This video is brought to you in part by TrueTech Tools, quality tools, essential support. Previously on HVACR Survival We're heading to the airport and we're heading out to California and we're going to do a transport trailer across the country. So we just got out of the airport. I'm waiting on my guy, NASA, to pick me up. The heating and cooling units there are underneath the tarp. It's obviously connects to those there. And the return's here with me and a reset, circuit breaker, high and low pressure taps. Well guys, that concludes our walk around the town of downtown, San Diego. 100 meter motor yacht. 150 million, dude. Alright, so we're having a few problems here as you can see. We're like, backed up forever, to all the way to forever. It looks like they got to get over to the right thing up here. I'll just take a look at my equipment and see how it's doing. Looks like it's running. Feels like it's running. See our little criss-crossy thing? I'm literally just kind of... Man, it is cranking the heat out though. It's doing pretty amazing things here. I mean, look at this view out here. I mean, it's pretty... I've never been here before. We're in Arizona right now. Alright, so we stopped kind of late because we were having problems with that road closure. We didn't get as far as we needed to go. We can only drive till about 7 at night because of the oversized load. But we can start at 4.30 in the morning so we'll be back over here at 4.30, 5.30ish area, something like that. We got a real bad smell of propane, which they let anybody refill these. So this thing was all the way up to over full. It was well over, and as you can see now, we're at 3.25. So what I ended up doing was opening this up like that. First try to hear, obviously, it's going to be lower pressure take forever. I went ahead and did it here. The check valve in there isn't that great.  To make it safer, what I ended up doing was going and getting a little cone over there. Ricocheting it outside of this because, you know, it's just going to float away out here. We got it so it ain't leaking no more, it's leaking out of the side of it. Now it's just a matter of trying to get a hotel, but like I said, we got to be here right away. First thing, so it's 8.20.  You can at least get cleaned up, get a break away from the band, the RV, whatever, and it will continue forward. That's an asteroid or something, comet, whatever. All right, this isn't too bad. They even gave us some cheez-its. We got a sink, got a dishwasher, coffee pot, microwave. This is better than the thing we had in San Diego. We're going to go to Sleepy Sleep here in a minute because it's got to get up early. It's 8.38 right now.  We left at 4.30.  Barrier continues for a while. This should be kind of the worst section of it. We just got into Texas a little bit ago, and that lane right there is awfully tight in the house. I got 12 horns, man. Can you put that on YouTube? 12 horns? Well, next go, if I was to name it. Finally, to our first stop in Texas. So that's what's going on. All right, let's go in here. Oh, great. It says we're sold out. Look at us. You have reservation. So are they really sold out? It says on the door they're sold out. They're still in reservation. Yeah. All right, so because I didn't know everyone was booking the rooms, the whole hotel sold out. They were nice enough to find me one that they just remodeled. As you can see on the floor. But it's a place to sleep for a few hours that we'll get. We're out here in the windowware, so that's what happens. All right, so microphone's on the wrong side, but we've got to get ready here. So it's my turn to go out there. I'm going to grab something to eat real quick. I'm 10 minutes late, but I wanted to eat at least one good meal. A huggy sandwich from the gas station last night for supper wasn't all that great. People upstairs wouldn't stop walking around. I mean, even at 12.30, they're walking around like they had combat boots on or something. Here we go. Basically, you've got the HVAC control over here, which is pretty brain-dead. So you can go right in there and you can adjust the temperature alarms and all that. And then you've got the G factors over here. That's basically keeping track of temperature sensors, which we've got six of them or seven of them, and you've got relative humidity in there. Also, it's doing the graph over here. And then there's a data logger inside the machine that's also doing its thing. In case, you know, anything bad happens, it'll be noted so you know. So there's a little antennas that they're using. They're doing a bridge from here to up there on the trailer. So all the temperature things come to the back, back here into that little silver box. Then it's blown them up into a network of goodies and shot back here, these. It's got quite a bit of range. You've got different jackries and stuff. ACs have been having issues. This one here, it's blown about 14.9 amps. And in the rear one, it's probably going to be exactly the same. That's kind of what we're doing, what we've got going on. I mean, if the stuff's running, what else do you need to do? There really ain't much. You guys know that, you know, set our home babysit something. You know, some of the things where so much money involved, they're going to be for cautious. All right, so finally, one of our first potty breaks or whatever. Still in Texas, I believe. Everything's been going pretty good so far. Temperatures are holding pretty decent. Around 71, 62 just to make it run. Committedly levels have stayed good. So we're doing all right. It's not real super hot though yet today either. Hi. We've got six wings and two monsters. Honestly, I'm afraid to eat too much. Might get the parties. That'd be bad. So a little bit of wings. You never know depending on where we get at, whether or not we're going to have a place to eat something good or if it's just going to be bars and whatever else that you can kind of find because it's hit and miss when you're out here in wilderness.  This sounds like they must just have a couple big cities and that's it. Everything else is desolate. We weren't getting a signal for the jeeter on the fan and so you're going to release the states. And G was inactive. Now it's active. Must have had a brain freeze. Oh well, it's going to work now without its assistance. So just jumped it from RG. I wanted to do a restart and that would have fixed it. Oh well. The rain here in Texas. So we're in Louisiana right now. We're going to save this holiday and express over there. One problem earlier. Motor wasn't wanting to run. It said it wasn't giving a signal on the G terminal. Went ahead, just jumped RG, got it running. But the problem is when I reset it, it freaking started working again. It's not a big deal. It's doing the job. It's keeping it down now. The sun's going down though. The temperature is dropping pretty quick. Alright, this isn't too bad. This holiday and express. Good enough to sleep and poop in I guess. Good enough for tonight. We've got to eat yet. And then we've got to watch the...  So that's what we are doing. We're set at 70. That ain't having a very good day, but the clock don't work on a refund. I think he's got problems. Alright, we're going down. We're going, here we go. It's been a long day. Every day's been a long day. Although I'm not working hard, it's a lot of setting on your butt. So, you know, and kind of setting there, looking out the window. Just hoping something maybe goes wrong, or maybe not hoping that something goes wrong. I don't know for something to do.  A little too much electronics I think. Alright, so I got me a Tahitah Burrito there to go. Kind of a neat looking little restaurant. I'm going to head over here and maybe set this thing for three hours and then somebody else will take over. So there's the hotel and things over here. Alright guys, this looks pretty good actually. You ready for this? I'm used to white queso. They've got yellow. So, authentic Mexican restaurant. We've got all the goodies here that you can ask for. They can monitor our temperatures and our humidities. Our humidity two through six is in the bag. So, humidity, they want under 60. Temperature, obviously they're not too horribly worried about it. I mean obviously they don't want above 80, but we're not going to be anywhere near that. The units are both set at 62. Reheats only on one of them. So, let's eat. And just sit here and wait for another three hours and we'll get rolling tomorrow morning at 7.30. Unless something bad happens. Alright, so I'm done. 11.13. Heading over here to the castle. Going to get cleaned up and start tomorrow. Another day, another dollar. Alright, so it's the morning time. It's 6.38. We're going down there to get some breakfast right now. Then we got to hop on the RV and then we're going to get moving again. We're in Louisiana and to head north. Eventually. So, how are you? Not too bad. Looks like he got a lot to sleep. Alright, so we're stopping a lot earlier today. It's 6.13. And we are here. Over back behind me