Okay, hi, I'm Andrew Plotkin. I've been messing around with interactive fiction since about 1978, first playing it, then writing it, and then working on the tools that are involved in having it happen. This talk is about the tech. Now, when I'm talking about interactive fiction, at this time in this talk, I'm talking about the old-fashioned, parser-based interactive fiction where you type commands, and then the game spits text back onto the screen. The term interactive fiction has gotten very broad over the past few years. There's twine, there's choice-based games, there's narrative indie games. Those are all awesome. This talk is about the Zork format. So the Zork format, the Zork format.  They wanted to port their game Zork to home computers, but there were a lot of home computers, and because it was 1979, there was the Apple II, the TRS-80, there was gonna be a whole bunch more in the next couple of years, and they wanted to be able to write a game once and run it anywhere. So they invented this virtual machine. They set up a company called Infocom. They shipped 35 games using the Z machine, and then VGA graphics were invented, and that was the end of Infocom. But there were a lot of Infocom fans on the net. The internet was a thing by then. So a group called the Infotask Force sat down and reverse-engineered Infocom's format and created a open-source interpreter so that people could still keep writing the same game files. This is where I showed up. In about 1993, I decided to write a nice-looking Z machine interpreter. I wanted scroll bars, copy and paste, proportional fonts, all the things that you get in a GUI system. At the time, I was most familiar with X Windows and UNIX, so I took a terminal window Z machine interpreter called ZIP, and I turned it into an X Windows interpreter called XZIP. A couple of years later, I learned Mac OS programming, System 7, as you see, and I decided to port XZIP over to the Mac, so I took the same underlying engine, ZIP, and I wrote Mac display code for it, and I called that Mac ZIP, which was short for Mac XZIP, which is a terrible name idea, but not my last. I also started writing IAF games at that point using a open-source tool called Inform, which targeted the Z machine. That's a different talk. Next port was a Mac port of TADS. TADS is a different open-source IAF development system. It had its own interpreter and engine for playing the games, so I took the Mac display code and stuck it on top of TADS interpreter, and I got a new engine, which I called Mac ZIP. So at this point, we've got these things, and clearly, there's an opportunity to modularize. Modularize is the hardest to pronounce word in this entire talk. If you take the display library over the top, and you plug it into one of those interpreter engines, then you have a new interpreter, and then it's much easier to port things to new platforms, and also I could fill in that fourth square on the grid, which I never got around to doing before. Plus, there were all these other IAF engines coming out because it was a popular thing. AGT, Hugo, Alvin, Adryft. So I figured if all of these used the same display library as a base, then porting each of them to Mac Windows, et cetera, becomes very easy. We also needed a new virtual machine because Infocon Z machine was aging out. This was like 1997. It was a 16-bit design.  It was starting to cramp ambitious informed games, so we needed a new setup for that. So here is the grand plan. First, I designed the API. Then I write a display library implementation for X Windows, for Mac, one for terminal windows. Somebody else can do Win95. Then I designed a new 32-bit virtual machine for interactive fiction. At the same time, everyone else is porting their IAF virtual machines over to use my display library. And after that, all IAF technology works uniformly. It's portable. It's awesome. So I got started on that. I named the display library Gluck and the virtual machine Gluck because I figured the entire IAF community was on the internet, and so no one would ever have to say any of these names out loud. It didn't matter if they were hard to pronounce. Sort of. So going down to the UI design, there's a reason that informant heads and all of these other IAF systems use the same basic UI interface, which is that they were all trying to replicate Infocom. And Infocom's first game, Zork, was basically Colossal Cave fanfic. So all of these games go back to mainframe terminals and teletype machines. The game is gonna output a stream of text. It's very abstract. You can do anything with the text. You can render it in proportional font. You can run it through voice to text, text to speech, if you want. Infocom virtual machine added simple styles just like boldface and italics. They also added an optional status window, which was basically a terminal window, a grid of characters. But that's still pretty abstract and it's easy to port over to new systems. So when I designed my system, my display library, I took that model and I generalized it just a little bit. I said, okay, you have one or more windows, but every window is either a text grid or a text stream. And the windows can't overlap. We're not getting into that. The interpreter's gonna handle all the text rendering, all the decisions about fonts and so forth. So you wind up with a model which is more flexible than the Z machine, but it will still run on anything from a GUI system all the way down to raw telmet. Obviously if you're playing over telnet or a raw text stream, then you only have one window and it's a stream, but the game can cope with that as graceful degradation. So now we have a text model which will cover the least common capability set of the Z machine, TADS, Hugo, and all these other systems. Problem was everyone is ambitious. Everyone's trying to expand their common IF model to include graphics, sounds, smell division, et cetera. Infocom did this with their Z machine version six, which is a mess, but we'll get into that later. Multimedia TADS is HTML style. So I didn't try to handle the universality of all those capabilities. I came up with a simple modest display model for my virtual machine. And I said, okay, my system's gonna use that. Everyone else can use the basic text window capabilities. You'll have a look port that's great. It'll be portable. It won't have all your fancy multimedia. So here's the result of my grand plan. My virtual machine has decent multimedia support. All these other engines, you can either use the native port, which has multimedia or the gold port, which has less capable. But that turns out to be kind of interesting. Even though these interpreters are limited, there's stuff you can do with them. Why? Because we, at this point, have the idea of playing IF games in a web browser instead of having to download an interpreter. Well, what does that mean for my display library? My display library was a C API. It was literally defined by a C header file. So how do you run that in JavaScript? Well, you can port the C API over to a JavaScript API. That's easy. You could abstract it and say, describe each call as a data object, render the data object, and then you can pump out, auto-generate a JavaScript API or the C API or whatever you want. That's better. Let's take a step farther back. The C API is a bunch of function calls, but it's actually an event loop. The idea is that you make a bunch of output calls, then you call the magic select function to the interpreter blocks and waits for input. So if you're gonna do that on the web, well, a web application already has an event loop. You don't need to write one. So take another approach. Say all of the game output for the turn is going to be represented as a single JSON object. The gamers can generate that, shoot it out, and then wait for input, which in the form of a JSON object describing the next player command. We don't have to change the game structure to do that because we can put the JSON layer on top of the JavaScript API I mentioned before. The game is still as the same. The game is calling the same gulk functions, but now those are JavaScript functions already generated from the XML, and all those do is generate a JSON output, shoot it out, and then set up the appropriate callbacks. So that's pretty cool. The reason it's cool is that, as we heard in the previous, one of the earlier talks, JSON is a really nice format. You can do a bunch of stuff with it. We could take the JSON data stream and log it, and now you have a transcript of the game which can be replayed later. You could shoot those JSON data objects over to another machine, and now other people are watching you play. You can have the, well, let's play version of interactive fiction.  It's really easy to do regression testing on the content of a JSON stream. So you can do all these other things with it. I had so much fun playing with the JSON layer that I rewrote the JSON layer on top of the C API. So you could take one of the old C interpreter engines, slap on the C JSON display library, and now you have a process which does JSON standard and standard out, which is a great component. There's somebody who's doing that, using that as the basis for an Android interpreter. So obviously there's plenty of holes in the system. I've been, like, planning to integrate CSS for about 10 years now, and I keep not having enough time, but other people are working with it. There are other things in progress. And on the upside, Sky once used a look library to hack the internet on agents of shield season one. That's pretty cool. Thank you for listening.


