. So for all the challenges there are still, that for me is a really important statistic in this survey. I think so too. I'm glad you mentioned that. Everywhere has challenges and we have our share, but if you would still recommend to your friend, yes, the good outweighs the bad, then that's a really... If you could find housing. If you could find housing. The pros outweigh the cons for sure. There's lots of jobs. I mean, that's probably why we have a lack of housing and folks will want to be here. That's true. It's a good place to live. It's a good problem to have in some ways. The housing market is tight, but there's also a bad problem of not being able to extend job offers in some cases. So what surprised you in the survey? What was kind of a wow moment? I can start. I sort of already mentioned it a little bit. But I think what surprised me was how high some of the respondents wages were and knowing that they're still facing these challenges. It just shows how great that YPs feel that these barriers are to staying here. Knowing that a large percentage or maybe not large, but a significant percentage are making 100K or more and they're still running into these challenges. That definitely spoke to me and definitely stood out. Was anything that surprised you? The safety concerns that didn't come up. So we took the same survey in 2019 or a similar edition of this. And I think we asked, was it the if you're planning a moving why? I can't remember if it was that or just general concerns or no. It was that question as well as our just the top three challenges. Yeah, the challenges and assets and last time safety did not come up. And so this time it did. So I think we have had our challenges in that area as well. And there's certainly work being done on that, but it was surprising for me. Yeah, I did look through that. And that was really surprising that it was not on the radar at all. I was more involved with kind of the 2019 survey. And you know, when you've brought that up, I don't remember any conversation in 2019 around safety. Really, it is. I don't think it came up at all. It wasn't included in the report from 2019. Yeah, and even there was a couple of focus groups that followed in 2019.  Our last episode of this was, if folks want to go back and watch was actually with Burlington Mayor Murrow Weinberger talking about public safety and a 16 point plan that he put forth on public safety. The Lake Chamber Board endorsed that plan and have been working with the mayor on some of it. A couple of them have been achieved actually. Actually just this week in the legislature. The legislature H230 passed the Senate, which is a mental health bill actually that deals with suicide prevention. But one of the aspects of it was safe storage of firearms, which is really important to the Lake Chamber Board. And I testified on that bill and the legislature. So we're happy to see that bill pass and we're making good headway on that 16 point plan that our board endorsed. Certainly surprising and shocking to see that, but at least we're reacting to it. And the reaction was in the works as the data was coming in. Definitely and while it is significant that it was brought up. I do feel like it's important to mention that it wasn't a large percentage of the respondents. I think it was like 13% listed as their top challenge. 13% listed it as their second challenge and then I think it was even lower as their third challenge. So hopefully with the work that you and other advocates are doing will not have so many concerns. Certainly. Just a quick one. The thing is yet to the bottom of the screen there. But yeah, just a reminder to go to the website and check the report in full if you get the chance just to dive into the details more if you can. Certainly. Who should folks reach out to if they're interested in BYP? Good to plug it in the middle of the show too. Yeah, absolutely. BYP at vermont spelled out dot org is our email address. And you can definitely find that at our website as well which is BYPVT dot org. Bottom of the screen there. So what else is big in this report? Anything else that kind of stick out to you? One thing was, you know, a question that kind of I saw that kind of mirrors like a typical survey question nationwide about readiness for an emergency. And the response rates were actually shockingly good for that. Usually that's something where we see that and it's troublesome. And folks, and I know you might have the exact numbers up, but normally when you look at that, it's wow, folks aren't ready for an emergency. But in this case, it seems like our young professionals are. That didn't end up making it in the report. So I just want to say if anyone's interested in that, definitely reach out to us because we do have the data on that. But I agree with you. I was surprised that so many people were as prepared as they were because I know I've also seen that national data before and it's shocking. It made me kind of wonder if that is given the timing of it, you know, if that has to do with just pent up demand from the pandemic. And if that had anything to do with just, you know, in previous surveys, student debt was a large concern for a lot of a lot of our respondents. And, you know, we're in a place where student debts paused right now for a lot of folks, you know, we're waiting on a Supreme Court decision to understand what happens with that pause later this summer. But, you know, it just brought more questions and answers, I think, for me when I looked at that. Yeah, important to remember that this is just a slice of the YPs in the region. And what did we have a total of, I think, 218 respondents? And we did also just mention that it is, we found also surprisingly that the amount they make was over between, what did we say, 50 to 80? 50 to 100 for the majority? Yeah, 50 to 75K was definitely the biggest segment. Right. But yeah, the majority was over 50K. So for that? So it could be slightly skewed or two. Could be right for those that make a bit more, 500 bucks might not be enough to break them. And I wonder if just the pandemic, we had so many things thrown at us that maybe some folks have started to be more prepared just because we had to, you know, adapt to so much over the past few years? Yeah, certainly. And I think, you know, you know, for folks who are interested in BYP and in the network specifically, there is kind of a desire for better financial literacy. That's one of the things that generally offers partnering with NefQ, new credit union BYPs done a lot of great seminars on personal finances. So there could be some survey bias there too. Folks who are in the network tend to take more of the surveys. That's true. And now that you mentioned that student loan payments are still paused, this average student loan payment was above $450 a month. I think it was like $470. So maybe that payment was what was putting some folks over the edge and now they are able to save up a little bit. Kind of going back to the $500 emergency thing too. It just makes you a little bit concerned for what happens, you know, when you see those payments restart. You know, that's childcare right there. That's what folks have to pay in a month for that, you know, or more in a lot of cases. Much more. You wonder why folks are struggling with affordability. You look at just all of these compiling costs and certainly has you concerned for what the fall could look like for YPs. True. Well, anything else that's a big or just kind of a larger overview takeaway from the survey? One other thing that I wanted to mention was just a role that employers might be able to play in helping to retain some of our YPs or attract new ones. Only like just under 50% of respondents feel that there's a path to move up at their current organization or feel supported to do so. So I think there's an opportunity there for employers to really look at their current employees, promote from within, really lay out that path that YPs could take. Whether they're in like a lower position and they can move up. I think feeling secure that you have opportunities to move up at your current employer would definitely keep you there longer. Yeah, it's something we've talked about, you know, in the context of just being such a small state that also has so many small employers. We pride ourselves on how many small employers we have, you know, with over 78% or so, you know, being under 25 employees. It's kind of incredible that creates that issue where sometimes in your workspace it feels like there's everybody and then there's the boss. And the path to being a manager doesn't seem as clear in that small of an organization. And so with our advocacy, a lot of the work we do is about trying to scale some of our small businesses in the state to be larger, whether it's that density of opportunity with all those mixed opportunities along the way. And, you know, the larger the employer is, the more it can scale, the more opportunities there are for advancement. And there's those middle management and different interim pieces. We had another show, Lauren Bass, from our LaunchVT program that is really about, you know, launching some of these smaller companies, but really giving them the tools to scale up and become those employers that can offer things like that. But it kind of feeds into the larger chamber mission too, because that's a lot of what we do is some of that. And Alex, you're actually the director of the Leadership Champlain program. So I don't know if you want to talk for a second about how that, you know, that kind of feeling of not being able to move up and not seeing a path move up, how Leadership Champlain plays into that. Fits into that. Yeah, I mean, I think it's a great opportunity for folks at, I mean, a lot of them do come from larger organizations already, for those that come into the program, from smaller ones. It's kind of a professional development opportunity where they can see different opportunities, but also develop themselves into hopefully future leaders at their own organizations. Well, in those smaller organizations, I was kind of saying, you know, it's quite the catapult from being, you know, an associate to a director. It's a really big launch to that point. And what do you do in that interim period to prepare? Leadership Champlain is a great thing to fill that void and that gap in the interim time. It's a continued professional development opportunity for sure, and great for folks to continue to develop those skills. And as someone in the current cohort, it's definitely exposed me to a lot of opportunities I wouldn't have typically had. I have interacted with so many leaders in our state and so many different industries that I probably never would have met otherwise. So, props to leadership. Yeah, Alex and I are obviously big fans. Alex, you were in a cohort with me before, you know, you ever ran the program. And that's really how we got you to join the Chamber of Programs. Yeah, I know.  Yeah, so I mean, it's a fantastic program. As BYP is too, I mean, you know, you can kind of get a sense for just all of these Chamber programs, how they interact, how they kind of fill different voids and chasms, you know, that our employees in the community need and our employers in the community need so that we can, you know, best serve our region and make it this place where, I don't remember the exact percentage, but a large majority of people will tell you to move to, you know, and most people here, even when they talk about challenges, they, you know, they would refer to somebody else and they don't want to leave, you know. So, I think that's really fantastic. Yeah. Any parting thoughts you folks have or coming up on our time here? Yeah, just look forward to seeing anyone who's interested to come on out to a meetup or one of our future workshops. And thank you. Yeah, we've got a, last note, we've got a couple other workforce development programs and development beyond leadership champion to look out for those for anyone who has graduated from the program or is interested in other professional development opportunities. Awesome. Leaving us on a cliffhanger or something like that. I like it. So, people want to find out more about Burlington Professionals, BYPVT.org. Absolutely. Or BYP at Vermont.org is the email. We want to learn more about the Lake Chamber broadly and all these different programs we mentioned off today. You know, you can just go to LCCvermont.org or just email Vermont at Vermont.org. Well, Alex, Amelia, thank you so much for joining me on this lovely show that we get to do with our community access every so often and keep up the good work. Thanks for your time. Thanks for having us.