there is behind all them trucks over there is the hotel. This is a decent room here Holiday Express. We're going to go eat. Let's go see what's going on. Hi. I feel warm up. Alright, that was a good steak for the most part. It had a lot of fat on it, but it was a different place to try out which is kind of cool and that's the whole point of doing it. So, we're heading back. I got to go to bed. And we have to go out and do a two hour turn. So, it's Monday, 2.12. We're going to go out there and set in the trailer RV and watch the thing for till 5 o'clock and then everybody else will be out there in the relief. I'll be back in to check out one before we leave. Okay. Yeah, we're in Tennessee. We'll face traffic here. So, this is a little different than most of my videos. What's going on so far and really honestly, the hope is that there won't be. If I did my job right, like I've said before, crap's not going to break. Not granted. The crap's getting shaken on a truck for 2,500 miles or more one direction than 2,500 miles the other direction. Alright. Alright, alright, alright. Here we go. Getting her, getting her. Hell, that's the freaking semi, right? To keep myself busy and to be sure that it's actually running like it's supposed to. Let's go ahead and take this thing apart, which I just did. I wanted to make sure because you can feel and that's warm. So the reheat isn't on, you know the reheats work. I think these thermostats really need to have the extra sensors hooked up so they have discharge temperature sensors in there. I think discharge temperature is just as important as some of the other ones. Right now, obviously, everything on this thing is completely dry. Freaking airfishing. Crap. G.E. junk. I have never liked G.E.s. Everything's held on pretty good so far. Yippity, yippity, yippity. 61% humidity in there. 67 on the temperature. Set for 53, 58. We're really having to push her hard down low. The thing that's killing us is the HEPA filter is actually up there at the top on the supply side. This filter that was at the back I didn't realize it when I was working on it prior to hooking it up that's why things were going to be out of order. That filter there used to be connection on the back and it kept it from going out there. It was like a last resort if anything got into the system before it blew it on to the unit. This one's not as big of a deal because none of the electronics are on it yet. Okay. Just you and me. It's 232. It wasn't even late. It would be great if they had an alarm system setup. I said something about it. Believe it or not what makes no sense is the budget for a lot of this. Is this big in some spots and for other spots it's that big. It's just goofy. But we're doing great. It's a 7% humidity and that's inside the box. Alright I don't know if something blows up I'll do it with you guys later. Alright, so my ship is just about over 445. I'm picking these guys up and getting this thing out of here. When I booked the wrong date this is like the second time on this trip you think you're on the right month and you're not because they started off in November and you actually booked it for October and it's cold here with Hilton so we just stop and see where we're at. We aren't going to make it all the way back tonight but we will tomorrow. Alright, so we're in Virginia two hours away from Goddard not a bad bucket land pretty basic. Right there's our camper. Alright guys, so let's go over here and see what we can get for lunch supper. It's 2 o'clock. Yeah, 2 o'clock, 2.15 o'clock. I'm not tired. I had a monster, one of those white mint blanche monsters, zero sugar. Alright a little chick for life. Alright guys, so it's 2.15 in the morning which is awesome.  I'm really going to miss getting up like this and really going to be heart breaking. My ears are just ringing.  They're pretty loud. We're hoping you're not forgetting nothing. As far as I know, I'm not. We were good yesterday. Let's try it again today. Alright, so 7.55 and we are here. There we go. Well, we made it destination done so we'll see if we get some more footage on anything that you're going to see. Got to hop on a plane fly back to two locations before we get back, but that's what the plan is. I really appreciate you guys taking the time to watch the video. It will be real tech savvy, but it was definitely what is involved with like a transport mission. Behind there of course is a huge plenum. Air goes through this other side is the return plenum. You can actually walk in between both ends of it. Where's the air being pushed from the HEPA filters out and this wall here is actually perforated. You go through there and then it goes up and the air handling units are up on top with the makeup there and the filtering and everything like that. So they are doing some outside air with it. Yeah. Huge gas thermal back chamber. I'll walk you over there. That's our fuse right there. That's inside. It looks like acoustics. What's that thing? It's probably SES. Is that vacuum? Is that doing vacuum or what is that? They'll pull a vacuum on it. They'll blow nitrogen in there. They'll get it down to this is actually about halfway up. It goes down. I'll show you a picture of it. The lid of it comes off. That's what that photo was. And we're standing at about these shrouds and platforms in there. There's like an examples one. They'll go in. They'll mount a big camera system to it. They'll rotate around. Basically when they end up getting down to cryo temperature and blow a vacuum on it they'll use the imaging system to check out different aspects. What is that one? There's another one over there. I'll say an oxidizer That's the propulsion system. They have them like these special platforms stainless steel drum They have those four flip tides. Can I show this stuff? I don't want to get you in trouble. Can I show this or no? Are you sure? These diving boards connect up to one of those, the brain. We bring them in the clean room. You'll actually have a guy that's hanging off of it. He'll lay down on it as far as stuff. It allows us to get amazing reach on the flight hardware. It's pretty cool. It's a big static facility. Basically you'll have a bolt pattern on the bottom. You'll bolt something down and pull on it from the top. Hydraulics or chain noise stuff like that to pull on it. Strength test it? Area 151. Any facts are there? Are G&2 and K-bottles like that? Okay, so here we have, these are all still at the area. What kind of people are working in these? Are there just techs, scientists? Mostly, I mean technicians are the ones that are actually assembling things. Scientists work in the office for those part of the sector. That's actual flight hardware. They'll put the hardware on there and they'll slide it in. That's just another T-Vac chamber. The baby size T-Vac chamber. I can be a small one. There's one that's almost like handheld based. What's this for? Your base is what we're going to be moving to. What's the base do? Plankton. Plankton. Here it's all cloud and ocean ecosystem. Oh, I thought you already did that. Didn't you already do it? I'm sure there's a Is this all the data that you're collecting? These are, yeah, these are all like electronic racks that are hooked up to it. They communicate with it. They all have a different function. Basically, K-A band. You have like these harnesses that go into it and hook them right on. It's your cooling when you need it. Yeah, it's a little That's actually base. I noticed they got an unlimited budget for that. It's funny looking as all get out. What's the end? What's something like on the inside there? That's called the DAC. Deployable Arcism. So where's Arcismo at? So the IC is actually buried basically above the gold part. So there's going to be something else attached to that device that we brought? Yeah, the spacecraft bus that was sitting outside there. Engineering unit is below it. That's what that whole gold band there give you an idea of the scale basically. You can see the high gain antenna sticking out the back and some of the solar rays that are on the side that are deployed outward. There's a model upstairs that we can look at and we can see inside and you can see where the IC is actually sitting. So are you guys going to unwrap this thing? They're going to unwrap it today. But for that I'll be going by then for like a year. That's a lot nicer unit than what we had. But they have the same like I was looking in here it has the same eco net Carol Yeah. All this tech came from that first unit that they started building. That's a lot nicer interface there. Yeah. A lot nicer. Alright guys that's going to finish the tour around NASA. I hope you enjoyed the video like I said they were going to unpack in the clean room and that just takes too much time for them to get everything ready for that and by that time I had already left for my flight back. Once again thanks for watching the video I really appreciate it if you haven't subscribed please do so. Make sure to get the notifications turned on until next time later.