He found a secret underground tunnel in his new apartment, and it led to a creepy secret. When Irishman Daniel Carly saw an available studio apartment with suspiciously cheap rent, he leapt at the chance to move in. It was only after he'd already unpacked his stuff that he began to notice something very strange about the apartment. As if Carly didn't find the decor weird enough, he also found a secret underground tunnel in the place. Being below the building, Carly discovered a lot more than he'd bargained for. It turns out there's often a good reason why apartments go cheap. Sometimes you're better off leaving the things that hide below your living space alone. When Daniel Carly first saw a new apartment listed online, he snapped it up as soon as he could. Daniel didn't even bother to view the property, as he was sure that, for the price, the place would go quickly. It turns out that he might have been a bit too hasty. Only after moving his stuff in, Carly began discovering strange things about the property. The building was at least a century old, and had very high ceilings and some very unusual architecture. But even more recent renovations seemed off-putting. There were mirrors everywhere throughout the apartment.  There's not a lot of horizontal space in the property, so the bedroom is nestled on a mezzanine floor. With no guardrail, Carly needed to be careful not to roll out of bed, as he'd fall down into the living room below. More mirrors, hinting that whoever lived here before was into some weird stuff. Both the walls and the ceiling in the bedroom, were covered in mirrors, which doesn't seem like the behavior of a normal person. What was going on here? Hard way up the wall in the kitchen, there was a hole. This doesn't seem to exist for any logical reason, but it does give us a clue as to the building secrets. It turns out that there are plenty more hidden surprises in this place. What initially looks just like part of the floor reveals something far more disturbing. Just outside the bathroom was a hatch that wasn't included in the listing for the apartment online. What could be hiding down here? Taking a closer look, it's clear that this hatch must be in regular use. There's a latch on it so that someone can open and close it, and it stands out from the floor so that it's easy to lift up, or push up from underneath. At first, Carly simply thought that this was some storage space. There was a sorted junk down here that must have belonged to a previous tenant, as is common in many older rental properties. But then Carly noticed something chilling. There are steps in this space. Hidden in the darkness was some kind of underground tunnel that leads below the apartment. So is this simply a basement, or something more sinister? Fully prepared with a flashlight, Carly began making his way down the steps. Everything was pitch black, and he assumed this space couldn't be that big. He was wrong. The tunnel led all the way under the building, snaking and twisting through several rooms. It seemed that this dungeon led all the way under the other apartments in the building. Even as Carly went further into the basement, he couldn't see an end in sight. Only this had been part of the building before it had been converted into apartments. There were bricked up windows that must once have led to other, now inaccessible rooms. But soon Carly found signs that people had been here more recently. Graffiti on a wall made it clear that people had been down here recently, or, at least, as recent as the invention of spray paint. But what possible reason would anyone have for coming down here, and was there another way in or out of the tunnel? Carly found some disturbed ground, along with some form of grate. There was no brick here, just loose soil. While Carly joked that this might be some kind of grave, it does make sense that there might be bodies buried in the area, especially if the building was an old monastery, as Carly suspected. A large raised brick structure could well be a place where someone slept once upon a time. Or, alternatively, this basement may be the final resting place for a previous owner of the building. With the house this old, it's hard to tell what may have once existed here, and what might still be hiding in the shadows. The presence of fuse boxes suggests that this place is in regular use. Presumably engineers must need to get down here periodically, but how they get in and out isn't entirely clear. There's also plenty of loose live wires hanging around, suggesting that the dungeon isn't exactly safe. Exploring further, Carly found himself directly underneath many of his neighbors' apartments. Do they have access to the dungeon as well? And if so, how safe is it for Carly to sleep in his apartment without something heavy blocking the entrance to this entire underground maze? It turns out the floors throughout the building aren't exactly soundproof. Down here, Carly could hear his neighbors in conversation with each other, while spying underneath their floorboards. So has anyone been doing the same thing to him since he moved in? Finally, Carly managed to find a date relating to when someone was previously in the tunnel. An old newspaper, dated April 10, 1984 made it clear that someone was down there 30 years ago. Although, of course, this doesn't prove that someone else hadn't been there more recently. The tunnel system was full of debris and junk from previous residents of the building. There's even a large wooden door that looks like it must be very old, tucked away in one corner of an underground room. For now, Carly simply has to hope that nobody else has a hidden door within the dungeon that can let them in and out.


Lumberjacks, they're looking to end a three game skid hosting perm. Let's go second set, Bemidji looking to put this one away. Lexi Wade from the outside off the blockers, they would take it a tie at 1-1. Let's go to the third and just wait again. This time from the outside again and she'll put it away. Bemidji cruising in game three. But how about we just go to Wade one more time, this time from the other side and she finds a hole in the defense. Lexi Wade, great night for her, big night for Bemidji. They went in 5-3-2 over perm to get above 500 on the season. If you've enjoyed this segment of Lakeland News, please consider making a tax deductible contribution to Lakeland Public Television.


as usual, wait for just a second, okay? And we are, yes, and everybody seems to have come across from the last session. So welcome back everybody to the next talk of the day, the second talk of our final day that I see in our crowdcast schedule. They're the 20th session of the conference. So it is my pleasure and honor to introduce Rose Travis who's also, by the way, if you are following the conference on Twitter, she's doing some amazing live tweeting for us. We're gonna keep going with this theme of the role of data in science. So we'll be talking to us today about big data in behavioral biology. So without further ado, please take it away. Great, thanks Charles. And thanks for organizing the conference, but to you and to Luca, it's been really fun. And thanks to all those speakers. I've had a really good time and learned a lot about digital studies of science and also digital science. I'm gonna be talking more about the digital science side of things. I haven't done any kind of digital study of this aside from being in Zoom meetings, lots of Zoom meetings with the research group that I work with. So it's coming out of an ethnographic study, but at the same time this project in particular is kind of right at the beginning, I haven't done any formal work investigating it. So I'd be really happy to get feedback and ideas on the project in the question time. Yeah, so I'm gonna be talking about big data in behavioral biology. We can start off with a blackbird. And you might wonder, what does a blackbird have to do with the International Space Station? Probably not much in normal cases, but this blackbird has a small device attached to its back. That is a radio transmitter. It's sending signals of the bird's position coupled with a timestamp to a receiver station in the International Space Station, which is then sending that data back down to Earth to researchers in their labs. That blackbird is part of a really big international research project called Icarus, which has been running since for about 10 years now. It's an international cooperation looking at animal movement and animal movement of lots of different sorts of species. Part of the project has involved developing the technology to do this. So they've had teams working on miniaturizing radio transmitters and then also lots of teams out there attaching them to animals and looking at what happens. It's also because there's a receiver station in the International Space Station, it's funded by space agencies. It's funded by national organizations. It's a huge thing. And all of the data gets published on a database called MoveBank. That's been around since earlier than this project, but it's obviously received a huge input of data from this project. And I encourage you all to go and look at that database because for nothing else, there's a beautiful visualization of all of the data that's coming out of these animals. And that's a screenshot from it. So you can see what's going. So if I haven't made any visualizations, at least somebody has and you can get something out of it. What I find interesting about this project, apart from pretty graphics, is that there's a lot of interesting claims being made about the use of these devices and how they're changing behavioral biology. This is taken from the Icarus website from a site that is called The Internet of Animals, which raises already some interesting points about digital science and digital nature. But what it's about is the way that this project is changing the science. And there's some interesting claims here that I'm going to investigate in a little more detail during the presentation. So they say things like, in the future, these transmitters will be able to tell scientists much of what they previously found out only after hours of observation. The researcher in certain cases is sitting thousands of kilometers away in his or her research lab. The process, the progress that they've done in this technology, it facilitates completely new insights into nature and it allows tracking animal movement in real time and on a large scale with thousands of animals. So some of these points, things about researchers being thousands of kilometers away from these animals moving around, the ability of these devices to cut hours, to make things efficient, to deliver this information over to scientists so that they don't have to work so hard for it. And also to be able to generate new insights that maybe they wouldn't have been able to get with the regular methods. All of these claims are quite interesting and quite powerful claims. Obviously it's a little bit advertising speak, but it's also indicative of the way that biologists themselves tend to approach these technologies. So I wanna start this presentation by kind of tracking back a bit and looking at why these technologies are so interesting to biologists. And that's because they're such a big departure from traditional ways of doing, ways of studying behavior. Then I'll briefly introduce these technologies and look a bit into the kinds of benefits they deliver because they are really good for the behavior of biologists. But on the other hand, they're not maybe sometimes as good as some biologists would like to think they are. So I'll spend the final part of the presentation looking into how biologists deal with this movement data together with statisticians and how that means that these kinds of ideas of researchers sitting in labs just receiving movement data is too idealistic to start with naturalism in ethology. This is Conrad Lorenz and Nicotin Bergen, they're the founders of ethology, two of the founders. And they were well known for being great naturalists. They love to go out into nature and see the way that animals were behaving. And they use this method they kind of capitalized on this love of exploring natural behavior and develop that into their method in ethology. So they encourage their students to go out and to look at natural behavior and its natural causes and functions. That's what ethology was about in contrast to some of the other, the American ways of looking into animal psychology. They aimed to kind of do this really detailed observation of animals in order to develop a familiarity with the habits of the species, the one it usually tends to do. And only then they argued, could you start to figure out what the functions of different behaviors were, what their causes were, how they fit into the animal's way of life as a whole. There's a lot more I could say about this, but this is enough to get the picture of kind of where behavioral biology has come from, at least one of the places it's come from.  