live from Cube headquarters in Palo Alto, California. It's the Silicon Valley Friday Show with John Furrier. Hey, you're listening to the Silicon Valley Friday Show. I'm John Furrier, we're here on November 4th and I'm joined by Jeff Frick again and we have our new call-in box here. It's a blue cube for Collins. Last week we had Dave Vellante, we're going to try to bring in Dave Vellante and potentially some other guests. Jeff, big week this week. So going down the rundown, we're going to talk about, you know, the Cubs won the World Series Amazing. The election is right around the corner. It's the last show before the election, you know, four days away. I'm talking about Obama and his impact, I think to the social media, the social president, I'm calling him. First president to really have a Twitter social presence. That's going to be a big thing to analyze. Microsoft got big news this week and we got CubeCon next week. I'm going to try to see Andy Jassy in Seattle as well and tons of earnings. Facebook, Fitbit, GoPro, Twilio, Hortonworks, Tableau software, tons of earnings to digest in one M&A deal, you know, Broadcom, Bice, Brocade. And finally, we're introducing our new feature of the show as we experiment and iterate through the show. And that is every Friday, we're going to do a VC of the week where we spin the wheel and wherever it lands, we'll call on them and we will ask them questions. If they can't get on the phone, we're going to just pontificate and opine about our experiences with that VC.  Maybe it could be good news for somebody in the morning meeting, whether they get financed or not. Well, you know, they all pay attention to each other, but it's important for entrepreneurs to know really who's really doing the work. I mean, to me, the reason why I want to do this one, we know these, I've been out here for 18 years. I've been working with the feature one this week, it's great, like I've known them for 20 years and dealing with them. But it's good for entrepreneurs in the industry to know who's actually doing the work, who's out on the streets, who's helping entrepreneurs, who do they work for? They work for the LPs, the limited partners. They won't work for the entrepreneur in some cases. So this is important and some VCs are certainly changing and we can talk about that. But Jeff, the number one story besides the election is the Cubs won the World Series. And being a Red Sox fan, I know how it feels. Congratulations to everyone in Chicago. But I gotta say, they stole from the Indians and all because of the TARP. Yeah, I was just saying, what do you think about the TARP? The TARP won the World Series and... So it was the TARP related to the lights at the Superdome. It was the same exact thing. The TARP was what killed the Indians and there was like five Twitter handles already up. As soon as the TARP came out, we were laughing. What about King LeBron? Do you think he's happy or sad? I think he's very sad. They blew the 3-1 lead. Oh, I don't know. He's the king. But it was very Red Sox-esque, that tagging up play from first to second really was the game changer in that game. But again, Cubs pull out a miracle. Theo Abstein for president. That's what I saw on Twitter, ex-Red Sox guy. So again, good to see Theo doing his thing in Boston in 04, doing his thing in Chi Town. The fun thing about October Baseball, or I guess November Baseball, is it's such a different game than any other game in that all the tension is actually between the action. You know, while you're waiting for that next pitch and they had so many great crowd shots in the back and forth where the Chicago guys were completely stressed and the Cleveland people were completely stressed and there was one crack of the bat, just a 180 degree flip on the emotions. It's like no other sport when every single pitch, every play means so much. And that's why October Baseball is so different than just one of 162 games. And really the tarp is all fun to talk about, but it really did kill the momentum that Cleveland had to put that game away. The jugular was exposed. Tarp comes out, they go back. Turns out the players huddled in the weight room.  Very Red Sox-like. Again, if you remember in 04, the Red Sox were down to one out and Robert stole second. They get a rally, they win four straight games against the Yankees. They were down 3-0, they win 4-3, then they swept everyone ever since. Let me ask you another question, John. You grew up on the East Coast. That game ended at 1 a.m. East Coast time on a Monday night or a Tuesday night. I mean, is that long-term hurting, you know, the continual fan base as these things go later? And it was late on the West Coast. I'm a huge person who believes that that is absolutely flawed. They should get the games out earlier.  I mean, that was what baseball was all about.  You watch the game and you have a good time. And that's killing football too, by the way. You argue that football has also been so commercialized that it's not a family sport anymore. It's more promoted. It's really good. It's more ridiculous. Well, I mean, there was not a rigged World Series with the tar even though some speculators said it was rigged. But certainly the people that was talking about the election being rigged, when WikiLeaks were gonna talk about the impact of WikiLeaks on this election. And you know, this is really an interesting concept, Jeff, because this to me exposes the impact of transparency. And what the WikiLeaks points to is that what's gonna happen, I think in the tech business, certainly we'll do these VC segments, but it opens up the inner workings of how things get done. And they now have a new level of access to information. And I think this is gonna impact the every industry, including tech. It's gonna be going to see how decisions are made. They're gonna see how people are thinking and it's certainly gonna change the culture. So I'm expecting the WikiLeaks impact to go way beyond the election. And we're already seeing it in Silicon Valley where people are getting exposed to the inside the baseball or ropes, if you will. Most kitchens are not very clean, John. You don't wanna go into the kitchen. The sausage factory, enjoy the sausage, have a good barat, but you don't wanna go back in there. And I think it is exposing it. And I think it's a good thing because there is no cleanliness. These are regular people, real people. It's political, it's ugly. It is what it is. But I do, and I wore my shirt today because it's our last Friday show before the election. And I do just wanna reinforce a couple of messages.  Whatever you feel about the presidential piece, there's a lot of local stuff that happens, school board stuff, local laws. It's very important to get out and do your vote. And the other thing is I was having an exchange with Rebecca Knight and we were talking about politics because she's very into this season. But I wanted to- Rebecca Knight, one of our co-hosts. But we talked about some things I wanna recommend to people to go read. The problem I think in politics today is it's so polarizing. You can't have a conversation with different points of view. And there's two really great books by Doris Kearns Goodwell, team of rivals of political genius of Abraham Lincoln where he specifically brought people together, John, that didn't like each other and learned from them all. He forced them to work together. And Joseph L is founding brothers, the founding generation. These are really great books in this ugly, dirty, nasty time. Go read, kind of reset on what's going on. Jeff's got a soapbox. Absolutely. Put that away and let's get back down to business here. In the tech business, obviously the Obama thing also is something I wanna talk about because Obama has become the first social president. First one with a Twitter handle, first one on Facebook. And I think it doesn't get enough credit and certainly around the world around being a tech-oriented president. My son, Alex, took his hand when he was at an elevation as part of the video crew at Palo Alto High School. But he's open, he's open president and he's brought Silicon Valley closer to Washington. I think for the first time in my life I've seen the tech industry actually become more policy-driven. And I think this is gonna affect people's lives more. And it's a good thing. I think Obama doesn't get enough credit for that. You're seeing the CTO, Megan Smith, she was at Grace Hopper. Again, that's a positive thing. I don't think Obama gets the credit for that. Not sure Hillary or Trump is gonna support that. I'll see Hillary is big time supported here. So she would be a better president for Silicon Valley. I think people forget the huge impact that Washington has on what goes on out here. I mean, Intel got really rolling because of Sputnik. They would do anything to get a lower weight horsepower to get a satellite in to chase a Russian. So huge spins in DARPA and other federal programs. Well, the cyber security thing is the WikiLeaks again. The hacks on WikiLeaks points to the fact that the tech business, tech industry is actually instrumental in protecting our freedoms because you think of the cyber security just the hacks alone are impacting the election. But even other liberties are at risk. So we've talked about that before.  We're gonna talk into our in-depth segment down in the next segment. The impact of Microsoft's announcement with this team product and the impact to the leader in the area, Slack and others. And there was an article in the full page you had in the New York Times, we're gonna talk about. We have KubeCon next week in Seattle. That's Kubernetes conference. It's a big geek conference around containers and the impact of containers as well as we're trying to get a one-off with Andy Jassy, the CEO of Amazon Web Services next week to get more data for you. So you look for theCUBE to be there. And then finally, the earnings. Jeff, Facebook had good earnings, all on mobile ad revenue. Fitbit had below earnings. They didn't meet their earnings. GoPro lost half their revenue and half their earnings. They're plummeting. And that was a huge hit. Their stock's down big time. Twilio is a cloud services company no one's ever heard of. But they're Silicon Valley based but points to the cloud as a disruptor. We'll analyze that in the next segment and finally Tableau Software not hitting their expectations. So you're starting to see the earnings, the scoreboard, if you will, start to tease out some of the indicators in the business. And that's going to be the subject of our next segment. And of course, we've got the Greylock VC of the week. We're going to go in there. I got a note from Jerry Chen last night. What do you need? Obviously a big fan for Jerry. Shout out to Greylock. I'm going to go in depth on that. So we're going to hear the changes in tech next segment. You're listening to the Silicon Valley Friday show. I'm John Furrier with Jeff Frick. Be right back with more after this short break. Since the dawn of big data, the Cube has been there. Connected with executives, practitioners, entrepreneurs, thought leaders. But you're not a thought leader anymore.  