of all the materials that I explored at Hormel Center, these were the ones that stuck out to me, and it's not just because there's a Wizard of Oz picture on it, although that definitely helped. These are the scrapbooks for somebody named David Sabato. So, David Sabato came to San Francisco in the 90s. We have a lot of stuff in common. We have some familial roots in Honolulu, or both strippers, just kidding.  Yay! So, it wasn't just any drag queen, but the preeminent drag queen of the late 90s in San Francisco. So, hosted events at institutions that still exist today, like The End Up, Benchen Barn Oakland, which is ironically where my mom partied in college. Yeah. And at the end touch on Polk, which was an Asian club that my drag mom got her start at. So it's like so many connections. Not only that, but she was very politically active. She contributed to the Americans with Disabilities Act, the AIDS Bill of Rights, fundraised for a lot of prominent organizations and causes. So this rich, robust legacy. And somehow, suddenly, inexplicably, she disappeared. Some speculated it was HIV-AIDS. Some said she went to Oklahoma, but I'm like, I don't know about that. Which is unfortunate because I was born. And I really could have used a role model like that, you know? So my piece is called Where's Desiree? And it's a speculative poem on where she is. Okay. Desiree is not on Tinder.  She is not a 9 p.m. noise complaint filed over someone's daughter's quinceanera. And she would never wear Google Glass on Bart. Desiree is your best friend, pleading you to not text that dude back because one, he's a Gemini. Two, I'm like, I'm waiting. Julie, sorry. Two, like, everything is in retrograde right now. And three, if he doesn't like Cardi B, how cute is he really? Desiree is at SF Pride 2008. She is a loop of beads thrown from a sunbaked rooftop that, even from stories above, miraculously rings the neck of a queen walking below. Oh, that worked out a lot better in my head. She does this consensually. And as the queen looks up to see who bestowed upon her this holy-ass gift, realizes that, oh, M.G., it's Alex's ex Chad, the go-go dancer who broke Joshua's heart, who left him to have a three-way with Joshua's play party DJ and Honey Mahogany, and they're a threple now. Yeah, that, Chad.  Robin's old and better album is playing, and besides, it's Pride. Get over it. Desiree is in Georgia. She is the purple rhinestone butt plug that blasts from the crusty butthole of Republican Brian Kemp as his filibusting tantrum reaches its climax in the protest of the swearing of true governor, Stacey Abrams. The butt plug hits the tiled floor with a clang and stunned, the courtroom looks to Brian for explanation. And at that moment, the spirit of Desiree corrupts Brian's mouth to shout, painful, bleeding hemorrhoids.  Brian kneels and hastily mashes the pause button in. He looks up, eyes are shined with fresh terror. In the back row, George, Brian's gardener, whom the butt plug is named after, surreptitiously mouths, I love you, to Brian. Brian's lip quivers. But instead of saying it back as his body wants, he stuffs it back down and cries. Desiree is in the mission.   Socrates, she calls out, mildly irritated. Socrates, or Persia the drag queen, is at once in the store and not. Persia is staring down the aisle entranced by one cardinal red prom dress, all marvelousness and light, as bright and blinding as her future. A gust picks up from inside the store, emanating from this very dress, it seems, as the world around her darkens, and from all around her a voice calls out. Persia. Persia's soul whispers, yes. But from beyond the clouds of her trance rings the voice of her mother, not again Socrates. Persia looks from her mother to her desire, then back again. A single tear collects and tumbles down her cheek. It splits into two, one her true calling, and the other, the empty coffin of her mother's expectations. Persia beelines to the dress, as her mother calls out, so this is it.  Without hesitation, Persia embraces the dress. In a burst of brilliant color, Persia peels like an exquisite banana, her inner meat pluming out into a sparkling, iridescent tropical bird. Persia turns her beak, so her one good tropical bird eye is facing her now astonished mother.  Persia's mother nods bitterly, so be it, she says. And with that, Persia swoops out of the thrift store and off into space. Finally, Desiree is in the White House. She is watching Donald Trump shake a bag of Cheetos into a blender of Viagra pills, well-done steak, Heinz ketchup, and Kikoman soy sauce. I love writing. Donald slaps on the blender lid, a skew, and studies the dashboard. Crush, liquefie, so much text and no pictures. He raises his right hand, and just before coming down on all the buttons at once, his assistant rushes and screaming up, up, up, up, up, up. Donald steps away from the blender muttering. Don't use my Nutra bullet, she says. Why, it's the absolute greatest blender alive.  Donald collapses into his chair and flips on Fox News to a banner that reads, Clansmen have feelings too. To the assistant, he tilts his chin up and points to his gaping mouth expectantly. The assistant sighs deeply, concentrating as hard as he can on the smiling faces of his wife, his family, and his children. He steps toward Donald, flips the blender jar, and pats the pallid gray swamp-like muck into Donald's mouth. Donald gulps audibly. A shudder courses through the assistant. Go, says Melania Trump, who is now in the doorway. Thinking the high heavens, the assistant rushes from the room. You used my Nutra bullet. Melania says, you used my Nutra bullet for the last time. What? He croaks. Those pills, not Viagra, says Melania. It's fentanyl. Donald hacks once more. He oh, he jokes, patting his thigh. His face turns from tomato red to purple. Melania saunters closer to Donald. And those steaks, not beef. As she leans into whisper, it's Stormy Daniels. Donald shrieks, eyes crossed and twitching. What kind of woman are you? And in a puff of Cheeto-colored smoke, he is reduced to a cockroach, which Melania smashes with her high heel with a delightful crunch. Silly Donald, Melania tits. I am not man. Melania digs her fingernails into her forehead and peels her skin back. A grip of hair falls to the floor, revealing the evil Republican identical twin of Sarah Hurwitz, Michelle Obama's speech writer. I am free. She squeals in that cement-walled hallway of an accent.  As passers-by from outside the White House walk their dogs and tilt their heads at the lights, speculating, totally unaware of what has become of her president. Desiree is camp and unadulterated queer joy. She will never be the man who mugged her in the Marina Twilight, nor the steel toes of their boots and their tooth-cracking thuds.  She is sheer determination, ever pushing the needle of her story towards her light. She transforms that bruise into a smoky eye. She downs that drink, she kisses that man, and she trots onward because the pictures do not know any of this. The people do not come to the show for hearts that hold you like empty parking lots and curse the sun for the shadows it casts. We are here to laugh, we are here to forget.


Hello and welcome today. We're going to be looking at writing a script that waits for a certain device in this particular case We're gonna be waiting for a flash drive. Now all disks all drives on your computer will have a UU ID and identification Usually string of digits. It's something that you can you can manually change when you format it But unless you go and change it for that device It's going to constantly stay the same each time you plug it in so you can look for this and Wait for a device now. This is different than saying your device There are options in there that I've gone over in the past that basically constantly look for certain things to be plugged in This is you're running a script the script will say okay now plug in this device And it will wait for that device before this particular script continues running So real quick if I list out in our dev folder, we're gonna have dev and then disk will be our disk devices We there's another folder in there called by UU ID. This will list them out by UU ID So we run that and you can see I have a couple of devices if I was to give the longer command for ls of dash L It would actually show you what drives they're pointing to but now remember something like this device is SDA1 that may change depending on the order of devices being plugged in where the UU ID should stay the same unless again You change it yourself, which is a process of doing is not just going to happen So right now, let me go back and clear the screen list out all Files or in this case links inside this folder. You can see them all I'm gonna plug in a flash drive wait a second And then I'm going to run this list command again, and you can see there is a new one It's this one right here the o3 cb-1 c0 f Okay So I can take that put it in my script and tell my script to keep checking for this device and wait for it to exist Again, it doesn't need to be mounted right now. It's not mounted. It's just looking to see if it's plugged in And then you can have your script mounted if you want or format it or do whatever you want or just do something Has nothing to do with the drive But I already have the script written. I'm going to put this up on paceman There'll be a link in the description to where you can find it But let's go over it real quick. So very short here I'm setting a variable to the UU ID of that device and then I'm setting where it should look for that Now it's going to say please attach that device and then wait for UU ID, okay? We're going to say dash and that says no new line So what I'm going to do here is just give you some output that the script is still running So now we're going to say okay If this link does not exist keep looping, okay So it's looking for this drive and every second it's going to loop so it's and each time it loops It's going to print out a new period dot dot dot just to give you some indication that the script is still running and waiting And we'll check every second once it loops and finds that it exists It will break out of this loop and then continue in this case We're just going to print a message of it is connected and of course you can do whatever you want in your script after that Let's go ahead quit out of this. We will run this. Well first. Let me unplug the drive and Now I will run the script and you can see that it is waiting and you can see the dot dot dot just a little indication that it's still waiting Please attach this device and I will plug it in and it should only take a second or two There you go device is connected So that's how you do that. You just wait till the device exists. It's loop and again This is different. It's not something you're going to run in the background all the time There's other options for that But for this particular case again, you might have a script that you want to wait for a certain Device to exist before continuing. So I thank you for watching films by chris.com. That's Chris the K There's a link in the description and as always. I hope that you have a great day


