Before it happened, most of us thought about fossil fuels only when we filled up our cars. Then the whole extraction industry collapsed and we realized that something more important than transportation was completely dependent on these fuels. That was the food system. We never thought about the fact that from growing and harvesting to processing and transportation, our food was made using fossil fuels. This is the story of a family trying to cope with the loss of those fuels. We have to grow, harvest, and forage for ourselves in a new world. It's called food and again. Our top story tonight, gas prices soar as oil producers declare a halt in production, citing an undisclosed complication. From all back down in Russia to the United States and Canada, oil companies have turned off the taps, at least temporarily. As soon as I saw the news, I knew I had to start getting to work. I'm kind of lucky that my job has made me think about fossil fuels, society, and collapse. I used to be an archaeologist and I wrote about the rise and fall of ancient complex societies like the Aztecs, the Romans, Mayas, Incas. This all made me realize how dependent our way of life is on fossil fuels. Just like the Romans needed fresh conquest to keep their empire going and the Maya depended on the monsoon rainfall. We need petroleum, coal, and natural gas to drive everything in our world. According to the news, the entire extractive industry has suffered some sort of crippling collapse and we're stuck with just the fuel we have on hand already extracted. Right now they're calling it gasageddon, but pretty soon it's going to become foodageddon. This is going to get really bad. It's winter now, but it's going to be spring soon and then it'll be winter again. It's going to be trouble. We've got a whole bunch of chickens. I don't know how I'm going to feed them. I don't grow food for chickens. I don't even know where to start growing and getting food ready for them. What are we going to do? We need them for meat and for eggs. Plus they're nice to have around, but what are we going to do if we can't just pick up feed at the store? I mean, people had chickens before we had fossil fuels, so we should be able to have chickens afterwards. I just have never done it, so we have to figure that out on top of everything else. At least we've got a rooster. We should be able to grow chicks this spring. Probably not a bad idea increase our flock since we're going to have to depend on it. Plus the chicks are really cute. Right now, what do we know? The news says that there's been major catastrophe in the extractive industry. It's rather vague. I don't know the details. They don't provide a lot of details. They just say that for right now, fuel production and other fossil fuels are kind of shut down until further notice, which is kind of ominous sounding. You know, we have the strategic petroleum preserve. I don't know if they're going to tap into that, how long it's going to last. I don't know at this point right now. It is the very beginning of February. At least, you know, the system seems to still be functioning at least in the interim. So, you know, right now we're kind of business as usual, but we certainly are thinking ahead. What are we going to do next and what's going to have to change? About 80 to 90% of our energy comes from fossil fuels, so we're going to have to really change things around quickly, even if it's just a shortage for a few months. We're really lucky now. We have the postal service. It'll bring us anything, anytime. We just have to order it online. It's easy. That's not going to happen after, well, I don't know, a couple of months. That's going to be not possible. It's definitely a lot quieter around here. I won't mind that, but we're going to have to plan ahead, buy what we need now, get it sent here, and hope that we thought of everything. It's the beginning of February right now, so we've still got snow here in southern Wisconsin, but we have to start thinking ahead right now. We're lucky in that we've been turning our yard into a garden for a few years, but we don't have that much space. It's basically a suburban lot out in the country. Next time, we'll go into a bit more detail about our greenhouse and our growing operations and our other infrastructure, but everything that we're going to eat is going to have to be grown here. And luckily, if we can do it here on a quarter acre, a lot of people in the suburbia or other places could do it on a small amount of land. Okay, so the news is some sort of catastrophe that shut down the gas production and fossil fuel industry in general is crashing. The industry isn't saying much about why. They're putting out things that announcements that there's something wrong with the supply chain and they're anticipating not putting out any fossil fuels for the foreseeable future. I think we should plan for the worst. What's your inclination or what do you think so far? I think that this is all a stunt to raise prices ridiculously high and get subsidies from the government because, yeah, I'll just stop it there. I don't think it's true. I think it's all BS. What rating are we doing? I have no idea. Yeah, I think it's just the oil industries colluding to raise prices and there aren't going to be any antitrust violations coming down the pipeline because they're probably benefiting from it. So you're like OPEC did in the 70s where they made the gas shortage artificial. Okay, so why don't you introduce yourself since it's the first. Who are you? I'm Lauren. I am Scott's wonderful boy. A rational support animal. What's Casey then? I'm a puppy girl. I'm a puppy girl. I know it looks like a lot this year but we have a wood fired greenhouse and on one hand that's great. We'll have greens all year round. But on the other hand, that means I got to get a lot of wood together and you have to get the wood together for next winter, this winter so it can dry over the summer. It's work now with my truck.  But next year it's going to be a whole different ball game. It looks like a lot of wood and we can go through two cords right now. Chords four feet by four feet by eight feet. So I don't even know what it's going to be like next year when we don't have fossil fuels to heat our home and also our greenhouse. Three, four cords. Easy and that's just to keep things from freezing. I worry that people aren't going to take this seriously until it's too late. So I'm Scott Johnson. I work at the Low Technology Institute. I'm actually the founder and director of the Low Technology Institute. And essentially our nonprofit is here to develop strategies to house, clothe and feed ourselves when fossil fuels are no longer available, which happens to work out really well with the recent news. So we have been asking ourselves for years, what would happen if fossil fuels disappeared? That's the premise of the institute. And we've been looking at this question and trying to figure out how could we survive when that happens. And a lot of the things that we've come up with and have worked on are what you call low tech solutions. And low tech doesn't mean, you know, sticks and rocks, although we do use sticks and rocks. Well, it's the simplest means to achieve an end. And the example I always give of that is, you know, a microwave meal looks like a really simple thing.  But that simplicity belies what goes into that. All the energy to heat it, to refrigerate it, to process it, to grow it is quite a lot. There's a lot of production there. And so, you know, something as simple looking as a microwave meal is not simple at all. It's a lot simpler, believe it or not, energetically and through a whole bunch of other measures to grow food on your own property and eat it. And so we've kind of been working on this for years in a serious fashion, but not in a dire emergency situation. But now, with the news that fossil fuels are disappearing, we're going to have to put these things into practice. You know, in my mind, and I'm sure a lot of other people have done this, I've thought about like, what if there was a gas shortage? Or what if fossil fuels somehow became unavailable? What would we do? And you know, you kind of think through these scenarios. But when it comes to food, without food, a lot of things quickly become less important. A lot of revolutions in history have started because of food. The French Revolution coincided with record high bread prices. You know how like there's a murder of crows and all these other kind of silly mass nouns for things? I like to say that a large group of hungry people is called the mob, right? And without food, everything else, again, just becomes completely superfluous. So for us, the number one priority isn't heating or water or anything like that because we have those, at least we have the water taken care of. Heating, we can work out. But food, food's going to be the number one issue as fossil fuels become scarcer and scarcer. How long do you think we should plan for? Self-sufficient. I don't know if it's a matter of having to plan for self-sufficiency. I think it's a matter of, yes, we're going to have to budget our gas intake for the few months, but then we're going to need to learn to just re-budget for a new normal, again, of whatever this heightened gas price is going to be. I don't think this is the end of days. You know, I think this is... My hopes are dashed. Do you want it to be the end of days? End of fossil fuel days. No, I don't think fossil fuels are going anywhere. I think people love their fossil fuels too much. And again, I think it's just a business tactic. Also, it depends on if this was a man-made issue or if it was a naturally-caused issue, but we don't know yet, and so hopefully more information will come out, which, again, is why I think it's all stunned. So we aren't the average people. No, but we've been here two years, so people could pretty much catch up to us if they put their mind to it. And follow lowtechinstitute.org on the blog. Yes, exactly. We could catch up to ourselves in a year at this point. If this happened three or four years down the road, yeah, we would be so far down, so much farther on that we couldn't have made that up. I wouldn't have made it in the ground green house. I would have made a less labor-intensive greenhouse. But you could conceivably turn, like, Rin's backyard into this in a year. Easy. Rin doesn't have as much backyard. Yeah, but she has plenty of sunlight.  They could turn their backyards into this much easier than we had to clear a brush. We had to do all this stuff. We're okay for the first month. We can be generally relaxed about it, but then if it hasn't fixed after one month, then the second month we need to start being more careful. Third month, more careful. Fourth month, more careful. So if you're right and it's just OPEC or whoever screwing with us, then great. And we haven't changed anything. I haven't changed anything. All right, let's see how things are in a month. If fossil fuels are gone, then we'll be glad that we listened to me. Do you have any immediate worries? I worry. How do I phrase this? Oh, you're not worried about the whole scenario about gas disappearing. You're worried about how I'm going to react to it. You're worried. I'm worried about some overreaction from Scott and needing to calm him down and come back to reality. Okay, well, right now the reality is fossil fuels are not available. Yes, but by tomorrow morning everything will be fine. All right, so how's this going to work? Every Friday, more or less, there should be a new video up. So you should click the subscribe button. I'm sure there's somewhere down here somewhere. And then you'll be notified when a new episode's out. Every week we'll show you what we've been up to that week, what we've been growing, what we've been doing, what we've been preserving. We'll share news as it happens, as fossil fuels continue to disappear from our way of life. What's new in the world? And as best we can tell, how's that going to affect us? We will talk about the new restrictions that we've had. You know, when we run out of gas, we can't drive to the grocery store. We will let you know all that. In addition, we're going to do a podcast. And that podcast will be a bit more behind the scenes talking about the research we're doing, that we're basing all of this on. And we'll also be jotting this all down. That means we'll be recording how many hours we work, what kinds of food we're making, how much of each food we're growing, what sorts of inputs we've put in. Just the real nuts and bolts, the real energetic cost of all of this food growing, and also the production. And we'll also share some recipes, because we're going to be eating a lot of potatoes. I can tell you that now, and I'll talk about potatoes. I'll probably do a whole episode on potatoes. No joke. Potatoes are totally worth it. But we eat a lot of potatoes, and you need a lot of different potato recipes in order not to get completely bored eating just potatoes. So we will have all this formal reporting on the website, so you can check that out under the food again tag or link. We also would really love to have your contributions, send comments or get in contact with me at Scott at lowtechinstitute.org. You can check out the whole thing at lowtechinstitute.org. That's our website. If you are interested in volunteering and you live in the southern Wisconsin area, get in touch. If you are with a business or organization that has to do with gardening or some ancillary food preservation or antifossil fuel, whatever, and you want to work with us, also get in touch. So tune in next week. I think the best thing to do is to really introduce you to our operation here. We'll show you the greenhouse and the solar panels, the garden beds, which are under snow right now, the chicken coop. We'll see the bees. We'll kind of maybe do a little bit of a tour around town just to kind of give everybody a real context of where we're coming from, where we're living and what we're trying to do. So stay tuned for that. It should be out next Friday. Again, subscribe button. I think that's all we have for this week. I hope you're doing okay. Good luck and take care of yourselves.