Before we proceed any further, I have a public announcement about my company farhatlectures.com. Farhat Accounting Lectures is a supplemental educational tool that's going to help you with your CPA exam preparation as well as your accounting courses. My CPA material is aligned with your CPA review course such as Becker, Roger, Wiley, Gleam, Miles. My accounting courses are aligned with your accounting courses broken down by chapter and topics. My resources consist of lectures, multiple choice questions, true-false questions, as well as exercises. Go ahead, start your free trial today. Hello and welcome to this session in which we will discuss the mid-month convention. In the prior session, we discussed the mid-year convention and we also discussed the mid-quarter convention and we stated that those conventions mid-year and mid-month applies to personal property and we differentiate between personal property and real property. In this session, as we are discussing the mid-month convention, the mid-month convention applies to real or realty property. What's real and realty property? Building, warehouses, land, things that are affixed to the land that are not movable. A car will be considered a personal property, by the way. Is there personal use or personal property? But we talked about this in the prior session. Let's take a look at makers' realty or makers' for real property. Again, here we are talking about buildings because we don't depreciate land. That's the reason why we assume building. Now, we're going to break down the real property into two types of real property. We're going to have residential rental. What is residential rental? It's where people live and we have non-residential property. It's considered commercial, think-of, office building. This is what we mean by residential versus non-residential. Here's what's going to happen. We're going to have class life, different class life for each classes of this property. For the residential rental, we're going to have 27 and a half years. For non-residential, we're going to have 39 years. The method of depreciation we're going to be using, it's going to be straight line versus, if you remember, under the others, under the half year and the mid quarter, we use the double declining balance, the 200 or the 150. And we are going to assume a mid month convention, not a mid year, not a mid quarter. For real property, we're going to be using mid month. And again, residential real estate include property where 80 percent of the gross rental income are from non-transient. It means non-transient. I mean, people don't move around non-transient dwelling, which is rental property. People live there. That's what we talk about apartment building. However, hotels, motels, and similar establishment are not residential rental property. What is the mid month convention if a property is put into use at any point in a given month? It's considered to have put on the 15th on that month or disposed of for that matter. For example, a commercial building that's put into use on April 3rd will be treated as it puts into use on April 15. Now, obviously, we have a different schedule for the residential and non-residential. This is the residential rental property. Notice it's 27 and a half years, mid month convention, mid month convention, straight line method. Notice the first year we're going to have a partial depreciation. Therefore, the rate for this is month, January, February, March, April, May. And this is year one, year two to nine, year 10, 11, so on and so forth. Notice here after year one until the last year, basically it's 3.636 or 3.637 rounding. Basically, it's the straight line the same amount every year as long as you have a full year depreciation. However, year one will be prorated because it's a partial year. It's a partial year, but the computation has been done for you. We'll work an example illustrating how to use this. Same concept for non-residential. Again, when I say non-residential, we're talking about commercial property. It's 39 years straight line. Those tables are from the IRS. Notice the first year it's different for each month, January, February, March. Why? Because it's a prorated. Then notice as you go down, it's going to be lower. Then for the remaining from year two to year 39, it's the same amount because we're going to have this asset for the full year. Then the last year, it will be prorated to make up the full year, to make up the full year. If you add those two, they should add up to 2.564. Let's do that just so I will show you. If we take 2.461 plus 0.1, 2.461 plus 0.0107, that's equal to, let's do it again, 2.461 plus 0.107, that's equal to 2.568. Again, this is a rounding issue, but approximately 2.564, 5.677, something like that. This is the non-commercial, non-residential rental property, which is commercial. 39 years mid-month convention and straight line. Notice in year one always it's going to be prorated because year one you're going to take partial year depreciation depending on the month. Then from year two to year 39, you're going to have the same amount because we're using the straight line assuming you don't sell it. Then in year 39.5 or in year 40, you'll have a partial as well. Let's take a look at an example for a residential real estate to illustrate how we use the tables. On April 1st, 2005, John purchased a building for a million, which could qualify as a residential rental real estate. Residential rental real estate means it's subject to the 27.5 years mid-month convention using the straight line. So let's assume we're in the year 2022, or it could be in the year up until the next 26 years. The cost recovery deduction will be how much? Well, we're going to take a million, and the cost recovery deduction is 0.0363, which is from year two to year all the way year 27. It's this rate 3.636%, which is 0.03636. So the total amount is 36,360. If the property is sold on October 5th, the deduction would be different. Why? If it's sold in October, that's the 10th month. If it's the 10th month, so it's right here, the full rate is 0.3636. However, for that year, we can take the majority of the year, which is nine and a half month, because it's assumed it's sold in the middle of the month. So we'll have nine full month plus this middle. So we're going to take the full depreciation multiplied by 9.5 divided by 12. And if my math is right, we will take 28,782, because we had it for a partial year, the majority of the year. But nevertheless, it's a partial year, a little bit over 75%, because this is by itself 75% plus this small part. Let's take a look at an example that illustrates the commercial, which is what we're doing by commercial, 39 and a half, 39 years. A building was purchased by John on November 2nd, 2022 for a million. If the property is classified non-residential, it means commercial, the cost recovery will be how much? Now we're going to be using the stable 39 years straight line mid-month. Well, what is the rate? The rate is 0.3210. Why 0.3210? We purchased this building in November. November is the 11th month. For the 11th month, it's going to be already prorated 0.3210, which is a million times this amount. Let's assume the property was sold on May 5th, 2025, instead of being held for the entire year. How much will be the deduction? Well, so going forward, the rate that's going to be from year 2 to year 39, the full rate is 0.2564%. Now, since we sold it in May, since we sold it in May, so we had this asset a full four month and we assume we sold it mid-May. It doesn't matter when in May. We assume we sold it mid-May. Therefore, we're going to take the full year, multiply by the portion of the year we held this asset, which is 4.5 divided by 12 times a million. If my math is right, again, you can check the math if it's not right. I apologize, but it should be right. It should be 9,615. So this is how we will use the mid-month convention. Now, what should you do now? Go to Farhat Lectures, look at additional MCQs through false notes and additional lectures that's going to help you understand the cost recovery method. Again, under cost recovery, we learn about half year convention, mid-quarter convention, half year and mid-quarter apply to what? Applies to personal property. Mid-month convention, we just covered, applies to real property. Good luck, study hard whether you're a CPA candidate, enrolled agent or an accounting student. Invest in yourself and stay safe.


