My fellow Americans, in recent days, all of us have been swamped by a sea of economics that makes some good, some bad, and some just plain confusing. There are times when I think that the paper traffic that crosses my desk in a week could fill a big city phone book and then some. The value of the dollar is up around the world. Infest rates are down by 40 percent. The stock and bond markets surge upward. Inflation is down 59 percent. Buying power is going up. When economic indicators are down, others are up. But the dark cloud of unemployment hangs over the lives of 11 million of our friends, neighbors, and family. At times, the sheer weight of all these facts and figures make them hard for anyone to understand. What do they really mean, and what can we do to make them better? Well, the first step is to understand what they mean in human terms. How they're affecting the everyday lives of our people, because behind every one of those numbers are millions of individual lives. Young couples struggling to make ends meet, teenagers looking for work, older Americans threatened to buy inflation, small businessmen fighting for survival, and parents working for a better future for their children. All of them have one thing in common. They're Americans who love this country of ours and want to make it a better place. They're brave, hardworking people who know that America today faces serious problems that were long years in the making. And they're desperately trying to make sense out of all the statistics, slogans, and political jargon filling the airwaves in this election year. Above all, they're concerned citizens who are looking for guideposts on the road to recovery for ways to help see our country through to better times. I know because I hear from hundreds of them every day. In meetings here at the White House, on visits to schools, meeting halls, factories and fairgrounds across the country, and in thousands of phone calls and letters, I only wish I could share with you tonight all that they have to say. Their hopes, their fears, their concerns, and most of all, their quiet, patient courage. But let me just give you one example that speaks for so many of you. A letter from a wife and mother named Judith, who lives in Selma, Alabama. Dear Mr. President, she writes. It's 3.45 a.m. and for over an hour I've been unable to sleep. This morning, I need very much to believe in something. I'm not writing so much as an individual, but as a representative of so many. We need to talk with you, to believe that you hear us. After years of training and experience, we can't find jobs. Some unemployment figures sound almost healthy next to the almost 19% we're enduring in Selma. The costs for basic survival are nearly beyond belief. There may never be a house, home of our own, that dream we've worked for for so many years. We have said no to so many things. We're afraid and confused. We've worked hard. We conserved. We planned. We were frugal. We're careful. We feel so out of control. We don't want a handout. We just want to help make the system well again. We must know that in the tons of bureaucracy, we've not been lost. We want a help. We want a better life, and we're willing to work for it. We believe. We must. It's all we have. Well, Judith, I hear you and millions of other men and women like you stand for the values of hard work, thrift, commitment to family and love of God that made this country so great and will make us great again. And you deserve to know what we're doing in these very difficult times to bring you a dream, the American dream, back to life again after so many years of mistakes and neglect. Tonight, in homes across this country, unemployment is the problem uppermost on many people's minds. Getting Americans back to work is an urgent priority for all of us, and especially for this administration. But remember, you can't solve unemployment without solving the things that caused it. The out-of-control government spending, the skyrocketing inflation and interest rates that led to unemployment in the first place. Unless you get at the root causes of the problem, which is exactly what our economic program is doing, you may be able to temporarily relieve the symptoms, but you'll never cure the disease. You may even make it worse. I have a special reason for wanting to solve this problem in a lasting way. I was 21 and looking for work in 1932, one of the worst years of the Great Depression. Now I can remember one bleak night in the 30s when my father learned on Christmas Eve that he'd lost his job. To be young in my generation was to feel that your future had been mortgaged out from under you, and that's a tragic mistake we must never allow our leaders to make again. Today's young people must never be held hostage to the mistakes of the past. The only way to avoid making those mistakes again is to learn from them. The pounding economic hangover America's suffering from didn't come about overnight, and there's no single instant cure. In recent weeks a lot of people have been playing what I call the blame game. The accusing finger has been pointed in every direction of the compass, and a lot of time and hot air have been spent looking for scapegoats. Well, there's plenty of blame to go around. The problems we face are bigger than any one party or group of people. They're the result not of weeks or months, but of years, even decades of past mistakes. The problem isn't who to blame, it's what to blame. So tonight, let's forget about party politics and take a look at how our country got into this fix and what we can do to get her out of it. When I said this problem was years in the making, I wasn't just using a figure of speech. This chart shows you what I mean. You see that red line? It represents the rate of unemployment from 1968 through the present, and it tells us two important things. First of all, it's a jagged line representing rises and dips in unemployment as our economy passed through boom periods and bust periods over the past decade. This reminds us that the current recession is part of a long series, a series that hasn't stopped because in the past, when the crunch came, too many in government resorted to quick fixes instead of getting to the root cause. Each time they applied the quick fixes, unemployment dipped for a while, only to take off again. In that sense, you could say that we've been on a decade-long roller coaster ride. The only difference is that on a roller coaster, you end up on solid ground once the ride is over. As you can see from the chart, while unemployment zigzagged from year to year, its long-term direction kept notching upward. Notice that each so-called recovery left unemployment higher than before the recession. In 1968, unemployment stood at 3.6 percent. In 1971, it shot up to 5.9 percent. Then it started coming down again, but instead of going all the way back to 3.6 percent, it bottomed out at 4.9 percent. In 1974, it started shooting up again, and the same thing happened. It bottomed out at a higher level than before. In other words, for all its short-term ups and downs, the unemployment roller coaster was really an escalator, edging its way up the charts throughout the last decade. Unless we reverse that trend, it can only get worse, not just for us, but for our children and grandchildren. Now, let's look at what's behind this bad trend in unemployment, what's been causing it for over a decade. A second chart tells much of the story, but before we look at it, I'll bet many of you have already come up with the answer. It's a phenomenon that last year, a majority of Americans correctly identified as our single most pressing long-term problem, inflation. Inflation and the high interest rates it leads to are the real culprits. They create the economic climate that leads to unemployment. This blue line represents inflation. Like unemployment, inflation has zig-zagged over the last decade. But you can see that up to now, the long-term trend has been upwards. Again, as with unemployment, the old quick fixes simply did not work. Each time they were applied, they gave a little temporary relief to the patient, but left him weaker than he was before. It's a consistent pattern. Each time inflation has shot up since 1969, there has been a deadly, delayed reaction of rising unemployment. The inflation is like a virus in the economic bloodstream, sometimes dormant and sometimes active, but leaving the patient weaker after every new attack. My fellow Americans, we've got to stop these trend lines to disaster. To do that, we have to understand what causes them. Well, for starters, our federal government has been living beyond its means for more than a generation. One of the wisest of our founding fathers, Thomas Jefferson, warned that the public debt is the greatest of dangers to be feared. He believed that it was wrong for one generation to forever burden the generations yet to come, and for the first 150 years of our history, our leaders heeded Jefferson's warning. But not lately. In our lifetimes, we've seen government spending rage out of control. We've only had one balanced budget in the last 22 years. So now we're staggering under a trillion dollar debt. This year, before government can spend one dime to feed the hungry, care for the sick, or protect our freedom, it must plan to spend $110 billion just to pay interest on that debt. And still, the big spenders wonder why the American people want what a stubborn minority in the House of Representatives denied them just 12 days ago, a constitutional amendment to balance the budget. All of this government spending and readying can only spawn higher taxes and whopping deficits, which for nearly two decades led to inflationary increases in the money supply. Inflation and massive government borrowing drive up interest rates. That makes it difficult or impossible for families to get the credit they need to buy homes, cars, and appliances, or for businesses to invest in greater productivity. And ultimately, inflation leads to recession and unemployment. We've had eight recessions since World War II. At the bottom of it, all is inflation. Government caused inflation. Over the years, our leaders adopted something called the New Economics, based on a belief that a little inflation each year created prosperity. But each time, the economic disruption caused by inflation triggered another round of recession and high unemployment. The government reacted not like your family would by putting its own house in order, but by spending, borrowing, and printing more money. Unemployment would dip for a time, but the same quick fix that temporarily eased unemployment was sending inflation back through the ceiling. It was a vicious cycle. Too many people played politics with the economy for too long, and those twin disaster lines kept inching ominously upward, bringing our society closer and closer to catastrophe. In a way, I guess I can understand why so many of our political leaders fell into this trap. I'm sure they did it with the best of intentions. It's easy to lose touch with reality when it's other people's money that you're spending, and there are so many things you want to do for those or this or that special interest group. So many programs, many of them quite attractive and well-meaning that can only be subsidized by more government taxing, spending, and borrowing. I can understand how it happened. Indeed, like many others, for a time I accepted government's claim that it was sound economics.   