Alright, thanks for staying with us. Now the country's apex advertising agency, Akron, revealed on Tuesday that the advertisements on Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp in the Nigerian market are not vetted and approved by the federal government. Akron then asserted that such continued unscrutinized adverts and other publications emanating from Mark Zuckerberg's meta-owned social media platforms are illegal or lawful and a violation of the extant advertising law in Nigeria thus seeking a 30 billion for punitive damages. Hail salubwa. Now according to Flevi, digital transformation is being embraced by companies across most industries as the role of technology shifts from being a business enabler to a business driver. Transformation is driven by six technology trends which are social media, mobility, internet of things, cyber security, big data and cloud. So what ways do you think small businesses can leverage technology? Now that's a question, please let's hear what you have say. Remember you can join the conversation, send us an SMS or WhatsApp to the very one 80384663. Let me first of all say happy birthday Manny. I apologize and I'm doing it live on TV. I was waiting for you to be here first. I missed her birthday. Her birthday was October 2nd. I can never forget that day again in my life. But happy birthday again. Thank you. I know I'm going to get you. I've already told you we're going to get ice cream. I'm going to get ice cream. Hey Manny, I mean when I saw that thing with Meta, why do they always say Facebook, Magsuka back on? Why do they always do that? But hey, when I saw that thing I was wondering. I mean yesterday I was at an event where I was comparing for an organization that tries to support small businesses. And interestingly the head of Meta was there. And interesting, she was saying that the switch as to how business, you know before it was just social, whatever on Facebook and all of that, the switch happened even again. They saw that tremendous with COVID and all of that. A lot more people began to take their social media presence very seriously and decided using it to push their small businesses and the growth that some businesses have experienced just by, I know how many things I put on my WhatsApp status and I hear people, people send me messages all the time. I said, I wish I was charging for this thing because if I put up something the next day I'm getting like three messages this place, where is this place? I want to visit, right? So I can now imagine somebody that is really deliberate about pushing a business or a product on social media. They are making a ton of money and they really helped small businesses. So why do you think this is even fair for a government agency, you know, to come online and say, oh, we don't want this or maybe there's a violation and something? What other alternatives have you provided for small businesses? Because this is the only thing that small businesses, in my opinion, can afford. Because you see before, before you take a page, you remember when we had the CEO of Hager and Esther here, when she was talking about how they will go and pay for those newspaper publications and all of that and they will pay through their nose. And they don't even see it, it wasn't even measurable. But with the social media, it, it, it broke the monopoly and everybody could actually transact businesses, right? On with technology. But let me hear your thoughts, Elsie, or let Manny confess. Okay, you know, like what you just said now, prior to this time, like this period, this season, if you wanted to place any advertisement, you'll be in the newspaper. And one of the downside of placing advertisements in newspapers because you don't know your audience, you're just gambling, you just throw it out there. This is a target.  And if these people are coming and saying that this is not allowed, then I think that the government, what we talk about every time is create an enabling environment for businesses to thrive. So if they come now and say this is no longer acceptable, it just means that the government is actually witch hunting us. Honestly, that's what it feels like. They are witch hunting us. Like, let us grow. You understand, somebody asked me yesterday, how do you get clients? This is an honest question. It happened yesterday. How do you even get clients money? I said, it's referrals. Because what else? We're not allowed to market. You understand in my profession. So how do you get clients? So we put out one or two publications, people see us, they read our articles and they call us and say, okay, so if they are telling us that we can't do this, then they are trying to actually ruin our business. And there's a software that shows that prior to this internet disruption, COVID period, businesses, their lifespan of startup was five years. After five years, they disappeared. They were nonexistent. So if these social media platforms are helping to boost businesses, why will the government be against it? Let me listen to our digital marketer, digital communication experts. Wow. Okay. So again, when I saw the story, I just like to take away the parts of dragging FG into it because that's what most of the media publications did. And I was, I mean, I'm definitely going to raise that with some of them. Let's have an argument. But it also shows the level of unprofessionalism that comes in that space when they are trying to report something. It is our call. Just mention the association. You don't need to put it there. So it then gets a lot of weight, right? But it's also good because yes, we are having this conversation now. And I have a bit of background to the whole drama. So I'm taking a course. I mean, part of the plenty courses I'm taking, our BAU is one that would give me, one that's endorsed by ACON. So if I can take that certification, I would then become a member of ACON, right? And one of their man or member official, I don't know what to call him right now, came and took us a session. So that session was to take us through the dues and don'ts, the laws and everything to become a member and how you vet, advert and all that. I remember that before now. In fact, now what happens is if you want to put your advert on radio, TV and newspaper, you actually get approval from ACON. That's the practice right now. And the charge, I think about $25,000, right? So while he was going through that session and then he talked about the approval phase, he then mentioned that businesses are supposed to approve every marketing communication content that is going out on digital platforms as well. And then of course, the class became heated because the class of about 20 people running some marketing agencies, some are running their businesses, some are representing big brands in that capacity, right? I was still asking questions. So are you saying that for every post that a business puts out, because no matter how you write your copy, the goal of you uploading stuff on your Instagram or Facebook is to get people to know your business, know your brand and at the end of the day convert, right? And he's saying for everything that goes out, they need to pay. So I asked him, I said, are you saying that if we're going to put out 20 posts in a month, we're supposed to pay $25K times 20? Oh, he said, oh, so if that's the problem, if the money is the problem, then how would we feel if they have conversations and reduce it to a thousand error per post for digital media? And we said that's still not the point of the issue. Because at the end of the day, there is always cost of customer acquisition, right? And I mean, in FinTech space, where I've worked a bit, you hear KAC and all that. So if you're adding this extra cost to the business that we can say when you are even promoting, you're probably targeting 5% of people you have reached, hoping hope that they would convert, right? How is that going to affect the bottom line? At the end of the day, I just had to let him know that I understand because he's saying that they want to protect the consumers, right? I don't know who these consumers are, but he's saying, do we agree that consumers need to be protected? For a while and go, they need to be protected, right? But you cannot want to protect a digital space with a traditional tool, right? So if we agree now and say the whole business in Nigeria will be sending you our copies for every month to vary. What can you do? You don't even have the capacity. Again, very quickly, because I know what we mean, I guess. Google, Facebook, Meta, right? Yeah, Facebook really not really Meta in this case. They vet your content before it goes out there and that takes less than 10 seconds, right? You see it, you know if there's a problem, you know everything, right? In review and you know, are you having conversations with these people to plug? If it's about the consumers, let them know the kind of words you don't want to be displayed in Nigeria because if, for example, when I try to promote a casino business or even pharmaceuticals, there is already a law that certain countries will block it and there's an agreement between that country and Meta and Facebook and Google to know that for us also we don't want this. Have you started that conversation? If it's really about the consumers, why are you slamming 30 billion naira? No, it's not about the consumers. I think they are just, they've seen the boom in that space. Okay, Jeffrey has over 18 years of sales and business management experience in six industries, 11 years of that, he's done in the FinTech space. His work experience covers both local and international and multinational brands like NCR and Lanter, InterSwitch and Number. He's an expert in sales optimization, business and market development with a focus on achieving exceptional results in a highly competitive business environment that demands continuous improvement and volume slash profit focus results. He's an alumnus of the Lagos and Columbia Business School and he also is a trained Milan, million, Heyman and value selling methodology. He is a safe agile and AI practitioner and currently a mentor in the Google Africa startup accelerator program and messed in Ghana. He's a friend of the house and he's joined us live in studio. Hello Jeffrey. I have to add that part. Jeffrey, I mean, so this conversation is quite interesting because this my madam here is the communication and marketing digital experts, you know, but I think she really broke it down. But in my opinion, I feel like what this Akon is trying to do is just trying to, they are trying to take a chunk of that part because they know, even me in my small space, I know how much I have spent with adverts, you know, ads on Instagram and all of that. But hey, this has happened, right? Because again, the reason we are not really focusing on what Akon has done, we just had to put it as a foundation. We want to know the impact because we say all the time that for your business to be able to scale, you must be able to infuse technology to that business. And small businesses have understood this, and they are now taking advantage of every single digital platform that they see, every technology tool that they find, and they are seeing the direct impact on their bottom line. They are seeing growth, they are seeing sales and all of that. So when we start to see things like this, definitely there will be an impact, right? So how do we even start to navigate and what are your thoughts on the, if you have an opinion, you know, some people try to avoid all these kind of issues, but hey. Okay, I do have maybe a short comment on that, then we go into what we want to talk about. Law is a law. Revenue is revenue. If this was in another country, would we have the same opinion? I think just the distrust that we have is making us a bit emotional about it. Your country has a law. The law needs to be respected. Whether it is for, against, that's a different conversation. Do we have a law that says certain advice needs to be censored? Yes. Do we have a law that if you post an advice, you would need to pay? Yes.  