What would you describe your first playoff experience here at the stadium last night? That was awesome. That was an awesome night. We won, but at the same time we compete so much in the game. The bites that we had in the dugout during the game. All the players supporting up, all the each others. That was awesome. That was an awesome night for me. Talk about competing, can you describe the difficulty of that catch you made in the fourth inning? I just tried to help the team in whatever thing that I'm going to do in that night, you know, defense, offensive. I just tried to do the things that I have to do to help the team win. And that happened yesterday. Yeah. I feel so, so good about it. Other questions? We'll go to Kristi and the Nerf. What happened after that play? How did the fan end up with your hat and you high-fiving him? The people think that the defense give me a other hat, but no, no, no. We have something inside the hat. So when I drop the hat to the outside of the field and when I check the hat, it's not the thing that I have inside of the hat. And I say, like, what is that? You know, that was my hat though. Eric, on your right as well. As well, you came up as an infielder. Why do you think you've adjusted so quickly to playing either one of the corner outfield positions? I was training so much from the last year in the offseason in Orlando with Bormand. And I used talking with him, like, I have to be ready for the time that they need me in the outfield, you know. And during the season two, talking with the coaches, different coaches talking with some veteran guys like Ryan Lamar, talking with my brother all the time, like, giving some tips before I played. And when the moment coming in triple A in low, that was in low way, my first time playing. And I was like, preparation, you know, just like, yeah. I think I know the things that I have to do to play here and just making the adjustments and the teams and trying, like I say, trying to help the team. My brothers is completely an outfield all his life. Yeah, he's so good. Greg in the second row. Have you surprised yourself at all with how smooth that transition to the outfield has been? Yeah. I'm honestly, I'm surprised about that, but at the same time, it's like the work that we was putting on it, you know. Yeah. I never told that, that I'm going to make like plays like that, but we was working for it. In the third row on your left. What was your reaction when you first got called up? And what did you want to accomplish, you know, when you got here? Accomplish. Yeah. All right. So my first reaction when I got that call amount is just like, like a kid in that moment. Like a dream that I had before and I get the column of I was so happy, so surprised at the same time. But just in my mind was like, play hard, just trying to do the things that I was doing in triple A and just to try to help the team and do the things that I know don't be like superstar or thing that I can do more things that I can do. Just be me, be myself and Laura on your left, you only have a few dozen major league baseball games, but already you're on a postseason stage and you're contributing. How much, how do you handle the nerves in that situation or do you even feel any? Yeah, everybody, I think everybody feels nervous. It's not, he's not a human, you know, but he's used too many, too many veteran guys and too many people who play postseason before told to me all the time, I don't, he told to me so much, my wing and they just give me like a couple of advice to control the nervous and these things. And I just try to be there. Just breathe, breathe, breathe, that's all in my mind all the time. Breathe, that's it. Yeah, it's the same game. You know, it's nothing changed just to more people in the, in the stands. But it's the same game, nothing changed in the second row on your left. Um, last night wasn't the first time that you sort of run into fans while trying to make a play. Where does that, like sense of fearlessness come from for you? I don't know. I think I was just excited for the game, excited for the postseason. And that just happened in that moment. You know, I was, I was not thinking nothing in that moment. It's just happened in the game. And the third row on your right.  What does it mean to be so impressed by veterans in this league? And they're just continue to be shocked. Like, what does that mean to you? I miss a lot from the first time that I've been here. I told this before and all the veteran guys, all the people inside the club, how they give me like confidence. And from the first day that I'm here, they, they give me that, that team that I am part of the team, you know, so that made me feel so happy. That made me feel played with so much confidence is I on the in the, in the field. And yeah, I feel so happy. Her best things about, about me, you know, feel so proud about myself. Two more of Brian and your luck. As well. So did you get the card back from inside your hat? No, no, no, no, no. Somebody, some fan probably took it home. Yeah, I don't know, probably. I don't know if that was in the field too, probably that was in the corner. I was looking around, but I don't know what was it. What did you do when you got back to the dugout? Did you have to ask? I just, I just, yeah, I just get a new one. Yeah. And then tomorrow or game two, what are you looking forward to about playing behind Nestor? Use the same, the same, the, the plans never changes, just be focused in the game, pitch by pitch. You just try to help the team with the things that are in my hands. Do the things that I have to do, that I know to do. And that's it. Is that all my, my, my, my mindset all the time. Finish up with Bruce on your right as well, though, it's the best of five game series. So how important is it for the Yankees to keep it going in game two? That's a good question is we, we as a team, we always think in win, you know, we have to compete all the time. We want to, to go inside of the feeling, win. And yeah, it's so much important. But at the same time, it's like the team that we got in the mind always, like we have to go inside, do the thing that we have to do and just win.


Everyone, yes, we are still here in our respective boxes. Meredith Murrach, Mr. Clearwater, David Bohn, David, how are you doing? Hey Meredith, I'm good. How are you? I'm great, thank you. Hang it in there. I think we're all trying to. Yes, definitely. So what have you been doing? What have you been up to? Uh, you know, just hunker down.  But like everybody else, we're just kind of trying to figure out the new world that we live in. Kind of a waiting game and staying home is the best thing we can all do right now to hopefully get back to normal as quickly as possible. Hopefully everyone in New York is doing okay. You know, David, I just want to thank everyone up there that's on the front lines that's going through this, the medical professionals that are out there day after day, really risking their own lives to try to help others. It's pretty remarkable to watch. It really is. When you think of all the things you can do, I mean, even from donated pizza to our healthcare workers at the hospitals, I thought was pretty unique. I mean, there's so many little things that can be done to try to pitch in and help out at this point. And there's all kinds of fundraising opportunities too as well to help out with so many different needs that are out there. So, yeah, there's a lot of things to look at and a lot of ways to help even though we're kind of stuck at home. Now at home, have you been turning on Yes Network, watching Yankee classics, watching Yankeeographies, anything in particular you've been kind of trying to pass the time with? Yeah, mostly actually streaming online. The, you know, Yes Network website is really good for that stuff. And your Instagram feed, I think is number one, must watch. I think Meredith, the following you and Susan on Instagram to me is my daily highlights.  As I said, I'm kind of, we're down in Florida. So, you know, the Yes Network, I don't really have it what we're saying right now. So, I'm relying on streaming media a lot as far as information. I think I might know somebody who might know somebody that might be able to help you out in getting the Yes Network. Yes, there you go. That might be my next move. What's been the best thing you've watched so far, whether it be Netflix, Hulu, just whatever on the internet? Well, you know, I have an eight-year-old son. So, you know, he kind of dominates the television now that he's home and being home school. Today was his first day of homeschooling. So, trying to get that sorted through, you know, the distance learning thing that's going on now is challenging. It was the first day today. So, you know, that was probably the most interesting thing I've done is trying to figure out distance learning and all the kids around the metropolitan area that are going through this and different schools now trying to get up to speed with it. Certainly is a big challenge for him, but also on the movie side with him, you know, we watched, you know, Frozen 2 over and over again. He wants to watch the same movie. I know every song to Frozen 2 now. So, now, I've never seen Frozen at all. One, two, or I think there's a third as well. Is there a third? I don't know. What song is Frozen 2? The only one that I know is Let It Go. That's the first one, though, I think. That's the first one. Yes. There's so many great songs in there.  