There's an interesting thing in this generation where digestive problems are at the absolute forefront of some of the main symptoms that I'm seeing in many of my patients. And it's not uncommon for people to come in saying they have anxiety or depression or they're going through cancer care. And one of the series of organ systems that are the most hard hit is digestion. So bloating is one of the symptoms also known as water retention, feeling full that people report a lot they'd like to work on. And I thought I would use this as an opportunity to talk about this symptom and really what it means from a Chinese medicine perspective and how we treat it. Hey guys, Dr. Alex Hine, author of the health book Master of the Day, Doctor of Chinese Medicine. So before we jump into this video here today, there are two very important links right below this video. The first is if you'd like to become a patient of mine and my private practice in Los Angeles, the link below is to contact my private practice and my office. Also, if you're throughout California and you'd like to be a telemedicine patient, that same link will apply for you as well. The second thing is that there's a free download, which is for daily rituals that can potentially help you ideas to your life with Chinese medicine that is right below this video as well. So let's talk about what we think of as excess or deficiency bloating. In terms of Chinese medicine, we break conditions down into excess or deficiency. Now, excess bloating is kind of like Thanksgiving, right? You have a ton of turkey, a ton of mashed potatoes, a ton of gravy, probably at least five beers, and after that, you feel indigested and bloated and full. That's just from overeating. Sometimes maybe you're eating a lot and your bowel movements aren't as complete over a couple of days and you feel excessively full. It's excess bloating where you push on the abdomen and it hurts, doesn't feel good. When it comes to deficiency bloating, these are more often people that have food sensitivities where they have a lot of food allergies. They eat a specialized diet. They can't digest wheat or dairy. And often, it's similar to the kind of pain that women have during menstruation where they put a warm water bottle and they feel better. So this kind of deficiency bloating is very different because we often give herbs that affect it differently versus this kind of excess Thanksgiving type bloating. So let's talk about some basic advice for this kind of deficiency bloating, which is really the majority of my patients that I'm seeing. So when we talk about this deficiency bloating for a lot of people, this is usually due to what Chinese medicine considers cold and dampness. So let's just conceptualize bloating as dampness. There's an issue with the mucous membranes that are producing too much gas. A lot of these people will often have softer or wetter stools. They'll sometimes have diarrhea. And a Chinese medicine perspective is that this is your body trying to vent that dampness almost like how you get diarrhea when you catch something, you catch food poisoning.  When it comes to cold and damp, from a Chinese medicine perspective, you want to avoid foods and conditions that create cold and damp. So there are foods that are considered cold and damp, like raw vegetables, celery juice, sugar. And there are conditions that can create cold, which is basically hypo function, right? It's an under functioning of the digestive system, which then produces the symptoms of just feeling stagnant and excessively full. So a lot of the herbs we use, for example, ginger, is used to increase metabolism and often will help, for example, increases the stomach acid in your stomach. We'll actually increase that so that you're getting indigested less. So for a lot of people that have, you know, they eat and they get a food baby after eating or they feel a little indigested, we often need to increase the stomach acid and increase the body's ability to metabolize in that way. So when we use these herbs, especially spicy herbs, spices, and in many cultures, bitters, right? These digestive in Europe, digestive drinks, even coffee is a digestive, right? In Italy, you have coffee after a big meal. These help stimulate some of those gastric juices. So when we talk about bloating coming back to this, the susceptible factors that we mainly think about are dampness and cold. And so we want to avoid foods that are in that category, or we want to avoid conditions like overeating that can actually produce that. So let's talk about this a little bit more. So there are a couple of things that I see people consuming quite a lot that are foods that can really exacerbate that tendency towards dampness to begin with. Now, I live in Los Angeles. It is obviously a bubble. Certain things are trendy that are not trendy elsewhere in the world like raw vegan diets and celery juice. I don't really recommend either of them for anyone pretty much ever. But for some reason, there is a tendency for certain people to like these kind of foods. And let's go through this list and we'll talk about a little bit more what specifically will affect this kind of quality of bloating. So things to avoid. For example, raw vegetables and salads. These are hard to digest foods, regardless of what you hear from supposed health gurus. You look at people with really severe digestive illnesses. Raw vegetables will destroy them. They'll get diarrhea, abdominal pain, cramping. They are not easy to digest foods.  Raw vegetables are one of the first things that go. Other things include dairy or ice cream, right? Everyone knows the feeling of having dairy or ice cream and then for 30 minutes you're like, ugh, ugh, always clearing your throat. Well, that's creating excessive moisture and dampness from a Chinese medicine perspective. So if that is a susceptibility you have, avoiding those is really key. Other foods are excessively greasy or fried foods or oils. We talked about celery or excessively cold raw vegetables. Kale salad is a terrible idea for somebody with this pattern. Another one being sugar. So one final thing here with dampness and bloating is that for many people, if they're really susceptible, starches, all starches can be a problem. And one of the diets you see this in is the specific carbohydrate diet, strict paleo, these kind of elemental diets and the whole 30, where in general, they have you avoid almost all starches. And I find that for many people, the avoidance of all starch, rice, potatoes, all of that and just doing meat and vegetables can often help people with really severe bloating at least for a couple of days to get them back on track. And if it's really severe for a prolonged period of time as they're taking formulas that I'm giving them. But practically speaking, for most people, these will not be a problem and just finally tailoring their diet can actually be the deciding factor. So again, remember, it's not these foods that are necessarily the problem. People with a good strong gut and strong digestion will eat Taco Bell and they can still poop like a champ the next day. They can eat a raw salad, they're not gonna have abdominal pain. But for people where this is a constitutional or genetic susceptibility, you just have to be extra careful until your gut is a little bit stronger or maybe for some people that may be forever. And that's just gonna be the weak part of your armor that you need to pay attention to. So that's a little bit about bloating and dampness as we think of it and foods and kind of their, what people call their energetic qualities, but really I like to think of them as temperatures and their flavors and how they affect the body. Now again, before we go, that's all I have for today. But if you'd like to become a patient in Los Angeles or virtually via telemedicine throughout California, the link to contact my private practice is right below this video. And then I have two related videos for you right there.


Hello, darkness, mild friend. I've come to talk with you again. Hey, get out of my nipple. Josh!  I'm pregnant. Your nipples are the darkness we were talking about. True. And you can follow us on Instagram and Twitter for more juicy content. Thanks, unpatriot. So juicy. Don't forget to subscribe if you haven't. Like this video, helps out the algorithm. Thank you so much. Today, we got a delightful, this is called Legends in One Frame. So this is our. Legends in One Frame. Dosty of Dosts. Ustagi, is the character who's saying. Lovely. Our very first Dost. Along with many other percussionists. I don't know if they're all tabla players, but they're all playing together. Lovely. In a, in a, in a, in a, in a, in a, in a, in a, in a. We've had the honor of not just doing a. Interview. In person. But then he graciously invited us to watch him. Perform live. Yes. And it was magical. It was wonderful. It was everything you would imagine if you've not had the. Blessing of being able to. Watch him perform live. But it's, it's everything you'd imagine. I don't know who the others are, but so if they, if they're people we should know over the, we've seen before, please let us know. Here we go. Off to a blistering start. I think it's crazy that the sound moves faster than his fingers. I mean, it's, it's like putting their wings. Yeah. His fingers move faster than the sound. I was just thinking that time or whatever it is. Yeah, I'll talk about it at the end. The big and little ones on different sides. Yeah. I wonder if it's all like. Right hand, left handed. Maybe. His speed is insane.  Some music is a language, but it's also many languages. I can't even begin to comprehend what they're saying. Oh no. They're talking to each other within the context of that particular form of Indian music that would remind me of the same kind of awe I would have listening to a conversation of the five greatest neurosurgeons or scientists. The colleagues of Neil deGrasse Tyson, for example, sitting around together and having a very animated discussion about the higher level things they understand. I would just sit and watch and I would know they're speaking English. So I know that's music, but it's so beyond my comprehension of musicality, I can't even keep time to it. I don't even know what they're, I know they're doing particular things where they count to seven and then a five or whatever that it's beyond my capacity to understand. I don't know how they were able to keep track, to play like the obvious, they're masters. They're beyond masters. Yeah, it's like listening to Neil deGrasse Tyson and his colleagues discuss everything they know at the highest levels, they know it and just knowing they're speaking words in English I understand, but not having any comprehension of what they're talking about or brain surgeons or nuclear physicists. And my son is throwing a timber tantrum in the next room. Yeah, I don't, that was incredible. Absolutely, like staggering. It is absolutely mind boggling what all of them are able to do, but obviously our Ustaji Dost is just absolutely so incredible. It seemed like even he was faster than a lot of them. And I loved equally, not just watching the playing of each one, but when they were playing I'd look at the person next to them and you could see they know exactly what's going on. Oh yeah.  It's beyond, it's a whole other world of music that I'll never know. It's absolutely insane. Yeah, that was amazing. Let us know any other videos of Ustaji or the other Ustajis, I'm sure they're all Ustajis there on screen that we can react to and be mind boggled by down below.


