Hey everybody, thank you so much for joining us today. Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, depending on where you're logging in from. This is JSA TV and JSA Podcasts, the newsroom for telecom and data center professionals. I'm Jamie Scott of Pattaya and on behalf of my team here at JSA, thank you for joining us during these very difficult times as we continue to face down COVID-19 with travel and work restrictions, onsite networking events have been put on hold for several months now as we all know, which means that these JSA virtual roundtables really taking on a new level of relevancy. As a timely platform where we can seek advice and information, even answers to our questions from top industry thought leaders as we face these latest challenges of today's new reality together as one network infrastructure community. Also, hopefully a little sunshine at your door today. We have provided lunch or if you chose a gift card to a local restaurant for the first 100 registrants. So for those of you who have received the first 100 who registered and we have over 200 registered, that's only about half of you. But for the first 100, please go ahead and enjoy your JSA lunch while we get started here today. And a quick reminder, this is a round table, round table format. So we wanna hear from you. We wanna hear your voice. We wanna help answer your question. So go ahead and type in any questions you may have for our panelists into that question box. And depending on time, we'll get to as many as possible. And additionally, the last 15 minutes of the hour, we're gonna take our conversation over to LinkedIn for a chat with many of our speakers here today, all of us speakers. So go ahead and go to LinkedIn. We will put the direct link right there in the chat box for you shortly. You can also search on hashtag JSA virtual round tables with an S build and our feed will come up as well. So make sure you also carry over the conversation and post your questions and thoughts for panelists on LinkedIn too. All right, so getting started here, this is JSA's fourth round table in a series of necessary conversations right now on the impact of COVID-19 to both our industry and our target verticals. Next one up, coming in about three weeks from now is COVID-19 and it's impact on educational networks. So that's May 28th, 1 p.m. Eastern with guest moderator and my friend, Mr. Rob Powell of Telecom Rebels. Please check it out, jsa.net. Register and let us know if you have any additional speaker suggestions. This is again a platform for all of us. So we wanna hear from you. All right, let's get started. Two days topic, COVID-19 and it's impact on healthcare networks, very timely. And to underscore the importance of this conversation today, we have over 200 registrants joining us. Thank you community for your continued support of the series. We just announced this topic, you know, three weeks ago and we already have such a great, great number of registrants and our all-star executives within days, dedicating their time for us today. We thank you panelists for joining us and to help us introduce them and to guest moderate, please welcome our own fabulous JSA director, my colleague, a gentleman I learned from every day. He also heads our strategic industry writing team, Paul Skechley. He's one of our industry's top content writers on healthcare networks. We're really excited to have Carl as our moderator today. Carl, thank you and the floor is yours, my friend. Thanks very much, Jamie. And thank you to our viewers for tuning in and to all our panelists for taking the time to join us for a very timely topic, the impact of COVID-19 on healthcare networks. Of course, we know that the healthcare sector is such a vital one for each and every one of us. Throughout this pandemic, healthcare workers have continuously displayed much heroism going into risky environments to take the best care possible for those affected by the novel coronavirus.  And, you know, we wish them much luck and help as they continue to fight this virus. And hopefully, you know, one day soon it will be in the rear view mirror. At the same time though, I think we'd all likely agree that our own tech and telecom sector right now is quite vital for the IT side of healthcare and supporting their networks in extremely critical ways. So just before we dive into our discussion, I'd like to start by going around the virtual table we have with us today for very distinguished individuals. So I'd like them to tell us a bit about who they are and their companies and what their companies specialize in. So in a few sentences, Anna Lee, let's start with you. Sure. Thank you. Hello, everyone. I'm Anna Lee Ilg. I'm the CISO at Envolta. Envolta is a national managed service provider. We specialize in co-location, hybrid clouds, managed IT, consulting, and security services. Excellent. Thank you. Eric, how about you? Good afternoon, everyone. Eric Dahl, vice president of business development for strategic venue partners better known as SVP, and we offer wireless infrastructure as a service or the fourth utility that can be made up of DAS, Wi-Fi, public safety systems, IPTV, Fiverr, and CBRS on-go private LTV networks. We manage the entire development process from initial design to system commissioning to monitoring and maintaining a 24, 7, 365 days a year. We bring a complete long-term technology solution, including multiple ongoing system refreshes and upgrades, and we fund 100% of the distributed network system, no carrier needed or requiring and suing certainty for system delivery day one. Along with the venue, we bring all major carriers to the system day one, and we bring back revenue to the venue, if possible, 90% of carrier ransom capital contributions. We look forward to the discussion today. Excellent, Eric. Thank you. Mark, how about you? Hello, everyone, and thanks for having me on the panel. Pleasure to be here. My name is Mark McNeil. I lead the healthcare practice here at Tech Guidance in the Chicago area. We provide consulting services around communication, collaboration, and technology in healthcare to our clients. Our services are actually free. What we try to do is foster connections between our clients and suppliers who offer services that can meet those needs. Amazing, thank you. Ryan, let's hear about you. Great, thank you so much. And Jamie and Carl, thanks for putting this together. This is really fantastic, and thank you for everybody who's joining today. Ryan Barbera, I'm with Data Canopy. I'm the CEO here. Data Canopy is an infrastructure as a service provider and IAS provider. We have 16 locations around the U.S. and several locations in Asia. We like to say that if it's regulated or complicated, we work on it. So we provide everything from simple co-location all the way up into hyperscale workload management and everything in between, which is just a little bit of stuff. So, you know, we really focus very heavily on the healthcare industry as well as in the federal space, which are both converging in general, but today a lot. And I'm really excited about the conversation today. So thank you guys for having me as a guest. I appreciate it. Excellent. Thank you all so much for that wonderful explanation. Okay, well, let's hop right into it. We have to start with a very short and punchy question. So COVID-19, what are the top two challenges healthcare networks are facing as a result of this pandemic? Annalie, tell us what you're seeing out there. Sure. Well, of course, it depends on the level of preparedness. The two that come to mind are really just the available bandwidth, any kind of urgent routing and architecture changes to meet the demands of accessing critical systems from a dispersed workforce. In most cases, capability requirements have changed resulting in maybe possible unplanned equipment replacements and increasing capabilities. Excellent. Excellent answer. Eric, how about you? What are you seeing? Yeah, I think one of the most things I'm hearing from the customers I'm talking with on a daily basis are reliable up-to-date networking infrastructure and new technologies on that network infrastructure. Collaboration tools that are enabling their workforce isn't critical at the site to be remotely engaged as well as clinical application environments that allow to report rapidly changing needs along with that new mobility intent clinical scenarios. And if you've heard many hospitals using iPads bring your own devices and that obviously brings a whole host of you think it'd be a simple solution but there's a very significant impact both from an IT budget setup not to mention the strain on the mobility cellular bandwidth with capacity and network infrastructure as well but it does affect and improve the patient experience. So I'm talking with on a daily basis. Right. Thank you. Mark, what are you what's the sense you're getting out there from the industry? Some similar things. Certainly the supporting the expansion of remote care is probably the top challenge that we hear about. That would include not only the pop-up testing facilities and remote clinics but also telemedicine as well. And obviously all three of those areas are are a prime focus right now and growing very rapidly. In addition to that, so that would play back into what Annaly and Eric were saying about infrastructure and bandwidth so that we can access systems from those remote locations. It's not only the patients who are remote, many of the caregivers are now remote as well. So they're no longer within the fall to the hospital so managing those interactions and making sure that they have the access to critical systems that they require are certainly a top challenge. A close second behind that is, okay, now that we are remote, we've got our networks extended probably further than we ever thought we would. How do we maintain security? I mean, obviously this is an industry that deals with extremely sensitive information. It is highly regulated. How do we protect patient privacy? How do we share accidental sharing of PHI when we need to actually protect that information? So those are the two key areas that we hear from a lot of our clients and how can we help them address those issues which we'll discuss here today. Excellent, absolutely. We're totally going to come back to those wonderful topics. Ryan, as a member of Data Canopy what is your organization seeing from healthcare networks and healthcare providers? Yeah, thank you. So everything that the other panelists have talked about, we certainly see some parts of that, but we see it a little bit differently because of just where we sit in the stack as an infrastructure provider. We actually see a lot of the issues in and around interoperability between disparate systems. Right now there's a huge demand for information share. Some of the panelists talked about the difficulties in that just in a general sense that's always difficult, but now things need to happen in almost near real time that's become more and more difficult. These disparate systems were designed for single providers and so now they're trying to extract data, share data, leverage data in ways that's never been done before and that can prove to be really difficult. So