The Adventures of Frank Race, starring Paul Dubov. The war changed many things, the face of the earth and the people on it. Before the war, Frank Race worked as an attorney, but he traded his law books for the Cloak and Dagger of the OSS. When it was over, his former life was over too. Adventure had become his business. The Adventures of Frank Race. Frank Race for The Adventure of the Fairway Beauties. Golf is a funny game. Usually, if a person applies himself diligently to a sport, he'll eventually come up as a creditable performer. But it's not that way in golf. A few people just have the knack. Millions don't. As for Mark Donovan, he ranks with the great majority. Hey! Hey, Race! Oh, that was close. Missed me by a good inch. Oh, brother. It's a good thing you're dark. Look, what did I do to that shot anyway? You sculled it. Oh, I did. Well, look, I hit down on it, Paul, just like you said. Remember that term we used during the war, Mark?  That's the way you hit down on that shot. Do you know something? This is the most aggravating game which was ever invented. A little pill standing still, the guy can't do nothing with it. You're doing quite a lot with it. Yeah, but never caught in a plan. Look, I'm gonna try one more shot. If it don't come off, I'm heading for that blackjack game in a caddy pen. Let's try some strategy to get on this screen. What do you feel like, a hook or a slice? Eh, who knows. Well, you have a slice on the last one. So aim to the left. That should take it right into the pin. Into the left. But there's a pond over there. If it goes straight... Mark, let's face it. You haven't hit a straight shot all afternoon. Chum, if we really face it, I ain't never hit a straight shot in my whole life. You've been slicing most of the time. So aim for that pond and watch it fade right onto the carpet. Ah, okay. Line it up for the pond. She caught it for the green, huh? This one will be a... Hit! You see? What a... Uh-oh. Oh, race, race. It's heading right for the... pond. I'm sorry, Mark. I gave you poor advice. Look, the poorest advice you ever gave me is when you talk me into taking up this game. I'm through. I'm finished. Relax, Mark, because it's all in fun. This is what I'm having, fun. Look, you've got four more holes to finish. Go ahead, play them, play them. Let's see at the clubhouse. If I ain't there, take a peek in the caddy pen. But 45 minutes later, as I paid off the caddy on the 18th green, I saw I wasn't going to have to look very far to find Donovan. He had planted himself on the practice tee and was gobbling at a couple of girls who were hitting shots. Since Mark has excellent taste when it comes to feminine allure, I wandered over there myself. Oh, it's your race. What happened to the blackjack game? Well, he ain't everything. Hey, look, take a gander at this pair. Not only are they a duo of delightful dainties, but watch how they lamb them balls. You know, I got admitted, race. California's a wonderful place. Look at that shot. They're a mile. They should be good. Know who they are? No, but I ain't turning down any invitations. One with a deep tan is Zoe Frenier. She's national women's open and amateur champion. Has been for the last three years. British champion, too. Probably the greatest woman player of all time. I ain't gonna argue that one. Look, how about the petite little item?  Barbara Stanford, California champion. Hey, you know these names? I know Zoe Frenier pretty well. I used to... Oh, looks like she remembers you. She's heading this way. Well, Frank Rays. Or may I never get another golf shot? Which would be the tragedy of the decade. You're in wonderful form, Zoe. Oh, thanks. Frank, it's wonderful seeing you again. Babs, come over here. What are you doing in California, Frank? We just came down from Vancouver. Been loafing. Zoe, this is Mark Donovan. Hi, Mark. Hi. And this very lovely thing is Barbara Stanford. Maybe you know each other. Not nearly as well as I think we should. Hello, Barbara. Hi. This is fun. Everything is fun when it's with other men. Isn't it, Zoe? He stood off about eight or 10 feet from us. Judging from the clothes he had on, he wasn't there to play golf. His features said in a mask of bitterness had bad news written all over them. Vic, I... I didn't know you were around. That's nothing new, is it?  No, that's right. You don't like problems, do you? Just sweetness and light, that's our Zoe. Sweetness and light and fun with other men. Tell him to get lost, Zoe, all of them. You're out of line, Vic. Way out of line. I want to talk to you. Now, do I get to do it, or do I turn myself into a really difficult problem? Look, Chum, if the lady don't want to have nothing to do with this, she don't like... You stay out of this, Chum. With me, nosy bystanders draw nothing but welts. Is that right? Well, I take a... No, no, don't. Come on, Vic. We'll go somewhere and talk. Wait a minute, Zoe. You don't have to let this lad push you around. And just what would you do about it? It's all right, Grace, really. Nothing is all right, and you'll know it. But stick around, Grace, or whatever your name is. I've got a personal interest in your ill health. All right. Who is that guy? Her husband. Her husband? Oh, brother. And I'm trying to buy into a family brawl. Am I lucky nothing come out of that? I didn't know Zoe was married. About three months ago, up at Del Monte. His name is Vic Malloran. Is it peculiar, fella? He certainly is. How about something tall and cool at the bar? I'd love it. On the practice tee, at 30 yards, I'd been telling myself that this Stanford glass would be something worth staying in California for. In the clubhouse taproom at two feet. She made me want to become a native son. What happened to your friend? Mark? Hmm. His gambling instinct reared its head. I have an idea. He's now in the vicinity of the local blackjack swarray. He's a lot of fun. What about me? You think I could be a lot of fun? With you, Race, the word fun didn't occur to me. No. What did? I... Oh, no, you sound. I'm not going to give you a lead like that. I'll wait. I'm good at waiting. Are you ready? Up to a point, of course. Let me get a rundown on you. You're here for the tri-state tournament. That's right. Then I suppose it's Seattle and the women's national. And I don't suppose you're quite that patient. You'd rather play golf than eat? Love it more than anything else in the world. So far. That did it. I'll wait. I sit still for a prospect like that any time. Would you sit still for an interruption to this, uh, tater-tater? A lot of weight, a lot of muscle, a lot of tailoring in a double-breasted pinstripe suit. A look of bland friendliness went with it. The sort of look you get when you mention checking the bets in a high-stake poker game. You sat down without waiting for an answer to his question. I'm Chuck Kendall, Private Dick, working for Vic Malvin. So? I wanted to make sure he didn't hurt your feelings out there a while ago. This sounds like a new one. How does the dialogue go from here? What do you do for a living? Newspaper boy? Come again? What are you? A reporter? Why? Well, we wouldn't want Vic to get in bad with the press. That's all. The guy's running for public office, a thing like what happened out there could look bad. It ain't really. Just a beef with his wife. Nothing to write about. So Vic is running for public office, is he? You know, that intrigues me. It thoroughly intrigues me. Well, I don't follow you. You wouldn't. But you can forget the publicity angle, and not a newspaper man. Huh? And that? Do I sense a change in your attitude?  I can see why Vic had an impulse to change your face around. Got any more to say? Yeah, just one thing. Don't go bothering Vic. There's people who wouldn't like it. A lot of people.  Now, would you mind leaving us? He does look hard, Rice. I imagine he is. Quite hard. There's something else about Zoe. She's in love with Larry Myers, do you know him? I know he's a great golfer. Zoe wants to get free of Vic Malvern and Mary Larry. And Larry doesn't even know about Vic. That's why this is all so sticky. You see, Larry is meeting Zoe here for dinner.  I think he's heading our way. A sweet swinger, a great competitor. Not more than a couple of years away from the national open crown. This was the tag the experts had pinned on Larry Myers. But his usual poise wasn't with him as he came up to us. Hi, Babs. Hello, Larry. This is Frank Rice. Oh, nice knowing you. Babs, I don't know what to think. I just got a message that Zoe is standing me up. What did she say? Well, she didn't say anything. She just left word with a bartender that she wouldn't be around this evening. Gosh, Larry, I don't know what to say. Jennifer, a call for Mr. Frank Rice. Pardon me. Coming back, Rice? I certainly am, baby. Stay put. It was Zoe Frenier on the other end of the line and the very tone of her voice said trouble. Rice, can I see you this evening? It's very important. Malvern? Yes, I've got to see you, Rice. Larry Myers is here at the clubhouse. Would he be any help? No. No, I don't want Larry to know it. Don't say anything to him. Will you, Rice? Promise me. I'm a clam. Where shall I see you? I'm staying at the Colonial Arms. It's on Wilshire near Westwood Village. I can't think of the number. It must be here somewhere. Take it gently, Zoe. I'll find the place. What time do you want me to come? Well, I've got to go out for a while. I'll make it about 7.30. Is that all right, Rice? That's all right. I'll see you about 7.30. At the Colonial Arms, I found Zoe Frenier's apartment on the second floor. But in the hall just outside her door, I was intercepted by a pair of citizens who could have qualified as bouncers at the Longshoremen's Convention. Where do you think you're going? I can't see that it's any of your affair, but I'm paying a visit to a lady. In here? This seems to be it. Not just now, your nap. Take a walk. Been walking most of the day. I played golf this afternoon. Then you should be in good shape. Get going. All right. You've had your chance at being dramatic. Move aside. Look, friend. I told you once. What would you like? Special delivery letter? Obviously, we've reached an impasse. But I still intend to pay my respect to the lady. Nick. Eh? Flip this pigeon down the stairs. Sure, Ogie. Nick moved his mask toward me reaching out with thick arms. It was an open invitation for a wrist lock, so I obliged, twisted quickly, and flipped him. Then I had Ogie to handle a good man with his fists. I took one to the ear that sent me lurching for the stairs, but I got one back. And Ogie went down only for a second, though he wrenched up, came at me. I went to one the end. What goes on here, anyway? This guy, Vic.  