Do they have the technology to support what they are trying to do? No. Can you bridge the breaker motor system that you have to deal with the speed of digital technology that Meta is presenting? No. But are you entitled to something? Yes. If it is reasonable, because that's the law. If it was our own business, we would not have the same. If this was first in, say, Germany or the UK or wherever, we would not have the same, because we feel that that country would be objective in the way it's going to approach the matter. So we'll probably support it. But the distrust that we have today about everything else that we've seen is why people are fighting against this and how this may be managed, if not right, and how it will impact every other business that leverages the same place. But do we have the right to take money for every advice? Yes. Yes, we do. Do we have the law to back that up? Yes, we do. But I did read in some of the posts that they've been trying to have this conversation, but they are not getting the attention that they require. This is why the lawsuit is coming. If they had the attention to have this conversation and find some framework to partner to do this, maybe the lawsuit wouldn't be. So I think what they're trying to do is get something from maybe... They just want a chunk or something. They did say that there should be some revenue coming to them as well. So let's say how it pans out. I don't think they have the power to stop it. I think they should have said that and had that conversation with Meta, and then we will not even hear about all these things. They said they've been trying to, and it's just not been forthcoming. So to talk, to speak to that trying to write, I also think the fundamental problem is what you've mentioned, the way we handle things that is not objective. So when the ban happened on Twitter, it bettered a whole new policy document that is on that side.  The problem is all these agencies and startups and everything, they're working in silos. If they're all working together, then that document should be able to have accounts issuing it. An account would not need to say we're having a conversation with Meta and they're not reaching out. Let's get into our conversation. Jeffrey, we tried to make sure that our Fridays we give something back to small businesses because we believe that 80% of the, they are the biggest employers of labour and 80% of the businesses in this country, well, 41.7 million MSMEs registered. So it's a huge part of our economy that we cannot afford to just look away, right? So I mean, now technology, everybody's shouting that tech is the new, whatever tech is the new future, tech is this, right?  How should they begin to look at and how should they begin to leverage tech? How should they see tech and their business marrying each other? Okay. You know, I always like to break things down. So it's easy for people to, to understand. So let's first agree, what is a small business? How would you guys define what's the small? Let me now take over the anchoring now. How would you guys define a small business? Say 200,000 to 2 million a month income, would that be a good, between three to maybe 10 staff strength, that would be a small business. Okay. Let's look at three ways in this type of business. Look at growth. You look at sales growth, you look at customer, you look at maybe location, multiple location, right? And then you probably look at marketing, the things that you do. Growth comes from these three, three, four parts. So let me just reiterate that the sales customer, marketing, and of course, multiple locations that you're trying to spread out. Technology is very important if you are going to achieve growth in these four areas. A lot of tools are available that you can download on your device to manage sales. And how does that enable growth? If you're able to see the numbers of your business, then you're able to take better decisions. That's a fact. If you're able to itemize what you're selling and attach that to an inventory, then you are able to spend more in restocking. You're able to channel your money into the right part of your business for the kind of growth that you're looking for. If you are trying to look at trends to see when do people buy more, what items should I stock at what time, what day of the week should I give more attention or put more people on the front line? These are the reasons why people go into technology because that is the visibility that you get from a sales point of view. If you're trying to grow sales but you don't have visibility to data, you don't have visibility to your inventory turnaround time. If you don't have visibility to how each of your items are doing at your various business locations, then I don't think growth will really come. And that's what technology helps with. And before it used to be expensive because a lot of companies go with a product-led business model. But now you have a SaaS-led business model. Some people even offer premium and then it's only when you want to unlock certain parts of that technology or solution that you then begin to pay for. And we're blessed in Nigeria because even the digital, the fintech companies are providing these tools without any costs. And all you just need to do is use that platform and then they charge every time they add value to your business, which is people use. Okay, let's quickly go on a very short break. We're coming from the break, I'm sure. The ladies have questions for you. Stay with us. We'll be right back. All right, thanks for staying with us. Now if you're just tuned in, we're discussing leveraging technology to grow small businesses. And we have with us Jeffrey Williams at M. Remember, you can join the conversation, send us an SMS or WhatsApp to<PHONE_NUMBER>. You can also tweet at us that we should after one of the hashtag we show. All right, Manny, I thought you had a question. Okay, so as good as we know that these technology solutions are to small businesses, we also know that they cost some money. So how do these small businesses go about using this technology to enhance their businesses? And at the same time, this cost would not even affect their businesses more. Well, there will be costs without that. It is the impact now we need to talk about, and I have some recommendations around that. You are used to using your phone. You don't download any app. You are setting about the apps you want. You take the time to research it. You use it for a couple of days. This is not what I want you to delete, even before you start to commit to it. I don't think that there are any apps now that's there are a lot of apps now where you have to pay first before you can even download. So you have. Exactly. There's usually something that allows you to check. So my advice to people, small businesses, is first understand the type of business that you run. Understand the gaps that you're trying to address. Because if you don't understand the gaps that you're trying to address, then you will be swayed to any app that anybody else is referring to you. And when you are setting about the kind of apps that you want to use, then try to use it for some time, then decide how you want to pay for it. Now, because I've used a couple of these apps before, and because a lot of the fintechs are now embedding these sales tools within their platforms, which are now free for you to register and onboard your business, the storefront type of businesses, you are able to only pay at the point of using or it's adding value. So I mentioned that earlier. So in this case, a company can say I would charge you 0.5% of the business or the sales that you've done on the platform. Some will say I'll charge you 1.5%, depending on some even have like a ban. If you if it's 10,000 error, 5,000 error, I will take 15 error or 100 error. So these are not a lot of costs compared to the value. And the value is not only about the fact that it's a sales tool, but it's keeping data. It is giving you visibility. It's allowing you to manage your business considerably end to end because some of them have receipts and subscriptions and a way to remind people that they are owing you and all of that. Now we're talking about growth, right? Small business growth. One of the technology that we've seen and it's rapidly building up is lending. It takes a lot for you to take on a lot of process for you to take on lending. Now you can get a digital platform, get registered in 24 hours, get access to money to run your business. In fact, some models do not transfer the risk of that loan to you as the business owner. They transfer it to the person buying from you. So by getting on a digital platform, you are opening your business to multiple customer pools of different types. Those who want to buy outside your current domain, those who want to buy using credit, those who want to buy small or large amount, those who want delivery service that of course most of these platforms have now digitized. So your scope of business just expands with technology. I want to say that I know that the importance of tech for businesses cannot be over-emphasized but I wanted to speak to upskilling, right? So tech is something that the trends now it changes every day, not even once anymore. You wake up today and there is something changing even just on your Twitter, Facebook and all, right? How would you advise small business owners to keep up, surely in terms of marketing and understanding how these algorithms are changing and how it works to also help their businesses? Okay, I don't understand that question. So are we speaking from a marketing point of view or the choice of technology? Both. So whatever technology you use now, there's always an upgrade, right? But if you want to leave it a marketing, right? And like you mentioned, the small businesses we have now, we use Facebook, Instagram, Twitter to ensure that we reach the audiences that we want, right? So I just wanted to speak to people who are using it because I've had conversations with some people and they say, you know what, I was doing this before. I know that if I want to post on Instagram, I click here, I post but now I can't see where to post, right? It's just a regular conversation. But you realize that it's giving a lot of people stress and you realize that they have to now go to the top right to post, you know, how to just navigate and just ensure that you are still understanding. Okay, I think I have clarity now. All right, so if you don't need something, don't get it, simplicity still works. If your business is to copy and paste and you are not editing, don't get an editing too. The problem is that a lot of technology companies are building ecosystems. They are trying to build it more robust, more enterprise, make technology and innovation cheaper and available. Maybe today you don't need it, tomorrow you will need it. So let me put all that in there. In doing that, it's good because it serves the innovative need of the market. But in also doing that, we've seen cases where they've either confused the current users or they've just made things even worse than how it was before. Now, as a user, when you find yourself in that kind of situation, stick to what you know, stick to what you need. Remember my first basic comment is, if you know what you need as a small business, that is what you should be looking out for. Just because new things are available does not mean that it's for you. So stick to that thing that is working for your business until the business has grown to a point where you need something addition. Now, it doesn't mean that you are not going to research and try to venture into looking at new things. But before you do that, do a trial, read about it, ask people. One thing we don't do that the Western world does very well is that we don't give reviews. I don't know why people don't like talking about things. It's a waste of time.  