This is a subject that I think is in the next month or so will be quite prominent in the bourgeois press, since it's the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. And I think they will say more or less the same things as they said back then, that it was a victory of freedom, that it was also, it was claimed the end of history. I think history now, just the last months, has showed that it didn't end 30 years ago. And also they said that this was the victory of capitalism over communism. Now we would just live in the best of the capitalist free world ever. And I think if you look at capitalism for just the last 10 years, it's also quite clear that capitalism is not doing so great either. And then the last part of these sentences, it was the victory of capitalism over communism. And for us, for Marxist, it was very clear that what failed in the Soviet Union and in Eastern Europe, it wasn't communism. It was Stalinist regimes. It was degenerated or deformed worker states that fell in the Soviet Union. And that was the reason why in the end it had to fall. And I will come back to that. What was the reason for the fall of the Soviet Union and what kind of regimes was it? But first I wanted to go a bit into the movement around the fall of the Berlin Wall. And I think if you look at this regime and saw how dictatorial many of them were, it's quite impressive. If you look at the movements around the fall of the Berlin Wall, they were not movements for going to capitalism. It was not movement for the free market as it is claimed today. It was actually movement that wanted freedom, that wanted democracy, but not on a capitalist basis. And I think that is quite impressive when you look at these regimes and all the propaganda being spread now. The fall of the Berlin Wall on the 9th of November 1989, very soon 30 years ago, it was the result of a wave of movements in 89, starting a bit before, that spread from capital to capital in the Eastern European countries in the Soviet Union. Already in the early 80s, there had been strikes in Poland, sort of like the first signs of something brewing in these countries. And also an expression of the blind alley that all these regimes were more and more finding themselves in, all these Stalinist regimes. And an expression also of the fact that the planned economy were more and more stagnating, if you can say that. They were more and more going towards zero and not being able to develop society and develop the lives of the population in the Soviet Union. And so the economy stagnated and these regimes, especially the Russian, came into crisis and was much weakened. And that also meant that when the movements erupted in 89, where earlier on in East Germany 53, Hungary 56, Czechoslovakia 68, the Red Army from Moscow would just come in and crush the uprising. In 89, the Russian regime was so weak and in internal crisis that they couldn't just send in the Red Army and just crush the movements that had erupted. So that was also why these movements could actually lead further than earlier. Yes, so already before the fall of the Berlin Wall, you could see all over, all across 89, that there were movements leading up to this culmination, you could say. In Poland, in the elections in 1989, the Solidarność, which was the trade union leading the strikes in the early 80s, they were allowed for the first time to run in the elections. And they won all the seats that they were allowed to contest, which really showed the mood of discontent and looking for some other way. In Hungary, they decided on a democracy package, trying to make reforms, to lighten up the regime, to make people reform from above to try and keep revolution from below from happening. In Prague in November 89, there were mass demonstrations of half a million and there were strikes. But the most explosive situation was in East Germany, which was also the most industrialized part of the Soviet Union, or of Eastern Europe. And the most experienced working class, the most educated working class. And the leader of Eastern Germany, Ekonika, he was a hardline Stalinist. And he was appliedly opposed to any reform. There were a lot of discussions in the ruling circles of these regimes at the time, was it time to have some reforms in order to try to avoid revolution from below, or should you just try to crush it? And Ekonika was one of the hardline crushers, just rooted out by the roots, you can say. But one thing is to wanting to do this, another thing is to be able to do it. And that's another thing. But the movement in East Germany sprang up. It started around the city of Lipsig. I'm not German, I don't know if I said correctly. No, Lipsig, something like that. Lipsig, okay. Good, sorry. And it was very politically confused. It sprang up around actually the services in the Nikolaj Church, because that was one of the places people could meet. And there were weekly demonstrations in Lipsig. And it was, of course, very politically confused. But this movement spread to all the other cities in East Germany, demanding that something happened. But what was very clear in these movements was that they knew what they didn't want, but it was not very clear what they wanted. Because they just wanted that things should change, it should be different. And there was no one to give it any political lead, to give it any leadership. And the regime went into crisis, and it became quite clear that they couldn't, like Honecker wanted, they couldn't just crash down on the movement. And if they had done it, it might just have led to even bigger explosions. So the Honecker government had to resign, and they put in another, also a Stalinist, but a more moderate kind, called Egon Kranz, who tried to open up saying we should have elections. But at this time already the movement, like we see today now, it's not about the initial demand or about one thing. We should, okay, if we have elections then we're satisfied and we go home. It was too little and it was too late. These attempts of reforming the regimes in a more democratic way. And they are obviously also, because they were Stalinists, also considered using force. And they actually consulted with Moscow, but Moscow was very clear at this point that they were not going to get help from Moscow in any way. Because they didn't have the forces and because they thought it would even lead to even greater explosions. So the Eastern German government were left to themselves. And to be honest, they had no power anymore. The movement had already gone further than what could be controlled and got a momentum of its own. And it was quite clear, one thing is if you are in the middle of it, it's quite clear looking back on it. I think this is sometimes something we forget. One thing is to be in the middle of it, seeing what is the situation. When we look back to it, it's very clear to see that at this point, the power was actually in the streets because the government couldn't do anything. This mighty state with the Stasi agent in all building blocks and workplaces, they were powerless. They couldn't stop the movement from happening and going on. But the problem is, and the problem was, which it is also today, there was no one to pick it up. There was no one to give it any political direction in any sense. Which I think if you look at the history of the Soviet Union and these regimes, it's quite obvious why the left wing were quite decimated at this point, the real revolutionary left wing. But this mighty eastern German state ended collapsing like a house of cards. On November 9, after weeks of these mass uprisings, the East German government announced that East German citizens were allowed to visit Western Germany. And they didn't say how or when, but this, and I think this was also an attempt to soften up, to say it will become better. We will reform, just wait and see. But it just created an even bigger explosion. And I can understand if you're a citizen in East Berlin, you think they say we are allowed to go to West Germany. Let's do it. So they went to the wall, which has been a place where people have been killed trying to cross, but just the masses flooded to the Berlin Wall and started to climb it. And the guards didn't dare to do anything about it. I think they were quite shocked and perplexed, thinking, what the hell are we supposed to do? Okay, we just let it happen. And these East Germans, they were met by West German citizens on the other side. And I think all have seen these scenes of jubilation of people just partying. This is one of the first thing I remember seeing on television. And I was nine at the time, I didn't understand it. But I remember my parents just being, this is massive. This is like a historical event and people all over Europe in jubilant that now you actually had this hated wall, and I think it was hated on both sides, being torn down by ordinary citizens. And this was a period, also the first period after of euphoria. And I think this is very common in the beginning of a revolutionary situation. We can do everything. We have power, people could feel that things were changing. But it's not enough to be euphoric. Like we know it's not enough to overthrow a government or to overthrow a wall. You have to have something to put instead. And this was the problem in all these movements and also in East Germany, that there was nothing to be put instead at this time. Where all the objective conditions for political revolution was there, if there had been a genuine Marxist tendency in East Germany at this time, who had posted the idea of creating a worker state, of having a planned economy, of keeping that, but introducing workers democracy and the workers running of the economy. That could have succeeded, but there was nothing of the kind. And the fact of East Germany was that this vacuum existing in the movement was very quickly filled by a very rich and very powerful neighbor called West Germany, which had all the resources in the world to fill this vacuum and to put forward the demand, which became then the main demand after some time. But it wasn't in the beginning, but the demand of the reunification of Germany. And it's clear when this demand came from Kohl from West Germany, it was reunification on a capitalist basis. That was quite obvious. But they presented it like now that German people have to be united, which was correct, but not on a capitalist basis. And this demand started to gain ground. And also Kohl, he made a smart trick. He tried to bribe and partly succeeded, I think. The