Where's Ogie? At the bottom of the stairs. Looks as though the guy got very tough. Two of your mugs, and you can't even handle one man. What are you here for, Chum? This is getting repetitious. I came to see Zoe Frontier, and if you have any idea of trying to stop me... Oh, you can see her. I'll even go in with you myself. Come on in. A compartment had been decorated to match the architecture of the building with an early American motif. I had to look around, notice that the copper lamp hanging from the beam's ceiling was planted by something. I tripped over a tear in the hooked rug as I moved deeper into the room. Fancy, huh? Very nice. But where's Zoe? Oh, she's here. But she's not going to say anything to you. No? Why not? Because somebody just cut her throat. We'll return to the Adventures of Frank Race in just about one minute. Back to the Adventures of Frank Race. She lay sprawled on the kitchen floor, her head almost under the table, one of her legs still double grotesquely from her death agony. Zoe Frontier, greatest woman golfer of all time. How do you like that? I don't. I've known Zoe for quite a while. This won't qualify as one of my merrier evenings. How do you think it makes me feel? I don't know. How does it make you feel? Come on out in the other room, Race. I've got to think straight and talk straight. I'm not going to be able to do either looking at her. Malvern, the police, I don't suppose they've been notified. Well, if they have, somebody else did it besides me. I'll call them now. Put down that phone, Race. I can't stop you from getting lost, Malvern, if you feel like it. I said, put down that phone. Try anything fancy and the next slap will be with this pistol. Malvern, you have firm and compelling ways. Just watch it, that's all. Any objection if I rub my jaw? You can get up. Sit on the divan if you like. I like. That whack seems to have slowed down my metabolism a few points. You make good use of those shoulders, Malvern. A snake punch, you know it, I know it. I had to do it, that's all. You're an interesting case, study Vic. Where do we go from here? I'm that girl's husband. I've got a hunch you know that. I know it. I've been carrying a torch for her. It's gonna take a long time for that torch to die down even now. I got that too. And you think that maybe I killed her? I'm afraid a lot of people are gonna think that. Yes, that's why we have to figure on you for help. You left me behind with that one. I checked up on you, Race. I checked up this afternoon just because I saw you with Zoe. I found out what you do. I found out that plenty of smart boys think you've got a lot on the ball. I still don't get what you're driving at. I want you to do something for me. I want you to go and talk to a certain man in this town. I'm asking you to promise to go and talk to him before you say anything to the police. And if I don't, what happens? Nothing.  Who's the man? Will he be expecting me? He'll be expecting you. His name is Sylvester Painter. Sounds familiar. It should. He's mayor of the city. Sylvester Painter. I remembered a spread about him I'd seen in a national magazine. He resigned his office during the war to get into the service. He'd been re-elected in 48. He greeted me with a look of intentness and a firm handshake. Sit down, Race. I, uh, just finished talking to Vic. I may as well confess that I haven't the faintest ideas to what this is all about. It's about a lot of things. But mostly Vic Malvern. How long have you been in town? Well, you probably know what we've been through, then. The mess we've had with police department corruption? Yes. All right. Now I'm gonna jump back to Vic. He used to be a cop. Great cop. Youngest captain of detectives in the history of the force. He served in the same theater of operations that I did during the war. Now, a lot of stuff has been said about what I did over there. Well, I started out as a major, ended up a lieutenant colonel. Vic began as a captain and ended up a full colonel and did it with combat duty.  Well, you see, Vic has been running for political office and he's picked up a set of hangers on who become a trifle overzealous at times. They didn't pull guns on you, did they? No. Come to think of it, they didn't. Well, this morning I conferred with the police commission regarding our present emergency. I made the point that there was only one man equipped to become our new chief of police, Vic Malvern. And it's my belief that the commission is ready to appoint him. Quite a situation. Yes. But I'm sticking by Vic. When we talked over the phone just now, I asked him flatly if he was guilty of his wife's murder. He said he'd had nothing to do with it. I believe him. So where do I fit in? I want this murder cleared up and fast. I want a special man for the job, you. And don't think you'll just be working for Vic Malvern, none at all. He called me twice tonight. The first time he wanted me to give up on him to forget about making him chief. I told him what I'm telling you. That if I can't turn to him, I don't know where I can turn. I don't have weeks to look around. It's got to be done quickly before real demoralization sets in. That's why I want a clean bill of health for Malvern. How about it? What could I say? Later, when I told Mark Donovan about the assignment, he shook his head. Are you leading with your chain race? How do you know what's behind the deal? It's political. It'll be sticky and a hot lollipop in a kid's hair. And besides, how are we going to get into golf when you want a case? Speaking of golf reminds me of someone I could see. A lad by the name of Larry Myers. Right now? It's almost 10 o'clock. Probably a good time to get him. I'll catch you later, Mark. Yes? My name is Race. We met at the club, remember? Oh, yes, certainly. I'd like to talk to you a few minutes, Myers. Oh, sure, sure. Come on in. Well, what's on your mind? Zoe for an ear. Zoe? I thought you might be interested in the fact that she's dead. Dead? Zoe dead? It rocked him, and I could sense that he wasn't acting. But he couldn't tell me much. He'd been too numb by the revelation. So I called it a day and went home. That's your race? Right. I found out something about you tonight. You had better luck than I did, what? You, I'm slipping. Well, that's always encouraging to hear. You had a date with a very pretty dame, and you forgot all about it. I had a... Barbara Stanford, I was going to join her at the townhouse. Did you think the town... I'd give it a load down on the whole deal, give her a big pitch about the mayor himself, calling you in on a big case. And she said I could drop dead. Would me do any explaining? Oh, race, you ought to know better than that. She's still waiting for you. Marcus, you're indispensable. Dig me out a clean shirt, will you, in one of those new tides. She had a smile for me, and it was in her eyes as well, so I felt I rated. But almost at once, she asked me to take her somewhere else. I've been here so long, race. I've seen so many smiles of sympathy. All for men, I bet. Those weren't smiles of sympathy, baby. They were muted wolf calls. All right, we'll hit for another spot. Where'll it be? I'll leave it to you. While we were deciding, I was paged for a phone call. It turned out to be Mark Donovan at the other end. I've been trying to get through to you for the last 30 minutes. You've been shadowed. How do you know? I caught up in the winter when you left here. It was a guy who staked out across the street. He'd tell you carefully. What kind of car? A great Chevy Coupe. One of them, no one's. Oh, there's something else. Larry Myers called. I don't know where he was. I told him about the date, said all right. Perfectly all right. Thanks, Mark. I seem to make you wait and wait, don't I? It's all right. This night air feels wonderful. Just look at that fountain across the street, Grace. Isn't it beautiful? Like to wait? Let's go. Perfect. Let's run. Hey, you're fast. You make me step. Oh, this is going to be marvelous. I'll go my shoes. I think I'll take mine off, too. Hey, this grass is a little damp for sitting down. Grace, that car, it's acting oddly. Yes, it is. Grace, are you all right? Yeah, I'm all right. Here, I'll help you out. Thank you. Yeah, I'm all right, but that brought my thought sharply back to business. If it's okay with you, I'd like to go somewhere else before we hit that nightclub. It's okay with me, but where? Zoe for an ear's apartment. I have an idea that we might find something there that could throw a little light on her murder. Will you be able to get in? How about the police? No trouble there. I was made a special officer by the mayor. I had no idea Zoe had such a lovely place. What's the matter, Grace? Either someone has just left or they're still here. How can you tell? Cigarette smoke. Good. I'd have been disappointed if that hadn't been in this closet. What, Grace? This golf club of Zoe's. You think it has something to do with her death? That lamp up there. Notice how it stented? And take a look at that tear in the carpet. Someone was making practice swings. They evidently got out of the groove. It's my idea that someone waited here for Zoe. Waited a murder. And while they waited, they took practice swings with this club. Must have been a poor golfer to have hit that lamp. Or a good golfer who suddenly turned nervous unhearing Zoe at the door. I wouldn't handle the club, honey, fingerprints. I want to be able to testify that this club wasn't touched after I found it. Whose fingerprints could they be raised? Yours, honey. She didn't say anything. Just stared at me from under those lovely lashes of hers. And I knew I'd hit it. Often a runner-up, but very seldom a winner. That's the way the records read when it came to the name of Barbara Stanforth. All because of a girl called Zoe Frenier. And Barbara hadn't been able to take it. Those fingerprints, Grace, could have put them on that club at any time. No, honey, when we came in, you tried to put across the idea that this was your first time here, remember? I'm sorry.  It's tough. You would say that. I was afraid of that. But it won't make any difference. Will it, chicken? Well, so it was Kendall you hired to gun me down. You knew that, too, did you? Pretty hard to miss it. You'd never have noticed that car unless you'd been looking for it. My reflexes aren't bad, but you hit the ground before I did. Kendall, this is a very difficult man. Yeah, sure. Which makes the case worth a lot more dough. Write your own ticket. Just let me leave before you do anything. Yeah, go ahead, chicken. So long, Grace. I'm sorry, too. Go on somewhere, lady. Kendall! Why you... Now there was a pip of a punch. We were lucky. He was trying to shoot in two directions at once. Oh, don't get restless, lady. You gotta stick with us. I hired all that evidence, too, Grace. But, uh... You know, somehow I ain't happy about this. I'm not happy about it either, Mark. What's your reason? Well, when you come to think of it, taking a babe like this one out of circulation, it's an awful waste of talent. The Adventures of Frank Grace, starring Paul Dubov with Tony Barrett as Mark Donovan comes to you from Hollywood. Others heard in tonight's cast were Lillian Baev, Frank Lovejoy, Tom Holland, Michael Ann Barrett, and Bill Johnstone. This series is written and directed by Buckley Angel and Joel Murcott. The music is composed and played by Ivan Dittmarz. Be sure to be with us again this time next week for another dramatic chapter in The Adventures of Frank Grace. Art Gilmore speaking. This is a Brucells production.


