Daily Tech News Show is made possible by its listeners. Thanks to all of you, including Johnny Hernandez, Hi Tech Oki and Logan Larson. Coming up on DTNS, Tim Stevens tells us about tech to keep EV safe even after a crash, plus YouTube's bid to become your place to watch everything, and Amazon gives you more free music. Oh, nice. This is the Daily Tech News for Tuesday, November 1st, All Saints Day 2022 in Los Angeles. I'm Tom Merritt. Lovely Cleveland, Ohio. I'm Rich Strafilino. From Tokyo, Japan. I'm Tim Stevens. And I'm the show's producer, Roger Chen. What are you doing in Japan? All sorts of fun, Stefan. Driving cars around Mount Fuji. I went to a race track to see some beautiful Nissan GT-Rs and chasing down a bunch of cool features.  I love it. Well, we're going to find out a little bit about what you did in Germany now that you're in Japan. I won't say something I shouldn't say. Let's just start with the quick hits, shall we? According to a message from Twitter sent to publishers and seen by The Verge, Twitter discontinued ad-free articles at the end of October. Twitter included these articles in its Twitter Blue subscription. It's kind of a weird thing. If you were a subscriber, you got access to ad-free articles from select publishers. Twitter says removing the feature will let it focus on resources, on adding additional value for our members. And in a clue for what that added value might be, Elon Musk posted to Twitter on Tuesday that Twitter Blue could be $8 a month, which include verification, priority and replies, mentions in search, which is essential to defeat spam, scam, ability to post long video and audio, half as many ads, and paywall bypass for publishers willing to work with us. Look forward to seeing the official announcement on any of that. In Sony's Q2, the number of subscribers to PlayStation Plus fell from 47.3 million to 45.4 million. In the Q2 quarter, despite Sony's launch of new tiers and perks for the subscription service, despite subscribers going down revenue from network services, that includes PlayStation Plus, the now defunct PlayStation Now, and PlayStation Network advertising revenue increased 17% of the year to $794 million. PlayStation 5 sales are at 25 million consoles as of this quarter lifetime. So PlayStation's got easier to get and people stopped buying them? That's just ungrateful. People stopped subscribing. Alphabet's Waymo will expand its RoboTaxi service in Phoenix to include trips to the Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport, a first for a U.S. autonomous taxi provider. These types of trips are big business for ride hailing services in general, so it's kind of a big step. Lyft-reported airport trips made up 10.2% of its total ride share in Q2. Waymo Airport rides will run 24-7, but be limited to the Trusted Tester program initially and use human safety operators as well. Waymo expects rider-only operations to start over the weeks to come. In the spring 2023 semester, Parsons School of Design will offer a class with Roblox to explore the intricate relationship between digital and physical fashion set in an immersive future. Parsons students will learn how to create 3D digital fashion with Roblox's toolkit as well as physical clothing. Roblox will collaborate with Parsons faculty on the course. Students will be able to sell items from the course at Parsons and in the Roblox marketplace. Parsons' big name in the world of design education, so definitely caught my eye. Very cool. Search engine marketing firm SEMrush, SEMrush, published a study showing that 27.6% of people are redoing their Google searches by either refining or extending the queries that they type. The data came from 20,000 anonymous users making almost half a million unique searches. 70% of people took less than 15 seconds to make a secondary click, meaning they found what they were looking for probably. 27.6% needed to adjust their search somehow, although they might have still found what they were looking for. And of those refining searches, 17.9% made changes to the search query while 9.7% clicked on an image from a carousel generated by the search. SEMrush noted keyword changes happened more on mobile at 29.3%, over 17.9% on the desktop. I'm going to guess that's typos. On desktop, the study also found 25.6% of results were zero clicks, either meaning the answer they needed was available right on the page they were looking at without having to click anywhere or they just gave up. Keep in mind, the survey did not measure search satisfaction. It only looked at the behavior of the clicks, hence the, maybe it meant, it could have meant all that sort of thing, but it's interesting nonetheless. But this remained within the YouTube TV app. Until now, Tom. Yeah, that's right. Google's starting to bring down the wall between its serious TV quality content on YouTube TV and the wider world of YouTube. They've integrated movie and TV show rentals before, but this is a step beyond that. The main YouTube app is going to offer something called primetime channels. If you go in the US to the movies and shows hub, you're going to find more than 30 channels. You can get to it from the Explorer tab as well. When you add a channel this way, the channels appear on your YouTube homepage next to your other subscriptions. So you can have a new Star Trek Picard and that might show up right next to Daily Tech News show and curry cakes from Incheon. Paid channels will integrate with their free YouTube channels. So you could have stuff like AMC Plus content living alongside AMC's free YouTube channels for trailers and that kind of stuff. At launch, the channels available on movies and TV show hub will include Showtime, Paramount Plus, Stars, AMC Plus, Epic, Shutter, Acorn TV, Hallmark Movies Now, and a couple others. YouTube plans to work with partners to expand channels over time and will bring it to international users in the future. So Tim, are you excited to be watching your AMC Plus content potentially in your main YouTube app? Yeah, I mean, I think initially this is definitely a great move. It'll be much, much easier to add these channels to your subscription. You know, much like you can on Amazon now with just a couple of clicks, you could get access to much better content without having to create a new username, a new password, type in your credit card number and go through all that to subscribe to Paramount Plus or whatever. I must say some of the selections are not that great though. I've never heard of dub channel. I had to go look what that is and it turns out it's mostly Canadian made for TV movies and off-brand. Wait, you just said it was not that great. Sounds perfect. You're trying to get you excited there. But I must say, I wonder what this means for going down the road. I'm a little concerned that we are starting to go back into the era of conglomerations of premium access channels to the point where instead of paying the hundreds of dollars to our cable providers that we were years ago. Now we're going to be paying hundreds of dollars to Google with forced packages and bundles and things that we won't necessarily want just to get the content that we want. I fear that we could be slipping back down to that dark, dark place that we just barely escaped. Let me assuage some of these fears potentially because I think we've always wanted cord cutting to be a way to save money and it can be. But it's actually not its biggest advantage.  So instead of having two options, pay a lot or pay a lot more, which is what cable gave you. You had to pay a lot to get most of everything and then there was a small tier you could pay more for. This says individual channels. You have control over them. You decide which channels you want. Now right now, like you say, the 30 channels are not all the channels you could possibly want, but it might be the template for that becoming the case in the future. So I think it is good to have this kind of control because this isn't the only place you can do it. You can also add these on Apple TV, on Amazon, on Roku, on Sling, on Hulu Live, on Direct TV Stream. There's lots of places to do this. So you have choice, you have control and I think what's really interesting about YouTube doing this is there are more people watching things on YouTube than ever before from creator channels. And so saying like, hey, you're going to watch Picard and you're going to watch Carey Cakes. Why not watch him in the same interface? Could be a compelling pitch for YouTube here. Well, and my question is when does the rest of YouTube TV start moving over here? Because I get having a dedicated TV app. There are just some subscribers there. I just want a TV experience. I don't want all that crazy YouTube stuff. I watch a ton of YouTube content as well as over the air or what have you cable kind of related content. And so it would be really nice to be able to say like, hey, my cloud DVR, there's no reason that just can't automatically be a tab in my YouTube interface. Maybe that gets a little busy. Maybe it's still like still the YouTube TV app is the better experience. But there are so many shows that have analogs over the air that I watch that I'm having to go between apps on my Roku TV that would be just so nice to have that. So I hope this is a sign that the walls come down on this even more because I just want my entertainment. If I'm paying Google, especially from a premium subscriber, I'm paying Google for all this stuff. Just put it all in one spot and make it easy, Google. Yeah. Well, they were having carriage disputes with Roku. They were putting YouTube TV available through the YouTube app on Roku. So there's precedent. They could just make it easy, make it all one out. Do it. All right, let's talk music. Amazon has long given prime subscribers access to a limited collection, around two million songs in Amazon music at no additional cost.  You like two million, we got more. If you wanted full access to the whole catalog, which would be more equivalent to what you get from Spotify or Apple music, you had to subscribe to Amazon music unlimited. That's an extra 899 a month and gives you 100 million tracks, including new releases, exclusive artists back catalog stuff, stuff like you would expect from a full on music service. So it was two million for free just, you know, as a taste and then an 899 a month service. However, Rich, that's not the same anymore. It's not things, things they are a change in much like the times they are changing things up now offering some access to its full or now offering access to its full Amazon music unlimited catalog to all prime subscribers at no additional cost. Prime subscribers can only shuffle play songs from an artist album or playlist, but you have access to that full catalog. Now you can also stream personalized playlist. You can make, you know, make your own and listen to that as much as you want and download songs for offline listening. However, a prime subscriber can't stream a song on demand or in higher quality with spatial audio HD and UHD formats. Those are going to still be limited to prime music unlimited. So the limited things are in the unlimited subscription. Just to be clear. So the limits are now on features, not on songs. Yes, the catalog is makes sense. Yeah. Amazon Prime subscribers also going to get many of the top podcasts in their Amazon music app without ads. Not all of them, but some of them. So shows from CNN, NPR, wonderies, shows, ESPN, some Amazon exclusives, etc. The Amazon music app is also getting a redesign and it'll include a new podcast preview feature. I mean, you can listen to some clips from episodes to kind of help folks discover new shows. It does feel like this is a way for Amazon to say, we know we raised Amazon Prime's price earlier this year. So we're going to give you something new, right, Tim? Yeah, absolutely. And I think that the podcast up here could be really compelling for all prime subscribers. I think having access to premium podcasts at free will be definitely a win. And having