Eastern European population saying, we will do a one-to-one swap for Eastmark, which was the East German currency, thank you, money. The East German currency to Deutschmark, the West German currency, which meant you would get a lot more buying power for your money. But this is quite clearly a one-off, okay, you have some money, you get more money, but this is a bit like peeing in your pants. You'll get happy for quite a short amount of time. And then it's not so pleasant in the long run. Okay, that was a bit strange, maybe. But what they all so promised was that they would also be happy in the long run, that the East Germans, they would end up having the same living standards as the West Germans. This is a daily saying, sorry if it's not an order to say. And on October 1990, the reunification was officially carried through and on a capitalist basis, of course. The process in Russia happened in a bit of a different form, and it was, you can read this book, which is really good, the last afterward deals with the whole process of the collapse of the Soviet Union. And I won't go into detail, because I think this is not what this talk is about, and also I think people can read the book. But the process was a bit more drawn out. In 89, there were strikes in different minds against the deteriorating living standards, because the economy had been stagnating for quite a while, the living standards were falling. So the workers began to strike demanding better wages and so on. It was not demands for capitalism, but it was demands for bringing the economy forward and for improving the lives of the workers. And the regime was in dissolution, but the main factors in the dissolution of the Soviet Union was not the masses in Russia themselves, even though there were strikes in some demonstrations, but it was different wings inside the bureaucracy fighting each other for which way forward. And in the end, the Yeltsin wing won, which was the pro-capitalist wing. There was a coup and there was counterattacks and all these kind of things. But I think the main thing was that it wasn't a mass movement in Russia that ended up ending the Soviet Union. And these, the Yeltsin wing started to introduce capitalist reforms and it had catastrophic results. If you look at, in 1991, the USSR was dissolved. And if you look at the economy from 1990 to 95, the production fell by 60%, which was after a period of a long period of stagnation. But I remember when I started at my university, we had an economy course and we had a book about economy, a macro economy. And the first chapter was, why was capitalism superior? And the example was the Soviet Union. But when you look at all the figures, it was the wrong way around. And I never understood how they used this to argue the opposite of what the figures actually said, because what you saw was, when the Soviet Union fell, all the economic statistics just collapsed. It was a collapse of production and it was a collapse of living standards in these countries and not least in Russia. Between 1991 and 1993 real wages fell by 43% in Russia. It meant that one third lived below poverty line. And I think a really good indicator of how much the living standards plummet is the average living aid for men in Russia that fell from 65.1 years old in 87 to 59 years in 93, which is more than more than six years that the average living age fell. Normally it goes forward and then it's if there is a big war, a lot of men are killed and then maybe the average age fall. But this was not a war situation. This was capitalism coming to save the Russian workers by reducing their living age with the six years. Yes. So now we will have all these jubilant articles and I'm sure television programs. I think, I don't know if there are any Germans here. I think in Germany it must be just massive. It's already starting in the Danish media. And there will be all these histories about how much better it has become. And I think this is also something we have to go into. Has it actually become better for the people? One thing is that the immediate collapse, now they had 30 years to prove that capitalism is superior. And there will be all kind of statistics and so on. And I looked at some opinion polls and if you look at the percentage of people in the former Eastern European countries, they were asked if they approved that their country moved from having a state controlled economy to having a market economy. And it is less people now who approved this than it was in 1991. So it has actually fallen. And I think this shows the impasse of capitalism. It's still a majority in most of the countries, but it is a smaller majority now than it was 30 years ago. And in Russia and in six out of eight countries, not all of them, in Russia and Ukraine, there were more people who were agreeing with this. They said it was better before they didn't approve this move to to market economy. And in Russia, Ukraine and Bulgaria, they say that a majority say that the economic situation for most people today is worse than it was under communism. And it is only in Poland and the Czech Republic that a majority thinks that it has gotten better for the big majority. And I think this is quite saying of the situation 30 years on the fall of the Berlin Wall. If you ask them about health, education and so on, it's also a majority who think it was better before. So I think we will have a lot of speeches and articles, but I think this is the real fact for the majority of people. It's clear for a small minority in all these countries, they got way better off, much, much richer, even if that was possible. But for the great majority, lives actually ended up being worse. So let's go into what was these regimes. But because if you also look at these opinion polls, it also said, is life better now than it was under communism? And this is what they still say. And I think this is one of the main, how can you say, arguments when you meet someone, when you sell the paper or something, you still admit with this, especially from older people. But what about the Soviet Union? Do you want it to be like the Soviet Union? What about Stalin? And you have to be able to answer it. And I think all of us need to be able to answer this because it's quite important not just to answering an old cranky lady on the street corner, but also in order to understand what actually went wrong, why did it end up collapsing? And was that really what we want? I think there are many things in these kind of regimes we don't want. And it's not what we're fighting for. And I think actually today, I think that has changed, that could also be interesting to discuss. But I think it is changing. As long as the Soviet Union existed, there was this argument. So what about the Soviet Union? But I think today, with all this, I don't know if I can say it like this, but degeneration of the left wing into individual identity politics, it actually, when it pushes some of the more serious young people looking for answers on the left wing away from that, they end up looking to the Soviet Union and to Stalinism. And I'm not that much into a different Internet fora. But I have been told that on the Internet fora, different kinds, the Stalinists are actually gaining quite a lot of attraction. So I think we also need to be able to, those who are going away from petty wars who are left wing politics, they shouldn't end up in the Stalinist camp. They should end up in our camp because we are the real defenders of the Soviet Union, the planned economy. And the only ones who can actually explain what went wrong and why it ended up failing and developed as it did. And Stalinism, we have just produced a theoretical magazine on the subject, and I really struggle, how do you define Stalinism? Because it's not like Marxism. Marxism is like, you can say, it has three component parts, philosophy, history, and economics. Stalinism, it's not a set of ideas. It didn't arise like some Stalin sat down and thought, how do I think the Soviet Union should develop? What do I think about society? This was not like, you can't take a book and say, okay, this was Stalin's thought and this is Stalinism. You can only understand Stalinism as the concrete expression, the political expression of the political degeneration of the Russian Revolution. You can only understand it in its historical context. And I think this process has been best explained by Trotsky in the Revolution Betrayed in the book from 36. And where he actually also predicted that if the workers in Russia didn't carry through a political revolution, then the Soviet Union would end up collapsing. And at that time, I think many people on the left thought he was completely crazy and it took a bit longer than he thought. But still he was absolutely correct in analyzing the underlying processes and internal contradictions in the Soviet Union to see what would eventually happen if the workers didn't intervene to change the course of development. And the main thing, and I think this is something we really need to stress, the main explanation which is very short, and of course you need to know a bit more than this very short thing, was that he said that Stalinism and the degeneration of the Russian Revolution came from the objective conditions of the isolation of the Russian Revolution in a backward country. This is like the main, if you have to explain it very shortly, this is our explanation, an isolated revolution in a backward country. And if you look at what the Bolsheviks said they never thought, I was just at the China discussion and somebody raised the question of is it possible to build socialism in one country? He didn't say that, but in relation to China. There was no one in the Marxist camp before Stalin, but during the Russian Revolution and so on, there was no one who could ever imagine posing the question of creating socialism in one country. If you look at what Lenin and the Bolsheviks said and Marx and Engels and all the others, but also Lenin and the Bolsheviks that Stalin, and the Stalinists say that they are the heritage of, they never said that we should try and build socialism in Russia or that it was possible. What they said from the beginning was that the Russian Revolution should be the spark that ignited the world revolution. And they said it quite concretely actually, we cannot build socialism in Russia. We can be the beginning of the revolution but then we will need the help from the advanced capitalist countries, the workers, to take power in their countries and come