Hello and welcome back to Enter the Combat League, a video series where we take you, the player, through the different ranks of Combat League and offer our tips for how to progress through those ranks to go from a new combatant all the way up to the godly ranks of the top. Continuing from our last video, it's now time to go into detail about the middle three ranks of Combat League, which are Champion, Master and Grandmaster. These are the ranks where your matches will begin to get noticeably different to what you've experienced up to this point, and there are a few factors as to why this is the case, so let's go through them now. Champion is the first rank of this video and where you'll begin to notice a big change immediately. This is the rank where a new feature of Combat League is introduced. Up to this rank, you can play at your leisure and will always have the same amount of points no matter what, whereas once you hit Champion, your points will begin to slowly decay each day if you go a full three days without playing a single set. This introduces an element of responsibility to you as the player, as if you want to continue climbing the ranks, you'll have to play at least one set every three days, otherwise you'll begin to lose the points that you've earned. This isn't as hard to maintain as you might think, as it's only one match that has to be played in order to stop your points from dropping, and even if you lose the match, you won't lose more points than you would have lost via a point to K anyway. Gameplay-wise, you should see Champion as a small extension from Warrior, as by this point, you would have played a decent amount of sets and will still be in roughly the same point of matchmaking. You'll find that the bracket for higher ranked players that you come across will open up slightly and will typically stop getting matched against apprentice ranked players as well. You should be able to find yourself being able to get through Champion with the same kind of strategies that got you here in the first place and with consistency can earn the rank of Master. Master rank can act as a turning point for where you begin to find players with a more solid understanding of Mortal Kombat 11. Typically, players that reach this rank will be continuing to climb and won't settle until at least Grand Master. You'll also find here is where you might begin to be matched against players in ranks such as Demigod, so have to make sure that you're prepared for anything. By Master, you should have a firm grasp on which characters you enjoy playing and where you should really be focusing on your own knowledge of the characters that you play and how to be ready for common online situations, how to anti-air, punishing wake-up attacks, etc. The more comfortable you are with your own character, the more you can focus on the variables of the match itself. This is also where you'll begin to start seeing that points lost from losing could begin to add up, even though you'll usually find that you'll always win more points than you lose, by this point you'll want to start paying attention to the amount of points you are losing. With this kind of attention can typically bring frustration, especially if you aren't used to ranked playlists and it's more common than you'd think for players to begin to feel this way. Try to keep a level head. Remember that climbing the ranks is a gradual process and will take time, especially if you're trying to improve at the game as much as you can at the same time as climbing those ranks. Getting frustrated can easily slip you into making more mistakes and not being as ready for situations that you should be looking for, such as punishing mistakes that the opponent might be making. If you've made it to Master, you're doing something right, but there's still more that you can achieve and one of them is Grandmaster. Grandmaster is a common goal that many players aim for. It might not be the highest rank in the game, but it's certainly higher than most reach across the course of a Combat League season. Here is where you'll begin to fight players of Demigod and even above quite regularly, which will act as a double-edged sword as even though winning will be tough, you'll win a huge chunk of points for the win and lose almost nothing by comparison. This will be even more noticeable if you fight players of God rank as well. At this point of Combat League, you'll absolutely want to make sure that you are used to the popular characters that are seen regularly. Fan favourites like Scorpion, Liu Kang and Sub-Zero are still very popular online and even in ranked play, so you'll want to be as knowledgeable as possible in these match-ups in ways that will make a difference when fighting them, such as knowing what moves are punishable, how long their attacks take to recover, what their options are from full screen and many more instances like this. As well as character-specific knowledge, you're going to want to make sure that you are as clued up on the game itself as much as you can. By the time you reach this point, you'll have a grasp on how to play MK11 online and ideally will have an idea of what mechanics you need to understand the most. You'll want as little room for doubt as possible so you can focus on the important stuff. This is the point where consistency is absolutely the most important thing. Don't be afraid to lose, but obviously winning will always result in more points being earned. Grandmaster is also where you'll take a small jump in how many points you lose as well, arguably being the first real point in the ranks that you want to make sure that you are staying consistent against other grandmasters or in the ranks just below you. These three ranks are quite the jump from the kind of matches you will have in the lower three ranks, but progression is still an important factor of any ranked climb, and we hope that these tips help you grow all the more as you eventually aim for the very top. Thank you for watching and we'll see you on the next episode of Enter the Combat League.


From our studios, in the heart of Silicon Valley, Palo Alto, California, this is a CUBE Conversation. Welcome to this CUBE Conversation here at the Palo Alto CUBE Studios. I'm John Furrier, host of theCUBE. We're here with special guest, a CUBE alumni, investor and entrepreneur. We do Sudakar. We do good to see you again. John. Always a pleasure. You've been on as an entrepreneur, founder, as an investor. You're always out scouring the valley. We have some great conversations. I want to get your thoughts as kind of a guest analyst on this segment around the state of the union for enterprise tech. As you know, we cover enterprise tech. We go to all the top enterprise B2B events. The world is changing. We've got re-invent coming up. We've got VMworld before that. The two big shows to cap out this year. We've got Splunk, a variety of other events as well. So a lot of action. Cloud now is pretty much a done deal. Everyone's validating it. Microsoft's gaining share. A lot of growth areas around cloud that's been enabled. I want to get your thoughts. The first question is, what are the top growth sectors in the enterprise that you're seeing? Nice. First, thank you for having me. It's always a pleasure talking to you. Over the years, you and me have done this so many times. I'm learning a lot from you. So thank you. You're welcome. So yeah, I think let's dig into the cloud side and in general the market. So I think that there are three, four areas that I see a lot that's happening a lot. Cloud is still growing a lot. It's 100% or more growth in the cloud and we'll talk details on what it is. The second area I see a lot is IT services or cloud services. This includes service management. The areas that service now is in. There are still service management. AI ops was IBA that's why. AI ops in that category, AI service management. Gartner is coming up with a new category called AI service management. So they're replacing the ITSM with AI-driven. So that's growing at 100% as a category. Third is RPA. According to again the industry analysts, they have seen that it's growing at 65% to 70%. So these three areas are growing a lot. And the last one that I see a lot is user experience. Can you believe it? Slack is a 20 billion market cap company. So if you net it out, it's a cloud, service management services, RPA, user experience companies. These are all the four areas I see a lot. They're taking all the oxygen. Rest everybody is like the breadcrumbs. Okay, and why do you think the growth in RPA is so high? Is it hype? Is it real? What is going on in RPA in your opinion? Again, the rumors I'm hearing out there is some companies are already at a billion revenue run rate wise. That's a lot in RPA. So it's not really a hype. So if you look at below the RPA, what's happening is RPA companies are automating automation. The key for here is if I can improve the user experience and also automate things. RPA started doing screen scraping in the early days, looking at any reservation, supply chain, any workflow automation. So every company is so complex now. Somebody has to automate the workflow. How can you do this with less number of people, less number of resources and improve the productivity? I mean, RPA is robotic process automation is what it stands for. Ultimately, it's software automation. I mean, software meets cloud, meets automation. It seems to be the big thing. That's also where AI can play a part. Your take on the AI market right now, obviously, cloud and AI are probably the two biggest, I think, categories people tend to talk about. Cloud and AI is kind of the big kind of territories. RPA could fall under a little bit of both. But what should you take on AI? Yeah, so I think if you look at RPA, I actually call the traditional RPAs to be historical legacy vendors. And RPA companies are doing a good job to transform themselves to the next level. But RPA needs to have AI at its core. It's no longer the screen-scaping, the decision-making, the workflow, understanding there are new technology called conversational RPA. There's actually a separate market guide being created called conversational AI. Within AI, can I talk to you in a dialogue manner? Like what do you explain with Instagram or what's using WhatsApp or dialogue flow? How can I make it a conversational RPAs? It's a new sector that's evolving it. But RPA companies have done a good job. They will evolve too. They're going to add AI as a component. And UI has been, has great success. We've been covering them like a blanket on SiliconANGLE and theCUBE. I got to get your take on how this all comes into the next generation. Modern era because we're both been around the block. We've seen the waves of innovation. The modern era of Cloud, certainly Cloud 1.0, Amazon, now Microsoft as you're following Google and everyone else, really goes DevOps. The DevOps movement, cloud native, amazing, create a lot of value, continues to do well. But now there's a big conversation around Cloud 2.0. What is your definition of Cloud 2.0? How do you see Cloud 2.0 evolving? First of all, I like the name Cloud 2.0. I think it's you, author. It is going to continue as a trend. So look, Cloud 2.0 is, I don't know what it will be but I can tell you what it should be and what it can have. Some of the things it should do in the cloud is, cloud is still very much run to human beings. A lot of DevOps people, a lot of human being. The next generation, two daughters should have things done programmatically. I don't need tens of thousands of SRDs and DevOps people. So back to your AI upside and everything. Some of those things should become, cloud should become proactive. I don't want to wait until Amazon EC2 is down. If I'm paying Amazon this money, Amazon should be notifying me when my service is going to be down. There's subsurface, there's, they have provided cloud trail, cloud watch, et cetera, but they need to take it to a notch level with Amazon, Azure, or PCP. So making the experience of deploying, running and building apps. Scalable, obviously that's the scales with the cloud. Programmable, kind of brings in the RPA.  