That's the new trend. Futurist is the buzzword. No, I'm not. I'm very much living in the past. I don't like the future. And I don't think much of the present. And John Cleese. There's a lot of people out there who have no idea what they're doing, but they have absolutely no idea that they have no idea what they're doing.  That's why the planet doesn't work. Knowledgeable, insightful, and a true gentleman. And the guy at the counter recognized me and said, are you listening? Yes, I'm tweeting away. I'm tweeting. I'm tweeting away. He just got rude that way. F***ing keyboard. John Cleese joins the Cube alumni. Welcome, John. You got any phone calls you need to answer? Let me check. The Cube is a comfortable place. You come inside the Cube, and we have a conversation. Almost as if it were a chance meeting. And we have a discussion about a particular topic. Our philosophy is everybody's expert at something. Everybody's passionate about something and has real deep knowledge about that something. Well, we want to focus in on that area and extract that knowledge and share with our communities. Folks who have never heard of it before come in the Cube and say, well, this is really cool what you guys are doing. It's unique. It adds value to the community. And it adds value by really sharing information. I can't tell you how many people stop me at conferences or on the streets, on our airport, say, hey, I love your show. People that I've never met before, they say to me, I know you. You don't know me. I watch the Cube. I queue up your videos. I listen to them while I'm on the treadmill. It helps me learn, expands my knowledge. Thank you. So it's really an honor to be part of that community. This is Dave Vellante. Thanks for watching the Cube. You're listening to the Silicon Valley Friday show with John Furrier. OK, we're back. You're listening to the Silicon Valley Friday show. I'm John Furrier. Joining me today is Jeff Frick. And we're on segment number two. We're going to a little bit more depth. And the topic here, Jeff, is really more of the impact of the changing landscape of the tech business and how it affects society. Some interesting news hit this week. The mobile usage surpasses web usage for the first time ever, meaning the mobile first, the mobile revolution, the iPhone. Go back to your point in history, whether it's 2007 or not, the iPhone and everything else is changing the game. Mobile usage by consumers and business users have surpassed the web browser usage for the first time, which is a huge tell sign, which means everything's going mobile as predicted by all the pundits. And also, everyone's investing in mobile. That is a huge, huge deal, which means, what does it mean? It means that the expectations of the users are completely changed, and the disruption opportunities are massive. And the opportunity, there's a couple things there, too. The way you interact with a phone app is completely different than when you sit down at your computer. It's not a session. It's a grab a few minutes. So the way the apps works very different. You're in line at Safeway. You're in line at Pete's. You're in line at wherever you're driving to the kids game. Don't check your phone then. So that's a big one. The other thing is there's a lot of native stuff in the phone that gives the app so much more information than you get in your desktop browser, where you are, how fast you're moving. You can put all kinds of things on the phone that they don't necessarily put in the browser. The phone has native capabilities, like the camera. That's where Snapchat came from, Uber, ordering cars. I mean, this is the thing. Right now, people always ask why the Cube makes certain selections of where we go. We're going to be at KubeCon, KubernetesCon next week. Really just reinforces that whole point that the application developers, people who build apps for phones are developing new technologies, like Kubernetes, like containers, and wearing my Docker con shirt from Docker, makes containers. Jerry Chen's an investor from Grayluck, ironically. No coincidence there. But again, this is changing the business model. You're seeing the developers on the front lines making apps, as you mentioned, whether it's shopping at Safeway, getting stuff delivered to your home, or changing the consumer experience with their life. And this absolutely is highlighted by things like Uber and Airbnb, social networks like Facebook. And this is the disruption of innovation happening right now. So, I mean, just look at the seed change. We were talking before we came on about, you know, Uber drivers not getting health insurance, should they be classified as employees? Kind of goes back to that whole government thing. Ultimately, I think the government is going to redefine some of these new ways to work when they're not hitting their tax money. Just a quick note, I think I saw a tweet too, that Jim McClucky from Google, who named Kubernetes, gave a story, or Craig, excuse me, is leaving Google. So, it'll be interesting to see where he shows up next. He's going to go do a startup from his tweet. But again, this brings up the whole point. It's not just Uber. Think about like the conversations we had about Twitter in the past, and the media during this election, we just talked about WikiLeaks. This new real-time environment, access to the data, is absolutely changing. People are connected. Now you've got wearables. We wrote a story on SiliconANGLE, that there's now bras that have health monitors in them. You know, for women, something. I mean, everything's changing, right? The whole consumerization. This is huge deal, huge deal. And then we're seeing that in the earnings this week. We saw Facebook, we saw Tableau, we saw Twilio, Cloud Company. And the impact of the earnings, to me, is that it's the scoreboard of the health of the company. And then you look at them, you say, hmm, what's going on? And ultimately it points down to obviously the mobile we just talked about, but the cloud computing is changing the game. And that ultimately is the thing. And you know, when I walk around Silicon Valley and Palo Alto and around town, it's clear that the venture capitalists are not investing in infrastructure. They look at the cloud game and saying, wow, this thing is disrupting. And we talked about it a little bit last week. The bets might not come home. So people don't know what to bet on yet. So the game is changing. You know, one quote I heard last week was from a venture capitalist, is that the plumbers, if you will, plumbers in the technology parlance means guys who set up servers and networks, you know, called plumbers, because they make the plumbing work for the bits, are being turned into machinists. What that means is, in an industrial revolution way, the game's changing. So their jobs are changing. The economics are changing. So this is a huge deal. The cloud is turning plumbers into machinists. This is a transformation. Yeah, absolutely. And there's a lot of talk about how there's going to be a huge change in the jobs. Computers are going to take jobs. Yeah, they're going to take a lot of jobs, but there'll be new jobs. You got to figure out new places to play. And there'll be new ways. So we're interested in a new segment on the show called Venture Capitalists of the Week, VC Firm of the Week. And the reason why is, one, we live here, so we see all and we know all of them. We talk to them intimately. We know their secrets. We know their trade secrets. We know what's going on behind closed doors. And we talk to people on the streets. And here's what I'm hearing. The number one question I get, and the reason why we're doing this is, I get asked all the time, who's the best VC? Who should I go to for cash? And that's ultimately a decision entrepreneurs are making when they look at growing their business. They want to pick a partner. And picking a VC is like getting married. Once you pick a VC, you're in. And it's really a partnership. So that is probably the most important decision an entrepreneur makes, whether they bootstrapped to financing or they started with an idea that needs capital, they got to go to the bank, if you will. And the bank here in Silicon Valley is the venture capital business. So that is a natural question. So we want to do that and highlight that. And our first inaugural pick of the week or discussion of the week is Greylock. Greylock venture capital. So Jeff, thoughts on Greylock are pretty clear to me. And the reason why I picked them first is I like the firm a lot. I think this firm has transformed from an East Coast firm. My first experience with them was 20 years ago when they were on the East Coast, mainly in Boston and then moved out to the West Coast as a small satellite office. And the West Coast has become just a powerhouse. They've really done amazing deals. If you look at what they've done here in Silicon Valley, they've invested in Facebook Series B, LinkedIn Series B, Airbnb. One of some of the best consumer hits in the industry that are changing the game. Cloudera and the Enterprise, Pure Storage, Workday. They have partners like Anil over there who's the CEO of Workday. Jerry Chan has been on theCUBE many times as a young partner. So they have a great consumer focus as well as an enterprise focus. So they got a new blood in the firm. They got the new partners coming in. They just hired a female partner who from Pinterest, amazing person. She's got experience in consumer. But here's what I like about Greylock. I have some weaknesses too, I will highlight in a second. But the strengths for Greylock are they focus on scale. They want to create