I didn't come here to reward pressure groups by spending other people's money, and most of all, I didn't come here to further mortgage the future of the American people just to buy a little short-term political popularity. I came to Washington to try to solve problems, not to sweep them under the rug and leave them for those who will come later. A president's greatest responsibility is to protect all our people from enemies foreign and domestic. Here at home, the worst enemy we face is economic, the creeping erosion of the American way of life and the American dream that has resulted in today's tragedy of economic stagnation and unemployment. Now, I don't pretend for a moment that in 21 months, we've been able to undo all the damage to our economy that has built up over more than 20 years. The first part of our program has been in the books only one year and 13 days. Much of the legislation we need has still not been enacted. We've still got a long way to go before we restore our prosperity. But what I can report to you tonight, my fellow Americans, is that at the long last, your government has a program in place that faces our problems and has already started solving them. 21 months ago, we faced five critical problems. High taxes, runaway government spending, inflation, high interest rates, and unemployment. Getting to the roots of unemployment meant fighting inflation and high interest rates caused by runaway government spending and taxing because we know that when inflation shoots up, it triggers a delayed action rise in unemployment. Now, inflation is being driven back down and lower unemployment will follow. So we started by winning the first real tax cut for the American people in nearly two decades. Our program brings down income tax rates 25%. At the same time, we've been cutting costly wasteful government regulations and the rate of increase in government spending. We've reduced the rate of government spending growth by nearly two-thirds. Inflation, which registered 12.4% in 1980, is down to just 5.1% so far this year. Interest rates, which had climbed as high as 21.5% before we took office, have this week fallen to 12%, not low enough, but certainly heading in the right direction. Unemployment, always a lagging indicator in times of recession, has not yet stopped its upward drift. But in 21 months, we've already brought tax rates down by a quarter with the third installment coming next July and brought down the rate of increase in government spending by nearly two-thirds. That's helped us to bring down the rate of inflation by more than half and that's helped us to bring down interest rates by 40%. So on four out of five problems that faced us in 1980, we've made important progress. We haven't solved them all, but we're making headway. Just last week, the Federal Reserve Bank decided to lower its discount rate to 9.5%. The first time, this key interest rate has gone below two digits since 1979 and the fifth reduction in just four months. This demonstrates the Fed's confidence that inflation and market rates will continue coming down and its confidence that we can work together for a healthy, non-inflationary recovery. All of this lays the groundwork for a recovery that will mean more jobs and more opportunity for all our people. But it's a delayed reaction. Remember the trend lines. Just as surely as skyrocketing inflation created a negative reaction that drove up unemployment, bringing down inflation and interest rates is creating a positive reaction that will boost employment. I wish there were a quicker, easier way, some magic shortcut. But unemployment is always one of the last things to turn around as an economy heads into recovery. And make no mistake, America is recovery bound and the world knows it. The American dollar beaten down and distrusted in the late 1970s is showing new strength. Recently, we've been seeing a surge of investment in our stock and bond markets. This is no flash in the pan. Markets will go up and they will come down but the trend in the United States is up. What's more, this investment is coming from all over. From home, from abroad, from small investors on Main Street, to those who manage billions of dollars including our workers pension funds. Why aren't these people heeding the drumbeat of doom and gloom coming from Washington? Because they've been watching this country's inflation and interest rates dropping for months. They realize this administration means business in the battle against inflation. Their decision to put cash on the line is a strong vote of confidence in the foundation being laid for America's recovery. Healthy, stable growth that will bring new jobs and opportunity for our people without returning us to runaway inflation and interest rates. That's the one big difference between the recovery America is headed for today and the shaky temporary recoveries of the recent past. This one is built to last. With your support, we can show the world that we've learned our lesson and that this time we're going to get the job done and get it done right. This time we're going to keep inflation, interest rates and government spending, taxing and borrowing down and get Americans back on the job. Much of the work that remains to be done requires congressional cooperation. As you know, Congress adjourned October 2nd for the election campaign. But it left behind a lot of unfinished business. For this reason, I urge the Congress to reconvene after the elections so that it can do its part as quickly as possible to continue the work of recovery. We simply can't afford to wait until next year, when something as vital as the economic health of America is at stake. The Congress will return on November 29th. It will face five top economic priorities, priorities that must be addressed. First, the Congress must do its part to control government spending. Before adjourning, it sent me only two appropriation bills. 11 more remain to be passed. And I will use the veto if necessary to keep them within the budget. When the Congress passed the tax package this summer, it pledged to save $3 in outlays for every $1 in new revenues. I intend to hold the Congress to its word. Second, I urge the Congress to reconsider the constitutional amendment to balance the budget. This crucial measure was passed by the Senate and supported by a clear majority in the House of Representatives. It was only defeated because of the hardcore opposition of a minority of representatives who prefer continued big spending. Third, the Congress should act on regulatory reform to help make government more economical and efficient and the private sector more productive. Regulatory reform legislation was passed unanimously by the Senate, but was bottled up in committee in the House. Fourth, the time has come for passage of the Enterprise Zones Initiative to revive declining inner city and rural communities by providing new incentives to develop business and jobs. This program was approved by the Senate Finance Committee, but still awaits action on the Senate floor and in the House. And fifth, we need to pass the clean air bill, which, while protecting the environment, will make it possible for industry to rebuild its productive base and create more jobs. But it isn't an easy job, this challenge to rebuild America, renew the American dream. And I know it can be tempting listening to some who would go back to the old ways in the quick fix. But consider the choice. A return to the big spending and big taxing that left us with 21.5% interest rates is no real alternative. A return to double digit inflation is no alternative. A return to taxing and taxing the American people, that's no alternative. That's what destroyed millions of American jobs. Together, we've chosen a new road for America. It's a far better road. We need only the courage to see it through. I know we can.  Together, we can do it again. We can do it by slowly but surely working our way back to prosperity that will mean jobs for all who are willing to work and fulfillment for all who still cherish the American dream. We can do it, my fellow Americans, by staying the course. Thank you. Good night, and God bless you.


Country to ride, daikupenda Usiku nanchana, to kaina wewe Tama bati juye tu, tu ishipamoja Kokitanda changu, to kaina wewe Namola tu pemkate Kozeni lubi, nilubi, nilubi, nilubi, nilubi naife Inilubi, nilubi, nilubi, nilubi, naife Aftakumizomoyo nili sema si tajapenda tena Baka real love iniloketa, main real love na fiyolabia kutekiana Kok granted tena, nikakumbuka have this guy in my life Na shatia lini pa shatia dini, lisha team baka nisha me team a favorite zi Uboia mini changanisha, mini datisha, mini tizisha Mina shani ruga, suame fanya ni change mind about what I said in my second line Koz machi aki anaglita ka golda mina shakua the apple of my eye Simi nikiwa karibuna ena kwa gani me changanikiwa koz Smeli aki oni fanya zuzu, ya nivi leni ki ambiwa nichuz Bituini ena roses na mbeba juju koz nika mini shikiya juju So crush me and me tell you something 90% avitu nani ambiwa nga siskiyangi koz nyu Pay attention to the rhythm of your voice I mean, it's like a sweet melody to me Na uwa spendiku kukukat short koz na takakonu kiyongia And that's why nikiwa karibuna ena kwa gani yamavuna ni metulia See, manenu aki has this healing power That makes me forget about the heartbreak Basika e ni budget ko parlementia royangu nishampi tisha Naka president nishamu apisha Nani ni kupende, na kutunzega na dai ni kupende Dusiku na umchana tu kaina wewe Na mungu wa tu pemkate Vinilu vinilu vinilu vinilu naifil Vinilu vinilu vinilu Safi saafi saafi kabisa Welkom back to the E-Circuit. I'm Mike Itai. Remember our question for the day before we get into the interview is would you let your friends sit on your boyfriend's lap? It's an interesting question, I know but you can answer on the E-Circuit or what for our channel on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. Now our first guest goes by the name Feli Karembo and the guitarist Mr. Cross Bond Welkom to the E-Circuit It's your first time on the E-Circuit?  I'm fine with it.  Ya Safi umtumanyadzeis kia spoken word How do you describe spoken word? Okay, spoken word I come from poetry but the only difference between poetry and spoken word is poetry is written but now when you're performing now it becomes a spoken word but then also ya kuna difference because when you're performing spoken words spoken word I can say kiviangu akuna limit but poem kuna limitation there's some things you need to observe like stylistic devices and all that but in spoken word you're just picking your mind Ya, you're free You're just expressing yourself Na amalili inkadze ya apu sasa Cross Bond Amalili ektu vai bia kia wukasa macha ni kuena kuakampani E, Feli Karembo me ni ya artist musician naimba amalili performer naimba danstal reggae fusion na afro so alikuna kampani na piga gita alafo kikam naikuna piga gita alafo naongi alafo naongi ya kali So, aka tuka bond through naturality kama tuji na ako muka cross bond Safi, so how did you get into it say the spoken word Okay, first of all, sikuwa na joy kandu spoken word Like, from Kitambo, nimi kwa tu ni kiandika from high school I was just maybe niki kwa sana na umutua umutua cross padzangu I don't talk, I just write Sikuwa na Kitambo ni ya imendi kwa na kalaredi kila mahali sa isu bag No, like if umutua mi hihat and all that you know, sometimes when you're having issues in your life you don't want to share with anyone because una feel like una sumbu amtu So when me personal na prefer I just write what I feel if I'm having a problem na andika and then niki andika na feel wao, as nimi share Una feel much, much better Say, transition elifika kutoka kwa kwa andika two feelings ako na sikuzi express out loud using your art for me as spoken word Okay, so there is a day So I updated the status apart of my spoken word Okay, sikuwa na juwata ni spoken word So when I update another person and he was like What is your talent? Nika wama bia I don't know what my talent is I can see you can do spoken word Nika wama bia I don't know, maybe I try So he challenged me I can go home write So I went sikuwa juwata niki I just finished the piece took it to him and took a shoot your piece Neto bleeding scars Bleeding scars Actually that's the one in it Tamaliza na it's a favorite from your fans and your new fans sasa wala na was the e-circuit the bleeding scars Now back to your correspond you're an artist but now you're associated with spoken word spoken word, vaya karembo Ni Ni Ni Ni Ni Ni Ni Ni Ni Ni Ni Ni Ni Napenda na flow na rhyme I think it's the best I've ever seen or ever had From her?  