I mean, there's just, you know, the music is amazing. To watch my son sing every word to every song when he watches these movies, it's just pretty remarkable. Show yourself. There's some great songs. They're really Now, are you an Anna or Elsa kind of guy? You know, definitely more of an Anna, Anna kind of guy, because I knew personality. She said, so funny. Her personality is out there. It really is. Kristen Bell does a great job, you know, in character with that one. When it comes time to play baseball, whenever that is, it's going to be great to see baseball do something to help the country, whether that's just a diversion or some sort of escapism or something that allows people to get back to some sort of sense of normalcy. And I think baseball's always played that role. No matter what the schedule is, whether it's a half season, double headers, playing into October, November, whatever that may be, you know, I'll leave that to some really smart people that'll come up with some creative scheduling ideas. But when it's time to play baseball, baseball players should be on the field and trying to provide some sort of inspiration, some sort of relief for all the fans out there that have been waiting so long to see it. I think it will be therapeutic for a lot of people when it does finally come back. People miss it. People miss watching the Yes Network, watching the Yankees, watching their respective teams. And baseball's different than any other sport in that it's every day. And it's a good chunk of time. And I think now people are just waiting for that normalcy in their life. So hopefully it happens sooner rather than later when it comes to that. As far as the Yankees are concerned, anything that you're intrigued with right now when you think of the team? Well, you know, I think just the overall health of the team.  Sean Carlos Stanton has more time to heal. Even Aaron Hicks, you know, has got much more of a chance to come back and make an impact. So from the Yankee standpoint, you've got a chance at the mid-season point or whenever potentially the season starts to be pretty close to full strength.  From the Yankee standpoint, the rest is good for them to get healthy. And they have a chance, no matter what type of schedule is going to be played, to be pretty close to full strength when it does come about, including James Faxson too as well. You know, so there's so many veteran, very important key players that have more time to heal up right now. Now, if you were a player right now, you talked about double headers as a possibility. How many double headers in a week would you be comfortable with? Wow, that's a tricky one. And it's hard to say.  So I don't know, maybe once a week. It'd be hard to do it twice a week without some sort of roster construction issues or being able to have extra pitchers to get through those double headers or maybe even seven inning double headers. You know, I think that's something Jim Cott has thrown out in the past. That would be interesting. That's what they do in the minor leagues, play seven inning double headers. So I think this is a time for baseball to get really creative. All the people that have all these great creations and, you know, that they have these wild ideas about, you know, what we can do to enhance the game or to come up with some different ideas. Now's the time for these people to come forward and come up with all these ideas. Before we get going, we'll get creative here. And I'll ask you, if you had to be quarantined with one member of the Yes Network crew, who would you pick? Wow.  And you're probably the most professional one on our crew too, by the way. O'Neal and I are just ex-jocks trying to fake it up in the booth for the most part. Flash is fairly professional too, but he's still an ex-jock. She's an old catcher too, to double down on that. So yeah, I'd want to be with somebody really professional, really funny, and somebody who has social media savvy. Well, thank you. Michael's going to be mad, but don't worry. I'm going to forward him this clip just so he sees it. Is there one food that you couldn't live without for a quarantine? Wow. Wow. You know, one food would probably be, you know, that's a tricky one. You know, ice cream. Ice cream would be pretty tough.  I'm still a little kid at heart, I know. And if there's one song that had a play on loop for the quarantine, what would you choose? Wow. You know, I'd probably play Margaritaville by Jimmy Buffett. You should have picked Margaritas as the one thing you couldn't live without. You could just sit there in a Tommy Bahama, try to pop those shirts with your Margarita. I need a blender. I need a blender and flip flops. Well, David, if you need help with Sammy, I'm a graduate of Yes, University. I'd happily step in, teach a class for you. But until then, we hope everybody at home is being safe and we'll see you again soon. Sounds good. Professor Maracaville.


We will welcome everyone, we will continue with our study of optimization. I had some questions from the previous class which I want to address here. Some of you are asking me about the difference between what is a sufficient condition and the necessary condition. So let us just recall this. We had concluded that if x star is a local minimum of an optimization problem like this, where you have a, you are minimizing a function f x over an open set S, then it has, then and if x star is a local minimum of this optimization problem, then it has to be that the derivative of f at x star or the gradient of f at x star they must be equal to 0. This is, this has to hold. So this is what we call a necessary condition. This means that if x star is a solution, then it must satisfy this. Now we also got a stronger necessary condition which said that the Hessian of f at x star must be positive semi-definite. So the condition is written here in blue. So it said that if x star is a local solution, then the Hessian of f at evaluated at x star must be positive semi-definite. This is also a necessary condition. So if x star is a local minimum, then the Hessian must be positive semi-definite. This is, this is what this condition says. There is a condition which is, which goes in the opposite direction, which says that if such and such condition is satisfied, then x star is a local minimum. That is what we mean by a sufficient condition. So that is what is written here in red. So a sufficient condition for local minimum. So suppose x star is a point in S and again we are in the same setting. S is an open set, f is a different, twice differentiable function. And suppose we have that the gradient is of f at x, at x star is equal to 0. And moreover, the Hessian is positive definite, which means that v transpose Hessian times v is strictly greater than 0 for all v not equal to 0. So if the Hessian is positive definite, then x star must be a local minimum. So these guarantees that x star is a local minimum. But every local minimum may not satisfy this. There are local minima that violate this, but they must satisfy surely the other necessary condition, which means that the derivative should be equal to 0 and the Hessian should be positive semi definite. Also a quick outline of how the proof for this sufficient condition for local minimum would work.   Now how did we get here? We got here by using that the first order term, the linear term in h actually is 0 because the gradient is equal to 0. The gradient of f at x star is equal to 0. So this term vanished and you are left with only this term. Now if you look at the difference between the left hand side and the right hand side, if you look at the difference between the left hand side and the right hand side, let me if you look at the difference f of x star plus delta h minus f of x star, this quantity is equal to half of delta square h transpose del square f at x star h plus something that small o of delta square. So you have this, you look at this difference. Now we know that when delta is small enough, what must happen? See remember we are arguing in the opposite direction. We now want, we want to say that if the Hessian is positive definite, then x star must be a local minimum. So which means that we want to say that when delta is small enough, this quantity, the quantity on your left hand side here, the quantity on your left hand side must be greater than equal to 0 for delta small o. So the way to see that is to just simply take delta square common here. You have left with then half h transpose plus this quantity which is small o of delta square divided by delta square. This is true for all, so for delta positive and small enough. Now we know that when h is not equal to 0, when h is not equal to 0, this quantity, this underlined term, this term is strictly positive. Why? Because the Hessian at x star is positive definite, positive for a not equal to 0. This is because the Hessian is positive definite. Now because the Hessian is positive definite, this term becomes strictly positive and what do we, what can we say about this other term, the term that I have circled. It is a term because it is, the numerator is small o of delta square. I have divided that by delta square. What that means is as it is a quantity, small o of delta square is a quantity that upon dividing by delta square also goes to 0. So small o of delta square divided by delta square goes to 0 as delta becomes, as delta goes to 0. So as delta becomes small, this quantity will become eventually smaller in magnitude than the first term. It goes to 0. So eventually it has to become smaller in magnitude than the first term. Whether this term is positive or negative does not matter to us. Eventually in magnitude it is going to become smaller than the first term. So consequently whatever is there in the bracket here is going to add up to something positive for delta small enough. So this is this bracket for delta small enough, this bracket is positive and outside I have a delta square which is also positive. So in short what have we got, we have got that well if as a consequence we have got that this quantity, this difference is definitely greater than, this difference is definitely greater than equal to 0 which means that, so that gives you that which implies that x star is a local minimum. So this is guaranteeing that x star is a local minimum. Now let us do a couple of applications of this. First set of applications are going to be where it is evident that the optimization problem is actually an optimization over an open set. In the second case what is going to happen is that you will, it is not very evident that it is an optimization over an open set it has to be mathematically transformed in that sort of way and that will also lead us to our next class of optimization problem. So the first category is this problem of what is called least squares regression. So the problem in this kind of, the question in this kind of problem is that you have a bunch of, you have a bunch of input or you can say independent variable which affects an output and we want to infer a relation between input and output and the relation is not always exact. The inputs and outputs are related to each other possibly in a noisy fashion but we do not have a model for the noise, we do not have, there are many probably many other unmodeled things elements in the