billion dollar companies. So they're very clear in what they do. They say to entrepreneurs, if you want cash from us, we want a billion dollar plus venture. Not a mom and pop, not a lifestyle business. We're going to billion dollars and they focus all their energy on scale. And the partners are approachable. John Lilly many times responds on text and Facebook and email. Jerry Chan is super awesome on theCUBE. And they have a lot of other young partners that are coming up. So again, super good people, great positioning. And they've just done a lot of great deals and they have a great network. Obviously Reid Hoffman founder of LinkedIn. Now the other thing about Greylock is that they kind of got this society changing game going on where they're actually interested in changing the society and changing the world. Which I would say is an authentic mission but it's not the primary. Some people do it as kind of like a promotional thing but Greylock I think has an authentic action on, hey, we want to make money but we also want to change society. So that's my take. Yeah, I think what's the really important take-aways for entrepreneurs is the company and it used to be a relatively short list of the 18 back 20 years ago as Clenna Perkins, it was Sequoia, it was Excel, there was just a couple. But more important than the company and the company's important is your individual partner. Because as you said, it is like a marriage. It's a very intimate relationship. You're together at the hip for a very, very long time. You need someone that's going to help you scale your business. And so I think it's really the individuals that make the difference and the specific individual who's got experience connections going to help you as an entrepreneur grow your business. Yeah, I mean I think, you know, if I had to like put a critique on Greylock and I think the thing that they should work on in my opinion, again this is my opinion, they seem very weak on series A deals. And everyone says, oh no, we do series A deals. If you look at their track record, they have, you know, do a lot of series B's. And I think that's interesting and smart because the entrepreneurial game's changing.  So series B is kind of like the new series A. So, you know, my only ding on Greylock on that area is they don't do a lot of seed.  You can look at that strength, but I think, you know, they should put a little bit more cash out there for some of the seed deals there. And the other one is that they're, it seems like a white boys club, right? I mean, to me, it's like that's, you worry about the VCs being like monolithic and monotone. And I think, you know, Greylock has been trying to hire more diversity and that's just a critique on all VCs, but, you know, you worry that it is a, with VCs it's an elite factor. I went to Harvard, I went to Stanford, I think that's the one critique I'd say on Greylock is they got to get outside that, you know, elite bubble and get down on the trenches a little bit more. They do probably better than everyone else. I see Jerry Chen out there. He's one partner that I think is always out in the trenches. The other partners I don't see much out there. So, you know, that would be my only critique on Greylock.  I think they're tier one all the way, but I think they got some work to do on that. So that's Greylock, it's my take on Greylock. A lot of more strengths than weaknesses. And Jeff, what do you hear?  What's your take on that? You know, again, as you said, what's fun is when you see them at the shows, right? When they're out working the booths, literally working up and down the lines at the booths, you'll see a ton of them at Reinvent here in a couple of weeks, you know, getting it done versus being kind of on the hallowed halls on Sand Hill where nobody can get to them. And you got to go through three people that, you know, a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend to maybe get an audience. And that's not how you get the great deals because it isn't just go to KP, go to client or go to Excel anymore. That's just not the way that it works. I mean, I think the one of the things I like about Greylock is they do authentically like the entrepreneurs and they have a good enterprise piece. So most people mail it in on the enterprise side. If you look at the tier one VC, Sequoias and we'll get to them in another week, but Greylock has a great enterprise group. I mean, they actually do great deals and they have great successes under their belt and they are, we do see them out in the trenches. The thing I worry about the VC's, and this is one thing entrepreneurs should always be aware of is that, you know, it's like a realtor, who do they work for? They work for the buyer, right? So the VC business is about they work for the returns. So, you know, I think that's something that's always being mindful is that the VC's work for the limited partners, they got to produce a return. They're not in, it's not philanthropy. They're not just given cash to entrepreneurs. They need to make money. So timing of investment is critical.  You got to produce a return. So it's pressure. The other thing is, VC's have a portfolio and most entrepreneurs do not. I think that's the other big thing that separates the two in terms of you're all in. If you're an entrepreneur, you are all in on your business.  So I think that's another huge distinction between a venture capitalist and you on your board. Yeah, the relevance to what you're saying really comes down to this. The VC's is about the partner you mentioned, but what you're talking about now is, they have business to run, they got to produce returns. So that's their primary goal. But how I judge the VC's is by the people that they have in the firm and two, are they adding value? I mean, some VC's actually don't even try to add value. They give it the cash, they sit back and let that horse run. Some VC's are more hands-on. Greylock is definitely more hands-on with entrepreneurs. They actually add value. One of the things about Greylock, giving them a quick plug here, is that they did this awesome blitz scaling program at Stanford, free content. They went out there and they share, they share information, they blog a lot. So they're out there helping. So I think at the end of the day, added value becomes second, getting the return so they add value to get the returns. And a lot of VC's mail in the quote value add and I call that a value subtract. Most entrepreneurs don't want, don't want meddling in their business, but they want value add. So Greylock, great tier one. First VC featured here on Silicon Valley Friday show. I'm John Furrier. Joining me today is Jeff Frick. We'll be back with more in the thinking out loud segment. We're going to talk in depth about Microsoft and Slack, some of the competitive strategy going on in this transformation market. What it means for you as a buyer of software and what it means to the companies, how to compete in the world as it's changing so fast. We'll be right back. I remember when I had such a fantastic batting practice, I walked by a couple of sportswriters in that era. Paul of Famer, Reggie Jackson. It was like, you can rock at it out there. I kind of hope I didn't leave it out here. Reggie Jackson. When the game started, I got back in that moment. I got back in what was live, what was now. Goodbye. I went and did a, something was ESPN earlier this year. What's Steffen Curry? They said, Reggie, we want you to come up and watch his practice, his pre-game. You know, it was very similar to your batting practice where people come out and watch, et cetera. And I watched the dribbling exhibition. I watched the going between the legs and the behind the back and the fancy passing, et cetera. And I watched the shots. And the guy asked me what I thought of the show. And I said, well, it's a cool show, but I'm going to see all that tonight. He does all that. He put it into the game. I said, so it's not a show, but that's his game. Mr. October. I think our world now with the instant gratification of sending out a message or tweeting to someone or whatever, certainly in the moment is about what our youth is and who we are today as a country, as a university. Congratulations, Reggie Jackson. You are CUBE alumni. Hi, I'm Stu Miniman. I've been an analyst with Wikibon and a co-host of the CUBE since 2010. It's been an exciting journey working with the CUBE. We get to go out to so many shows, help extract the signal from the noise, interact with such a wide variety of clientele, both practitioners, thought leaders, the big-name industry people. And we've helped some people raise their profiles in there, especially love working with those practitioners. We've seen them move their careers forward and move their businesses forward as they take advantage of technologies and practices that they've learned, talking with us, working with our research people and working with their peers. This is Stu Miniman. Thanks for watching the CUBE. You're listening to the Silicon Valley Friday Show with John Furrier. All right, we're going to go live. Okay, you're listening to the Silicon Valley Friday Show. I'm John Furrier. You're joining me today is Jeff Frick and we have on the line Jerry Chen, one of the partners at Grey Luck who we were just talking about behind your back. If you're not watching live, Jerry, how are you? So we were just giving props to Grey Luck about how good you guys are. I guess we had some critique in there, but I don't think it was, we were stretching in there, but you're a partner over there. Give us what's going on inside Grey Luck. What's happening? What are you guys doing for deals? How big is the fund? What's happening? We've been saying that 51 years and 15 funds was a billion dollars we started investing in 2017. And we're just going to do what we've always done is try to find great founders, great entrepreneurs and our two core areas, which would be enterprise software and consumer enterprise software. There's a couple of new things that I think as you rethink that definition like self-driving cars or AI and other technologies out there. But I think the core is still software, consumer enterprise, but as software to speak, we'll see technology permeate every single vertical and every single use case. So we're excited. We're looking forward to keep investing. Yeah, that's awesome, Jerry. You know, we're going to see you on theCUBE at Amazon re-invent. That's going to be awesome. I'm wearing actually my DockerCon shirt today. So ironic, and I actually didn't think about it when I put it on, but it's so comfortable. CubeCon is next week. So a lot of stuff's happening. We just talked about the mobile usage surpassing web for the first time. You mentioned self-driving cars. It's a software business right now, certainly on the enterprise, converging with consumers. So I got to ask you, with all the earnings reports coming out, it seems like the seed change is happening. So the question is, who's disrupting who out there right now?  