Lemuku na takini niwa wistimia. Tama kwa ganda nkwa kainia wistimia. Taka nga hwa mende nga wanlimu na Hwushkawaku wakand pli kwissimia. What about social media? Sofende niwa. YouTube, Instagram, Facebook... How hard is it for you to distribute these digital content? What was the message? First to not have followers When we were upcoming artists we were worried other people were like your peace But now reaching out me had Another platform maybe below me In an interview and all that but as a upcoming artist we have a problem because of that platform kuna ni, kuhu shuwa wa ad And now in terms of events, muna blend vizuri muna mehishpua So definitely muna kill kwa event But say event za nini spokinwa na skyaga hindi yukua Issue sana sana because most of the people you invite on ataka Discounted tickets na wadle wa bada wa jatambuwa spokinwa wad vipua Ine nende laku kwa better ama nini nini neza fanyika nekua better First of all, most of the places we perform, we do it because it's our passion So if you have an event, we invite you to Like poetry, inafa we need to maybe a small token for us because Sometimes we need to have a small event So we need to take you serious like money on a small token So when you go there to do your pieces and your art They assume like it's free, like it's passion so you But so it's easy to na feel because this now Apart from being a talent, bada ni job kwaitu So ni hustle, so to na feel like we need to Take it as an event, maybe to na fakwa get To na fakwa paid and all that And that will appear as an artist, do you feel the same way? Zuna artist okay, I'm a live performer So anytime I go play in my guitar for some other bands they pay me Though it's not always to the standard but I get paid And I also have my shows at Shujamul I have three brand new tracks, give it fire fire and A cover for Ed Sheeran's Perfect I did it in a reggae style, it's on YouTube So the challenge is, kwa shows unaitawa to sometimes I have my shows Mitu anakam, ana perform, alafu anataka Alipwe mingiku likuata biliu na alipwe When you're rising, it's not that easy Like she has a show, where is the show? She clear We are bleeding scars event, second edition It's the second time she's having it, it happens every month In Soweto, now in that show she's trying to raise others And she's not even raising herself So that's the challenge, she doesn't even have the money to pay the other artist So I think there's a need for mobilization of more fans I don't know actually how I can help but I'm here playing the guitar for her, so at least I'm helping That's good, that's good, we support you We come through in Mzuri, it's an event In Soweto, it's the second edition In Soweto, we participate in the show Okay, to leave a first edition In it of the bleeding scars event So in this event, we have an upcoming artist, a platform So I'm from Kayole So I can say that I'm from Kayole So I want to show people that Kayole Apart from the vision of which others are not even true We have talent, a platform So I'm trying to create one for us Upcoming artist Is it specifically for spoken word or pure artist? No, it's not spoken word If you are a rapper, a dancer, a dancer This is a good chance for you So the first edition was successful We'll be doing it after every two months In it of the bleeding scars So count a few, count a platform This is a good chance for you Come showcase your talent I invite mentors, we have great people there Like Pudo, Dofan Age They come, they attend Maki I'm so grateful to them wherever they are They are my mentor And as a get-in-touch, where do you get more information about this? Okay, maybe on Instagram Felish Nawamboi, Facebook Felish Nawamboi They can also subscribe to my YouTube channel Felika Rainbow So about the event, it was on June 15 Come when you're a rapper, a dancer, a spoken word artist Singer, this is a chance for you You're all welcome And then on the bed Ship kia Soweto Kufika tu kaiole Soweto stage 17 Just give me a call Taupujiya And then on 2nd of June To kuna eventing Initua Mavoko open mic Iko mluolongo Ticket ni only 100 Bob For single Couple ni 150 And then a group of 5, 350 So I'll post the Postakwa Hando liangu wajue How to get the ticket Nice, nice Now kuna pise ni mkwa about kupafom Initua the bleeding scars just like your event Can you tell us a little bit about this And why is it a favorite of the fans? Okay, first bleeding scars Ni about heartbreak So I think people loved it because They can relate I just love it because Sikwana expect what I receive Vivo like ilini patatu by shok And so if they love them If they love it Then it also becomes my favorite So yeah Nice Sassanti ni sana kukukam Cross-bond Na nao shengia zon Kwa tuatiku delay Tuatiku delay Zon isha ingiwa It's a sad tune You have to get into the feeling Saafi saafi Na uto naza kupata api This as we conclude Cross-bond Charles Facebook ni cross-bond rasta YouTube cross-bond rasta Cross-bond Cross-bond Cross-bond rasta James Bond Rasta ko Instagram Cross-bond rasta ko Twitter Kwa YouTube ni cross-bond rasta We give quality So can you follow and follow Let's share ideas Saafi asaanti sana karembu kukukam through So this is the bleeding scars By Karembu What I feel here Is something not so rare Because when I first saw his DP I felt something deeper And I actually stole it from my DP See I wanted to meet him in person Because I knew he would like me And meet me his person Mostly when he replied to my text Even if it was mean I felt so meaningful to him See he promised me he was there to stay And finally after meeting him in person He made me his person I made him my heartland Because kwa Rwayangu wali kwa shakim Bia heo race na kaguza heo line Mostly I felt I was there The first time he called me babe Main wifey And I made him my babe My main, my hubby He was the first person I would say Morning 2 and last to say Good night 2 Kwa kwa wapenzi Marafiki 2 Kaidana 2 Tachana 2 Kwa diki Dake ni bila tamili kwenapas Ndo feelingsa ke kwangu zili Anza kupas I was there hoping and trusting That I will save it all And once again become is all Neli dani Goda Me ni peyeka rib kumda li kua live Ana li kua 2 alive Kimambia ni me miss yal Kwa na get bila ni memhati Ani bila siwe zimpata See nili liya Nika uma na kumda taime nina Omengi na naende liya kumara My babe My main My hubby Nasi baby wa to go all jana Why did you stand me up? Siya li ni ambiti anata ka Spare setting in patience Ya kuni miss kumbia li kua na Ta kani go missing out of his life Aka ni ambiapendi bila na Dress setting in vitite na Krob kumbia li kua me patakrash Siya na vitite na Krob na li kua na Ta kakumona daily in me Siya li ni ambiti I'm the main Kumbia li kua the main lie Siya li ni ambiapendi kushia na Kumbia was the one sharing him Siya li ni beba ufa la joa li joa na Penda kafa la joa li joa kudu Anything and everything for him Cause he was my everything See nili liya Nika umwa Nika jichukiya na nika chukiya mapezi Daki ni bila taimi li kua inagonda Piya ni li anzaku let go Ukuli ni li kua na Penda li ni umiza but Siimta ki mabaya Namitakia mazurina na mombiasana God and bless na waifam zalie Katoi karembo ka mimi Noila siku kata come home Kaki li eti dadi Brioa many heart Nibia telewa How I'm feeling right now Siya girl


Hello, everybody. I'm trying to remember the last time I saw so many people in three dimensions. This is a wonderful feeling to be back here again. And also a lovely excuse to not take the hoodie out the cupboard for the first time in about two and a half years. We're going to change gears like this and talk a bit about the impact of both open source but also open collaboration and open API ecosystems within the finance industry, taking a NatWest view of what we've done, what we've learned, what's gone wrong, what it's benefited us with and ultimately where we're planning on going next. And hopefully bringing to life some of the framework, some of the contributions, some of the work that individuals in this team, in this room and your companies have been helping to put forward. So I lead enterprise engineering. As was said, for NatWest we've been on a journey over the last three or four years off the back of open banking to really start to open up an organisation that's been a very traditional bricks and mortar finance company here in the UK hundreds of years now. We are a complex entity but I'm going to start with a bit of a history lesson for those of you who aren't intimately familiar with the world of open banking and open finance. 2016 and beyond or before that, I think we had a degree of connectivity across our ecosystem, across our companies and industry but it was largely individual value chains. We were partying with individual people on the other end of a contract, opening up services and APIs for a particular purpose. Open banking came along and forced to the CMA a regulatory change in that scene and in 2018 in January that came into effect with about 60 participants in the ecosystem forcing location data, ATM data, transaction data, payments data out into the public for the first time. In an organisation in an operation which suddenly challenged a bank's traditional way of protecting its market segment and serving its customers. I'm really proud to say that at NatWest we went beyond that regulation quite early and took it as an opportunity to treat this as a differentiator for us in the industry and we've now taken a very conscious tilt towards an open ecosystem model within the organisation and we'll talk a bit more about that in a second. Coming up very soon, being discussed actively at tables in different rooms right now is open finance, an opportunity to move well beyond the original intent of pure payments and transaction data and into a world of mortgages, savings accounts, insurance, pensions, really making sure that as an industry we can break down some of those barriers and walls. New competition and new innovation for our customers and our peers. What's been really critical in this journey is recognising very similar to the shift in open source that actually we as an organisation don't always have the best ideas sitting within our brick walls. We don't have the best technologies, we don't necessarily have the best technologists, we have some fantastic ones but actually this is about opening up and embracing the pace of the ecosystem both within the open source collaborations but also the open ecosystem and API ones as well. It's been a difficult lesson for us to learn, if I'm honest, taking a many hundred-year-old institution and bankers who are used to dealing with bricks and mortars and branches and try and teach them that actually the products they're now selling, in a lot of cases, are pure technology things they can't see and touch. The competitors who have spent many years challenging and fighting against are actually in many cases now their collaborators and their partners in these endeavours and their customers who they've been used to coming to them for products when they need them, walking into the front door of their branch, actually now have a very different expectation of how they should be engaging with a financial services company and a product. It's forced us into a model of accepting actually that things like sanctions screening, something that we do internally, is now a valuable product for an industry beyond our walls. The fintechs aren't necessarily here to eat our lunch every time but actually are huge opportunities for us to engage and connect with our customers in different ways and our competitors in a lot of cases, with FTC3 as a great example and now an opportunity for us to join together and really help solve some of our internal business problems as well as our consumer problems in an open marketplace. There's a lot of fantastic quotes and talks about ecosystem models and I'm not going to go through them but I think the key lesson we've learned is that the better the ecosystem we're in does, the better that we do as a participant of it. We're really trying to encourage that collaboration in every aspect as being a key culture form for us and I'm certainly not going to claim that we're at the end of that journey. Key for us, and I seem to have missing text on my slides as well so we'll see how well this goes for the rest of them, has really been focusing on five key culture tipping drivers across the organisation that play both in our open source mindset and our ecosystem mindset. We're talking about product over projects, a very common taxonomy, I'm sure we're all very familiar with it, but asking teams not to abandon and forget about technology, code and services in APIs once they're done with that particular investment but actually to feed and water, hydrate them