Edge of the network is also interesting, comes up a lot like, okay, how do you deal with networking? I mean, Amazon's done compute and storage and meet amazing well with cloud. And networking has been built in, I guess. To me, the trend with networking kicks in big because now it's like, okay, if you have no perimeter, you have a service area with IoT. There's nothing there. The cloud 2.0 has to address real time, programing ability, things like Kubernetes continues to rise, you're going to need to have services taken up and down automatically, no humans. So that's my key point. The key point for cloud 2.0 should be done without a human in the equation. Today it's still done with DevOps. If people are still using Terra from a lot of scripting, a lot of manuals, can you automate that? That's one angle. The second angle I see in cloud 2.0 is if you step back and say what exactly the intrinsic properties of cloud made is, it's the workflow, it's automation, but it's also able to do it proactively. So what I don't have today is, if I'm playing cloud vendors this much money, tell me what outages are happening. Don't wait until outage happens. Can you predict the outages? They have the capability to, it may mean, it should be probabilistically, it may not be 100%. So I want to know outage prediction. I want to know which services are going down or notify the users. That will become a common denominator and services will be start providing. Even though you see small startups doing this, eventually they become features. All these companies and they'll get absorbed by the, I call this aircraft carriers. You have Amazon, Azure, GCP. They're going to absorb all these AAPs to the point they provide that as a functionality. Yeah, so let's get to the consolidation in a second. I want to get your thoughts on the cloud 2.0 because what you're really getting at is that there's a lot of white space opportunity coming in. So I got to ask you the startup question as you look at, you're an investor, prolific investor in a lot of startups, also you're an entrepreneur yourself. What is the opportunities out there? Because we'll get into the big whales, Amazon, who are building and winning at scale. So barriers to entry are higher every day even though it's open sources there. Amazon's betting on open source big time. We had John Thompson talk about that. That was a success of Satya Nutella. And so what, if I'm an entrepreneur out there, what do I do? I mean, is there any real territory that I could create a base camp on and make money? There's plenty. There's always opportunities. So there's plenty of white spaces to create. Look, first of all you have to look at what's catering. Look at what's happening. IBM is out of business and service management. CSO itself to Broadcom. BMC is sold twice to private companies. Even the CEO got, has left or whatever it is. Then you have HP sold itself to Micro Focus. The only company that's left is ServiceNow. So in that area, you can create plenty of good opportunity. That's a big white space. And CSO has now just had a bad quarter. So they're not truly cloud-nated. Look at what they're going to do well, eventually. But there's enough companies to go in that space. That space can support two to three opportunities. So I can see a publicly traded company in ServiceNow space. In the next five years, my prediction is there'll be another company that will go IPO in the service management space. Same thing's going to happen in RPA. RPA vendors won't get acquired. They'll create enough workflow automation. They become the next tip course of the world. I can see a next publicly traded company is going to happen. In the IT operations, PageRoot is a publicly traded company today. PageRoot is doing really well. Watch DataDog. They're going to do a public next. So that area also, you see, plenty of opportunity to create companies and AI ops. So this is, again, back to the growth areas. Cloud, hard to compete on public cloud. The big guys are out there. There's a cloud enablers. The people who don't have the cloud. So HP try to do a cloud HPE. They had to come out. Dell try to cloud can do it. SAP technically is out there with a cloud. They're trying to be multi-cloud. So you have a series of people who made it. In Oracle, still on the fence, they still technically got a cloud, but it's really more Oracle on Oracle. So they're kind of stuck in the middle of the team. You know, cloud enable or versus a cloud player. If you're not a cloud player, large enterprise, what is the strategy? Because you got HPE, IBM, Cisco, and Dell. So I think, look, that's all. You didn't include sales force in that. If I'm sales force, I want sales force to get into. They have a sales cloud, marketing cloud, commerce cloud. Mark is not doing anything in the area of IT cloud. They cannot go from 100 billion to half a trillion or trillion market cap without IT. They have to embrace that. And that's a 100% growth area. Adobe will get into this game at some point. Adobe is already 150 billion market cap. Then that leaves with what is Cisco going to do? Cisco has been buying more security, software assets, but they don't want to be a public cloud company. They're hybrid cloud, but they have to figure out how can they become an arms dealer in this game and by owning different properties of cloud services. And that's going to happen. And IBM did a good job by acquiring Red Heart. So I think some players are already figuring out this. Consolidation is happening, but they have to get in the game in cloud. They have to do other service management. They have to get into RPA. They have to get experience. See, none of these guys are experience driven. In this day and age, the new kid who are joining the workforce, they care for Airbnb. They care for V-Work. They care for Uber. They care for Netflix. IT is not betting on this. So if I'm on the boardroom at Cisco, I'm not talking about experience. That's a problem to me. HP boardroom is not talking about that. See, that's what, if I'm, I know Mark is on the board from Andreessen, but Mark is investing in all these Slack companies. Then why is HP not doing it? Either HP show get a separate board member or they should get somebody else. You know what, I'm going to telegraph the moves, maybe. I don't know, we talked to Andreessen about that, but I want to get back to this experience thing because experiences become the new expectation. That's been kind of a design principle kind of ethos. Okay, so let's take that the next little younger generation. They're consuming Airbnb. They're using these services like their news and little chunks be built a video service for that. So things are changing. What is IT's version of that? Is it a consumption? Is it a product issue? So how does IT cater to these new experience? What are some of those experiences? I think all of the above. I think IT first of all should cater it. Every property, every product should figure out how to offer to the consumers, how they were consuming it should offer to the businesses on the B2B, B2C. So the IT has to think of every product owner should start thinking about how my user should consume this and how should I offer new experiences and how they want to see this in a new way. It's not in the same, the same compute and networking. How can I deliver it proactively? How can I deliver to a point where people can consume it and make automatic decisions? The decision making is that's where the AI comes in. Don't wait for me to ask the question. Suggest, it's like Gmail autocomplete. Every feature should be thinking through probabilistic what can I do to improve the experience. That changes the product management and that's where I'm looking at companies who are thinking like that to the next generation CRM, next generation security, but that has to happen at the product level. I was mentioning the people who didn't have clouds, HPE, IBM, Cisco and Dell. You threw Salesforce in there. I kind of would think Salesforce, Salesforce is technically a cloud. You do a cloud before cloud was even cloud. They built basically Oracle for the cloud. That became Salesforce. But you mentioned service now, Salesforce. You got Adobe, you got Workday. These are application clouds. So they're not public clouds per se. They've got Amazon web services. Adobe runs on AWS, right? A lot of other people do. Microsoft has their own cloud, but they also have applications as well, Office 365. So what are some of these niche clouds, these application clouds have to do differently because if you think about Salesforce, I mean, you mentioned a good point. Why isn't Salesforce doing more? I mean, people generally don't like Salesforce. I mean, they think that it's more of a lock-in spec, less of a, wow, they've done really innovative things. I mean, people don't really tend to talk about Salesforce in the same breath as innovation. They talk about, well, we run Salesforce, we hate it, or we use it, and they never really break into these other markets. What's your take on them? No, I think market's done a good job through over the years acquiring very companies. It has to start from the top, and at the market, his management team should say, I want to get into a new space. He got into Commerce Cloud, he got into marketing. He has to now