Hey guys, it's MJ and in this video we're going to be continuing our discussion around finance for the fellowship exam and We're going to be looking at Foreign investors. So before we've been looking at the main investing classes being private individuals financial intermediaries Businesses and now we're going to be looking at foreign investors Okay, and like always this is an unscripted video, this is me just you know studying out loud I've got quite a skeptical approach. So this video is going to be very much opinion based Feel free to join the discussion in the comment section below if I do forget to say something I will add it in the comment section But job, this is all going to be opinion based Well, I mean I'm going through the notes, but I'm going to be flavoring it a lot with my opinion So these videos are just to help me help me study and thank you so much for joining in so what we're going to be talking about is foreign investors and Foreign investors, I mean depending on what country you're in Foreign investors are going to play a different role so I am from South Africa as many of you already know that the greatest country in the world and So the way South Africans will look at foreign investors will be very different to say how America looks at foreign investors the role of foreign investors in South Africa will play a much bigger role or a different role To say foreign investors in the United Kingdom or say a European country so Let's look at South Africa South Africa is considered as an emerging market So yeah, we come considered emerging Market although if you come to Cape Town you will be surprised because I mean it's a world-class city and it puts all the European cities to shame But because we're very diverse and we do have a lot of poverty Throughout our country. We are known as an emerging market Now why do foreign investors Want to invest in South Africa? So foreign investors like to come to South Africa because of the fact that we're an emerging market and They might see that we might have higher returns But the main reason for foreign investment is a thing known as diversification Okay diversification. I'm assuming you guys are very comfortable with finance. I don't have to explain diversification Essentially, you want to have assets that are uncorrelated to reduce the overall volatility of your portfolio So yeah, foreign investors are attracted to to our country because of that diversification benefits and It was up to them. I mean they would try and put quite a bit of money into our country To reap the benefits and they'll put some in South Africa. They'll put some in Kenya. They'll put some in Korea They'll put some in Brazil, you know, they will they will spread it around in order to get diversification Now the big thing surrounding South Africa is our credit rating Okay, our credit rating is very important because We must think about the foreign investors and a lot of the foreign investors are massive financial intermediaries whether they be pension funds or all these massive Organizations that basically are playing with billions and billions of of dollars coming in monthly and They need to put it in somewhere Now they have rules Specifying what they can do with that money Rules could be something like 60% needs to go in the local government bonds 30% might go into say stocks 5% into property and say 5% into A rated emerging markets Okay, it could be something like that I don't know that the way we'll talk a lot more about portfolio construction and various strategies in other videos For now, let's look at this fact that foreign investors have got rules and regulations That say to them that they should be investing outside of the country for diversification benefits But they can't just go and invest in any country. The country needs to have a good credit rating and The reason why I should have a good credit rating is so that it's not taking on too much risk I mean you don't want to be investing in say a country like Syria where with the current war conditions It's very very risky and all the money you put in you might never get out And credit ratings I mean we can do an entire video around them and why I feel they hold too much power and why they're actually In my opinion bad But in this video, let's talk more about foreign investors specifically coming to to South Africa Okay, what what are foreign investors? Looking for when they come to an emerging country Well, the one thing is they they're very worried about the impact of the currency movement Okay, so What what happens specifically here in South Africa is you might get a foreign investor they come and they buy a beautiful apartment in say the Cape Town waterfront and you know, they could maybe spend by for say 10 million Rand and Then two years later and the value is now at 12 million Rand And we might say wow, that's been a great great annual return or capital appreciation of two million Rand But to the investor, I mean back here. It was maybe Why is my thing not working? having a bit of a technical Wait, I think we're back. There we go bit of a technical difficulty there So sorry, so you bought the apartment for 10,000 10 million Rand and it's now worth 12 million Rand But you can still be unhappy because at this time you might have found that 10 Rand was equivalent to one dollar Whereas now 20 Rand is equivalent to one dollar. I'm just I'm making making these stats up To illustrate the point as in before This was worth say one million dollars Why is my thing freaking out one million dollars? Whereas now at 20 Rand, it's only worth I'm getting this maths correct 600,000 dollars So though your your asset has increased in Rand terms, it's decreased in dollar terms And that might be kind of awkward because you might have to pay Capital game tax on the Rand increase even though your dollar value is going down Although there might be some double-tax agreement and you might be able to if you have a smart accountant on your team You might be able to get around that, but it would be really awkward to pay tax and taking a loss So currency movement is is important for foreign investors Specifically in South Africa. I mean our currency has been depreciating for quite a while I mean it is it is something that scares away foreign investors That's it. I mean another thing that that investors don't like or rules and regulations Okay, specifically rules and regulations that give an advantage to the local people and Disadvantage foreigners because then they thinking well why compete in the country where we have an unfair bias against us and Finally enough South Africa is one of those countries I don't know all of the rules and regulations around foreign investment in South Africa But just based on what I've been seeing in the in the news and stuff I mean we've got we want to implement a whole bunch of regulations around foreign investors buying property You know, we want to make it very difficult for them or we want to say foreign investors can't do this can't do that Once you put the capital in you can't take the capital out I mean even at one stage South Africa to bizarre this is quite a few years ago like a maybe 20 years ago We had two currencies where foreign investors would buy the one currency then exchange the one currency for another currency And it was all rather complicated but Foreign investors don't like rules and regulations that limit the amounts that you can invest in or limit the asset classes You can come into or do all these other things and South Africa Does have rules and regulations another thing foreign investors are not a fan of is something known as political risk Okay, and I mean South Africa's neighbor Zimbabwe is the key example beautiful country. Everything's going great great economic prosperity Government wakes up one morning and it's like we're gonna implement a bunch of rules and regulations Which we think is gonna benefit the country and they had maybe some good intentions, but it had some disastrous financial consequences and wiped out the entire economy the currency you hit hyperinflation and It was I mean your people who invested in Zimbabwe bought certain financial assets specifically in the Zimbabwe dollar God, yeah, it was was worse than a nightmare So they don't like political risk because political risk. It's very difficult to to hedge out It's very difficult to predict It takes a lot of learning and knowledge of politics and remember investors know Finance now in order to go into this merging market. They need to understand politics as well They don't like the idea that politicians can change rules and regulations So quickly put them at a disadvantage because remember you're foreign investor I mean, he's not just going to South Africa. He's maybe got South Africa. Maybe he's got Bhutan Maybe he's got Kenya. Maybe he's got New Zealand and so if one of them is being politically unstable I mean, I know Thailand's got some weird politics going on then they'd rather be like, you know what? let's just leave that country alone and Go to one of these other ones So some countries are more more encouraging of foreign investment I think like Indonesia they like have advertising like come invest in our country, you know, they want foreign investment in But I mean despite all these things South Africa does get a lot of foreign investment. I mean one weird thing is that I mean our GDP grows very very Very very small amounts. I mean it was yeah, very small yet our stock market I mean that grew I don't want to quote numbers because I don't want to quote numbers on this video but basically the GDP grew by a small amount and the stock market grew by a large amount and That could be because of foreign investment. I mean a lot of our stocks are owned by Have got foreign money in and this causes a bit