access to that content is great too. I'm actually excited about the addition of really high quality audio here. This is on par with what title is offering in terms of bit rate and having spatial audio as well. That's something that really only Apple music is making a big deal of. And if Amazon can make a big push on that front too, that could make this a pretty compelling option for those who have their new Atmos setups at home. I think they want to have a little bit more music going through there as well as movies and things like that. Well, I think Amazon hopes that it will be compelling because that is the stuff that they are enticing people with the unlimited tier. And, you know, Tom, you pointed this out that the catalog is no longer enough, I guess, to draw it. They feel like enough to drive people solely to that. Instead, they're baking it in as a value add to prime and say, listen, music. I always maintain music has so much more stickiness. Like then video stuff where when you can unsubscribe to anything any given month, yeah, you can binge your your House of the Dragon or whatever you have. And you don't need to keep that like on you. You don't need to feel like you can access that anytime. Whereas music has so much more repeatability and you want to have your same playlists and stuff like that. So I feel like it's smart if they want to keep people on that prime bandwagon to do that. I actually did enjoy that the weird, really tiny two million song things. I have two small kids and there was a ton of kids music on there. But that actually onboarded me to YouTube music because I still felt like Amazon unlimited wasn't offering me enough of the integrations with some of the other smart home stuff that I had. So there are there are some other things that can push people into that. But if it was included for free, I probably would have figured out how to make do since, you know, if you're already paying for prime. I do feel like that is a really, really interesting catch there. Yeah, I do feel that nine dollars a month is asking a lot for not a lot in this case. I mean, having you HD and spatial audio is great. But I think for most people having access to the music is really what they want. And so that seems like a big ask for not a major return when you compare, you know, what you get from zero to everything on Apple music, that kind of thing. So I wonder how many people are really going to be willing to spend an extra nine dollars just for our quality, just for streaming what they want to just for offline access. Yeah, well, the bigger one to me is being able to say, Oh, I want to listen to anti fragile by Lucera film right now, pick that right. That included with prime video, you can't pick that. You just have to listen to a playlist and hope it comes up. So that that seems to be the bigger compelling paywall you'd run into that would make people pay. I just don't know how they run into that. You have to choose to be using Amazon music in the first place, which probably means you know this is available through prime. And you don't have another music service. It just seems to be a, you know, you start to slice the potential audience pretty thin at that point. The interesting thing to me is how this compares to what Spotify is offering, right? The market leader, you know, in most markets when it comes to or in major market, few major markets. I don't know why I'm qualifying this so much when it comes to streaming music because you have their ad supported tier and you're basically getting all the functionality of the ad supported tier. But you don't get ads like this. You don't get ads. Yeah. It's a, you know, the same thing with the podcast stuff like Amazon's going or Spotify is going super hard to expand their podcast offerings. But even for premium subscribers, when you're paying a monthly fee, there's no way to get ad free stuff. And they're throwing that in there with prime where, you know, the, the, the cost of that is massed to a once a year payment for a lot of people. Some of the people do monthly. I know on that one as well. So I think you have to look at it also in terms of how they're, you know, kind of going after the market leader there. And, you know, if you're looking at that, trying to get people to move over from someone that has the dominant market share, I think it's, it can be theoretically a compelling argument, depending on how you listen. Well, folks, it's time to get our holiday gift card list in order. Each year we send every patron who wants one a holiday gift card with exclusive art from Len Peralta. I think this year is his most beautiful art yet. I can't wait for folks to see it. If you'd like the card, make sure you're a patron if you're not already and then check patreon.com slash pledges. Make sure we have your proper mailing address by November 15th and you'll get the exclusive DTNS holiday card mailed right to you from us. Thank you. Gasoline petrol powered cars have had more than a century to develop safety systems prevent controlled explosions of petrol from turning into a fiery inferno during a crash. But EVs have different challenges. They are less likely to explode. They still can. They also can electrocute a passenger or a first responder. Tim recently visited Mercedes Benz at their testing facility in Germany to look at what they're doing to improve safety in the EVs. Tim, what did you find? Yeah, it was a really interesting visit after their facility in Immendig in Germany, which is this massive place where they have miles and miles of test roads that are all designed to replicate different areas of the country. They have miles of South Korean paint lines and road signs, American signs, Europe, everything else. So they can test all their vehicles and all the markets in the world that they're going to be sold in. But the main thing that they do there is really test safety. And so we got a lot of demonstrations about driving on ice, avoiding collisions with pedestrians and things like that. But what was really interesting was to sit down and talk with their engineers about the things that they've been doing to improve the safety of their EVs, particularly the EQE sedan and the EQS sedan, which are coming to market now. And it's interesting because a lot of stuff that applies to a normal luxury sedan like stability control, traction control, that all applies here too. But also we need extra stuff to make sure that these cars are safe both before collision, in a collision, and then after collision too. Because if you think about a first responder, I had a conversation with a captain of the FDNY this spring. And he said that when they're arriving to a car crash these days, they often don't know if a car even is an EV because they're not often clearly labeled. And if it is an EV, they don't know where they can safely cut without cutting into a high voltage line. So Mercedes-Benz are doing things like automatically disabling high voltage systems in EVs and routing their cables in a smart way to make sure that first responders are not at risk when they get to these cars. Yeah, I thought it was interesting, all the automatic protections were used to the ones like airbags that you talked about in your article. But having an automatic cutoff that says, we think we've been in a crash, let's keep the minimal power on for displays and emergency calling features. But let's stop the battery from running power through those lines. Because like you were telling me earlier, even if they're well marked, you may not know they're there if they're crumpled under something. Right. These cables, the high voltage ones are the ones that provide power from the battery to the motors basically. They're orange, they're wrapped in Kevlar, they're very hard to damage. So in that case, the occupants are particularly safe. But when it comes to a first responder, they're going to bring out the jaws of life and they're going to start cutting that car up. So another thing that Mercedes has done is they've run a cable through the A-pillar, which is the pill that kind of wraps around the front windscreen. If that cable is cut by the jaws of life, then it also will immediately disable all the power in the car too. Again, adding more safety and security to make sure that nobody gets electrified. Yeah. And the batteries can also explode. They may not be quite as explosive as gasoline, but is there anything they're doing to prevent that from happening? Right. So there is a lot of advanced battery monitoring that's going on all the time. So each individual cell, there's a massive battery pack in the floor of the car, but that's made up of a lot of different cells. And the car can monitor the temperature of those cells to make sure that there's no thermal overload going on, which would cause the battery to potentially rupture and catch fire. So that's going on all the time and certainly continues going on after a crash. But they've also wrapped the battery in a honeycomb of extruded aluminum, which is this really thick webbing of material to make sure that if you are in a major side impact that the car absorbs the energy from the crash and that doesn't actually then get into the battery pack and cause any ruptures there. So it's physically protected, but there's also a lot of smarts going into the temperature monitoring and management to make sure that the car is basically keeping itself safe. Because once those battery packs start to go up, they go into a thermal overload, which is basically once cell ruptures gets very hot causes the next one to explode. And that's when we see these giant clouds of sparks from EVs when they've caught fire. It doesn't happen very often, but when it does, it's a very dramatic, very scary thing. And all that you can do at that point is just start dumping water on it and wait for it to finally go out. Yeah. So better to stop it from happening in the first place. Absolutely. Yes. A little bit of prevention is a very, very important thing. Tim, with all this stuff, obviously, safety is a product differentiator for an automaker, but is there, have you heard any noise from Mercedes or any of the other EV makers about kind of safety standards best practices? Obviously, like you mentioned, like the high voltage lines wrapped in Kevlar orange, but like something like that, even if they're not not even talking about licensing, but just like standards. Is that out there? It's definitely one area that needs improvement for sure. Orange cables for high voltage is definitely standardization, but in terms of wrapping in Kevlar and things like that, that's definitely something that Mercedes is taking to the next level. But one thing that Mercedes is hoping to bring to the table is providing more information to first responders. Again, when I was talking with that captain from the FDNY, he said that they really don't have any standardized information from manufacturers. They don't even know where to look to find out where they can safely cut. What Mercedes-Benz is doing is putting a QR code inside the door frame so that you can walk up with your smartphone, scan that and very quickly get all the information that you need to know where you can safely cut and what the details about this car are. That is not a standard yet. The industry is really working to try to come forward and try to find a way to make it easier for first responders to figure out what they can do safely, but there's still a lot of opportunity there for improvement and I hope that comes soon. That's a perfect use case for augmented reality. If you have a properly working augmented reality headset that can recognize the car and then mark the places where it's safe to cut and where the power lines are, incredibly useful stuff. That'd be great. The last thing that I thought was interesting in your article was the thing they're doing to protect your ears during a crash. Tell me a little more about that. They're using what's called pink noise, which is basically static. If the car thinks that you're going to get into