I mean, that's, is that a good competitive strategy? Who's disrupting who in this market?  So I think the question is, what's the next wave? So mobile is clearly a wave that's been driving technology for the past three, four, five years, and it's been 10 years since the iPhone came out for really the past five years since. Smart phone penetration, as people are looking now at what's the next wave, the reason why VCs and entrepreneurs are excited about things like VR or conversational platforms like Amazon Echo or Google Home, or even cloud-connected homes, computers, cloud-connected industrial devices, be it the jet engines and factories. Those are new nodes. Those are new distribution points to get software to the end user. And so I think that wave of where now, software doesn't go just the phone, but it goes everywhere. Your glasses, your watch, your car, your jet engine, your, because all of a sudden, it references a new channel from the technology provider to the end user, be it an enterprise or consumer, and all of a sudden every incumbent that made the business on PCs, which was rocked by the phone, that every incumbent is making a business on a phone, and as you think about how the software you've re-rated for this totally distributed generation. You're listening to Jerry Chen, partner at Greylock. Jeff, you have a question for? Yeah, Jerry, Jeff Rick here, how you doing? Quick question. Great, Jeff. Good to hear from you too. You go through all those different devices, you just listed off from light bulbs to GE jet engines, a huge attack area for cyber crime. We just had the big DDOS out just a couple of weeks ago. How much more investment needs to be made in security around all this new software that's distributed and connected everywhere? Could be a ton of new investments in security around all this new software for all this reasons. A, all the new endpoints that are connected to the internet. B, every single year, day in, day out. So I think this could be a lot more investment security because I think the innovation required by crime clearly hasn't worked the past few years, right? People are still breaking through the current barriers. So I think more has to be done. So I think what we're actually bullish for the next cycle around security investments, both classical security around enterprise software, but all security things like your car, your home, your light bulb, your jet engine. Security's huge. Definitely totally agree, totally bullish in terms of the opportunity. It's really not a good environment right now with all these hacks, WikiLeaks, everything else going on. But Jerry, the thing I want to ask you because you're part of the VMware mafia, you were ran cloud at VMware. You know that business you invested in Docker. You're always out in the trenches which we gave you a lot of props for and you've got great hustle. You're seeing a lot of things. What's going on in the infrastructure market right now? We're hearing that there's a cold freeze going on on investment in servers and storage companies. You guys do have an investment in pure storage which was years ago and they're doing very well. But people are saying that the plumbers are turning into machinists, right? So what is happening with cloud is completely putting a wet blanket of on the infrastructure business. Where is it going? So I think Mark, that's the thing that enables you to build things for the cloud, the technologies, I mean, as a plumber and a machinist, I think I do code, I'm still focused on infrastructure going forward. But I think what you're seeing is a cyclical trend of infrastructure evolving from on premise to cloud. And so if you think about the cloud, Amazon has been that giant 800 pound gorilla for the past two years. It's only recently since Azure and Google have really become a scene become more relevant. So I think the past few years has been tough because unless you had a good cloud story as an infrastructure company, you really, really struggled to kind of tell your story to the best of your customers. But I think companies are figuring out like technology like Docker, like you mentioned, doctors will become the platform for cloud portability for applications across Google, Azure, Amazon and VMware. And so I think in that world where now you're seeing on premise to on premise, infrastructure gets a lot more interesting now especially A, as Jeff points out, secure it better. And B, you have a multi-cloud story that enables you to build all these next gen applications. You listen to Jerry Chen, he'll be out on theCUBE at Amazon re-invent. So look for him on the first day. So look for Jerry Chen. Jerry, just quickly, just final point. I want to get your thoughts on obviously Microsoft announced Teams and all Windows 10s are on the corner but specifically Slack, the leader at the top of the hill. They have the high ground certainly in that messaging area and chat. Kind of put an ad out there and said kind of snarky at Microsoft saying I'll get their attention. How does a startup compete? Because great luck, you guys have successfully invested in disruptors like Facebook on the Series B, LinkedIn on the Series B, Airbnb and the list goes on and on and very successful startups that have turned into billion dollar companies. So how do companies today compete either existing Series B or Series C companies or even Series A companies as the rich get richer like Oracle and Microsoft and try to come in and muscle in and take territory from the startups. What's your advice? You guys are all about scale. Give us your thoughts. Yeah, I do startup and third technology. The incumbents like Microsoft have better distribution, Salesforce, channel. It's really a race. You come to like a gray lock in a great VC because they're gonna help you A, build a product, recruit the team. But also we think a lot about distribution on the consumer side of our reality and social connectivity on the enterprise side to figure out what's your best distribution? Your best go to market. Your best good distribution could be viral. What's last viral? It could be find the right partners in the cloud or with different software vendors but trying to build that distribution channels with your better technology before the incumbents like Marcus either way into your market have 40 years technology and I think they're gonna keep playing out and we're so bullish on startups because the ability for them to out execute and out innovate has been proven over the past two, three decades. So the game is still the same. Be nimble and take them down. David and Goliath's story continues. All right, Jerry, thanks so much. I wanna ask one final question. You guys in the partnership at gray lock. I just sit around the conference room table among partners. What's the thing that you guys talk about that you self reflect on yourselves and say we have to work better on as a VC firm? What do you guys say is your needs improvement area for a VC firm? As I think we need to talk about if we can work better together which basically, I think individually we're all great investors but I think as a team when we come together we're unbeatable as a team. And so we always talk about how we just can work better together. And I think that's an ongoing journey like all great teams are from the warriors to think of their sports franchise like any company, any teams no different. So we just wanna work better together. I think that's really internally what we think about. More series A's on the horizon or series B's pretty much? Billions, a lot of money to work. I think a lot, it's about going early. The last couple of projects I've worked on personally were series A's and C deals. So even earlier than a series A, like one to two million dollar checks. So I think you're gonna see us go super early in some cases. All right, Sherry, Chen. Partner at Greylock, great friend of the cube and always great someone to grab. Thanks for picking up the phone. We're just doing a little randomly dialing the VCs. Ironically, we talked about Greylock today. Congratulations, great to see you and hear from you and we'll see you at AWS re-enter. Yeah, that's what we're doing. We're crank calling people. Can't wait to do it for Mark Andreessen. Mark Andreessen? Crank calling on the Friday show with John Furrier. Yeah, we're gonna call in. Can Mark Andreessen, please? Nice next. All right, Sherry, thanks so much. Talk to you later. Sherry Chen, a great VC. And you know what I love about Sherry Chen? He works hard. He's in the trenches. He's transparent. He's put it out there. I would say, VC Greylock certainly has gotta do better on gender partnership. They gotta have better, more women in the partnership. They need to have more diversity. But, you know, great for him. I'm nitpicking there. All right, that's the Silicon Valley Friday show. And, you know, next week, we're gonna be in KubeCon and we're gonna be here in the studio for Friday. And of course, congratulations to the Cubs who won the World Series. And potentially we could have the Cubs winning a World Series for the first time since, what, 1908, was it? Long time. And then maybe we might have our first president, female president by next Friday. Next Friday show. Get out and vote. Get out and vote and we'll see how this election comes down. Man, either way, our world will be completely different as of Wednesday morning, you know. Hopefully they won't have the hanging chad problem in Florida. You're listening to the Silicon Valley Friday show. I'm John Furrier, Jeff Frick, and we had Jerry Chen randomly dialing in. We're calling him up. And maybe we should do a crank call series on the VC. So, good stuff. I'm John Furrier, Jeff Frick. Thanks for listening to the Silicon Valley Friday show.