really I think and this is actually something I think everybody's talking about in addition to the security infrastructure in many cases is outdated or just not robust enough to handle what's going on in the current environment and I think that's whether it's telemedicine or again whether that's storage, whether it's compute, whether it's bandwidth, whatever the case might be right now you're hearing just more more and more. I mean that is kind of what we're trying to do at this time. Then you combine that with the regulatory compliances that haven't gone away. So you still have your HIPAA, your HIPAA high tech, all of the other compliances that are around that and protecting the data. It's incredibly complex and then we have to also remember that the point here is to actually help people. So it's the balance of how are we improving these networks, how are we making this data available and at the same time that the healthcare professionals and the patients are being handled well also. So those are the big issues that we're seeing today. Absolutely Ryan and you know I think that's actually a phenomenon that's occurring around the world right now. I think yesterday I saw an article for example in the news that talked about Japanese physicians that were protesting basically their working conditions not so much from a perspective but from a technology perspective. We have seen the stories of young doctors that are still using vaccine machines to attempt to transport vital information to each other and between their patients and they're just saying now is the time we really need to get ahead of this because it's a huge hamper on our efforts. So excellent point. And also what an interesting way to segment into another salient topic right now which is telemedicine. So right now we see a lot of comments about telemedicine as a great way to take care of ongoing or non-critical health issues without having to go to healthcare facilities but there are still challenges around that. So what needs to happen in your opinion what needs to happen to healthcare networks in order to make the widespread use of telemedicine a realistic long term possibility. Annalie, what do you think? Sure. So I think telemedicine is really one of those projects that were in the plan or are being planned for versus using in the immediate. It's kind of one of those road map items where you're like we'd like to utilize telemedicine or a portion of it. When COVID came into play they had a hurry up to make this happen which is amazing in itself but however when we're not really putting the time to plan it creates some of these telemedicine platforms are a bit clunky or not everybody knows how to use and so like with any change the network capabilities should be evaluated you need a robust platform and this platform must be able to connect to all the critical systems to pull and share data really it needs to support a scalable experience that supports streaming so with that said I believe that there needs to be an architecture redesign security measures need to be in place such as I'll just name a few DDoS protection IDPS data loss protection and you know right now one of the challenges too is the attacks have risen so security attacks have risen since the work from home mandate so just a couple of thoughts to think about there. Absolutely Eric from your strategic venue partners perspective what do you think about the telemedicine issue? I think the interesting thing about telemedicine is that it comes back to the initial question we need an updated 5G network infrastructure but it's both in the care settings meaning the hospitals the medical office buildings the ambulatory surgery centers long-term care facilities as well as in the patients homes whether that be in their urban or rural setting where it's you know leaked at best you know I believe that there's going to be a need to accelerate that virtualization of some of the patient provider encounters that we've all become accustomed to and telehealth telemedicine and remote monitoring AI supplementation diagnostic and then technology enables you know healthy at home for example all our variants say we're going to have to see that to come to light with this and CMS and the reimbursement rules reimbursement rules are going to have to be vigorously considered you know they've done it temporarily during the COVID process but I did see a pretty interesting quote this week by the CMS administrator and she said I think the genies out of the bottle on this one I think that's a fair to say that the advent of telehealth has been just completely accelerated and it's taken this crisis to push us to a new frontier but there's absolutely no going back which is great from an infrastructure company standpoint such as SVP we look forward to working with the health systems in order to make them up to date in order to be able to provide that service absolutely Mark you look like you had a nod of agreement there or something to add yeah no I I love Eric's comment and sharing that quote makes sense and certainly COVID-19 has catapulted telemedicine to the forefront it was probably in most health care providers top five initiatives but most of them now are looking at as number one and I think Annaly also said you know the issue that we have is that not everyone is at the same level unfortunately and bringing some of the laggards up to where they need to be is an issue one thing I do want to say is that the other thing that COVID-19 has done is gotten the health care industry through what I think is a major hurdle which is patient acceptance this was not really the fundamental way that people wanted their health care they wanted to go for an office visit for the most part talk to their physician face to face they are now much more accepting of this virtual care or remote situation at least in certain circumstances so that's a major hurdle to get through I mean I think Ryan mentioned it earlier we're talking technology here but this is all about people in the end so if the people don't want the experience and don't accept it you know the technology that we put in place really doesn't matter so that's a huge hurdle that we've gotten through I think and certainly we can take some steps here in our industries to kind of move telemedicine forward and help bolster that acceptance and make it more widespread and I think we've talked about some of those things certainly the scaling of infrastructure and bandwidth so that we all have access to information and communications we can support the collaboration solutions that we need cloud is certainly going to help us in a lot of those areas a lot of the customers that we deal with are running telemedicine operations out of a contact center so in order to scale that quickly you know CCAS solutions are critical collaboration in the cloud solutions are critical even infrastructure in the cloud is now available where it gives healthcare providers the ability who may have not prepared for these things to rapidly scale up infrastructure and capacity in their network to start handling you know telemedicine kinds of situations excellent points too Ryan what are you seeing from data canopy Mark just mentioned scalability cloud infrastructure what are your thoughts yeah I really honestly it's kind of bad to go last because I get to hear everybody else say all the things I was going to say but they're all 100 percent correct Mark is absolutely right in terms of the scalability it's a little bit what we talked about in the first question in terms of how are we scaling these systems to meet the demand I think that everybody's dead on that COVID has taken what was kind of a slow role in terms of how things were happening in telemedicine and basically made it mandatory right I mean if you have a non-essential thing you're going to be talking right now to your doctor most likely by a telemedicine the other thing that Mark said that I do really want to kind of emphasize not just on this question but throughout the entire discussion is that this really healthcare really is about people and I think as technologists it's really important for us to remember that you know my wife and I this week had a call with my son's ENT doctor he had tubes in his ears we were scheduled to have those tubes removed obviously there's no elective stuff or non-essential stuff right now so we had this online thing with him couldn't get his camera to work it was a little bit choppy it was a little bit difficult for us we couldn't see any of the diagrams he was showing about what the ear looked like and at the end I asked him I said you know I know who we are and I know who you are but there was a third box that was on the screen that we didn't know who that person was and it turned out it was just that you know the doctor scribe which if I'd been in the office Mark's point he would have introduced him and we would have understood who I think that in addition to the technology the human education portion of this I mean we're all people who live in technology but I would just imagine what my grandparents would have how they would have handled something like that or how they're going to do that it's not just about you know people who know how to use technology but a telemedicine is really going to be something that's effective in a pandemic or more broadly like we're talking about the human element is the most critical element so the technology has to be scalable but we also have as technologists to be able to help our clients in using that technology in a way that's beneficial for healthcare workers and for patients as well absolutely I mean that is such a such a very astute point and you know I really think it gets at the theme around security which we kind of touched on lightly already in this discussion but we haven't really had a chance to get really down into it but you know when you look at how COVID-19 has affected healthcare networks over the past six to eight weeks you know we really see that a lot of healthcare providers have had to extend their networks as they set up multiple locations including testing facilities and pop-up clinics and you know so we've kind of talked a little bit about the challenges that this poses for their networks from a service delivery and security but you know what what sort of things can they do or should keep in mind you know in order to safeguard their networks and you know solve some of those challenges so Annalie why don't we go around again with you Sure, first I love Ryan's story so Ryan I'm going to reference you so you don't feel like you're the last one on the list here but you know I kind of it really brings it to life because you know I can't imagine what healthcare providers are going to right now and have full respect you know when I think about these situations I think about how we need to make sure that these new facilities or these pop-up locations really feel like they're on site right it can't take five minutes or even three minutes right to pull up a patient record and when I think about that I think about some of the challenges and we've already talked about connectivity capabilities but for the securing wireless the security and capabilities of the IOT