a crash, the speaker suddenly blasts out this pink noise, which is actually kind of scary. I heard a few times as we were going through these demos. What that happens is it causes the inner ear to close a little bit and it protects your ear from the incredibly loud sound of the collision and the airbags going off as well. It's actually proven to reduce hearing damage because oftentimes you'll hear people getting out of the car. They can't talk to the first responders but they can't tell them if they're injured because they can't hear anything because of those airbags. Pink noise actually can save your ears permanently and also in the short term. Wow. That's crazy. Tim is in one of the last bastions of fax machine technology, Rich, but it's fast becoming one of the only places where you can find a thriving fax machine community. You got a couple of business verticals, but Japan is really one of the holdouts and the UK is maybe trying to accelerate that their communications regulator, Ofcom, is putting another nail in the coffin of the facsimile machine. It's proposed changes for telcos to no longer require providing fax services as part of the Universal Service Obligation or USO. Currently, two telcos in the UK are responsible for universal service, BY and KCOM. It's consulted on the rule change, finding it was appropriate for fax to be removed from the USO given it's limited on going use. Ofcom expects to publish a statement on the changes in early 2023. It doesn't sound, at least from the BBC report we were looking at, that there is the groundswell of no, please save our fax service. I'm sure someone's upset about it. Tim, can you do us a favor and send a fax while you're in Japan? I actually don't have one in my room. I've been here in a couple of years. It's interesting to see there are, there's less forms to fill out. In fact, you know, when you used to come to Japan, they'd stick like a whole book of paper. They'd stick it into your passport, basically, and there'd be just minutes of them filling out forms in the back end. It's getting a little bit easier here, but there's still an amazing number of forms to be filled out. Whenever you buy anything, Japanese folks still seem to love their paperwork. Yeah, I know they're trying to move them on to a digital ID, and that's not going well. People are resisting that. So, yeah, interesting to see. But sad to see the receding of the fax. Cutting the infrastructure to kill the service. Soon it will just be a sound effect. In a movie, yeah. That's all people will know it from. All right, let's check out the mailbag. Yesterday on our extended show that the patrons get good day internet, Dr. Nikki was talking about her experience with the haiku box. It detects bird song and can identify which birds are singing, she said bird song. She also mentioned the Merlin app that can do this on your phone, and Steven Broomfield heard that and wrote in and said, a few weeks ago while my wife and I were out walking our dog in suburban Denver, we heard this strange noise, like a high-pitched trill. I can honestly say that in the 50-plus years of living in this area, I have never heard this sound before. When we looked up, we saw what we thought was a flock of Canada geese. The sound, however, was so strange there was no way these were geese. I then remembered the segment you did on the Merlin app. Within a second or two, it identified the sound as the Sandhill Crane. My wife gave me that oh-so-common look that says, you're such a nerd, but I'm glad you knew how to do that. Steve says, now we just need Google to build this into Android, like the now-playing feature, which also comes in very handy for impressing my iPhone-carrying wife. Thanks for the nerd flex, Steve. Don't get them ideas. Merlin being acquired. It's so cool. It's good stuff. Well, also good stuff is having Tim Stevens on the show. Tim, thank you so much for being on. This was awesome. Yeah, thanks for having me. Like I said, I'm not here in Japan. I'm really excited to be here and working on a lot of cool features, which you'll be seeing in a lot of different automotive and technology publications in the next couple of weeks. Where can people check you out if there's one spot? Definitely check me out on Substack Tim Stevens at Substack.com. Fantastic. And a special thanks to Louis Saint-Amour, who's one of our top lifetime supporters for DTNS. Thanks for all the years of support, Louis. I mean, double thanks because Louis Saint-Amour is, and it's a thing supporter too. So Rich and I are well familiar with Louis from that show as well. So thank you so much, Louis Saint-Amour. It's good to have your name read over here as well. Of course, Louis Saint-Amour, one of the people who recognizes the importance of independent technology news voices out there. If you would like to be like Louis, support us. Patreon.com slash DTNS.  That extended show, Good Day Internet, starts right now. You can also catch the show live Monday through Friday, 4 p.m. Eastern, 200 UTC. Find out more at DailyTechNewShow.com slash live. Back tomorrow with Scott Johnson. Talk to you then.


importance of this island in the month of February. Here you see the Tiber is still quite high. And what we're going to be doing is we're going to be talking about for the month of February major events, religious festivals, particular dedications, and then some events around the lives of Imperial family members, emperors, emperors, would-be heirs, and so forth. But ultimately, what is the month of February about? It's a period of purification. It's a period of, you can say, atonement.  This is going to be manifested through a series of key festivals throughout the month. And of course, the Vestal Virgins will be playing a role in that. And here they are. It's a famous relief that comes to us from Palermo. But it is the Vestal Virgins, and the man standing on the right is the Pontifex Maximus, who's in charge of the Priestley College, which includes the Vestal Virgins. Okay, so for the month of February, we start off here on the 1st, and there is a temple that we can still visit today, and we'll see in just a moment the Temple of Juno Sospita, the Savior, next to the cattle market in the Forum Holatorium, which is the vegetable market. It's founded by a consul after a war against the Insubrians of Northern Italy. Battles in 197, the temple is dedicated on the 1st of the month in 194 BC. On the 5th of February, this man right here, who appears, his portrait is in the Tarlonia Collection, which is currently open to the public on the capitaline hill. He dies in York and is succeeded by his sons, Caracalla and Gata. And we know what happens in the sequel, Caracalla kills his little brother Gata within the year. Now in 6th of February, 62 AD, a precursor to the destructive eruption of the Suvius, we have an earthquake, and you can see in the archaeological record the devastation from that particular earthquake. We talk about all the time the earthquake damage to the city of Rome. Well, all of Rome, all of Italy is volcanic, and so there's earthquake damage throughout the peninsula, including Pompeii. And there is a famous relief that shows the various structures and temples at different angles, basically capturing that moment of the topsy-turvy end of the world scenario on February 6th, 62. And then, of course, we know what really devastates the city is going to be the eruption in AD 79. The exact date is still disputed. Was it in the summer? Was it in the fall? But you can see that we're starting off the month of February with the bang. I'm sorry I have to say that. And we've got a little bit of mix of these great events, these famous moments in Roman history in that first week. The temple dedication, the death of a, you know, the starter of a dynasty, the Severan dynasty of Septemberus Severus, and of course then an event that everyone is going to remember. Let's take a look at this church that's in San Nicola in Carchere. And what you have here is in the incorporation of three temples. And the outer temples are built in the Punic War, the first Punic War. And the middle part is going to be what is the core of this church, San Nicola in Carchere. And that's where you have wedged in between the temple of space and Janus, the later 190 BC versus the 260 BC to 240 BC. You have that last of the three temples in the area of the vegetable market. And it is dedicated to Juno, the wife of Jupiter, Juno who saves. So you're making vows as generals.  And you help and you thank them by a construction. Didn't always have to be a temple. Could be an altar, could be a statue. The temple is about as good as it got. February 8th, we have a lot of interesting personalities. Leo the first is becoming the emperor in the east in 457. Constantius the third is co-emperor with the Norris, famous emperor of the western half in 421. Zeno is co-emperor with his son in the eastern empire.  Kind of reverse tactic there in 474. And then the figure that we're probably most familiar with out of all these personalities, all these rulers is Britannicus. He's not a ruler at all. He's the son of Claudius, the emperor. So one of our famous Julio-Claudian emperors. And there he is depicted with his mother, Messalina. So one of the number of wives of Claudius, ultimately the most famous is the last wife of Claudius, Agrippina. And what we have here then is that story of the natural born son of Claudius, Britannicus, named after that triumph that Claudius has in Britain, ultimately dying. And then Claudius has to turn to a stepson, Nero. But the idea is that there's something fishy going on here. And the sources really push that theory, that conspiracy theory that Britannicus was indeed poisoned, as was eventually Claudius himself, poisoned probably by eating some tampered with mushrooms. That's happening on the 11th of February in 55 AD. Now, we're getting to the good stuff here. The core of what the February is all about is the parentalia. It's a nine day festival on the 13th that's kicked off, includes on the 21st. And it's rights that involve the Vestal Virgins. And it's all about honoring family ancestors. But as so much is the case for the Romans, you do things publicly, you do things when the privacy of your home. And we have that also in the 13th, the temple of Faunus. So this deity of, well, he's associated really with Pan, so God of the countryside and kind of like a Sylvanus figure, God of the woodlands. But here he has a temple on the Tiber Island. And that's why we kicked off the first view today with the Tiber Island. It's not just the Sclepius who's on that island. They're going to be several deities, Beovus, the Sclepius. Let's not forget about Faunus. And also on this day, Gordon III dies, and you can take your pick on how he does die in 244, murdered by his own army, or he dies in a battle. So it depends on how you want to look at what the sources are saying. But February 13th is a rather auspicious, and then in the case of Gordon III, an auspicious day. And we're not going to forget about the Paterontalia because there are going to be other things associated with that nine day festival. But I just wanted to squeeze in here, Valentine, St. Valentine, who is martyred in Rome in 270, buried nearby the Pontimilbius, the Pontimilbius on the Via Flaminia. It's going to have a church eventually in catacombs, but purportedly his skull is on display in Centurion and Cosmiden, where you have the Boca de la Verita in the form Boarium. And ultimately, he's declared a saint in 495. So it takes a while, but I think we're all familiar with Valentine's Day, which is around the corner, and the associations with that festival. But it's getting its start with a guy who is martyred in Rome. And in the third century, of course, there's a little touch and go with being a Christian, sometimes persecuted, sometimes not. Making your way through the Paterontalia festivals, we do have the Februa, and that is a festival of purification that lasts two days. And that's where February, it's a thing about fever, February is coming from, it's purifying, burning off the bad as it were. And then we also have this very famous festival called the Lupercalia, which lasts a number of days. It's a fertility right. And we have this famous image, not from antiquity, but much later depicting then this kind of pageantry that's involved. And essentially guys go around in their underwear, flicking whips made from strips of flesh from sacrificed goats.  