of a problem. You don't I mean, this is my opinion I mean foreign investors. I love I love free markets. I'm very much a free market guy But I understand that There is a danger to to foreign investors the case being foreign investors coming to a country Start, you know investing do all these type of things and then on a dime notice They can withdraw everything and cause total chaos. I mean, I was reading something about Puerto Rico, I don't even know how to spell Puerto Rico, I shouldn't even be trying to spell but basically Puerto Rico. It's a little island state. I Mean it's good. I don't know if it's American if it's an American state or I don't know it's got some weird political thing But the idea was there was a rule in regulation something about good tax benefits for I think it was pharmaceuticals a lot of pharmaceuticals Went into the country set up pharmaceutical businesses. Then there was a tax law changed in some country which removed their benefit and all their capital was sucked out of Puerto Rico and They left in quite a thing. They required such a massive bailout. So foreign investors I mean, like I said, I like free markets, but in a weird way, I Understand why South Africa has got these rules and regulations Making it difficult for foreign investors We what we do we want to make it easy for foreign investors to put money in but we're going to make it difficult for them to pull The money out foreign investors if it's difficult for them to pull the money out They're gonna think twice before putting the money in so it's it's a very weird Relationship because foreign investors can help your economy grow. I mean, we see here with the stock market As the stocks increase These companies can now employ more people they can expand they can do all these wonderful things You know foreign investment is good, but when foreign investment is withdrawn. It's very bad So you want to kind of keep your enemy And this is the thing is sometimes if the credit rating agency Downgrades us and this is why it was such a disaster or such everyone was very nervous in South Africa Is because we were thinking, you know, is this credit rating agency gonna downgrade us? And if they downgrade us then it's no longer just foreign investors preference for investing in us or not It becomes against their rules to invest in us and that means billions and billions of dollars that was flowing in Every month suddenly stops and that can cause a lot of chaos To our economy so foreign investors play a large role in the economic environment of emerging markets such as South Africa and We have a very heavy reliance on a credit agents credit rating agency Which I feel is unfortunate because it's like this little office far away from South Africa Making decisions that have a very large impact on our nation So it's understandable that a country will want to protect itself with rules and regulations But we need to be careful that we don't create political risk and then scare foreign investors all together and stunts our economic growth and This makes the job of say a financial minister a very big headache You want to encourage foreign investors, but you want to limit the power that they have on it So it is kind of like a double-edged sword. It is very Difficult to try and balance.  I mean both of them can cause disastrous effects. So it is a fascinating topic So, yeah, feel free to to let me know your opinion in the comment section below but For the syllabus objective, we just need to know that foreign investors are a big investment class. They are worried about currency movements rules and regulations and political risk and They do have quite a big sway in a country such as South Africa if you in America Foreign investors will play a different role. I think they'll be a much smaller role And you might just have to worry about say one or two Countries such as maybe, you know, what is China's involvement? You know that whole China America But it does get very interesting. It does get very political. I mean finance and politics, especially at this globalization level Are very much intertwined So, yeah, I mean you can go and read books and books and books about foreign investors But for the financial exam, you do want to be aware of them and maybe think about it and When answering questions think what role will foreign investors play and always bring it back to the country that you are writing in Otherwise, thanks so much for watching and check out next time when I'm going to be talking a little bit more on politics In the sense that we're going to be looking at Government policies and how that influences the economic environment. Thanks guys for watching. Cheers


Welcome to Building Tomorrow, a show that explores the ways tech innovation and entrepreneurship are creating a freer, wealthier, and more peaceful world. As always, I'm your host, Paul Matzko, and with me today in the studio are Aaron Powell, editor of libertarianism.org And Matthew Feeney, the director of Cato's project on emerging technologies. And with us today, we have a special guest, Mark McDaniel. Mark, can you tell our listeners a little bit about what you do? Hi, thanks for having me. I'm Mark McDaniel. I'm a reporter and producer at Reason.com. I've covered a couple of things for them, anything from immigration to 3D printed guns, kind of where all of this stuff fits in the political landscape. And, importantly, used to be at the Cato Institute. I did. Before we lost you. Produced for your Thoughts podcast. That's right. Before you decamped for our cooler cousin at Reason, like, we don't wear like leather jackets like Nick. Yeah, I haven't worn a tie. So this week we're going to discuss, like Mark kind of teased, homemade gun technology. I would say 3D printed guns, but not all of them now are printed. We'll talk about mill technology in a bit here. But we're talking about this in light of a court case or a court settlement involving gun ownership activist Cody Wilson and his company Defense Distributed. Now, Mark, you made a mini documentary using Wilson as a launching point to talk about printed guns. So maybe why don't you kick us off by talking a little bit about Wilson, a little bit about that documentary and what you discovered about this new technology. So the 3D printed gun movement, it's not necessarily a new thing, right?  But Wilson kind of launched it into the mainstream by coming out with his, what they called the wiki weapon project, him and a bunch of people gathered together in a loose collective. They weren't a company or anything like that. With the goal of actually building and putting out a functional fully 3D printable gun. So when they started the project, right, there wasn't a whole lot of press on it. They were trying to raise funds, was surprisingly unnoticed. And it wasn't until they actually started to try to build the weapon, right? They did a little bit of testing. They tried to get some 3D printers. And the company's strategists ended up coming in and pulling away the printer just after they got it, right? Because they got wind of what they were going to do and then they reported them to the ATF. So Wilson had immediately a lot of interest, right, when the press picked us up and he filmed them removing the printer. It was like the best thing that ever really happened to his, yeah. It suddenly made him a national figure in really just a matter of a couple of days. What kind of gun was he going to print? I mean, what are we talking about here? So the initial thought was to print, and their first design was called the Liberator. It was kind of based off the concept of a gun that was supposed to be built during World War II. So the idea was to manufacture a relatively small, lightweight, easy-to-manufacture gun that they could drop over Europe that was basically just a single shot. And the thought was to scare the Axis powers with this, right? Anybody could have a concealed weapon on them. Anybody could turn around and shoot somebody, right? So Wilson and Defense Distributed kind of picked up on this and created what they called the Liberator, right? Which was a single-shot, fully 3D printable handgun. It had replaceable barrels. The frame of the gun itself was all polymer. The barrel was polymer. But the barrels couldn't stand up to a whole lot of pressure. So their initial test run with it was replaceable barrels that shoots a .380 caliber bullet. Which is a pretty big bullet, I think? It's a little wider than a .22 caliber, which is like what you think of when you're out shooting as a kid. Clinking cans, yeah. Yeah, exactly. A little bigger than that. Not a very hot powder load. So the pressures on the inside of the barrel were relatively low. So they were able to stand up to, or the plastics themselves, were able to stand up to the pressure that the .380 produced. So once they got that gun out and then test-fired it, then videoed the test-fire, and it was then released by, released through Wired. They worked closely with Wired throughout all of this to get the word out. Once that video was released of him test-firing the Liberator, everybody lost their damn minds. Well, in one of the features or bugs, depending on how you look at it, is that it's plastic initially, right? So it can get through metal detectors. It can get through screenings. There's some activism. I know Wired wrote about an Israeli gun reform group smuggled one into the Israeli parliament and got within a few feet of Netanyahu. So that was arguably, it's an overreaction to the actual validity of the model. But there was a big wave of journalism in like 2013, 2014 that's like, oh my, untraceable guns being printed. But you're not 3D printing the bullets. So wouldn't you have to get the bullets are still metal and wouldn't they get caught in the metal detectors? Yeah, absolutely. And at least with a lot of the 3D printed gun enthusiasts I've talked to and professionals like Wilson and others at Defense Distributed, like that's the end goal, right, is to create something that's relatively, is fully 3D printable, fully doable at home. But as of now, it's just go to the store and buy a box of ammunition, right? Are there already or were there at this time already plastic guns that just weren't 3D printed? So or was this, I mean, was the notion of a gun itself that could make it through a metal detector new here? Not necessarily the barrel itself. I think that that's kind of the big deal about the liberator was that the barrel was 3D printable. There are