and ultimately turn them off if it's not being needed or used anymore. We're forcing our teams to think externally so every single API or service that comes through any of our design boards that's classified as a business service is now required to be publicised on our bankofapis.com portal. I'll throw a link up to it at the end but you can see it publicly so everything we do whether it's check imaging, if you take a picture of a check and you cash it is now a publicly available API that anyone can use in the ecosystem beyond our bank. Most importantly for me is expecting unseen reuse and I think this goes in a lot of our open source contributions as well. Getting beyond the model that we can predict what something's going to be used for and writing it for some use cases and securing it for use cases well beyond its original intent. Over the last period we've seen 57 distinct examples and we'll talk about some of them in a minute of unexpected reuse of the services and APIs in our ecosystem each of which has either led to additional revenue that we weren't expecting to gain, additional cost avoidance and a better time to market because suddenly somebody hasn't had to develop a big complex thing or a cost reduction and an ability to scale a proposition significantly without the cost rising in line with it. We've got to deploy once mindset which if I'm honest is one of the most painful things for me in an organisation of 10,000 technologists is to convince people to reach over the fence and have a conversation with those in the room next to them to find a way to bring up and collaborate on a product that almost meets your needs rather than build something yourself again that absolutely meets your needs is a real culture twist across our technologists and our contributors that continues to be a focus for us and if anyone's solved it by the way come and grab me later and tell me how because I'll happily buy you a glass of wine later for that one. And lastly be open, again mindset shift but accepting that the teams don't always have the best ideas in them being open to the ecosystem both within our organisation and outside and actively taking part in those communities that enrich our knowledge, our approaches but also that our customers rely on and are supported by. I'm going to talk about five key examples of those out of the 57, these are the five I think are probably resonate best with this group. The free agent is an acquisition that we made in the SME accountancy firms we bought them about a year and a half, two years ago now completely separate company based up in Scotland does amazing work and very very quickly they were able to use our public facing APIs with nothing written bespokely for them to access their customers account details, transaction details and suddenly make payments so actually you can now do your tax returns within free agent without actually having to enter any of your bank account details from scratch they can just suck it out of the ecosystem both for us as a NatWest bank but also for any other participant in the open banking ecosystem as well and suddenly the proposition that was being provided to a customer wasn't just you put your data in and we'll tell you what your returns are but actually don't worry about all that horrible data stuff we'll take care of it for you here's a much richer ecosystem model for you. Cora, which is our chatbot if you've ever gone to natwest.com and had a question you'll be confronted with IBM Watson trying to solve it for you very quickly took on our accounts and payments APIs as well so now about 50% of the customers that come and talk to Cora are getting their questions solved in that channel rather than having to go further into a call centre or into an agent and that channel has grown almost double over the course of the pandemic with no additional cost in the running of those APIs or systems Rooster, which we bought at the end of last year Rooster is a youth account system I don't know if you guys use it but certainly I do for my kids well before we purchased it so it was nice to see that it was finally joining the NatWest family Rooster with no real involvement from our API team has been able to consume the login with Bank API a product that again is a non-traditional finance product but suddenly has allowed Rooster customers who were also NatWest customers to login link their NatWest account and app to their child's Rooster account and over the course of the next few months you'll be able to start to see your child's spending habits in your parent account you can login as a NatWest customer in the Rooster account using that API and that ecosystem and get a free 12 month card for your kid my eight year old has one at the moment running around the shops spending with a debit card is a mildly terrifying prospect if I'm honest as a parent but it's nicer though that I understand the technology that's sitting behind it NatWest invests our assets under management businesses using our public facing payments APIs and ecosystem now to transfer funds into people's investments accounts with a 25% plus increase in MPS and a 160% increase in assets under management again with no additional cost or complexity in the operational process of that money transfer actually they transfer more money in through our APIs than almost any other industry participant at the moment so it's nice to see some internal dog food eating and lastly pay it which is a new proposition we launched 18 months ago or so which is entirely founded on this principle of an open ecosystem it is a payments model allowing consumers, businesses to make payments to their customers or receive payments back from them there's some great examples of Northern Rail companies avoiding having to send out checks for delayed trains and suddenly giving somebody a URL they can click on to receive their money into the bank account of their choice but I think all of these are opportunities at millions of pounds worth of cost avoidance across our business that would never have been realised without that mindset model and shift that an open ecosystem has enabled we've stolen wonderfully I would love to say from the model that you guys have set really well in the open source family and frameworks and that we've contributed to my other hat runs our open source policy for that west but we've borrowed that mindset of open source contribution into open ecosystems as well so being really open with our meetups and forums if you go and check out our website you'll be able to find the next one of them we hosted last in 250 Bishopsgate last month with a great attendance actually and some really interesting conversations from both our peers but also more importantly from our consumers and the fintechs in the room about what they want our banking industry to look like in the years to come fairly open blog content around what it's like to consume an API how to get ahead, what's coming up next tips and tricks we've open sourced our SDKs so making it easier for customers to consume these and actually sit on the other end of it OAuth is not always the world's simplest protocol to wrap your head around so trying to make that easier for people to access this ecosystem we're moving our entire code repository within that west up into GitLab to create a mono repo approach between now and the end of this year really empowering inner sourcing as a model for that reaching across the boundary that we talked about earlier finding out the code that almost does the job that you needed to we've got obviously a huge focus on FDC3 which is that west we're hugely committed to and I think joining these approaches together the richness of an API ecosystem the ability to position that onto somebody's desktop in a way that allows it to link in to the apps and the experiences they need I think gives us hopefully the best of both worlds and we'll start to see hopefully some of the code from that west appear in that proposition very soon and lastly we're signatories to the fintech pledge so making it as simple as possible for new entrants to this market to come in the door understand how to work and help them to wrap their heads around what is not always the most simple or understandable industry to be part of and if you, as I said, want to go check out my words bankofapis.com is where you can find our nine brands you'll find our APIs as they sit today we're being very open about what's coming next and we welcome you to come and join the community that sits around that as well and lastly the what's next so we have a significant progress so far we expect to get nearer to the 200 APIs by the end of this year that's many thousands when you count the nine different brands and the multiple different versions and the various different schemas that they will all enforce we've got two million of our customers using our APIs on a regular basis through other parties so through the fintechs and the ecosystem gaining value from propositions and products that they wouldn't have otherwise had access to we've got almost half a billion calls a month I think just over that now actually and a very steady increase on that as we see going month to month the growth of this ecosystem is continuing unabashed and we expect that open finance that's going to receive another acceleration as well what's been great actually as we continue to scale both our calls and the proposition and product and consumers is the number of queries that we get hasn't scaled massively actually we have through reinvesting in the documentation and reinvesting in the community actually a pretty good approach to people being able to pick this stuff up fairly intuitively, fairly natively we've got a number of APIs coming up around things like open data and insights in the second half of the year age verification is another one of those the sanctions API that I mentioned previously that was originally done for one of our venture start-ups a large multinational marketplace that you will probably know it's also taken that on so when you sign up as a marketplace vendor it calls our API to work out whether you're an appropriate supplier for them or not so there's been some really interesting culture hacks and opportunities off the back of this that is starting to transform the way that our organisation sees itself our CEO Alison Rose has mentioned now that her last two investor packs and briefings APIs and ecosystems as being one of our key drivers behind what we see is the growth in the years to come so hopefully the start of a very positive relationship and one underpinned by our commitment to the open source community by contributing back both our SDKs back code to our regulator which we've done over the course of the last couple of years and through FDC3 hopefully linking these two models together but with that, I'm going to leave you in peace and hand over to our next talker