to our aid so we together can build socialism. So it was never in their mind, and Lenin actually said he was prepared to sacrifice the Russian Revolution for the German, because the German Revolution were more important for world revolution. So it was quite clear that this was the line of the Bolsheviks. And this was also what happened. The Russian Revolution was the spark that it ignited a worldwide revolution movement. The problem was the lack of leadership that subjects for other discussions what went wrong in the German Revolution and so on. But this was the main, this was like the germ of the degeneration of the Russian Revolution, that all these revolutions that happened throughout the world that they ended up being defeated. So the Russian Revolution stood back as the only one. And if you look at the first period after the revolution in 1917 and onwards, it's clear that all the steps that the Bolsheviks are taking, they're taking it as necessary, imposed upon them because of this isolation in order to just hang on with the tip of their fingernails until the revolution comes to their aid in other countries. So just to keep power in order for the isolation, just to wait for the isolation to be broken. And they took many steps that you wouldn't have taken in Germany after a German Revolution because the economic situation in Germany were quite different. And I think this is something that is also really important for us to understand. There was a discussion of blueprints at the China discussion. Do we take everything that every Marxist have ever written and say this is exactly word by word what we should do? If we take anything Lenin said from 1917 until he died and say this is how we should implement socialism in each and every country after the revolution, it would be very wrong. We have to understand why did they take the steps that they took at the time that they took them? What was the conditions that compelled them to do it? And then understand the method in it. Yes, so this was the conditions of the Russian Revolution. And this idea of building socialism in one country and Stalinism, it arose out of these concrete conditions in Russia after the revolution. Yeah, if we look at Stalinism, of course, if we look at it today, it is a set of ideas. It is a set of ideas that became Marxist principles or whatever Marxist Stalinist principles that arose out of what ideas the Stalinist bureaucracy needed in order to justify the steps that they took in Russia after 1924 basically. And it is ideas that has played and still continues to play a very reactionary role in history and labor movements throughout the world. So it is ideas we need to understand and we need to fight.  This idea of socialism in one country, for example, it is, I think it's quite obvious for everyone who sits in here, Marx explained how capitalism is a global economic system, how all economies are completely intertwined. And this is what has made it possible for us to produce enough now for everybody to get what they need. So you can't go back and isolate each economy. You need this division of labor, this global economy in order to actually further humanity, further production. And therefore socialism needs to be international and not just in one country. And up until I think actually early 24 or late 23 at least, Stalin wrote an article and held speeches where he explained this political line of the Bolsheviks. The Russian Revolution just needs to hold on until the world revolution comes to an aid. And then six months after Lenin died, he died in January 24, Stalin wrote the exact opposite. There's a really funny speech where he tries to explain how what he says is actually what he said earlier also. And it is really, really strange to try and follow his arguments because it was different. And if you look at it from two different sides, and it doesn't make any sense because he basically just swatched 180 percent to the opposite. Now it's possible to build socialism in Russia. And this is what we should focus on. Yes. And what it actually expressed, and I think this is a very good example of what was going on in Russia at this time, was that this idea expressed the growing power of the bureaucracy in the Russian state and their interests. And their interests were not, and I'm coming back to why this bureaucratization grew and how it happened, but their interests were not world revolution or workers' democracy. Their interests were keeping their power and their privileges intact. And in order to do that, they needed as much order and calm. They didn't need the stress and chaos of revolutionary upheavals they needed. Let's plan. We all know the type. Let's plan. Let's do it no matter what happened. And then we just keep everything intact and go forward. And that was their social interest. And Stalin was just, how can you say? He was just the personalization of this bureaucracy. And if it hadn't been for Stalin, it would have been someone else. And Stalinism would have been called something completely different. Yes. So how could this happen that suddenly in quite a short period from 17 to 24, we have a situation where the leader, the general secretary of the Bolshevik party can go out and say what we're fighting for socialism in one country? And how could the degeneration of the revolution happen? And if you read, also left-wing historians, but if you, especially if you read Bosvian historians, it was a fight, a clash between personalities. I don't know how many times I read, but Trotsky, he just wasn't smart enough. He wasn't brutal enough. But Stalin, he was like the, he was committed. So that is why he won. And I think that is a very superficial explanation. And it also, it doesn't explain anything because there are many determined people in history. And I think Trotsky was a very determined person in history also. But it was a question of the objective conditions. And if we look at Russia, it was extremely backward at this time. Beside that, it had been completely crushed, the economy in the First World War, and then we had the Civil War, that even destroyed the economy more. It was not until 1926 that they reached the same level of production as they did in 23. And the social base of this bureaucracy that grew out was the Pettibus Vassi, especially the peasants, the small landowners. And during the Civil War, the Bolsheviks had had to take quite harsh measures called war communism. And one of the main features of that was saying, the workers were starving, and the soldiers in the Red Army were starving. And what they did, they needed grain. They needed food for the workers not to starve. So they went into the countryside and they took the grain from the peasants. And it's quite clear, I think it's quite clear for everyone. You don't have to be a big psychologist to see this.  Especially because the state, they didn't have anything to offer back because the industry was completely crushed. But this was necessary in order for not letting the workers die of hunger, basically. But it also became clear that when the Civil War ended, they had to take steps in order to accommodate the peasants, which was the great majority of the Russian population. So they took some initiative called the New Economic Policy, the NEP, which was admissions to capitalism. It was allowing a more free market within the grain market. So allowing the peasants to sell grain on the market. And of course this meant that there was a differentiation, a social differentiation within the peasantry. Those peasants who were already a bit rich could get richer, start to employ the poorer peasants, and a whole layer of so-called NEP men who were the people who traded between the countryside and the cities also began to grow up and become more and more powerful. And this was like the social base of this bureaucracy. Yes, this petty bourgeoisie that was growing inside Russia. And also at the same time, a petty bourgeoisie in a bit of another respect, not in respect to property, but in respect to the position in society began to grow up. If you look at the bureaucracy in the state, it grew like enormously. In 1920, the number of people employed in the state had risen from 100,000 in 1917 to 5,880,000. That's quite an exposure, yeah, a large growth. And that was five times the number of workers. So the workers, their force in society were being undermined. And also the workers' democracy had been undermined during the Civil War. A lot of the workers had been sent to the front. They were like the front fighters in the Red Army. A lot of them had had to just flee the cities because there was no food to get. And for example, the number of industrial workers had fallen from 1.2 million, no, from 3 million to 1.2 million in 1920. The population of Petrograd had fallen from 2.4 million to 574,000 in the same period. So the working class, the power of the working class was really being undermined because of the objective conditions. The plan of the Bolsheviks was to revive the Soviets, the workers' democracy, once the Civil War was over. But then other things came across. And if we look at the people working in the state, a lot of them were former Tsarist officials because generally the population in Russia they couldn't read and they couldn't write. And they needed the new regime, they needed experts, both in the state and in the military. And they tried to control them politically. But if you suddenly have 5.8 million who you have to control and you have a working class of less than 3 million, it's a bit difficult. So, and it's clear that former Tsarist officials, they didn't have any interest in communism or revolution or anything. They had an interest in their own social position in society and their privileges. And in order to keep them, you also, the Bolsheviks needed to give them some privileges for them not to flee out of the country. So while the communist officials, they had a party maximum. They could only earn the same as a skilled worker. Then all these old officials, they needed to, some kind, you can say, bribe them in order to stay and help building the worker state. But it was also clear that this was a big danger. And Lenin warned repeatedly and more and more towards his death against this bureaucratization in the state and actually saying, we are not running the state. The state is running us and saying, this is the main problem that we have to fight. And this also started to affect the Bolshevik party itself. During the civil war, the doors had been completely open. Everybody