definitely plastic guns that have been around for a while. Like the most popular handgun in the world, the Glock is, the frame of the gun is fully polymer. So there was a big scare at the time. Glock came out in the 80s was, oh, these are plastic guns. They're going to be sneaking these through metal detectors and getting close to people. But the rest of the important parts of the gun that have to withstand the pressures created by the gunpowder, they're all metal, right? The slide, the barrel, the rails were all metal. So they're not necessarily new, right? The thing that made the liberator really different is that anybody could do it, right? You just click print. It's a little more complex than that. But with the right tools and the right know-how, you can just click print and it'll come out and you can shoot it. Can you help unpack the legal environment where these devices land, right? So there's the right to keep and bear arms, which seems pretty robust at the moment. But nonetheless, there are federal agencies. You mentioned the ATF that have certain regulations concerning the distribution and manufacture of firearms. What laws was Cody Wilson flirting with or outright breaking? What's the regulatory or legal concern with this technology? I can say what he actually got charged under. What's interesting is that it was not the ATF that went after him initially. So he did get interrogated by the ATF after his printer got pulled by the company. The company that arranged for the printer, they printed the liberator on, they pulled the system, reported the ATF. ATF comes and says, what are you doing? They give him a hard time, but they don't actually charge him with any crimes. It's the State Department then that steps in when he's uploaded the blueprint for the liberator. Unlike the last time he had tried this with the Wiki project in 2012 where he got a handful of downloads, after that video goes viral and he uploads the plans, tens of thousands of people downloaded in a couple of days. And then what happens is the State Department steps in and says, you're violating this 1976 piece of legislation called the Violation of International Traffic and Arms Regulations, or ITAR. It's 1976. It's the Cold War. It's all about keeping people from selling guns or smuggling guns to Eastern Europe. It's all Cold War air logic, but they're like, no, look, if you can download this gun, it's like you're selling arms or you're smuggling arms. Well, that's similar to the claims that when they tried to shut down encryption is that the rules for encryption counted as weapons or munitions that you couldn't send overseas. I suppose what's motivating the question in the first place is I'm not sure what the laws are about just making a traditional firearm at home. And then just to be the annoying thought experiment guy, well, so if you have a hobby doing that at home and then you upload the manual of how to do that, would you potentially run afoul of this same legislation that Paul just cited? But my understanding is that no, that you are allowed to make a gun yourself. There's nothing that says you can't. In fact, there have been states, I know California is either considering or recently has passed legislation requiring homemade gun makers of any kind to basically apply for a serial number that you then have to stamp onto the receiver or the barrel or I think it's the receiver, which is new. I mean, because traditionally, like the only people who made guns at home, at least in the U.S., were hobbyists making, you know, and it's folks who are basically skilled craftsmen who have like a side hobby in making guns rather than this makes it broadens the pool of people who can do this because now it's a lot simpler because of the printing and milling technology. But yeah, I don't think there was anything illegal about making your own gun and now suddenly he makes it easy, Wilson makes it easy and demonstrates it, gets a lot of buzz, more and more people start doing it and the state kind of overreacts is, I think, how that story goes. Yeah, I think that that's pretty much it, right? And it's important to kind of understand what exactly the state regulates when it comes to firearms, right? There are two major laws that govern what qualifies as a firearm and it's the Gun Control Act and the National Firearms Act. So basically what these two laws say is that the frame of the gun is what's capable of regulating the ammunition feeding, the housing, the trigger and the hammer device. So the things, the parts that actually make the gun fire, right? That translate the movement from your finger on the trigger to the hammer falling and then igniting the primer. So this could look like anything, right? It's not anything specific. So the only thing that those two laws require is that if you're doing this for commercial purposes, you should go out and you have to put a serial number on it. You have to be licensed with the state and with the federal government and submit your place of business or wherever you're doing this to surprise inspections or anything by the ATF. But if you're making a gun for your own personal use, none of that's required. You don't have to put a serial number on it. You can make it however you want it safe or as unsafe as you want to do it. So that's essentially what a lot of these things are talking about is how do you make the frame at home, and especially when it comes to 3D printing, how do you 3D print a reliable frame, right? So this is why the Glocks, for example, their frame is entirely made out of plastic. It's all polymer. But it's the parts of the gun that have to deal with the stress of being fired that take a little more engineering and stuff like that. We have laws restricting who can buy a gun. If you're on certain lists, you can't buy a gun. If you have done certain things, you can't buy a gun. And so those laws say that if you go to a gun dealer and he sells you a gun, he's done something wrong, right? But presumably those laws would also apply to he can't sell you a pile of parts and a screwdriver that you can then just go home and assemble into a gun, because that's effectively indistinguishable from, is that the case? It's effectively indistinguishable from selling you a gun. So only if the frame of the gun is actually a firearm, right? So it actually fits the definition of a firearm, right? So if I can legally sell you a bunch of parts that contain everything you need to do, right, that has the barrel, the frame, everything, I can legally sell that to you if the frame doesn't match up with the legal definition of a firearm. So this is where Defense Distributed's next step comes in with the introduction of the ghost gunner and milling out what they call what's called like building a gun from 80%, right? So what an 80% frame or receiver is, 80% is just kind of a colloquial name for an object that doesn't quite fit the state's definition of a firearm. Which would be 100% if it meant the definition, right? Yeah, exactly, right? So if you're able to freely sell and purchase and ship all of these items, the 80% receivers or frames, without any interference from the state, right? Because they don't actually meet the definition. But with a couple of hand files and a drill or something, you can go in and mill it out and make it into a fully functional firearm that's capable of accepting the ammunition feeding, the trigger device and all of that, right? But it's all kind of a game about what is legal and isn't. So in one sense, no, you cannot give me a box of parts to assemble a firearm, right? But you can give me what's totally not a firearm and then I can assemble it into a firearm myself and then make the gun. Yeah, I mean, most of the parts of a gun can be legally and cheaply purchased, like the actual barrel itself or the magazine or et cetera. And the smart thing about the Ghost Gunner platform, just to be clear for our listeners, when we're talking about a mill, it's etching out the metal. It's cutting from the metal this 80% receiver piece. And so they're selling you the machine that will let you make your own receiver. They're not selling you the receiver. Therefore, it's, again, another way of working around those requirements. On the 3D printing, what's involved in doing that? I mean, so the fear is that, oh my God, if we enable people to distribute the plans that you can feed into a 3D printer, then everyone from militia groups to the dumb teenager messing around in his garage can print an unlimited number of firearms. So is that accurate in the sense that is this the kind of thing where if all you have is those plans, then anyone like I could go home this afternoon and read some instructions on the internet and be 3D printing guns by tomorrow? Or is it still much more labor-intensive or expensive enough that the, oh my God, everyone has a gun is not quite as realistic? Yeah, I think that that's it from the printers that I've talked to and I've sat through and watched some of their processes. It's way more complicated than just hitting print, right? Plus you don't want to, this is an area where it's, if you 3D print like a little figure and you screw it up, it's leg breaks and you have to make another one. But if you 3D print a gun poorly, it's going to have lasting consequences. Yeah, you want to keep your fingers, right? So I mean, I'm sure that if you bought a 3D printer and then went and printed the liberator without a whole lot of knowledge or expertise, I mean, chances are it'll come out decent, right? But to do it well, right, and to make a, to make, not just guns, right, but to 3D print anything well takes a lot of know-how, the knowledge of the materials you're using, the software you're using, how to get the proper layer height and fill levels right. So I mean, it's not like you're not going to have somebody just go out on a whim and buy a 3D printer and print one of these, but it's not out of the realm of possibility. It's expanding the pool of people who can do this from a few thousand skilled hobbyists to, you know, millions, but not every American.  