decide, should he get into IT or not? Once he comes there, he's really take up because today Salesforce is below the market cap compared to Adobe, right? If I am Salesforce, I need to go, but then should I go after service now industry? Should I go after entire IT services industry? Yes or no, but they have to make that decision. Same thing with Adobe. Adobe is not going to be a niche cloud. They will get into IT side. They're already doing the AI side and experience, so they're king of experience. They're king of what they do in marketing side. They will expand to IT. Well, Adobe will just launch a platform. Yes. That's under the former executive from IBM. That's an interesting direction. They all have these platforms. Okay, so I got to get into the Microsoft, Amazon, Google, the big clouds, and then everybody else. A lot of discussion around consolidation. A lot of people say that a recession is coming next year. I doubt that, but you know, knows. The consolidation continues to happen. You can almost maybe predict that, but where do you see the consolidation now? You got some growth areas as you laid out. Cloud, IT services, RPA, experience-based software, like Slack, et cetera. Where's the consolidation happening? If the growth is happening there, where's the consolidation? It's happening everywhere. I see a lot in cybersecurity. I mean, CrowdStrike already went public. You have Zscaler, the whole bunch of companies, so the next level of companies, you already saw Cisco Bot, GeoSecurity, Palolta has been buying aggressively companies, so security's already going through a lot of consolidation. You're not seeing other people taking a bet in the IT services industry. You'll start seeing that. You're already seeing that in the Kubernetes space, the game is pretty much over, right? Even VMware bot companies, even NetApp bot companies in the Kubernetes. So I think consolidation is always going to happen. People are picking up the right time. It's happening across the board. It's a great time to be an entrepreneur, create a value, take companies public too. So it's like, I think it cannot be anymore at a better time. Look, to your point, where the decision happens or not, nobody can predict. But if in a chance now, it's the best time to raise money, build a company. Well, Madhu, I think the analysis, at least from my perspective is, looking at all the events we go to, is the same theme comes up over and over. Andy Jassy, the CEO of AWS, always talks about old guard and new guard. I think there's two sides of the streets developing, old way and a new way. And I think the modern architecture, the modern era of computer industries coming, and it looks a lot different than it was. So I think the consolidation is happening on those companies that didn't make the right bets, either technically or business model-wise, or they took on too much technical debt and could not convert over to the cloud world. Or these really robust software environments. So I think consolidation is from just the passing of older, non-relevant. And I have a name for this era. So remember, the first main computing was called Mainframe Era. Then we went with Client Server Era. Then came the cloud. Cloud is 2006, now 13 years old. The new era called, what are the name? It could be something with AI and machine learning era, where things will be so automated. That's what we have, new area of computing. So that's, I would like to see, so that's a new trend. This will be another 10-year trend. So even though we go through a recession, it's 10 years. And software. Software, cloud scale, data. AI level. Yeah, it's interesting. And I think the opportunity for startups is to build new brands. These new brands could come out. Let's take an example of a company that went after an old incumbent space, dying market share, not very attractive from a VC standpoint, from a market space standpoint, Zoom. Zoom went after web conferencing. And they took on Webex. And 20 billion dollar market. And they did it with a very simple formula. Be fast, be cloud native, and go after that big market and just beat them on speed and simple value. Back to their experience. They gave you the greatest experience just on the web conferencing it. And better than Skype, better than Webex, better than anybody else. And the market paid them with reward. Thanks very much. He had a great vision. And he's very focused. He used cloud scale. That's it. Took the value proposition of Webex. Get rid of all the other stuff and brought it simple to video conferencing. And that mantra is going to happen in the AI, applying to AI for IT service management, AI ops, AI customer service, AI customer support. So this is what entrepreneurs can do. They can target big markets. Go niche depth. And go directly at either a specific differentiation whether it's experience or just a better mousetrap in this case could win. Right, and one more thing we didn't talk about is where entrepreneurs go after is the area. Remember, many of these apps are still enterprise apps. Nobody really focused on moving these enterprise apps to the cloud, right? All these cloud providers are still struggling with saying, how can I move my workloads? Remember, only 10% workloads in the cloud. 90% still on-prem. So somebody needs to figure out how to migrate these clouds to the cloud very seamlessly. The apps are going to be born in the cloud, cloud native apps. So how do you address to cloud native apps? So there's enough opportunity to go after enterprise applications, cloud native application. So it's a very important. I mean, I do buy the argument that there'll still be on-premises activity, but to your point, there'll be still a massive migration to the cloud, either sunsetting apps and being born in the cloud or moving them over on-prem, off-prem. In all that, I keep telling the entrepreneur to follow the money. When there is, the thing you have to look for is there a big market? Are people catering there? If people are dying and the old God is there to your point and it is in the new God, new God will happen. And if you can bet on the new God in new experience, market will reward you. Where is the money? Follow the money, where do we follow? Show me where it is. Tell me where it is. I told you, follow the cloud.  If you are any company you are not making in the cloud, as a CEO or board member, you need to think through it. Second, automation, whether you go RPA, IT automation, you have to make money out. Service management, whether it's from customer service to support operations. You've got to take the cost out of it. If you are a CIO today and you are not making bets, that's the main thing I see is most CEOs still don't want to take it back. They want to build an empire. The message to CEOs right now is either you do it or get out. Give the job to somebody else. Well, I polled a lot of CISOs in preparing for reinforce Amazon's new cloud security conference and overwhelmingly response from the CISOs, Chief Information Security Officers, is we are building stacks internally. When I asked them about multicloud, you know what they said? Multicloud is BS. I said why? He goes, well, we have a secondary cloud but I don't want to fork my development team. I want to keep my people focused on one cloud. If it's Amazon, we go Amazon. If it's Azure, we stay with Azure. I don't want to have three development teams. So there's a trend to keep the stack building internally. So that means they're investing in building their own tech stacks. Your thoughts on that? Look, I mean, that's again, there's no one size fits all. There will be some CEOs who want to have three different silos. Some people have this horizontal stack, like I've seen companies right now, they write the code once, it compiles and executes in all three clouds. That's a new way to build it. You're not going to create a stack for each of them. You have to write the code so that it uses the native services but uses the same code base. That's how the new startups are building it. If somebody's writing it like this, that's all we have thinking as a CIO. So they said, the new CIOs have to think through, how can I do one code works on all clouds? Great. Moodu, thank you for coming on again. Always great to get your commentary. I learn a lot from you as well. Appreciate it. I got to ask the final question. As you go around the VC circles, you don't need to mention any names. You can if you want, but I want to get a taste of the market size of rounds. Seed round A and B, what are hot rounds? What sizes of series A? I'm seeing more 10 million, 15 million series A. Series B's are always harder to get than series A. Seeds are always kind of easier. What's your take on the hot rounds that are hot right now and what's the sizes of the investments? Very good question. So I mean, so series is the most easy one, right? Your concepts, but the seed sizes went up from 200 K to now. Most seed rounds are a million, two million. Most seed, series A is now one to 10 million dollars. So if you're a series A company, you're not getting 10 to 15, there's something wrong because that became the norm because there's more easy money. It also helps entrepreneurs. You don't have to look for money. Series B's are becoming $20, $25 million rounds. Series C's, if you don't raise a $50 million round, then that means you're really not a growth company. So the minimum amount to draw is $50 million in series C. Then after that, you're really looking for expansioners, $100 million, et cetera. Yeah, private equity or secondary market. But the key is the market, valuations also went up. So I tell entrepreneurs, when there is an opportunity if you have something, you can command a price. So if you're doing a series B at $25 million, you should be commanding $100 million, $150 million, $200 million, or valuations, right? If you are not, other guys are getting that. You are giving too much of your company. So you need to think through all of that. So series B's at $100 million? Good companies are much higher than that. There'll be $150, $200, and again, this is a buyer's market, the entrepreneur's market. So pieces have more money in the cash of good players. They will put in, whether you have one million revenue or five million revenue, 10 million series B is the most hardest, but it's commanding good premium. Good times of being entrepreneurs always, bubble always bursts when it's a buyer's market on the entrepreneur side. Take the money. I always start a company when the market busts. That's always my philosophy. Moodoo, thanks for coming on. I appreciate your insight. Always, as usual, great stuff. Thank you, John.  Investor, friend of theCUBE, entrepreneur. I'm John Furrier. Thanks for watching. Thank you, John.