Now, everybody wants to know if you can actually find compliant items at big box stores. And the answer is yes. In fact, time goes by that people find me in Costco and grab me and say, is this okay? Is that okay? And oh my gosh, Dr. Gundry, you're in Costco. Now, what are you doing here? And the answer is you can actually find a lot of safe items, but also a lot of really good items for you in a big box store like Costco. So today I want to talk about the protein choices and the oil choices that you can find in Costco and what you should look for. So first of all, Costco has wild salmon. They'll have it fresh in season and it will say wild Alaskan salmon. And one of the tip-offs is it's usually a lot darker red color than farm raised salmon. And it will usually say wild. Ignore the organic that is farmed by definition. They didn't follow the fish around to see if they were eating organically. And they were fed organic grains, corn and soybeans primarily. Number two, most of the time, Costco has frozen handy pieces of wild salmon. You have to kind of sort around and look because they'd be much happier selling you frozen Atlantic salmon, but stay away from that. Look for Alaskan salmon. Alaskan salmon by law has to be caught wild. That's not true of Canadian salmon, Norwegian salmon, Scottish salmon. Look for Alaskan salmon. And by the frozen pieces is really handy. Also, they have canned salmon. And look again for canned wild salmon. So lots of options for salmon. What my wife and I do is we tend to wait for salmon season and then we buy several pieces of whole salmon and take it home, cut it up into pieces. We put it in Ziploc bags because as you've read in the new book cut check, Ziploc doesn't have any phthalates in the plastic. And then we have it the rest of the year. Next up, canned sardines. Costco often has really good canned sardines. Now canned sardines are full like salmon of omega-3 fats, long chain omega-3 fats. And they're a great source of protein, but you're really looking for the omega-3 fats and interestingly enough, you're looking for them for the little bones in the fish, which are a great source of natural calcium, not the calcium pills you're swallowing. Try to find them in water. They're better for you in a lot of ways, but if all you can find is olive oil, make sure it says olive oil, not packed in oil. Usually the ones that are packed in oil have soybean oil or cottonseed oil.  So water, preferably, second choice olive oil. And these brands appear and disappear in Costco, but in general, most of my patients are very pleased with the sardines that you can buy at Costco. Canned tuna. Now canned tuna, just for the record, usually comes from small tuna, not from sashimi-grade tuna. They would not be that dumb. Small tuna are much lower, if you will, on the food chain, and they have not been acquiring heavy metals like mercury for a much longer period of time than sashimi-grade tuna. So you're really quite safe with canned tuna at Costco. In fact, some of the brands will say mercury-free or low mercury, and you can trust that because, again, most of these canned tuna at Costco are small, and grab yourself some cans of it. They often go on sale. You often have to buy six or 10, but that's when you want to buy them. Okay, over in the cheese area, Costco frequently has a number of goat cheeses. If cheeses are fermented, then you're much safer in lowering the amount of a mischievous sugar molecule called Nu5GC. So you really want to go past the fresh goat cheese logs, which are not fermented, and instead look for goat cheeses, feta cheeses that actually say the ingredient is goat. Read the label. Unfortunately, in America, many feta cheeses, which should be goat or cheese, are actually made from cow's milk. So just look for the words goat or sheep. Lastly, there are a number of sheep cheeses that are great for you. You can find Pecorino from Italy. You can find Menchingo from Spain, and often there's a sampler of sheep cheeses from Spain, cut into small wedges, and it's a great way to experience some of these fantastic fermented cheese from sheep and from goats. The prosciutto from Italy is a fermented food, and all the Nu5GC from Italian prosciutto is gone, and it's in almost every Costco. It's already pre-sliced. It's really easy to use, and it's a perfectly acceptable addition to your diet. The same way Italian Parmesan cheese, Parmesan Reggiano cheese, is by far the cheapest you will find at Costco. And I actually buy our Italian Reggiano cheese, Parmesan Reggiano, at Costco. And it's gotta say that, it's gotta say from Italy, beware of cheeses that have Italian sounding names, but aren't from Italy. Same way with the Italian meats of the Italian salamis. Make sure it came from Italy. Costco started carrying sliced Italian charcuterie with salamis and prosciutto in a very convenient package that are actually from Italy. And what's exciting about that is these are traditionally fermented sausages, and the exciting news from Kutchak is that these sausages don't contain Nu5GC, and they are loaded with postbiotic fermentation products like polyamines, like spermidine. So they're actually pretty doggone good for you, and they're at Costco. Yeah, what about non-meat protein? So well, there's actually plenty there for vegetarians and vegans. Hemparts, you can get big bags of hemparts at Costco. Hemparts have the benefit of being high in protein, but also high in soluble fiber. So it's a win-win. And you can use hemparts in so many ways. I find the easiest way is to just sprinkle them on salads, sprinkle them on vegetables. If you wanna throw it in a smoothie, that's fine with me. But hemparts, and they're really reasonable. Pistachios, there are a number of pistachios that are available at Costco. Whether you want them peeled, dry-roasted, salted in the shell, unsalted in the shell, they're readily available. Here's a word to the wise. Try to buy them in the shell. Cracking open that shell and picking it out slows you down. And it's true with any nut. Nuts are really good for you. They contain a lot of protein, but you'll eat a lot more if the work's been done for you. So just a word to the wise with pistachios and also with macadamia nuts. Macadamia nuts, it's difficult to safely find raw macadamia nuts. And if you do find them, if they're in half, they've probably gone rancid already. That's why you see most macadamia nuts have been already roasted, and that's to stop them from going rancid. It's easy to find macadamia nuts at Costco. Word to the wise, it's easy to gain weight eating macadamia nuts. In fact, if I have a skinny patient, and I believe it or not, see skinny patients who wanna gain weight, my go-to snack is macadamia nuts. And you can put on the weight with macadamia nuts. Walnuts, Costco has both organic and regular walnuts. Should you spend the extra money? Well, just remember that with most nuts, the nut is never exposed to herbicides or insecticides because it's contained in a nut. And once you break open that nut, the flesh will not have those herbicides and insecticides. However, in the interest of good agriculture, if you can afford the organic, please buy the organic. But don't be afraid of non-organic nuts for the most part. And I did mention macadamia nuts, be careful. Okay, now how about oils? Well, Costco is a pretty doggone good place to find really good cold-pressed organic olive oil. But word to the wise, you don't wanna buy your organic cold-pressed olive oil in those big plastic jugs. Two reasons, number one, it's in plastic. But number two, although it sounds like a good idea to buy your olive oil in bulk, the minute you open the top on olive oil, it starts going rancid. And you won't use it up fast enough before it goes rancid. So the alternative is almost every Costco has in an organic, usually Italian olive oil that's in a long, tall, cylindrical bottle. And it usually has a label of authenticity called Toscana. I've actually been to the plant where it's made in Tuscany. And it's true, it has to come from the Tuscan region. Now, sometimes they don't have that, but there's a very similar one that comes from Spain. And it's in a very similar bottle. And it's also quite safe in a very high quality. But just stay away from the big plastic bottles and you'll do yourself a favor. Sesame oil, you can usually find untoasted sesame oil, but it's not in all Costco's. Preferably, once again, look for sesame oil in a glass bottle. I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Dr. Gundry podcast. Make sure to check out the next one here. There is an entire microbiome that's dedicated to the manipulation of sex hormones. And it could just be that rosemary is the aphrodisiac that maybe all of us should be munching a little bit more of.