But most people don't. I don't know. I don't know whether it's a culture thing. Somebody will break that barrier some way with technology and all of that. But in the Western, somebody buys this glass. In two weeks, you'll see almost a thousand comments about it and it gives you an informed decision around your decision on what tech to use. But here, so if you can find the review part of that solution, try to look into it and see what other users are saying about it as well. If you want to know, I'm a product manager. I mean, what you just said now is true because there's some new features we just added on the platform. So I'm actually going to have a meeting with my customer experience person and the field guy to now educate them on these new features because, again, you don't want the user to wake up and they are confused that, what was I pressing before? So imagine you are educating your customer. Yes, I have to. Yes, because they have not educated. They will not have to go and get any questions. Yeah, because they are in charge of direct to customers. I am back-end, you know. That's what we are talking about. Let's go to here. You say all this. Yeah, Jeff Bruno is my journey. So I'm learning as a product manager to understand, like, you know, I was speaking with my boss yesterday, he says, now you are becoming a product manager. You know why?  Customer wants this. I said, no, what is important? Okay, so this one is not relevant. It's not priority. So I'm able to tell them that even though you want certain kinds of tools, at some point, you really don't need them. You can actually make do with what you have. Minimum simplicity is the best when it comes to using any form of technology, because by the time you start to complicate, even you become confused. You are also trying that to a business model. This is what we want to do. Absolutely. So I was going to speak to Fintech. Well, you mentioned something about Fintech. Again, yesterday we were talking about how CVN is beginning to say, bless you, we want to give some Fintech lessons, because as they did like this and they've come to disrupt everything, they've made life so easy for a lot of businesses. People are now waking up to say, okay, no work. Look at what you just said. I can wake up today, open accounts, get loans, get these, get that. These are solutions that could never have been possible if you had gone with the traditional, yes, if we use a good traditional banking. So how do small businesses, because they're springing up every day, and they're a really good, fantastic solution.  What are the parameters you tell them to look out for? In dealing with those Fintechs, because some of them are really giving great solutions. Well, start the journey right, and the journey starts from the owner of the business. The problem is the owner of the business in most Fintechs do not exist. Everybody is the owner, and so they have an opinion about what the market wants. There is no true ownership as to that. If everything is narrow headed to a department or a person, it is easy to streamline the requirement, the needs from outside the company and within the company. Then it goes to the product person, who is supposed to bring to life the market value that that business person is trying to create. If you're truly a business person, your first journey starts from what is the need of the market. Not what you feel is going to be good as an idea. That's why most times when I sit in business presentations or product demo, the questions I ask would be, did you do a voice of customer? Did you understand what your other competitors are doing? Did you find out which market you are going after? Yes, of course, Fintech is broad. Yes, the market is broad. Are you building for the food industry? Are you building for the energy industry? Are you building for the agriculture industry? The more narrower that need and that knowledge and that statistics is, the easier it is for a product to develop a product market fit, to provide value for the market. My advice would be that, get the business right, do your market research properly, have a pool of customers that you go to, to ask information. Today, technology makes it easy. You can have a WhatsApp group, you can have a Slack group, you can have any Twitter group, whichever group you want to go to. Do a quick survey. Almost everything today has the survey button where you can just ask. I remember some months back, although one of my fabulous products lead. She's now in Microsoft. She, we're having a conversation around, let's do something for the small businesses. I was fighting for a particular value and she was like, you know what, Jeffrey, I disagree with you and I'm going to find out what the market really needs. She went on her social media and then put a small post out there. I thought that people wanted that particular value and by the time we went around it was like third. Now it doesn't mean that at the time that I knew it, but it means that innovation and customer need keeps changing. So anything tech who comes and say they want to copy a 10 year old company to build their own value without understanding what the current market is asking for won't work because the value and the need that made that company exist 10 years ago may not be the current market reality. When is your turn to build something into the market? Quickly, I want to ask small businesses, must every small business use social media as a tool, as a technology tool for their businesses? Is he a must? It's the same question by asking, must every person have a cell phone? Is it a must? I'm giving back to you. Have I answered or do I still answer? The intention of the business is to grow and to reach customers and yes. So even a phone is technology? No, no, no. I'm saying the social media part of technology for software. Social media technology. So yes, yes because social media allows you to compartmentalize your approach to selling, which is you can have understanding of the type of customers you want to speak to. You can target the type of people you want to. You can expand your scope of customer or the pull of customers to other domains that you will not necessarily reach from where you are. Local transport is more expensive. The roads are not very fantastic. Now people, I mean today, somebody calls and says to me, Jeffrey, you've got so much content, you've been on TV, radio, everything, your social media page, your LinkedIn page is like a book to read. Why don't you do videos? Like master classes. Yes, thank you. Masterclass, work your package. Don't worry, we'll find the people. And where are they going to find those people? Social media. It's a social media. I got you. Because I was going to even ask you about trainings because there's so many people who actually want to leverage on technology but they are not trained. For instance, my mom doesn't know anything about how to reach anybody on social media. So how do they get these trainings? Well, you just mentioned this masterclass. So I think if we have more people, more professionals. You should listen to Weaselby Friday. We train people for free. I think there needs to be a shift. And I hope that maybe someday in Africa there would be. YouTube has a massive collection of educated videos but you'll find receptionists, people that have routine jobs where customers don't really come in. Sometimes when I get the privilege of finding those ones and I say, what are you doing on your phone? Do you know you can literally get educated? Yes, just watching YouTube videos. You can get your master's degree. Just pick something that you have interest in, pick a knowledge area, and you'll be amazed about the so much professionally made videos on there. Cut a love for free. You know what? Even for small businesses. I don't know what you want to do again. When we say then they say, you know, they want to be watching something. I will not call that one. So just to speak a bit more around leveraging technology as well. There is a big part of that for companies that have multiple locations. Technology makes it operations cheaper. Technology makes it easier for you to know how to distribute your assets, which is the funding. Technology makes it easy for you to manage inventory even across this multiple location. Without technology, it's going to cost you a lot more to go around and interact and distribute your minimal resources across. From a customer's perspective, technology allows you to understand your customer, understand the buying journey, understand what is it that they like to buy, understand the lifetime value of your customers. The cost it takes me to get this customer over the period in which this customer continues to remain my customer is what a customer lifetime value is. Those are valuable KPIs that small businesses can use to continue to build and grow using just simple technology to manage your customer, keep the name of the customer, attach the receipt to the customer. You know, you can even give credit based on the customer's profile. You can improve the average spend per customer by targeting those customers by sending them WhatsApp messages or the right kind of coupons or images and all of that. Good evening, my dear beautiful sisters of what are you saying? In a nutshell, your guests have said it all. We need to understand the type of businesses we are getting into. Then we need to add exposure for patronage, for building of that business through technology. Happy birthday to you, my dear beautiful sister, money money.  It's your portion in Jesus' name. It's been a while. I miss you a lot. My name is Daniel Ilu. We is regular. Fine. Thank you, Daniel. Thank you, Daniel. Thank you so much. They have helped me to apologize again. But thank you so much, Jeffrey. I said this one is master class. They should just be watching with every Friday. Yeah, yeah. As Jeffrey, we free his time for us. We continue to bring him. But I think, I mean, today was an amazing conversation. If you have a small business, honestly, you do not have an excuse to fail as far as I'm concerned. The world is actually waiting for you because this is your time in all honesty. Thank you so much, Jeffrey. Thank you, Manny. Thank you, LC. All right. Before we go, to ensure you follow us everywhere, TikTok, YouTube, everywhere. Technology. Yes, it's technology. Follow us. Make sure you share, please. Don't be watching. Don't be stingy. Watch. Don't share with your family's friends. Invite everyone to come watch us and follow the conversations as well. Now, if you missed today's quote, here it is again. At least 40% of all businesses will die in the next 10 years if they do not figure out how to change their entire company to accommodate new technologies. This is alarming, but if you do what is right now, you will not be part of that percentage. We'll see you guys on Monday at 8 p.m. As we bring another great conversation to your screen. Enjoy.