So, okay, I'll be talking to you about HDR models for cinema This is very much a work in progress that we're doing with with Juseb Blatt from the here the interactive technologies group and David Kane and Ricardo Marquez so What is this about so? Let me start by talking about what's the dynamic range and what is dynamic range of a camera? so in general the dynamic range of a scene is the You can think of it as the ratio of contrast as the difference between the brightest and the darkest points in a scene and you compute this ratio and that ratio is the dynamic range and Cameras are able to capture a given dynamic range Which is usually much smaller than that of You know common natural scenes For instance, this is a picture taking with a you know regular camera with a short exposure time We can only see what's outside the window as we keep increasing the now We increase the exposure time and we take another picture and now we see more Okay, as we increase the exposure time we get to see more and more inside but what's outside gets overexposed and After some point we just don't see anything outside. Okay, so why is this happening? Well, the response of camera sensors is linear within a range Which you can see there so from dark to saturation. There's a linear response of sensors and if a scene so this is the histogram of some scene it has a lot of well, it's the histogram of the Intensity of the light coming from that scene given the exposure time that you're using. Okay, so if the exposure time is short Most of the points will have a very dark value. Okay, so as the first picture I showed as we increase the exposure time Now we get to see more things, but the things that are let me see this work Yeah, so things that are brighter become saturated. Okay, and as you increase more the exposure time the effect I mean the area of the saturated pixels is even larger So this is problematic in particular well in many instances in particular in the cinema it's problematic because It forces you to introduce artificial lights, which are cumbersome, it's a very time-consuming Expensive process So you what one thing that does not work is just to use short exposure times and then boost the gain So if you do that noise becomes apparent like you see here. Okay, so it's not that's not a good practice so Yeah, so what what people do in in cinema shoots is they add lights Not only in low light situations like here, but also in you know daylight situations You are artificial lights so that the dynamic range is reduced and that sorry That was what I was trying to show here So if you add lights to the scene what you get is that The brightest points are not much affected, but the darkest points get brighter So you reduce that ratio remember that the dynamic range was the ratio between the brightest and the darkest points So if you make the darkest points more illuminated then that histogram fits within the available dynamic range of the scene, which is what You do or when you use a flash it's exactly the same thing so People do this cinema crews do this all the time and That takes a lot of resources away from doing photography for artistic reasons So there's artificial lights are there sometimes or very often so that you can see things properly and Often also because you want to express some artistic intent But the voting time to this makes less time available for the other or makes the whole process more expensive Like this you would like to devote all your you know available resources to do photography for artistic expression So in the what are the challenges that we we are addressing in the in this project So the first one is tone mapping so The dynamic range of cameras is there's like an arms race It's ever increasing so dynamic range of cameras increases and dynamic range of displays increases and so on so This is some Yeah, like pamphlet from some renting house from 2009 and dynamic range at that time was around You know between two and three orders of magnitude now This is 2014. It was around 14 orders of magnitude. I'm sorry 14 stops around 34 orders of magnitude and Presently it's getting closer to to five. Anyway, that's Enough in many situations. It's not enough in any general situation. There are common Natural scenes with a dynamic range of six seven hard higher orders of mind so but even if you Build a camera, which is capable of shooting or recording Footage with a very high dynamic range you that footage you need to display it, okay, and the if you can now nowadays get a digital cinema camera like that one with a Dynamic range of four orders of magnitude a digital cinema protector can get this and a home TV can get Like two orders of magnitude. Okay, and if you go to a store People by selling you the TV will tell you that's a total lie. We have a contrast of well a few years back They will tell you that have millions You know five million to one contrast That's That was a line that they're not telling that anymore But nowadays you can you can find you can buy TVs that will tell you well The difference intensity between the brightest and the darkest point is like five thousand to one and that is true But the way you compute that is not in real operation of your TV when you're you know Watching images on your TV In a room for instance, there's a lot of Light bouncing back from you to the screen that bounces back again and so on and that reduces the effective dynamic range So it's about that. Okay, and definitely it's it's more than dynamic range of the camera. So there's a Something that has to be done and it I don't worry. It's it's done So all the movies that you see have gone through this process by which the Dynamic range of the footage is reduced so that it's it fits the dynamic range of this place and of you know projectors in cinemas that process has several names in Here we're calling that tone mapping which is like the usual term in in both in cuba graphics and an image processing So we have to do tone mapping We have to reduce the dynamic range of the footage so that it fits that of this place And we have to do that preserving the natural appearance of the image so So what is this so your you know any camera from your cheapest mobile phone camera Does the following it does a non-linear correction. So it reduces this dynamic range in this matter so this process called gamma correction and it's basically Consists in passing the footage or your your picture your video through a non-linearity. We had which has this shape Okay, and this is this replicates how we perceive Intensity so the way we perceive luminosity is not linear with respect to the intensity of the light it has this non-linear response which can be in Often in many cases well approximated by this by a power law, okay of an exponent of I know almost one half Okay in cinema though the This is not the way this is done. You don't want your camera to take your artistic decisions for you so what people do in in cinema shoots is They keep the The the information image information in linear form They just pass it through a non-linearity for encoding purposes so that they don't lose in the quantization when the image is digitized Okay, and that non-linearity have has a logarithmic shape, but it's only for for encoding So if you look at so that is what that is just the the representation of what the camera is Recording so it's not ready to be seen So if you take away that logarithmic encoding and just put the usual gamma correction curve You would see something like that. Okay, this is what your mobile phone or Any regular camera would do when recording a JPEG or a MPEG video This is the kind of output. So in cinema what you do is you keep this use and You undo the logarithmic encoding in post-production and there's a skilled colorist That goes that's a grading process But which he or she adjusts the contrast and also the color so that you get to see This for instance, so take a look at the background. Okay. It was overexposed here now. It's no longer exposed and Okay, so this will be manual term mapping and manual term mapping is what's going on in post-production It's done manually. It's not done by algorithms So this term mapping is important because if you don't do it right if you just say, okay I will show this everything linearly. Well, you don't see anything like so this image This is an image in which we have done a linear term mapping So zero corresponds to black and one corresponds to white and you don't see anything Why because the histogram is very much skewed to other low values So there's a peak here in the low intensity and there are some few pixels which are very bright so if you do proper term mapping something like Well, similar to his or my qualification you get that Anyway, another challenge we want to address Merging sources of different dynamic range. So in cinema, so well, not in cinema. So when you work with With photorealistic synthetic images so this synthetic 3d scenes are built with very much very accurate models of how Light interacts with objects in the scene. So they're really really they can be really really accurate and At the end the final stage is you have a Image which is a representation of the light coming from the scene and you have to pass that through a term mapping algorithm So that you can see that on your screen and that's what you know any you know software for architecture or some Or software for for video games does it would it does it takes this physical reality. I'm sorry this physical Approximation of physical Reality and tone maps the intensity of the light so But the original scene is high dynamic range and In sorry in cinema what you usually have is you have for special effects for visual effects You have to mix Footage which has different dynamic range. So you can have standard dynamic range or even low dynamic range for your actors And you have to combine that with high dynamic range CGI generated objects and you have to do that properly and that's done. So some examples there That has to be done manually through some very much Well, so through professional software tools for post-production like some of them you can see here So another challenge we are avid it very much interested in is Image quality assessment. So let's say Well, our goal is to do a ton mapping method Which is automatic and it matches in terms of visual appearance what a skilled colorist does in post-production That's our ultimate goal But in order to address if whether or not we have reached that goal, we have to validate our results And so we need to do some image quality assessment for the tone mapping and it turns out that there are very very few Objective I'm sorry quantitative metrics for assessing the quality of tone mapping. Actually, I'm only aware of to I mentioned one so here This is the metric of aiding at all from 2008 So what they do here is they use models of visual perception that have been computed So this models of visual perception are derived from experimental psychophysical data in which people are presented with artificial stimuli like great things and Gabbers and With different levels of detail and luminosity and these people are asked Do you see this change? Do you not see that this change? So they This allows Allow the researchers to compute Thresholds of visibility of change So in this manner with this what this metric does is it takes us input a high dynamic range image and its tone mapped version and Comparise the visibility of details. So if they are if there are details, which are visible in the high dynamic range scene But not visible in the tone map tone map seen this Paint that with represent that with green if the opposite is the case if there are things you cannot see in the high dynamic range scene but you can see in the tone map version this represent that with blue and Red here represents in version of contrast if something that was you know a boundary going up It turns out. I mean a difference of intensity that goes up now in the in the top up Image it goes down that's represented by red. So in this manner you can This metric allows you to see to gauge which are the changes of visibility in the Tom mapped image like for instance here So this is on the left a Tom mapped image on the right the error There's a lot of error in terms of loss of visibility groups represented by green Anyway, this is a very useful metric It it correlates Well with visual perception. I'm sorry with with the opinion of Subject it have but it has not been thoroughly validated and we have found that it does It could be improved. So it correlates. Well, it it could correlate much better. So there are moments or I'm sorry There are times in which you apply this metric and estimate that the quality of a tombot image is Very good, but people do not really find that image that good and the opposite can also be the case. So there's Really much Well one further point this metric only considers contrast It does not consider color and color is very very important in how you got the appearance of an image the quality so another challenge therefore is to develop Quality and image quality metric to assess tom mapping results So for instance, you have here different Tom mapped results and here the errors according to this metric So our previous work We have fun. I'll go very quickly through this So one thing that happens is in the human eye light bounces inside it And this has the effect of reducing the effective dynamic range. So even if we are seeing Looking at the scene, which has a very high dynamic range the dynamic range of the retinal image The image that forms in a retina is very much reduced and that's good for us Actually, because it gives us hope that we can do a proper Tom mapping algorithm using the Limited dynamic range of the footage of cameras. So this is an example of a retinal image Well, I don't have time to go deeply into that but the retinal image is definitely not the final Ward, I mean in our visual system does a lot of processing in the on the retinal image and it It's able to recover Many of the apparently lost details that we think, you know are unrecoverable here, but they can be recovered But the our point is that you start with something which is limited in dynamic So this is just to highlight that in effect the dynamic range of Retinal images