And that would lead to your pregnancy. So it is a rather boisterous and, you know, there's a lot of revelry involved in this particular festival. And then famously during that time, you have one of these very public attempts for Julius Caesar, who's participating with Mark Antony, to be crowned in front of everyone, not with the crown of gold, but just with, you know, the kind of Laurel leaps and so forth as a gesture. But it takes on its own meaning and the pageantry that's involved. And ultimately, it's like should he be crowned or should he not be crowned? And although Mark Antony tries several times, the response from the crowd is no, we do not want him crowned, we do not want a king. And that's one of these poignant kind of episodes. When we think about the ways in which so often the case, the background and the skeletal framework within your existence through the Roman life, through the Roman calendar, are going to have these religious moments, these processions, these things that everybody participated in. And that's the thing in which the gossip happened, the incident happened, the assassination happened. Like the political statement on the part of Julius Caesar happened. And that's why we're looking at these months and more than just looking at Roman festivals, more than just ascension of an emperor, but also that the political actions and famous moments that take place with throughout the year. Okay, 17th through the 21st, Fort Nakalia, we're celebrating the god, Fornax, and that's just the goddess of the oven. And how important is, you know, electricity to us, internet, probably more important nowadays than flushing toilets and electricity. But the goddess of the oven, she is key. They're remembering these various deities throughout the year. Cronalia honors the god, queerness, that is, the deified Romulus. We have an emperor dying, Jovian. And then we're also looking then the 21st to the last year, the parentalia, you end it with the Feralia, and you're then at that point celebrating the Manes. And when you look at so many ancient Roman inscriptions to the dead, it says DM all the time abbreviated for the de Manes, these spirits of the dead. And that everything is ostentatious. You're giving flower reeds and the tombs, sprinkling some brain, sprinkling some salt, soaking bread in wine and leaving that. So it doesn't have to always be something precious, something that is not affordable. This is for everyone to participate in is the basic idea. And then we have this young man here, Gaius Caesar, one of the two grandsons, Augustus destined as his he adopted his grandchildren. And neither one, neither Gaius nor Lucius survived. He dies here in AD 4 on the 21st of February. And think about how much more devastating that was to Augustus. He writes about how Caesar, Fortuna, the goddess, ripped away by grandsons from me, took them away. And it's just, I'm sure that had extra meaning. And he died on the day at the end of the celebration of the dead that would not have been missed upon any run. Every woman recognized that added meaning to that particular day. Rounding out the month of February, we have on the 22nd, the Caristia, which as opposed to the Feralia is a private celebration of the dead, particularly held in the household, venerating the household lorries. Now, next on the 23rd, we have the Terminalia. And this is a great god for the Romans. He refused to budge on the capital line hill to make room for the later and greater Temple of Jupiter, Optimus Maximus. So this is something that the Romans hold in great esteem. This is the boundary marker. And this is the sign of how the early religion was respectful of what pre-existed. The Terminalia goes back to the earliest beginning of Rome. On the 24th, we have the Festival of the Regevugium, which remembers the expulsion of the kings through the figure of the Rexachro arm that goes through that process, probably even an actual physical movement through the city, again, remembering the expulsion of the Tarquin kings from Rome. Also on the 24th, we have the Great Persecution of the Christians by Diocletian. This place takes place in 303. And it's kind of the beginning of the end. It's the last grand attempt to wipe the Christians out of the Roman Empire. On the 25th, Hadrian adopts Antonis Pius and makes Antonis Pius adopt Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Ferris. So a double succession was laid out by Hadrian. And it worked for that time being never to be replicated. On the 26th, we have the Ascension of Valentinian I and 364. On the 27th, we have the Festival of the Aequiria. It's in the campus marshes, possibly the Targaryen, which is near the today's Via Giulia. It's dedicated to the god Mars. It also has death and underworld associations. We're at the end of the calendar year in the original 10 month calendar in ancient Rome. The first month of that original calendar system was March. So here we have that kind of end, that celebration, that recognition of death in the lives of the Romans. On the 27th, we have the Constantine the Great's Earth in 272. Also on the 27th, in 380, we have the Great Edict of Thessalonica, which makes Christianity the religion of the Roman Empire, making illegal the veneration of the old gods. Despite that decree, a number of those traditions will continue to persist, including the famous Lupercalia in the month of February.


Sorry to interrupt all the conversations. Thank you very much. We are now going to come to what I think is probably going to be the high point of this day because we're going to have two individuals who are more strategic in their thinking than anybody I know. Dr. Brzezinski, of course, is known as having been one of the great strategic thinkers for America in the policy landscape for many years. And I'm so very grateful that he's a mentor to me and a professional and personal friend. And I'm very grateful for that. And John Hess, who is also a member of our board, I can't say how grateful I am that John joined our board. And John, of course, is the leader of Hess, the Hess Corporation, which has done such remarkable things. We heard about it earlier with Dan Solomon about the work that Hess did during Hurricane Sandy. At some point, John, I hope you'll say something about that. I think that would be very helpful. What I'd like to do to get this conversation started, and this is a conversation for all of us, is maybe to ask each of them to take a few minutes at the beginning to reflect on their perception about where we are with this question. The geopolitics of energy. We're trying to combine two perspectives here, an energy perspective with John and a strategic perspective with Big Brzezinski. John, let me start with you and ask you just to reflect on how has this shale revolution that we are experiencing, how is your perspective as an energy man and what it means for us, what it means for the industry, and how Hess is dealing with that. Why don't we start with you? Thank you, John. It's an honor to be here. In terms of our own company, it's been transformative. It's totally changed our strategy. Our company is an exploration and production company. We've transformed ourselves from an integrated oil company, and in that regard of our strategy for exploration and production, about five years ago, we saw that shale was a game changer and if you were going to be a resource growing company in hydrocarbons of oil and gas, you had to have a seat at the table in terms of shale. So in the past, our company was way too dependent on high impact, high risk exploration. And we were drilling, and we're participating in drilling very expensive wells offshore Brazil, offshore Gulf of Mexico, offshore Africa, offshore Indonesia, and some of these wells could cost $200 million. And you know, there are not many companies can afford a dry hole at that rate. One of the things that Fatih was talking about before in terms of the declining production in the world, we have to make up for it. And because a lot of the easy oil has been found, you have to take risk in deep water. And it's more expensive, it's riskier, but it also takes a lot longer. So we really had to reassess our strategy as a company and fortunately we decided to get into unconventionals in a big way. We looked at some of the gas shale in the United States, but we were worried about what future prices might be. And there are a few oil shales. And fortunately we were very lucky in 2010 to triple down in the bucket, where we now are one of the two largest oil producers there. We're currently producing about 70,000 barrels a day. We project that by 2018 that'll be 150,000 barrels a day. It's going to be a very important part of our company. We also have learned some of the talk about technology and operating excellence is very important here. There is a learning curve that over the last two years we've been able to reduce our drilling costs there from about $13.5 million a well to $7.5 million a well. So that will allow us not only to be more resilient with lower prices, but it also opens up a lot more wells that we'll be able to drill. So it's been nothing short of game changing or transformational for our company in terms of the role that it plays. One of the challenges, however, that shale presents a company like ours, is as you look forward, you have to make a huge pre-investment before the production gets up. Because each one of these wells doesn't do much more than 500 barrels a day and then maybe it drops off to 100 barrels a day. And that compares to the Gulf of Mexico where a well could do 10,000 barrels a day. So you have to drill a lot of wells. It's logistically very challenging and it's also very labor intensive. So you have to get the operating model right. But the second thing that it did to us besides totally transform our strategy and portfolio is we had to look at how we allocate capital. And because it was $2 billion a year our company is a lot of money. It's about half of our budget. We couldn't afford to feed the pre-investment cycle of four to five years of $2 billion every year without selling assets. So what we embarked upon doing about two years ago, which we've just completed, is we sold more mature assets that were international, about $6 billion worth in Russia, in Azerbaijan, in Indonesia and in Thailand to help fund this growth. The big thing about shale is once you find it, it's really low risk growth. And investors like that, as a shareholder, I like that too. And it's been something that's really been the foundation for the company. And what we're hoping to do going forward is to take the operating capability and technology that we've proven out in the Bakken, and we're also operating by the way in the Utica in eastern Ohio, that's a smaller position than what we have in North Dakota, but we want to apply our capability on a global scale. So that is an opportunity that's in waiting. That's something that I'd be happy to talk about later in terms of what a global unconventionals look like because the majority of unconventional production in the world is in the United States now with a smaller piece in Canada. So that's just a perspective of how shale has impacted us. It's been transformational in our strategy and in terms of the company we're trying to become. The other thing that is a consequence is what is our company going to look like in the next five years because of shale? Half of our production will be unconventional, half will be conventional, basically offshore assets in the United States and across the world that are long life cash flow