They do take some, both digital expertise as well as, you know, know-how. So it's really an evolutionary expansion of the pool, yeah. Well, I suppose the question that skeptics will have, right, is it's not that the fear, presumably among skeptics of this technology, is not that everyone will be able to 3D print a gun in their basement or their garage. The worry is one nefariously motivated person who's willing to take payment via some private cryptocurrency and just to hand out these guns on the streets to anyone who wants to buy one without a background check or without anything, giving them out to children. You can imagine this being the nightmare scenario. And is that just a bullet that advocates of this technology should bite or is there a reason not to be so freaked out by that possibility? Well, I mean, that kind of thing happens already now with guns on the streets today, right? I mean, even the federal government is doing this kind of stuff with, like, I mean, running guns down to Mexico. I mean, it's not a problem unique to 3D printing guns. It might make it a little more available, but I think the technology right now is pretty far off from that. And I think it's just kind of a risk that the advocates of 3D printed gun technologies are just going to have to swallow, right? I mean, this is the same risk that the rest of the firearms industry has had to deal with forever. Yeah, well, right now there are already easier and cheaper and basically even arguably more less traceable ways of getting your hands on a gun for good or for ill. For example, there's a lot of alarm from the ATF and gun control activists about what they call these ghost guns because you can't see them. Ghosts, right? But despite the growth of this technology, there's only been two cases of ghost guns being used in mass shootings. But in that same time period, there's been literally hundreds of mass shootings from traditionally produced and acquired firearms. Like, it's not hard to get your hands on a gun, right? You know, our system of regulation is not preventing people from getting their hands on guns. So the proportion of outrage and concern is not in keeping with the actual, like, additional problem that people are seeing that activists are worried about. Why does any of this matter? We've talked about, on prior episodes of this show, we've talked about, say, cryptocurrencies and that governments can often do try to shut these things down or limit them and we say, you know, they shouldn't because cryptocurrencies are going to benefit everyone, you know, from at the high end of finance to the low end of unbanked people in authoritarian countries and so on and so forth. So what's the rosy scenario with 3D printed guns? Like, why should we, outside of just the principles of the matter that, you know, if code is speech, government shouldn't be limiting speech and so it shouldn't be restricting the distribution of code. But outside of that, why should we care whether people can have 3D printed guns easily? So I think that's because, I mean, small arms are the seat of all political power, right? I mean, every policy has to be backed up by some sort of course of action or whatever, right? So all political power is based on access to small arms. And I think what makes this so significant is it's distributed that availability outside of the existing regulatory frameworks.  But at least the way I see it, what the 3D printed gun has done is it's taken that political power and distributed it to anybody who has access to these files. It kind of creates a bit of like a backstop against... So it used to be able for gun control advocates to imagine the possibility if they just acquired enough political power and influence that you could shut down the major gun manufacturers. Like that's no longer possible. Like as long as our current regulatory system exists, which allows relatively easy and broad legal access to firearms, I think this remains relatively niche. But it means that it's never going to truly be possible without some kind of really major kind of authoritarian ramp up to effectively enact gun-based gun control. Because if you did, let's say you shut down the traditional manufacturing channels, there's no way of taking these gun designs off the internet. Like they're all over the globe now, you can access them. You'd be whack-a-mole trying to take down gun designs at this point. I mean already there's thousands of these mills out there by the point of something of that happening. There'll be hundreds of thousands of gun manufacturing mills and individual owners' hands able to produce firearms. It makes gun control, major gun control ramping up hard to imagine, almost impossible to actually enact. So it's almost kind of like a backstop against gun control measures. Are the people engaged in designing these guns or these files for them in, you know, perfecting the manufacturing techniques and so on, are they doing it for those sorts of ideological reasons? Like they think that, or is it, are most of them just kind of, this is a fun thing? Like to try to figure out how to 3D print a gun and it feels very cyberpunk to do it. I mean how ideologically motivated are the people in this space? I think some of them probably are.  But for most of the people that I've talked to, idealism doesn't necessarily fit into it, right? I mean this is just kind of a cool hobby, kind of a tinkerer thing to do. And I think that for the vast majority of people that's what it is. Wilson kind of brings that to another level and people like Wilson. But one of the things that a lot of these hobbyists don't have access to, right, is they don't have the capital and the manpower to make substantial significant developments in the technology itself, right? They don't have access to higher quality and stronger materials. They're just limited to what they know and what they can research online. And I mean don't get me wrong, people do really amazing things with that. But until you start getting larger groups focusing on this outside of defense distributed, it's going to stay mostly niche and mostly a hobbyist thing. Well and you have, I mean as far as the question of activist versus kind of hobbyist, I mean Wilson definitely fits that activist's mold. He just did an interview with Wired. And he has that, as you referenced earlier Mark, there's that interesting relationship he has with Wired where they'll get first dibs on like stories. He'll give them interviews like in-depth stuff. But then Wired has the stance of like disapproval about him, but there's this co-dependent relationship that's really quite strange. But there was a Wired, he just did an interview very recently with Wired and we'll post the link to it in the show notes where he said, look if this court case hadn't gone my way, we would have released, we would have put the files back up online anyways. We would have continued what we're doing and dared the government to come and take him from us. And he had actually already purchased a Goliad flag from the Texas Revolution, which is like it's an arm holding a sword of blood dripping from it from basically the town of Goliad defying Santa Ana. It led to the Goliad massacre, several hundred. So it's a, let's just say it's a flag charged with a kind of an edge of potential violence. And he was all prepared to fly the Goliad flag, dare the federal government to take him down to what he compared to a Bundy style, like Clive and Bundy. So he won the court case, so he doesn't have to bring out the, or he got the court case settled. So he's not going to go there, but that's something that a true believer and activist gets does, not a tinkerer, right? Maybe we should talk about the court case briefly. So we said he settled the State Department suit, or threatens him with, I put that on the number. He could have faced up to 20 years in prison and a $1 million fine per violation. And remember tens of thousands of people downloaded the Liberator model. So that's per each of those 10,000. So he was facing like the possibility of infinite penalties. He defends himself on first amendment grounds. You mentioned encryption case earlier. I actually thought that was really interesting. So how much more do you know about the 90s encryption debate? Oh, not as much as I should. I thought, I thought it was interesting about, so it's this guy named Philip Zimmerman in the 90s. He has, and I don't know the details of his exact cryptography software, something called PGP, but it doesn't really matter what the specific software was. It's that the, It's a set of equations. Basically the con, even really the concept of encryption. The military in the State Department argued that, hey, look, that's military tech encrypting stuff. That belongs to the, you know, to the military, to the State Department, to the CIA. You shouldn't be allowed to use this, this, this, you know, set of formulas and encryption formulas to for private use. This should remain the military. So they're going to go after, they're going to go after this Zimmerman fellow on these grounds. They eventually back down. He makes the same kind of first amendment arguments that Wilson actually successfully made. They back down, but it's a big deal because like literally all that software we use on a daily basis social media, to email, to online payments, all of that uses encryption technology that was technically, that the State Department was arguing was a violation of the same ITAR agreement that we're talking about now. You have to pity the government law. You had to make the argument that mathematics was only, only something that they were allowed to use. Math, it's a military tech. Right, it's military technology. Only you can use it. No, it's an interesting argument, right? And you run into these arguments in a whole host of new tech issues, right? Or whether just saying true things about the world is something that the First Amendment protects. And then of course in this country you have the added Second Amendment because it's a firearms issue, right? The right to keep embarrassed, but also the right to communicate about, and we should be clear about this, the freedom to communicate about something that is a craft, that is a hobby, that is a recreational pastime, that people, you know, this was not something about how to 3D, you know, using a mythical tool to 3D print heroin, right? Or this was something that, a new way of developing a product that has been a part of American history forever. And yeah, I think it's interesting that the case ended the way it did. But from what you said about Cody Wilson, I'm not sure if he's the kind of ambassador that other people in the movement want. I guess Mark can tell us more about, because you've actually met him, right? Yeah. Yeah, and likable fellow? Yeah, I enjoyed sitting around visiting with him. I mean, very intense guy. Right. Is very ideologically driven. I think