devices right that all healthcare providers utilize when I think of the data I think to make sure that we are continuing the encryption method methods used for data transfer and really from a security perspective we're increasing the security footprint and you know given rapid changes like this I always caution some of the reality which is capability and availability are always ahead of security so just make sure that when these changes are happening on the network that we're reviewing configuration changes and that we're ensuring the network is being monitored by security tools Interesting Eric from strategic brand new partners perspective again how are you how do you think healthcare networks can go around about solving their security challenges or obstacles whatever they're facing sure to keep in the personal light I just got married this weekend and my bride now wife is the COO and a CNO of a North Carolina healthcare system and I live with that healthcare worker coming in the door every day after a very stressful and crazy day that she describes to me when I look at her calendar when she leaves in the morning sometimes she doesn't come home they have a command into the command center that they have to staff 24 hours a day and you want to talk about security and healthcare worker burnout I think the scary thing about it all is that 25% of all data breaches that are happening now are in the healthcare environment so a quarter of those other staggering statistic is it's 25 million patient records in 2019 were breached and in fact 53% of those originated within the establishment itself so it's something that from an infrastructure provider such as SVP we want to put in the most secure the most highly technologically savvy network and we go with private LTE and or carrier grade signals we can't put in Wi-Fi but as we all know Wi-Fi has it's data issues so we prefer the private LTE and or the carrier signal the LTE signal and therefore to secure the networks. Interesting thank you Mark when you're advising your clients and when your firm does that what sort of advice do you give them and interested in your thoughts here so the first thing that we have to realize and face facts is that the person on the other end the healthcare IT person they are really comfortable within the four walls of the hospital okay they deal in an environment with highly sensitive information in a highly regulated industry so when we start going outside of the firewall with these remote locations there's a lot of sensitivity there so heard what the other panelists have talked about we are facing similar kinds of things and just to tell you one horror story from a major healthcare provider that came to us asking for advice when they started doing their pop-up clinics people were asking them their caregivers were asking you so how do we access networks how do we get back to our apps and how do we pull up patient records and everything like that somebody actually said to them well you're in a parking lot in a shopping center you know there must be a Starbucks there why don't you just think into their public life and do it that way no word of a lie actually somebody said that so when you when you're thinking about that and I know everyone on the panel here has a look of horror on their faces but it actually does happen because people were forced into doing this so quickly that they could not back up things the proper security so now when we hear about those horror stories we check on that immediately like let's make sure how you're connecting into your networks and your applications you certainly those kinds of things open up all kinds of potential fishing expeditions and other kinds of security things that you really don't want to face and deal with so similar to what Eric is saying we are we are coaching people more into 5G mobility security there are some people that have come to us interested in Ymax so we're looking at a lot of those different kinds of solutions but certainly trying to cook people away from the quick six of you know logging into the public Wi-Fi at Starbucks that's certainly not the way to go Wow what a story that is Ryan you mentioned a while back that you your firm does a lot of work to around HIPAA and the like what are your thoughts then on on this topic of security yeah I think that one of the last things Mark said there was this isn't fast and the problem is that we have an immediate demand and need for expanded networks expanded resources today and a lot of these are just don't have the human capital or intelligence not not because they're done but because literally it's just not something that they've looked at as Mark was saying they've been highly concerned about the four walls of their their organization so what the conversations that we're having with people are you know speed kills be quick but don't rush we have to take a look at all these things I think Eric was speaking to the idea of you know multiple devices leveraging wireless and only was speaking to the idea of assist so these are not all mutually exclusive silos all of this in our mind comes together and if you don't have somebody who's focused on that or understands it you're going to make mistakes most security breaches don't come from the network you know statistically about 20% of breaches come from external 80% of breaches come from internal problems that we're having somebody going to Starbucks and uploading patient files or something like that so you know if you're if you're rushing and you're trying to just get something out there to check a box you are invariably going to make a mistake and it can be very costly you can expose people data you can cause access to systems you don't want people to have so unfortunately it's not an easy answer I don't think that a lot of things are and COVID is pushing a lot of organizations to try to get things done as quickly as they can we always caution you have to just go at the pace that you can go at also and this is just the reality of it most of this stuff is not super cheap I mean you have to be willing to spend the dollars to secure the infrastructure the way it needs to be properly secured nobody wants to be the lab or testing facility that accidentally had all of the tests for 10,000 patients exposed to the internet right so unfortunately this was all the questions that you were asking for me was the most dangerous in terms of kind of the bad news scenario here is that security is really tough in normal circumstances and when you're trying to go really fast and really hard it's almost impossible and so as people are expanding these networks it's going to be incumbents to find really great partners and vendors that can help you do those evaluations and make the right decisions in terms of how to secure your network properly at every single level including again at the human level that's where most of the breakdowns will happen right Ryan and you know I think that really leads us into the question of the role of data center providers then and all of this because ever since the economic effects the rise in remote work the surge in bandwidth demands came about due to obviously the COVID-19 pandemic I think we've seen that data center providers play a very strong role in supporting normal operations keeping businesses up and running and other crucial mission critical aspects but now you know obviously you know there is an argument that COVID-19 has accelerated the use of various e-help applications you know and we see now hospitals especially are generally vast amounts of extremely sensitive data that gets shared internally you know between staff a couple of patients and then we have the whole mobile IoT devices smart beds, tablets, sensors so you know in your opinion Ryan what is the role here for data center providers in supporting healthcare providers through COVID-19 but not just through COVID-19 also beyond is this trend here to stay and if so data center providers really carve themselves out a supportive role for this yeah I know it's a great question I just want to start by saying that data center providers are by far the most important of anything we've talked about but you know it's a great question and I think that data centers are somewhat ubiquitous now we've always data centers have been around since the beginning right so we just don't think a lot about them because we think of them as you know these weird warehouses where weird people like me scurry around and program things and the reality is that data centers are the backbone of everything that's going on now I mean we are talking about you know I always like when people talk about wireless because there really is no such thing as wireless it's just how your wireless device works that infrastructure terminates at a couple of key points around the country and around the world those are data centers how you're accessing we've talked about CMS on this call this is public knowledge so I can talk about it but data canopy is one of the host partners for CMS if you're involved with Medicare today you're touching a data center somewhere to get that information if you're talking to Amazon gov cloud if you're talking to it doesn't matter the data centers that today live as that hub and as these systems scale up the data center will go from being important to critical because really data centers are the only thing in the market in my mind that has the capacity to scale as quickly as is necessary whether that's from a standpoint of bandwidth capacity whether that's from a standpoint of real estate, location whatever that might be the idea that you could replicate what's being built in places like Ashburn, Virginia or Dallas or Shanghai or Frankfurt you know these are hops that millions and millions and millions of people on a daily basis are reaching and that lends themselves to being able to to help with this problem so as we start to see more IoT you know the BYOD type of stuff as we start to do more security it's going to make data centers absolutely more critical but to Mark's earlier point it is shifting away from the traditional environments that we've seen and more into how are we leveraging cloud infrastructure and doing that in a way that allows us to scale effectively so in my mind and I am very biased I would like to say that but in my mind data centers are absolutely critical they were important before they're critical now and to the point that you are making all of our clients we're seeing that expansion today in the healthcare space we're having conversations with all of them about how to do that effectively right right so I can definitely tell the passion in that answer I'm actually interested I think for our audience too to hear Eric's take on that because Eric I think you know your firm does a lot in terms of the whole wireless arena so what is your response then to Ryan yeah you know I couldn't agree more with Ryan that you know wireless devices do connect to a wired world and I look at it as you know how will 5G affect healthcare that's how I look at it you know your top six to start telehealth, telemedicine, remote patient monitoring, augmented in virtual reality, data analytics decentralization of the healthcare