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Hey, folks, thanks for coming out. So this is Cryptpad. And so first off, how many of you know what Cryptpad is? How many of you have used it? How many of you haven't? All right, OK. So basically, what Cryptpad is, it's a zero-knowledge, real-time collaborative editor. That means the server doesn't know what you're typing when you type something. So basically, what we're doing is we're hacking on top of what you might call a quirk in HTTP, that anything after the hash mark in the URL is never sent to the server. It's there for a reason. It's not the reason that we used, but we found that we can put a key there, and then we can do all the encryption in JavaScript. And that will keep the server ignorant of the content. As long as the server is willingly ignorant, it can be ignorant of the content. So we also have a drive, like a Google Drive type drive. I can show you mine. This is my drive. It has lots of stuff and lots of folders. And the way that we get the drive is also a pad. And the way we get the key for the drive is we sCrypt your username and password. And then you take that, you store it in local storage. And again, never just sent to the server.  So the server doesn't even know your username. That's the level of security that we have here and the level of just dumbness that we've put in the server. So we are 2 and 1 half developers. I'm only half. We're about 3,000 lines of server side code in Node.js. And just under 40,000 lines of client side code. We have 24 libraries, seven libraries, and AGPL. You can read the slide. And this presentation is on Cryptpad, as you can see. We have about 100 installations. Thank you installers. Thank you webmasters for not enabling stealth mode. So you do tell us that you are using an installation unless you enable stealth mode. So thank you because as developers, it helps us to know information about this. And then on cryptpad.fr, that's our flagship server, we don't have a lot of information about you. But what we do have is nginx logs. And so from nginx logs, we know that we get about 3,000 unique visitors a week. And about 16,000 pads are loaded a week. And CPU usage, it's really boring. And in case you'd notice, yes, the prod server is called cryptpad alpha dev. Don't judge me. So that's the drive. That's what you see as a user. And that's like one pad. This is another pad. This presentation is another type of pad.  This is actually on the prod server. We have a bunch of directories.  And the files are just hashes. They're basically indistinguishable append only logs. And we can make guesses about them by the pattern of sizes of encrypted messages in them. But other than that, they're indistinguishable. And this is what you see inside of a log. So it's basically the sender, message, recipient, and the content which is encrypted. And that's all the server sees in any file. It doesn't know if it's a drive. It doesn't know if it's a pad, or a presentation, or anything. So this is my like, I want to say, if you're doing interesting things with open source, consider research. Because this was funded by Investissement to Avenir and BPE France, part of the Open Pass NG project, which we participate in with a couple of businesses, Lina Grande Nexity, and a couple of universities, Laurier and Leaks. And with this project, we were able to make Cryptpad from just a very small proof of concept. We brought it up to where it is today. And it wasn't even supposed to be in the project. It was convenient for demoing and testing the things that we were developing for the XWiki Cloud, which was in the project. So what is in this Cryptpad thing? So we have plain JavaScript. As far as how we develop software, we're really old. We develop old man JavaScript. And we use some ES6 APIs, but we have to all agree to use them. And it has to bring real value that we can't get otherwise. New prototype constructor, this. JavaScript, the bad parts. We don't allow that. Like, we don't want that. We use vanilla.js. We use some jQuery. We use a lot of required.js. We prefer unopinionated. We prefer libraries. We prefer old things. And actually, we have no build process. So when you install Cryptpad, when we update Cryptpad on the nginx server, we do a git pull, and we edit a file with a cache breaker with a version. That's it. That's the release. So the server side, that's Node.js. About 3,000 lines of Node.js. So if anybody wants Cryptpad in Python, just write it. Come on. 3,000 lines. So we allow some const, some let, some arrow functions. We're not doing classes, no generators. None of the hairy stuff in ES, whatever. We're using Express, WebSocket, NPM. We basically just threw together the server. But the server stuff, we could just change it to anything else. So we also use JS hit and flow type, which are quite nice. But again, no build. So we don't allow strange syntax leaking into our JavaScript. We use only the comment syntax of flow type. And we use selenium testing. But again, we're kind of old manning about this, where we say, yeah, well, selenium test, but we're only going to use selenium to load the page and then to pull the logs out of the page. So here's our CI server. And you can see those are browser logs that got sniffed out of the browser by selenium. And it's basically the browser is running the test because we set a cookie that says, we want to test, load the page, and the page self-tests. And then it says it passed, and then selenium sniffs that back up and passes the test. So this ends up being very useful for preventing the bane of selenium flaky tests that kind of pass and fail sometimes. So one of our innovations is the cross-domain iframe. So basically, all the UI in cryptpad is in an iframe that's on a different domain. It's not on cryptpad.fr. Because cryptpad.fr has local storage, and local storage has keys. And keys can read out your drive. And so in that event, any cross-site scripting is deadly. It's like total run. So everything that you see inside of here is on sandbox.cryptpad.info. So cross-site scripting attacks are limited. And we have RPCs everywhere because of this, which is sort of bad and sort of good. It helps us architect the software by forcing that on us. The server, it's basically a chat protocol. That's all there is. And it's a protocol called Netflix. And it was developed by the coast team at Inria, our partners. So because it doesn't have any history of its own, it's meant to be a peer-to-peer protocol. We have this magic user called the HistoryKeeper. And HistoryKeeper joins all the channels as soon as someone else does and just kind of stores that history. And you can send him a private message. And it'll send you all that history of that channel. So you can think of like a Super Chan serve. That's basically what we're doing there. Yeah, stores that on files in the file system. So we're not using MySQL or anything like that. We're just using flat file. And surprisingly enough, it's scaled so far. It's been OK. Basically what the server does, it reads a file into a web socket. So a lot of work there is there. If you build an index, you can also read out history ranges. But the elephant in the room here, a lot of people bother us about this, is that you kind of have to trust the JavaScript. You have to trust that it's not going, that we're not just feeding you JavaScript.  So we don't have a solution for that right now. But I have a few ideas. And the first idea is that we use Substack Hyperboot. And basically what Hyperboot does is forever caches HTML with a signing key. It's trust on first use. If you hard reload, it's going to flush the cache. And you're back at square one. But once you've loaded that page once, you can see updates come in. And it's like, OK, there's an update to this web app. Would you like to use it? And idea number two is a Hyperboot validator. If we could get Hyperboot to start being used in zero-knowledge web applications, then we could build a browser extension that will validate that Hyperboot. And then attackers don't necessarily know if that browser extension is present or not. And so if they attack the Hyperboot thinking, like, OK, I'm going to change some of this to insert a backdoor, well, if the browser extension is present, it can catch them and even report them. And so we could track attacks. That would be pretty cool. And idea number three, which I'm not sure I'm going to have time for, but I'll go with it. This one's really, really geeky. We could validate this in Namecoin. And Namecoin is really kind of interesting because it has two really silly properties, really useful properties, sorry. One is that it's almost free to transform a Namecoin because everybody's just forgotten about it. It's like not an interesting cryptocurrency. And number two is that it's merged mind with Bitcoin. So the amount of proof of work that validates every Namecoin block, it's like astronomical. And this allows for offline validation. So I need to explain how blockchains work. So you have all these transactions, and they're hashed together in a hash tree, and they're put into a block. They're hashed into a block header. The block header is small. The transaction is fairly small. All the transactions are big. And the hash tree, each branch of the hash tree is fairly small. And then the way Namecoin works is that, with merged mining, is that they put the header hash of the Namecoin block into a special transaction in the Bitcoin block. And then so basically you can trace a route all the way up from Namecoin, a Namecoin transaction. You can trace that path by checking hashes all the way up to the Bitcoin block hash.  This is going to be a lot of data. You have to send this to somebody in order for them to validate. Well, no, because you don't have to send the whole Bitcoin block. All you have to do is send that path. And I did the math on this. The path, it's actually about a kilobyte of data. It's one kilobyte of data. And you can validate basically any signature just by doing a Namecoin transaction. And if you send more Bitcoin headers, so you can send that path, and then you can send a bunch like 10 more Bitcoin headers. And they're 80 bytes each. They're basically free. And that makes the power, the strength of that proof like 10 times more powerful. It takes 10 times more electricity to fake that. And if we had a browser extension that just stored the header chain, which is 4 megabytes per year, then the proofs become basically rock solid. You can't break that. So again, Namecoin is interesting because it's merge mined with Bitcoin because it's old and because they kind of got in early. And nobody cares about it, so it's cheap to experiment with. A lot of other cryptocurrency people will tell you, oh yeah, we have a cryptocurrency that also puts things in Bitcoin. But the Namecoin is unique because it's actually merged mined into Bitcoin. And if somebody says, oh, I put something in a Bitcoin transaction, they could also put something else in another Bitcoin transaction. And then they could tell you about this one. And they could tell somebody else about the other one. And those are two valid Bitcoin transactions. Whereas with Namecoin, it always goes in the coin-based transaction, and there's only one of those. So don't believe the hype about signing things and putting that into a Bitcoin transaction. If it's not merged mined, it's basically not going to work. But it's kind of cool because Namecoin is, nobody's doing an ICO on that. It's basically dead. And yet, it actually works for this. So Cryptpad features, future ideas. Yeah, this Namecoin thing, I don't think we're probably going to do it for Cryptpad. It's cool. It's nerdy. But I don't think we need anything that strong. And somebody should write a paper on this. This would be really kind of neat. Especially since one thing is cool about it and it's also a thing that will make it less likely to get actually implemented is that nobody can make an ICO and try to make a million dollars selling you shitcoins. So I like that space. Anyway, Cryptpad futures. So we have four different apps right now, four or five different apps.  