That's the one thing. Okay, so the ethological approach sounds painstaking because it is painstaking, going and watching geese for hours on end, it's hard work. And in particular, it's not easy to get kind of a more objective method when you're just going and looking at animals. As a result, there's been a lot of ways of, a lot of tools that have been developed to study animal behavior in a way that's kind of objective in the sense of comparable across different individuals, different humans. One of the most important tools is ethograms, they're kind of lists of behaviors that have been selected for being kind of relevant to the species with a code. And that means even you're observing the animal, you sit there with this sheet of paper and you write down the codes with a time for whatever behavior the animal was doing. So this allows individual researchers to quickly record what animals are doing. But it also ensures that there's intercoder comparability and they do tests with that.  There's also bird ringing, which is kind of, it's not really an ethological tool, but it's a way to track animal behavior and how they're going out into the world. So you attach an identifiable little plastic ring around their foot. And then people out there in the world who like watching birds, they'll tell you when they see it. And this helps you keep track of where animals have gone, where they've maybe settled in a territory, where they're migrating, these sorts of things. That's again, another way to kind of keep track of animals in a way that's a bit more easy than just looking with your bare eyes. Finally, more recently, people have developed software and R codes and things like this for processing videos. And this can help you to get like computer automated measurements for certain sorts of behaviors that are fairly simple, things like jumping distance or jumping angle of a grasshopper in this case. So these are all pretty powerful tools and some of them are more new, some of them are quite old. The tool that I'm most interested in, obviously is that these technologies used for tracking animals. There's various sorts of technologies that are used for tracking movement. There's radio transmitters, accelerometers, GPS tracking devices, and there are others. But these are probably the three most dominant things that people use. They've been used since the 1950s or 1960s actually to track animals. There's a really good history of this by Etienne Benson. But it's only in the last 20 years that they've started to be used on a broad scale. And that's because they've become, because of other technological developments, they've become much smaller, much more inexpensive. And it's been much more easy to get the data out of them remotely rather than having to find the animal again and kind of extract whatever information it's recorded in an internal program processor. So because of these massive changes in technology, suddenly you've got thousands and thousands of studies being done using these devices. And you can see there, some of them are really, really tiny, like the one that was on the blackbird at the start of the presentation, the size of your finger. Some of them are a little bit bigger, like this one that's on the fur seal pup there. You can see it's about the size of the palm of your hand. But both of these are designed then for like a particular organism so that it will fit it, a particular species. And it won't obstruct its behavior as it's moving around in the environment. There are a lot of benefits that you get from using these devices. Obviously one of the biggest things is that you can have a larger sample size. Because they're cheap, you can buy lots of these devices and all you need to have is the manpower to attach them to the animals. That sounds simple, it's not always that simple, obviously manpower in Antarctica is not quite as cheap as manpower in your backyard. But you can get much larger sample sizes regardless. You can go from say dozens of animals in a normal behavioral study where you're sitting there and watching animals, to thousands quite easily. You also tend not to lose the devices as easily as you would with say bird rings. With bird rings you can ring a lot of birds but you often lose them, you never see them again, you don't know what's happened to them. With radio transmitters say you attach it to the animal and it's constantly relaying information back to you even if a human doesn't see it again. What I think is more interesting benefit of these technologies is that you can get much more variety and that's not just kind of within a population because you've got a larger sample size you can also then capture more of the variation in a population but you can also get, you can study behavior under different sorts of conditions say it sounds trivial but you can't watch what an animal is doing when it's underground, when it's underwater or in a storm or in inclement weather unless you have kind of special expensive technology like night vision cameras and things like this. So these technologies once you attach them to the animals then you're able to track them in places and under conditions that aren't easy for humans to observe. Part of this then means that you can get different sorts of species. So in the past a lot of the behavioral studies were done on animals that were active during the day that were kind of easy to keep track of maybe they had a fairly small territory and these days you can do this kind of large scale tracking of animals of all sorts. So you can get studies of the fur seals for instance the mums go out for days on end and in the past nobody knew where they went. Now you attach trackers and you can find out where they're going to forage. This is then I think quite an interesting benefit because we were so used to as philosophers thinking about lab science where you're dealing with these tractable animals. Here you're looking at a different kind of broader set of species that are trackable as Benson puts it. The third advantage that I'll just cover quite quickly is that you can get longitudinal data. So in the past it was quite difficult to track the same animal over time unless you were able to ethically attach a label to it or a tag. These days with the trackers you put the tracker on and the tracker does the re-identification for you. And this longitudinal data is obviously very interesting for biologists who wanna find out about long-term migration or developmental patterns in movement, these sorts of things. The final benefit that biologists also like to talk about is that you get reduced bias. And there definitely is an element from these technologies of reducing human bias. I mentioned before that behavior biologists tended to work with ethograms.  So it's humans trying to identify behavior and humans are notoriously limited in terms of what they can see and what they pick out as a behavior to code. But also the code itself is biased in the sense that it's humans who've designed this code and picked out these behaviors as interesting and not added other behaviors that they don't find interesting or functional relevant, even though they might be in the end quite interesting or quite important for this particular species or this particular individual. Tracking devices then overcome these sources of bias because you're just getting whatever data that's being transmitted from this individual moving around in the world. You're not having a human there deciding which data points are the most relevant. These are sort of the benefits that biologists themselves talk about. You hear them talking about them in talks, at least I've heard them kind of getting really excited about all this new technology they've got and all the huge sample sizes and all this stuff that they can get with this technology. As philosophers or scholars of science, we can kind of translate these direct benefits into benefits in terms of scientific values or virtues. So scientists or behavior biologists with these tools, they're getting greater significance and greater representativeness in their samples. They're also potentially going to be able to get more novelty and objectivity. And it's these two at the bottom that I'm more interested in. Is it really true that these devices help behavior biologists to get more novel results in the sense of results that aren't predetermined by theoretical assumptions or human biases? And then as a correlate of that, are these technologies more objective or do they give us a more objective science? To answer those questions, we have to look a bit closer at what movement data looks like and how biologists deal with it. I mentioned at the beginning that the sorts of data that these kinds of trackers and transmitters are producing, it's a position or acceleration data point coupled with a timestamp. So at certain time intervals, this device sends an information about either where the animal is or how fast it's accelerating depending on what device it is plus the time. And the way the data sets look is something like this. This is data provided to me by Roland Langrock. He's a statistician at Bielefeld University in the group that I work with. And he deals with animal movement behavior. He's a statistician, but he deals with primarily just with this data. The first example is of a shark and it's being tracked with an accelerometer. So that tracks how fast it's accelerating. On the x-axis is time, like several, many, I think it's weeks. And on the y-axis, that's its acceleration. And you can see that it's quite complex. There's very low acceleration, there's very high acceleration and there seems to be some sort of fluctuation. But generally just it looks kind of messy to me at least. The second example is an elephant track. And this is a location track. I think it was a GPS track. And you can see, so this would be like a 2D projection onto a map. So you can put a map underneath it and then you can see where the elephant is going in that territory. The things that you can identify kind of as a naive person from this is that there's parts where it's kind of, the elephant is just moving around in a little squiggle there. And then there's parts where it's taking long straight lines or kind of it's traveling further distances. That's at least what it looks like. As well as the movement that you've often got other sorts of data, environmental climate data, as well as often information on the track individuals like their age, sex, condition, phenotype. And sometimes if you've taken a blood sample you've got their genotype as well. What do you do with this kind of messy data? You look for patterns. And because it's so complex, this sort of data you often then go and ask statisticians to help. One of the most common ways to analyze movement data is using hidden Markov models. There are other ways, but this is quite a dominant way to analyze this data. And it's also the way that this data that I showed in the previous slide was analyzed. So I'll look at this. Take the example of the shark. This is the same data now the colors are shown. And you can also see the model that's being produced from the data. I won't go into too much detail because it does get quite technical. But what we can see is that the model has split up the data into three states. There's a blue state which is low acceleration, a yellow state which is medium acceleration, and then a green state which is high acceleration. So the model has kind of decided that this is the best way to represent this data based on these three states that the shark can be in. And then what you can do is you can look at the likelihood that that shark will be in one of these states depending on the time of day. So seeing if there's a circadian rhythm in the shark's movement. And then you can see that it looks like there is a bit of a rhythm. This high energetic movement seems to only occur in the early morning and in the evening. Whereas the medium acceleration kind of also seems to happen most often. And you can sort of see that from the data as well. Now, what's interesting about this sort of model is that it delivers these three states. And you can see on the graph that they're called cruising, active swimming, and high energetic movement. But what it's actually delivering is low acceleration, medium acceleration, and high acceleration states. So it's up to the researchers to decide what these states mean. And here they've decided it's cruising, active swimming, and some sort of high energetic movement yet to be decided what exactly that is. So this is one of the major challenges with dealing with this data and dealing with these sorts of models is interpreting what the models are telling you. What are these states? Is high energetic movement foraging or hunting? Is it perhaps mating? Or traveling? This is not clear to a statistician dealing with the data. For that, you need a biologist who knows what sharks do. I'm not a biologist. I don't know what sharks do. But I imagine it's something like hunting, I think, in this case. But what's interesting is that you need this kind of biological background of knowledge of what's typical for shark behavior. You see this also in the case of the elephants, where there are similarly three states. One is a low movement state, which they've labeled resting. There's a medium movement state, which is they've called area-respirated search. So it's kind of moving, but not doing more than resting. But it's not traveling. And traveling is the third state. This is a classic way to label these three states for terrestrial animals, actually. And it's up to biologists then to say, well, in this area-restricted search state for an elephant, what does that mean? Maybe it means it's kind of going