could join because it was, if they lost, you would be killed, probably. So it was, okay, if you want to fight with us, do it. But towards the end of the war, it became clear who was going to win. So everybody who wanted a career after were very clever to join before the war ended. And the party was just swamped with careerists. A lot of them former Mensheviks and so on. It meant that the party did a purge in 21. I've heard Stalinists say, yeah, we did purchase, but Lenin also did a purge. But if you look at the purge in 21, it was they expelled people from the party. That's it. You're expelled. We think your career is out. The purchase in the 30s on the Stalin is quite a different kind of purchase. You were sent to Gulag and worked to that in a work camp while you were being tortured until you gave in, how do you say that? Confession, thank you. Yes, so they had begun to purge the party because that was still essential in order to keep the worker state in Russia. But shortly after the death of Lenin, the neo-Trampferat in the party, Stalin, Sinovyev and Kamenev, they put forward this idea of a Lenin levy. Open the doors to the party and just swamp the party. Also as a way of them gaining more control of the party and watering out the old revolutionary elements inside the party. And if you look at the situation after this Lenin levy, 80% of the party had joined after 23, and less than 1% of the members had joined before the revolution. So it showed all these dedicated communists who have been part of the revolutionary process were actually being completely swamped in their own party, you could say. So this led the basis for also the degeneration inside the Bolshevik party. Yes, could it have been different if Lenin had left longer, if he hadn't died in January 24? And that is also always very difficult to answer. What we can say is if the isolation of the Russian revolution had been broken at one point in this period, it could have changed the course of the situation in Russia. So maybe if Lenin, if he had lived with his authority, could have made a different outcome in Britain 26, in China 27, but he couldn't make a different outcome in Germany 1919. It's not just the question of one man and his authority. It's a question of the objective to conditions and have the forces of revolution been built before the revolution breaks out. And we don't know because he died. That's the fact of history. So the main thing is that in this period, there were actually also after Stalin and his clique came to power. There were quite a lot of revolutionary movement that could have broken the isolation of the Russian revolution. But the Stalinist bureaucracy at this period, they gave the worst kind of advice to these dedicated communists around the world. Not I think in the beginning because they didn't know better. But then it changed. The more the bureaucracy in the Soviet Union could see that a successful revolution in another country would undermine their wealth and power because it would be an inspiration to the Russian working class, the more they actively sabotaged the revolution like they did in Spain in 1936. And actually Spain, the Civil War in Spain and the revolution in Spain was such an inspiration to the workers in Russia that the Stalinist bureaucracy thought this is too dangerous and that made them launch the Purge Trials of 36, 37, 38, 39, which swiped out not only Trotskyists, they had already been kicked out of the party in 27, but everybody with a memory of the Russian revolution was being wiped out. And not only that, every dedicated communist, I read some memoirs of a communist who didn't understand what was going on, but everyone who didn't join in the process of denouncing other communists, they were being accused and also those who joined in, they were actually also being accused. So it was like a complete snowball that just wiped out tens of thousands of communists in order to secure the rule of the Stalinist bureaucracy inside Russia, for real, you can say, more or less. I am running out of time. Yes, what to skip. I think, yes, I think if we look at Stalinist, of course a lot of things happen in the period up to the purchase with the wiping out of the left opposition and so on. And the Stalinist bureaucracy, they swung from one, from being very pro-Kulak, very we should just keep this development from the neb running until they suddenly saw that the Kulaks were actually threatening the regime. They just swung 180 degrees to force collectivization and introducing five-year plans, as the left opposition had actually said, but five-year plans in a four-year period. And I think this is also one of the main characteristics of Stalinism. It's empiricism. They just react to what happens and then they swing because they don't understand the process, they swing to the other extreme and implement what has been said also in a wrong way. And if we look at the development, and this is one of the things that the Stalinists say today, but look at how well the economy developed in the Soviet Union. And if you look at the planned economy in the Soviet Union, it is amazing. It is amazing and it shows the potential of a planned economy. I think, I don't know where I put the number, I think that the production rose in the Soviet Union. I can find the number later. I have it somewhere. I think it rose 52 times or something like that in the period until 53, from 13 to 53. And in the U.S. it rose six times. So it really shows the potential. But if you look at the economic development in the Soviet Union, it was not because of the bureaucracy and the way they introduced it, it was despite of it, because there was complete waste, there was complete mismanagement. If you're not allowed to criticize, if you're not allowed to come with your input, and everything has to be decided from the top, you can't develop an economy. In a market economy, then if the good is shit, nobody buys it. But in a planned economy, without democracy, you just produce because everyone just wants to fill out their quota of production. And that created, it created huge, how do you say that, huge progress, but it also created more and more problems for the Soviet economy. And I think this is also what we need to understand, what lessons that Trotsky and the left opposition said from the beginning. If you have a planned economy, it needs to be international, but it also needs to be democratic, because without democracy, then the planned economy will end up dying. And that is exactly what happened. After the Second World War, the economy more and more went into crisis and stagnation and couldn't develop further. And also what happened was, what Trotsky had predicted, at some point in the bureaucracy, they will want to become capitalists themselves. Because one thing is to have privilege, because of your position. The Stalinist era showed that it's very easy to lose your position. That is one thing, but also you cannot give your wealth to your children to inherit. So at some point, they will want to become a capitalist class. And that is also what happened when the Soviet Union collapsed. That the Stalinist bureaucracy, they ended up changing themselves into the new, some of them more luggage, some of them were not. But mainly those who became the gangster capitalist of Russia were former Stalinist bureaucrats. Yes. Yes. Yes. So in the end, the system collapsed. And I think our position is something we should be really proud of and that we should really put forward at the present time. We need to highlight that we are the ones who are actually the only real defenders of the heritage of the Soviet Union, which is the massive gains of the planned economy. And we're the only defenders because we knew, we know why it ended in a defeat, because it was not an international revolution and because it was not democratic. And all those Stalinists who say they actually support or those who defend the memory of the Soviet Union, but ask them, so why did it end up collapse? Why did your kind of regime end up collapsing? And they don't have any explanation. And I think this is what we need to highlight now and to explain that all these ideas that came out of this regime, these Stalinist ideas, the idea of socialism in one country, the idea of two-stage reformism. First we should have capitalism and then we can talk about socialism. The nationalist degeneration of the entire Third International, the one-party states and the one-line parties where you have not democratic centralism, but only centralism. All these ideas are playing a really reactionary role in the Soviet Union and across the world today. So the degeneration of the USSR into Stalinism happened because of objective factors. And these shouldn't make us think, they shouldn't have made the Russian Revolution. What was the alternative? It had been fascism in Russia. But it should make us think, what was the main thing lacking at this time? It was a cater organization on an international scale that could actually help the Bolsheviks break the isolation of the Russian Revolution. And we should build this. We should use this weekend and these lessons to use all our forces to build the necessary force in order for this to happen in the future. This is the thing we should... I think it was Ian in the panel yesterday who said, you should not just sit here and discuss. You should think, what do I do when I come home? And I think this is what we should do when we come home, build a revolutionary international. And also to explain, when this is what I want to end on and an important point, and also to explain, because now all these jubilant articles will come and there will be many on the left wing who will be too scared to defend the heritage of the Soviet Union. There were people when the Berlin Wall fell, Phil who said, the Cliffite for example, who said, but this was not a catastrophe. This was not a step back. This was a step to the side. Because they were afraid, because of all the horrible things that happened, they were afraid to defend, they were afraid to make an objective analysis of the situation and defend all the good things and all the progressive things in the Soviet Union. And we should not fall into this trap of being overwhelmed by public opinion. We have to defend the real heritage of the Soviet Union, the planned economy, and the huge potential and the revolutionary potential of the workers of this part of the world and of the rest of the world to actually move to create a better world. Thank you.