We would like it to be like an app store where you can just write your own app with an API and an SDK. And because the app is running inside of a sandbox iframe, it should be pretty safe and that the app's not going to eat your keys. Better permissions. So all the permissions in Cryptpad are cryptographically enforced. And so we have really, really simple permissions. You just share the link and that person gets irrevocable access to the pad because, well, that's how keys work. We want to do better permissions. We want to do really cool permissions. But we also want to keep to the cryptographic standard that the server is not really trusted for anything. So that's an interesting research problem. Solve group key management. The Matrix guys are doing that. I'm interested in it. I'm not sure I really want to do it. I know it's going to be a pain. Encrypted chat is broken for multi-user. And that's for a really good reason. It would be interesting to solve, but we need a research grant. Encrypted at rest email. That's kind of an interesting idea. There's a lot of idea of encrypting email end to end. But just when the email server receives it, just encrypt it when it receives it. And then you have to decrypt it in the web app. That is something that if your threat model is that somebody will hack into the web server and dump all the mail, that could be useful. And my personal favorite is I want to use this sort of as a pock to start the ball rolling on this idea that we can write web apps where the server doesn't really know anything. And how much time do I have? Five? OK. I can open this up to Q&A. I can also do a little demo. I've already done a little demo. And I have stickers, but not very many. So yeah. So I've made little blocks of 15 stickers each. You just start them passing along. Yeah, something like that. Sorry, there aren't enough stickers for everybody. I have also some old stickers that are what we used to have way back in the old days. And you can ask me afterwards if you would like one of those. Any questions about anything at all except the nose? Just tell me. I'll repeat it back. Yes, sir? Handle the sources for cryptography. OK. You may not have access to the phantom from JavaScript. It's the first question. And second part, how do you handle memory loading? You need to look memory where keys or user password is stored because if this memory is not locked, it may be accidentally sold out and went to disk and unencrypted from JavaScript. So the questions were, number one, how do we access randomness?  And one of the things they added was a secure random generator. And the second question was, how do we prevent our memory from getting swapped out? And then you have keys in swap space on your computer. And it's a legitimate problem. But we're just trying to be better than Google Docs, where they just sniff up all your data. And if a key that you're using in your browser gets put into swap memory on your desktop, if your threat model is that it's a mean corporation and they read all your data, well, we've solved that problem. And if your threat model is that you are self-hosting a server and a hacker gets into it and dumps all the data, we've also solved that problem. Because then the hacker has to go around to all the laptops and grab all the keys out of the swap space. OK, thank you. Yes, sir? It's encrypted using, so this is the opportunity to talk about the key algorithm. Salsa 20, Poly 1305 for all the symmetrical. So it's a stream cipher. And we have per message nonces, if I recall correctly. Basically, you can do a lot of, it just depends on how big the nonces. So I think we're doing 24 byte nonces because we can't be bothered to change the tweetNACL box function. Yeah, we use tweetNACL.js. And the asymmetrical encryption, which we use for a few strange things, of course, is also, it's curved25519 and ed259. Is there a cryptpad browser for accessing cryptpad? Oh, what's the best browser? Unfortunately, yeah, Chrome is really fast. Chrome JavaScript execution is just really, really, really fast. And it's so hard to compete with that. I love Firefox. I mean, I appreciate what they're doing. They're keeping the web open. But it's fast. Firefox Quantum. Actually, a really interesting story about Quantum. They hit out of regression. I just opened the bug. Basically, in Quantum, the cross-domain iframe that has an animated loading screen. I can show you the loading screen. It's that spinner. That loading screen, that animation, it's just hidden. And it never actually goes away. And in Quantum, they continue to render that, even though it's hidden, because it's in a cross-domain iframe. And right after they applied the Spectre meltdown patches, they moved that into another process, I think. And then that animation started to consume like mega CPU. Next question? Yeah, go ahead. Let me see if I understand you properly. Can we protect against rogue extensions? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. So you install an extension that puts pictures of cats on your browser. And in fact, it also leaks your keys. No, we've got no answer for that, because extensions just have more permission than we do. Yeah, yeah, keys go in local storage on krippad.fr. So I'll show you what it looks like here in Spectre Element. So up to the top, so this is krippad.fr. And then inside of krippad.fr, there's an iframe. And I don't know if you can see that easily, but the iframe is on sandbox.krippad.info. So almost all of the code that's running is running over here inside of an iframe. And that was a hack which we used to sandbox all this stuff. And we were able to use it because they invented that for being able to make ads that jump around on your screen, but they're contained inside of an iframe. So they built that, and it works really well, because they needed to for ads. And then we stole it. Yeah, how do we message between the iframe and the outside? Another HTML5 thing, they added this thing called post message. And you can just send messages back and forth. It's all asynchronous, so we have protocols and protocols and protocols for all the different things that communicate with each other. We've gotten really good at writing RPCs. OK, who wants to be the last question? Yes, sir. It's multi-user real-time editing. That was the question. I wanted to repeat it back because you know. All right, thank you very much, everybody. If you didn't get a sticker and you want one, I still have some of the old legacy stickers. Just talk to me after, and I can hook you up.


When you pull up the pitching tab for tonight's Slate and MLB DFS, you're going to see how fun this slate projects to be because we have got dudes on dudes on dudes. Shohei Otani, Walker Bueller, Zack Wheeler, Robbie Ray, Brandon Woodruff, Lucas Gelito, Luis Castillo, Blake Snow, maybe, and also a couple of younger pitchers who are not quite there yet, but have the makeup of being potentially fun pitchers from a DFS perspective. So our job today is to sort through those aces, decide who is our best option for DFS, and let you know how to handle things for today's slate. Welcome on into the solo shot. That's right here on the FanDuel Podcast Network and NumberFire.com. My name is Jim Sonnis. I am a senior writer and analyst for NumberFire.com here to break down today's 10-day game main slate, what locks up for 7-0-5 for two nights. Last night had that Cubs game get a little bit wild with the weather just didn't really look that way in the morning, got worse the day went along. So that's why I recommend following Kevin Roth and Roto Grinders on Twitter, because he was on top of that. I'm not going to know that as well, especially here in the morning. So follow Kevin Roth and Roto Grinders on Twitter for all weather information. But as of right now, it does look like we are good to go for today. As always though, check back for an updated forecast later on. Also an update to our schedule for today because we are jam-packed across the FanDuel Podcast Network for today. We have this going on right now. I'm recording covering the spread with Nick Costos and Dr. Ed Fang later on today. We have our PGA podcast with Brandon Gadoula and myself that's recording live on YouTube at 11 a.m. Brandon is back with you at 3.30 to go through his PGA DFS and betting Q&A. I'll follow up at 4 for the MLB DFS Q&A. So make sure you are subscribed to the NumberFire Daily Fantasy podcast feed for both the podcast and the FanDuel YouTube page to get everything as we go live and also the FanDuel YouTube, Twitch, Facebook and Twitter pages for all of the Q&A's. Hey soccer fans, this season FanDuel and Captain Morgan are teaming up to give you a one-of-a-kind soccer contest. Introducing Captain Morgan's soccer pick'em, a weekly fantasy contest that is entirely free to play. The contest is simple. All you got to do is make quick predictions for Saturday games of soccer season. You will earn points for each correct pick and compete for a chance to win up to $3,000 in prizes every single week. Head over to FanDuel and enter the Captain Morgan's soccer pick'em today. Must be 21 plus 2. Participate for more details as a FanDuel.com or download the FanDuel fantasy app. Eligibility restrictions apply. Don't forget to make your game day more delicious and sub in the captain. Pitching preview for this Wednesday main slate. As mentioned, Shohei Otani, it's the top dog on FanDuel 4 today. Checking in at $11,600. We have Walker Bueller at $11,300. Zach Wheeler is $11,000. Robbie Ray facing the White Sox at $10,500. Brandon Woodruff is $10,300. Lucas Geolito comes in at $9,800. Luis Castillo is $9,700. Blake Snell is $9,000. And then Johnny Cueto and Nick Pavetta are the other guys at $8,000 or higher. And although we've got like 97,000 aces on this slate, most of them are in tough matches. Bueller is facing the Padres. I used Nola against the Padres on Saturday, but it's still a tough matchup for sure. It's a team we can go at, but you know, they're tough. Zach Wheeler facing the Reys, a lot of power there. Robbie Ray facing the White Sox. He's a lefty. Brandon Woodruff facing the Reys. We used, or I did at least, Corbin Burns against him last night. Didn't go all that great. So that's a consideration. Lucas Geolito facing the Blue Jays. I know