generators. Half our production will be onshore, half will be offshore. And I think the other thing that's really important is half our production is going to be in the United States. And before we got into shale, 25% of our production was in the United States. So in sum, we're much lower risk to investors. We have balance between unconventional, conventional, offshore and onshore. And I think our company will be well positioned to deliver superior sustainable returns for some time to come. John, before I turn to Dr. Brzezinski to ask him about the geopolitical implications of this, let me just ask one little question. Energy abundance is great for consumers. We love it. It's good for American security, et cetera. But it also means that you're entering into probably a prolonged period of slack pricing. One of the things about abundance is if you're on the selling side, it makes it at prices. You don't have the pricing power that you'd have before. And of course we've got an enormous infrastructure build out that we have to contemplate. How do you think about that as a businessman? Well, it's not just about shale in terms of how it affects oil prices in the world. I think it really gave a great presentation this morning talking about energy demand growing about a million to a million and a half barrels a day every year. The supply for that energy with production declines and proven provinces going down about 5% of the year and then you have to meet that growth wedge. When you talk about the world needing 90 million barrels a day of oil growing to 100 million barrels a day, we produce in this country about 8 million barrels a day and of that 2.5 million barrels a day is shale. So I think there's room for shale and I don't think it's going to make prices tumble when you look at it over the long term. Now in the short term, you have Libya off the market the last nine months for 2 million barrels a day. You have Iran off for about a million a day because of the sanctions. If that all came on the market at one time, there would be a price readjustment. Another point, but in the long term I think that price readjustment would correct. I think we're in a period of much higher prices for many of the reasons that Fatih talked about. Another point I think it's important to know is shale is not a cheap barrel. At 70 or $75 a barrel, you'd start cutting back on your drilling. That's one of the attractive things about it in that you can cut back on your drilling but the resource is still there because you hold most of the leases by production. I think the last point I'd like to make is 90% of the drilling in this country in shale is on private land. And so really the American entrepreneurial spirit capitalism at its best is being practiced and one of the reasons we're having the success story in this country to grow our oil production and to grow our gas production. Dr. Przenski, just as a summary of the inadequate summary of the presentation this morning, this energy revolution means America is going to be stronger because we've got a stronger economic foundation. Most of the consumers in the world are looking in, especially China, is looking east and China is increasingly dominating the landscape as a consumer. Major producers such as the Middle East are looking at Asia as its primary market. Russia is torn. They're having to find markets in the east and can you reflect on the larger geostrategic significance of what you're seeing in this energy landscape? Well I have to confess that at this stage I don't have a very clear view regarding it because I'm still not sure how transformative it's going to be. I think there is enormous potential but I think there are still areas of uncertainty and in any case I think to the extent that it will be occurring it will be occurring in a world that as I said earlier today is much more unstable, much more potentially explosive, much more affected also by subjective dynamics of a global population that for the first time in the history of mankind is almost universally now politically awakened, politically conscious and filled with enormous passions of resentment or aspirations. Resentments against colonialism and oppression and these are still surfacing in the post-colonial countries, intensifying religious fanaticism, sectarianism in an world which is a major source until now of energy, the Middle East of course. All of that introduces into this dimension tremendous unpredictabilities and poses the question how our relative advantages of comfort and security in this regard can be translated into meaningful geopolitical strategy. Perhaps we can be more comfortable about our status but whether we can then translate that into geopolitically enduring arrangements that serve our national interest I think is very questionable. There's also a further dimension to it. This revolution is occurring in the context of other ongoing revolutions and earlier revolutions. The industrial revolution transformed global geopolitics. The wars of the early 18th century, 1800s were the last pre-industrial wars. The wars that occurred 100 years later in Europe were the first wars dominated by countries that had entered successfully into the industrial age. And it's not an accident that the Russian forces that entered so triumphantly Paris in 1815 were defeated in the Crimean War than defeated by other wars including the collision with Japan for example. And it's not an accident that Japan also defeated China which had been heretofore in a sense more powerful than Japan but once Japan industrialized it was able to do that. And the 20th century was a century of wars wage by industrial powers. We have more recently experienced a revolution weaponry which created all of a sudden the emergence of the United States on the world scene and the sudden rise of Russia because it survived the industrial war and then was able to transform itself into a global power with the appearance of atomic weapons which put us in the same category of survivability or non-survivability as the Russians. Now we may be on the eve not only of this energy revolution which enhances our security but we may also be on the eve of yet another revolution which transforms the natural warfare. And I know you have been very interested in that and so have I written a little bit about it namely the whole combination of information cyber capabilities and so forth creates the potentialities of fundamental transformation in the distribution of power in a way that can be altogether surprising and decisive and very sudden. So where that then places the so called energy revolution which gives us a higher level of comfort in terms of thinking about geopolitics. It may be quite independent of that it may not be affected by it at all and even those who we see as much more vulnerable to energy problems and as potentially the objects perhaps of enhanced our influence in relationship to them may be able to achieve a quantum leap in geopolitical capabilities by an altogether distinct and separate revolution namely in the next phase of weapons of mass capabilities but perhaps not all that lethal actually in terms of their immediate consequence but totally effective in terms of political results. This is a horrific prospect which completely overshadows in my mind the question of if I may say so the energy potential that we may be acquiring or the values of a democratic society and its cohesion or ultimately the survivability of our central role in the world. So we're looking for kind of broad sweeping judgments regarding the geopolitical prospects in the next several decades. Yes the energy revolution strikes me from what little I know about it and I plead on the very limited knowledge about it as significant but perhaps potentially in terms of consequences geopolitical consequences overshadowed by the successful successive revolutions in geopolitics affected by the industrial revolution the post-industrial weapons revolution and the next phase of weapons revolution.  Take us a while to dig into that. While I'm thinking it through John let me ask you John this is one guy amazing for an energy guy that decided to learn Farsi because he thought he needed to have that perspective. So I'd like to put on your kind of international hat John not just as an energy hat but international hat to reflect on what it and I know that you said that you were getting out of a lot of overseas drilling but nonetheless you've lived a lot of your life in that space and I would reflect on what that's like for an American company to be overseas the kind of support that we would need to give our companies if we want them to be successful the kind of normative values that we want to encourage because you're living in a world where you're up against state-owned companies etc and so just reflect on that because then I'd like to turn back and ask about what it means for us as a policy landscape. As it turns out I said about half our company was international about two days ago I was in Equatorial Guinea the west coast of Africa where we operate about 70,000 barrels a day of deep water production we've been in that country for about 12 years operating. The country has its social challenges in terms of education and don't go past third grade 80% don't go past sixth grade so it's a huge challenge how can the president of that country lift his people out of poverty and so one of the things we do to try to help ourselves getting access to energy but also continuing to have the license to operate and having the trust of the government is not just invest to take the oil or the gas out and make money for our shareholders but just as important as what your economic contribution is you should have a social contribution so we've formed a public-private partnership there with the government of Equatorial Guinea it's in its sixth year it had a first phase of 50 million dollars our company would pay half the government of Equatorial Guinea would pay half and we've touched the lives and benefited 40,000 students we've trained for years and we've rehabilitated about 800 schools and that was really focused on primary education now we're in the second phase because it's been so successful and focusing more on secondary education and vocational training so that we really can help the people of Equatorial Guinea prepare themselves for the new world that they're coming into and hopefully get jobs and be productive citizens. I'm proud to say there are people that work in Equatorial Guinea in our company over half our nationals and that's not an accident it's by intent so while I'm not addressing the issue of how the US government directly can help us I think there are things that American industry can do with their own ingenuity to have a wide view instead of a narrow view about who their stakeholders are so that everybody benefits from the investment. I want to come back to that too you know I have my CPU about half the clock speed of Dr. Brzynski so it took me a little bit of time to think about a question to follow up on his statement so let me offer that and then I'm going to open up to all of you for some comment. Dr. Brzynski you sketched out a rather potentially alarming future and challenged all of us to think about it certainly I haven't thought about it adequately. Let me tie that into the conversation we've had today which is that whether this energy revolution is fundamental to reshaping the geopolitics or not it is going to make a stronger America but it also is probably going to create more fragile conditions, economic conditions in our allies more dependencies in our allies and so I'd ask you to think as a man who's been a practitioner for 50 years where we have designed an engagement strategy in the world that depended on good and strong allies what's your vision about this, this future that you are discussing and you are describing and the condition of our allies going forward how would you think about that and what would we do and is there a role for this new tool that we may have? Well