Hi, this is Yoho Sapin Bhartiya and welcome to another episode of TF4 Newsroom and today we have with us once again Thomas Grapp, co-creator of Cillium Project and co-founder of Isovalent. Thomas, it's great to have you on the show. Thanks all for having me. It's great to be here. It's my pleasure. Today we are mostly going to talk about the need report that you both came out with. But before we go there, let's quickly remind our viewers what is Cillium all about and what is its role in the cloud-reduced space? Cillium is a CNCF project, is best known to be what's called a CNI, a container networking interface plug-in which provides the networking portion of Kubernetes, but we're by now actually much more than just the CNI, we're doing a little balancing, we're doing our policy, we're doing security, we're doing runtime security, we're doing service mesh. So we've quickly grown into a platform, kind of an ecosystem based on EBPF-based tooling that provides a variety of different values around networking security and observability for cloud-native infrastructure. Talk a bit about the role Cillium as well as Isovalent is playing in the space to kind of lower the barrier of entry, make things, because also as you're talking about observability, security, monitoring, these are also a lot of projects with the CNCF, they offer that. So talk a bit about the overall picture there. Yes, I think there's two aspects that matter. First of all, of course, we're not the first projects to provide networking, connectivity, observability, security and all of that. I think what's when we created Cillium itself, it was clear that there is a new team forming a new set of persona forming that will use Kubernetes containers and so on. Back then it didn't have a name, now it seems to be getting a name called Platform Engineering. So everything we build is built for this persona. And then the second aspect that is unique about Cillium is the use of EBPF. So the lower level, magical technology that we use to implement all of this is this EBPF engine, kernel level technology that allows us to do things better, faster and more efficient. So these two components really is what makes Cillium or the entire Cillium ecosystem unique and essentially differentiates to other projects. Let's start with the users, now talk a bit about what kind of users growth you have seen over the years. Yeah, I think we've seen amazing user growth from a perspective that I would say we have not expected even close. When we started out seven years ago, we started out with a team of three engineers working on Cillium and writing code. By now we have over 500 code contributions from different people, not only just counting the people who have actually contributed code, we have end user organizations that have added themselves to what we call a Cillium users file. We have over 14,000 users in Slack chatting about Cillium and EBPF and how they solve networking security challenges and so on. We have grown our Twitter follower base and so on. So on every metric and you can see this in the actual report, we have essentially grown massively beyond every expectation we had. As you were talking, initially the project, most cases projects start with a specific focus with the user, the scope of the project grows. Talk a bit about some of the exciting use cases of users that you have seen and you were like initial days, seven or eight years ago, you would not, hey, nah, they will not be, I mean, this is not our use case. Talk about if anything is there that excites you also. Yeah, this is, to me, this is I've been building products and projects for a long while and this is always the most exciting part because you're often wrong. I remember, obviously, we started out as we're going to be the networking layer. So we provided multi-node networking that containers and pods can talk to each other and that was clearly also an element. Well, this is cloud native, these are microservices, so layer seven matters. Like you just don't want to stop purely on the network level, but we need to do layer seven firewalling. We want to do layer seven load balancing and so on. But then the layer seven firewalling initially was actually not interesting at all to users at all. They wanted observability, they told us. Stop with this next-gen firewall. We really want to see what's going on first. So we have to build Hubble first. An observability layer that gives platform teams and application teams deep insights. What are my apps doing? How is the network happening or is the issue on the network side or isn't the app side? And then I think the wave of DNS issues appeared. So all the platform teams wanted to have dashboards on how is DNS doing? Is DNS the issue? So we literally have a dashboard that is answering the question, is DNS the cause of the issue? And then there is also interesting aspects where we thought that we would properly predict the market when we built multi-cluster connectivity, multi-cluster multi-cluster load balancing. And I remember doing a Kube contact bank in 2018. And it was not really interesting at all yet. People said, yeah, that's cool, but nobody started using it. And now today it is our most frequently used feature. And if I would, I think, list one feature, one aspect that we would have never guessed we would actually cover, it is clearly service mesh. I think when service mesh came around, it was like, yes, that service mesh will run on top of Stilium. Clearly there is a little bit of overlap. We're targeting the same team. I think there is a bit of connectivity overlap. But we're over at what we're kind of operating at different levels. And now we've naturally grown into covering service mesh as well. That's definitely something that we did not think about when we initially started Stilium seven years ago. This is an open source project. So folks can, of course, see how does the pipeline look like. But if I ask you, what are the things that, once again, as you said initially, and then you kind of grew the scope of the project. So talk a bit about what kind of things we should look at for in 2023 in terms of Stilium that, hey, these are the things that you're working on. These are the problems that we are trying to solve for the user community. I think there's three main areas that we really, really focus on. First of all is clearly Tetragon, which we announced last year. Runtime security using eBPF in the Stilium ecosystem. So all the eBPF knowledge that we have, that we've applied to networking, we have brought into Tetragon to solve runtime security from an observability and enforcement perspective. We've announced that at KubeCon Europe last year. We've now have prod users and we're kind of iterating. There's definitely a lot to come in 2023. The second aspect, we're very excited for what is coming with Gateway API on the service mesh side. We've added ingress support to Stilium. And just in 113 that is coming out in a couple of days, supported the first version of Gateway API. And we're looking forward to essentially continue with the upstream community to work on Gateway API to essentially standardize the intent language, the API, how to configure a service mesh. I think that will empower Stilium to become a fully capable service mesh. And I'm really looking forward for an industry wide standard on the service mesh side. And the third part, I think, is definitely listening to our users on the on-prem networking side, all the enterprises out there trying to figure out how to connect their existing infrastructure with this new cloud native world, providing the answer to that. That's the third big focus that we have. And that kind of makes me think that... Can you also talk a bit about, as you were talking earlier about the adoption of Kubernetes, which is great. And also you talk about some of the pain points. What are some of the core pain points that you are seeing, not just as a co-creator of Stilium, but also co-founder of Isobel and that the wider ecosystem, you know, users are feeling there and you're like, hey, this is still some of the challenges that the whole cloud native community has to still solve. So I think in the beginning it was very basic problems, like even just getting the baseline securities in place or migration to Kubernetes essentially resulted in teams losing all of the observability because the existing observability solutions would not have visibility into a cloud native cluster. Now today, the challenges are a bit more nuanced and we see enterprises struggling with, I want to migrate more workloads from my on-prem settings into the cloud, but I cannot do so for all of my apps. I can only, for example, the stateless portions or parts of the apps, but some of the databases need to stay behind, but then that's actually very challenging for enterprise applications that no longer want to be modified. So providing them solutions how they can partially migrate, while for example, preserving the actual network addressing and so on there's a lot, many asked there to help migration into the cloud because it's very desirable, but it's not easy. It's not as easy. It's very simple for let's say the cloud natives that have built their apps in the cloud and have a CI CD pipeline. It's dramatically more complex for enterprises that are not in a position that they can just simply rewrite all of their apps. Now let's talk about this report. Talk a bit about the idea behind the report, how frequent it comes out and what was the methodology that was used for this one? Yeah, so I think from the very beginning, Syllium has been very community focused. When we look at what features we have built, we have always been asking our community, what are you using today? What is blocking you from using Syllium? More what you would like to see in the future. So we've always been interacting with the community of Syllium. And same here in the report, the report really focuses on how the community sees Syllium. How many people are using Syllium? Which features are being used? How many contributors we have? How many different companies are working on Syllium? And so on. So the report really goes into detail how Syllium stands in the ecosystem and how we have evolved solving different use cases for different users. Out of these findings, which were the ones that you saw were, hey, we were not expecting that. Or it's like, hey, this is a trend that you're expecting and it's good to see that it's going in the right direction or like, hey, no, that's not what we're expecting. Anything that caught your attention? Yeah, I think the two aspects. Aspect number one is that the rise of Kubernetes outside of the clouds is going much faster than ever anticipated. I think we've seen like very cloud focused use of Kubernetes and Cloud Native in general. And if we look at Syllium usage now, and I would say like more than 90% of Syllium usage in the beginning was cloud only. And now 70% is including at least an on-prem aspect. And a lot of the focus is actually how do I connect my infrastructure that's not in the cloud yet? How do I connect that with my cloud native workloads? And Syllium is essentially starting to cover that aspect as well very, very quickly. And the second aspect is definitely how quickly we have gained a foothold on the service mesh side. From essentially running an initial survey, hey, we have been hearing that you would like us to cover service mesh with outside cars. Tell us how you want that to a better program to production users in one year that was definitely completely unexpected, but obviously a very pleasant surprise. How is this report going to help the project? Because as you're talking about, to gather a lot of insights from the users, how they're using it, other communities that are there. Because when we talk about community, there is no community, they're communities. They're community of maintainers, they're community of users, they're like peer vendors. So talk a bit about some of the learning, so findings of this project that is going to, sorry, some of the findings from this report that is going to influence the project and which ones are those? So I think out of such reports, in the end, open source projects at this stage is always like a massive, massive effort by a lot of different people. And in the beginning, that's essentially, I'd say a core team and you talk to each other very, very frequently and everybody knows each other. At this point, it's literally hundreds of people coming together and creating psyllium. So I think a big portion of this report is actually to thank the people, to actually list the contributors that are on a daily basing, reviewing code, writing code, bringing in ideas, testing code, like keeping the CI running, all of that. And also, I think, shout out and essentially highlighting the companies, the vendors that are funding these engineers and actually help psyllium get along. So to a large extent, I think, we are also doing this report to essentially list out like who is actually contributing to psyllium, who is building psyllium, to make sure that the people and the companies that are actually doing the contributions see that they're being recognized. And this will, of course, help that the effort continues and that vendors and individual engineers continue to feel comfortable and continue to feel motivated to actually work for psyllium and continue implementing what our users are asking us to do. Thomas, thank you so much for taking time out today and not only talk about psyllium, as well in this report at the larger, you know, challenges for the whole community, but also how you folks are solving it. And it was a great discussion.  Thank you. Thanks a lot for the time.