Dylan Cease was good against him last night, but tough matchup there. Luis Castillo facing the Brewers. It's a lot of tough matchups. The one guy without a tough matchup is Shohei Otani. So I think that Otani does deserve to be at the top of our list, at least from a median projection perspective for today. And I've previously been a bit cautious with Otani because the strikeout rate was down. And given all he's been doing this year, I thought there was a chance maybe he was wearing down because that would be totally understandable. And then he took a blowtorch to the Tigers last week. So I think it forces us to put Otani atop our list for tonight. And it's another good matchup from here. He's facing the Orioles. I was very happy to stack them last night. And they did very well, but they're not a great team. They have a 25% strikeout rate versus righties and an 8% walk rate. And those plate discipline numbers are good for pitchers. It should allow Otani to be efficient with his pitches. And even deep in the year, we're in August, and he's still pitching well and they are letting him ride. He has gone 95 or more pitches, three times in his past five starts. The most relevant sample for Otani is the past nine starts with more sliders. And in that time, he has a 25% strikeout rate with a 5% walk rate. That strikeout rate's still a bit low relative to other Aces on the slate, but he's showing the ability to have spike gains. He had eight strikeouts against Tigers, eight against Oakland, nine against the Giants. And the A's and Giants are much tougher matchups than the one he gets tonight. It's also so impressive that Otani has gone at least six innings in all but one of those nine starts. Really nice floor. Matchup helps the floor too, so there is a lot to like here. So I was too low on Otani last week and I'm fine correcting course here and putting him at the top of my list. So Shohei Otani on a loaded slate is my number one guy for today. The second option is going to force us to go at someone in a tough matchup. We just have to decide who we want to prioritize in that tough matchup. The contenders there are Zach Wheeler, Robbie Ray, and Walker Bueller. All three teams, all three guys are facing teams with at least a 103 WRC plus against our handedness. And that's why I went Otani first because the floor is better there. But in terms of ceiling, I really do like Wheeler's outlook. I'm going to rank him second, slightly ahead of Ray and Bueller for tonight. There are a couple reasons I'm here and the first one is that Zach Wheeler is really freaking good. He's up to 15 starts now with Wheeler's curveball usage being up, which is a big sample. In that big sample, he leads the slate and skill interact via RAID 3.12. He ranks fourth in strike and rated 29%. He is fifth in walk rate, third in hard hit rate, first in fly ball rate. So Wheeler is potentially, this might be hyperbolic, but potentially the most well rounded pitcher in all baseball, which means he can overcome some tough matchups. He definitely does get one tonight. He's facing the Rays who have a 116 WRC plus against Reides, but they aren't a nationally parked tonight. That means they might not have Nelson Cruz and if they do put Cruz in the outfield, then someone else who is decent will be out of line up as well. They also do strike out, got 25% strike out rate against Reides, which is the fourth highest mark on the slate. It may not be a situation where Wheeler has a good four because the matchup is tough, but he has a very clear path to a good ceiling via the Rays, strike out rate and via how good he is. I think if you were looking at just tournaments, looking at a single entry lineup, you can make a strong case for preferring Wheeler over Otani. I think that Wheeler has better odds of dropping a 60 burger on him. Otani is the definite top option for cash games, just a very safe overall profile. But I think for single entry, there's a chance I would lean towards Wheeler at pitchers. So both really good options, Otani for the safety, Wheeler for the upside at least for me. I think as far as the value plays go, usually on a slate like this where we've got like aces across the board, I'm not going to want to spend down. I think tonight we actually have leeway to do so because there are two pretty fun guys in good matchups, which we don't see with the aces. Both sides of the Marlins Nationals game, the Nationals are starting Josiah Gray. The Mons will throw Edward Cabrera in his debut. I'm going to talk about Cabrera here, but I think that Gray is worth your consideration as well. Cabrera making his debut started his year in triple A or in single A I should say. He made two starts there. He struck out eight of 11 batters in the second start. Stupid. Then he got promoted to double A. He made five starts there. He struck out seven batters in four of those five starts that earned him a trip up to triple A. In triple A, he struck out 12 batters in his third start. Then he did 11 strikeouts and 12 strikeouts the following two starts. He's been doing that because the Marlins are giving him a lot of leash. Since moving up to triple A, Cabrera has gone 98 plus pitches three separate times. He's at 61 in the third innings this year, which means they're probably okay letting him stretch things out a bit, try to extend his pitch count for next year or his inning count for next year. I think that that gives Cabrera an edge over Josiah Gray because Gray's next pitch count with the Nationals is 87. I prefer Cabrera. I'm willing to consider Gray, but I prefer Cabrera, which could go poorly because it's his big week debut. You're going to be nervous. That can lead to some mistakes for sure. But like Cabrera is a path to a ceiling, so why not? $7,300? I tend not to be super cavalier with stuff like this, but I think in this situation, kind of okay with it. Edward Cabrera on a slate filled of aces, still to me at least, worth consideration for DFS. You know that I try to be transparent about this stuff, not going to use a value play, et cetera, et cetera. I'm going to use him tonight. So despite the fact there are aces here, it is a guy making his debut. Zero innings to his credit, who I think is worth some consideration for today. Part of the reason why Cabrera is interesting is because I do like some higher salary stacks. One of them is a Red Sox. We talked about the allure of them yesterday because they're a facing guy who didn't get a ton of strikeouts, let up a lot of balls of play, and didn't have elite batted ball beta. They get a very similar profile tonight, and I think we should stack them once again. This time they're facing Bayley Ober. Ober is taking the typical twins approach and throwing more sliders recently. And it's led to a very good skill interactive ERA at 3.93. But as we discussed with Griffin Jacks yesterday, that's in part due to a low walk rate. And for DFS, we don't mind that. In terms of stack, we don't mind a low walk rate. His strikeout rate is 23%. That is below after the slate. He's letting up a 42% hard hit rate and a 39% fly ball rate, which is above average. If you put that profile up against, I don't know, like let's say the Rangers. That can be fine. That's totally okay. The Red Sox are not the Rangers. They have a 112 WRC plus against Reides with a 213 ISO. That is the best mark on this slate. So I think the results will start to differ Ober soon once he's facing tougher teams like the Red Sox and I would not be shocked if that worked to start here tonight. And I do like the Red Sox in terms of stacking. Kyle Schwabber, I think is awesome here. He has not hit a home run yet with the Red Sox, but he's seen the ball well. He has more walks and strikeouts. He's had plenty of barrels, plenty of hard contact. I think the homers will come soon. And in fact, let's just say it right now. I think one comes tonight. We'll talk about Kyle Schwabber and the Digger calls. Love him at $3,500. Kyle Schwabber, his first Red Sox home run coming tonight. We'll see how that goes. For the number two stack, I think it's kind of risky, especially because there are some concerns about who will play tonight. But as of right now, as of this morning, I think that the Giants are interesting. They're facing Taiwan Walker, who's a good pitcher and he's gotten good results at times this year. The peripherals recently are less rosy and the Giants offense is pretty good. So I think I'm going to go back to stack them here and hope that others do not. They got a pretty low implied total. So I wouldn't expect the Giants to be super popular tonight, despite the fact they did blow up last night. Walker's been jacking up his splitter usage recently. We talked about this earlier in the year when he started lowering a splitter usage where it wasn't like a bad thing for him. It's not a pitch we need to fear all that much. So the fact that it's coming back up doesn't bother me. And the peripherals tell that same story because in the six darts with more splitters, Walker has a 4.98 skill interactive ERA. His strike rate is 18 percent. And he's letting up a 49 percent fly ball rate against a lot of teams. I would trust the results. The results say Walker is a good pitcher. I would trust those results and I'd move on, but the Giants are not a lot of teams. They have a 110 WRC plus against righties, a 202 ISO, 40 percent fly ball rate. And they're in New York tonight. It's not a great park for overall offense, but it's a much better spot for home runs than San Francisco. So I like their upside here a lot, even though it is risky to go with the Giants. I still think they are a tremendous stack here. They're not like a team you want to stack if you are super risk averse, but I'm not. So I think that they great out pretty well here. I'll give moral and hope that that they that people avoid them. The one thing that would cause me to deviate here and downgrade the Giants would be if both the Brandons are out. Crawford is day to day with a back issue. Belts grandmother passed away yesterday, played a great game in her honor last night. He said that it was he's dedicating that game to her in a season. But I'd assume there's a chance that belt will miss time soon as he should in that situation. So if both Belts and Crawford are out, downgrade the stack for now, though I am in, I think they've got a lot of depth here in this offense. So I would still be there, even if both the Brandons can't play, but it would downgrade them for sure. And the team that would go above them would be this number three stack. We talked about Edward Cabrera making his debut in the pitching section. We'll talk about another guy making his debut in stacks. That's Jake Lats for the Texas Rangers facing Cleveland. I think we can stack Cleveland against him for tonight. Lats started the year off in double A and he got a lot of strikeouts there. He had a 31 percent strikeout rate, but his ERA was still 4.69. I think a lot of that was due to his 10 percent walk rate, but he also didn't get that many ground balls. And, you know, we don't get hard contact data from minor league parks, but I would bet based on the results that he was letting up a lot of hard contact to eventually Lats did get promoted