through a farmer's field and destroying all the crops and picking out the corn that it likes. What's then interesting in particular about this model is that it demonstrates a second challenge for dealing with movement data and that's selecting variables. A statistician probably wouldn't choose to plot these kinds of state probabilities against temperature, but the biologists were interested in how these increasing temperatures affect elephant herds. And what they found was that high temperatures, quite surprisingly, elephants were more likely to travel to engage in these kinds of long-distance walks. And what the biologists then inferred is that they're looking for water. And probably the biologists were out there also looking for water on a hot day and observing how water got scarcer as the temperatures increased. What I think these sorts of examples show us is that analyzing movement data needs more than statistics. You can download the data off the internet. You can run a HMM, but you're going to have to have some sort of background behavioral knowledge about the species or about a closely related species in order to interpret what that model is telling you, as well as to then kind of investigate it in more detail in terms of causal explanations or the function of the behavior. You also often need theoretical assumptions. And that wasn't super clear in the examples that I showed. But you can see it in some other examples where there's an assumption that what the animals are doing there is going to be adaptive. Maybe you've got optimal foraging theory in mind. And that shapes them the way that you interpret the data that you're seeing and the way you explain it as well. And both of these mean that we can think back to these claims about the revolutionary nature of these technologies. It's not quite clear that we are going to be getting entirely novel results if we're still relying on theoretical assumptions to interpret these data. And it's also we're not entirely departing from some of the biases that we already had because we're feeding in behavioral observations, our own behavioral observations, back into our interpretation of the models. And this then feeds our own biases back in. So what do we see as the important things that they're doing there? It's foraging, it's meeting, things like this. Who knows? Maybe they're doing something completely different that we haven't noticed. What can Icarus learn from what I've just been talking about? I think that it's pretty clear that radio transmitters can't tell scientists much on their own. The data that it delivers must be interpreted. And that interpretation that requires not just researchers at their desks doing stats, but also researchers in the field and in the lab looking at animals, dealing with animals in their day to day life. And both of these need theory, of course, as well. As a consequence, then it's not entirely likely that we're going to get completely new insights that overturn theory or overturn the initial beliefs that we had about what animals were doing. Of course, you do get some new insights, especially into the different sorts of variation that there are. But you have to be cautious about these sorts of claims, I think. So apart from the irony that this project is called Icarus, I think there's something else we can take away from this as philosophers. And these sorts of claims about big data, I mean, we've investigated them in lab contexts a lot of the time, things or human biology, or things like immunology or large-scale projects in epigenetics say, what's been done less is looking at big data in field sciences, like tracking animal movement. And it's interesting that here you see the same sorts of things coming up where you need this practical, maybe embedded knowledge of the organisms that you're dealing with in order to interpret the data and use the data for anything. And with that, I would like to finish up. This is the research team that I've been working with, the NC cubed group. And that's where I got a lot of the insights from the talk today. So I'd like to thank them and also, obviously, the DFG for funding me and to you all for listening. Very cool example. Thanks so much. Let me do my usual and ask a question once now while we wait for everybody to catch up with the end of the broadcast. So I wanted to ask about, you mentioned that, I mean, obviously you know some of these biologists well. You're engaging with them regularly.  I guess it's probably the best brief way to put it. Because this is a classic thing that we sometimes hear about that there's a kind of distrust that perhaps the reason that they're presenting their work this way is that they want to show themselves as not being engaged in a field. We're just reading off the data, right? Not being engaged in a theory-laden enterprise. So I wonder what that's been like in your discussions with them. Yeah, that's a good question. I haven't explicitly gone into these questions say about adaptationism with them. That's kind of future work that I'll be doing, hopefully. But I am fortunate to be in a team where there is quite a lot of interest in theory and in philosophy, actually. So they're quite happy to engage with me about discussion and discussions about kind of much more theoretical pie in the sky sort of topics. So my thesis is on individuality. And now we had a lot of discussions about these sorts of theoretical ideas to do with individuality. And I would ask critical questions. And sometimes they do get a bit uncomfortable with it. But there was less of this sort of, and potentially so that I am in a German context, there was less hesitancy to rely on theory. And I do think it does have something to do with the German context, actually. That's an interesting, yeah, the impact of broader scientific cultures here. That's a cool angle that I hadn't thought about. And of course, it's relevant for a project like Icarus that's completely, obviously, I assume, totally international, right? Yeah, although it is hosted by the Max Planck Institute for Anthology in Germany. But the main researcher there, he was working in the US for a long time as well, so, yeah. Sure, wide, wide network. Let me pick up on another element here. So I'll try to think about how to phrase this as well. So I wanted to pick, so you mentioned that there's all this data is publicly available. And so I wonder, is there a significant environment of reuse around this data? What have you been able to pick up on that? I'm picking up on, I'm sort of riffing on Sabina's talk from earlier. Is there a community built around the utilization of this kind of data? Can you tell from working with the biologist that you've talked to? And that's another good question. I haven't seen that with the biologists I've been working. Like they're much more engaged with producing the data. And I think also because of some of the stuff I talked about in the talk, reuse is going to be quite challenging for a lot of these researchers. They're produced not only because you need this kind of background knowledge of what the species normally does, because because there's such variety, you have to know something about these species. And often you don't, as a behavior biologist, you know about some sort of species, but not about these other things. But apart from that, there's also the issue that a lot of this data is being generated in very specific kinds of situations. That said, I think that there must be people reusing this data, or they wouldn't bother to put it up. And especially, I think, with the migration data, that's where things start to get interesting because people look at them in terms of the spreading of diseases or kind of changing land use with changing agricultural patterns, these sorts of things. So yeah, it's something actually that I should look into in the future researchers, like how this data is traveling into other contexts. Question coming in from Sarah Davies, who asks, who says, what a fantastic case. I really like the idea of looking at data creation and management in different kinds of spaces. So I'm also reminded of the work on metadata management that we heard about the other day. So how do your informants deal with this? How much data cleaning, data care, data curation? Do these data need? And also, where's this done? Does that kind of work happen out in the field? Or is that happening back in the lab? Yeah, that's good. Good question. Thanks. I don't know too much about how much, like the extent to which they have to clean this data. I imagine there's a fair bit of cleaning that goes on, although it is often quite simple data location plus timestamp. It would usually happen in a lab. So when you go out into the field, often you don't have a good internet connection. So you're not actually receiving the data as it's being produced unless you go attach the transmitters, then go straight back to your lab and watch it happen. So these people in Antarctica, they spend six months down there, and only when they get back do they finally get all the results that they had been accumulating and start to look into that data. So yeah, but obviously it depends on your study system as well, where you are and what you're doing. Serious delayed gratification for us for Antarctic work. That's impressive. Let's see. Ali Belovil writes, I like what you say about theory informings to the statistics and the models that you use. Can you elaborate on your experience working with a statistician? So is there a back and forth process between the questions that you want to ask, the data you have available, the statistics that are available to be used? So I haven't really been working with Roland. I mean, I've had conversations with Roland. And he has. So this is kind of actually where I got the idea for most of the stuff of this talk. He's told me a lot about how he as a statistician has no idea about biology. He really like he has no training. He was asking me at the start of the research group, what's a phenotype? Like, can you explain to me what's a phenotype? I don't understand. So what's been interesting is looking at these challenges in communication between statisticians and biologists.  They have to kind of like figure out what it is that this model is doing. And what are these states and what is that telling me? So you see it in really interesting like learning process between these different communities. And obviously I've learned a whole lot because I didn't know what HMM was either. Not well, not really. So that's been I think that's one of the most interesting things about these interdisciplinary communications is the learning that takes place. And then also some of the challenges that they have to deal with in the process. Just to follow up on that, this is for my for my certification. So the group that you're working with, it is it's all of these people mixed together in a in a big research cluster. That's really cool. That's very cool. OK, next question coming in from Christoph Maltaire, who writes a fascinating area of research. So you mentioned two limitations concerning interpreting the data and selecting the variables. I'm wondering also about the role of choice of model type. So for example, HMM versus versus other kinds of models or choice of like hyperparameters for fitting the models. So have you talked at all about your thoughts on that for either this particular case study or more generally? Yeah, that's a good question. I don't know too much about what sorts of thought processes go into choosing the models. I have a feeling it's like at least in the group that I'm dealing with, the statistician is quite familiar with dealing with HMMs. And it is one of the most common ways to deal with movement, movement data, because it's a way of kind of modeling steps. And that's often what you've got is you've got step data. But obviously, they can do things like linear regression. And biologists are more familiar with doing linear regression. So maybe they'll try that out first. And if it's proving too difficult, they'll go to the statistician. And the statistician will say, here's this tool that I've got, let's try it out. So I have a feeling it's more in terms of tools and what sort of tools are available than in terms of what would be the best for this data set in terms of very considered processes. I mean, people have talked about this kind of tool-based use of stats in other cases as well. Yeah, as you say, that fits with a sort of toolbox conception of biological modeling that you hear about fairly frequently in our literatures at least. Yeah, for sure. Let me see. With that, I think we're running out of questions. And I don't have anything else to add. So let me just wait for, again, just to give people a little bit more chance to type in something into the box if you're interested. We are almost out of time, so that's not a problem. But if anybody has anything they want to add. All right, I think we can go ahead and wrap it up there then. Thank you so much. Really, really cool example. I'm interested to see where the work keeps going. And I'm going to go look at all the fun movement data online soon, too. That's really neat. Cool, thanks. Fantastic. Thanks so much. And we'll see everybody back here in a few minutes. It's one of our slightly longer breaks. So we'll see you in a few minutes for the next talk. Thanks so much. See you.