modeling and moving that care closer to the patient we're seeing that already happen and I think that's you know we talked about how that's been accelerated with the COVID-19 and I think you know large file transfers you know being between the OR and X-ray and what have you you know how does healthcare prepare for 5G I think you got to look for opportunities in your organization for enhancing patient care and improving operations that would benefit from the infrastructure you got to identify key players and departments that would participate in the initial project and how they would collaborate to provide efficiencies and integration and then find a partner who can lead the way to 5G with no capex outlight but only have a monthly first model like strategic body partners or SVP and we bring a complete long-term solution including multiple ongoing system refreshes and upgrades so that's how I look at it from a how are we going to bring 5G and how are we going to move healthcare into the next century basically. Interesting yes thank you so much for that all right so to our panel this is then one some summary question basically two so to sum up in one or two sentences what lessons will the healthcare industry specifically its technology administrators take from this COVID crisis that will help them prepare better for the future so let's just go around the table Annalie what do you think? Sure so you know having gone through many DR scenarios over the last I don't know 14-15 years it kind of goes back to I don't think anybody was really fully ready for this kind of impact when I say this kind of impact the duration of impact the financial impact a crisis like this has impacted the financial considerations of the healthcare industry right now and I think one it's very important to really think about the solutioning you know also another thing is I hope to see more funding more investment on the technology side more openness to consider new technologies Eric brought up a lot of great ideas around 5G right and I think that's really important to start looking at again new technologies and solutions for future crisis like this. Excellent Mark what do you think? So yeah just to summarize I mean certainly remote care is here to stay obviously COVID-19 has really catapulted that as we've all said throughout this entire discussion but one thing I want to focus on that I'm hearing from some healthcare providers and also things that we're trying to generate here at tech guidance is I'm really predicting the rise of analytics and specifically communications analytics as this trend to remote care continues on and COVID-19 obviously gave it a huge push as this continues moving forward and more and more healthcare interactions become virtual as opposed to being in the office they're all leveraging some kind of communications platform a collaboration tool a wireless they're texting their chat whatever it may be those platforms are generating valuable data that healthcare providers are starting to use and I think some of the providers on the leading edge are really taking advantage of these communications analytics and looking at things like you know how long are these interactions lasting how many contacts are we making to a particular patient before we have a positive outcome etc and some of the really sophisticated ones are really trying to develop from this data you know what are the optimal contact kinds of strategies that we have for individual patient groups you know when you look at you know a post-surgical outpatients you know there's a whole bunch of contact that's going around you know the wound I mean are you in pain is there redness around the wound are you taking your prescription have you scheduled your follow-up appointment etc etc and some of the as I said some of the really sophisticated providers are leveraging telemedicine now and the data that they can extract from that to improve patient outcomes to reduce readmission rates and to come basically back to offering better healthcare virtually because of all this extra data that they now have recorded conversations where they're doing you know word spotting to figure out what are the key topics and questions that patients are asking how do we better prepare our caregivers to address those questions etc so it's giving them a lot of ammunition to kind of offer better healthcare in general thank you mark quick 30 seconds from Ryan and then Eric what do you what's your final thoughts I think that somebody touched on it earlier I like to think of this as a way for people to break out of the four walls of their office and I think that healthcare has historically seen itself as a silo all the way from the the practice type to the doctor's office and north from there I think what this is teaching us is that by leveraging IoT by leveraging big data by leveraging analytics we can do things in that we could never do before whether that's contact tracing whether that's telemedicine whatever it might be that's coming out of this for me the one silver lining of all of this is that I think it really has catapulted the idea that technology can help to make people's lives better in health and we talk a lot about that but it's been slow in adoption and I think that this is going to force from the government down to the individual doctor to take a look at how we're using technology to make people's lives better and that's my hope for this and I think we're starting to see that and I hope it's not a blip but rather a trend and that's really what I would love to see come from this excellent thank you Ryan Eric last comment I think the pandemic has resulted in really a shift in IT strategy better prioritization and focus on mission critical projects only and the need to accelerate 5G mobility network infrastructure and telehealth remote patient interactions are really at the top of their list and there's cost improvements, hybrid outsourcing more managed services and a really a long term focus on their networks and how they interact with the patient and their operational side of the business is key excellent thank you so much and Carl I'll take thank you thank you so much guys and we have been watching the question box explode I want to also thank Alan Katz Hassan Alass some of our other viewers with had some great questions coming in our panelists have done a great job of just naturally answering a lot of them talking about workers and technology like AI and et cetera and I think you guys really did a good job of responding and cognizant of time I did just want to from my heart to yours thank everyone today for joining us crazy times again we appreciate you guys arguing and having these critical conversations thank you panelists for your insights on COVID-19 impact and healthcare networks again Annalie Ill CISO of Involta Eric Dahl Vice President of Business Development SPT Mark McNeil he's the lead of the healthcare practice over at Tech Guidance and Ryan Barbera CEO of Data Canopy and a big thank you to our guest moderator my colleague my friend Paul Skechling director here at JSA for keeping us on point today and a quick reminder this is not the end of our conversation we will be hopping over to LinkedIn the link is right there in the chat box and I'll send it to our panelists by email to in a minute but absolutely click on that link and join us for a continuation of this Q&A also the remaining part of the hour over on LinkedIn and viewers if you're one of the very first 100 registrants hope you enjoyed your lunch by heading visit us at JSA.net to register for upcoming JSA virtual roundtables including our next series we're talking COVID-19 May 28 and its impact on educational networks so moving right along with our topics on how COVID-19 is impacting our industry in current protocols so that is the wrap look out for the playback of today's roundtable coming soon to JSA TV and JSA Podcast on YouTube iTunes, iHeart, Spotify and more everywhere you're looking will be there meantime see you over on LinkedIn happy networking and stay safe my friends


Hello everyone, I hope you are doing well. Today I'm gonna talk about something that I normally don't really like to talk about, but it's gonna be my top five of the 2021 Formula One season. It's always very difficult to pick up a top five because obviously it's very hard to compare someone with a Haas and someone with a Red Bull or Mercedes, you know, driver-wise. Saying that there's a couple of, well at least one in my top five that comes out with a car that was definitely not one of the best but has done an incredible season. So yeah, if I start in fifth position, I would, not necessarily in order, but I would Carlos Sainz Jr. First year with Ferrari next to Charles Leclerc. He has surprised me in a very good way. He's been consistent, he's been fast, has been really good next to Charles, has been able to claim points at some good fights. A good surprise, I was not expecting Carlos to be that good, but I was really good with the new car in 2022. Let's see how it goes. And I guess Charles is gonna be there as well. So Ferrari could be on for something cool in 2022. In fourth position, I will put Lando Norris. He hasn't won a race, but he was very close a couple of times. Felt like Russia should have been his. Monza, he was behind Daniel Ricciardo, his teammate, and they really played the McLaren game being first and second, but you could tell he was faster. He's been raising his game year after year. And I think this year, you know, next to Daniel Ricciardo, a big value Formula One has been stronger and very fast. He is definitely my tough four of the drivers, Lando. I think my McLaren could be a really good car in 2022, so keep an eye for him. And then third, I would put George Russell with the Williams. George has been doing a really good season. Who is Spa qualifying? Let's not talk about the race, but qualifying in Spa from Charles second on the grade. Obviously Williams was very strong that weekend. Latifi qualifying well as well, but he was there, and he had another few really good races through the year. So that has been very impressive. Can't wait to see him with Mercedes in 2022. That could be something. And then first and second, I'm actually gonna say first draw, it's Max and Luis. Max, first up and Luis Hamilton. What a year they gave us. What a fight from both guys in different way. I think Max had a strong car at the beginning, really managed to score both positions. Two is driving, go at the front, lead the race, push really hard, hard lock in Baku and Hungary where he lost a fair bit of points. Luis on the other hand with the Mercedes that was a little bit struggling compared to the year before has been raising his game with Mercedes all year long and what an end of the season they had. Obviously with the end in Abu Dhabi that we all know could have gone either way really. But yes, I think those two were definitely giving us an incredible fight, an incredible show. I think we're on in 2022 for the same thing. So yeah, I think we are ready for 2022. As I say, new rules. I'm gonna talk about it in a later video, but for now, don't forget to like or subscribe or leave me a message and I'll see you very soon. Thank you.