problem which are affecting the output. So consequently we do not have a perfect relationship. What we want to infer is a relationship that will be good enough for predictive purposes. So it may not be good, it is not necessarily good for, it is not enough that the relationship is matches very well on the data that we have but rather our goal is actually that it match, it should perform well on unseen data in order to and give us good predictions on unseen data. So I will explain this with an example. Suppose we want to, we are talking of say price of a used car just as an example. So price of a used car now used cars come in all kinds of varieties so but we can think that maybe the price of the used car depends on a few input variables such as for example the age of the car such as the brand or make of the car it depends on whether it is a petrol or diesel variant it depends on the condition I do not know of the car depends on the number of kilometers it has run what has been it is running etc. So these are in the language of machine learning what are called features. Features are what I was calling input variables. So these are what are called features and the price of the used car is what we want to infer from it so if you want to infer using the feature. So if I give the goal is that I give you a new, I give you a sample car which has which sample used car which has all these features it has a certain age I tell you its brand I tell you whether it is a petrol or diesel car I tell you its condition tell you the number of kilometers it has run and I want you to predict what the price is at what price will this sell in the market this is this is the problem and now of course you cannot do this without any data so I will give you some previous data. So I will give you previous data points or previous data points what do these previous data points correspond to they correspond they give you a list of features they give you values for features and they tell you the price the price at which the car sold. This price is what we call a label so you are previously given you are given some previous values of the features and you are given also the values of labels corresponding to that. And now what we what the goal is that using all this data you come up with some way some predictor for a new sample. New sample does not mean a brand new car a new sample of an old car of a used car an unseen sample which possibly has a different values of features and use that to predict the price. This is this sort of problem is a sort of a basic problem in machine learning now what we what we let us introduce a bit of notation here these kind these features I will let us denote features are going to be denoted as in the following way. So I have suppose so I have suppose n features n features include you know things like this and these I will assume they take values in a continuous space. So here these either all type features or brand type features which are which are discrete let me know let us ignore them for the moment let us assume that these are n features taking values in a continuous space. So this could be age of the car some way of measuring condition the number of kilometers it has run and so on. So these are features that n features that are real value each of them is a real number. So and I am going to give you m samples samples or data point. So the way this is we will denote this since there are n features so what we will do is we will put stack all of them into a vector. So the for the ith sample the values of the features that you that you have let us denote them in this sort of way a i of 1 dot dot dot a i of 2 dot dot dot a i of n. This becomes a row vector the column vector like this a i is you will just be the column vector formed by this column vector. The price or the label that we have got for in the ith sample is denoted b i and this is also a real number. So label now what you what one typically has also in addition to this is a bias feature I will ignore that for the moment. But so for simplicity just let us look at this sort of question you have you have previous data points here this is my feature space the space in which my a a is take their values. So I have I have a say a 1 here and the corresponding b 1 here I have an a 2 here a 2 suppose and the b 2 and the a 3 and the b 3 b 3 etc. And so you get these sort of you have these you have these m samples. Does everyone understand this there are m samples that is the m is the number of dots that I have here like this of this kind n is the is the length of the feature vector. Now what I would like to do is somehow come up for a new unseen point. So here is a new point in the feature space which I have never seen before I would like to know what should be the right value of the price or the or the label for this correct. So if I want to do this kind of prediction what I need to do is build a model using what is using the data that I have. And so what we will posit is there is we will hope for a linear relationship we will let us let us posit it in this sort of way let us posit that that b depends on a i in a linear fashion.  So this is a linear function on a linear function of the feature. So the coefficients here x are this vector x 1 till x n these coefficients defy as I vary the coefficients I will get a different value for a transpose x and I am hoping to match get coefficients in such a way that when I these coefficients in such a way that when I that when I input a new set of features here unseen set of features it will give me a good it will give me a good approximation or a good prediction for the for the price or the label alright. Now the trouble is if you look at the sort of figure that I do here data the way it is because there are so many unmodeled elements there is clearly no real need not really be a linear relationship between between the label and the feature. So what one tries to do is then you think of a cost function a cost function or a loss function we we try to we look at you look at the mismatch or look at the residue like this look at the residue like this and we say well we want to look at we would like to this you would like to find an x such that this these these residues as I goes from 1 till m these residues are many are as low as possible this is this is what is called the training problem. So you look you try to find x's and thereby define this function define this linear function through those x's so you try to find x's so that this residue is as small as possible. So a popular a popular way of doing this is to do is to simply write it like this so let us write a as this matrix I will I will so this is this puts together all the observed features of the m data points. Let me write b also as this column vector these are the observed labels of the m data points. So a is now a matrix in r m cross n b is a vector in r m and what because that need not really be a linear relationship what we will try to do is find an x such that these residues are the sum of these residues is minimized. So now the residues can take any sort of sign so it does not make sense to just simply add them. So what we will so you need to take a norm of them so you let us see so what I am taking here is the I am taking the 2 norm I am squaring the residues and summing all of over the m sample. So I am looking for an x in r m so x belongs to r m the number that minimizes this particular loss. Another way of writing the same thing is to simply write that this is norm of this vector this vector A x minus b the L 2 norm of that vector is what you are doing. So what this problem does is it gives you the optimal set of the optimal the optimal x's x's are x's have different names they are called regression coefficients in some language in some communities they are called in weights by some what matters is basically they define for you once once the x the optimal x has been found once the x star the optimal x so let us call that x star the optimal solution. So if once the optimal x star is found all in order to predict the price in order to predict the price for an unseen sample what I need to do for an unseen sample say suppose if I find a new sample A tilde what I need to do to predict the price for that is to simply do A tilde transpose x star this is my predict this is this is the idea behind yes no there are there are so different norms have different properties and different shapes so so I this goes for more and more into data science I I I was not prepared to discuss it right now but I will give you a general idea see the when you look at points like when you get a bunch of data points like this not some of them can also be have out what can what you can call outliers so a data point like this which which really is well out of the trend right so the general hypothesis in this sort of work is that the data is comprises of a a a trend plus a bit of noise and we want to capture the trend but not the noise but there will occasionally be an outlier which come because noise is random it will occasionally be an outlier like this and now what that kind of outlier can do is that it can have an adverse effect on the way on your choice of x star because of the way you are training your algorithm right so on the way you have defined the because of the way you are because of the way the x star has been found you that that it can skew the the choice of x star a little bit so that to the point where now the noise starts being a bigger role than the trend now what has as a consequence what you would one way of getting rid of that is instead of hand picking what in saying that well this is an outlier and that is an outlier you probably do not know what is an outlier to begin with instead of doing that you try to look for a different different loss metric itself so so instead of the Euclidean norm look for take a different norm say for example you can take an LP norm so you can raise all of these to the instead of power 2 you can raise all of these to the some power to some power so this is the LP norm there are other types of loss functions that penalize large deviations much more than they penalize small deviations so that you can choose one of them so this goes more and more deep into what you want what the purpose of the study is what the nature of the data is and what but this is just a simple simple illustration that I wanted to show you.