morning. The wind's picked up a little bit. Go figure where at the Oregon Coast.  It's like we're in front of their blue sky clear day. I think I'm gonna pack things up, go back the way I came, get back to the car, and drive down the coast a little farther. Let's check out the section of dunes before I start heading north again. It's amazing all this fits in a backpack. My name is David Patton. When I started photography I wanted to make art. I wanted to be a landscape photographer. But with a family to feed and bills to pay, I decided it would be better to be a working photographer than a starving artist. So I took a job as a photo journalist. 25 years and thousands of assignments later it was time to go back to my first love. It was time to follow my passion. Come along on my journey to become the best black in my photography I can be. Whether it be film or digital, I will be sharing what I learned through my successes and my failures and hopes to inspire and educate. This is my journey. This is brightening the edge. It's been a while since I've... well it's been a long time since I've done any solo backpacking. I gotta admit it I didn't feel all that comfortable. It was a little uneasy last night. I think it'll just take some time. I used to do that again by myself. You know every every sound in the woods just is amplified when you're by yourself. I didn't sleep all that well but that's nothing new. I don't... even when I'm with people I don't usually sleep all that well out in the woods. That's just you know that's just the way it is. Boy I wish I could find one of these trees and make an image. Just there's no way to get it to stand out from the background. Just so much clutter but there's some really cool trees here. I'm hoping for one to jump out. I hope to hear the angels sing and say here it is. Here's the shot but I don't see one. I mean it's it's extremely beautiful. I just don't see a lot of photogenic areas. Some cool reflections but it's too windy. This is frustrating. I mean there's so much potential here but I'm not seeing it. I'm in photo mode today. I sure like to come home with some shots. I haven't gone out too often and not brought something home. So hopefully this isn't that one of those days. I mean I'm on the Oregon Coast for God's sakes. There's gotta be some interesting photos around here. Well I did find something to photograph. This really kind of interesting contrast. I don't know what this stuff is. This light color stuff but it contrasts with the green foliage. Might make an interesting texture type picture. This light isn't really good for the forest type shots. I'm trying to get something here because I've never seen anything like this before. It's kind of unusual for me. It's kind of some kind of moss or fungus type thing but it's kind of interesting. It's really just really thick in here. I'm gonna make a couple compositions in here. I like the contrast between the light and the dark in here. I just wish the light was a little more even. But you know you work with what you got. These look like dunes. It's a little bit more what had mine. I just wish it was a different time of day. These are a little more clean. Pretty expansive. Sure what to photograph. But there's hope here that I might find something. It's pretty windy. I'm just hoping the sun wasn't so high. Get a little bitter. The texture on the sand. Definitely those places I'm gonna have to come back to. I think I finally found the dunes I'm gonna want to work in. It's just they're so they're so big. I need to explore more areas and it's gonna change just by the hour. By the season. The light the way the wherever the light is is gonna determine what part of the dune you're gonna want to shoot. It's pretty cool. I was kind of hoping for this where I was yesterday. I just kind of wish it wasn't so windy. Can't ever everything. Found my shot. I thought this was a person standing in the sand. I was way way over there. And I saw this sticking out of the sand. I thought with these light with these shattered lines on the front and in front and back of the of the old tree. I thought there's my shot right there. It's taking me almost an hour to get here. And I'm quite happy with the composition. I just hope it turns out. I'm shooting it with a 150 millimeter lens. Slightly compressed. Got some cool lines through it. With that nice anchor point in the center there. I'm off to the side. That tree might get a couple of wide angle shots now I think. This is what I came for. I'm pretty happy. Over there is where I took the last shot today. I think I'm gonna end today's video right here. It's been a fun couple days. Not a whole lot of photos but I got enough. I'll have something to show you in the video. So until next time thanks for coming along for the ride.


I started out working in restorative justice out of the criminal law context where I felt that I had been teaching criminal law for about 25 years and was more part of the problem than the solution. And this kind of individualistic response to punishment began to make less and less sense to me. Meanwhile, I had been acting as a labor arbitrator since about 1984 and sitting in rooms listening to lawyers argue cases in front of me. And I just began to become more and more uncomfortable with my role as an arbitrator because it seemed to me that there had to be a better way to get problems in the workplace than what I was being required to do. And at about the same time, well, a little while back I never taught really labor relations and stuff until later in my career. And I suddenly realized that as an arbitrator I'd been working for about 20 years in relation to a paradigm that no longer existed. And workplaces have changed and yet the way in which lawyers view workplaces has very often not changed. So I guess I'm interested in the kind of big institutional stuff and how it trickles down to what happens in individual kinds of problems in workplaces. So just let me talk for a couple of minutes about the way in which sort of workplaces have changed in ways that are sometimes hard to understand. But all of us, right, almost all of us, none of us are coupon clippers, right? We all work for a living and our employment relationships are critical to our lives. The people that we interact with on a daily basis. The way in which we work and how we relate is critical for our employers in terms of its productivity, profit in the private sector, capacity to compete. We've got, I think, restorative approaches become important for consumers and clients and even shareholders. And that restorative approaches can benefit all of these people in ways which are quite significant. But where we come from, I'm a lawyer, right? And we have something called the contract of employment. And the contract of employment is actually a kind of post-Second World War creation of the welfare state. And that we attach all sorts, or we used to, attach all sorts of benefits to the contract of employment. If you had a solid contract of employment, you had a pension, right? You had benefits, you had ways to relate to people. If you were in a unionized workplace, you had an advocate for you to help you solve problems. Well, that's all changing, right? The vertically and horizontally integrated firm is becoming a thing of the past. We're doing away with defined benefits pension plans because what's happening, there's a guy named David Weil, an American from Boston, works at Harvard in the Department of Justice. He's written a book 2014, it's called The Fishered Workplace. And by what he means by that is the workplace is crumbling, it's being divided into little bits and pieces. It's called The Fishered Workplace. Why work became so bad for so many and what to do about it? And the workplace that he describes is international value chains where production has been fragmented around the world or even in the domestic economies of the advanced nations. We find that workplaces now, I mean, Marriott Hotels owns one hotel. The original hotel, which is their symbol that Mr. Marriott ran, the rest of them all franchises. The people at the front desk don't work for the hotel, they work for a subcontracted company. The people who are doing up your room work for a separate company. The people who are doing the payroll work for a separate company. The people who are, you know, I think we still have people who are employed in this trade center. They're lucky in a certain way. So what that's created is this fragmented workplace where people don't relate adequately to one another and they can't even relate to the organization which maintains the brand, which retains your product loyalty to the brand, controlling every aspect of what goes on in the hotel except for labor. Labor relations are unregulated, which means there's a kind of competitive market with all those subcontractors who have an incentive not to apply appropriate labor standards from the jurisdiction. So that's what I see as a kind of horrible big picture which has emerged, right? And emerged in a legal environment which still sees sort of command and control as the way in which we deal with people. If people don't do the right thing, we suspend them. We punish them or use capital punishment in the labor market, we fire them, right? It's a punitive model. Yes, I know, quality circles and, you know, flat team-based management and sophisticated organizations and teachers and management schools talk about what might be thought to be a more restorative approach. But generally, our notion of disciplining employees is about proportional punishment, the same kind of thing which criminal lawyers argue about and judges impose. So I think we have to have a different approach. In 1919, the International Labor Organization was created and one of its mantras at the time was that labor is not just a commodity, that people are not slaves and yet in a certain way we continue to treat labor as a commodity and treat people as if they're slaves. I think that we have to change that. We have to change the values. I'm really partial to the work of Amartya Sen, labor economist who adopted or promoted a human capability approach to the way in which we think about economics, that we have some sort of freedom where we have the choice to make choices that we have reason to value. In order to do that, we have to have political kinds of freedoms, economic facilities, social opportunities, rule of law, protective benefits in societies. There is a huge kind of relational environment which enables freedom of a relational sort. I think that Amartya Sen doesn't talk about relational autonomy the way our friend Jennifer Nadelsky does, a law professor at the University of Toronto. But I think that that kind of relational understanding of the big structure ought to get fine expression in relational rights rather than individual rights and there are some sophisticated theorists of contract law who work in the area of relational rights that I can't talk to you about. But relational values of equality and dignity and respect and mutual concern have to characterize our workplaces. So how do we do that? I think that there are sort of substantive policy preconditions which can be brought to bear in terms of our thinking. I think that there are procedural opportunities and I think that we have to think about all of this quite frankly in an international context. Let me give you a couple of examples. I think that we have to prevent, we have to apply our legal policies to prevent people from using sham kinds of calling people independent contractors when they're not, they're just employees and avoiding labor regulations in that kind of way. We should be treating volunteer interns who are trying to create relationships as people who ought to get paid. There are so many examples. In unionized workplaces, unions become a kind of hierarchical organizations very often whose relationship with their members is not healthy, it's not democratic and we have to take a restorative approach to internal understandings of labor kinds of contexts. But at least in a unionized context, people who are members of unions have some protection and the employer knows that they have to deal with people on some sort of intelligent basis the next day because the union is there. But in non-unionized workplaces, there are sophisticated theorists of management relations now in some management schools that are starting to apply restorative justice in managing organizations and I think that that can be quite helpful. And I think we should be using restorative conferencing rather than standard grievance arbitration in many contexts, particularly where there's a kind of poisoned workplace or where there's bullying going on from the shop floor or from management, right? Working across bargaining units, a technical North American kind of concept, restorative conferencing can be useful. But there's a constant fear among government policymakers that if we have decent labor standards we're going to not get investment, right? This kind of race to the bottom which we have to transcend and I think the Rana Plaza thing which happened in Bangladesh is a fascinating example where the international labor organization responded to what's called now consumer-cratic approaches to labor relations and I think if Richard Derib is right that by educating students to a restorative approach the consumer-cratic kind of pressures to have good labor standards may bear fruit. Anyway, it's a big picture, little attempt to have some big kind of ideas but values are critical in all this and institutions. We can't solve the stuff just on the individual level. Thank you. Sorry to go over that.