Everybody forced here ripping 2021 flawless football hobby two box case number 25 random team style There's a results link in chat. You can always find Results on the website late in sports cards.com. Thanks everyone for joining. Good luck Here we do Well, let's see a shield gem Go bigger than a shield go and shield gem. It's only 15 in the whole product, right? Dude, I would love to work a wobble house. Don't tell rich. I'd be slinging some mean hash browns. Oh, yeah, I Didn't order these mother-in-covered. That's too bad That's how I served them Smothering covered all right starting us off Panthers dual patch career milestones Christian McCaffrey 10 to 10 Super Bowl patch card Broncos Peyton Manning 19 at 25 Player-worn Manning three colors. We're they fit his forehead on the card Got Washington auto D. Ami Brown a rookie at a 25 Rams RPA one of 20. That's 2-2 at well flawless flyers Bucking ears auto Mike all stock four of 10 four times 10 is Jersey number eBay one of one easy Who's he saved my job? I think Eagle Star Swatch signatures one of 10 Jersey number Jalen Hertz boom Congrats to the birds Get that magged for you new Jersey number Hertz and penmanship auto Cowboys Emmett Smith nine of ten Good inner box to start the case here. It's Smith Cardinals legends Sapphire gem Joe Montana eight of 15 49ers goes San Francisco Emerald gem one of five Rams Matthew Stafford I'm a guarantee That's right JB. That's right Holding the one-on-one yesterday. Yeah, it's time. It's bad chats and rookie dual patch auto bears Justin Fields 14 of 15 Sick patches three colors on each for the bears Congrats on that Beautiful dual patch. I've been hitting fields literally yesterday and today I don't think I can I don't think it's up to me. He's got the Justin Fields bug everybody. I need a I need to pull the uh, the field the fields shield Shield, I feel like I'm gonna say bad words Oh nice JB Congrats again on the hit man. Let's go JB You guys hear my stomach growling. I'm sorry. It is actually kind of loud Haven't had time to get up and like grab a snack tonight for the most part and y'all are gonna be y'all are gonna be Illegal and shane are about to be in shambles Okay, first up triple team triple patch here Tiki Barbara Ricky Williams Clinton Portis Giants Dolphins Broncos probably a random. I can't read We'll have Sam check for majority Giants Dolphins Broncos Random at the end on that one dual patch cowboys Dak in CD three of ten nice. I had a look at that who that was here Patch auto jets Vinny test of herd eight ten of ten looking at this next card in the checklist Kenzie pulled the Devontes in the shield Last night honored ink Wow, I don't think they've ever pulled his auto before Ravens Kaleis Campbell to a five. I Think that's a 20 20 2019 is 20 20 19 NFL man of the year Kaleis Campbell Ravens Nice hit there Apparently Ogden's in this too. Really? Yeah God flawless performances as a cardinal boomer Isis in one of 15 What? When was he a cardinal? Either way before my watching time. I wouldn't know either way, but Clearly not the first team you think of when you think of boomer Isis, and that is an okay boomer Patch auto dolphins Jason Taylor six of 20 it's like a bunch of that hits in here And once you don't see a lot You go dolphins Like I said boomer on the boomer all together is before my watching years Eagles rookie dual patch auto Devontes a Smith three of 15 Nice hit for the birds I don't know how to go about this first of all like I don't know what order all the way right for sure And I think you got to go left. Yeah, I agree. It's just very weird, you know got sapphire Jim Justin Jefferson 7 of 15 Vikings I'm a guarantee Yeah, this is gonna be this is a week you got to trust me on this one guys You have to trust me on this one. This is a very weird word. It's gonna seem crazy at first NFL shield one of one bills rookie Greg Russo Boom shield, baby, that's right. The shield is not the last card of the break big one bills Yeah, we're so pretty solid man. Good player and God, that's Boy, oh boy dual rookie auto Jaguars Jets Trevor Lawrence Zach Wilson three of three Boom, baby.  This is not going to randomize it right away at least Yeah Correct that is not getting at them at least not right now. Maybe they decide to random it I don't know. It's not it's not for me to decide when a card this big Wow We're pulling some heat tonight that is gonna do it for The random teams case we got tiered coming up next. Thanks again everybody We know we do have a random still Do have one random still almost end of the video? Giants Dolphins Giants Dolphins Broncos triple relic random here on the Tiki Barbara Ricky Williams and Clinton Portis We'll go four times whoever's up top after four gets the card one two three and four Giants getting it Tiki. There we go. Thanks again everybody more flawless coming up


Kashin Transit Heist in Hillbrough, Johannesburg A group of armed men hit a Kashin transit van in Hillbrough, Johannesburg on Thursday afternoon. The incident occurred at High Point in Hillbrough next to KFC, on Pretoria Street. It is alleged that three people were injured in the incident. A police officer reportedly gave chase in a BMW but was shot. On scene and transporting a critically injured guard and a civilian following a CIT robbery, emergency services statement that several unknown suspects attacked and fired shots at a parked Kashin transit vehicle and fled the scene, taking an undisclosed amount of money. Saps Hillbrough cluster members and the Johannesburg Metro Police Department responded and pursued the getaway vehicles. A shootout between the police and the suspects ensued. During the shootout a member of the South African Police Service was fatally wounded, police spokesperson Lieutenant Colonel Brenda Murray-Dealey said. Two security guards and two bystanders were wounded during the heist.


Hey, this is Brett and this 2012 Dodge Challenger SRT8 is stock number 14021ZA. I am here at Summit Automotive in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, you're new and used sports car and Dodge Challenger headquarters. This 2012 Dodge Challenger has a 6.4 liter V8 Hemi engine. It's paired up with the six-speed manual transmission. It puts out 470 horsepower. This car has been fully-safetyed and inspected by our service shop, has a fresh oil and filter change. All the fluids have been checked and topped off and this car is 100% ready to go. I'm going to go all the way around in this video. Inside, start it up, take a look under the hood, take a look inside the trunk, give you the most accurate representation that I can of the car. Bright silver metallic is the color and I shoot all my videos in 4K. If you like the video, you can subscribe to my YouTube channel which is youtube.com slash Summit. Autoclick the bell notifications, you'll get updates on the videos I do each and every day as well as having access to one of the largest catalogs of vehicle and sports car walk-arounds on YouTube over 8,000 videos and counting. This one comes with the really nice 20-inch painted and polished aluminum wheels. It has Brembo brakes with the slotted rotors. Wheels are in really nice shape. It has Continental Extreme Contact tires. These are 255, 45, ZR20s and I would say they have just about half the tread left on them, maybe a little bit under half but still decent tread. Front fender is in excellent shape so these stripes are actually painted on. These are painted on stripes so they look really good and I'm sure somebody paid a good amount of money to get those put on there. Front bumper is in excellent shape. I didn't see any scuffs or scrapes. It's never been drilled into and the lower valance is in excellent condition as well. This one does have the projector lamp headlamps and we'll turn all those on at the end of the video so you can see just how bright they are. The hood stripe is also painted so that is all custom paint on there. The hood's in really nice shape. Didn't see any major dents or dings on there. And the passenger side front fender is in excellent condition as well. Just some very, very light scuffs on there, hardly even noticeable. Bright silver is the color. It's got a lot of metal flake to it. It's my favorite silver that Chrysler makes. It really looks good and these stripes even have some metallic finish to them as well. So they look really good too. As you go down this side of this 2012, Dodge Challenger, take note of how clean that body is, how reflective and mirror like that paint is. Take these HD videos so if you're far away or even if you're close by and you just cannot make the trip down, but you're still interested in purchasing the vehicle, you can see the car, hear the car, and have confidence in the vehicle they are looking at before you even get here. So when you do get here, there's absolutely no surprises. You can make a smart and informed mind of something that you're looking for. If this video helps you make that mind decision, let your salesmen know that you saw the video, that it was helpful and that Brett sent you. Very nice down that side. This back wheel is in just as nice in shape as the rest. You get Brembo brakes back here as well. And on the back we have Continental Extreme Contact. What size are these? These are too small. What size are these? These are 27540 ZR20s and these have considerably more tread than the fronts. You have 70, 60, 70% of the tread left on those back tires. And you can see the tread pattern on there. Underbody is in nice clean condition as well from what you can see. Kind of hard to do that with the gimbal here. Coming around to the back of the vehicle. You get the mopar exhaust. Sounds really good. We'll start it up in just a second here. Rear bumper is in great shape. You get a custom deck lid spoiler. That's in that gray metallic, I'm assuming, granite crystal. It's got metal flake in it as well. Anyways, trunk lid is in nice condition too. No dents or dings on there. Let's take a look inside the trunk. There is the factory spoiler. So that's the original SRT-8 spoiler.  Very nice and clean back here. So that is... Anyways, the shocks are doing a nice job holding that trunk lid up. And that shuts nice and solidly. As you go down the driver side, just as clean as that passenger side, no dents or dings on the rear quarter. Looks really, really good. And for full disclosure, this back wheel. This one's absolutely perfect. Very, very nice. Yeah, looks really good. Down the rest of the side of the car, the doors all look really good. Didn't see any dents or dings. Heated power mirrors inside. The SRT package gives you the black leather and alcantara suede. Get the red stripe and the seat there. The SRT's stitched into the back rest. No rips or tears on the seats. There's just a little bit of wear on the bolster, but no rips or tears. Power driver seat with lumbar factory formats. You get the bright pedals down there. Auto headlamps, power windows, locks, and mirrors. You get a carbon fiber handle right there. Suede insert on the door. Back seats are in excellent condition. No rips or tears back there. You do get the latch child safety system and formats back there as well. We'll hop inside, check out the miles, radio, and everything that this car has to offer on the interior. You can see that this one has 53,197 miles.  The SRT8 instrument cluster looks really good as well as a digital speedometer. You get the flat bottom steering wheel with the carbon fiber inserts on there. Bluetooth and information center controls on the left. It is leather wrapped all the way around and cruise controls on the right. You also get audio controls on the back of the steering wheel. This is kind of a neat car because this one comes with the old 430N radio. It has the factory navigation, but you still get that Harman Kardon premium sound system with the dual subwoofer and back. This was one of the only years that you got that combo.  You get the carbon fiber surround the radio there as well. AM, FM, and Sirius XM radio capabilities. You can see it has the factory navigation system. There's Highway 41, so that is working nicely. The thing I like about this radio is that you can store music in it, and you get a hard drive. You get 20 gigs worth of storage so you can download CDs onto this radio and play the CDs whenever you want, even though you don't have a CD on you. I think that's pretty cool, and that's the real advantage of this radio over the 8.4 that would be in the later models. It also plays DVDs. If you're stopped, it'll play a DVD, so that's kind of cool too. Some people like this radio over the 8.4 radio, and this was one of the only years that you could get that with the Harman Kardon sound system, so that's pretty cool. Heated seats, heated steering wheel controls, sport mode, stability control, hazard lights, climate controls, your six-speed manual transmission. You get that carbon fiber insert on the center console as well. Some nice ambient lighting there. Here's your key fob. That's in nice condition. And the passenger side, floor mat, dash, and seat are in excellent condition. Smells very clean inside this car. I don't think it's ever been smoked in. You get a power sunroof and the headliners in really nice shape. You get map lights up there, homelink buttons for your garage doors, security systems, and lighting systems, and then an auto-dimming mirror. All right, let's start it up. Take a look under the hood, listen to that exhaust, and we'll be all set to go. There we go. Starts right up, no check engine lights or anything like that, except my parking brake light. Let's go listen to that exhaust. I do love how the 6.4 Hemi sounds. All the lights are working nicely back here. And I would personally like to thank you for checking out the video today, and hopefully from this HD video, you've been able to verify the quality, condition, options, and of course, cleanliness of this car all the way around inside and out. Those HID lights are working nicely. The factory fog lights working nicely as well. And under the hood, we have the 6.4 liter V8 Hemi engine. 470 horsepower engine base, very clean runs, very smooth. They even got some nice carbon fiber colors for the heads there. Anyways, this car has been fully safe to inspect by our service shop. It has a fresh oil and filter change. All the fluids have been checked and topped off. It is 100% ready to go, cold air intake. And there's the emissions sticker.  And this one's all ready to go. I would highly recommend this car from a quality and condition standpoint. And to see more pictures of this car, check out some of our other 550 new and used cars, trucks, SUVs, minivans, Wranglers, half tons, three quarter tons, one tons, challengers, chargers, Mustangs, Camaros, Corvettes. You name it, we got it. SRT-8 GT500, ZL1, Z06. You name it, we got it. Go to that website right there, summitauto.com. Full pictures and descriptions of every single vehicle all at summitauto.com. If you'd like to check out more HD videos, you can go to youtube.com slash summitauto. Click the bell notifications. You'll get updates on the videos they do each and every day and access one of the largest catalogs of vehicle and sports car walk-arounds on YouTube 8,000 videos and county. In fact, any second you will see a link to subscribe to my YouTube channel on the upper left. A link to more Challenger videos I've done in the upper right. Link to this vehicle on our website on the lower left and a link to one of our latest YouTube videos on the lower right. Click those, check us out. We're super excited to help you with this Ultra Clean 2012 Dodge Challenger SRT-8 in bright silver metallic. Thanks again for checking out the video. Remember to like, subscribe, and share on the YouTube channel. I really appreciate it. Thanks again.