is reduced So we did this work which has Yeah appeared this year In which we so we were presenting We were asking people to judge the quality of of images as we varied a different number of variables and we find we found a significant correlation between the image quality that people reported and the level of Uniformity of the lightness histogram of the scene And that allowed us to you know derive several conclusions regarding the you know the the gamma curve that both the encoding and the display should have and also to touch upon the Effect of the background and the surround of the image on the perception of the image so We derived a another thing that we did is we we developed a tone mapping algorithm that is based on natural image statistics and basic principles of human visual perception This is also a work from this year returning imaging so it one one principle that it's it repeats itself in several stages of In of the human visual system is that of efficient representation. So The Availability of resources is limited. So there's a lot of processing that is done in order to optimize the And the way these resources are used and the and optimize the results Are produced with these limited resources. So one thing that is done is that? Given that the response of photoreceptors is limited Photoreceptors have a response which does Which is nonlinear and does sort a sort zero zero minutes great Okay, so thank you very much anyway for the receptors, though do a sort of history my equalization on the on the input and this is an average of the histogram of natural images and In log log coordinates. So what we did here in this work is we took so this is computed from photographs Okay, and natural photographs and this is the average histogram. So we said let's create a Nonlinear curve which would flatten the histogram of a typical image which would have this typical histogram so this is basically what we did and so this method of ours has Some parameters which adjust on an image-dependent matter Automatically, okay, and after that we do contrast enhancement, which is also and really just a very Ubiquitous principle in in in human vision, which is that of divisive memorization okay, and so this is tone mapping algorithm based on on vision models and natural image statistics and we get results which So this is a JPEG image What you would get and this is what we get applying our algorithm to the raw image Okay, again JPEG and this is what we get applying our algorithm to the raw image, which is very close to what a skilled colorist would achieve So that's that's good, but the problem is very much not Closed why is that? Well, okay, so there's There's very few high dynamic range image databases. This is one of the most popular one by Mark Fairchild and it has like 108 images and Properly taken and calibrated and so on so it's it's great, but it's not enough for doing statistics like we are basing our model on so Some examples of those images. So this is the You know the average histogram, but it turns out that if you take this database some his some image has this Histograms here are in blue this histogram, which resembles that shape But you can have by model distributions or this weirdly shaped ones. So We want to improve our metal. I'm sorry. We want to improve our model Which is based on statistics. We need a large database of high dynamic range images Taking high dynamic range images properly is very very very complicated. It's time consuming. You have to do it very carefully It's it's not straightforward at all. So what we're doing now is we take we're taking The graphics approach we are producing synthetic scenes and in which is very much simple to change the light okay, and What we found is the following this is the distribution of Median luminance versus dynamic range in this Database that I mentioned it has this very interesting negative correlation and We have found this is very preliminary results that with synthetic scenes. You can get the same behavior Okay, so that's a good start. So our goal would be to produce High dynamic range images synthetically millions of them Okay, from which to derive statistics, which are more accurate Which can then be used by us to improve our model, which is based on natural image statistics So first we have to ensure that the natural image statistics that we can derive with synthetic scenes match This statistics of real natural scenes. So this is our example of You can see there How the median? How that behavior there of the median luminance versus dynamic range Changes as we change the light Okay All right, so thank you everybody Yes By collecting photographs available on the web would that be possible or is not possible will you have to analyze them? In order to decide whether they are suitable for your research or Well No, it would not be possible in the sense that we have to Ensure that things are done properly. So we need We need this scenes that are So the usual manner in which high dynamic range images are created is the following you take differently exposed pictures that the ones I showed in the beginning and then you fuse them, okay and This sounds simple enough. It's really If you want to do it properly, you have to be extremely careful So misalignments are very problematic the way you fuse them I mean if you change weights your results can change the weights that you give to different images The results are changing appreciably So if you give so the dark images are noisy and the overexposed images Well, they're exposed so you have to read out those values plus you have to calibrate You have to go to the scene and measure the actual with a photometer the actual amount of light so I'm not aware of people doing that on a systematic basis. So maybe some someone has done that and posted that on the web but What usually is called HDR images on the web is actually not HDR images is the tone mapping result Which is also usually done just for artistic purposes So you get something that does not look natural. It looks weird with halos and so on and That's what many people in Flickr for instance called HDR


We're here in support of Coast Protectors and this massive stop KM Plotilla. We're right up at the police line in the water right now, sending Kinder Morgan a message that you're not going to build the Trans Mountain Pipeline. Fights are connected. We're connected by water, we're connected by land and we're connected by prayer and spirit.


Recently, Wesker has begun accepting Medicaid health insurance from their patients. This will allow them to see more people and get them started on the road to recovery using the tools at their disposal. This will especially aid in the operation of the Judy Patton Center for Healthy Families. We just started the Medicaid program, which is amazing because previously we could only take people that were sent by DOC, but now we'll be able to more widely take patients with their passport, with their well care, things like that. And so that just leaves us wide open to taking new clients that would need the help, but aren't necessarily court ordered for the help. We've been looking for this for a while. Like I said, we've basically been DOC for quite some time, and we've been looking to go to Medicaid because we just want to be able to help more people, you know? And so we're finally getting that pushed through, and we're just super excited about being able to help a lot more people. Do you worry about having enough money to last throughout retirement? Give Reed Potter at Raymond James a call. Reed has 26 years experience helping folks enjoy their best life in their retirement years. At the Center for Healthy Families, patients can be evaluated and receive prescriptions as needed. West Care employees have taken many necessary steps to help those in need. Just look at the whole mind, the whole body, and everything, and go from there. And we're, like I say, one of the only ones who has a PhD on site. We do accept MAT patients, so the Medicated Addiction Treatment. We have them come on site. They prescribe the medicines here. We hold on to them.  And so that's good too, because that's a plus. Some places, you know, don't allow Medicaid at MAT. So we just were really proud of that. And like I said, being able to have them come on site and just take care of everything that they need, you know, it's a one-stop shop. So we're really proud of that. Reporting for Mountain Top News, I'm Nick Colum.


There we go. What's up, everybody? I'm EvilRabbit. We are here in Forza Horizon 4 and in M4 To do something fun today because well, let's just do it Drift camera is now in Forza Horizon 4. So, you know, we're gonna be ripping the togey in this M4 sideways with the drift cam on and See how we do The rain is not gonna help definitely not used to the physics here in Horizon 4 But we are definitely going to Go send. Oh, I've been waiting for this Now it is just turned on it is basically how it would be If you just turn it on I haven't tweaked it or anything so we're just gonna send it how it is See how it is and well here we go. All or nothing So much different But so much cooler. I Feel like I'm throwing too much angle Because I'm trying to get used to the camera. We go. That's a little better. Oh my so much rotation. Oh definitely Take some minutes to get used to for sure The tinted windows on this M4 paint definitely not helping But it's definitely so much cooler. Oh To run these mountain roads with this drift camera But I am not doing a very good job in this M4 right now. I'm oh well Nobody saw that I would blame the fact that he's on paddles and I'm Actually using a shifter But that would just be me making excuses So the feedback of my wheel has definitely changed since I updated it.  Oh just tap So drift camera horizon for Definitely something that takes a minute to get used to The rain is probably definitely not helping But we will try and do better going downhill I catch myself trying to throw too much angle I think Because I want to see the camera rotate when I should just Try and beat the turn the other tinted windows not uh not working.  Where'd you go? 370 by 350 or my s14 or my s13 We're gonna rip the 350 z Down with this doesn't have window tint So maybe it'll help out but I have a tin on the windows because I couldn't really see out that window when I was sideways And then I'm for I know I'm just making excuses, but it is here and uh, oh I gotta get used to the right-hand drive to So much better be able to see out the window When it's not tinted So now we're gonna send it downhill see what we can do as we grind the gear in the third All right full send in the rain so much better That was not good Bogged out a little bit, but we're gonna continue So it's definitely gonna take a little bit to get used to the drift camera But I feel like it's gonna make this that much more entertaining. I am struggling today to do anything Correctly on this mountain, but we're still gonna send it. Oh, yep. Nope. No way. No So if you guys are using the drift camera, let me know down in the comment section down below how you guys are enjoying it because uh I'm just doing donuts here on the mountain because uh Can't really drift right in this view. I swear. It's it's the view because Go outside view See, it's the view. I gotta get used to it I throw too much angle in that view because I kind of want to see out the side window and I'm not actually Doing the proper Amount of counter-steer or angle. I was a quick switch in view. It's a little better It's not to be so aggressive on the angle And we should be good. I feel like I could probably adjust it to make it Work better for me. Now we're getting it So we're gonna go up hill and see if we can't get the uphill better here in the Z With the new drift head cam drift camera head motion However, they word it Third gear flick in We'll left up break That's better Not trying to be super aggressive on the angle That didn't help Z is struggling to get uphill though. There we go I think I got it now till the Z runs out of power So much better on the third attempt on the uphill of this Definitely gonna be playing more in this view here on horizon as well as in Forza Motorsport 7 Definitely super excited that they brought this Drift camera to horizon. It's something I've been wanting for them to bring especially for these tailgate runs Now if only they could do it for racing and look at apex It will be perfect But you know, we can't You know beggars can't be choosers. We at least have this for drifting. So that's good I would say get the wheel to rotate 900 degrees in the cockpit. That'd be nice But no get another man down here running. It's like Von getting his car Z is struggling So I think the update to my force feedback on my actual Fanatec wheel has made the feedback feel a little bit different So I'm gonna have to fine-tune and adjust that a little bit to get it how I want. This does feel pretty good right here though Camera does look good. I feel like I could tweak that a little bit more to make it fit My driving and look further so maybe I won't throw as much angle. That's the reason I'm throwing so much angles I want it to look Further for me when it doesn't need to be go Freestyle section on the hill Don't hit that don't hit the car No, didn't save it. I tried So make sure you guys follow me on Instagram and Twitter all of which found in the description box below Like I said, if you guys are using this, let me know what you guys set it at Maybe I should adjust the settings in this whole Gearing change thing forza. You need to fix it. Please Because I know I'm not grinding the gears That was nice. I forgot this was a drift zone So I hope you guys enjoyed this little video here on horizon before trying to get back into it that grass line though Definitely gonna be doing some more here on the mountains with this camera view with some of the TBS guys as well as Some of the oh geez of the channel Definitely gonna have to tune another couple more cars because there's a lot of new cars out there in this game that I definitely need to Get sideways in So as always like think you guys should come back and watching we're gonna write it off into a tree I'm gonna grab it and I will see you guys After this turn actually, I'll see you guys next time There we go too much