Hello everyone, thank you for joining this pre-recorded talk for our paper titled Banquet, Short and Fast Signatures from AES, presented for PKC 2021. This is joint work with Carsten Baum, Daniel Callis, Emanuella Orsini, Peter Scholl and Greg Zeveroge. In this video, I'll be going through first some key facts of the paper, then I'll be explaining the idea of zero-knowledge proofs as knowledge from MPC. I will present our technical contribution for inverse verification, which will enable us to build the Banquet signature scheme. Finally, I'll touch about some implementation details. First with the key facts. Our Banquet signature scheme is built using an MPC in the H-based, zero-knowledge proof of knowledge, for which we use a Fiat-Chemier transform to achieve non-interactivity. And its EUFCMA security is based on the one-way function assumption of the AES block cipher with a slightly modified key generation algorithm in the random oracle model. One key feature here is that it has no public key assumptions, which is the same as for other MPC in the H-based signature schemes, which makes it quite attractive. Its work that follows the same line as Picnic, which is now in its third iteration as a NIST alternative finalist, and I will highlight here that the Picnic scheme is based on the low MC block cipher, which has about 600 end gates. And it's also a continuation of previous work called BBQ, which was the first attempt to instantiate Picnic-style signatures with the AES block cipher, which has about 11 times more end gates than low MC. Our paper presents several improvements over these two previous work. Not only do we have a better assumption in the sense that we use AES over low MC, but we achieve better performance in both signature size and speed. Here are some numbers. I've highlighted the Picnic-3 and the Banquet results. We see that our latest implementation achieves almost comparable running times, only one millisecond more than Picnic-3, for only seven kilobytes more in signature size, considering that we use a circuit that is 11 times bigger. We can further reduce our signature size by increasing this parameter N, which is the number of parties, which I'll explain later. But at the same time here, we have to pay for increased computation time. Now I will first describe the general idea behind the proof of knowledge framework. To build a zero-knowledge proof of knowledge from MPC, we are aiming to prove claims of this form, which is that we know a witness such that a circuit evaluated on a public statement and this witness will output one. And the proof of this claim is the ability to simulate an N-party MPC protocol which computes this circuit. In a simplified way, we can say that the prover generates and commits to the view of these N-parties. And the verifier will then ask to see some of them, and it will check that they are consistent. So that each message sent by one party to another was indeed received correctly and without modification. And it will also check that the circuit outputs the correct value. The soundness of the zero-knowledge proof will be guaranteed by the probability that the verifier sees inconsistent views. So if the prover cheated in the construction of one of these views, there's a high probability that the verifier will see this. And the zero-knowledge property comes from the semi-honor security of the MPC protocol because the verifier opens only part of the views. And therefore, the secret sharing will prevent knowledge leakage. So building signature schemes from the zero-knowledge proof was done before. The latest advancement in the picnic scheme uses the KKW technique, which was presented at CCS 2018, where here the idea is to compute the circuit with an MPC protocol. This circuit uses correlated randomness, so binary masks or triples, which must be verified. So the verifier must be convinced by the prover that these correlated randomness are correct. Here the picnic scheme uses a cut-and-choose technique, which then allows for a communication-efficient MPC protocol. The drawback is that hundreds of cut-and-choose triples have to be generated for only a few tens to be kept. Not only this, but if you want to compress the proof to a three-round, then the circuit has to be executed for each of the hundreds of cut-and-choose. And all of these executions have to be discarded when only tens are kept. So to give an idea in picnic, you have to generate 252 copies of the circuit, when only 36 will actually be challenged by the verifier. Now, once this is set up, the circuit that the picnic uses is this low MC binary circuit over F2, for which we have a plain text x, a cipher text y, and a key w. And the circuit evaluates to one if and only if the block cipher produces y on input x with key w. Now, when we first thought to do the barbecue signature scheme, the idea was to move away from low MC and use AES instead. Now, because AES is 11 times bigger as a binary circuit, we had to change the framework there. And we decided to use arithmetic circuit over F2 to D8 instead. This meant that instead of using N gates, we used inversion gates, which are pretty much equivalent to the S-box operation in AES. To do these inversion operations, we used a masked inversion technique where the input S is first masked with a random R, which costs one of these pre-processed triples. This masking is opened, inverted, and the R inverse is then removed locally by the parties. And this produces the inverse of S. This technique has two drawbacks. The first is that it requires the randomness to be non-zero. Since it's random, this happens with little probability, and the parties simply restart if that happens. The other drawback is that it requires the input to be non-zero. And this is where we modify the key generation of AES to simply state that the plain text x, the block cipher, and the key w should be chosen such that this never happens. In practice, this only reduces concrete security by one to three bits. The next paradigm that we can explore in MPC in the head is to move away from this cut and choose for verified randomness, and instead let the MPC protocol itself do the verification. This comes from sacrificing techniques in MPC where a lot of correlated randomness is created, and some of it is sacrificed to verify the rest. Here we would have the prover inject the result of multiplication as part of the witness for the relation. This means that there is no need to compute through the circuit anymore. Instead, the MPC parties execute a verification protocol. For example, they can satisfy one suspicious, they can sacrifice, sorry, one suspicious triple to verify another. And this leads to efficiency optimization, such as batching possibilities. So now we can have a quick sketch of a protocol where we see that MPC parties receive suspicious multiplication results from some god-like prover. And then they can verify them by sacrificing equally suspicious random triples. And this would result in a protocol which requires the communication of four elements for each nonlinear gate of the circuit, plus one extra. This, however, leads to a protocol which has inherently more than five rounds, which means that the noninteractive soundness cannot be proven straightforwardly. However, this first way of doing inverse verification is quite naive. So now I'm going to describe how we can improve on this. So first to describe a little bit this naive approach, in the context of having inversions, the prover here would be injecting these suspicious inverses into the MPC in the head executions. That means that at the end, the parties end up with M pairs, which allegedly should each multiply to one. So the naive protocol is then to cast each of these pairs as a multiplication triple with expected output one and verify each of these multiplications with a triple that is random. And this leads to this communication cost of four times the size of the circuit. So the beginning of our improved check uses these polynomials, S and T, defined using, well, the inputs S and the injected inverses T. The polynomial P is defined as their product. And we see that by defining the evaluation of P on these points, one to M, to be equal to one, this is where we are setting the relation that we are verifying. So if we wanted to verify a different relation between S and T, this is what we would change here. Now what we are left to do is to ask for the proof to check that P is indeed equal to the product of S and T. To do this, we can sample a random element of the field, open the three polynomials at that point, and check that the equality holds for this point. Our soundness bound at this point comes from the Schwarz-Zippel lemma, where we see that a non-zero polynomial has a bounded probability of being equal to zero when evaluated on a random point. In our case, the Q polynomial is defined as P minus S times T, which is non-zero if one of the inverses T has been wrongfully injected. So it's actually not equal to the corresponding input. One thing to note here is that opening these values of S and T at a random point will leak information because the polynomials are not randomized. So we do exactly this, and we add an additional random point to prevent this leakage. So this is how we can bound our soundness for this part of the verification by noting that P is of degree two times M, and therefore we need to ensure that if we choose a field which is much larger than the number of gates in the circuit, then this soundness bound will tend to negligible. So here we can have our improved protocol where we commit to a randomized polynomial S, which contains the inputs, and a polynomial T, which contains the inverses. The P can be defined for its first endpoints in the clear because we are expecting the first endpoints to be equal to one. However, the prover needs to specify the remaining M plus one points because P is of degree two M. So this adds an additional communication cost, and the parties can now open P, S, and T evaluated at the random point R, which has a further constant cost of three rounds. So in total, we see here that we have only two times the number of gates in our communication cost. So we've almost halved the cost of the communication already. And we've removed any kind of cut and choose, so we're not executing the circuit wastefully anymore, and we don't have any triples, except that we do. It's hidden in the point evaluated as zero required for randomization. Here I'll just note that the extra randomness in the polynomial S is prevented to prevent, is added, sorry, to prevent pairs interacting with each other and correcting off each other. But it doesn't add anything to communication. But now that we have this check, we can further improve it. And to see how we do this, first let me rewrite in some sense what we are verifying. So the horizontal vector here is the S polynomial with the randomized coefficients