This is stock number 11053. We are here at Summit Automotive in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. You're new and used heavy duty truck headquarters. Today we are checking out this exceptionally clean 2015 Chevy Silverado 2500 double cab short box. This truck has the six liter V8 motor. It has been fully safety and inspected by our service shop has a fresh oil and filter change. It's been checked and topped off per the state of Wisconsin inspection process and this truck is 100% ready to go. Silver ice metallic is the color we shoot all of our videos in 1080p 60 frames per second. So if you have HD capabilities on your computer tablet or smartphone device turn them on right now because it is definitely your best way to check out the quality and condition of the vehicle before seeing it in person. And if you want to check out all the photos on this truck in the upper right hand part of your screen is a link right to our website where you can check out all the photos there. This one comes with Bridgestone Duravis M700 LT265 70R 17 tires factory alloy rims that are in excellent condition. Front tires have probably about I'd say 60% of the tread left on them. This one does have the Z71 off road suspension package so you get the Rancho shocks right there. Front rim and underbody is in pretty nice shape for being a 2015. Front fender is in excellent condition no dents or dings on that. Comes with the projector lamp headlamps the factory fog lights and that front bumper is in excellent shape. The grille is in really nice condition as well and the hood I did not see any dents I did not see any dings on it very nice shape there. Another side front fender no dents on that and the passenger side rim no major scuffs or scrapes or corrosion. As you go down this side of the truck take note of how clean the body is how reflective and mirror like that paint is. We take these HD videos so if you are far away or even if you're close by and just cannot make the trip down but you're still interested in purchasing the vehicle you can see the truck hear the truck and of confidence in the vehicle that you're looking at before you even get here. You apologize about the wind here and that's why we offer the Summit Auto Fastpass option in the upper right hand part of your screen a link right to our website where you can apply for financing get pre-approved see a payment quote even appraise a trade off from the comfort of your own home. Has factory chrome step bars frame and underbody pretty nice shape very little corrosion just a little bit on all the welds and stuff but pretty common. Has all the remaining factory exhaust back tires have about 50% of the tread left and this back rim is in excellent condition as well no scuffs or scrapes. As we come around to the back of the vehicle rear bumpers in really nice shape no major dents or dings on there it does come with the rear bumper steps full towing package which includes receiver hitch four pin and seven pin wiring and that tailgate is in excellent condition as well I didn't see any dents or dings on that. Has a locking tailgate the shock down assist tailgate has a line ex spray and bed liner and this one has a Reese 16,000 pound fifth wheel that comes with the truck. The beds in excellent condition you can see right there that it's a Reese 16K and as we go down this side of the truck just as clean as that passenger side I didn't see any dents or dings on the driver's side box this back rim for full disclosure is an excellent shape and down the rest of the side the truck looks really really good all the doors look great no dents no dings the step bar is an excellent shape comes with the telescopic tow mirrors they have built in directional signals and LED side lights and lights on the side of the mirrors as well you turn those LED side lights on with your cargo lamps press that button you can see just how bright they are they shine up the or light up the side of the truck at night which is nice inside the LT one package gives you the black cloth interior there are no rips there are no tears in the seats really nice shape you get a power driver's seat factory all-weather floor mats row this one also has auto headlamps turned out four-wheel drive and factory brake controller you get tilt and telescopic steering wheel power windows power locks and power mirrors and as we hop inside the truck here you can see that this one has 27,923 miles you get the Z71 instrument cluster and that is very nice and clean comes with a leather wrapped steering wheel blue tooth and information center controls on the right cruise controls on the left and then you do get audio controls on the back of the steering wheel comes with these six-speed automatic transmission with the optional tap shift this one comes with the Chevy my link system and FM and Sirius XM radio capabilities there's a Sirius this is also where your backup camera is going to show up and it does come with a CD player as well you get all these different apps on there from GM as well down here is your climate control you get your dual climate control you also stability control that's for your cargo lamps we'll shut those off and your downhill assist control you do get dual glove boxes look I'll clean that carpeting and floor mat is very very nice passenger side seat no rips or tears on that and the headliner is in excellent condition as well I didn't see any stains or rips or tears this truck smells very clean inside I don't think it's ever been smoked in has map lights up there and you do get on-starring SOS buttons in the rear-view mirror we'll take a quick look at the back seats then we'll check out under the hood the back seats are just as clean as the front seats no rips or tears back here latch child safety system for any child car seat needs you do get the fixed glass rear window defrost these seats fold up for extra storage and you get all weather floor mats back here and the carpeting is in really nice shape no rips or tears either bottoms of the doors all look really good and we'll take a quick look under the hood I would personally like to thank you for checking out the video today and hopefully from this HD video you'll been able to tell just how clean this truck is all the way around inside and out under the hood we have the six-liter v8 motor engine bay is very clean runs very smooth this truck like I said has been fully safety to inspected by our service shop has a fresh oil and filter change all the fluids have been checked and topped off and this truck is 100% ready to go I would highly recommend it from a quality and condition standpoint and to see more pictures of this truck or one of our other 450 new and used cars trucks SUVs minivans Wranglers half tons we quarter tons one tons you name it we got it go to our website www.summitauto.com pull pictures and descriptions of every single vehicle from two locations all at summit auto.com and if you'd like to check out more HD videos you can go to youtube.com slash summit auto remember to like subscribe and share on this video and all the videos that you see there in fact in a second you will see a link to subscribe to our YouTube channel on your left a link to more Chevy 2500 truck videos like this one on your right if you have not been to our website on the bottom link to this vehicle on our website click those check us out and we really look forward to help you with this super clean 2015 Chevy Silverado 2500 double cab short box LT1 and silver ice metallic thanks again for checking out the video


We're here at ITU Telecom World 2013 in Bangkok, Thailand and I'm very pleased to be joined by John Davis, who is Vice President for World Ahead Programme for Intel. John, thank you very much indeed for being with us today. Max, it's a great pleasure to be back at Telecom World. This year's events theme is embracing change in a digital world. I wanted to ask you where do you see the biggest opportunities in that change for the industry and for society and what do you think are the biggest challenges? The biggest opportunities are just getting more people enjoying the internet by being connected to it. And it really comes in two areas. One is the affordability side. Can I afford the devices? Can I afford the broadband? Programs that we've worked with the industry and ITU on for a while. And those are making enormous differences. And the second one is in education side where you have a billion children in school and not as big a computer usage as everyone would like. And that's just a massive opportunity to educate them, give them 21st century skills. Now, I wanted to also ask you, how are Intel embracing the change? Well, Intel is really focusing on areas that make a difference. We've spent a tremendous amount of market and effort and money on the pre-paid broadband, the low cost devices to reach the lower income people. And we've spent a tremendous amount in education. We've trained 12 million teachers. We actually build custom devices for the children. They're rugged. They're liquid proof. They've got all the 50 terran and networking that people want in the classroom. But the other thing we've just done in the last few days is we've acquired a content company called No. First letters like K and O like knowledge. And what they do is they make it very easy to go from a book to a interactive hyperlink book. So you PDF it very quickly, but then it goes out to the web and looks at everything related to the subject. It indexes it. You can do assessment. And there's all sorts of tools. So if you want to take regular content and make it interactive learning content, this is one of the great ways of doing it. And we just added that to our portfolio. And you're sponsoring or you're involved with a few sessions here at IT Telecom World? Yes, we're actually sponsoring four sessions on Wednesday tomorrow at Telecom World. And these are really from practitioners. These are people that have done this for years. So we brought them from all around the world. And there's people that know, here's how I install the IT in there. Here's how we get the teachers trained. Here's how the content works. Here's the networking we want. Here's how you make these work in the rural. And put all those things together. So we actually have four sessions. One is the minister session that I'll kick off. And these are ministers that have spent a lot of time leading education. They're from all the continents. The second one will be around solutions and best practices. Countries will say how it's impacted my PISA scores or how this has really impacted the children's ability to pick up skills to be powerful in the job market. So we have those. We have an area on content and solutions. How the content works, the interactive forms of that. And then the fourth session we have is how do you pay for it? How do you afford it? And some of the tools that the IT ministers have like the USFs and the license fees and very much that part. And it's really aimed at telecom ministers, IT ministers. And I want everyone to think it's not just the education minister that drives education. It's the partnership between the education minister and the IT minister working together that makes it happen. I have many examples around the world and we'll see some of those tomorrow. Finally, Intel have been attending ITU Telecom World for quite some time now and I know you attend a number of these events around the world. I wanted to find out what's the value of attending events such as ITU Telecom World? Well the value of ITU Telecom World to Intel and the events is the networking. There's the government people here. There's the industry leaders. There's ITU. There's people that touch everyone. There's a very powerful group of leaders together and these are the ones with the resources to make the difference to drive the change. And if you look at the number of people here at Telecom World if I was to get on a plane and try and meet the number of people I'll meet this week it would take me one year of flying. They're here and you can get groups together. You can show them practices. We can run workshops doing both. But it's just that getting together of decision makers and sharing the best practices and there aren't many forums that do that beautifully in the world. ITU Telecom World is one of them. It has a beautiful job. John Davis, thank you very much for being with us today. Great, thanks to BMX.