Hi, beautiful. You're looking good. Thank you for being here. Today, we're watching some people bleach their hair. I saw a couple of thumbnails and I feel like maybe we're gonna get some fails today. Hopefully one of these people can do something right. I'm gonna be here to give you my professional opinion on everything they do. And hopefully today I can shed some light on how to lighten your hair more effectively and not burn your hair out. I also wanna thank Centrum for sponsoring today's video. The Centrum Rest and Rejuvenate. Do you have a racing mind like me, baby? Do you need that extra melatonin? This is a part of a new line of targeted products from Centrum. Centrum is committed to helping you feel your best. They've crafted an array of vitamins and dietary supplements that work in harmony with your body and support your body's unique needs because feeling good starts inside. So inside these deliciously flavored berry gummies is five milligrams of melatonin which promotes sleep and supports relaxation. This also replenishes collagen, a key skin nutrient while you sleep. So rest and refresh your day ahead with this gorgeousness right here. Try new Centrum Benefit Rest and Rejuvenate at www.centrum.com or click the link in my description box below today to learn more. And thanks again to Centrum for sponsoring this video. Now let's get in to the rest of the video. Up first we have a video by Hihi, it's McKenna and this is called Bleaching My Own Hair from Brunette to Platinum in one application. In one application? Oh, not five? Like everybody else does? Maybe I was wrong when I did the intro of the video expecting there to be problems honestly because this sounds kind of interesting and kind of like it's gonna go right.  Okay, whoa, this is a lot for me. Her hair is like a level four. That sounds like a daunting task to do it home yourself, but I'm here for it.  Yes, I absolutely agree. You should definitely try this. I have prepared for this by taking notes on a Brad Mondo video where he just explained how to go from Brunette to Platinum. I don't fully remember telling you how to go from Brunette to Platinum but I do remember giving some pointers on if you're gonna lighten your hair. I'm glad you took notes.  I really appreciate that. Let us say goodbye to this Brunette hair. Your hair is beautiful and that is a lot of hair and it is very dark and very warm. Good luck getting it platinum. I don't even know if I'm gonna do pink and purple. If the blonde looks cool, I might keep that for a little bit and do this later. I don't know yet. Here are all the notes that I took. I literally even had to buy a brush.  It's greasy and oily and that's apparently what's supposed to be the case when you bleach your hair. I love that, that is so good. You need those oils to protect your scalp. Otherwise, if you shampoo your hair, it is going to be pretty painful lightening it sometimes. So I wouldn't recommend stripping those natural oils off your scalp before doing the lightening process which is great that she didn't do that. Brunette section is way thinner than the back section. It looks like I'm sectioned into the four parts. I'm gonna leave these down since I'll be starting with them I think. Don't start with the front, start with the back. That way if you need to rinse it out you can always like lay back and rinse it without getting the front. One scoop with two ounces of volume. How do I measure? We're off to a rocky start. We can't even mix the liner. Four scoops of bleach. Damn, I don't feel like this is gonna fit. I'm gonna do three scoops of bleach less than half of the bottle. Can we just take a second to appreciate the multiple camera angles we're working with right now? McKenna, this is incredible. We're doing the big section like the apex or whatever you call it. That is not the apex, McKenna. Apex is up here, it's the highest point of your head. That's like the lowest. Also, why are your sections so big? I think the number one thing I said was like make sure you do small sections and make sure you put enough light in there. Like I remember saying that, I do. Oh my God, it's already lifting so much. I can just see it. You literally took notes in my video. Why are we starting in the front of your head? Next time you do it, please start in the back and please do smaller sections and do horizontal sections. Do slices throughout the head. Get in there and get a lot of light in there on there, please.   Okay, I'll do this entire bottom section and then I will do the roots of the entire bottom section and I'll do the same with the top sections. Oh my bad, she is working on the back of the head. I take part of that back. I couldn't see, I couldn't tell. I'm sorry. Okay, this is not what I like to see. Big chunk of hair. I already am seeing blonde. It's like when he says don't start with the roots I think so when do I do the roots? You do the roots when the ends are almost orange like a bright yellow color. That way with the help of the heat from your scalp your roots will process and be done right when your ends are finished as well. Typically we like to put foils on the ends. If you're lightening your hair from virgin to platinum blonde I would definitely always use foils. That way you get the heat on the ends and on the root. Again, this stuff is really complicated so I try not to over complicate things when I teach things online. In this salon as a professional I would have a bit of a different take than the things I say online sometimes but you know, we're not going for perfection.  There's millions with how light that is. There are massive chunks with no bleach. I'm gonna have hot roots. This is not going well. Again with the sectioning it's really not great at all. Actually there's quite a lack of sectioning going on which is unfortunate because that's like the most important part. All you gotta do is take horizontal slices and go up the head. You don't need to take triangles and rectangles and octagons and hexagons all over the head. That way you would know if you got all the roots or not because you're just going up in the same pattern as you did before with the maids and ends. So next time please be better. The roots are the worst part. I should have just left them brown. Oh my God, can you see this? This is gonna need like a drastically longer amount of time but I still have blind faith that it'll look okay. That's what you call delusion McKenna. McKenna, McKenna, McKenna, McKenna, hold on, hold on, breathe for a second, stop. McKenna, what happened to doing the ends before the roots? Like I know you did the mids and ends before doing the roots but like you need to let them process before doing the roots, you know? Let's think about this before we move ahead.  This is blonde. Yes. McKenna, if you have some blotches and you'll just go back in and do some touch-ups it's not the end of the world. We're actually starting with the roots, why? Why did we just throw away everything we learned previously and now we're doing just whatever we want? What's going on? What's up with that?  This has changed so fast. I have to start rinsing this. Like it's getting ridiculous.  Stop touching it so much. Okay, totally right, I hope you help with this. What are we doing? Oh, I just got rinsed, oh my God. Wait, wait, wait, wait. Did you just put your head forward to rinse the back? How is that gonna work? Cause the water's gonna go forward.  Does that make sense? This is a real struggle today. I am absolutely a hot, fiery blonde. What happened? The right side might be a little darker. I got hot scalp even though I freaking did it last. Whatever it's called, hot roots. You hardly did the roots last. We both know it. From what I can see online, everybody tones their roots first. They like section off and do the roots and then tone the rest of their hair. No, no, no. You didn't follow any of my directions and now you're about to tone your hair and try to make it platinum while it's still bright orange. Also, let's not start with the roots. Let's start with the part of your hair that is the most orange and needs the most toning.  You know what I mean? Let's think about this. Half of this Wella T18, I guess. I guess I'm just gonna start at the roots, work my way back, get it all over.  