to triple A because the Rangers have a lack of pitching depth for sure. The first two starts in triple A for Lats did not go well. Let up a ton of fly balls. There's a big dip in strikeouts, but now he's forcing the big leagues because of some COVID issues in the starting rotation for the Rangers. Cleveland is really bad against lefties. So I don't want to stack them against the lefty. I tried really hard not to last night. They got an 88 WRC plus, not a ton of power, but I still think we want to be in on them here strictly because the matchup is so good. I don't like making strictly matchup based recommendations, but I think in the scenario, we kind of do got to try to get to Cleveland here. The primary guys are Jose Ramirez from the race and I'm at Rosario. None of those guys are values. We're trying to get to Wheeler, Otani, et cetera, et cetera. So we do have to dig for some value here. Yu Chong is a guy who hit for some power in triple A, put the ball in the air in the majors quite a bit. So I think Chong is someone you could consider. Oscar Mercado is someone I'm willing to consider. Wilson Ramos, if he gets to start work. So I would probably more mix and match with those guys. I wouldn't like overexpose yourself to anyone specifically. Race is the prime target here. It's $3,200, way too low for a guy with this power, but the others are at least consideration. So check out Ramos, Mercado, Chong and see which one you want to rank highest among those guys, but mix and match. I think that's the optimal way to play things for today. Let's finish up here. Things to watch and talk about another couple of situations to potentially get some one-offs similar to last night. We got some bad teams facing pitchers we want to stack against. So it's mostly one-offs here, but I think that the primary one is the Pirates against Tyler Gilbert. Gilbert had the no hitter, but his skill interactive DR8 is two big league starts is 5.54. He has a 14% strikeout rates. We can use guys facing that. And it does give us some value here. Rodolfo Castro should play. He's $23, he can hit some tanks. Michael Chavis is minimum salary if he gets in there once again. So not opposed to some one-offs from the Pirates. I can't full stack them because they're bad, but Chavis and Castro guys I'm willing to use. Sendings through for Arizona. They're likely facing Mitch Keller, though that has not been confirmed as of yet. Keller did look better as last time out, but I'm still okay using bats against him. But there is only set to make sure they're, you know, competent hitters. To me, that's basically Dalton Varshio at $3,000 if he plays. Also true for a couple others, but I wish the salaries here were lower to compensate for the fact that they are hashtag bad. Finally, the Angels are good for some one-offs tonight. It's hard to stack them because their best hitter is unavailable for stacking because he's pitching tonight. But facing a bullpen game for the Orioles, that is unlikely to go well. So Joe Adele, Brandon Marsh, if Upton can play, I would squeeze him in there. Max Dasty, if he plays, same thing. Jared Walsh looked a little bit better last night, but still not quite fully back. Either way, Angels work. They've got some value. So I think you're looking at like a three-player stack. I'd rate the Angels above both Arizona and the Pirates, but below Cleveland, the Giants, and the Red Sox for today. Let's finish up with the Dinger calls. And I did spoil it before, but Kyle Schwarber is my boring home run call for today. Again, no home runs yet with the Red Sox. I think that changes tonight. He goes yard. And I think that Schwarber probably going to go on a run here pretty soon. So Kyle Schwarber is a boring one. The fun one is boring if you've been paying attention, but it's fun in the sense that this is a guy who was left off of a team's 40-man roster. I'm pretty sure he was a rule five pick at one point. That's Lamont Wade, a Lamont Wade junior of the Giants, playing really good baseball, hitting the ball hard in a good matchup in an improved park for Dingers from his home park. So home run picks for today, Kyle Schwarber and Lamont Wade. We'll see how they can do for tonight. That is all that we have here for today on the Silo Shop. But as always, we are back here once again later on. Brandon Godula has the PGA Q&A at 330. I have the MLB DFS Q&A at 4 p.m. to go through reactions to lineups, see how things change based on who is in there and who is not. And that could be a key for today, given the situation with the Giants. Make sure you swing by 4 p.m. today, YouTube, Twitch, Facebook, and Twitter, and check out Brandon at 330 as well. Also make sure you check out the Numberfire Daily Fantasy podcast feed. Wherever you get your podcasts, PGA podcast coming up later on today. We got UFC, NASCAR, potentially more sports being added down the line, and also NFL podcasts just around the corner. Find that by searching for the Numberfire Daily Fantasy podcast feed wherever you get your podcasts. If you have questions for me, I am on Twitter at Jim Sonnis, J-I-M-S-A-N-N-E-S. You can also follow the FanDuel Podcast Network at FanDuel Podcast. Big thank you to everyone for tuning in for today. Good luck to you tonight. We'll talk to you once again tomorrow. This has been the Silo Shot right here on the FanDuel Podcast Network.


The horse with the speed of light, a cloud of dust, and a hearty, high old silver! The Lone Ranger! General Mills, makers of Cheerios, the ready-to-eat oak cereal that gives you go-power, and Wheaties, the breakfast of champions, present by special recording, The Lone Ranger! Cause champions don't age not far! Yes, sir! Get on your way! Get on your way! Get on your way with Wheaties! Your chances seem brighter just knowing champions are made, not born. It happens. Take Harvey Keane, top-notch shortstop for the Detroit Tigers. When Harvey was just a lad of six, he was learning baseball tricks. He trapped those grounders learned to throw. And this is something you should know. A Wheaties breakfast helps him grow. Now Harvey sparks that Tiger team, cause Wheaties keep him on the beam. Harvey Keane, a Wheaties guy since he was six years old. He knows there's a whole kernel of wheat in every Wheaties slate. Watch Harvey Keane, the top one! Hey, hey, hey! He's on his way, on his way! He's on his way, on his way! Get on your way with Wheaties! Cause champions are made not far! Yes, sir! Get on your way! Get on your way! Get on your way with Wheaties! Breakfast of champions! With his faithful Indian companion puddle, the daring and resourceful Masked Rider of the Plains led the fight for law and order in the early western United States. Nowhere in the pages of history can one find a greater champion of justice. Return with us now to those thrilling days of yesteryear. From out of the past come the thundering hoops beats of the great horse Silver, the lone ranger rides again! Judd Jackson, notorious off-law leader, escaped from territorial prison, rejoined his gang, and took over the leadership. Judd recklessly led the gang on one holdup after another in the nearby territory. Here comes the stage now, men. Have your guns ready and let's go.  Ah, it's too much trouble.  Judd missed no chances to add to his ill-gotten cash. I can get that rancher half price to take him to cash with me, Jim. You reckon that's right? Pretty sweet, you're riding around with 20,000 cash. Did somebody notice you'd draw it from the bank? I made sure nobody did, you see? Hey, look, look! I'll cut out and run him! Yes, Captain Carter! Ah! Ah! Hushed up the team! Oh, there! Next time, mister, don't ask Martin to try to get away. Chief, find the cat. He has 20,000 with him. News of the gang's activities spread throughout the territory. The lone ranger and Tato, who had been helping in the search for the escaped convict, led Jackson, rode the trail towards Stockton.  Of course, he was clever enough to cover his tracks after he'd gone some distance, so he thought he may have circled back to the south. Huh? I began to think Jackson may be mixed up in the gang that's operating in this neighborhood. Why do you think that's him coming? The gang didn't become active until after Jackson escaped. After he had time to reach this territory. That's right. Next news of the gang. There's killed two birds with one stone if we manage to capture them. We've got Judge Jackson to break up the gang. Ah! And we'll cancel the night near Stockton and make an attentive search for the nearby hills in the morning. One, two, three! Ho, ho, ho, boy, easy. Early that evening, the outlaw, Pete, arrived at the hideout track in the hills. Hi, Keith. What new ones out? Ah, nothing much. Folks are still talking about the gang in Yappin because the sheriff hasn't caught us. Oh, that sheriff is running around in circles. That's right, Jerry. And he'd be excited more than ever if he knew I was leading the gang. Sure would. I, uh... I saw something on the way back from town that you might consider bad news. Yeah, didn't ya? What? I saw the masked man in Indian who turned you over to the law six months ago and he just sent to prison. What? You did? Where? He drove back in the hills. I made sure they didn't see me. I knew you'd want to know they were around. They're dangerous, Judd. We'd better lay low there around. Well, lawmen don't bother me, but the lone ranger in this Indian friend are dangerous. They've got me once, but by Sunday, they aren't gonna do it again. Best way to avoid having them get you again, Judd, is for us to leave here. That's right. No, Doc Garnish. Before they have a chance to find out I'm leading this gang, I'll think of some way to get rid of them. I've heard a lot about those two. That won't be so easy, Judd. Why not? We've got the advantage right now. We know they're in this territory, but they don't realize we know they're here. If you figure on having a gang try to grab them at their camp, count me out. Yeah, me too. They're too smart to be taken by surprise. And even though it's seven to two in our favor, and those four guns they have between them shoots modest, straight, and fast.  How come you men are afraid when we're seven to two like Jerry says? Jerry told us it was true when he spoke about how to handle those guns of theirs, Judd. Trying to sneak up on them or have open gunplay with them is local. Maybe we might find a way to trap them. Well, give me time to think, will you? Wait a minute. I have an idea that might work, eh? What? Well, Jerry here is young and kind of presentable. If he could get in with those two ombre... Wait a minute. I'm not going to... Be quiet a minute, will you? How can I think with you yapping for your novice all about? Go on, Judd. What is it all about? Well, Jerry's been showing off his trick-riding around here. And this is a good chance for him to put it to use. Wow! He'll tell you where the grove is if those two ombre's are staying in. Now, early in the morning, before they break camp, you ride at a gallop along the trail past the groves, pretend your horse stumbles, let out a loud yell, and fall from the saddle, make out like you're stung. Well, yeah, then what? The mask man and his friend will come to see what happened. See if you're hurt.  