Hey guys, welcome to Trending Reviews. My name is Umar, so I've just bought the Google Pixel 2 XL and I've just upgraded from the Samsung S8 Plus. In today's video I'm going to be showing you after using my Google Pixel for about five days I'm going to be showing you all of the things that I miss from my Samsung S8 Plus that the Samsung could do, which the Google Pixel can't do. So there's a quite a long list, so hopefully you guys have experienced similar things to what I'm about to show you as well but at the end I'm going to give you a judgment on if the Pixel 2 was actually worth upgrading to from the Samsung S8 overall So let's have a run through some of the points and see how they look There is a lot of things that I miss on the Samsung S8 Plus, so I'm just going to go through and give you a quick run through on all of the features that I sort of regret upgrading for First one is the Edge Apps So I use this all the time and it's just a quick way for me to access a lot of my apps which I use pretty much daily So it's a shame that I don't have the Edge screen like I did on the S8 for the Google phone anymore Second one, I do a lot of running The S8 comes with a heart rate sensor on the back So I can just hold my finger over the flash And it would tell me the heart rate The next one is face unlock So I have set the phone to unlock using my face Now I know Google Pixel doesn't have that But it's something that I've started to use a little bit more So if I give you an example It's on the lock screen, so I'm just going to point it to my face now And there you go, it's unlocked Now the next one is the Edge Lighting So when your phone is down flat It's one of Samsung's Peak features that they outlined when they first released the phone When someone is calling you or messages you the outside edges of the phone They light up a specific color Another thing is the S8 has the headphone jack Now I know the Google Pixel does not have the headphone jack anymore I do use wired headphones quite a bit So I do miss that even though it does come with an adapter, it is a little bit fiddly The other thing is wireless charging Samsung S8 does have a compatibility with wireless charging The Pixel doesn't unfortunately I do have a wireless charger that I keep with me at work But that wasn't Able to be used now that I have the Pixel One other thing on the lock screen For the Samsung S8 When I have always on display If I just quickly Turn that on Now with always on display you can see just underneath there. I have the battery percentage So it's on 77% at the moment Now for some reason The Google Pixel does not display the battery percentage on the lock screens I'm not sure why But it's a limitation by Google Unfortunately, I haven't found a workaround just yet for that But that's something that's very useful and it's just a standard feature. I'm not sure why They haven't included that Next thing, if I get a missed call or a text message that I haven't seen yet on the SA Plus If my phone is down When I go to pick it up, I get a haptic feedback And what that does is it slightly vibrates the phone Once you've picked it up to let you know that you've actually missed something So whether that's a call or a text, that's pretty useful I know Samsung are really good at adding little unique features like that But unfortunately the Google Pixel didn't have that In terms of the the UI I found it a little bit easier to uninstall apps using the Samsung UI here So if for example, I wanted to get rid of an app I Installed so I'll Just press for one second and the menu pops up with an uninstall option Uh, you can do that straight away from there Whereas on the pixel If I do that here if I just go To hold down, I don't have the uninstall option Um, the other way to do it, I guess I have to Go into the app app drawer Find an app that I've downloaded for example Drag it up and put it into the uninstall bin there Now, um One other app that I used to use was to view my gallery So all my photos and videos I'm using an app called quick pic so on the On the Samsung I have quick pic here It's just easy to browse. It's very straightforward and it's super fast now I can get quick pic on the Google Pixel And I found out that There's a limitation for some reason with the pixel phone Uh, specifically with this app Which no one seems to know online at the moment. I've been on various forums Um, all of the text is in purple or pink Um, and there's no way in the settings to change it to white, which it is in every other Uh, version of the app that I've ever had Um, I've only ever seen this on the pixel. So I'm not sure why it's doing that but It's a little bit annoying and um, I've resorted to using a separate gallery app for that instead The other thing, uh, when you get, uh Messages from people you get a number Next to the icon the app icon to say how many messages you haven't read yet Pretty common. Uh, most people have used it all the time So for example, if you guys can have a look here, um under the whatsapp icon I've got, uh, a two so that shows me that I've got two, uh, unread messages I'll just zoom in a little bit there for you There you go. So By default, uh, the google pixel actually doesn't, um Have notification badges, whether that's a number or otherwise Um, and I was quite surprised to find that out because when I was looking, um, online for Solutions on why the badges aren't working. I found out the pixel just doesn't have that option So even though this is the pixel now, uh, I'm using nova launcher And there's an option in the prime version of that to add notification badges So I had to go all the way around just to get that And finally, um, the music player, um, I had to download a third party music player For the pixel When I closed the music player app the music stops playing On the samsung s8 it didn't do that. Um, but equally when the music is playing, uh, I don't get music controls on the lock screen either And I'm sure there's there's ways around to get Uh, a separate lock screen or some widgets or an app to do that But by default it cannot do that which the samsung obviously can Uh, and it's a bit of a shame It's done that but Unfortunately, those are uh, the ways the way things are at the moment. So, um, I do miss those things Um, and I have to give it to samsung for allowing me to realize, um, just how much I would actually miss it By upgrading to the pixel to excel Um, however, there are some things that are better on the pixel which I did upgrade for including the camera Which includes the portrait mode, um, which I really like It has the squeeze feature, um, to open up google assistant Um, you have the pixel buds, um, which allows you to translate other languages by having the headphones in your ears Um, one other thing I really like is the now playing feature on the lock screen And that's quite useful appears there at the bottom um, and lastly the, uh, option to supply power from the pixel to another device So when you connect your phone to usb You can either choose to charge the phone, uh, whether you're getting it from an outlet or or a laptop or a computer Uh, but likewise you have the option to send power back from the pixel to the other device So you're you're charging the other device as well and that's a really cool feature as well. So Okay, so that was a quick run through of, um, all of the features that I miss from my s8 plus Uh, what do you guys think leave a comment below to see if I've missed anything out? Um, or if you still think Uh, the google pixel 2 is far better than an s8 plus Overall, I think, um, it's actually not worth upgrading. Um, there's just so many things The s8 plus can do, uh, which you get used to and it becomes sort of a lifestyle Uh, that the pixel 2 doesn't so for the past few days Um, it's been a bit of a struggle to to live without some of those features. I've just shown you Um, but overall I am quite happy with the phone. Um, it is fast I do have stopped android on there as well Um, and the camera quality I think is far better Um, if you want to see a comparison Uh, of the, uh videos images and audio Check out my previous video. Um, otherwise if you have any questions, uh, about any of the Features that I've mentioned or anything else with the phones then do give a leave a comment below And do subscribe. I've got some more videos coming up. I'm going to be reviewing some of the more latest phones And hopefully see you next time. Take care


Welcome everyone, in the previous lecture we had seen a problem which was which involved a system that had that could be in two possible states, states S1 and S2 and there were certain actions available at each of these states and we designed policies that of both deterministic as well as random randomized kinds that were Markov, here was a deterministic Markov policy and policies that were also history dependent. So first so these were so the randomized Markov policy and then we got to we altered the problem a little bit and then we got to also history dependent policies. So this was for example a deterministic history dependent policy and here was a randomized history dependent policy. So now what we will do is we will come we will come from here to the next type of problem where we would be asking ourselves how do we actually solve a problem like this I mean how do we actually solve a stochastic control problem or a Markov decision process means what how does one actually find what the optimal policy is. Now in this case what we will do first is we will restrict ourselves to just Markov policies which means we will look for a policy that is optimal over the set of Markov policies for a particular problem and what we will do is we will show that this kind of a search for the optimal Markov policy can actually be simplified greatly by using what is called the Bellman's optimality equation. So we will get to this in a moment. So what we will do now is go back to the stochastic control type of formulation of the problem where if you recall we were looking for we were looking for an optimal policy which was we were looking for an optimal policy. So this pi was our policy which comprised of functions mu 0 to mu n minus 1 these were the decision rules and this was we wanted that we were looking for a policy that is in the set of Markov deterministic policies. So let me write this emphasize that by putting a D next to this. So the policy has to minimize a cost and the cost that you get from a when you apply a policy pi to the problem is given by this expression. So we had a cost which was the expectation of a terminal cost g n of x n plus the sum of the stage wise cost which was g k of u k w k sum goes over from 0 to n minus 1. Now u k itself because we have choosing a policy which is Markov u k here is a function mu k of x k. So therefore this cost can be written as equivalently as g n of x n plus sum from k from 0 to n minus 1 g k of x k mu k