added. And what essentially we are checking is that the inner product of this randomized vector with the vector of injected inverses should equal to the sum of the random coefficients. What we can do is factor our number of nonlinear gates M into M1 and M2. And instead of verifying one inner product of size M, we're going to verify M2 inner products, each of size M1. So we just rearrange our S and T values to fit into these inner products. To do this, we're gonna define multiple S and T polynomials to match with the vectors I was just describing, but we're gonna use a single P polynomial, which is going to be the sum of the products. Now we can directly lead to this generalized verification protocol. Now the commitments to the T polynomials are still gonna cost M elements, but the commitment to the P polynomial is going to require M2 because its degree has changed. And when we open the polynomials evaluated at R, here we require more than before because we're evaluating more polynomials. But when we sum it all up, we see that the total cost is equal to the size of the circuit plus some terms in the square root of the size instead of twice the size. So for a high number of gates, this is significant. So now we can put all of this together into the final signature scheme. The key generation, as I said before, is that we sample an AES key and a plaintext of an appropriate length such that the execution of the AES algorithm doesn't present any zero input to its X boxes. So in the BBQ paper, there was an analysis already which showed that this reduced the security of the assumption by only one to three bits concretely. Then for the signatures, we have the parameters of M, the number of gates, M1, which is the factorization, the number of parties in the MPC, tau is the number of parallel repetition of the proof to increase soundness. And lambda is a lifting parameter because the AES is executed over F2 to the eight. But because of the soundness requirement for our check, we need to embed the values we are checking in a much larger field to ensure that the soundness is negligible. To create a signature, the prover then simulates tau parallel instances, each of them with N parties. And when it's running the parties together with a sharing of the secret key, the witness will also include the sharing of the inverses. This is the injection of the nonlinear outputs. And we use random oracles to generate the randomizing coefficients, the opening polynomial point, and to select the view, which leads to a seven round protocol, which we then make noninteractive. The verification is just a recomputation, which is why we achieve very similar runtimes for prover and verifier. We state here our theorem, which shows that the security depends on some random oracle assumption, some pseudo random distributions. And most importantly, the fact that the function which maps the key to the ciphertext block, because the plaintext is public here, this is a one-way function. So this is where our one-way function on AES, the assumption on AES lies. Finally, to discuss a little bit the implementation, to explain our parameter selection, we consider that an attacker can cheat by resampling the challenges of each intermediary round until they match a guess that it's made. So say that the adversary would guess tau one of the first round challenge, and tau two of the second round, then he will have to guess the remaining tau three to win all of the executions. Now, if we let PI denote the probability that he has correctly guessed these challenges, we can write the cost formula for a particularly given strategy. Then we simply require that this cost be greater than two to the cap for our security parameter for every possible strategy, and we increase our parameters until this is reached. And we furthermore added by choosing M1 to be about the square root of M gives an appropriate balance between speed and signature size. So this table demonstrates the variation in performance as we vary the parameters. So these are all for AES 128. Then below you can see the factorization of the number of S boxes that we use. And we see that by increasing N, the number of parties, we of course increase the computation time because the prover has to simulate more parties, but we also reduce the signature sets. And then each line further divides the results between the different lambda values, which is how high we lift the values during the check. And this affects soundness because we see that the tau requirement differs as well, the number of parallel repetitions. We've optimized the implementation in different ways. First, we noticed that all interpolation points have the same X coordinates, so we can pre-comput some coefficients. Instead of interpolating polynomials for each party, the prover has an overview of everything. So it can reconstruct the polynomials in an unshared fashion and then interpolate, which takes a factor of N out of the computational load. And also for the S and T polynomials, the inputs are the same for each parallel execution. They're just shared in different random ways. So we can use this common values across them to further optimize the Lagrange interpolation. And all of this reduces runtime by almost 30 times. And then using some further improvements, we can reduce to the runtimes that we've achieved. Finally, I've included a table which compares our banquet scheme for the three bottom lines with some of the other state-of-the-art signature sizes for post-quantum candidates. And as before, we see that we are competitive with picnic three in runtime and we're really not far off in signature size, especially with our higher number of parties. And I'll highlight again here that we use the AS circuit, which is much more complex than the picnic slow MC. So thank you for your attention during this video. Here is the imprint number for our paper. And please feel free to contact me or my co-authors if you have further questions.


Hi there, welcome back to my YouTube channel, this is Daniel Rosel here. I came across yesterday this article on the times of Israel by Jessica Steinberg, who is one of their journalists, and it just kind of caught my attention, particularly one quote in it that I just thought was extraordinary and which I know is going to just like completely fly under the radar, but I think it's so telling and I think it's so typical of the mindset of way too many people in Israel that just keeps this country so overpriced. Now, I have been living in Israel for seven years. I came here because as a Jew, growing up in Ireland, I felt sort of out of place and that, you know, if we have a Jewish country, Israel is where we should be. So that was my reason, but you know, I'm sure it might seem a bit odd to people when I criticize stuff, but I have, for whoever reads my online writing, my 414 medium followers at the time recording this, but I've been very critical of the cost of living in Israel and I don't believe that it's sort of like unpatriotic or anti-Israel to just kind of pretend that there aren't these problems here. And one of those problems, speaking of the cost of living that really, really irritates me, as somebody living here and working here and paying taxes to Israel and trying to live sort of a normal middle-class lifestyle is just the fact that like it does not make sense to holiday in Israel for Israelis. It just is a waste of money. It's just like much better value to go to Turkey or to go to Greece or to go to Italy. Now that Ryan is here and there's been like this, the open skies agreement, Israeli hotels are just not competitive. You got like lousy service for a high price tag in general. And this article just had this quote from one of the like CEOs of the major hotel groups here that just said, I can't believe he just said that like in black and white, that's the attitude. And I'm like, when we sort of like tried to investigate, well, why is Israel so expensive? What's the deal with this kind of crazy high cost of living that according to a recent survey was the ace highest in the world? And people will say, you know, well, it's a small country and people have to pay for kosher certification, the revenue and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And I think that people fail to appreciate the extent to which greed and this kind of like attitude that Israeli hoteliers particularly deserve high prices. And there's been articles like this coming out since the start of the pandemic saying that, you know, you'd expect under normal circumstances supply and demand Israel being so dependent on international tourism that if that just was stopped, that you would see a reduction in prices for hotel rates and Israelis availing of the chance to stay in their small country. And I think that would be a tremendous thing. Israel is such a small country and I'm actually a huge fan of vacationing or a staycationing as somebody who has a hard time getting into holiday mode and turning off from my work. I love the idea of going down to Tel Aviv or somewhere else in Israel as opposed to going abroad. You don't need to fly anywhere. You don't need to right now in COVID do all the COVID bureaucracy, all the PCR tests, but it still doesn't really make sense. And I think that's ridiculous. So yeah, there have been these articles coming out since the start of the pandemic about how miraculously despite COVID, the hotel rates are not diminishing. And I think this article does a good job at explaining why. So it's reduced from hotels, bad on local guests this season, but don't expect a bargain. What a surprise. Don't expect a bargain in Israel. Who would have ever thought it giving up on foreign tourists, the approaching holiday season, high end establishments seek to woo domestic tourists to spend their vacation shackles, but they don't want to lower their prices. So that to me is a strange dynamic. Now I jumped out to the quote that just really I was like, hang on, that is ridiculous. Why would you like, why, why would you say this to a news reporter? Like, that's, you know, it's going to be published in like an online newspaper and you know, people are going to read that. Like, aren't you ashamed about this? We were fully booked for the holiday this year. I said, Avner, Avner on general manager, the Jerusalem Waldorf Astoria when families come from abroad, I'm going to be talking about families and foreign tourism in Israel. We're mostly talking about like foreign Jews. We're talking here about the Sukkot, the, which is one of the festivals in the Hageem, which is when, you know, Jews are mandated to sit in booze and it's like a, it's a lovely holiday and all the restaurants and hotels put up their own Sukkot for the festival. And it's generally the way that it works in Israel when you're working here is that most people actually take the whole Hageem off because a lot of employers give you, they have this