When you're collaborating with other people, sometimes it's sufficient to put notes into the document or to have the comment feature, which invites a discussion. But that's asynchronous, it's not in real time. On the other hand, there are different times when having a real time conversation is going to get you a lot further, a lot faster in your work. Fortunately, Google Sheets makes that kind of conversation really easy with the built in chat functionality. To do that, you have to have at least two people working on the same document. I can come over here and see that I've got it's open in my other account. Then I click on this icon, which says show chat. And then I simply come down to the chat window, type Hello. And let me know I've sent them a message. Now let me go to the other account. And it's telling me that there's a message here. Now if I click on this, it just kind of goes away. But if I come up here, where I've got my little notification dot, I open up the chat and there it is. Okay, here I am. What's up? And now I've got this conversation going back and forth. And this allows people to work together in a way to try to solve the issues. It works really well when people are really far apart. And maybe for instance, a live telephone conversation is not the best idea. This chat history stays there as long as anybody has the document open. So for instance, let me go to my other account. And I will close the document here. And then what you get over here is an indication that Barton Paulson, that's my other account has left. If I close the document here. And then I open it right back up. I give it a moment to load. And there's actually nothing there because the other person is not even in there anymore. So the chat history disappears once everybody closes the document. But while you're there, it's a great way to have this real time conversation about what's happening in the document, what tasks needs to be done, how to interpret and how to apply your insights.


What's up, man? This is a 10 minute video. I know you guys have been asking all I've really been uploading is the CFM games Those are full games been uploading the podcast too, man So if you guys haven't checked out those make sure you do but this is a 10 minute gameplay and it's of a game mode that maybe You guys don't play maybe you guys don't pay attention to and that is mutt draft What mutt draft is is that you pretty much you get a base team of goals Then you get 20 rounds where you get to pick from three different player three different players So if there's three wide receivers you get to pick which one you want now These are normally just elite cards. Maybe some team of the week cards. Nothing really crazy. No super cards You're not gonna get the Randy mosh. You're not gonna get um who not gonna get Dion Sanders You're not gonna get Lawrence Taylor at the end of the draft There is a legend round where you get three legends to choose from I believe on this team My legend is Ken Houston. So you're not getting those super geeked up You know NFL Madden or NFL hundred cards or all the new cards in the game is pretty balanced There are no abilities. So all you guys to say, you know abilities ruin Madden this that and third There are no abilities in draft champions It is simple go out there and play Madden you're not getting jukebox not getting arm bar There is no, you know edge threat. No escape artists.  It is probably The best bunch playbook in draft champions, you know, I think it's kind of tough to pass in draft champions Without the escape artists without the hot route master route specialists or anything like that, you know But it's a lot of fun and this was a great game against another top hundred opponent. Now also before I start this This is how you qualify For the Madden challenge. So if you guys don't know tons of you guys ask me, how do I play in these tournaments? This is how you do it the mutt draft leaderboards right now until probably we have another month to play the mutt draft leaderboard I'm not sure on my dates, but if you want to play for all this money at the MCS events and everything Mutt draft is the way to play it now. That is the reason I'm playing it That is the reason you see a lot of top man players playing it now. So without further ado, let's get into this gameplay I got a good one for you guys the weakness of this team that I had as you see him with gale Sayers the running back. We're gonna have to go ahead and tackle him We got our strength is Ken Houston and Earl Thomas Weakness are my corners as you see to leave a solid player good height But real slow in my other corner is buster screen But like anybody with the name buster just got to play like a buster and that's buster screen He is going to be the focal point of my defense this game. We'll see how it works out Gotta hide your weaknesses if you have them in DC One of my strengths Mr. Meet Cole Hardman the best wide receiver in this game because he has 94 speed just in this mode The fastest player in this mode and you got to be able to use him as I use Latavius Murray though the ball underneath He's my running back Kyler Murray is my quarterback another great player That uses I laser over here to Jimmy Graham Kyler Murray's I want to say the best quarterback in his mode As the ball gets swatted the line although he's not you can't really use that speed unless you hit that left trigger get out Pick the ball back up and laser down the field to meet Cole Harman I just talked about 94 speed literally made his DB's look terrible right there Seven nothing. That's the way to start a game man. Me call Harman Kyler Murray that's gonna be the theme of the game This guy wants to establish Gale Sayers now. I don't have any secure tacklers. I don't have any enforcers I don't have any shutters.  That's his name. I think Josh Allen from the Redskins Alabama product, I believe in fourth down Kwan is a little bit too slow to catch that guy Tyler Lockett He makes a nice spin move There's that boy Kenny Houston bang Who was probably the best safety the first week and mutt came out now? He's not on anybody's team, but he's one of the best safeties you can get in draft champions So you guys if your teams aren't that good a mutt man Look in the draft champions it cost coins to play but the rewards are really good And you don't need a super team to play and like I said if you want to play for these big money tournaments as we get To a fourth down here and what I decided to do is try to sneak in a little palms here sneak a little match coverage Just try to confuse them throw them off fourth and fourth try to get a sneaky stop But I will tell you every time I run palms I Give up a touchdown and that's what happens here on the wheel route touchdown dies into the end zone And I will tell you if you guys watch these games live at twitch.tv slash dub dot or you're just on the YouTube watching games I will never run match Again every time I run it just give up yards. Just give up yards give up touchdowns throw a little yard underneath there to Who's my little receiver as I hit hardman, but I have hard men shark and I have Antoine Randall L Antoine Randall L 86 speed not that fast, but he has great juking and he has great spin He meets the spin threshold and that's awesome. You see me run back here And why do I run back this far because if I were to do the ball away in the pocket would have been intentional grounding Hit the wheel row here till the Tavius Murray dot down to the 21 yard line I want this to be the last drive of the quarter I want to make sure he doesn't get the ball back and I had the lead going the halftime That's the whole goal right here hit it underneath the Jimmy Graham stay in bounds keep that clock running now I guarantee that he will not get the ball back with Tavius Murray inside the 10 Now I'm gonna use the timeout is 28 seconds left I'm gonna hit try to sneak a couple dots in here go to out route over here to and Randall L Don't get any yards on that timeout though third down. I'm gonna hit this little curl for a touchdown. Nope I'm going to hit it for a fumble picked up by Denzel Ward and he's gonna get tackled luckily Right there huge fumble huge momentum shift I was able to at least get three points and be ten seven me But I fumble right there next play after that run He's gonna have all day in the pocket throw it up top and where that's about that buster screen My buster gives up a post with half a second left on the clock Bang he kicks the field.   