Hi guys. I'm Gunita. Do you hear me? Yeah. Hi guys. I'm Gunita. I'm the founder of Vividly and also an architect And I truly believe what we are needs is a design and design can really change the virtual reality What I'm saying that is because I'm tired of actually explaining That we are is more than just the heavy infrastructure and heavy gadgets and a lot of resources invested that actually lack to Deliver the experience. It's enough of that. We with Vividly are really standing for the rich and Juicy experiences and we want to allow millions of 3d users to have a fast track access to reach and juicy VR How do we do that? We use the WebGL technology based on the SaaS subscription model User subscribes, logs in, drags and drops case 3d model from various formats that we support then you have this unique ability to stylize to to customize your immersive signature in the web VR and On on top of that you have your experience in a form of a URL that you can share and Bad and it's every device agnostic so you can present it on the web on the mobile VR or just plug in your Oculus and go in the fully immersive experience Well, we like to call it the sort of like Instagram for 3d in VR But instead of just a visual filter you have a story or narrative to apply which is combined from other Compounds as sound animation and shaders So just to break it down We want to make the virtual reality and the dis immersive experiences accessible Lightweight and appealing with web GL technology with the smooth and flawless user experience and this branding or let's say styling opportunity in the web So our closed better users have already found an application in industries such as urban planning architecture design and as well the digital design and On top of that we are seeing that the immersive worlds are moving in such a fast pace that the users are adding every day The immersive web the VR visualizations The other kind of API is that we can sell to the other DIY web design tools So we have already gained trust of a quite established brands that and we operate from Baltic states to the to the UK and even the whole world with some of the organizations We have tech support from Samsung leap motion as well in Oculus And we have just launched two pilots with the art slash architecture universities Yeah, that all because of the team that this young and striving professionals combining Architectural and strategic design background with the tech and branding strategies already listed on their four bus 30 under 30 stepped on the TEDx stage and accelerated in the great start of sauna and Thank you. Go need eyes. This is what we are looking for the questions Hello So is the goal to replace Other tools or do you need to integrate with existing tools? And if so, what would you integrate with? so Or if you replace what would you replace that? basically, we replace the heavy game engines that Like unity like on real but what we provide is basically a trade-off between your like input data and the output performance For the different kind of devices. So, yeah now users can use unity unreal But most of the let's say the the market is so low And small companies have a quite a lot of like investment in that or have to pass through the learning curve to you know Obtain the knowledge of this heavy infrastructure of softwares So that's what I'm saying a fast track to kind of the stylized and juicy web VR experiences And what what's the business plan? Sorry, I didn't see the business plan web is quite interesting space at the moment So as I said, we see the quite a big need and the urban planning and architecture and 3d design at the moment. We have narrowed down to the parametric design So the first thing we're gonna test as the business model is a simple SAS Model which is in three packages and from that on we see that probably we could also Based the model in future in the selling API to the web design tools if we can say so as a square space is a wicks Others that want to actually drag in this audience of like that is working in the immersive in a 3d world Could you speak a little bit more about the rays and what you plan to do with the money once again? What do you plan to do with the money and yeah speak more to the so we really need to Focus more of the product market fit and I kind of find whether our users are feeling how they feel like at this business really rolling Combining that with how the immersive world is moving We really need the collaborations with like Facebook and Google like a really tight collaborations We now have a good contact because the web VR community is quite narrow, but we need Our all the users actually to be to see vividly in that different way in the walls in the browser Sheen Instagram and Pinterest and Facebook Yeah community building and the monetization is the business model that you address So how does this work like how do they pay do they want volumetric or subscription or license or API? This all is under testing that needs the resource Cool. Thanks. Okay. You just tell me a bit more about you and the team and sort of what's your background And why your position to to do this? Yeah, two of the team members are coming from architectural background Me personally as well in a strategic design and I believe that's a quite interesting Perspective that we bring in because immersive space is a sort of architectural mindset We have the branding strategies Therefore, we really vividly has built already the strong brand within the community and is recognized in the in the VR Landscape and immersive technologies is developed by by Ari So our lead developer who's like been building the Kinect and all the immersive projects for startups all over the world So there are four core members and then we work a lot with other creative industries Which we feel very inspiring with like illustrators Synographers and all the others who could add this storytelling to the VR and help us to build that as a as a great tool for a wider audience and Thank you, Gonita. This time to move on to the next startup. Thank you


This is ABC 10 News at 6. You know, a scientific break. Plus, fact or fiction. A new program that tests whether someone is honest or lying. Thanks for joining us tonight and look close because they say your eyes are the window to your soul. Well, there's a tech company based in Utah and they have developed a way to actually look into them. It's called Eye Detection and the computer program can tell if a person is lying. ABC 10's John Bartel puts the new lie detector to the test. Now I'm going to ask you some questions. The modern-day polygraph machine was invented in the early 1920s. Looks complicated. Lie detector machines take an experienced person to interpret the results. Have you ever watched pornographic videos? Robert De Niro had access to one and the 2000 film Meet the Parents, but lie detector tests are not always affordable or accessible to law enforcement. That may change soon. A Utah-based company is introducing a new lie detector without all the fancy hookups. 65 centimeters. Neil Harris works for Converis.  That old saying the eyes of the window to the soul really is true. So the program is pretty complicated, but essentially when you lie, the size of your eye pupils change and a little camera measures those changes. You know, a scientific breakthrough. The eye detection program is already used in other countries. Now the U.S. government is looking at it and so is local law enforcement. So we spend a lot of time, a lot of money, a lot of personnel resources trying to find the right people. Amidore County Sheriff Martin Ryan says he's interested in using it during the deputy hiring process, but it might also help with gun control. Conceal weapons permits. Well, I had to try the machine out myself, so Neil had me write down a secret number. Look into the machine and lie. I don't know how I did it. The machine read me like a book. My girlfriend is not going to find out about this program, right? Lucky for guys like me, the program is only being marketed to law enforcement and the government. It's probably a good idea that a reporter is a bad liar. John Bartell, ABC 10 News.