a lot of it's kind of this act in a sense of like creating this villain character to kind of play off the sensibilities of middle America, right? There's a sense of like he's trolling the liberals. And I mean, there's that sense about him. I get sometimes when I hear interviews. It's not just the liberals, right? I mean, it's everybody. It's kind of going after. I think that's one of the big reasons why he went the firearms route is challenging political authority itself, right? Where does this, I mean, looking forward now. So he's won. The government settled. He's won. He can continue to distribute plans for 3D printed guns. And presumably the fact that he's won this means that more people now will step forward because there are probably lots of people who would love to have done it, but are more risk averse than he was. There were more people doing it the entire time. Sure. That he was embargoed by the State Department. Basically the State Department went after them using these ITAR regulations and said, this is a violation of your exporting military materials to other countries by publishing these files. And they just went after defense distributed. Everybody else on the internet, the hobbyists, they continued to produce their own stuff. FOSCAD is a good example of a kind of loose collective of people who gather in an IRC chat and talk about gun designs and try different things out and send and share and change and modify. Like this stuff was happening the entire time, right? And the government didn't care. It was more of a way for the State Department to make a statement on this and kind of preempt that speech, right? That's how it got into the speech realm. And I do think it is important to note that this wasn't a win in the courts. This argument did not win on the merits. It was basically just a settlement with the government. So is anything set in stone from this? No, not yet, right? Because the government could pick it up again if they chose to. Yeah. But I think that after this they might think twice about, is it really worth going after people for something like this? After what a almost five year long lawsuit? We should note that actually the Cato Institute filed an amicus brief along with the Electronic Freedom Foundation and some reporter lobbying groups on the First Amendment boundaries. So like this actually crosses over. There's a way in which the same technologies of interest to people printing pharmaceuticals in their own home. As long as you're not using the pharmaceuticals for commercial use. That's a growing area of, you know, like so the FDA has an interest in this as well. Like this is going to be tested on multiple fronts, not just on gun control. Do you as an individual have the right to distribute, to download plans that have been distributed for free on the web for making your own, I don't know, aspirin. Probably not going to be aspirin. It's probably going to be heroin. But you know, like it was not mine. Matthew's heroin is in trouble now. One of the implications I thought was particularly interesting. There was this series of articles by a guy named John Stokes who wrote Rights for Wired, Politico. He actually helped found ours Technica back in the day where he made the argument. And I'll have to see what you guys think about how believable this is that this because it's going to become significantly harder for the state to actually enact and enforce bands on particular guns. Because as this technology spreads as the community grows, it's going to get harder and harder to actually effectively keep people's hands off particular categories of guns that instead this will make a shift towards gun control based on individual ownership. So, in other words, rather than saying you can have these guns, you know, you can have a, whatever, a Walter P-38, but you can't have an AR-15 and like lists of approved guns and other approved guns. That becomes almost impossible to do under this new regime. And instead they'll say we're going to license individuals. It matters less what kind of guns you have. Are you someone who is licensed to carry in general? Yeah, I can see gun rights groups will have filed a suit before the ink is dry on this. So, one thing is that if there's one thing gun rights groups always keep an eye out for is any kind of list that the government has of people who own weapons. And the second thing is license for something that's codified in the Bill of Rights is, you know, we don't have licenses for people to publish blogs or newspapers or anything like that. You don't need a license to exercise your, you know, Fifth Amendment right or anything like that. So, now these arguments won't be persuasive to many, many people. And I haven't thought through them all entirely, but I can imagine like arguments along that line will, I imagine prevent anything like that from ever taking place. How far away are we from the technology being good enough that this isn't just making six-shot plastic guns or kind of novelty sorts of things, but where you can be manufacturing like what amount, you know, legit high-end firearms in your own home? I'm not sure what it's going to look like over the next couple of years. But now that it's basically out in the open, anybody can engage in this now without a fear of reprisal from the state. I think we'll see some interesting things. It's going to be groups that have access to the good engineers, the better materials and stuff like that that are going to develop some things that are substantially better than what we've got now. So, I don't know. I mean, maybe over the next couple of years we'll see some interesting developments. But if you want to make your own gun, Reason also published earlier this year a guide to how to make your own off-the-books handgun and how to do it legally. So it's building up a gun from 80%, right, ordering all the parts online, having it shipped to your house, not going through any FFL middleman or anything like that. It's a relatively simple process. So we published it in the July issue of Reason magazine and then had an accompanying video that was then barred from YouTube, so we hosted it on Pornhub. So if you want to learn how to build your own gun, there's tons of information out there, but Reason has one specifically on that. And if you're adventurous, you can check out the video. Well, thank you so much, Mark, for coming in. Thank you, Matthew and Aaron, for joining us as usual. And do be sure to check out, we'll put it in the show notes, the mini-documentary that Mark produced for Reason about printed gun technology, about defense distributed and touching on Cody Wilson. And until next week, be well. For more building tomorrow or to discover other great podcasts, visit us on the web at libertarianism.org.


Hi everyone Sean with jaspyscasebreaks.com here doing a 2013 black football one box Random team break number two. We're at the end. We're gonna randomize the original list of customers and give away nine spots in the Heisman mixer Coming up later on tonight Here is the original list of customers From James majority down to Christian woodland and bunch of last spot mojos and the Arizona Cardinals down to Washington Redskins So Dice roll here randomized both lists add them together see how it pairs up three and a six nine times one two three four five six seven eight And ninth and final time from Gary down to Gary now nine times for the teams one two three four five six seven eight And ninth and final time from the Jacksonville Jaguars Down to the New York Jets quick trade window Let's get all of the customers and teams on the list on the screen Now that that's all on screen. We'll go ahead and sort it by team name Cool We're gonna do this box here We've got another filler coming up later on So while this is printing let's pull this out. We got three autos in here 2013 draft class not the best in regards to quarterbacks, but I believe you've got Zach Erz, DeAndre Hopkins, Levy on Bell, I think Maybe Travis Kelsey Is he in this? I said Hopkins, right, Mark? Daria Slay That's right, Keenan Allen Anderson Pack is great Eric Yeah Rex, we have a random team number three That's still in there Logan Mankins To 399 New England Patriots Gary Lazo Brandon Marshall to 399 Chicago Bears Christian Woodland John Bostic also for the Chicago Bears. That's a rookie To 399 Christian Woodland Jack Doyle rookie to 399 Indianapolis Colts Gary Lazo Latavius Murray rookie to 399 for the now Las Vegas Raiders Jason K Kenbrell Tompkins to 49 rookie for the New England Patriots Gary Lazo Patchen Otto this guy was a monster We do have a redemption Deion Jordan for the Miami Dolphins to 299 Gary Lazo Deion Jordan, you'll work as a blocker Signatures 2013 community black card number seven Antonio Gates Who would it be a charger because it's only ever been a charger? Thankfully, um, obviously that is expired That's 2015 But uh, if you go ahead and send this to Pini Hopefully they can go ahead and redeem it for some points Or if they have the card itself in there, that'd be cool Uh chargers that's going to Christian Woodland Bryce Butler Rookie Otto to 99 for the Las Vegas Raiders Jason K Relic of Deion Jordan for the Miami Dolphins Gary Lazo, that's number to 299 Jordan Reed to 299 rookie for the Washington football team Gary Lazo and Kenny stills to 10 Relic rookie New Orleans Saints Joshua Zetz and we got a patch I'm not a patch a plate of Tyler Wilson metal rookies For the now Las Vegas Raiders That's going to Jason K No numbering on that but black metal plate There you go guys. That was the break now. Let's go ahead and give away the nine spots So here is the random of the first list James majority all the way down to Christian Woodland New dice roll top nine names after Six and four ten times Get spots in the uh football mixer coming up later on It was ten right? six and four ten one two three four five six seven eight nine And tenth and final time Spots 10 through 32. Thank you very much for giving it a shot. Hopefully I can do better for you next time Congratulations to Christian Woodland Gary Lazo Joshua Zetz Joshua Zetz Gary Lazo Christian Woodland Sean Matik Gary Lazo and Gary Lazo You all have spots in the upcoming Uh football mixer later on I'm Sean Jaspy's case breaks.com. That was black football one box break random team number two 2013 Random team number three coming up later That will fill up the football mixer and that'll be coming up after that. I'm Sean Jaspy's case breaks.com. We'll see you next time