actually I was just thinking about that as I was listening to you particularly on the last point because one of the critical aspects of sort of contemporary revolutions on the world scale involves also the question of significant changes in the way America's perceived in the world and the way people relate to it. What you're doing is an example of a very important dimension of that problem namely for much of its history America has really been perceived as the city on the hill probably in a very exaggerated fashion but it gave us enormous strength and appeal and so on. Today that perception is a little more blurred and it's mixed up also with a great deal of resentment within this novel politically awakened population and one of our major tasks in the world is I think to see if we can in some constructive fashion make our social experiments and our social change relevant to the concerns of humanity. You're doing that on a more narrow basis but very significant and I think if we are sort of thinking about the future and how we can manage it more effectively we also have to address this issue of subjective attitudes and how they are influenced by how we are perceived by others and I think in recent years we have been sort of coasting on the cumulative legacy of the age of revolutions in Europe in the 19th to 18th century and we were the epitome of success in contrast to Europe. Is this still the case? Totally. I don't know but I think there are sort of many signals that our system is becoming gridlocked that it's incapable of addressing fundamental issues that it can become locked into cultural conflicts that could be very divisive and our decision making capability in response to rapidly changing circumstances is becoming a little bit rusty to put it mildly even on the constitutional level who really makes foreign policy in our country. Is it the president which I assume according to the constitution he should be or is it fundraisers for political campaigns and national or international interest groups, lobbies and these kinds of things are part of this huge parcel of what becomes the ability to influence world affairs and I'm not trying to minimize in any way what we started talking about today, the importance of the energy revolution. It is important but in that larger context of other critical dimensions they also deserve much more attention and I think we just have been sort of drifting along on our success, getting involved into wars which were translated by public support by subterfuge to put it very mild and politely and wars which assumed responsibility for cultural change in a way which perhaps has not been quite as productive as we had hoped I'm all for the promotion of democracy but I'm not sure whether democracy can be transplanted and embedded in societies which were over a hundred years have had a different path than we and then in a very sharp sudden and bloody encounter we expect them to become like us and I'm waiting with some curiosity to see what happens after we're out of southwest Asia and perhaps after we're pushed out of the Middle East to see what kind of cultural impact it will have on their political evolution so my sense is that we are faced with a lot of very big question works attached to these revolutions that we're talking about some of which are very promising such as the one in energy John? Yes or no? I think listening to the conversations today and the discussion now it's really brought into focus what has the impact of shale bin on the United States there are really three dimensions that I would like to suggest one is the economy one is the environment and one is energy security they're three E's they're easy to remember on the economy it's created two million jobs to put that in perspective at the height of the financial crisis we lost eight and a half million jobs and we regained about seven and a half since then with the recovery two of those shale and it's projected as we invest more in shale job growth may go up to four million jobs by 2025 the second impact on the economy is investment a hundred billion dollars a year is invested in shale development that's a huge number and that's a number that happens year in year out and if you add the indirect investments in the energy business the energy business contributes about two hundred billion dollars a year to the U.S. economy then you look at foreign trade and Carlos here the impact of having more production and less imports has enabled us to reduce our trade deficit by about half since we started to produce shale oil so that's about a hundred billion reduction and that's huge impact in terms of how it's affected trade in terms of oil that we're not buying from foreigners but we're buying from ourselves so you know when I look at all that and then you add the cost advantage that was talked about earlier four dollar gas versus ten dollar gas in Europe and sixteen dollar gas let's say in Japan that's created a manufacturing renaissance and that's probably another hundred billion dollars for petrochemical plants industrial plants that are being built here so the real take away on all of this is what's good for energy is good for the U.S. economy and I think that's something that we need to think about when we think about public policy on the environment hydraulic fracturing you know I think the industry has not done nearly enough work to educate the public they're catching up I'm part of the industry so I'm trying to do my share as well working with our industry brethren on this but hydraulic fracturing has been around in the industry since 1949 a million wells have been hydraulically fractured in the United States 80% of the 40,000 plus wells drilled last year were hydraulically fractured our own company drills about 200 or more wells each year in North Dakota on farmland things are fine we're drilling 10,000 feet deep horizontally drilling another 10,000 feet and you know the states regulates and we don't need another level of federal regulation because the states are doing a good job whether it's North Dakota, whether it's California, whether it's Texas so I think the point on hydraulic fracturing has to be put in perspective it's a safe and proven process with a track record talk was about before the impact of gas displacing coal reducing our carbon footprint our emissions have gone down just since I think 2010 by 5% it's all because of the increased use of gas so I think that's important the other point that was brought out earlier by FATE again was we should just be talking about investing for supply we should be talking about investing in efficiency which will make the reserves last longer and also have the benefit of security and reducing our carbon footprint and in that I could use an example hopefully it's not too far fetched that if all the cars and all the light duty vehicles about 230 million of them in the United States went to hybrid technology we would have about 30% efficiency and could reduce our demand for gasoline and who knows how technology will work out from 9 million barrels a day to 6 million barrels a day and that would be a saving again of about $100 billion that's a price to me that's worth fighting for but last but not least is the word energy security our country has about a 90 year supply of natural gas and a 50 year supply of oil that makes us an energy power and obviously that has economic benefits and the foreign minister of Norway last night said we're the number two producer in natural gas in the world and we're becoming the number two producer of oil in the world so I think that provides a lot for our own security but I also think it can do a lot for global security and there are two ideas that I would suggest in that regard Libya went off production as a country in the middle of last year it's been off for about nine months that's about let's say a million and a half barrels a day that's taken off the market if we didn't have the two and a half million barrels a day of conventional oil the spare capacity that Saudi Arabia has of about two million barrels a day or maybe it's a little higher would basically be used up so without shale oil I think oil prices would be spiraling out of control right now so there is a real security benefit from an economic perspective of having the shale oil contribute to a world economy not just the US economy and security is a consequence the second point I'd like to make is I've heard a lot of talk about how can we help our allies in Europe and people often talk about LNG well LNG is not going to help probably for the next four years because a lot of those projects don't come on until full maybe 2020 and that will be 5 billion cubic feet a day so we talk about it but that's really not going to be something that helps our allies now this is something we could do today to help our allies now and that's give the green light to crude exports I think that is so important I think it's got huge benefits we already export three and a half million barrels a day refined products from crude why not export the crude itself let the free market determine how to allocate the resources and do the buying and selling export of LNG and we import and export natural gas now anyway imported from Canada exported to Mexico why don't we allow the export of crude the other point I think that's really important here is that the arguments made that it will raise gasoline prices at the pump gasoline prices in the United States are world prices because of the importing and exporting of refined products that we have so the lower price of crude here isn't translated to lower prices of the pump for consumers the best way for us to help consumers is and also world oil prices is to let that export of crude happen now the regulations that prohibit it were put in a time of shortage back in the 70s we're in a position of surplus now so when the Norwegian foreign minister yesterday said the best way to get energy security is to get diversity and more supply options on the table I think the best way we could help our allies in Europe is to put that crude on the market now and help take some of the pressure off of Russia selling them 30% of the oil that they're buying and I think that's something we can do now to help Europe and help the world in terms of making the place more secure and also help prices as well. Can I ask you a question actually on that? You're absolutely right in what you have just said but we have now potentially in our hands an even more urgent problem namely Ukraine right? We want to assist the Ukrainians to become part of Europe they're totally dependent on Russian energy Putin has just announced that not only he's going to charge them double for what he was charging them before and that was already exorbitant but he wants now payments in advance of them that would have the immediate effect of offsetting what is a very serious political threat that he has addressed to the Ukrainians in the field of energy. Well I think on the oil side because it's easier to get oil to them than natural gas for the reasons that I was talking about. Really both. Yeah, on the oil side I think if we allowed crude exports that would put more supply on the market that either directly or indirectly could influence European prices but also influence Ukrainian prices and access to it. It would basically reverse the flow in what time frame I think over the next 90 days. That quickly. Yes. That should be something that should be subject to public debate and information. And what else? Well on the gas, the gas is much more difficult. Well the LNG there, I remember the Norwegian minister last night talking that there isn't a lot of spare capacity on gas from Norway to offset the Russian supply. So I think this issues on natural gas would have to be longer term in nature because the infrastructure would have to be put in place that's already maxed out. Well what does that mean practically? I don't know exactly the dimensions of it in the Ukrainian context but what would they have to so to