Military leaders from Allied and Partner Nations took part in the Combined Force Maritime Component Commander Flag Course, or CFMCC. The course is designed to provide a forum to discuss regional security challenges faced by the participating nations. We are training flag officers from our allies and major partner nations how to command and control large naval formations. And we're doing that across the entire spectrum of naval operations from the very small maritime security operations, like counter piracy, all the way up to our most complex striking forces. The course fosters open discussion with the intention of creating a better understanding of how to work together to meet security challenges. So this class is designed to cause us to think about what does it mean to lead a combined force? What are the best lessons learned that we have, the best tactics, techniques, procedures of leadership in that regard? And in so doing set conditions for us collaboratively to meet the challenges that I just highlighted. Beyond dialogue, the course provides the opportunity for participants to strengthen relationships with one another. When you get together face to face, you develop relationships and from those relationships you develop a level of trust. And that level of trust will serve us very well in future operations. If a crisis were to occur, participants feel that having a pre-existing relationship with other commanders will enable cohesive operations to address challenges. It's absolutely important to know each other and also to know about the security challenges. Because when we have to work together, act together, it'll be too late to try to know each other and know the challenges. Then we have to act and the key word is act together. Petty Officer Matt Wright, Naples, Italy.


is worth point worth it.  Hey, fellow buddies, thanks for watching. Just for online, little pony. Amazing, right? All right, let's get started. And I'm also going to give you a bunch of samples of how I use worth point. I'm going to show you some items I sold higher because of worth point, and we're going to go over the price guide. So that's what we're going to talk about in this video. My name is Courtney. Thank you for being here. Most of my videos are about BOLO items, items to be on the lookout for, items that resellers can buy low and sell high. So be sure to check out my other videos. All right, let's get started here. I'm going to start with a clip from my other video that I did on worth point before this item sold, just to give you guys a little rundown of how this all started. So let's watch that real quick. So I had an item and I have a video of me thrifting, not thrifting, garage sailing, picking up this item. And I had it listed auction style for $150. And I was like, that would be great. I picked it up. I'm going to say for like 50 cents or a buck, it was kind of one of those things where I bundled together at the garage sale and he just gave me a price for everything. So $150 auction style. I talked to my husband, I'm like, hey, I really want to look this up. I feel like comps could be higher. I tried using Terapeak, but which was the first time I have tried using Terapeak. I'm going to show you that also. But I said to my husband, what do you think? And he's like, well, I have something I want to look up also. And he's like, if you want to do it, do it. So this is the part of the video. And this is on my sourcing with Bolo Buddies YouTube channel. And I think there was another box. Okay, you guys, I think this is a home run. So I looked that up. There are some on worth point that have sold, but I do not have worth point. I did find one. It looks like it sold for 160 on Terapeak. But I really don't understand how Terapeak works. I don't know if those are sold or inactive. So I'm going to auction mine for $149.99 and see what happens. Okay. So Terapeak, I went in and I put Cottington Boyd Christmas card. And you can see it shows 160 as the average sold price. I can't really see any details as to when it sold, if it sold, or if they ended the item. So I was kind of thinking, I'll just auction it for $149.99 and see what happens. Okay. So I got worth point. I paid for it. And check this out, you guys. So these are the solds. Remember, I had it listed auction style for $149.99. As soon as I saw these comps, I went in and I adjusted that price, that auction. Here is one from 2011 that is loose. It's not even on the Christmas card and it sold for $250. Now, this one is from 2008 and it sold for $152.50. I'm going to go by the higher solds because they sold later. So I'm guessing the value is continuing to go up on these because they are so rare. And here is the one that sold in 2013 on the card like mine for $333.13. Okay, we're back. So now today, I did a little research and I am going to show you the updated information for this same item. I am going to show you what I ended up selling it for. I'm super excited. I was hoping to get a little more. But I just couldn't pass up this offer, you guys. I just couldn't.  I've got what, $0.50 a dollar in this item. I'm just going to take it. I mean, this is fantastic considering what I was originally going to ask for it. So let's look at two days. We're going to look at terapeak and worth point. And I'm going to show you why. I mean, terapeak is great, but it's not worth point. And you're going to see what I mean. Okay. So this is my item. And I did price this very high, you guys. I had this at $500 and then I ran a 30% off sale. So I think it came down to like, it was in the $300. Right now it's showing 20% off. But somebody made me an offer and I ended up taking it. So let me show you worth point. And I went over this a little bit in the clip. So I'm not going to get too heavy into it. But you can see in 2013, 333, 13, and they accidentally put void instead of voids also. This one says voids and it is loose and sold for $250 in 2011. And this one is on the card and they put void also. And I don't know why we all messed that up, but this one sold for $150 in 2008. And that is all of the comps for this rare and hard to find item. So I priced mine high. I was hoping to get more in the 350 range, but again, I just could not pass the offer up. So today I put this into terapeak and I searched solds. And the only one that came up is my sold. And I ended up taking a best offer of $288.25 and the buyer paid shipping. So I am completely thrilled with that. As you can see in the video, I was going to auction this at $150. And it may have only sold for $150. So so happy that I ended up getting worth point and doing the research and taking the time to investigate further. So let's look at some other examples and these are going to be examples of active listings that I have. So let's go over here to this first one. Okay, Bolo buddies. What are you thinking about worth point? Pretty amazing, right? If you're interested in checking it out, you can go down to the description. There is a referral link down there. You can click on that and that will take you directly over. I will also pin it in the comments. All right, let's keep looking at some more examples. Okay, you guys. So this is a vintage brown bag curly lion from 2001. It is a cookie mold. These do vary from bread and butter to big money. Most of them are bread and butter. I will tell you that I actually unboxed this from my garage. I was just digging stuff out of my garage during a live show and listing it was a live listing show over on my reseller testing Bolo products. If you like live listings, come check it out. So I have this listed at $129. It's currently 20% off and sitting at 10320. So I have not had any bites on this. Let's look at Terapeak. No solds. None. Nada. So I could not research that way, but let's look at worth point, you guys. All right. So this one sold in 2016 for $178. This one sold in 2013 for $158, 2013 for $156. So in my opinion, if you watch as the date gets more closer to now, the prices are going down. So this one sold in 2020 for $89.99. Here's a set of two that sold for $89.88 in 2021. So the market for the lion is decreasing. Here's some in 2019 that went for $55. But it looks like I am going to go by this 2020. That's $89.99. And I'm going to price up a tad. And I am going to add best offer to my listing. So that is how I have mine priced. Let me know what you think in the comments. I'm the only one listed. Do you think I should list it higher and just wait for the right buyer? Or do you think I have it priced right? Let me know. Okay. So here is another example. This item is a Martha Stewart cookie cutter. Also an item that I listed on my live listing show. And it's like a working hangout, you guys. So I list if you guys are new to eBay and want to learn how to list items, it's a great resource because I walk you through how I search comps. And I also show you how I list items. So you can check that link out down in the description of the video. So you guys, this is a Martha Stewart by mail only copper cookie cutter. It's a snowman. And when I looked up comps on this, I was blown away. Now you can see mine does have some condition issues. I typically will use a tape measure just like this to let people know the measurements. And I try to include as many pictures as I can. Now this one or as needed, this one, this is your symbol or your logo branding for the Martha Stewart. So definitely keep an eye out for that. These are hot.  The snowman specifically. I've also believed there is a candy cane. We're going to talk about that as well. So I have this listed at 160 or best offer. So when I look at Tara peak, this is the only one that shows up and it is different. I do believe, let me see. This one, it looks like sold for 106 38. Let me open up the listing. This one is hollow. So it's got the candy cane and it has the snowman. But this one is hollow. The ones that are not hollow go for more. Okay. So let's look at worth point. So I put in the same search. And here is the snowman and the candy cane. I believe maybe these came as a set because a lot of people have sold them together. This one in 2013 sold for $366. You can see this is in way better condition than mine. 355 2013. Now here is a 2021 you guys and it sold for 350. But it's got the original paperwork. They look to be an excellent condition. And again, it says private sale. So I'm not really sure what the private sale means. Let's go. Let's try to find one like mine. Here is the same one that I have. This is from 2013. It looks like the one item sold for 330. Oh my goodness. So I am searching high to low. So that could make a difference. Here's another one in 2021. It's got the original pamphlet and the cookie cutter looks to be in mint condition. And it's sold for $192.50. Let's go over to page 2 and just see if there are any more. 2011. So I feel like I've got mine priced in a good spot. I'm going to leave it how it is. Here's one for $149.99 in 2021. And but this one has both. So I might be a little high, but I'm the only one listed. So I am thankful for it worth point. Okay. Because Terapeake wasn't giving me anything. All right. Here's another one, you guys. Okay. So this is my listing. It's a Disney catalog, which Snow White adult costume. You guys, the head is plush. It is absolutely amazing. It does have a rip on the seam, but