That's how you make a place six carries for seven yards I'm loving it buster screen help me out. Don't get burnt by Tyler lock it buster screen Second big plays giving up he's responsible for ten points on my field and we get it out in route bat it down by a Pass rusher. That's brutal underneath over here to Hardman catch a little drag on the all-out blitz This guy was either all-out blitz or cover three sacks me right there by Christian curxie Second in 19 hit the wheel right here to go ahead and pick up a cool 11 yards make this third down managed one able to hit the flat right over here that to DJ shark we give you guys watch the CFM you guys know He's a boss picks up that first down next play I'm just gonna take off with Kyler get some yards like I say he's slow behind the line But once he crosses that line of scrimmage boom is like he shot out of a cannon We'll ride over there to Latavius Murray. I got Kyler Murray Latavius Murray the Murray to Murray backfield We're gonna get out here bang another scramble Kyler Murray Get me inside the 20-yard line and if it worked that time let it work again. This time We're gonna take it to the Baha touchdown get within three points right here with the extra points All we need is one stop. It is a 42nd play clock. He's been running the ball This is gonna be tough to get off the field. This is his best run of the day Come on Kwan you gotta get over there a little bit slow talk to your players man still confidence boom Ken Houston Man, let's go Kenny. That's what you gotta don't tell you guys talk to them They hear you Marcus Davenport with the stuff there on second down third and long We're trying to get him off the field We go with a cover three cloud rush three as all day gets outside the pocket looking for some adult Back across his body right to Earl Tom is picked off. Okay, what can we do? We get tackled So it's pretty much a long punt, but I'm down by three gotta make a play Oh that little that curl in middle field turned around a little late But we're able to go ahead and get that in completion next play We get sacked tough getting sacked right there third and 17 notice whip route get half the yards back We're getting the fourth down Now this is my thought process and as you got to go for this If it was fourth and 20, maybe I might punt but right here fourth and 10 got to go for it I'm thinking he's gonna blitz. He's giving me the blitz. Look everybody in the box. I see we got that one-on-one on the right I'm gonna put Miko Harman on an out route now if he's manned up in box I need something else to throw so I'm gonna go ahead and I'm gonna put shark on a streak to throw it to the Inside past lead motion out slant I see I had that one-on-one take Hardman instantly bang first down Miko Harman holds on two minute warning next play We hit the flat route DJ shark right around Denzel Ward and where we're gonna take this one We're gonna take this one to the bottom Touchdown now we're up for now.  That's the goal. Like you said 10 second runoff. We're already under a minute and 30 Just give him what he wants underneath even though he has timeouts just you know make him work down the field He hits his wheel route. I think they're gonna click me on the safety. They click me on the corner allows him though They he uses a timeout. So that's that's one of them next play He goes a little four yard or six yard pass bang. He catches it. That's one of them next play He goes for it all with the wheel route Earl Thomas is over there knocks it away and guess who's there? Buster screen the buster you talk to him You just instill Confidence in your five foot six corner with the blonde dreads tell him that you believe in him He's gonna make a play when you need it and he ends the game on the tip pick from Earl Thomas getting over there Now the wheel round bunch is good man But I told you the strength of my team was Earl Thomas and Ken Houston We saw Earl be able to get over there make a play on that and that ends the game man because all I gotta do is Take a knee. He only had one timeout left. That's part of the reason why I do like do when people get the ball back Need a touchdown.


People today are demanding new skills of their policemen and we as a force have to learn them. We need to know more about people and their attitudes. We have to understand the pressures of modern-day living and how it affects people. One never knows when the lessons of psychology will come in handy. Yes, listen, there's a tap just climbing up the bridge here. I just thought you'd like to know. OK, then good. Thanks a lot. I think that's him up there, Ian. Well, if he's fair, then why go right up there to jump? The point of the matter is we both got to go up there. I'll climb up behind him. Right, I'll call for assistance. Give us your coat and hat. OK, Stan. What are you doing up here, Alfaro? Don't get nearly. I am away, OK? What's your name? My name's Ian. What's this all about? You seem a bit upset. You would be if you were in my boat. No job. Pilot builds. Is that why you're up here? A smoke? Have you any kids? I've got three. I often bring them over this bridge just to see the view. My kids will be better off without me. Don't be silly. How would your wife get on? Her? All she wants to do is nag. She's only worried about you. My wife does it all the time. They all nag at one time or another. How would your wife and kids get on without you? I'm sure you won't have that smoke. In through the rails, Stan. Right, I've got him. That's it, get the harness. Come on, Alfaro, settle down.


Hi, lady. How was this? This is me testing out the Feather RP2040 with e-paper support. This is the Thinkink board. So this Feather RP2040, it's great. It's got 264K of RAM, which you need because you have to buffer e-ink displays. And it's got a standard 24-pin connector. Pretty much every display for e-ink that's not like a reader display, like the standard static ones, color, monochrome, tricolor, et cetera, they all have the same pinout on this 24-pin connector, which makes this Feather really great for making all sorts of e-ink projects. So let me line this up and run the test. We're using a Pico to program the RP2040 through mass storage. This works really fast. And then when it passes, it lets you know by beeping and also changing the e-display. So coming soon to the Adafrit Shop.