Good morning. You're welcome to the breakfast on plus TV Africa. It's well Thursday is the fourth of this of January Can you imagine already in the fourth of January? The fourth of January 2024 and if you just join us for the first time here, well happy new year to you still I think I'm gonna be staying happy new year all of January. Okay. Yeah At least but at least the first week is happy new year. Yes, all of January also is good enough for happy new year Yeah, happy new year to you. My name is Neyam Gul Aghaji. My name is Roman Paul. So you're welcome We have a lot in store for you. Well, we'll be looking at how to grow money, right on trees money growing trees Well, we're going to see how we can do that today We'll also be looking at some top trending stories that cut our attention as well as Reviewing the papers on the national daily this morning. So you can see it's a lot on this breakfast bulletin and I'm excited. Are you ready? Yeah, yeah, so everybody would be interested But the first question that people ask in Nigeria is oh this first statement They make is that now which of better full-fits safe Well, you'll find out that it is easier than you you thought it was and you can save as low as 5,000 Naira and it really grows. Well, let me not talk like the expert He will be here joining us to tell us how money goes on trees But first of all, let's just go to top trending before we enter the actual one that we have Downfall viewers today. I like the fact that The governor of Lagos States arrested an army man who was riding his bike one way And it does cost a boss on social media. Everybody's talking about it and all that Yeah, but what interested me was that Like I saw it's a tweet from she was sunny this morning He was saying that a soldier was caught driving one way and the governor arrested him And it has triggered a conversation around how our national life is. Are we not driving on the one way? We not need to be arrested and brought back to cause to Take the right cost that we're supposed to and I'm also asking When everybody's talking about the fact that this arrest was a good one because he was riding one way Is anybody talking about the fact that bikes are banned? Roads, that's another thing. Sometimes we want to find a solution to our problems But we are not looking at the course of the problem. I lost me for some people and not others Why are we not talking about the fact that is criminal in Lagos to ride a bike? That's one second He disobeyed traffic laws and then even the vehicle that you're using to move around is actually legal in Lagos They I mean, I love the fact that they arrested him because it starts from the top When they get to see that even a military person can be arrested when they flout, you know The others of the state and that's good because now what that does is make sure that everyone sits up a Lot of people do this. You see people moving even on the BRT lanes as well You see people fine. I understand maybe for like emergency services.  Yes, exactly Yes, not just that you're just, you know, putting the sirens. Yeah. Yes So you see people just moving about and saying oh because you know, I have some back in or I have some protection I can definitely move one way and that is wrong. You at the top should also obey the laws Nobody's above the law right now in Nigeria. So I think it's a good way to go Yeah, but someone who will not always be on the road Nobody affects this kind of arrest. It's the governor who has done this and maybe the only one who can do this Before you hear of army and police fighting army and last-minute Somebody might want to enforce the law and others will think that you're impure to me How can you tell me what to do and these policemen and army men use these bikes for commercial purposes as well Have you not seen one? He was literally carrying a passenger Okay, let's move over to our top trending at first one It says recognize traditional worshippers Adele K tells federal government Oshun state governor Ademola Adele K has advised the federal government to recognize traditional religion and apportion to its adherence responsibilities The governor spoke on Wednesday at the government secretariat in a barrier venue of the new year traditional prayer session organized by the traditional worshippers Association of Oshun states at the prayer session the 2024 new year divine revelations of the ifa oracle were revealed Adele K who was represented by it at the Event by his deputy color ade we see charge their derent to be committed to their religion He also called on leaders of different faiths to tolerate one another in the interest of peace Adding that traditional religion had nothing to do with ritual killings or crime Speaking in Yoruba. He said if the federal government recognizes Islam and Christianity Nothing stops it from promoting traditional religion According to Adele we see the federal government should recognize practitioners and apportion to them Responsibilities it also pleaded for religious tolerance among people of different faiths said it should start from among leaders of all faith The Oluwa of Iwo Abdul Rashid at combi on Tuesday said royal fathers in the state Were in support of Adele K for a second term in office This was as the governor declared that his administration had reported success in all areas where opposition party members did not give him a chance to succeed Oluwan Adele K spoke in Oshugo at an inter-religious service held at the state secretariat at Bere So assured in the government and the state into the new year So what are your thoughts on this? I mean, I want to hear what you want to say.  I support the fact that they should be recognized I don't support the fact that they should promote traditional religion. I'm not sure support I'm not in support of the fact that government should promote any religion. They should recognize them give them their rights let them let them flourish at the way they want to and So long as it's within the ambits of the law But not the government promoting it and in this way also I feel it's totally wrong and a waste of resources for the government to be sponsoring people going on pilgrimage It's a fit thing. God is everywhere if you want to go on pilgrimage to Israel To make me come it should be your choice and your ability to do so Otherwise God can do what you tell him anywhere So a portion a good number of a good amount of money in our budget for pilgrimage of people who Can worship the same gods wherever they are. I think it's a waste of resources So government should recognize them let them go if you want they want to go monitor them the way that you should be Monitored but not spend money on them. I think it's a way. Yeah, I think as a government We need to Realize that we have to be independent of religion the same way you have to be independent of tribe and ethnicity You should be independent of religion because at the end of the day You don't want to have a sect of people Following you because they say oh you're Muslim or you're Christian or a traditional worshiper or because you're evil That's the reason why you know, I would support your government No, that shouldn't be it and even as a people we need to just I think religion does a lot To us religion has kind of suppressed us for a long time And you see people saying oh I can't be friends with you because you you don't practice the same faith that I practice And that should be wrong for instance My father is a Christian my parents are pastors But guess what? The my father has a lot of Muslim friends. Those are the people like he calls friends Do you understand even for me as well going into uni and I think that because I studied in the UK You have a lot of people you have people who are Muslims Buddhist as well And then you're not going to say because you don't practice the same faith that I practice that means I'm not going to be a friend now But here is where it gets even more interesting. Are you going to say because you are Muslim? I would not do business with you. I would not take your money Yeah, you understand or you're saying oh, okay. I need to use for instance I need to use a phone and I need data or I need the same card I like to say the MD of so so so telecommunications companies Muslim so therefore is Christian So therefore because he doesn't practice the same thing that I do I would not go in to understand So how do we peak and choose this thing now as you said? I do not I would not tell the government to promote traditional, you know worshipping. I mean just stay out of it Be independent of this if you need to bring them into office. That's fine Oh, doll people can be skeptical about this because they're like your traditional worshipper Hmm, I don't know if you put something on my seats today, you know this kind of things But I think that's what the sensitization comes in some people actually worship if I and they even say it in technology The most times technology are made of numbers and if I is made of numbers like I've researched this thing Yeah, well, if you're from a community like I come from, you know the potency of traditional worship and they the real essence of traditional worship Whoever is a seer a diviner in the traditional religion does not soil his hands with blood So, but we've been led to think that traditional worship killing killing people That's the way even the whites that brought up religion the looks at a lot of things that we were doing and they just say This one is fetish. This one is wrong.  They face the consequences, right? So Regardless, I mean like we said the government should be independent of that and make sure that you know Every religion should be respected. Yes, sanity Islam traditional religion. Those are the three major ones and Recognize them. I support that but don't go promoting them. You this is the good religion And because that's what I understand why that you give them money to fund these and that and that no No, let them do what they need to do, right? But remove your hands and let's not give religion so much Attention that we will now have two constitutions Places where religion is dictating the kind of laws that should be kept when the Constitution is dictating something else For instance, shall we have law in the north? We talked some names NSCDC Rescues societal woman who jumped into river in Oshun That's the next story the Nigerian security and civil defense Corps NSCDC Oshun State Command said on Wednesday Rescued a middle-aged woman who jumped into the Bordeaux for Oshun River in a suicide beat in Oshubu a statement by the Oshun NSCDC spokesperson a SC a delicate candy said officers of the NSCDC command pulled the woman out of the river on Tuesday after receiving a Distress call that someone had jumped into the river according to a dedicated search and rescue team of the command received a distress call from a member of the Public in less than 10 minutes officers were at the scene to rescue the victim the victim a middle-aged woman was resuscitated and later taken to the hospital for medical attention The statement revealed that the victim after becoming conscious explained that she came from Eradmiji to Oshubu to commit suicide by jumping into the Oshun River the PR or said the woman added that she decided to end her life because she was feeling fire burning in her Body and the only way to quench the fire was to jump into Oshun River I did a case at the state LSE DC command and Agbo last Sunday Commended the second rescue team for being responsive and bringing to bear that training in disaster management I did a care also explained that Agbo la and joined residents to take care of their mental health adding that his men would pay close attention to all the rivers in the state To prevent people from jumping into them to commit suicide Have a lot of questions. I mean my first question is how do you feel fire in your body and you have to Yeah, it could just be maybe she was Paranoid or something or maybe something was just happening in her. I don't know I think she's feeling the Nigerian situation right maybe Some of this a lot of these people who say they want to commute suicide will tell you they're indebted to a lot of people Here that's the form of fire, you know all around you. You don't feel comfortable anymore People who are conversing even if you're they're not calling your name is a CV this you they're talking about You're looking at me. They've seen me. They're talking about me.  