like offer for their staff that if you holiday during the intermediate days of Sukkot and the other festivals, they will consider it, they'll consider a, or they'll count your time off as like only a half time. It's a bit complicated as to like when they do it or when they have to do it, but that's a common practice of companies that so you can take a week off and only use up three days of vacation. So a lot of people just take the whole Hageem off. And now it says here own and his staff no longer believe those who call tourists will show up as Corona virus Delta variant cases soaring. Some of the bookings having canceled quite yet, but own is pretty sure they won't make it. And this changes the scope of his most important seasons. Now in August, the Waldorf is full, but with Israeli tourists rather than the usual cries of European and American visitors. The situation is typical for Israeli hotels this summer as most foreign tourists can't enter Israel amid the pandemic, nor will they likely be able to during the high holiday season in August, which is almost upon us. So the luxury hotel changed its rates and minimum lengths of stay for the holiday season, hoping that Israeli tourists will take advantage of the opportunity to spend part of the holiday at the Waldorf. The high end hotel is now offering a two night minimum and a 2,500 shackle that's $772 at the time of writing price tag per night, including breakfast as well as reduce prices on meal. Everything is reduced to I'm going to just highlight the quotes that kind of tick me off. Everything is reduced to the level that the Israeli market can accommodate. So and then he says then it says like as if it's like shame as if it would be like shameful to like offer a discount or admit that like it was good value. It's not cheap. Don't misunderstand me, but it's not as high as it was before. So like just this kind of whole idea that you have to reduce prices for just for like locals to be able to stay your hotels is I don't know. I find that kind of obnoxious and then that like you'd like fall over yourself to like emphasize that like it's not cheap. Yes, $772 per night is not cheap by the vast majority of people's standards in the world. But yeah, it's just like this weird attitude of like where it would like kill these guys to reduce their prices or that that's kind of how you feel. But there won't be any reduced prices at the nearby King David or the David Citadel. And these are two really fancy hotels, five star hotels in Jerusalem. Now here's here's the quote I take issue with. We're still not in desperate mode, said Ronan Nisenbaum, CEO of the Dan Hotel. So the Dan is one of the big hotel chains in Israel. There's hotels, Dan hotels, I think in most major cities. So Ronan Nisenbaum says, we're still not in desperate mode. We'd rather but here it is. Here it is in black and white. I just I can't believe you'd say this. We'd rather have fewer rooms at the right rate to make it feasible. Our strategy is to maintain the integrity. It's just jumped on me. Our strategy is to maintain the integrity of our rates to deliver amazing service and food, even if it means our volume will be lower. So basically what this guy is saying is he would prefer to sell. He's acknowledging the fact that like because of COVID and the fact that foreign tourists who traditionally constitute a major amount of the hotel's guests, he's acknowledging the fact that demand is down for these hotel rooms. And you know, under normal circumstances, you think, well, they'd want to keep their hotel rooms occupied. And he is saying in black and white that they would rather actually have lower occupancy just so that they can keep these typically overpriced rates going rather than it would like hurt them so much to reduce the rate.  And I don't know, from my perspective, like spending vacations in Israel just doesn't make sense. It's a ripoff. So I this mentality just drives me nuts. And it's not just about hotels. You'll see this. I've seen this here with landlords who will less a rental go unrented for seven months, which means they're losing money every single month rather than reduce the rates. Probably for the same reason, because they think we have to maintain the integrity of our rates. We couldn't reduce rates because there's less demand. We can't do that. We have to keep the prices in Israel really high. Now, I know I kind of seem just a bit angry, but it's just this attitude really bugs me, not just because I think it's obnoxious and I do, but because I think right now what this article is highlighting is that there is sort of we're at this sort of rare point in history of which we have this weird situation going on this pandemic in which foreigners cannot come to Israel. So the hotels are have to deal with an Israeli clientele. And look, I'm I wouldn't stay in a hotel in Jerusalem. I live in Jerusalem. I like my place. I'm not trying to say I'd love to get a deal to stay in the Dan hotel. I'm just saying what a short-sighted attitude that you would rather cling to your normal time rates and maintain the integrity. Like what a nurse does that mean? He's saying it black and white. We'd rather have fewer rooms at the right rate to make it feasible. Our strategies to maintain the integrity of a rate to deliver amazing food, even if it means our volume will be lower. What a what a small minded view that rather than sort of seize this opportunity to offer actually decent reasonably priced hotel accommodation to people living in Israel to people spending their tax money and making the country succeed.  So you can go back to creaming them. It just disgusts me. This added it really disgusts me. And another article just to support my case here from Ynet, Israel's hotels among most expensive in the world. So even though in Israel the sky is blue, sometimes you just have to Google articles or find evidence to so that you don't doubt yourself that the sky is indeed blue. This is just saying that there is a survey called the Hotel Price Index. And this is an old article from 2014. But I'd be very, very surprised if anything has changed. I thought it was actually booking.com and they take their price survey and they found that basically Israel, just like our cost of living is the ace highest in the world and the cost of real estate is the second highest in the world per square meter, just to add to the long list of statistics that kind of confirm that Israel is actually for the most part a gigantic rip-off. You have this article saying that Israel, Israel hotels are among the most expensive in the world. And typically they do not offer particularly good service, in my opinion, for their exorbitant rates. And again, you can say, well, it's because of the cost of workers here. As if the minimum wage in Israel is super high. It's not. It's the cost of kosher certification. And I just wonder, is this the answer? This quote from one of the major CEOs of hotels, nothing to do with rates. It's due to the fact that they do not want to lower their rates because they know that they can charge foreign Jews exorbitant amounts of money just because they know that they really want to come to Israel for Pesach, where it's much easier for Pesach or for Sukkot or for any religious hospital, any religious holiday. And I just find that obnoxious profiteering and the unwillingness to be flexible when we have these marketing conditions, I think, is just really, really appalling personally. As well as that, I think the fact that this guy thought that was an okay thing to just put out there to a journalist no one would be published, I think speaks volumes about the fact that these guys don't even see this attitude as problematic. And I think there's so many people like that in Israel. So that was my rant for the day. Basically, I don't believe in holidaying in Israel because I think it's a rip-off and I think that it makes more sense to go to other countries that do not have this growth culture of profiteering and exploitation. So if I could, I would probably be booking a vacation to Portugal or Turkey or Greece, but seeing as the borders are closed, it would probably be a couple more months, at least before we can get out of Israel for a while.


We may be a few months from boating season, but you can take in the sights of summer this weekend in Bemidji. Our Josh Peterson takes us on a tour of this year's outdoor sports show. Despite the cold and snow of winter outside, Inside Bemidji's Sanford Events Center is a different story. Boats and various ATVs are just some of the many items you can find at this year's outdoor sports show. It's just exciting because as you can see on the floor there's new everything and this is when the rebates and everything for the dealers are at their best so people can take advantage and save some money. For four years the stations of RP Broadcasting have held the annual show as a way to highlight outdoor fun and recreation, adding more and new exciting products each year. That's what we try and focus the show on, that's what you see mostly on the floor is machines, boats, RVs, you name it, that's what's on the floor. One of the many attractions here at the outdoor sports show are the boats. And for one local business, this year's event showcases more than just watercraft. For Ray Sport and Marine, formerly known as Corner Sports of Bemidji, it's a chance to introduce their new name to the public. We're going to be able to showcase more of the things that we do with all the brands that we have. London is obviously our number one brand but we've been a Cressliner dealer just as long and we do a really good job with them. For local businesses, shows like this are important to their bottom line and being able to showcase their product in a warm and comfortable setting. It's undercover, it's nice, it's nice outside this weekend which is nice but you can come in and you can actually touch feel and ask the questions. With so much to see and explore, the Outdoor Sports Show promises a chance to escape the winter blues. In Bemidji, Josh Peterson, Lakeland News. The Outdoor Sports Show runs Saturday from 9 until 8 and Sunday from 11 until 3. Admission is free. If you enjoyed this segment of Lakeland News, please consider making a tax-deductible contribution to Lakeland PBS.


An undisclosed number of persons, including women and children, have been abducted along the Ephraim-Sapelier Expressway in Delta State. An armed gang reportedly laid siege on the travellers by blocking the road and carrying out their act. An injured victim has released a now viral video saying women and children, including his family, were taken by the suspect. A window of the victim's car could be seen broken with shards of glass on the back set. Hello, hope you enjoyed the news, please do subscribe to our YouTube channel and don't forget to hit the notification button so you get notified about fresh news updates.