speak for sake since it's going to be longer time in coming back and being replaced. Well I think the oil would make a big difference as a starter and then maybe there are ways to work with the other European allies to figure out a better way to optimize their gas supplies with the Ukrainian so it lessens the supply insecurity that they have. So I think Europe would have to step in there because natural gas is much more regional commodity than a global commodity so really our European neighbors would have to come up with some way of giving them more supply or at least give them some relief. It's a major responsibility with the rest of Germany in that connection. Yes I would say so. Well actually that's a good and practical idea because if we are supposed to be doing something to offset the risk and to avoid perhaps the military collision we have to do something along these lines and to do it dramatically and effectively and tangibly. But these are things we can do now. It just requires some leadership. Okay let me open this up here for some questions from the comments. Thank you very much Dr. Hamry. Munzer Sleiman with Almayedin TV based in Beirut Lebanon. One interpretation of the continued crisis in Syria was related to energy that there were some talks about pipes coming from the Gulf through Syria to Turkey to supply Europe to what extent do you agree with that notion. The other thing there is an offset agreement between Russia and Iran about selling Iranian oil in exchange for their products. How that will impact on sanctions on Russia and also sanctions on Iran. Well I think that's subject to the ongoing discussions and we may be successful in phase one but hasn't been consummated yet. However the main impetus for the conflict and for its continuation is really not over energy. It's over sectarianism sectarian conflict which masquerades as an attempt to create democracy. We have been sucked into that essentially misleading definition of this conflict. I think the real problem in Syria is not the extent that it is or it is not being used for the export of Iranian oil or whatever. It's much more the fact that it does involve an instrumentally developed, deliberately developed sectarian conflict into which we have become unwilling partners. Ambassador Leach, how big a problem is the volume of water used in fracking and the adequate disposal of the used water. Well that is this is about handling of contaminated water when it comes out of the well some of it's recycled but it's disposed according to state regulations. I think the point is there's a lot more water consumed in the United States on golf courses than is in hydraulic fracturing. So to put it in perspective I think it's important to make that point. Give up. And I think there's also been a great deal more use of non-water techniques for fracturing. They're emerging technologies. That's also growing I believe. I didn't know it's your foot. So you're walking around with the boot. You're talking about race production but how about refineries? Are you building new refineries to handle all this production? Because every time we hear about a price raise it's shut down for seasonal change or either there's a fire one that shuts it down too. So how are you handling the increased production with more refineries? Because there was an article in 2012 saying the first new refinery in America was built in 2012 after 30 years. Great question. Should the industry build more refineries in the United States to deal with this increased production? By way of comparison we've gotten out of that business because we weren't as competitively advantaged as some and we thought there were more ways to make returns for our shareholders and grow our company by investing in exploration production because both refining business and exploration production business are very capital intensive and at the end of the day you have to make choices. So we chose exploration production. Having said that we don't do know a little bit about the refining business. We are already exporting three and a half million barrels a day of products to the rest of the world. So we don't have a shortage of refining capacity. We're actually long. So I don't think more refining capacity is necessary to deal with this increased production. The one thing that we need to think about and the industry from having clear economic signals needs to figure out is how do we want to retool our current capacity, which in many cases is built for heavy oil and retool it for the lighter oil that is coming out of the box and in the Eagleford in Texas. So I think that's the real decision we have to make. But having said that I think we should just let the law of supply and demand work and send the right economic signals and that's another reason I think it would be in our interest not just from a free trade perspective but from an economic and energy security perspective to let crude exports go now, let the market come to its equilibrium and then let investors decide what the best thing to do to build long term capacity is either in growing our resource base or do we invest in refineries? Right behind you. My name is Howard Newman and to follow up on Dr. Brzezinski's warning about war by other means what percentage of your CAPEX do you spend on cyber security to protect your IP, your operations and your finances? That's a number that I wouldn't talk about but you know this issue of cyber security and hacking that's going on obviously our IT information technology department is a very high priority and we often do tests where surprise attacks are made to see how we would react to it. So it's a very important issue in terms of information propriety and it's something that is important for all industries whether it's here in the U.S. or abroad. We've got about five more minutes and then we're going to wrap this up. Any other questions? Yes. I'm David Bardeen, question for John Hess. I really want to know how the U.S. government is helping you do your job but let me be more specific. I love your people in North Dakota. I know what you're producing. You said 70,000 barrels a day going up to 150,000. You've got to ship it to some refineries somewhere. As you said the United States is the largest oil refining country in the entire world. Nobody's mentioned that but you in effect said it. That's why we export so much. But you've got to get it to a refinery, right? Now you've told us how their U.S. government is preventing you from exporting your Bakken crude oil to other places, other refineries who'd very much like to have it as a result of price controls and other controls that really dated back to the Nixon Ford administration. But what is the U.S. government doing today to help Hess do a better job and more thorough job in growing this Bakken oil and getting it out? I think there are five key enablers for the shale success story in the United States. And those five key enablers really don't exist yet in foreign lands like China, Europe, South Africa, Australia that also may have shale. The first among all other things is the geology. The second is mineral rights and I'll explain what I mean by that in a second. The third is infrastructure. The fourth is fiscal policy. And the fifth is regulatory policy. And obviously that's where the government comes in quite a bit. On the first, which is geology, the United States has a wealth of information that's public about the wells that have been drilled in this country. And there have been a lot. So there's a lot of density of wells that give you the geologic certainty or uncertainty that you need to make the investment. So I think the first thing that you have to have is clarity on geology so you can appraise it. And in a lot of countries that information isn't available. Starting with somewhere like China or other countries as well. So those countries need to do more work to appraise the endowment that they have. The second enabler that I was talking about is mineral rights. In our country 90% of the drilling is done on private lands. But in other countries the country owns the mineral rights. But private individuals own the surface rights. So there's a misalignment. So that makes it a lot harder to get the alignment so you can make these big investments. Remember I said it's very capital intensive to build a shale business. The third enabler is infrastructure. Pipelines to take the oil and gas out. Meaning it's not stranded 500 miles from nowhere. The ability to get rig crews in. We're running 17 rigs right now in North Dakota. Could we run 17 rigs like that somewhere in Europe or in China. So it's a huge logistical undertaking and it's also people intensive. You also need water. You need sand. So it's a huge infrastructure challenge. And are those infrastructure enablers outside of the US available. The only country that's really mastering this now is Canada. Even though it's producing much less unconventionals than we are here in the US. But they've got it right in terms of providing the environment to invest in unconventionals which I think is at the heart of your question. Fiscal policy is key on pricing. But also what the tax policy is. What the royalty policy is. Because you're making an investment for the next 20, 30, 40 years. You have to have not only the rule of law there. But you have to have a policy that you can count on before you make this big investment. That's far from a parent to make shell work. Remember I said it's a high cost oil alternative. So if you're going to make that investment you have to have fiscal pragmatism. And then along with that you need regulatory. That's really where the government comes in. Regulatory pragmatism. And even though the federal government sets certain standards from the EPA. In terms of how to oversee and what standards we want. In terms of water quality, air quality and the way we operate our wells. The states really are experts in this. And are able to do an excellent job. But in many parts of the world that might have shale. They've banned fracking. Even though fracking as I said before is a proven process that goes back to 1949. And we're drilling over 30,000 wells in our country. That are safe. And secure for the environment. So I think the best thing our country could do is to let that system work. And I think the best thing the world could do is learn from our system and apply it there and get those five enablers. And then I think you'd see people doing more shale development in other lands. Not just here in the US. Okay the last question is way in the back. We've got a mic coming right over to you. Thank you. Mr. Hess, both in your last answer and an earlier comment you made. I'm sorry, Terry Campo, private sector lawyer used to be a DOE. That our policies are based upon the assumption that we were running out of oil and other fossil fuels. And I'm wondering if you would agree as well as particularly Dr. Brzezinski having been involved in the early policy decisions if almost all of our energy policies are based upon this mistaken assumption that we were running out of fossil fuels and that we have to drill, no pun intended, drill down to change that assumption in order to change those policies. I think the most important thing that we as citizens of this country can do regardless of what party you're in favor of or regardless of what you do for a living is to communicate better together, collaborate better together and in terms of the energy business do a better job of educating the public about the pragmatic realities that we face as well as the opportunities we have as a country. That's why having CSIS provide a forum like this I think is so important so we can all learn from each other to then finally address maybe having a more enlightened energy policy going forward. You've all been terrific to be with us. It's been a long morning but we've come to the hour. We should say thank you to all of you for being here but would you please with one last round of applause. Say thank you to these remarkable people.