Super purple, man. Thank God, you're gonna need a lot of purple and a lot of blue in there to cancel out that orange. Is this normal? Why does it look purple, brown, like burgundy? Honestly, I hope some of that purple stays in my hair because it looks a lot better than that orangeness going on. This obviously is not the tone that I would have hoped for after toner. I'm just gonna go straight to the lilac dye. I had to dry it. I haven't even washed it or conditioned it yet. Obviously, that wasn't gonna work. Your hair was bright orange and you're trying to use T18 and it's just not gonna happen. But I'm glad she's going and doing a purple moment except I feel like it's gonna turn out a little muddy because she has a lot of orange in her hair still. Everything is wrong! This is only semi-permanent hair dye. I didn't even show what it is. It's this ion bright. I should just mix this with the pink and hope it's a cool color. And it's somehow green, so I'm probably gonna have to go get better hair dye tomorrow, I don't know. I have to wait like 10 or 15 more minutes with this and then I'm gonna wash it, see what it looks like dry and we have reassessed the situation. That dye literally did nothing, but I did condition my hair and it actually feels great. Like it doesn't feel, honestly it doesn't feel any different than it did before. Your hair's not lilac at all and that is because you use lilac over orange even though the opposite of orange is blue, you're still gonna get a lot of toning qualities from a very intense purple color, which is what happened here and you got none of the actual purple. Okay, are you ready for the big reveal? Ta-da! Wow, it turned out good. The dye literally did nothing. It's just super fricking blonde and I blow dried it and straightened it. In sections, I didn't see any blanchies. What? Yo, this is one of the most wild videos I've ever seen. So somehow she ended up with decent looking color that isn't that orange and actually looks pretty natural on her. My mind is like, this is what happens when you have a positive attitude and a positive outlook on life like she does because she somehow, if no idea how, ended up doing something that helped her hair actually become a nicer shade of blonde by using lilac. I literally have never seen anything like this before. I'm gonna just use Arctic Fox lilac color girls night and I'm gonna make this lilac. It's super light. It's still not over. We're going lilac again. It's most definitely not lilac. I'm ending it there, that's it.  She tried to go lilac again. It's not gonna work. Your hair's not light enough. You have to lighten it more. I'm done, McKenna, we're done. Please, if you do that again, just don't do it. That was all kinds of crazy. Okay, let's move on to the next video. Up next, we have a video by Die Hard Barbie and this is called bleached hair three times in two hours. Pink to blonde, fail. Let's check it out. We are taking the purple out of my hair and we are going to bleach bath it.  I'm gonna be honest, I love a good bleach bath. It's a great way to get rid of some permanent color on your hair and honestly, if you don't leave it on too long, if you use enough shampoo and a little bit of water inside of there, it can be pretty gentle and be pretty effective at the same time. Then I have the 20 developer that I'm putting in. I honestly don't know how she's gonna get all this purple out though. I hope she gets lucky and it all comes out but it's pretty dark. And then you're gonna wanna add water, okay? And I had someone tell me that you're not supposed to add water. Every video that I have watched, they say that you're supposed to have damp hair or add the water into your bleach. So if you don't know what a bleach bath is, it's lightener, developer, shampoo and sometimes you can add water or you can just dampen your hair before you start applying a lightener. That way you get that lathering effect. So now it's like more liquidy.   Oh my God. Don't do this at home. This was a big mistake. I thought I've seen it all in till today's video. Girl, don't pour it in your eyeball.  You could literally go blind. Like this is not safe but still get it on fast. It's really important to get bleach baths on fast because it's gonna start processing very quickly and you want everything to be even. Just ignore that beginning part guys because that was not supposed to happen. I'm actually not so concerned about her sectioning as much as like I was in the other video because it's actually okay to put it all on there and get it in. It is supposed to lather and it is very runny and liquidy. It will easily get on all the hair if you just put enough on and kind of run your hands through and lather a little bit. So it's okay that she's not doing it perfectly. What can I do? Can you be like an ombre effect with the purple? I don't know. An ombre? I've never heard of an ombre. I don't think I'm gonna have enough bleach. Oh my God. Just mix it in. Oh my God. Get all that purple. The good thing is that it's lightening quickly. It's definitely effective. I just hope she doesn't fry her hair off by leaving on too long. We're making some progress, it's getting lighter. Come on, give us that blonde. It's looking like peach at the top. Ooh, it's pretty. Looking peachy at the top, lavender on the bottom, I'm into it. So I haven't seen my hair at all. So this is like all first impression.  It's like, oh my God.  I've never seen anything like this. Please be good. Please be good. Oh my God. It's like baby pink. It's a lot lighter. It is not blonde though. And I honestly hope she doesn't keep doing, I mean, says she did it three times. So honestly, we're screwed. And it's not gonna be great because her hair is already very compromised. Yeah, we're gonna have to go get probably one more packet of bleach. So we're on to round two and we're doing more. So got that, just gonna take it like this. Okay, A, don't do this. B, this is going to burn her head so bad because she just basically shampooed her hair with lightener before this. So she has literally no natural oils on her scalp. Her scalp is probably so raw and so sensitive. Ouch, this looks painful just watching this.  Like I'm just, I'm done today. Okay, I'm back. I'll keep watching it for you guys. Oh, I know that's burning her eyes so bad. I know it. When you mix shampoo with lightener, it puts so much fumes into the air and literally goes right into your eyeballs and makes you cry. I'm massaging this in. Stop rubbing your scalp.  You lather it. Oh my God, her scalp is going to literally fall off. Oh, I like it did nothing. It looks lighter, but you need to give it a break. Oh no, she's just really going to do it again. Third time to charm, right? I'm going to go dry this, come back and then we're going to have to bleach it again. My hair is like basically dry. This is after two bleach baths to get that purple out. So my plan is to do another bleach but not the shampoo method.  We are not even doing a bleach bath this time. We're literally just doing a straight bleach.  It already looks compromised and now we're not even using shampoo either. We're totally going with lightener. Let's hurry up this process. I would not recommend this. I would recommend leaving it alone. What you can do, instead of trying to keep getting the pink out, you can also use a toner. Typically the toner will release some of those pink molecules and add in a nice overall blonde tone without you having to lighten it again. And it did nothing to my hair. I'm not bleaching it anymore because that's three freaking bleaches in one day. Oh my God. Thank God she didn't do it again. I gave my hair a nice quick blow dry. I had no hair come out.  Little bit of like little split ends coming out but like other than that, my hair feels way healthier than when I started. What? I'm so surprised you didn't lose any hair first of all.  Girl, you got lucky. Okay. So now we're on to part two.  I'm so embarrassed. I had to cut my hair.  I am just loving it. It's like cute for the summer. Okay, that's where her hair ended up. I like the cut a lot.  The ends are definitely platinum. I'm glad you ended up getting where you wanted to get to and I'm glad you're happy with it. Definitely a big difference from the start with that very deep purple, same permanent color. So congrats on making it blonde next time. Maybe just not so many lightening processes. Maybe don't scrub your scalp and maybe just use a toner instead of lightening it so many times consecutively.  So I guess that's cool. Well, those videos crushed my soul. I don't even know what else to say. You guys heard everything already. I'm not going to go back through it. I need to heal from those videos. Oh boy. And thanks again to Centrum for sponsoring this video. You guys can follow me and my brand everywhere else. Here are all my handles. You can also shop X-Mondo Hair Color and Hair Care right down below or at X-MondoHair.com. That is all for today guys. Thank you so much for watching. Don't forget to live your extra life and I'll see you next time. Bye guys.