Ah, this one done the colo The society looks at you differently and the most difficult thing in life is trying to convince people who already think you are mad You're not because anything you do it even makes you look Yes, that's what is happening. So Government cannot be in every river every point so what I will comment them I mean in 10 in 10 minutes they were able to get there and resource data. So that's like what if she had not come for suicide tourism She left She left her village came to a show but to commit suicide that's Wow, so what if she hadn't come to this state center the state capital to commit the suicide where NSE DC would yes, what if it was in a small river in the village? I wouldn't have been NSE DC there that had the training and what if the NSE DC did not have that Particular training that because not everybody in as an NSE DC can swim. I'm sure but then I think you should be a criteria So they did well. I commend them so much But since they cannot be everywhere, we should be looking at the reasons people are committing suicide suicide used to be a strange thing If you see on social media in those days when you see someone saying I want to kill myself The people who will tell you I can't give you my knife I can give you a rope and all that and make fun of it will be more because we knew that it was a joke But now someone just as much as says I'm tired just that and you are scared like somebody reach out to that person That's that's the reality of the time. Just so we we have a clear suicide is not an option You only fail when you decide not to get back up. So no matter what is going on in your life I understand that you know the economy might be a bit tough at the moment But just look at the silver lining There is light at the end of the tunnel and no you should not end your life and just in case You know, you're going through anything. Please see a therapist We really don't talk about therapy here in Nigeria a lot But we should and if you need to see anyone if you need to speak to anyone, please see a therapist also Take care of your mental health. We cannot stress this enough here on the breakfast and here on plus TV We are rooting for you and we know that you know, you can your life is your life is promising That's just what I can say your life is promising. So please suicide is not an option See somebody speak to someone and you know, just have your family and friends around you that can really support you at this time But yes, let's go to another story and this says Boko Haram attacks born is Chibok local government kills 12 Now 12 people have been killed with two others injured in a fresh Boko Haram attack on Katamawa community in Chibok local government area of Burnu state Chibok local government area is 125 kilometers from Midigori the Burnu state capital It is a southern Borneo local government whose communities have been devastated by terrorism in the past 14 years with many adductions by the Boko Haram insurgents the Borneo state police command confirmed the attack to a Television on Wednesday saying that the attack happened on Monday evening According to the police public relations officer Nahum Dassau Two others were injured when the gunmen drove into the community with high love spans and motorcycles in large numbers Shooting sporadically though he did not provide Further details of the attack reports from residents indicates that the terrorists stormed the community armed with rifles shooting at Monas the terrorists stormed The community of Katamawa around 5 p.m. On Monday during the New Year's celebration heavily armed with AK-47 rifles came on motorcycles and high love spans and open fire on Monas Returning from Katamawa. They also reportedly later attacked another Chisha community near Shikair and killed three people and adopted a long lady burning houses and looting their foodstuffs Monday's incident come about a month after four electric towers along the Midigary Damaturi highway Were destroyed by terrorists 11 months after the power was restored to Midigary after a similar attack in 2021 Over the last two years Jihadists have carried out attacks beyond their strongholds in not is Borneo states the heart of the country's 14 year long Islamic militant conflict they have increasingly targeted farmers Loggers herders and fishermen accusing them of spying and passing information to the military and militia fighting them in 2020 Boko Haram killed 76 farmers from Zabahmari in nearby Kusugbe village a massacre that set a new standard of brutality According attacks from militants in not is Nigeria have seized at ease rather Since the height of the conflict when fighters held towns and large swaths of territory However, they still raid rural areas hit military bases and ambush convoys the insurgents in crisis has killed 40,000 people and displaced around 2 million from their homes and the not is since it erupted in 2009 according to the United Nations This is really sad I'm wondering how come we're still going through this over and over again and in the same cheap up Yes, that's where the girls were abducted. That's where we heard the first incident of Abduction that that really took us by storm and till now they can still work into that place take the people they want kill the people they want and all that and We're just telling ourselves lies The governor of a northern state has come out to say that militants or bandits or whatever In charge of almost 60 villages So if they are in charge of these villages collecting tax and all that how would you tell me that they're not occupying these Villages do they have to build houses there is In where I live the president doesn't live there, but he I'm being influenced by him wherever he is So whoever is ruling a place is the one who is in charge, right? So if you're in charge you're occupying that place Why are we not even deploying enough military personnel into these places? You know what when I was much younger?  These are Nigerian citizens They're making us to be people human lives They're making us to believe what a lot of people are saying that the people who should be proactive are Involved in whatever is happening here. Yes, because how do you explain to me and American was abducted in Nigeria? People came from America Which means there is available intelligence that they can use whether they want to collaborate with another country or another Expert organization or so, but there is available intelligence. Why are they not using it? For instance the plateau we heard that there was there were distress calls a lot of them over 27 in a few hours people still had a field day for 48 hours to operate in More than one local government and you say is because there's no intelligence. There is intelligence Somebody even a call calling me and saying We're where they're unknown gunmen here or they are bandits here and they're coming here They're killing us. That is already intelligence. I think because I mean in America for instance You call you down 9-1-1 draw the drone that killed, you know sent citizens. Where is it? They they they they even the people involved that killed very many innocent citizens. Where was that drone? Why couldn't it have been deployed where where where were the army people the police the Whether it's responsible for 48 hours. Do you know what this tells me? I feel like when they don't act on this Intelligence and all of that that they have you're giving power to these people. They already have power They are now writing letters to yes, so it's almost like the government cannot do anything So after I win would the government come and save you they will not so we can do whatever we want with your life And that's not even the right way to go because the moment you start to give You know how they say you don't negotiate with terrorists because in a way when you do that you're giving the terrorists more power Yeah, you can't give the terrorist power You can't give bandits power because guess what one day they will come for you It is growing a short story when I started out as a broadcast that it was the time Cultists came into the studio and said we must announce a list of people who were who they felt Uncomfortable within their villages. These are people who were wanted by the police and all that and they published their names So they came with names of chiefs and all that and said these are the people you must announce The saving grace was that there was no light and our generator was back First time I was clapping for Power-holding taking their life and we don't have it like so we're not transmitting and They didn't recognize us because we were you know, there's a difference between the person you hear on radio And the person actually see they didn't believe those were the people who were supposed to announce it So we told them to go and come back at nine o'clock in the morning They came very early at five when we're just opening the station then and you guess what when they came back at nine o'clock They came with a local government Germans car But at that time our GM had already brought the policeman they came there arrested these people took them They didn't enter behind the counter at all They didn't spend five minutes in the police station and they were billed Wow Not even officially because then there are no books that will say these people were held by the police and they were In five minutes they were out of that place in a local government Chairman's car a sitting Chairman's car of the same local government where the chiefs were saying these are the terrorists Terrorizing this place and there were people dying Give them the car to go to a police station or a radio station to to ionize whatever was their issue Then who will talk for you the so that's why we can't believe the rumors that you know their politicians funding all of this Terrorists well Let them bring out that list that it you all all the time They tell us if we tell you the least Nigeria will burn let it burn. That's a burn. Give us the least Well, we don't want I'd rather burn, but I mean give us the list They will not prosecute the people. It's not there's one thing of bringing there's one thing to bring the list out There's another thing to take action in it Let's start naming and shaming them and then if the prosecution will follow let it follow Let's know them that these are the people who are making Nigeria what it is And then maybe the shame that they will have to come back and stand In front of us and say vote for me will be so much that I would We'd them out of the party and then that that now sets a tone to even other people to come You're like because I saw that they've named and shamed this person. I don't want that to happen to me So I have to go into office and deliver. No, these people have insolation Against shame Let's just take this break and when we return we'll look at the papers and the papers also are loaded. Don't go away