okay guys so here is the compiled list of all of the people that submitted a comment to our video about the contest giveaway for gift cards a few of you guys commented on the video but you commented a day late you commented on may 1st so unfortunately i wasn't able to put your name into the drawing but just for future reference it might be a good idea to you know click the description box below or to watch the full length video so you know when the deadline is anyway so here we go let's see who won the prizes congratulations the top three people this is all randomized on random.org our Lotus Lolita Emily Meowry and Min Chu so we will be sending out emails or contacting you through tumblr with your congratulations message and the fact that you won a prize and if you do look at the requirements please just run back to us within two days to claim your prize if you have one otherwise the prize will go to someone else if you don't contact us then the prize will have to go to someone else and these are the following next people i'm just going to screenshot it so i know who's who what's what just in case the situation happens please continue to support us we've got a lot more in store especially with the summer coming up and you know school academic break it'll be really cool and really awesome so we can't wait for you guys to see bye


Well, hello and welcome everyone. You know, I hope that you had a really good Defcon and you enjoy all the activities in the red team village that we actually had at Defcon with me I have the red team village core team and Without any further ado, I'm actually gonna pass it right to west to go over an overview You know of the CTF and we're actually took place in Vegas and virtually not only in Vegas Thank you Amar for the intro there for the quals I'm actually gonna turn over to Barry let him kind of talk a little bit through of you know Some of the amazing work that our team did on the on the quals and then I'll jump into the finals a little bit later You know me I just want to thank the team that put it together There was a lot of work that we put into it There's over a dozen folks that that helped contribute to the qualifiers as well as the the final scenario Last year was full remote so we put together a Fairly immersive scenario based around an old movie called office space and then this year We had two networks for every single team in finals and the two the two themes there was Silicon Valley and the office And so this year we knew we had to run a hybrid event And so we knew the assets were gonna be up in the cloud But we had a lot of logistics in terms of having an area there on the contest floor We would interact with with players We knew that a lot of our players were international and weren't able to travel because of those restrictions So we want to make sure that that it was accessible to everybody across the board This year we had a qualifying event that started the the Friday of DEF CON and then rolled into into Saturday The the break that we had in the middle there we you probably wouldn't do that in the future just because it was a little bit of a It was it was hard Schedule wise, but we had a lot of players play that I felt like our infrastructure was good We had all pretty much all new challenges except I know that we used these older Beginner challenges that we've done. They're not really worth the whole lot of points But we like to have a have something for everybody on the qualifier We took those top 20 teams we announced who was progressing forward into finals We took a one-hour break which may have not been enough time for everyone to recoup and then we went right into finals And we had 20 teams advance. So we actually deployed 40 networks out to out into AWS We we really loved the feedback we got from the players in the DEF CON discord channel It was great to actually meet some of the players that were there in Vegas I know that there's a couple folks from From different teams and finals that we've only talked virtually and so it was great to put a face to To a name or to a handle and so that was that was awesome. And then and then we left that network open overnight You know different teams were we're fighting their way through the two different networks in the end though ai generated Came out ahead. They they secured a lead in the front. They were able to get past that initial fish Take Execute the supply chain attack the software supply chat Software supply chain attack that then took them down into the other network And for anybody who wasn't able to get eyes on those networks We're actually going to show the network map and i'm going to hand it over to west now And he's going to talk through the scenario what we built and and why Thanks very so yeah, definitely, you know as as very was discussing a lot of similarities to Last year in regards of you know, the finals round You know in a few repeat teams. So that was really nice, you know having that familiarity Of those teams kind of coming back to us and understanding what that challenge is So with that, you know with the finals You know depending on You know, what perspective you had and how your team divvied up, you know, you probably saw a few different things So what i'm going to show here is actually like the network map and to kind of give you an idea of how we kind of Design this so this isn't the final map, but this is pretty close to What we came up with and then went into Actual, you know, diving this out and building this out and some kind of tweaks on here. So, you know, some of some of the Names, you know, like the final challenge or whatever, you know We obviously figured that out. So we'll go through here at the beginning, you know, there's a lot of issues on the You know getting your payloads to land and execute and not getting caught by defender. So that was uh, you know I think a learning event for everyone and then with that Once, you know, if you're able to get actual foothold and get going with the actual payloads We disabled defender on that But once you got that initial foothold then you're kind of in that network and then you're able Start poking around. So we had quite a few different things on there. We tried to You know litter the box with kind of clues as you go along through the scenario Try to understand some of the different pieces as you kind of move through that human resources You know, there's a few little side quests as far as picking up some additional information Going off You know, there's emails different traffic like that to kind of get some of the clues on where you actually, you know Whether it's credentials to be able to log into the boxes a little later on But with that you eventually moved from that, uh, you know human resources department kind of over into the developer section That's where we actually ended up having a couple like a windows box and a mac box and with that with those two we just wanted you to kind of see part of the The source code, you know, some teams obviously saw it and then I think that you know Definitely gave it a leg up as they moved on to the next box But there's quite a few teams who just kind of burned through Especially on the back box kind of missing some of that source code So they had a lot of troubles as they're like interacting with that cicd pipeline You know try to figure out what to actually kind of enter what's changed kind of live on there and That was definitely a challenge for some folks We saw you know some teams kind of brick the service that was doing some of the deployments So it was definitely super interesting to kind of watch the teams as they kind of moved through what decisions they made what kind of You know Kind of payloads they put in there and what they had going So once you're kind of successful and you're able you know to get a cicd actually deploy and go through With that you'd landed that dunder method network In that regard, you know, you can kind of see some of our support boxes for smb window shares things like that But again, you know kind of moving that through we had some internal kind of web services With that like creed thoughts going through there Some internal blogs things like that And with that you could be able to actually get a back door get into the like the shipping department kind of warehouse area Um And from there, you know each step, you know, we're laying the kind of groundwork a lot of the clues kind of laying you through Over like where to go what's next Uh trying to litter it through so uh, I think this is where some of the larger teams struggled and definitely where we had a lot of the You know kind of clues and hints and points of You know, hey, we just don't not sure like how to do this next thing or you know, we're obviously missing a piece We think there probably should be credentials to this but we can't find them and a lot of it is just you know Going back kind of communicating with the team Understanding what they found where and where they found it So with that, uh, they were able to kind of move it along Go in through the sales department. There's you know, a vulnerable internal kind of sales website. They're able to kind of move along And then definitely another couple internal websites The final piece though is when they got into accounting There there is a website where you'd uh, essentially do some privileged escalation Uh get you know remote code execution on the website. So as a local user once you're there, there's We had a binary, uh where you could get, you know, your actual privilege escalation there and get the final flags Uh, definitely, you know some great feedback from some of the teams out there of how they kind of saw that last challenge, you know Maybe not our most intended one Uh So with all that though, like I know not every team was kind of successful Uh getting through this but number of teams at least, you know, they got that foothold They kind of enumerated that first network, you know, uh a decent portion of them kind of made in that second network So that's why we just kind of wanted to talk a little bit at that high level kind of see, you know Here is I would say most of the boxes and to include support boxes that we kind of needed to build To kind of make this scenario happen so With all of that, you know Please we love the write-ups. We love seeing the feedback. We love seeing how you saw this You know, definitely lesson learned, you know, there's there's a prevest we missed That we thought we were patched on and uh, we weren't so we were a little disappointed that, you know We kind of missed out on one piece there, but uh, it was definitely fun Our team definitely had fun watching all the players go through and uh, you know You know kind of seeing that different perspective of how the players looked at it and kind of the troubleshooting things that we went through So with all that i'm going to turn it over to savannah. She's going to kind of go through A lot of kind of like the stats and numbers of everything that we did Yeah, so hi everyone. So for the quals we had 600 Over 600 teams and over 2000 players that played the quals and then 20 teams for the actual finals Itself and we actually have a few of the players from the finals team So we have the ept team and then we also have people from hack tree boys that are going to be joining us on the stream today Uh, so oma if you want to add them in and we can kind of introduce them. So There they are they're all coming in Uh, yeah, so do you guys want to introduce yourself on the stream? Either one anyone can go first. It's up to you We can start with high tail Right. Um, hi. I'm high tail. Um, I'm one of the founders of hack tree boys and we're hailing from the philippines um With me is ian, uh, who is one of our Kind of the red team members So just a quick background of hack tree boys. We are formed by uh professional members Um, and we kind of separate ourselves into the blue team and the red team. So this uh, red team ctf was kind of a um Kind of a guide for for the blue teamers Made by the red teamers in order to guide us Uh into how how to solve like red team ctf problems and everything so Awesome. I'll pass it back to you. Uh HSB ian so HSB Hi, thank you. Omar. So, um, I'm ian. Uh, I'm one of the members of hack tree boys. Uh, we particularly, um Play capture the flag events and try to uh enhance our skills through these challenges Awesome And uh ept I think you're a mute And once again actually, uh for those of you watching I'm part of the ept team and we are Not a mute now you have enough I can hear you now No, we can hear you. Ah, thank you. Well, uh, uh, yeah, i'm one of the team and one of the members of the ept team We are uh We can hear your okay And uh, while we you know solve the technical issues there First first of all is actually thank you guys. Um Some of you is extremely early in the morning and some of you is extremely late at night Or even in them into almost the morning. So thank you for for making the timing here Well, i'm gonna pass it back again to you and one more try ept All right, so There's another player that actually just joined and i'm going only by your handle here, right? So Side max 73 Yeah, uh Hello, there you go. Uh Yeah, my handle is like hard to pronounce. I know Uh, i'm simon Shea max size max from marriage generated Very very cool You're norway right as well, right? Uh, no, uh, we are like from all over the world, uh some from germany some component and Some i think canada in uk Excellent And can you tell us a little bit, you know, how big was your team?  