Hi, good morning and welcome to today's products and focus if you just have a starting look at the u.s. There you can see we had an incredibly volatile session yesterday in fact the u.s. There to a mostly global markets where I'm a very torrid morning Dropping off quite significantly then to rebound But then to still finish quite negative the US market in particular managed to rally up But then come off towards 5 p.m. UK time and we'd posted quite a negative candle there again Now we've slightly managed to move upwards this morning But there's not very much in the way of any kind of support resistance anywhere nearby here So we're just kind of floating in the middle of nowhere and Today is the final part of the FOMC meeting due at 7 p.m. UK time and everybody's waiting to see if they're going to remove Any comments about keeping interest rates low for a considerably long length of time and that's going to be indicative of Apparently if the u.s. Are looking to raise rates in the middle half of next year We could have quite big ramifications of the markets today So mark is probably relatively flat until we get closer to that point as if they don't raise rate if they if they retain that that statement for the FOMC Statement at 7 p.m. Today that should give a shot in the arm to a lot of the equate markets and Should cause a dollar to sell off relatively aggressively But we'll have to wait to see tonight if that's going to go ahead and happen looking at the UK It's like a different matter. You can see how horrible Hardly volatile that session was how strong the rally was towards the end of the session only for the combat down again now it looks to be that we're trying to have a lot of research today and Crudelut with Texas seems to be stabilizing around about $55 But also most of the equity markets have been that little bit higher So we do have a potential risk resistance for in about 6350 we're a good bit away from there right now, but looks to be the equities are trying to have this Slight move to the to the upside there the German Dax struggling a little bit this morning as well as the US 30 So looking at Japan 225 And obviously that Japanese yen have been very popular yesterday Which caused a lot of pressure to come on to Japan 225 as people buying again as a safe haven We had a very strong rally this morning has been a little bit of reversal in there going from below of probably what 115 50 I'll be back up to 117 50 So we have quite a strong reversal there Probably looking at a potential short-term broken support now acting as potential resistance probably close to 17 at 0 49 if that mark continues to move up to the upside so looking at a dollar yen just about Pilgrim's head above 117 spot 36, which is broken support now expected to act as resistance without broken above it yet But yesterday was such a bad day for for dollar yen Good day for the embed if the dollar and we almost reached the next potential support at 114 spot 74 But that didn't happen Can we get can we break and close above 117 spot 36? We'll have to wait until tonight possibly to find out So Crude oil West Texas bouncing around potential support 54 85 talked about this so much the last couple of sessions There's nothing more really to To offer here We do have a doji formation at the bottom end of a downtrend if there's gonna be any short-term bounce in West Texas now It's a time really But I think it's all about the FOMC now taking a little bit more center stage If I actually just jump on to here for a second We have a look at dollar rubble, which I was everybody was talking about yesterday On the biggest and today's swings I've ever seen Was down 10% at one point was up 17% at the other but it seems to be Stabilizing slightly massive stabilizing still incredibly volatile But we did pretty much reach everything at 79 spot 89 was it was a higher day now We're already down a couple of percent again Taken below 70 back to 67 that this is still like an incredibly high point But for a lot of traders out there This is what a lot of people will be looking at to get an understanding of what Russia's gonna go ahead and do next So certainly about the low of the day already And the pressure is is back on but it's got obviously when you move up so aggressively as this You've got a long way to come back down So perhaps currency speculation and really driving that up quite a lot. It's already down four point four percent today So I'm gonna go go over again was so volatile this candle is absolutely horrible if you're looking at technical analysis Sold off and it's quite surprising because people buying yen is a haven but they didn't want to touch gold Maybe because of the FOMC We did spike all the way above 1218 only to get pushed all the way back down again And in fact, we're trying to have a little bit of a move to the upside right now We're trading below both moving averages at 21 and 55 pure SMA We've almost got we've got crossover a negative crossover on the slow stochastic the RSI is negative. We've got a crossover in the MACD Gold's not looking too good from a technical perspective And obviously tonight's FOMC if they have removed that they're gonna keep interest rates low for longer Gold's pretty vulnerable To more pain So moving on to your dollar your dollar had a real shot in the arm as people started to unwind A lot of their dollar positions obviously of those of traders were long dollar ruble When that that became time to sell out towards the lunchtime area yesterday when it really began to sell off That had a knock-on effect on many other markets as well. I think a dollar knocky And a knocky Swedish Krona were also very much in focus yesterday Especially the knocky got hit quite hard But the kind of side effects that was people were buying euros in a big way and that allowed your dog to get one spot 25 79 Albeit, it's a little in the back foot at the moment still in the middle of two ranges with next potential support one spot 23 67 So let's finish up with cable Cable travel actually did manage to break 157 43 as a false breakout didn't manage to close above that with any Sort of conviction. We're down a little bit again this morning So economic data-wise we do have UK unemployment claims at 9 30 then we have CPI data in the US at 1 30 UK time followed by weekly petroleum sales So make sure you don't forget about that and obviously remember tonight 7 p.m. UK time It's a FMC policy decision, but that's not the real big bit of news as a statement that comes straight away after And if we fast forward then on Thursday, you've got German IFO business data UK retail Sales US employment change figures so a fair amount of economic data, and you have the Philly Fed numbers as well So today and tomorrow we're looking like we've got a lot of macro data that can stimulate the markets And if you look at Friday there, we've got more UK data, but nothing of real significance We've got public sector net borrowing nothing that great So today and tomorrow lots on and certainly plenty activity in the markets keep behind the chart form as ever Making sense probably going forward and join me again tomorrow to find out what happened next


Okay, so a few months ago, we were listening to a talk about Dena's flag day coming up. And someone was talking about the experiences of running the ENI's flag day code over a couple of TLDs. So someone said, that'd be interesting for us at ICANN to try to do this with all of the TLDs that we have. And so this is a talk about the attempt to do this. Now of course, I won't have the same nice graphics that they had in that talk, then for one thing, we're after the flag day, so it wouldn't really matter as much. But it was interesting experience to talk about that. So to give you an idea of what this would entail was that if I actually ran every single test that was going to happen here, I'd have 11 billion digs executed. I didn't do that. I mimicked doing 11 billion digs for this. But that's the size of what we have. We have a lot of information. Now the code that I use, I know that as time went by, the EDNS test code that ISC developed, it changed over time. And when I met with the developer, Mark Andrews, back in October of last year, he gave me a file, a zip file of his stuff. I don't know what version it is. I just have his stuff. And as I worked on it, he kept saying, we should go to the GitHub and get my stuff that's now in C. And at that point, it was too late for me with all the work getting his stuff to work. I just committed too much.  I know he said that he has more efficient C code. I didn't use that. So this is not really a judgment of this code. So why? Why did we go ahead and do this? ICANN has a contract relationship with about 80% of the TLDs. That means of the 1,500, so TLDs out there, 1,200 of them, I have access to their zone files as a result of that. That doesn't mean I have 80% of all of the internet usage of the DNS. It's just 80% of the TLDs because, of course, you know, some CCTLDs, which I don't have any of, are very big, right? And a lot of GTLDs... What domain you could get? I could, but I'm trying to, just to make it a little easier to pipeline this stuff. But also, on the other hand, a lot of GTLDs are very small. So the distribution doesn't say, I don't want to promise I have everything out there, but I have a lot of TLDs out there. So basically, we thought it would be good to run over these 1,200 TLDs out there. The other thing, though, is that I knew that at the start of, a couple of things I knew would not play well. One is, I wouldn't have a graph reach TLD. I don't want to do that. I'm not raising TLD versus TLD. It's not fair for us to do that. We don't have that as a thing that a great TLD is on in any way. Also, all of the alerting that Mark Andrews was doing, we don't have access to that. That's a whole other department of who has the contact out there. But it's interesting for us, as a protocol now, to look at the health of the system. So the expert, we got some insight into the eating of zero situation, not a whole lot, because frankly, by the time we got down to that part of the data, we had a lot of work and did a lot of analysis. But what's going on now is I've been building a platform for eating zone files, parsing them and pulling things out there and finding things. In fact, I've moved on to other projects already since I did these slides last week and I'm thinking of the new stuff already. One of the lessons with KSK Roller Project was that managing the Internet is pretty weak. It's hard to manage network. So we're looking, one of our interests is to make sure that, to see what we can do to manage through measurement what's happening out there, to assess whether this is being done, that's not being done, how well are operators linking things out there? Are our glue records good? Are the glue records good? But that's further research than this. So to start quantifying