it can be fixed so easy. I just disclosed it right here in the condition. All right. So Terapeake, what do we got? No results found. So want long, not going to help. Here is worth point. And again, you guys, there are only two over here. Okay. In 2021, this one sold for $199. And this one sold for 81 in 2018. I think they were low. This one does have the apple. I am missing the apple. So I am the only one listed on eBay. So I have, I've got it at 220 or best offer. So I've got it priced high. I'm somebody can make me an offer or I can reduce the price at a later time. And I do, my sale does vary. Sometimes I do 25%. Sometimes I do 30%. Sometimes I do 15. It just depends. Currently I'm at 20%. All right. Here is another hard to find item. I think worth point is great for hard to find items. And we're going to talk about pricing here soon. This is a Katrin Mueller mohair jointed bear. And I picked these up at a thrift store actually. And I did pay up for them. I can't remember what I paid. I have had this one listed for a while. I think I got like eight of them. And I think I've sold like five or six. And there were a couple different brands. So I have this priced at 299. I do have it priced high you guys, but it is really, really cool. So Tara peak is giving me one Katrin. I think is how you say it Mueller mohair jointed bear. And this one looks to be maybe the one I have. It has the same name, but I don't think it has the clothes and the condition does not look as good. They sold it for $39. I'm guessing they did not have worth point because they undersold it. Let's look at worth point. Okay, so here are some of the Katrin Mueller bears. And you can see 178 for this one, 173, 150, 131. Now again, these are all older listings, but it still gives you an idea. This one's 2019. I think this one is smaller. They do vary in size. So you have to look that up. I'm trying to find a more recent one here. These are really hard to find. Here is actually the one that I have listed and someone sold it for $60 again. I'm pricing mine high. I think they undersold it. That was in 2017. These items are retired. They are made by an artist. And this person may not have had worth point or they just didn't know that some of them are going for $178, 173. You know what I mean? So when you're looking at worth point, you also, I always search high because I feel like those are the people that have researched it, have good keywords and know what they're doing. So if I go into this listing, you can see all of their description, which I think is really, really a great resource if you're researching the item. So I also like to look at high solds because I feel like those people have done their research and they know the market better. They have good keywords. So I am going to look at their keywords and build my title based on their title. Okay. So is worth point worth it? Now that is going to depend on your business model. For me, worth point is paying off. And again, after I show you pricing, I'm going to show you another example. It's a $40 item, but it was broken and you'll see the story. But anyway, it's a great story. Let's talk about pricing real quick. So I held off on worth point for a long time because I felt like it was really expensive. I did the trial and I just could not commit to the, how much it was, I'm like, no way. But the more I started thinking about it and I talked to my husband, I'm like, I really think that we're going to make money by having this because we're going to know how to price our items. And we both decided that it was time that we got worth point. And this all started with that Boyd's car. So I'm so glad we did it. Now here is the price guide. Let me zoom in here. This is the one I have. It's called value it price guide premium. The ultimate price guide with over 605 million prices, including details and images. So again, you guys, this is going to help you build titles. This is going to help you with descriptions. And this is going to help you value your item. Okay. So you can pay $23.99 a month. And if you just want to, you can do the free trial first off, but then you can do $23.99 a month. That's great. If you're just unsure, try it for a couple months. If you're sure that you want it, do the $199.99 for the year. And I'm going to tell you why, because you're going to save $87.89 for the year. So instead of paying $23.99, you're only paying $16.67 a month. So that's a big savings over a year. So I'm cheap and I like to save money. So I did the $199.99 for the year. How you do it is completely up to you. Now, I don't really know what this research it is, but it says marks and library. So it says your identification and origin research guide, 100,000 plus identifiers and online books. So I'm guessing if you sell books, maybe you're going to want to upgrade to this level. I don't do a lot of books, but I know there's a lot of people that do marks. I don't know what that means. I don't know if that's like, I don't know. So I'm just going to leave that there and you guys can research it. I don't want to give you bad information. And the final is all access. So you get worth of pedia and marks and library. So you get both of these that I just talked about. And both worth point products combined, complete access for the best price. So it's $39.99 a month or $439 for the year. If you do the $439.99, you're actually getting it for $36.67 a month. So you have to figure out what it, what's worth it for you? What point of your business are you at that it's going to be worth it for you? Do you want that first level, second level or third level? I feel like since I don't do books, that the first level is perfect for me. $200 a year. Check with your CPA. I'm guessing that's a business expense because you're using it for your business. But check with your accountant on that and save your receipts, you guys. Give it to your accountant. They should be able to advise you on whether or not you can write it off. It's McDonald's Happy Meal Trinket Box that I had. And when I put in McDonald's Trinket Box, these were the only solds that came up. Nothing like mine was listed or in the solds. So I went to worth point and I typed it in and it pulled up this one that sold for 305. And actually this one was not here when I pulled it up. This one has the little certificates. So it's a little more fancy than mine. This is like mine. So one sold in February for $90. And let's see. That is the one that is like mine. This one sold for 54, 54, 52, 53. So you can see the $50 range for these porcelain hinged trinket boxes. Now, let me show you my listing. So these are on worth point. So it gave me a really good starting point. So here is my listing. And I put the top of the trinket box where the gold meets the box has been glued back on. So mine had a defect. It had come apart. It had come unsealed and I had to repair it. So I just disclosed that information. You can kind of see right here where I used a hot glue gun. It felt like that would be the easiest. And I don't know, it would stick the best. I don't know if that was the right way to repair it. Maybe I should have left it as is and let somebody else repair it. But that's what I did. And then I just told them to look at the last photo so that they could actually see that the item was glued back on. Now somebody can probably get that apart, take a razor blade and peel off the glue if they want to repair it a different way. But because it was like that, I believe I started my auction at $39.99 and this ended up getting two bids and sold for $40.99. So I would have had no idea based on eBay solds and eBay actives because there were no comparables because this item is hard to find. This is what it looks like on the bottom in case you guys ever see it. It is 1997 so it is a vintage and it's a porcelain trinket box. It didn't have any chips or anything like that. It was in great condition other than the seal just broke where it met the porcelain on the bottom. So $40.99 on that one. Okay, Bolo buddies. I haven't mentioned Olo for a while. This is my mascot, Olo the Owl. And he is wearing Bolo Buddies merch. This is a kid's size shirt that I put on my stuffed animal. On the back it says, thanks for watching. So if you're interested in some merch, there is a link down in the description of the video. So thank you so much for being here. Thank you for watching. Let me know if you think worth point is worth it and go check out one of my Bolo videos. They're going to be popping up and I'm going to tell you you're definitely going to learn about some Bolo items, items to be on the lookout for, items you can buy low and sell high. Thanks for watching.


Good morning, Excellencies, and welcome to this morning's program. This morning we'll start with a special guest. We have in our midst Her Excellency, Madame Grassa Machel, whom I believe we all know. But for purposes of introduction, I would invite His Excellency Amassala Swing to introduce our special guest of honor, Amassala Swing. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Good morning, your colleagues. This is really a great day for IOM and for its 157th member state. It's an enormous honor for us to be able to welcome into our midst Mrs. Gracha Machel. She is in great demand, and it's wonderful that she's been able to accept our request to be our guest speaker, our keynote speaker today. She came in last night on a flight from Brazil as a very heavy schedule, but she is with us this morning. And we are absolutely delighted. Gracha Machel is, in many ways, a household word. She is a renowned international advocate for women's rights, children's rights. She has been herself a social and political activist over many decades. She is a former freedom fighter. She was the very first education minister of Mozambique. Her contributions have been widely appreciated, and if I were to list them it would take us too long. I would say, however, she is a member of the Africa Progress Panel, the United Nations Secretary General's Millennium Development Goals Advocacy Group, and a member, very importantly for us this morning, a member of the High-Level Panel on the Post-2015 UN Development agenda. She is also a member of the elders, which is currently, as you know, formerly chaired by Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and currently chaired by former Secretary-General Kofi Annan. She is also a member of Girls Not Brides, a board chair of the partnership for an eternal newborn and child health. African ambassador for a promise renewed, president of SOAS, University of London, Chancellor of the University of Cape Town, board chair of the African Center for the Constructive Resolution of Disputes, president of the Foundation for Community Development, and founder of the Zizili Institute for Child Development. As founder of the newly established Grachemachel Trust, she has focused more recently on advocating for women's economic and financial empowerment, education for all, and end to child marriage, food security and nutrition, and promoting democracy and good governance. Your Excellency, it's indeed a great honor to welcome you to the IOM, a session today of the Council. We're all thrilled that you've been able to join us, and we're greatly looking forward to your remarks. The floor is yours. Thank you very much.