You'll never get to share this moment with certain teammates. You just don't know what's going to happen. Just this league, it's a crazy league, man. I went through it like two years ago. You just never know what's going to happen. Is it easier or harder when you get this far in the postseason? I don't know. A little bit of both for me. There's a lot of guys, I think in this locker room, when we were two and four, they didn't know that we had AFC championship in our hearts. They didn't know that we had the ability to do that. And I think we gained that. I think the majority of the people, obviously the whole roster is not going to flip upside down. So some of the younger players, some of the 30 to 40, however many players come back, they now know we can do it. And that's big to me. Because the belief, that's the first step. You don't believe you're never going to make it. And just having that in their minds when we go through OTAs and we go through training camp, I think that could be a huge stepping stone for the next step in our program. But it's tough, though, because you want to make it to the serve ball. You want to win a serve ball. I was listening to what Ray Lewis had a little speech. I saw on Twitter today. He was just saying, there's only one team that's going to be happy, whether it's next week, whether it's San Fran or it's Kansas City. So 31 of their teams have the same taste in their mouth.  Yes, sir? Honestly, I'm sad we didn't make it to the serve ball at the same time, though. I just got so much joy out of how far we made it, how far guys strive to be better, believed in everything Brable was preaching, everything our defense was preaching. For me, it's this guy's up for me. I don't know. I'm sure some guys are down the dumps, but I'm not that way. You guys talked about going good to grade this. Did you get there? And what's next for this team? I think we took a step in that direction. I mean, unless great means winning the serve ball, I don't know. When you're one of the final four teams out of 32, I think that can be said to great. But I don't think that's where our story ends, though. I think we got much more left. I mean, that just shows that goes back to the belief thing, like if we can beat the Ravens, the Patriots, we had a game in Houston that was all or nothing. And then we go to Kansas City, we can do that. I mean, we can handle a lot, a lot of situations. Those are two top offense in the league. Petra Mahomes doesn't get hurt. I'd argue that they probably were the number one offense in the league, too. So there's a lot of good we can grab from this season.


OK, thank you for the welcome. It's good to be back. For those of you who don't know me, my name is Ted, and you can find me online as Drenmi. I'm the VP of engineering at a company called Engage Rocket. We build HR products out of Block 71, and we use Rails a lot. And we're also hiring, so if you're interested in knowing more about the challenges we're facing and how you can be a part of solving them, you can either talk to me after the presentation, or you can ping me on any of the Singapore Slack channels. I'm also a core team member of RuboCop, and we're also looking for new contributors of all capacities. So if you're interested in contributing to open source, but you don't really know where to start, then you can also come talk to me or ping me on Slack. So I'm going to give five random Ruby tips today. So I chose the theme 2.5 random Ruby tips. So most of these tips will be out of the newer releases of Ruby. And I'm hoping this can entice all of you to upgrade your rubies and your dependencies. So Ruby 2.2 has been deprecated in March. If you're on a very old version, it's probably a good idea to upgrade. It's sort of like doing the dishes right where it's much easier to just do it a little bit at a time than to save up this insurmountable dish mountain. So there is this ancient proverb that says that friends don't let friends stay on old Ruby version. OK. So Ruby has taken some ideas from active support. And the first thing they took was the hash slice method. So now if you have a hash and you want another hash that has only some of the keys inside, you can call slice on it. And if you're mostly using Rails, you won't notice any difference because you already had this in active support. But Rubocop does not have active support as a dependency. So to me, this is a very, very nice feature because I find myself wanting this at least once per week. Unfortunately, we still support the Ruby 2.3 and 2.4. So we can't use it just yet. But maybe in two years from now, I'm looking forward to using it. Look at the query you killed, Jim. The second thing they took was the transform keys method, which allows you to take in a hash and transform the keys of that hash any way you please. So in this example, I'm just turning the keys into strings from symbol. And this one gives you a copy of the hash. And there is also a dangerous version that modifies the hash in place. So you just add the bang at the end. Yes? What happens if these value values are objects or arrays or anything which is referenced by print? Will this create copies of the values also or just use the same values? That's a good question. I'm thinking it will keep the references. But I can't tell for sure. We'll look that up after the hook. Yeah. Do you have a lot of hashes with objects in this case? No, I don't. I came from C++ back. Right, right. Yeah. OK, so the next thing is you can now pass patterns as arguments to a lot of the innumerable methods. So for example, the any method where previously we need to pass a block, it now does a case comparison. So the triple equals method is applied if you pass an argument. So you can pass it any object literal to do a comparison. So there's at least one Hawaii in there. And this, you might be familiar with this comparison from the case statement. So you can do everything here that you could do in a case statement. So you could do a type check. I don't know why you would want to do that, but you can. So in this case, I'm checking that all the pizzas are actually real pizzas. Arguably, Hawaii is not a real pizza, depending who you ask, but in this example, it is. And you can pass regular expressions, which is probably the most common use case for this. OK, this comes with a warning. So these innumerable methods, like all and any, they have vacuous truth, which means that if it's empty, it's always true. So you can have situations where you think you have a collection of numbers. And then they are both odd and even at the same time, because there are no numbers in there, which at first doesn't make sense. But it's mathematically correct. And the numbers are all responding to cat emoji and returning truth. Right, so the fourth tip is you can now create structs with keyword arguments. So it's a different syntax from the one you use in method definitions. Because when you create a struct, it's just a method call, and it doesn't have room for more syntax inside without conflicting with other syntax. So what you need to do is you need to pass a keyword init argument and set it to true. And your struct will now have keyword arguments. This also comes with a warning. The errors are not as good as the method definition kind. If you forget the keyword, it will just tell you argument error, wrong number of arguments, got one but expected zero. If this was a method definition, it will also tell you that these keys were required, and then it will put the name of the keys. It doesn't do this with the struct. So this might be a misleading you need to dig a bit deeper to debug. The last tip was supposed to be that bundler is now bundled in the standard library, but they found some huge problem, quote, end quote, with it. It doesn't say what the problem was, but it's apparently huge. So it was postponed, maybe in 2.6 or even 3.0. So instead, I included a bonus one, which is that you can use emoji, which we just learned is very important nowadays, because Ruby is UTF 8, right?  And with this new enumerable pattern syntax, you can just pass the emoji in and see if all the pets are cats. However, RuboCop will be here. OK, RuboCop will give you a warning here, because it says you should use ASCII identifiers. Yes. Yes. Now there's a problem. You can't define classes with emoji, because class names need to start with an uppercase ASCII character. But somehow, this does not apply when you're aliasing classes. So you can just define a class and then assign it to a cat emoji. That's all. Thank you. Absolutely. Could you get your name higher? This is not the real thing, though. Maybe. It sounds like another talk coming up.


My name is Max Palazzo. I'm an engineer with Coinbase Customy. I am extremely excited to be here today. And as you can see, my talk is titled, Smart Contract Interaction Out of the Coldest Restorage. So at Coinbase Customy, we provide friction as a feature. We introduce barriers that make it extremely difficult for attackers to steal our customer response. We take our private keys, show them up into many, many pieces, and sort them completely offline. We only use any given address once to sign transactions, and then we roll over customer response to a new address. And we also have a very talented ops team who personally verify each transaction. So these features differentiate ourselves from our competitors. They are the reason why more people choose us to hold their crypto than any other custodian on the planet. And so we support many currencies, but as the most successful smart contract platform, Ethereum provides unique challenges to how our system works. So, you know, our top-of-the-line security comes out of the box. You know, you're either safe, but we natively struggle to do some of the things that make Ethereum the most exciting platform.  You know, and for interacting with smart contracts like Edgeware Signaling that require funds to stay put, we simply can't support that out of the box since we roll over our funds to a new address every time we sign transactions. But at Coinbase Custody, you take a cue from my manga hero, Yabe Suki Hero, and we surpass our limits right here, right now. So how do we do that? I will introduce to you the proxy smart contract battery that we use. So using this pattern, we can continue to provide world-class security while also giving our users a frictionless user experience. So how does it work? Let's say we want to let our customers participate in maker governance. Well, in coincidence. So whenever we approach a new integration, we start by writing a customized proxy contract that fits around the external contract like a glove. So as you can see, there aren't really a lot of bells and whistles. You know, we just create a thin facade over the external contract, and we call the external contract methods using the proxy contract as the identity. And so when we onboard a new customer to one of these integrations, we start by pairing them with a hot address with a tiny bit of ether in it. Just to make contract calls and pinups. We then use that hot address to deploy a contract on behalf of the customer. And we designate a new cold storage address, a return address that the funds will ultimately arrive. And so once the contract is deployed, we move the customer's full balance of either either or tokens to the contract, depending on what it's trying to do. And once the funds are in the contract, the fund can really begin. We can use the hot address to make as many quick and risk-free contract calls to the external contract as possible, using the proxy as the bridge. Since the proxy has the customer's full balance, they don't find an influence on any of these networks in the nation. So if you're voting for mega-governance, you're voting with all your data. If you're signaling for edgeware signaling, you're signaling with all your data. They're still able to wield the full heft of their currency. And when customers are done interacting with the proxy contracts, we call that previously shown release method, which will send the funds back to safety in the cold storage. So with this pattern, we're able to smash our limits. We're able to continue to provide world-class security, while also giving our users a frictionless customer experience while interacting with extra contracts. Our anime hero, Yame Suka Hiro, is brought. So that's my talk. Thank you for listening. My name is Max. Thank you.