things, the workload we had, 1,128 zone files, 193 million delegations out of that, it's a lot. 450 million NS records alone through all of this. Glue records, 3 million mostly before and I will not go through all the numbers of course, it's Sunday afternoon and we're at work. Graphs, I don't have any, I'm too lazy. I'm not like Rory, I'm the opposite of Rory, I don't like graphs. I should but I don't. Now the problem here is I'd have thousands of graphs, one for each TLD, you're not going to go through that. On the other hand I think for most of this, any kind of graph that you see is a long tail distribution, just for the most part I'll tell you when it's not. And the other ground rules, I don't like to name names. I do have one really large GTLD we all know about and you, I'm not going to talk about it but I have a run really big one, everything else is roughly less than that. In fact the one big one I have, it takes half the processing time just to parse all of them together. In fact I did a race one time where I parsed it in one process, parsed all the others and they tied at the end. 1227 to 1, same process. Two-thirds of all of my results would it be in that one big TLD and so on and so forth. So things are kind of skewed. No CCTLD data in this just to make it easy. It's easy I could get the stuff but I don't want to mix apples and oranges in some sense. And the ARPA is the only thing in the reverse map that pops up here because we happen to have that. And one thing, when I get to the IP addresses I change them too because I know in Europe IP addresses are like illegal to mention I think. So nameserver names, 3.2 million nameserver names, almost none of them have IDN. Operators now still only work in ASCII, the infrastructure still pretty much an ASCII thing. Over 99% of all nameservers are just ASCII nameservers. That means the tools that get into IDN sometimes may be premature for the operators out there. I know there was a flap about one tool suddenly recognizing the native labels that screwed up scripts and I was bitten by that too. Most of the nameservers that I deal with are in GTLDs. It's not too surprising. But 85% of all the GTLDs nameservers were actually in a GTLD, the name itself. And again, it's pretty much still all ASCII and pretty much still GTLDs. Glue records, I have 3.2 million. Glue records of that 2.7 million were unique addresses. Almost all of V4, not too surprising. What I found surprising though at the bottom of this I have nameservers that only have V4 is still a huge number compared to dual stack. I thought dual stack would be more mature. The first number here that surprised me was that I thought dual stack was just a given and not at all, not in glue records. There are 5,000 brave souls in V6 only. I will say the first that they were very smart people in alternate universes. Glue addresses per name server, mildly interesting. There were 3.2 million name servers that had no glue. Now, I should point out after I did the slide, I realized it's actually not really a bad number because 450,000 of them were in CCTLDs, which means I don't have that glue. It's very important. That's why it's good to have these split. Most of the ones that have no glue in there were glue I shouldn't have had anyway. So that's excusable, very excusable. Others just because of name servers that are somewhere else. And then I'm discovering now there's a lot of bad glue, but that's beside the point. Most servers have one glue. This is not a long tail situation. It's kind of funny. It goes 2 million for 1, then down to 50,000, then to 3,000, then back to 69,000 for 4,000 and so on. And by the way, 0 to 13 is the entire range of values for this graph. There's nothing below that. This is all of it. Because we can only have 13 NS records because by law it's never mind. A lot of registers actually assume that when they wrote their original code. So it's stay that way. Now, in this study, some later on I'll talk about a bit more about addresses. It's kind of murky. I call it muddy data because the glue records, studying glue records itself as glue records has a whole lot of things I can do with it. I'm doing that right now at my next level. But this tool would actually then, if you gave it zero glue, it'd go out and get an authoritative data and then mix it all together. So some of my stuff about addresses later on a little muddy out there, but interesting to do. Eventually I would like to separate that and do what's authoritative versions of the data versus the glue and see how we've kept that up to date. So zones per name server. One point almost 2 million name servers out there of the 3.2 million only do one zone. Now that could be vanity naming. Could be all different names with the same process, but that's the way it lines up with the NS records. I go down there. You see this is a long tail and then maximum next slide was kind of interesting. There is a name server out there that has over 4 million zones on it. Okay, it's, you know, I thought, what I find interesting is that I mocked up, I mocked up the names on purpose of course, because I don't like naming names, but the two and the one and the first two lines is on purpose. Some operators NS2 has more zones than NS1 at the 4 million mark. I would think if I had that many zones out there I would have NS1 be bigger because all the other ones are. Or I would have it balanced or I would have it automated in some way, but it's your name servers? No, no, no. I sometimes see that a domain will either have NS1 and NS2 or some name server owned by the domain owner plus NS2, but for that the difference is too small. Right. Yeah, it's just interesting. You're saying that in some cases you see an owner and NS2 for the recording basically. Yeah. So, but the other ones, the other big ones, NS1 and NS2, and these are the top six name servers out there and it falls down quickly. There was a couple more at 2 million, but everything else fell right down. But I just thought it was humorous that the top one there had a few more zones on two than one and that's weird. Okay, so multi-tent. This actually came with a conversation this idea that how many zones are actually on a process? I mean you have a process, right? You have name server addresses, you have name server names and so on. And I've worked in places where I know how we mix and match these things. It'd be interesting to be able to trace that out. This study can kind of hint at that, but I haven't gotten there because in some cases we have vanity IP addresses, vanity name servers out there, that gives you a high one to one situation. There are ways to figure this out over time and maybe you're just going to find out to help look at what's the structure of the DNS hosting out there, how many major operators out there, so we can start balancing some assumptions about the CDNS, CDS records, who you're talking to out there. I think it's interesting to know who's doing the consolidation stuff and the whole dying attack a couple years ago. Anyway, so it's interesting to know who has what where. TLDs per name server, this is not as interesting but I put it up here anyway. Most name servers only have one TLD represented, meaning the zone that they serve is in one TLD. There were two name servers that had zones and 539 TLDs out there. Hosters can do what they want. So now, compressing the tests. Now, many people have done this, recognized the idea that the way this thing worked for every zone on every name server's IP address would run a set of digs. And it's probably not necessarily do that so we'll just pick one zone and just... Okay, so I did that. I picked out one. I thought there'd be 144 to one compression value in doing that, giving that 144 zones per name server if I did a straight out average. Which meant basically middle here expected tests. I expected to have 2.7 million tests plus some unknown number for the glue list because they wouldn't be discovered until I ran the tool. Now the and the rest of it, why I bothered to put this up here was that I had to ask me how many VMs I needed to run all this stuff and that's why it was important to me. So when I launched it, I came back, I had 3.5 million total tests out there. It breaks down a certain way. Now, when I expanded back by now saying for this name server all the zones I multiplied, that was almost a billion things tested. 999 million and so on. That was a 283 to 1 expansion. I had forgotten about addresses multiplying in there. I was able to actually do all the parsing and take all the data in 24 hours which I find important because it's fresh. Analysis took another day or two of the data but at least the data was all pretty fresh from the zone file. For the glue list I found basically both of them only had one and again the that 1.465 is very close to the number of name servers that were in CCTLD so that's not too surprising that I got one out there. One of the servers that had no glue in my files had 58 address records. That's a top end. There's one at 33 and a long tail applies here and it's interesting to see with those. Now, looking at just the addresses, I'm sorry, I have a question. How many were errors? Well, the first one 210,000 were either NX domain or no error, no data. So these represent name servers of zones that are obviously, well, these are name servers that will not answer. Probably the zone is probably broken. I haven't gotten too far into that but I'm sure there are some zones out there whose all name servers just don't work. No error. When you ask a question in DNS and it turns out the name you want has no information anywhere. That's called NX domain. But if the name exists, the name actually has no information about it but doesn't have address records. We call it no error, no data. Sorry, that's a protocol jargon in there. So I meant that the name existed but it wasn't there to give you an address. A C name, it could be MX record, TXT record, it could be a delegation. It could be anything but it didn't have an address record. I didn't dive into why. This is what I call muddy data. This is glue record and authoritative data. So let me just skip across here to V4. In V4 there were 1.1 million addresses, 692,000, about half of them were one name server had one IP address. The other ones there were some sharing going on. What I have here is some of the A1, B1 sends for a slash 16 which had 332,993 name servers named in that slash 16. It doesn't say a whole lot at top. But if you look into the slash 24, A1, B1, C1 there was almost all of them were there and if you go down further into slash 24, I'm sorry I think the slashes are off. All of them are pretty much in one slash 24 which means now in the 255 range all those names are all fitting into that and I'll go into the next slide because it's really funny to look at that. And also to give you a size of scale, the next 16 out there A2, B2 again I obviously gave the IP numbers had only 