Hey everyone, so yeah, we got some stuff for you today We're gonna obviously talk about our expectation on a switch pro reveal this week and when we think it's most likely to happen We also basically know that Nintendo will be announcing their E3 plans this week I know like we were hoping it was gonna happen last week and then it didn't and then the whole week ended with this Explosion of switch pro expectations Well, we don't have the switch pro expectations at this moment But we do have expectations of a lot of stuff And we actually have some legit information on why we should expect Nintendo to announce their E3 plans this week Because basically by the end of the week, we're gonna know the entire plans for all of E3 All right, so first off, let's talk about what we know. We know Things about the switch pro as an example. Let's start there right Bloomberg put our report last week About the switch pro about how it's gonna release in September or October How the announcement is more than likely gonna happen before E3 because third parties are pressuring Nintendo to Allow them to talk about switch pro games at E3 Which they can't do without the system being announced and then obviously a bunch of other Insiders and Eurogamer and IGN others confirm these reports and said from their own sources. They've heard the exact same thing So what's interesting is the announcement is obviously quote-unquote eminent Which means it's gonna happen any day now. Don't expect it today. If it does happen today, that would be pretty shocking There's a bank holiday. I think out in Europe or the UK or something We also have Memorial Day here in the United States. Chances are they're going to wait until a day That's clear of all of that such as Tuesday or Wednesday or Thursday Those are really the three big days. I look forward to seeing it announced this week and I truly think they're going to announce the switch pro at the same time They're gonna announce their E3 plans This is because obviously if they announced switch pro before E3, they're not gonna ignore the switch pro at E3 We'll get additional details at E3 So that is why I think the announcement section will be paired together now Let me explain how we know Nintendo is going to announce their E3 plans this week The ESA has put out a email behind the scenes to press and I even got one even though they don't consider me to be media Very strange, but there's I'll put a link to a website that has it publicly posted as well And what it says is basically that they are going to announce the entire E3 schedule in early June Now June begins tomorrow, right? So the first second third and fourth this week happened from Tuesday through Friday once we get to next week That's the week lead up to E3 and if we don't know the schedule for E3 in Literally less than a week before E3 begins. That would be extremely strange So when you hear early E3 that are early June that we're gonna hear what the E3 plans That makes you think we're hearing about it this week and one of those first four days of June So look forward to that because if the ESA is about to drop the entire E3 schedule We know Nintendo and everyone else is already about that now Microsoft went ahead and announced last week We've had other companies announced here and there and this week I am hearing from multiple people behind the scenes that this is when we're gonna get everything Which explains why the ESA is gonna say hey the whole schedule will be will be announced basically later this week So that being the case. Nintendo is obviously going to announce as well Now is Nintendo going to announce Simultaneously alongside the ESA announcement or are they gonna announce before that's one of the questions We don't know but what is very clear is that Nintendo will be announcing their E3 plans this week And that to me is exciting. I'm pretty pumped. We already have such a patch week next week We have the summer games fest to take care of Obviously and then E3 we have a podcast gone Tuesday podcast is Wednesday I hope you guys tune in for that because we're in the final countdown into E3 We only have two episodes left before E3 gets here and then obviously a special E3 episode So that's gonna be wild Absolutely wild. I can't wait. So I'm just excited in general now I have some additional Potential information here from Samus Hunter and as always when we talk about information from Samus Hunter or any of these other industry insiders We have to consider it as a rumor Yeah, even though I really do trust a lot of stuff Samus Hunter puts out there It's still one of those things we have to take into consideration So I asked her this morning, you know, have you heard anything lately? The ESA just emailed me saying that the entire E3 program will be announced early June Which is obviously this week and here's what Samus Hunter said not directly But my sources from Nintendo. Well, I don't want to specify where her sources come from But they said that they have a lot of work planned for this week I think around the second day of June. We are getting news So they're thinking obviously Wednesday, not Tuesday And it says about E3 and Nintendo's plans. It's a major partner of the event Which obviously we know it's a major partner of the event them and Microsoft right at the top of this E3 listing But look at this E3 like tier listing that they put out there. They emailed this to everybody E3 tier listing I put it up on Twitter. I thought it was hilarious. I mean poor old, you know, Norton gaming in the bottom tier all on its own Poor little Norton gaming Nintendo and Microsoft in a tier up its own Etc. Etc. It's pretty crazy. So and I mentioned well Microsoft's obviously up there as well And they said yeah Microsoft, you know was only confirmed a presentation Nintendo a bigger plans Yeah, obviously, it's all Microsoft's confirmed for the moment. Now. I did mention obviously to her that I had Trial stuff. I'm assuming Microsoft will do interviews and game demos with the host Greg Miller and such But whatever we obviously don't know that until it gets announced by the ESA So she mentioned that Nintendo wants to announce all the major details at the same time And that's why they're one of the last ones to announce Which obviously makes a lot of sense because if they're gonna have to switch pro news And they're also gonna have all their other E3 stuff happening at the same time Yeah, announcing it all at once at this point seems to be at least to me the smart bet That's why I mentioned not because of her just based on Logic like if switch pro is going to be announced before E3 and they're gonna talk more about it at E3 Why wouldn't they just announce it at the same time they announced their E3 plans? And that could explain why their E3 plans weren't announced last week because they wanted to wait until they could fully Display all of this information properly. So I honestly think that that's actually a good thing So then I said it's interesting the ESA basically just said the entire show is announced this week So like it or not Nintendo is announcing this week regardless. It doesn't really matter what she says. It's just obviously Either if Nintendo doesn't announce then the ESA will announce for Nintendo either way we get it this week, right? Regardless of the ESA or Nintendo And then she said I'd say yes I doubt Nintendo distributes important information to marketing departments without having an announcement nearby And what she's inferring is that her contacts in a marketing department at Nintendo are basically saying hey we actually have information now on Announcements information on E3 and Because we have this information in the marketing department now that basically means an announcement is imminent Same as how the situation we heard for switch pro So at this point we'll have to wait and see which day you guys can get your bets in on what day you think it is Because right now I have no idea and I know you have no idea all bets are off No, I guess all bets are on not off right on right? You go ahead and pick your day down in the comments below now Obviously, I'm banking on a Tuesday or Thursday since that's when Nintendo traditionally announces things a Wednesday announcement It's not unheard of either Nintendo at this point doesn't really have a traditional day. They announce things anymore They're kind of all over the place if I remember right the switch light as an example was announced on a Wednesday In the middle of July in 2019. So yeah, Nintendo's going to announce things when they announce things typically Basically between a Tuesday and a Thursday somewhere in those three days seems to be it so soon I just can't wait I'm super excited about this. I you know the the announcements probably not gonna happen today during Labor Day So I won't expect anything today, but tomorrow Wednesday Thursday if somewhere in there We're likely to get all of this stuff dropped We it's exciting that we're on the precipice of these announcements And then the all the big news is actually at E3 and the switch pro is part of E3. This just takes E3 to the next Level so you guys let me know what you think about this down in the comments below There is just so much speculation so much goodness and so much great things happening at E3 now before I talk about some of our E3 plans Because you're gonna take a moment first video the week need to advertise it a little bit I got to remind you guys that hey We have a potential giveaway happening over on Twitter for a $50 Nintendo switch each up gift card at Ninty Prime is my User over there. There's a link to my Twitter account down in the description But the thing is that only activates if we hit 70,000 subscribers today Now we have about 700 subscribers ago not impossible to get but obviously a bit more difficult than usual So yeah, if you guys go ahead and subscribe and help that giveaway activate Someone is gonna win a free $50 each up gift card. Otherwise, you don't have to do that We have so many giveaways coming up for E3 that it's insane $3,500 worth of giveaways happening during E3 itself That is awesome. We have so many partner companies our own thousand dollars plus put into the pool Great giving ways consoles and accessories controllers games so many games were giving away Collectibles a ton of collectibles custom handmade items that you'll never find, you know Basically anywhere else one of a kind items along with some that hey, you know You could actually go and buy for yourself if you were aware of it There is some crazy stuff happening out there the breath of the wild E3 2016 collectors going one of these Breath of the Wild shirts. That's right. We'll be giving away at least one of those during E3 We have so many great things in store for you guys including the entire show itself our pre-show our post-show We're gonna be having special guests coming on for conversations. We have our own conversations plan We have gaming competitions with you guys to win prizes also gaming competitions between me and the co-hosts They have to do complete challenges if you lose like the hot chip challenge dressing this tingle for an hour Those are just a couple examples. We have numerous other ones that we haven't announced yet I am just super excited for E3 just for what we're doing let alone all the announces let alone potentially switch pro Let alone problem on breath of the wild to or something. I'm stoked There's so much going on and this is a great video to kick off our week because oh boy We're about to get the the news we've been waiting for at least What switch pro you know are we waiting years for that? But also the news on you know, whatever Nintendo's do that E3 feel like it's been building up all month long and We're right on the precipice of it. If not, I mean if nothing else, what are we 11 days away from E3? I mean something that 12 days. Let me think about this. It was two weeks from Saturday, so 13 12 days away. We're 12 days away from E3 12 days. That's awesome. Alright folks. I'll catch you guys in the next video


This systematic review aims to evaluate the methodological quality and overall level of evidence of diabetes PROMs, categorizing them based on outcome measures assessed. A total of 363 articles were identified, with 238 unique PROMs validated in the type 2 diabetes population. The CPDQ, DSMI-20, and CIT-ASHK are among the PROMs with a moderate level of evidence for greater than or equal to five measurement properties. These findings may assist clinicians and researchers in selecting appropriate high-quality PROMs for clinical practice and research. This article was authored by Priscilla Jialing-Wi, Yuheng Kwan, Dian Hui-Fong Lo, and others.