So surprised about the mask. Then, if they don't tell you who they are, you tell them that you've heard of a mask man in Indian who helped the law. Then ask him right out as he's the lone ranger. What's the idea? Well, listen. Then Jerry will tell him that he found out where the outlaw gang is hiding and that he was going to town for the sheriff. He'll tell him where this place is. Then he'll leave. Then he'll send the sheriff to help. You mean you want Jerry to really tell him where we are? Sure. Only we'll be waiting in ambush a quart of a mile from here where the trail runs between two gullies. Jerry will leave as if to go for the sheriff. Then he'll take a short cut back so as to be here when we gun the lone ranger and the Indian. Early the following morning the lone ranger and talker were getting ready to leave their camp when they heard galloping hooves on the trail beyond the grove. Come on, ride. Twenty-five, long trail. Yes, that was always heading toward town. Something happened. A few moments later, the two men ran to a stop beside the fallen driver. Look over. Oh, he's a living man. He must have been thrown. He appears to be stunned by the fall. My shoulder. A masked man. An Indian. Your arm breaks must be part of the camp. Take it easy, fellow. We're not outlawed. But that's masked. Wait a minute. I've heard of a masked man and an Indian who helped the Lord. Are you the lone ranger? That's right. Sure, grad, you find me, mister. Are you hurt? No, I'm not. I'll be all right. Hey, see how I'm able to stand it. A horse stumbled and stewed me before I knew what was happening. You were riding very fast. The trail is rough along here. That's right. Let me go get the horse. You feel all right now? Oh, sure. I want to get to town in a hurry to see the sheriff. Oh, what's wrong? It's about that gang I mentioned. I found out where they have the hideout. Did they see you? No, I managed to keep out of sight. What were you doing in the hills early in the morning? I lived back that way. I was going to town early today on business. My name's Jerry. Jerry Sparks. Thanks for coming to help me. That's all right, Jerry. Now, about the outlaw gang... Hey, I reckon you came here to help search for them, didn't you? Yes. I'd like to know where that hideout is located. All right, all right. Here, young fellow Sparks. Oh, thanks, Indian. Now, about the outlaw's hideout. I'll tell you how to get there, mister. Then I'll go on to town and tell the sheriff so he'll bring his men out to help you round them up. That's a good idea. How do we form the hideout? Jerry gave briefs but clear directions concerning the way to the hideout. Then finished by saying... I'm sure you'll be able to find it, mister. But you better not go too close to the sheriff and his men come to help you. We'll be careful. Thanks for the information, Jerry. Oh, that's all right. Now, I'll go on to town. I'll tell the sheriff you'll be waiting for him. See you now. So long. Get it. Get it. That's good. Now we follow trail to hideout. When sheriff comes, we catch gang. We'll continue our lone ranger adventure in just a moment. Diving Doris is 13 and he is the diving queen. She can do a flip because she knows she's got gold power from Cheerios. Yes, she's got gold power. There she goes. She's feeling her Cheerios. That's a mighty good idea for you. Just make sure you eat a big bowl of Cheerios and milk every breakfast and you'll get gold power too. Because a Cheerios breakfast is loaded with proteins, vitamins and minerals. The very things that help build healthy bodies. Strong bones, good red blood and muscles. Why they'd be the sort of breakfast you'd go for even if they didn't taste so good and they do taste delicious.  So that's for you. Well tasting Cheerios and milk for gold power. Eat them every morning and you'll hear She's feeling her Cheerios. Now to continue. The lone ranger stood watching as Jerry rode away in the direction of town. For a moment he didn't reply to Tato's remark. Then he said There's something about that fellow that doesn't ring true, Tato. Why you say that? I noticed first that he complained of his shoulder. There's no dirt on his shoulder. There was on both his hands. Not so heavy. Well if he'd landed on his shoulder dirt would have been ground into his coat. I've seen many trick riders pretend to fall from a horse and use their hands to break their foals. That's right. I also noticed the tracks of his horse. There's no indication of a stumble. Look for yourself. That's right. If a horse stumbles, hope makes scub marks. His horse not stumble. I think the gang's hideout would be guarded. No one could get close enough to observe them without being seen. That's right. We must think of that. And what we do? Then a fellow in the young fellow's direction we'll trail him and see if he does go to town. Easy. Easy fellow. The lone ranger and Tato rode down the trail until they came to a turn off on which they saw Jerry's tracks. Oh, yeah. Hope I'm right. He turned here, Tato. That narrow trail runs back around the other side of the hill. Ah. That's taken in direction him come from. It might be shortcut to hideout. I will find out. Hmm.  Identify yourself. I'm sure you'll remember you. Ah. Bring the sheriff and his men by the turn off trail. I'll go ahead and try to locate the hideout. You be careful, Kimakami. Of course. I suspect an ambush is planned so I'll be very cautious.  I won't do it. Jerry rode hurriedly back along the shortcut trail which led to the rear of the hideout shack. He didn't stop at the shack but rode past it and continued to the gully where Judd was waiting to ambush the lone ranger and Tato. Ho! Ho! Ho! Ho! Well, how's the make-up? Judd, it worked. Everything went as smooth as could be. I'm sort of surprised an hombre who's supposed to be as smart as a man's man would fall for the plan. Oh, why shouldn't he? I did it just the way Judd told me to. That fall I took would look plenty real to anybody. Tell me exactly what happened. Jerry quickly told what had taken place and of his conversation with the lone ranger. When he finished, Judd said... And they're on the way here now, is that it? Yes, Judd. They're coming along the trail I took to reach the camp. The one that comes along here between the gullies. They think I went to town to get the sheriff and his men. Yeah, they won't live to know whether the sheriff got here or not. You're right, Pete. Now, Jerry, you go across to the other gully with Jim and Sam. The masked man in Indian won't suspect a thing till they're between our crop fire. And then, it'll be too late. The lone ranger approached the rear of the shack not long after Jerry had passed it. He dismounted under cover of the trees. Holding his guns ready for instant use, the masked man cautiously made his way toward the building through the thick tall brush. He soon realized the place was deserted. Then he noticed the fresh hoof march leading from the front of the shack and went forward on foot through the woods bordering the trail. He had gone almost a quarter of a mile when he heard a low whimmy out toward the trail. The masked man stood on a wooded slope and looked sharply down the short distance to the trail. It was then he saw the tips of a horse's ears in a gully and he noticed there were gullies on each side of the trail. At that moment, the top of the man's hat appeared for an instant above the brush across the road. Instantly, Judd Jackson's plan was evident to have gunmen waking in both gullies which paralleled the trail so that anyone riding that way would be a target for bullets from both sides. If the sheriff and party come along that trail, they'll be trapped. I'll go back to warn them. As the masked man started back, he tripped over a fallen log and stumbled into view of the outlaws. Judd and his men heard the sound and looked up the slope. As the masked man jumped to his feet and gained the protection of a big tree, Judd shouted, You may cross the trail. Come on. The men who waited in the gully beyond the trail and joined the rest of the gang. The gunmen formed a semicircle as they gradually moved from tree to tree toward the lone ranger, firing as they moved. The lone ranger returned the outlaws' fire and had the satisfaction of knowing his bullets had hit at least two of them. While he realized he was in danger of being encircled, he couldn't leave the big oak as the nearest tree to it was too far away to be reached in safety. Have to make sure the log gets behind me. While his men kept up a continuous fire, Judd watched his chance, then crawled through the brush in an effort to get behind the masked man. Soon the big outlaw reached the position up the slope where the lone ranger's back was in plain view. But before the outlaw could pull the trigger, At that moment the charlots and Puffy rounded a bend in the trail. The outlaws turned their attention to the oncoming riders, giving Tata a chance to take Judd Jackson's gun and reach the masked man's side. We come to find out what Puffy still burn here shot. We know you in danger. Be right ahead, Pat. Lucky you did come on ahead, Tata. Use your guns. The charlots and his posse gallop into the gun by firing as they rode.  Yeah, sure. For a few moments I thought I'd really be trapped. But when we reached the hideout and Tata discovered you went ahead on foot, then we heard the shooting.  We followed along the trail. And the outlaws on both sides of the trail, waiting to ambush anyone who came along. I recognized through the woods here on the slope and discovered the plan. The way, it's fortunate they spotted me. Struck them from the gallows and away from their horses. You're sure we're putting up a good one-man fight against plenty of odds, Mr. Teller, who tried to send us into a trap. Man, bring those prisoners here. That's the man. That is name is Jerry Sparks. So you tried to get the man in Indian murder, huh? Now, look, Jeff, it wasn't my idea it was Judge Jackson. So that ombry lying there near the cottonwood is Judge Jackson, huh? He fits the general description, though he's clean shaven and now has black hair. I had an idea that Jackson was working with this gang. He'll have plenty more charges against him when he goes back to prison. I could have plucked that masked man if the Indian hadn't interfered. Yes, I had my friend Teller's thanks for stopping you. Good thing you were smart enough to figure they'd wait in ambush. Now, we have time and get them to jail where they'll do no more harm. Good. Uh, Teller, where are the horses? I'm back in peace. We'll leave now. See you again, Sheriff. Bye-bye. Good-bye. If you had, he wouldn't have followed your tracks.  I didn't want to go to first place, but you thought you knew it all.  Don't worry.  Lots of smart aleck cooks have tried to pull the same sort of trick on those two ombries. But let me tell you, it's no use trying to outsmart the lone ranger. No, sir. The copyrighted feature of the lone ranger incorporated is produced by Kendall Campbell Muir Incorporated. The part of the lone ranger is played by Brace Beamer, your announcer, Fred Boyd. Listen to the lone ranger brought to you by special recording Mondays through Fridays at this same time.