46,000 name servers out there and so on. The structure, this is less interesting you don't see the real numbers. Down on the top 6 there was one that showed more of an even distribution of there were 21,000 name servers in this slash 16 and there were about 5,000 each of the slash 24s below that something look more natural. For that one really large slash 24 I actually have these counts for each of the numbers that appear there. There are 16 addresses in that slash 20, that 255 is slash 24. They have between 21,000 and 20,500 name servers. So obviously this is someone has done this on purpose where they put all these names on here and it's just really funny. These two are two blocks of eight addresses. They do belong to one provider because I know what the names were in there. But the other thing that's funny about usually when I do things like that, usually I like to have a routable blocks these don't line up with cider blocks so I don't know what the deal is here. Someone has these 16 addresses and put in 330,000 name server names in that spot and they're running and they have to be inside of a hosting provider because they can't route that, you can't route a slash 29, which is what that would be, but it's not even a slash 29 because routing would have been like four routes or whatever. Sorry. Anyway I just found this really quirky. And then to give you the scale, these are the next ones BC and D were the next blocks that were that big. So again this all goes back to finding out how many people are sharing an IP address for name servers. Now v6, because v6 has so few addresses available I look to see who was sharing there and there is some sharing there and the in one slash 48, 48 bits out of 128 bits, there are 2,000 names. That's not a big deal. That seems, there's a lot of addresses there. But the next two, add two and add three have all of those addresses on one address. Slash 128 is the full address. So there were one name server names pointing to address three and address those two address three and those two blocks. So someone out there put that many names to one v6 address. Apparently they're running out of space. I don't know. And then to give you an idea that there are other culprits out there, if you look at single IPv6 addresses, 8 or 67 down to 4 or 16, there are that many service per that address, which I don't show because it's illegal to show address I guess. But some people are actually sharing address in v6. We must break this habit, folks. So, almost the end of my slides and I haven't gotten an ed in a zero yet. But it's interesting how much work, there's much work to get me done for this. So, well, okay, I'm going to just go into this and I have these results. These were the results that came out of the testing. Now, if you see in here, I have 997 millions total at the bottom here, a total test that would have been run. These are the virtual tests being done. 91% to the DNS was okay. Which I find really high, which is good considering all the other issues I found. For ed in a zero, 76% said they were okay because these are name servers, not zones, and concern are over zones and operators and all that. For the DO bit, which I expect to be high to 77% said okay there. And Shane, you look- Is that higher than the last one? Yeah. Of course, I mean a good reason to squint your face up. The DO bit requires ed in a zero. Right. So, let me repeat this. You're saying that the DO bit here, which has higher good than basic ed in this is kind of funny because the DO requires ed in a zero. That's just for the recording. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, that happened. EDS TCP, 58%. There were like 11 tests. I didn't put a mole in here. I picked the ones that seemed the most obvious to just talk about. This one seemed to be in trouble. Of course, if it really wasn't trouble, I have 10 home minutes to go. Let me take a story about. Oh, okay. So, I figured on one hand, it was February 3rd now, two days past flag day and if Rome was burning, we'd have known about it by now. But I haven't heard anything about that. In fact, I didn't see any talks here about EDS zero flag day at all. So, I assuming that it kind of went well. So, again, I didn't really spend as much time on this because ran out of time and also so much fun setting up the experiments. And the address not found failures and this actually goes to your question earlier. I have no address records and no address is found because I forgot to put the NX domain in here. No address records was the NX domains. These are the names. They're 75% or so of all the ones that had no address didn't exist in the DNS. But a quarter of that were names that had something other than an address record. So, that's how that melted down. So, lessons learned. One thing I say for this tool is that I tried to get a clear yes or no out of the tool and I was giving a long-winded response about how you had to judge all this stuff. I get the reason. It would be nicer if this tool had given us thumb up or thumb down for the server's address for EDS zero compliance, but that was kind of out. That wasn't going to happen. This, to me, the important thing was that it gave me a framework now for studying other parts of the registration system. I'm trying to get so that I want the data to be done in a day so it's fresh data. It may take longer to now analyze the stuff. But there are a lot of things in there that we can go in and look at. One thing that I've always been concerned about and the reason why I have so many numbers and counts here is that I'm always into have I actually captured all the results and I'm trying to make sure I don't leave anything on the table. Timeouts always bug me. I want to make sure that I know how to handle these things. So, if you're writing tools out there, be really good about making sure that every response comes back is recognized by the requester and that we can count to make sure that we have everything counted for. I found in here that there were some places that I realized I missed something and it opened up to like oh, there was a bug. I forgot about a certain set of servers already for a while. So, the goal of this is to improve the ability to manage the DNS system, managing meaning not to regulate or push it around, but to know where to put more attention for improving parts of it. What parts of this will make DNS cycle faster? What parts will make everything just click much easier? So, and then to wrap up, how do I get to 11 billion digs? I had 997,000 total DNS tests. That was from one of the, so each one of those represented 11 digs. There was, in the test, there were 11 things, I think it was 11 it went for. And the GLULIS had 726,000 more digs to get their authoritative address. You add that up and I used DC because that's all I've ever learned how to use for a calculator. And I get to about 11 billion would have been digs out of all of this. So, it only appeared in DC. It didn't appear in any, there was not 11 billion pieces of traffic out on the internet. There's this. So, that's what I have. Hopefully, it's been entertaining. Nothing else. Any questions? Any, I know you all didn't go home. It's Sunday afternoon. I've just one comment regarding many of these have seen this in January. Yeah, so comment was that a lot of improvements were done in January and to reach out to improve it, to say avoid world disaster. Yeah, that's good. There was a difference in the last week which was like zero or measurement error. So, the comment about CZ's experience, they brought down to zero error rate. Can you do that for the KSK by the way? We're 2%. That's good. Yeah, one of the comments, the comment here is that DNS firewalls are causing a lot of this. And I understand that's actually why this tool was a little hard to get a yes, no answer. I have a lot of experience with doing this kind of testing. To me, a timeout always meant I didn't know what was going on out there. And so I wouldn't qualify that as an error, but as an unknown. But in this case here, it was different because sometimes you could get through there and you got a timeout that helped you pinpoint that the error was, you know, there's something else going on. So, knowing that would change how we'd analyze all the results, but then get into the ability to quite understand all of the intricacies of that. I know Mark Andrews has spent a lot of time on this and helped contacting people that certainly he flooded me with too much information basically. So, I'm sure I'm familiar with that. So, any other questions? We hadn't for a couple of reasons. Attempting outreach to TLD operators. For one thing, I think Mark had advertised that he already had. And I think, by the time I ran this stuff, Mark was saying it was all pretty much taken care of. So, I didn't even really think about doing that. Secondly, we have a certain set of GTLDs we can talk to. The CCTLDs, there's an interesting dynamic there where some CCTLDs want to operate on their own merits. Some appreciate information. And so it's not as, we're not as forthcoming with some of the, we may, you know, probably should be. And as far as contacting anyone else involved here, we don't have a direct relation, like we can't just go out to the zone owners because that goes through the multi-layers of who's in charge of the, out there. Had this test been done a year before Flag Day and we found that there were things that need to be contacted, I'm sure we would have worked out how to do this. But given the timing, that this was, you know, the data, all this data came from January 18th, which is last minute to even get this thing launched and running. I didn't even try, I didn't even attempt the outreach part of this, which would have been, which is actually what the goal was. So, I relied on other efforts out there. Yeah. Half of the comment is that CZ has a tool for, partly because I'm too lazy to actually research, I didn't look at it that much, but I also assumed that it would have blown it over anyway, so I didn't feel that bad, I didn't bother. And because I was looking at the code that Mark had given me and I did use some of his reporting and decided just, you know, having an HTML page with red and green wasn't going to scale to 450 million, you know, endless record. That's why I, it wouldn't have been brilliant to have, to have used that. But also because I didn't want to split my data up by TLD, because I didn't want to have any kind of a horse race of TLDs, that's one thing that's important. I'm trying to look at this like broads of all of it out there. One thing that's important is, you have to have goals in mind for when you do this research, like what do I want to measure, what do I want to know, what do I want to present. In some cases you don't want to do horse races, but you want to do a qualitative protocol thing. There are different ways to use the same tool that it comes down to. . . . . . . .