of x k comma w k. The expectation here is over all the things that are random in this problem. Now since we are we since we have already put in the the a particular policy which is deterministic the only thing that is random in this problem are the is the noise that is given by w 0 to w n minus 1. So that is that is the randomness in the problem. Now this here is a cost that depends on two things. First is the policy that we are applying. So the dependence on the policy is clear it it is here all the mu's are appearing in the in in this expression. So it depends so the cost depends on the policy. So that is why the cost that we incur is is represented as j sub pi where pi is you emphasize this pi here because we want to show that the policy that the cost depends on the policy. The the other dependence here is on the initial state. The initial state here is is x 0. x 0 is where the system starts from now that is that so the policy also depends on the the the cost also depends on x 0 right because where you start from would determine what kind of cost you would actually get. For example in the inventory problem the amount of the the total cost that you would incur depends on how much inventory you start off start off with to begin with right. It also depends on a bunch of other things say for example the cost would depend on the time horizon also the cost would depend on the kind of the stage wise cost functions and the terminal cost functions and so on. But all of those are implicit here we are not we are not emphasizing their dependence in this particular expression. So the problem of the stochastic control problem that we are faced with is to find what is the optimal policy in a certain class of policies. So the class of policies we are as I said we are considering here is the class of Markov deterministic policies and there the problem now becomes to find the optimal cost the optimal cost as a function of the initial state. So J star of x 0 which you can say is the minimum over all policies in a in the class that we are considering which is the class of Markov deterministic policies. This is your stochastic control problem it asks you to find what is the optimal Markov policy when you start off from a from a certain state x 0 right. So let us let us just see let us dwell a little bit on what the complexity of a problem like this is. So here as I have stated this problem is asking me to search over all possible Markov deterministic policies right. So let us see how how large this this set of Markov deterministic policies is and and how you know how large how vast is this search. So to do this let us look at let us say for example the state space here are the state space that we are considering the size of the state space is is b some finite number is b. Suppose the the the number of actions available at each time step is the size so number of actions at each time step is so this here is the size of the state space the number of actions available at each time step is suppose small a and let us assume this also is finite this is the number of actions at each time step each time or each decision epoch as you want to call it and now suppose we have n which is your time horizon or number of decision epochs. So question is what is the size of the set of Markov decision Markov decision the what is the size of the set of Markov deterministic policies. So let us say so the question is what is this. So we can let us let us try to get an estimate of of of this this particular quantity. You notice that at every time instant you have a choice of of a actions a is the number of actions that you have at each time step. So the number of actions here is a and you can be in one of b possible states the system can be in one of b possible states and you have a choice of of a actions. So every decision rule can be decided once you tell me what action I am taking in each state. So there are b possible states and a possible choices for actions at each state. So that it tells me that the number of number of decision rules so number of decision rules each each time is is actually a to the power b. The reason for this is because we have we have a choices for and for each state and there are b states. So there are you can this is a so you get a times a times a b times so that gives you the number a so that gives you the number a to the power b. Since we have now since we have n time steps that means the number of this is the number of decision rules at each time. So since there are n time steps the number of policies is which is this is a to the power b to the power n in other words a to the power b times n. Now let us do this let us just run through this calculation and see how big this number could be. So suppose a is 10 which is that means you have 10 possible actions. And suppose you have say let us say 5 possible states. So b is 5 and suppose you the time horizon that you are considering is let us say let us say a time horizon is also 10. So then what is a to the a raise to b times n well a raise to b times n then becomes 10 raise to 5 times 10 this is 10 raise to 50. This is the total number of Markov deterministic policies in this in this problem. So you can see that this problem actually a simple problem with just 10 actions 5 possible states and 10 time steps. This itself has a humongous number of Markov deterministic policies for us to choose from. So this problem that we have posed here which is asking us to minimize find the policy which minimizes this cost over the set of all Markov deterministic policies is essentially asking us to find the best policy out of this set of 10 raise to 50 different policies. So this is clearly a very very complex problem. If you were to approach this in the most naive possible way which is by listing out all possible policies this would probably take you longer than you know the age of the universe to even solve. So this is obviously a very very complicated problem. So what we will do what we will see in today's and in the subsequent lecture is that there is actually a way to simplify this by where we will actually use the structure of the problem the fact that there is an underlying Markov process going on that there is a cost which is additive and so on. All of this will be exploited to reduce the complexity of searching like this. So in a sense we will not attack this problem as one where we have to search over or Markov deterministic policies. But before we get to that let me make another point. So suppose we were not looking for Markov deterministic policies but say history dependent deterministic policies. Suppose the search was suppose we were optimized not over Markov deterministic, optimized over not Markov deterministic policies but optimize over history dependent deterministic policies. Which means then the optimal cost that we were looking for is let me denote that by J star star of X0. This would then be the minimum over the minimum over pi in pi HD of the cost that would come about from that particular policy. Now let me put a small tilde here just to distinguish this from the earlier term and the reason for this tilde is because now the cost that I get from a history dependent policy is actually a different expression. So this here is going to be the expectation of the terminal cost plus the cost that you get in each stage which is a function of the state at that time and the action but then the action now is chosen as a function of the entire history. So let me write this as mu k of hk of wk, where hk here is the history at time k. The history at time k is simply the sequence of states and actions that have been realized up until time k minus 1 and the state at time k. So this is your, this then becomes the expression when you have a history dependent policy. So what has changed here is in place of, in place of having just the xk which would be where which is only the current state we now have the entire history present here. So that has, that therefore gives rise to a different expression let us call I have called it j tilde and when you minimize this over all history dependent policies we get a cost which is j double star of x0. This here is another way of posing the problem where we are now asking what is the optimal cost you can get if you were to allow for history dependence in your decision rule. So now let us, let us try to think of how may, what kind of complexity this problem amounts to. So suppose, let us take a simple case once again. So suppose we have, let me take for simplicity that, so once again we have A is the number of actions, B is the number of states, the number of possible states, number of elements in your state space. So and the question is what is this quantity pi hd, the size of pi hd. So well the number of history dependent policies would depend also on n which is the time horizon. So let me write the time horizon here, n is time horizon. So let us compute this for various values. So let us say for example, let us what we want to know what this is, let us say n equal to 2 for example. So for n equal to 2 you have two decision rules to choose from, there is a decision rule at time 0 and there is a decision rule at time 1. The decision rule at time 0 has in that you have A actions to choose from and you have B states at which you have to make this choice. So the number of possible decision rules over there is once again A raised to B, this is at time 1. Then suppose you then you take the decision rule at time 2. Now at time 2 you know not just the state at time 2 but also the entire history. Now you have to ask yourself well what is the total number of histories that you have at time 2. The number of histories that you can have is potentially the number of is going to be the number of is the history at time 2 will involve the state at time 0 or the history at time 1 will involve the state at time 0 and the state at time 1 and the action that you took at time 0. So the number of histories then is potentially A which is the number of actions at time 0 times the number of states at time 0 which is B times the number of states at time 1. So the number of histories at time 1 is going to be therefore A times B times which is which is let me write it simply it is A B square. This is the number of possible histories at time 1 and we have a choice of A actions one for each possible history. So the number of possible decision rules at time 1 is A raised to A raised A B square. So this so the total number of policies therefore can be as large as this A times B times A raised to B times A raised to A B square. This is what you get for when the time horizon is 2. Now when the time horizon is 3 let us compute this again for when the time horizon is 3 and the number of decision rules at time 0 is still A raised to B. Then you have decision rules at time 1 which is A raised to A B square. Then you have decision rules at time 3 at time 2. The decision