Hi, everybody. If you're standing up, get out or sit down because we have my favorite train guy who only talks about trains, and that's all we invite him for because we like trains, too. Please sit down and enjoy the wonderful world of hacking model trains. All right, thanks. I'm Eric Ritter. I am a fan of radios and trains. And last year I did a talk on wireless protocols for real trains. And at the risk of getting pigeonholed, I'm going to talk about model trains this year. G. So model trains have been around as long as real trains. And for the last 100 years or so, they've been mostly powered by electricity. And for most of that history, trains are powered by track electricity being applied to the track, usually DC, picked up through wheels and applied to a motor. So the train speed is proportional to the voltage. But about 25 years ago, the industry shifted considerably and went to a system called DCC, digital command control, that allows the power and control signals to be separate, although applied still through a track circuit. DCC works like this. It's a differential, essentially polarity switching signal that goes to the to the two rails. And the symbol is encoded using the period of a square wave that's nominally 50% duty cycle. So you have to encode a one, you have 55 microseconds one way and then the other way to get a full cycle. And then with a zero, you have to have at least 90 microseconds, but you can stretch a zero out so that you get an average voltage that's higher or lower that will allow you to actually operate a DC engine on that track. But the harmonics tend to frighten motors. To separate the two signals, you rectify the track power and get DC to power whatever you're trying to power, motors, micro controls, whatever. And then you run the signal through a couple or some sort to get the data stream. DCC packet looks like this. There are three bytes is a preamble for synchronization, three bytes, two of which are information and the third is checks, separated by zero start bets. The packets are several different types of packets. The first two here are used for actual moving equipment, engines and things of that nature. One is speed and direction, which is self explanatory, a function packet is used to control lights and sound effects and that sort of thing. And then there's this other class of packet called an accessory packet that's generally used to control track side equipment. One of the principal uses of this is to control the position of a switch or turnout. So you can do that from a handheld controller throttle controller. And then all of this equipment is configured through DC also. So there are packets for that. So typical wired setup, traditional setup looks like this. You have at least one handheld throttle, which looks something like this. And it's either wired or wireless, but it connects to some kind of proprietary throttle bus. That goes into a command station, which aggregates all the commands from the throttles and creates a DCC bit stream, which is essentially a circular buffer that just rotates through the commands for all the different engines and accessories. That goes to a booster, which is basically an H bridge that does the polarity switching for the track. And then you can also take that bus and run it to an accessory decoder to get both power and data. So for smaller scales like HO, which is a very common scale and scale, this is the most practical way to operate a model railroad because you need to supply the power through some external means. The scale that I model is G scale, which is about three times in scale the size of HO. So in G scale it's practical to actually put lithium ion batteries inside of an engine, because an engine is this big, and run the trains without any track power. And this is desirable because many of us, myself included, operate these trains outdoors where keeping track clean for conductivity is a challenge. But when you lose the track power, you also lose the data. So generally these systems are controlled by wireless connections that are directly from a handheld controller to the locomotive. And to give you a sense of the scale, I debated which movie to use, but this is a test of a G scale locomotive pulling a case of beer. And you can see that I'm really didn't flinch. But that you can see the size of a beer can and some of them are seltzers, but it's the weight that matters. All right, so I'm going next slide here. There are several competing wireless systems, and this has never really been standardized the way that DCC was. And there have been attempts at it, but it didn't go very far. The one I use is called Airwire that's made by CVP. And this is the handheld controller here. It's pretty straightforward. There's a rotary encoder in the center, and then you press that to change direction. So what you see on the screen is the number of the engine, 3841, the speed, and then the arrow indicates direction. And then the yellow button on the left right by my thumb is the accessory button. So you can hit accessory and then a number and throw a switch or turn the signal on and off or whatever you want to do. And this connects to a decoder that's in an engine. And this works, this particular system operates in the 900 megahertz ISM band, which is what attracted me to it as a ham. I have privileges in that band, and I thought it might allow for some interesting reverse engineering hacking kind of stuff. So I wanted to figure out how the signal is actually encoded and sent to the engines. So the first step was sort of a non-destructive look at it in GQRX or some software to display SDR. It's pretty clear this is a 2FSK signal. But what surprised me was that it's continuous. What I expected was that if I made some change, some control change, that it would send that change, and then it would sort of be quiet until the next thing, you know, happened. But this is actually a continuous signal. So I dumped some IQ samples and opened it up in a spectrum. And this is what it looks like. And this packet might look familiar. So I wanted to figure it out from five minutes ago when I explained the DCC packet. So this handheld throttle is actually encoding a DCC bit stream and modulating it as an FSK signal, which seems like a kind of brute force way to do this. But that's what's going on here. So I wanted to figure out how that's being encoded, what's going on. So the next step is to open it up and pretty straightforward, ignoring the gray wires there, which I'll explain in a second. So it's a microcontroller and then this anor and R9A wireless modem. And the R9A is based on the TI-CC-1101, which is very common modem chip packaged with an antenna and some filtering and PIN smatching and that sort of thing. And looking at the PIN out, it's essentially a lot of do not connect or no connection and then power and ground and then an SPI interface and then some GPIO that you can configure through the SPI interface. So to do analysis, I soldered some wires onto the four SPI lines and also eventually one of the GPIO lines and then ran them out the battery. Connector and terminated them with DuPont connectors so I could do some analysis just using a logic analyzer. In this case, the Soleil logic 8 device and then the associated logic software. This is the startup sequence when you first power up the device, the throttle and zooming in on this you can see each of these spikes is a byte and the software decodes all that and essentially there's nothing going from the modem to the microcontroller. It's all the microcontroller telling the modem what to do. You can export this to a CSV and then look at the contents and this is essentially the registers and their contents to configure the modems. This allows you to configure modulation, frequency, whether you're transmitting or receiving, transmit power and that kind of thing. And you can go through the data sheet and figure out what all these registers are and the one that I found interesting was this register 08, hex 08 which puts the, if you set this bit, it puts the modem into asynchronous mode. So the great thing with 1101, the reason it's used in so many different devices is it does all this cool packetization and error correction and stuff, but if you put it in asynchronous mode it essentially bypasses all of that and one of the GPIO lines directly modulates the FSK output. So the connection is just the microcontroller SPI to the modem which configures the modem and then just a bit stream that directly modulates the FSK output. The same setup is present in the receiver. This is what would go inside of a locomotive and there's also an anterin module there. This one has an antenna but it's the same line and so it's really just a mirror image of the transmitter. They're both in asynchronous mode so it creates a virtual wire carrying a logic local DCC signal between the two. So now that I know this, I can create my own transmitters, receivers, whatever I want to do. I'm pretty happy with the off the shelf throttle and as far as a motion decoder that you put in an engine, they're pretty robust and you don't want your engines running away, they're very expensive and heavy. But what I was really interested in primarily was the accessory decoder because the accessory decoders from the manufacturer were very expensive and with six or eight dollars worth of hardware you can put together an accessory decoder that will control as many accessories as you want or as you have GPIO lines for. So as an example, I put together a very simple one just using a very old Arduino Nano or Micro and 1101 module that you can get on eBay. It's probably a clone. I changed the antenna for a more appropriate antenna. And putting these together, you can create either a transmitter or a receiver and there are plenty of DCC libraries available for the Arduino ecosystem because people have been building their own wired DCC components for years. So the only missing piece is to do the modem configuration. So I wrote a library that takes these four inputs and allows you to dynamically configure the modem to do either transmit or receive, transmit power if appropriate. The RF channel, the manufacturer of the throttle is defined 16 channels and then the slave select pin. So you can put as many modems as you want also on this SPI connection and operate them simultaneously provided you talk to them individually. So the library is set up like this. You just set up the four parameters, instantiate the modem. You could do many modems if you wanted with different enable pins and then you can dynamically start it. There are other things you can do, change channel and that sort of thing. This is a little demo contraption that I put together just to show a sample accessory decoder and it looks like this. I have it here but you wouldn't be able to see it because it's quite small so I just put it up on the screen. Essentially the components that I showed you and then I put four servos on it and eight open collector outputs and these are controlled by accessory numbers one through eight. You could code them to be whatever you want. I was going to try to demo this live but I just made a video instead because it will be easier to see from where you're sitting. Essentially I'm going to power this up and then it will read from the EEPROM the last position of the servos or the last binary position of those outputs. Here I'm just hitting accessory one and then the one and three buttons control the accessory number one. I'll go through a couple others here. Excluding the battery this is probably $10 or $12 worth of parts and that would cost to do that with the manufacturer's equipment it would cost you $250 for four channels. For people in this very specific corner of this very specific hobby it provides some options for creating low cost accessory coders and of course you can also transmit by reversing the process and generating a DCC bit stream in their libraries to do that as well. This device which I have hooked up here is a monitor and this is essentially using the library and it's cycling through, I asked somebody to take a picture so that maybe it's just cycling through the 16 channels. With some defined dwell time and this is, I was going to do a real time demo of this but it doesn't seem to be working but this is five different throttles set to different frequencies showing the engine number, direction and speed and we did this at a club meeting with actually five different independent throttles. And all it's doing is looping through this very simple loop on the Arduino and the DCC process has call back that sends limited serial data to the host and then there's a Python program running on the host to display it. But essentially just goes through, waits till the dwell time is over and then switches to the next channel and moves on. I'm going to see if I can get it to work. It doesn't seem to be working for some reason but there's a lot of RF going on in here, maybe the problem. So that's all I have. Thanks for your attention. I have some of the, thank you. I have these gadgets here if you want to see them I'll be around so be happy to show you. No, it may be. I've never seen any, there's no FCC information or anything on any of the equipment. No, that's a good question. There are 16 frequencies but the carrier frequencies are fixed. You can change it on the throttle. One of the drawbacks to this type of system is it's a one to one, well you're going to have one throttle and multiple locomotives but you can't control one locomotive with multiple throttles because they would just step on each other. Some of the other systems, competing systems are mesh networks to overcome that issue. All right. I think I'm out of time so I'm going to get off the stage but thanks very much.