Hello, my name is Pavel Marek and I'm a co-founder of BamuMass. Our society is shifting towards renewable sources of energy and therefore we will need more batteries, more sustainable and grid-connected batteries. But there are already millions of batteries around the world. Can we make these batteries more sustainable and grid-connected? We can, and we have already started on a field of electric utility vehicles. There are more than 15 million of such machines and each of these machines have a big battery with average price 3,000 euros. Unfortunately, these batteries last 30% shorter than expected. It is mainly caused by the improper use, the human factor. Can you imagine that just by telling operators how to use their batteries properly we could save 30% of global battery production? No wonder of such big losses because current industrial batteries are managed with paper cars like this. But we have a better solution. We monitor the batteries by using simple sensors, which we have paid in pending. And immediately after installation the sensors connect to our cloud, which is the brain of our solution. With cloud big data analytics and interactive dashboards, we guide the operators to use their batteries in the best possible way. Which results in maximized battery lifespan, optimized operation and simple planning. Moreover, we create the biggest industrial battery performance database and can also connect all these batteries to the grid. And that's what we call battery intelligence as a service. We sell our affordable sensors to our customers and charge 10 to 15 euro per month per battery for the actual intelligence service. We utilize existing battery distributors and battery maintenance companies as our sales channel. We are successfully piloting our solution with the customers. In Finland, we have several pilots with Rokola and with Posti. And we are also piloting in Netherlands, in Argentina and in the Czech Republic. We have achieved all this with a great team of six people. Raimo, who keeps all things in order. Yevgeny, who takes care of our finances. Jeroen, who is our sales and marketing expert. And myself, I'm responsible for the product. We have also two skill developers, Alex and Heike. If you believe that our world needs better, more sustainable batteries, join us to make it happen. Thank you. Thank you. Two quick questions. That sounds very interesting. Is it for car batteries or industrial batteries or what is a battery for you? Industrial batteries. Industrial large ones. In a forklift, in a boat. But the logistics and the motive sector is the hot topic at the moment. And what's your go-to-market plan to reach those clients? Well, as I said, we are utilizing existing battery distributors and maintenance because the solution helps them to simplify the maintenance. So they have their own interests to actually deploy and spread the solution on top of the business motivation. Thank you. So are you able to measure somehow how much more efficient the battery becomes with your solution? Well, firstly, the battery do not on its own become better. But the way how it is used, it become better. And obviously that's something that we measure with a pilot. We were already able to point out that the batteries can be used better and the people start doing so, which can be seen from the information which we measure. Do you have some concrete numbers? For example, as I claim about this 30% in the beginning, that the battery lasts shorter on average. So this is something that we can see. We do not run long pilots, but we can extrapolate. Thank you. And thank you, Drew. Thank you very much.


This is the Autobahn in Germany, an express highway between Helmsted and the Federal Republic of Germany and Berlin, 110 miles eastward behind the Iron Curtain. It is the only authorized motor route to Berlin through the Soviet occupied zone. The major portion of travel to and from Berlin by individuals is by way of the duty train. Operated by the U.S. Army Transportation Corps, the train runs between Helmsted and the isolated city. Official contact with border personnel in the Soviet zone is made by the train commander. To the American soldier, the trip through the Soviet occupied zone is routine. If anything in this region of potential crisis could be called routine. For it despite tension and conflict elsewhere in the world, Germany remains a critical area and a constant challenge to our soldiers stationed here. In this issue of the big picture, you'll see why it is necessary for the United States to maintain troops in Western Germany and some of the ways in which the men of the U.S. Army Europe perform their NATO mission as a deterrent force against aggression. June 1948, the pattern of post-war crises that are to plague Germany takes shape. It begins with blockade, isolation threatens starvation for the people of free West Berlin, a city brought to a standstill. In an attempt to force the United States, Britain and France out of Berlin, the Soviets have cut off all ground routes to the allied sector. The attempt fails. Around the clock, airlift is put into operation by the allied powers. Food, fuel and medical supplies are loaded at locations in West Germany for flights to the beleaguered city. In the eleven months of the blockade, United States Army and Air Force teams working with other allied units bring in over two million tons of vitally needed supplies to keep the city alive. June 1953, another summer crisis. This time it is East Berlin as the people riot against the communist regime. Disatisfaction with political pressures and a low standard of living in East Berlin trigger a flow of refugees to the western sector of the city. In July 1961, 30,000 refugees cross into West Berlin. In August, 22,000 more join them. To stop the exodus which threatens the communist labor force and the economy in East Berlin, the East Germans build a wall between the communist and western sectors. Now the shape of the Soviet pattern for Germany is clear. Devisiveness, in violation of World War II agreements, recurrent attempts to probe the extent of the commitment of the United States and allied troops in Germany. It is equally clear that the role of the United States as a deterrent force in Western Europe must be firmly established. Powerful and highly mobile communist forces in Eastern Europe number over half a million men. Well-trained and well-equipped, they pose a continuing security threat to all of Europe. But despite threats, harassment and the presence of a large hostile force on or near its doorstep, free West Berlin has flourished. Other areas in the Federal Republic of Western Germany have prospered. Under the protection of the North Atlantic Treaty powers and West Germany's own security forces, great new urban centers have risen as thriving agricultural development and a vast industrial complex which spurs the West German economy among the highest in Europe. A free people going about their daily lives under a free government of their own choosing. Partner to West Germany's economic and political well-being and one of the major NATO powers is the United States, whose army in Europe contributes substantially to the security of the region. The United States Army Europe, known as USERER, with headquarters in Heidelberg, Germany, controls the activities of over a quarter of a million soldiers who make up one of the most powerful and sophisticated military forces in history. The elements of the United States Army Europe are deployed in central and South Germany, along 300 miles of the Iron Curtain and in depth westward. USERER vigilance begins at border areas near some of West Germany's most ancient and colorful towns. At Fulda on the edge of the Iron Curtain, USERER elements have the responsibility for securing the border area against unlawful penetration. Armored cavalry regiments on border duty are carefully briefed before setting out on their patrols. Armed with latest information regarding any incidents in the area that may affect their mission, they take off on their assignment. Stops are made en route to the border for a close look around. Mission posts based periodically in border areas provide a vantage point for surveillance of the communist zone. These are the outposts, the distant warning stations that keep a sharp eye out for border violations which may mean the beginning of another crisis. Constant alert is a way of life for USERER border patrol teams. Building the highly specialized forces needed for critical assignments in Europe requires continuous training and education. At Bodd-Tolz, the Non-Commissioned Officers Academy offers instruction in leadership and other combat-oriented courses. Since its establishment in 1949, more than 62,000 military students have taken the instruction. The academy develops the soldier's confidence to apply his technical knowledge and leadership in the practical situations of combat. Because a non-commissioned officer must be a teacher as well as a leader, courses in instructor training give the student experience in the fundamentals of military instruction. Often a lecture will be combined with a classroom demonstration and the student instructor must be able to make his presentation clearly and concisely. To carry out his assignment successfully, the non-commissioned officer must be able to locate himself and his squad or platoon on the map and then use map and compass to reach his objective. Every non-commissioned officer is a potential combat leader. Training in tactics stresses the ability of the student to make and execute a plan in response to a given problem. All courses at the NCO Academy are aimed at increasing self-reliance and the capability of guiding other soldiers in combat. User-Root Training programs are extensive and varied. Instruction and aviation is carried on at Mannheim using modern tactical aircraft employed by Army units. Army helicopter pilots master the intricacies of rotary flight. So important to today's combat operation, communications is high at least a soldier's training schedule. With modern combat weaponry achieving unprecedented sophistication, electronic communication support requires skilled personnel to operate and maintain the equipment. At the Combined Arms School in Bilsack, about 30 miles from the check border, personnel of other NATO armies join U.S. troops in training for key assignments involving tracked vehicles. With the fixed-fire extinguisher system of the M-681 tank, there are three 10-pound cylinders filled with CO2. If for some reason a fire breaks out in the engine compartment, then you will pull this handle all the way out real hard and one of these extinguishers will at this time discharge. Then when you release the