rules at time 2 you have A actions and the number of histories now is going to be well it will comprise of 2 actions the actions at time 0 and time 1 and the 3 states which is at the state at time 0, the state at time 1 and the state at time 2. So this is going to be A square B cube. This is the total number of histories that you can have. So A raised to A square B cube is the number of decision rules at time 2. This entire product taken together gives you the total number of history dependent policies that you can have. So I do not need to tell you that this again can be an extremely large number as in fact it is much larger than even the number we computed for Markov deterministic policies. So this therefore once again puts a question on in front of us as to okay we have posed a problem of Markov decision processes we saw that it has several applications we looked at a very clean application in inventory control but what is actually the way to solve a problem like this. So this is something that we now need to address okay. So the crux of solving a problem like this okay whatever be the class of policies whether it is whether we are looking for the whether we are looking for Markov deterministic policies or whether we are looking for history dependent deterministic policies or randomized policies or any of that the whole idea behind solving any of this is to use what we know about the structure of the problem. We know this that the cost has this additive structure that there is a terminal cost and then there is a stage wise cost. So there is a there is the which means that the cost that you incur over the entire time horizon does not depend does not depend on the specific trajectory that you have followed does not depend does not depend is not very strongly dependent on the trajectory that you have followed over the time horizon. Rather what happens the way you in accrue the cost is that one accrues the cost at each stage that is a there is a stage at each stage the action that you take and the state that you are in combined with a bit of noise is what tells you the cost that you would accrue in that particular stage as it is and the total cost that we that we that we accumulate is the sum of all these stage wise cost. So this is a crucial part of the structure of a stochastic control problem or a Markov decision processes problem. So we have to we somehow have to make use of this structure in order to simplify this choice of or simplify the search of overall over the set of all policies of whatever kind. The other structural element which I have not written over here is the fact that the next state which is xk plus 1 is again given a given to is depends only on the current state which is xk the action we choose in the current state and any element of noise which means that the next state the next state at time k plus 1 does not depend any further on the previous states than it does on just xk. So which means given the xk and the uk and the noise the next state is completely determined alternatively given the xk and the uk then the probability distribution of the next state is determined completely determined. One does not need to know the entire history of states that has that have occurred in order to in order to determine what the next state is. This again is very conducive to the kind of structure we have in the cost function because here it means that once you get to a certain state you you get a and you take a certain action you get a certain reward. It does not matter how you got there and and it does not matter it does not matter what has happened previously in the past. This kind of separability or additive structure in the cost function has to be exploited and what we will see next how this is actually being exploited in order to produce a tractable method for computing the optimal solution or the optimal policy for these kinds of problems.


This paper proposes the use of higher-order derivatives for managing the risks associated with wind power generation. It shows how standardization of weather derivatives can increase market liquidity and efficiency, and suggests a lasso regression approach to narrow down the number of traded instruments. Empirical analysis indicates that higher-order derivatives can enhance the out-of-sample hedge effect and reduce trading volume. This article was authored by Takujimatsumoto and Yuji Yamada.


What's going on, Tigers? This is Jacob Shoup. Today we have a nice upmarket, the DIA going straight up from the morning, NDX, similar kind of pattern. The Q's, similar as well, and GDX has been cooking recently, and that is at the expense of the DXY, so the dollar essentially. As someone mentioned in the den, it had been, you know, I mean from this morning, I mean we really had a steep decline going on here. It went down past the 101 mark, was kind of flirting with 100 in general, really tried for the past few hours to get back up over that 101 mark, and it did, and we'll see if that holds into the rest of the day, but the dollar has been getting absolutely smoked. That's obviously great for gold. So we'll see what that kind of has in store. You look at steel dynamics, so it did end up, let me see here, just do your date. It did end up testing that level, like we were saying the other week, and then it did reject it, but it's not on a lot of volume. It might get back down to that area, and we'll see what happens. You know, as I always say, I love trading this stock quite a bit, and so we'll see. Steel's also at, I guess, like a cyclical high for the industry right now, so it may be, I don't know if I would ever suggest right now is a good time to get into steel in general, just because of the cyclical nature of the industry, but it is making that nice, you know, it tested rejected, it'll probably retest again, so. It's interesting is Volvo has knocked it out of the park today. Truck maker Volvo post record Q1 as sales and margins beat forecasts. Post 45% jump in preliminary Q1 earnings. Their EBIT is at 18.4 billion crowns versus, I mean, that knocked their forecasts out of the park. Full earnings will be on April 20th, and it's a nice little bump in it. They've been really focusing a lot on making, I mean, they have forever, but cars, excuse me, trucks, cargo and all that, and they've done quite well. They're also doing decently regarding like the EV market as well, so it'll be interesting to follow along and kind of see what happens with them. In some news, I know Twitter is no longer publicly traded, but there has been some interesting stuff going on. Twitter announced earlier that they're going to merge with eToro, not merge with eToro, but rather have an eToro plug-in for their application. So let me see here. Hold this over for y'all. This is neat. I mean, this headline says it pushes app into finance, but really what it is, I think Musk wants this to be a one and done place where you stop, right? And this is also the concept in general with like Web 3, okay, and not familiar with like what Web 3 is. The way that it would, you know, practically be implemented is it's a one place to go. So Reddit kind of tried to run with that as like the front page of the internet a while ago, but obviously there's, you know, it's just really a message board at the end of the day, a forum board. Twitter with Musk implementing this is it's huge. So I mean, you'll be able to trade stocks based on it. You'll be able to trade crypto on it. Twitter has a really cool kind of feature essentially where if you put a money sign in front of a ticker, it'll link it. It's like a hashtag but for stocks. So and this is interesting too, is it's coming in at a time where, how do you call it? Of course, I'm blanking on the name of it. Give me a second. The, it's basically like a medium where you post articles in behind paywalls, but anyways they came out yesterday saying that they were going to compete with Twitter and allowing, you know, kind of short form and then message scroll down board. So Twitter has also announced that they're going to be implementing something called monetization where you can put your posts essentially behind a paywall, which will be massive. Again, not publicly traded, but what I think is interesting about this is, you know, I haven't been on Twitter in a long time, but I've recently been on TFNN's Twitter and I've noticed that you have long form posts now on it and this is getting away from the core of what Twitter was and kind of how it barred its market share to begin with and I think what that does is it leaves opportunities for smaller platforms that have been trying to compete with Twitter to get a leg in. So in the next few years, it might be interesting to see things like Mastodon and some other message boards that have tried to, excuse me, social media apps that have tried to emulate original Twitter and they'll see how they kind of get a percentage of the market share out of it. But it is pretty interesting to see this kind of development for it and I think really like this is the future for a lot of these major tech platforms, all your social media platforms are going to need to start integrating, I mean this kind of competition here, they're going to need to start integrating more and more features. Facebook did it with Marketplace which is pretty huge in a way of like cutting down eBay a little bit in some capacity, not in every way, but you know this kind of diversification of what the platform does and what you're allowed to do is pretty interesting. So let's see, obviously CPI was lower yesterday which is huge, but one of the things that was interesting to me is when you read the CPI, we'll get more into this when we come back, but you had fuel, oil, and gasoline extremely low, I mean you had massive negative growth for them and this was waiting CPI quite a bit. Not much else was budging and what I'm concerned about in some ways and I obviously couldn't be entirely wrong on this, but with the new OPEC cuts and we might not see it until after May, but we you know might end up getting higher gas, I mean we've deployed gas prices, we've deployed a lot of the strategic reserves already, especially in March which obviously none of this OPEC revelation came to light until April and through March there was a deployment of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, see if I can pull it up for you, right about here and this was in March and so whether or not that's you know suppressed prices greatly at the pump you know we'll stand to see with the increase in OPEC and again we'll talk about this a little bit more when we come back, we might not see too much increase until after May as what the Saudis do essentially is form contracts a few months out for delivery of supply, we'll talk about that a little more folks, stay tuned we'll be right back. Currencies, commodities and bond markets are as important as ever right now with how the-