You were first place last year So this makes two. Yeah. Yeah, we yeah, we did although. I wasn't there for the win. Uh, I only joined this year There's a lot of fun playing with with everyone. Uh I got up to finals last year too. Uh, this year's network was also a lot of fun playing The world some oversights with with some unintended which Uh kind of allowed us to uh speed through some of the boxes But overall it was uh a nice design network and we really enjoyed it Nice, I love hearing that If I would ask a question to all of you, you know, what was the The favorite part of the CTF for you and like the favorite challenge or the most challenging one or Anybody And when everybody goes on wants I want to start picking on people so I'll say my key question Yeah, uh at least for me, uh, the whole supply chain attack part with the CI CT box was very interesting and We spent a while on it, uh partially because of the broken bot on the other network which, uh Yeah, there was a lot of debugging on on the box. We That we had to do To figure out what was wrong, but It ended up working after all so it was a Very nice part part of the stf Very cool. How about you? I tell um The supply chain attack as well. Uh, it was a very interesting for us And coming from a blue team background, it it's actually my first time to actually, um experience it like first hand um, and So so we ended up with like, uh, blue team skills to in order to debug why it was working and why it wasn't working So we we we relied heavily on tcp.com In order to check if if the binaries were getting uh, downloaded or not Um, so yeah, yeah, uh, it was really really fulfilling and um challenging for us Very cool yen Yeah, same for me. Um, we had particularly challenges when uh, we were doing the ci cd Supply chain attack. So just to mention that we enjoyed it a lot Those struggles and obstacles. Uh, we learned a lot and one of our teammates hop curry Actually created a write up on the supply chain attack Because we enjoyed it a lot, uh, and it was quite a struggle to answer it, but it's quite interesting How the infrastructure was set up and uh, it's really a unique experience Oh, very cool. And i'm gonna try one more time ept. Let's see if your audio is coming through now Yeah, we can try one more time. Do you hear me better now? We can hear you knows at least for two seconds One of the members of the team of colleagues in one and yeah one company in our way And as the other had said we had a lot of fun doing this. So we We ended up, uh Hiring a cabin so everybody joined in the same Ben was quite fun and we had a lot of fun with the challengers So and and we had the same kind of big challenge with the the supply chain attack And so that's gonna that was really nice I think we went there big Detour in in owning and rooting the box We were root on it The build server before we And as a matter of fact, I'm showing the picture of that cabin, right? Yeah, that's the picture of one of the Yeah, that's the cabin that was the conference room between the two cabins that were built together like one big Cabin, so we had yeah, it was quite fun That's very cool. I'm jealous We definitely uh, took some inspiration from you you all Last year because we saw the cabin and we were doing it all remote and realized You know, we need to come together and do this all together and not spread out next time So, uh, we're super excited. We got that air b&b kind of off the strip and kind of two two full purposes All the streaming that we did is uh, well, I was kind of have all the team together It's kind of take a cue out of your playbook And do all the logistics and everything, you know build some carotery there. So thanks for the idea Yeah, I can really Command it. It's super fun. It makes it like twice as fun Remotely separately If you're right, you can just do it Very very true And once again, thank you for participating So Savan, I'm gonna pass it back to you for some of the statistics Oh, uh, so The flares uh, we have a 2000 flares Oh, we're good. We're good. I think it's over to me now. I think uh, maybe uh I just had I had one comment Um, we really love the fact that everyone liked that supply chain attack when we started coming up with the scenario it was right when the solar winds uh came out and uh And right around that time those maybe four or five pretty big Uh supply chain attacks that happened and so we're like, oh, this is great We'll do this theme and we thought when we started then that that would still be the hot topic by the time We got the def con little did we know that there was going to be massive ransomware attacks that you know Took over the news before we got to def con But uh, but yeah, we were we were hoping that uh that that was enjoyable that uh, you know Just just how easy it is to to uh do that supply chain uh interdiction Especially when it's software driven and it's uh, and it's really hard to uh, hard to detect And so for anybody out there who didn't see it The way we had it set up was there was a c-i-c-d pipeline That would uh generate uh an installer for this this fake software And then in the other network we had a uh at a script that just acted like a bot it would go and it would check periodically for any updated software and then if it got that software if it saw that there was an update because It was doing a hash match then it would download and uh and execute it So great to hear the feedback Um, and have any other uh questions for for the players Uh, really do appreciate everyone dialing in kind of telling us firsthand. Uh, how you like the uh event Yeah, thank you so much and thank you for participating and always Supporting the red team village. I know that it's not the first time for a lot of you And as a matter of fact, not the first time winning either so uh kudos and thank you for your support Hope to see you in the next one. All right. So with that, uh, we just want to kind of thank everyone that kind of participated in our prize giveaway Kind of filled out our forms everything else. So, uh, you know big shout out to sector seven Uh, they're able to kind of offer up a number of 50 off for their malware essentials courses Uh, you know, I've taken this myself. It's an amazing course a lot of good information Uh, you know in sector seven kind of always came comes through with us. They both offered, you know Kind of prizes for our finalists everything as well. So uh, huge huge shout out to them. So with that Big thanks for everyone that took the time to fill out the form and on the screen here. You can see Uh, these are the winners. Uh All right, we're trying to pronounce them earlier. I'm not going to attempt to read them now But big thanks. Uh, if your name's on here, uh You won, uh, one of the 50 off coupons for malware essentials from sector seven And with that, uh, we'll also reach out directly to you and let you know, uh that you won So again, big thanks to sector seven I just want to remind everyone, uh, you'll get email from 45 with the prizes So they'll be coming out from uh 45 and I'll go ahead and switch it back to Omar to go ahead and go through That that's awesome from now on From this stream onwards We're gonna pronounce pony AP as pony pie It's dyslexic. Uh, so it's nothing personal. Just this dyslexia. Just it's pony pie. So he just he spells it wrong That's that's the reason that we're laughing, you know behind the scenes So but thank you again sector seven and as a matter of fact, thank you to all our sponsors Without you, none of these will actually would be happening um Not only the impact to the to the retinverge, but the impact to the community as a whole, right? So our goal is to always have You know an industry-wide International, you know opportunity for people to learn And that's actually our mission, you know, it's actually to bring Learning environments that you can actually practice your skills in a safe environment learn from each other collaborate a network So, um, I'm gonna share real quick, you know, all our sponsors A lot of them in here, right from sector seven to bishop fox to hack the box to optif to specter ops And the list goes on on right? So thank you. Thank you. Thank you And um with that, I think that is everything That we have for today any quick round table if I miss anything If not, um, thank you again Yeah, I've got one real real quick. Uh, if if you're not on the discord you join the discord There's a lot of good conversation there. We've got some events coming up We're participating in activity con with with hacker one. Uh, that's going to be uh in a little less than a month now So we had that cfp open if you've got you've got to talk Also for the different events that we get involved with, you know, it's all just volunteers jumping in So if you've got something you want to talk about maybe you want to run a workshop or uh, or help with the ctf You know, please, uh, you know, please reach out on On discord and uh, and we can always use the help You you remind me of the biggest thing in there, of course our next event and let me actually share that in the screen real quick As a punny ip mentioned, you know, please please, please, uh, you know participate in this event and it's uh It's a conference even though it's hosted by hacker one is actually built by the community for the community We're gonna have tons of speakers multiple villages. We're not the only ones there as well and The cfp as he mentioned is actually open and if you also click on the little icon in the screen It will take you to this page and it's september 18th And again, it's an international conference and it's free So with that, thank you again for all your time and i'll see you on the next one Bye


Hello everybody, Lance here. Next in our handstand prep progression, we just did the short plank on two arms. We tucked our hips and we got this nice round back position. We found our abs, we got our reach, good. So once you can do all that, the next progression is pick one hand up. Okay, this increases the intensity of the exercise, the load of the exercise. It also increases the twisting, the torquing that you have to deal with here. But ultimately it's an intensification. So I need to build your strength. Ideally I want you to hold for as long as you were holding on two hands, but now do it on one.  And I'm really trying to feel the ab. On this side, since my left hand is down, I should feel my left ab a lot more, vice versa if I go on the other side. That is a quick progression there for you. Pick one hand up.