handle, it will go back in. An important activity of the school is operation of a tank gunnery range for U.S. armor units and allied tank crews. In this range conference room, unit representatives meet in advance of their company's arrival to plan maneuver sites and programs. Use of range facilities is coordinated to ensure all units' maximum opportunity to demonstrate their firing skill. The Grafenwehr-Bilsack training area provides ample space for testing armor knowledge in practical field problems. This area is the largest training ground available to U.S. forces in Europe and can accommodate a wide variety of military activities. The range control desk serves as the communication center and the control point for all firing ranges within the Grafenwehr-Bilsack complex. Among the exercises scheduled in the area is the assembly and firing of Army tactical missiles. A strong deterrent in the balance of communist and Western power in Europe. The proximity of these military ranges to the iron curtain border gives training activities here a special urgency. Our soldiers abroad learn not only the tactical specialties of combat, but systems and methods for military management and office procedures. Administrative personnel receive instruction in automatic data processing, needed for control of the large numbers of men and vast amounts of equipment in United States Army Europe. In all, the Usurer Educational Development Program employs more than 150 Army centers, mostly in Germany, which offer soldiers an opportunity to sharpen their Army skills in occupational specialty training, as well as in academic subjects. Usurer responsibilities include air as well as land defenses. An air defense battalion at a hawk missile site in southern Germany stages periodic alerts to keep the men in readiness condition. The hawk missile is designed for use primarily against low-flying enemy aircraft. Other elements of the US Army Europe Air Defense Command are equipped with Nike Hercules long-range missile systems, similar to the ones guarding some American cities. Readiness evaluations on all air defense systems are often held without notice to test the capabilities of both men and equipment in simulating missile firing. For practical firing experience, Usurer air defense soldiers are tested annually in missile marksmanship. Training continues, too, for the airborne soldier, important to modern swift-striking combat forces. Airborne brigades hold regularly scheduled jump exercises over West Germany. Preparation for every type of combat response is a major concern of the US Army. All Usurer divisions are flexibly structured with forces trained and ready to meet any military threat. The payoff of training programs is the maneuver. The full field exercise in which men and equipment are fused into strong, hard-hitting battle units. On the vast, flat maneuver lands of Graffenwehr, units up to divisional strength simulate the complex problems of modern land warfare. Germany's many rivers and waterways impede movement of ground forces, but US Army engineers provide bridging support for combat units. Everywhere, the accent is on quickness of deployment, as well as firepower. A combination proved in the swiftly moving conflict on the flat lands of Central Europe in World War II. Regardless of weather or season, battalion-sized units take to the field for exercises at least six weeks each year. Usurer elements receive support from US Navy and Air Force units in exercises implementing responsibilities of the joint United States military command in Europe. As a member of the NATO Defense Pact, US Army troops participate in maneuvers with our allies. Operation Absalom deployed US units to Denmark for realistic war games. Important exercise, Operation Black Lion. West German, Frank, and American combat units fit modern military techniques and weapons against a simulated enemy invasion. At pre-designated assembly areas, each force employs its mobility and firepower in a test of Allied cooperation. Quick counter-attack and neutralization of any aggressor thrust into Allied territory. Independently or in joint practice with our allies, training in United States Army Europe is a full-time business which pays dividends in keeping usurer forces combat-ready at all times. Along with his training as a fighting man, the US soldier in Europe is provided with a pleasant and constructive environment for his off-duty hours. Army rest and recreation centers, such as the one at Garmish, are important morale builders. Key and shooting meat combines both sport and an important military skill. For less active leisure, there are dozens of spare-time activities, including a bookmobile, which brings latest books, magazines, and recordings to widespread units. Part of an extensive US Army library system in Europe. To promote good relationships between the American soldier in Europe and his West German counterpart in the Bundeswehr is a continuing goal of usurer. Project Partnership, begun in 1967, brings enlisted personnel of both nations together in a variety of activities. German military police brief American MPs on local traffic regulations as part of a command information program. Project Partnership includes recreational programs and sports competitions, which serve the double purpose of promoting friendship and contributing to physical fitness. To know relationships between German and American soldiers and their dependents are encouraged. Relaxed environment, friendships are strengthened. Visitors and hosts become familiar with each other's customs and backgrounds. Jointly sponsored fellowship activities stimulate increased contacts between German and American soldiers and serve the mutual interests of the two armies. The essential to our Army's mission in Europe is adequate logistical support. The United States Army Communication Zone, located to the rear of our troop deployments in Western Germany, is a complex of supply depots and service facilities backing up the fighting man. Stores of vehicles and military equipment are maintained at strategic locations throughout the area. Army transportation personnel man every type of materials handling equipment to load and unload freight and cargo. From preparing parachutes for the airborne soldier to the repair of heavy armored equipment, logistical facilities for U.S. Army Europe provide continuous support in every combat specialty. Verhaven, a main port of entry for U.S. Army material earmarked for our troops in West Germany, supplies are unloaded and moved without delay to their destination. The Army's far-flung transportation system in Western Germany makes certain that vital military supplies, weapons, fuel and ammunition reach the soldier in sufficient quantity to keep him ready for combat at all times. Providing the use of elements with signal support is a network of up-to-date communications facilities. On a remote outpost atop a mountain in Germany's Black Forest is a tropospheric scatter site. At the peak of the mountain, a miniature Eiffel Tower is equipped with parabolic antennas in addition to complex control facilities. Elaborate electronic equipment inside the station connects with Army radio systems around the world. Despite obstruction of the signals by the barrier of the Swiss Alps and extreme weather variations, the tropospheric scatter facility provides a 60 voice channel for vital communications. Assigned personnel keep the channels open and the message is moving. An essential activity in the preparedness of the United States Army in Europe. In today's world of swiftly developing crises, the capability for a quick response to military emergency is indispensable for the fulfillment of United States commitments abroad. Periodic rotation of American troops to Western Europe ensures the continuing presence of fresh and alert forces. In the city of Berlin, United States Army Europe has several important missions arising out of the division of the city into Allied and Soviet zones. Completely isolated behind the iron curtain, Berlin has been called the island city or the island of freedom. While American soldiers stationed here are part of usurer, they are not committed to the NATO alliance. Their unique position inside the communist-surrounded city gives them a strong psychological role in preserving our rights in West Berlin. The tactical fighting force of the US Army in Berlin is the Berlin Brigade which conducts special training for its mission of protection. Because any hostile military action within 340 square miles of Berlin would have to involve conflict in the streets, first training priority goes to this type of operation. Using actual structures and street areas developed for combat in cities' exercises, brigade soldiers move quickly to demonstrate tactics in house-to-house fighting. The US military force in the city is the Berlin Garrison which consists of various strategic units designed for specific missions. Members of a military police company patrol the streets on the lookout for any signs of disturbance or disorder. Our MPs cooperate with West Berlin police in maintaining a close watch over the city. Situation reports are made regularly so that the US Army Berlin command can keep alert to tensions which may threaten the city's security. Air patrols make regular observation flights over the western sector, ready to spot conditions of potential trouble. Security is maintained too by water patrol. At Berlin command headquarters, around the clogged vigil, ensures quick response to trouble anywhere in the city. We have a traffic accident involving a German national and American vehicle. In this critical border region, incidents can mushroom quickly into international crises. Our soldiers in Berlin must be ready to cope with emergencies. To both vehicles, minor. With the German police at the scene of the accident. Right away. Good. There are many people who understand or say they don't. What is the great issue between the free world and the communist world? Let them talk. The continuing United States commitment to Berlin emphasized dramatically by President John F. Kennedy represents as well a commitment to the entire Federal Republic of West Germany. Communism is the wave of the future. Let them come to Berlin. Is enslaved? Citizens of Berlin. I take pride in the words. Threat to a free Berlin and a free western Germany is the 12-mile wall that divides the city. American soldier in Europe does his job with courage and determination, whether on guard at Checkpoint Charlie in Berlin or in division strength on training maneuvers over the Great Plains and valleys to the west. This is the United States Army Europe, ready to do its security job as a partner in the North Atlantic Treaty Alliance.