Good morning, John, it is your younger, but still quite old brother hang. So sometime in the last 10 years, it became pretty normal to talk about parasocial relationships. They've always been a thing. When I was in high school, I was obsessed with Gordon Gano and Helen Hunt. You can have a parasocial relationship with fictional characters, stretch far back enough. People had parasocial relationships with like Zeus and Artemis. To find this term that I keep using, a parasocial relationship is basically when the parts of your brain that are designed to have a social relationship between you and another person are used to just have a relationship with a person who does not know who you are or cannot know who you are because they're Huckleberry Finn who was not, for clarity, a real person. John, you and I always have big talks about all of the things that we do and how weird it is. Something that we've been talking a lot about didn't really fall into place until I heard Brittany Broski say this on Colin and Samir's show. Having such an intense parasocial relationship honestly from my end and from their end because I'm parasocially attached to them in a different way than they sort of look to me for a pick me up or for content or for the big sister vibe. Every decision I make is for them. I don't wanna have them be mad at me or be unhappy with the content I'm putting out. I think it's unacceptable to not be attached to your audience. I have always known that I have a very strong, very real, very important relationship with the people who I do not know who consume this content. Just like you can have a relationship with a character in a book. I have a parasocial relationship with this thing that I have created in my head. I have invented it and it is a thing that I can never fully know or understand and I call it nerdfighteria. Now, this is a parasocial relationship but it's not usually what we mean when we say parasocial relationship because it's going in the other direction. And there's not really a word for that but yesterday when you and I were talking about this on the phone, you, John, called it a seropocial relationship which is gotta be the best possible term. So to talk about it for a sec, this is obviously a very tricky relationship to maintain. First of all, because check this out, the people who make up this community are different people. They have different upbringings and they live in different places and they have different values and they care about different things but also they are more similar to each other than like the broader body of humanity. There are some things that tie us together. There is a core and I don't know what holds the core together but the things that hold the core together are important and I think about them a lot and I try to understand it by talking to people in the real world by reading comments, by doing the Nerdfighteria census and the building of an understanding of what ties us together, like what is exciting, what is unexpected and expected, what is unacceptable. That is a constant thrumming in my brain that informs everything that I make. Also, I can't control the core but I do like want things for the core. I want it to be strong and dense and capable and what does that mean? Strong, I guess just like that there's shared values that do knit it together and even when there's conflict, you check back in on those values and you can say, well, we're disagreeing about this thing but this thing we still agree about. Density for me means that there are lots of different shared things. Like maybe not everybody shares the same things but there are lots of different things that we do share and those things are not found often or as much outside of the core. So like they're special things and I want those things to be like unassailably good and some of those things you can control. Like the average nerdfighter is gonna know a lot more about tuberculosis and pelicans and AFC Wimbledon than the average human but some of those things are gonna like arise naturally like the number of trans or non-binary nerdfighters is much higher than the general population. The number of people who voted for Donald Trump is much lower than the general population. We didn't set out to have a lot of non-binary people in the space or exclude Trump voters. It just happened naturally. The last adjective I use and I literally this was off the top of my head. So there's plenty of other things I could say here but it's capable and by capable I think you know what it means. Like the most interesting and best part of being a part of this thing is that it can do things for itself and for the world. I want it to feel valuable to be a member of this community because it is and I want it to feel like this community can do stuff together whether that's increased access to tuberculosis treatments and tests or it's Crash Course and SciShow or the awesome socks and awesome coffee clubs raising lots of money to increase access to maternal healthcare and Sierra Leone. And a lot of those things have this core as their foundation but then can grow way beyond that and do way more good in the world than they could if it never left the core. That's capable. That's amazing. That's powerful. But also, did you see this coming? There are hard parts. I have for a long time now considered myself to be not mine. Between this relationship and also the obligations to various companies and other stakeholders of those companies and then of course my family and my friends. Parts of myself that were for me, I lost them. Now for clarity I think it is very important and an absolute good to share a great deal of yourself. I think that a self-shared is a much more rich existence than a self that is only for oneself. But it's also good to have some self left for the self and that was something that other people always forced me into rather than something that I would do voluntarily. That has changed them since I got sick for reasons that you could probably guess at which I think is probably healthy. Something else that makes a Sarah Postal relationship hard. I've already kind of referred to but it's that there's a bunch of different people and sometimes they're gonna disagree with each other and so you have a relationship with a thing that doesn't agree with itself. Which can also sometimes happen when you just have a relationship with a person. Sometimes I don't agree with myself. Part of the center might think that it is absolutely ludicrous for someone to spend a lot of time on TikTok which is a strange organization to let have a huge amount of data about you. And I understand that a piece of the core would feel that way and a piece of the core would disagree. I think the core has disagreed about how and whether to separate art from the person who created that art. But you gotta hold space for the reality that disagreement is okay and normal and in fact healthy. Like if every single person agreed on every single thing I think we'd have a problem. And like one thing that we've talked about before John is that like you and I don't feel comfortable being the deciding voice of that. Of saying like, okay, we're having a disagreement. Here's the solution because one, I don't trust myself enough to wield that power and two, the people who disagree with us would then feel alienated and unwelcome in a place that they love. Oh, this is to say, this is a thing. And it's weird. It's more common now than it ever has been because of the structure of the internet. And I'm grateful to Brittany and you John for helping me think through all of it. Even after all these years, I still am working on it. Like I still am confused by it and it's hard. And I think like the Sarah Postural Relationship is actually a much bigger deal than the parasocial relationship in that person's life. Cause it's not just a relationship. It is also like a job. It's like an ever present thing in my mind. Everything I do is informed by it. Not everything, thank goodness, but like everything public. Now I do not know whether to attribute this to the initial values that we started out with or to our constant stressing about it or to pure dumb luck or to the individual people who make up the community or just all of the above. But we have a tremendous core. Like we have one of the most interesting cores out there. Maybe the most interesting, most effective, like there's probably some competition but it doesn't feel like that to me. I could not wish for a better group of people to be in this with even if it is weird and confusing sometimes. John, I'll see you on Tuesday.


Anthony is three home run game first of your career that last one look like you gave the MJ shrug afterwards as it went there What are you thinking as that ball is traveling down the right field line looking like it's going foul? I thought it was way foul to be honest. It came back. I had a pop-up getting before that really came back and I mean I came back a good bit. So I was I was actually shocked. I had a foul right away. So I I mean it's it's obviously I've never done this in my career before so it's a great feeling It's a good night, and I'm happy we came out after an off-day and got this win Major League leader in home runs right now. What was key to your preparation to begin the season so hot? You know just just staying the course just finding a good groove and spring training that the Mental focus had to be a lot a lot quicker in spring training and honestly I'm just I'm trying to keep up with my boy. Jack Peterson. He's hitting home runs left and right so Talked to him the other night, and he's gone off and I hit a few homers. So it feels good What are you seeing from the offense over these last couple games? Just team of bats You know when we had the base loaded and we get the singles score runs. That's that's big for us so we know we're capable of hitting home runs and scoring runs, but You know when you get the one or two on singles if that's big and a curtain call not a bad way to end the night Yeah, that's a school. It's definitely a night that free homers Thanks a lot Anthony and congrats. Thank you