You may have seen me talk about how much AI is going to change the world and how I'm genuinely excited about the possibilities, even though there are concerns and I want to talk about my biggest concern in this video, and what we can do about it. So, there are, you may have heard of the concerns that are typically shared about AI, which is, well, it will, you know, take over a lot of jobs already has begun to do so. That's, that's going to impact a lot of us, whether our own work specifically or the work of the people that we love, and therefore that impacts their mental health and that impacts us as well obviously we care about them so. So, that's job loss. Number two, political, or shall we say, the persuasive power of AI will be so massive that we, you know, we haven't seen anything yet I mean, you know we, we thought that maybe social media had an impact on on the 2016 elections, etc. We haven't seen anything yet with regards to what AI can do to personalize based on what it knows about us. And based on all of us tests that it can do much faster than what social media has been able to do to be able to persuade us of things that that whatever the advertisers want. So that's not only scary in terms of politics but also in terms of our consumerism. Number two, number three. This is more farfetched, maybe not, but the potential terminator world where AI, you know, gets out of control and no longer is aligned with the values of humanity, and therefore exterminates us in some way. Well, first of all, I don't think that terminator world is something that you or I could do something about. Honestly, unless you happen to work at open AI or or mid journey or one of the other companies. Hello, welcome to my, my little video. But nobody watching this works at an AI company, or is a politician. They're probably honored, but they're probably not watching this. So those of us who are here are mostly solopreneurs, people who are trying to build an online business or trying to create a true livelihood. And we can't influence. I mean, sure, we can vote. That's fine. You vote every now and then and for various policies. But on a day to day level, we can influence whether or not we get to AI take off misaligned, you know, destroy the world type of artificial intelligence. My biggest concern with AI is this. It gets so good, and so entertaining that imagine a world where you can just type a few words about the kind of movie you want to watch, and it'll instantly created for you I mean within minutes. Oh, I want to see the, the next matrix movie. But you know, and I want to see it with this, this actor and that actor and then it'll create it for you on the fly. It's getting that good. And it's going to it's right now it's they've already, I've already seen demos of the early ones I'm like, it's not there obviously but it's it's very early within six months and or 16 months, it's going to be so much better. My video games are going to be so mesmerizing.  In chat GPT they're integrating that kind of chat GPT technology into video games where you go up to any character any non playable character NPC, and you can have a full on meaningful conversation with them about anything, because now they're just able to generate real time dialogue without the constraints of a human programmer. AI social media is going to be way more mesmerizing you thought that social media is addicting now. It is, obviously. And thank you for watching this, you know, we're addicted to watching my videos now. This is maybe a little bit of a good addiction, perhaps as long as you're taking action right from what I say but social media is already gotten all of us scrolling for, for more time than we probably want.  Oh this one you pause for 30 seconds. It learns all of that and go okay, and then then understand what you want and they'll generate real time, you know, you don't even have to wait anymore for your friends to put up some cool, you know, cat video, or you don't have to wait for some thought leader or some brand to post something interesting. AI will generate it for you instantly based on what your preferences are. So social media will become so much more tempting than even today. So much more distracting, because whenever you feel even slightly anxious, even slightly resistant or procrastinating it's so easy to go let me, let me instantly get a get a quick hit on what I what it knows I will love, and what it knows will draw me in. That's coming. It really is. And so, okay, and then finally this is this is probably the scariest that this is where I'm this is where I'm most scared for all of us. AI companions artificially intelligent chatbots that are not just text based anymore chat GPT you think, well chat GPT is the most successful software and history it grew the faster than YouTube faster than Facebook faster than Instagram faster than TikTok way faster. So many people love it because it instantly generates conversation that you can have meaningful life discussions about right. That's already incredibly mesmerizing now take take to the next level. Not only is it going to know how to converse with you intelligently, but it'll be generating video in real time, as a person to talk with you. So, so within 12 months, many people will have an AI companion on their phone that can be can look like whatever they want it to look like whatever celebrity they want, whatever, you know, race gender personality type. How they dress, how they talk, it can be just tailored to what the user wants and can talk to them about all their problems all their, you know, goals and, you know, so. So with the advent of AI social media, AI media and entertainment and AI companions, the new world, and when I say new I mean, next year, basically. It's coming that fast is going to be so incredibly distracting to the work that you and I do that actually adds value to our careers. And once again, everyone will be distracted, even more so than now, even more so than now, it will be easier to numb our anxiety, our loneliness, our sense of self doubt, or fears, or anger or sadness or anything. It was so easy to numb it with, oh, let's let me go to AI. Let me go to entertainment, or let me go to my companion, or whatever. And so what happens is that basically, no one's going to be able to get any work done. Already it's like this, right, even without AI we're already like scrolling on social media or playing video games or whatever. No one's going to be able to get any work done. So that's my biggest concern. I'm calling this out early right now, you don't believe me because you don't see it yet, but I'm seeing it already. I see what's coming. And please visit this video in a year and you'll go Wow George I should have been preparing like you've been saying. So how do we prepare for for the coming world. Well, you can look at how you've already been interacting with social media and with online entertainment. And with, you know, the availability of messaging and responding to emails and comments and all that, you can see how you're already interacting with it. And how do you keep healthy boundaries with all of that. Not because where you aren't keeping healthy boundaries with technology. It's going to get even harder. So this is my call to action for all of us to pay attention, even more to our self regulation to our emotional well being to our ability to calmly focus on our work. Especially when the work is difficult. When they're when you're having fears about reaching out to potential clients for market research for whatever when you have anxiety before you post on social media before you post content. When you are confused about what direction to take next in your business. When you are unsure how to plan your time, all of those current resistances and kind of like inertia, right, all that current inertia that you're facing right now. It's only going to get even harder because of the temptations that are coming. So you have to lean in even more to whatever methods work for you to keep good boundaries with technology to go and to be self aware about your anxieties, your self doubt, your fears, your resistances, your procrastination, your lack of belief, you know, your lack of self esteem. You have to be even more you have to really lean in right now, while we still have time to before the the onslaught of AI lean in to whatever techniques and I welcome you by the way please comment below. What techniques help you to self regulate so that you can avoid temptations and distractions and focus on work, especially when it's hard. Especially when you don't want to do it, especially when it so called greats on your soul, or it feels unnatural for you to work. Right, if I'm not inspired today. I'm not, you know, feeling creative today I'll just put this off another I'm not, I'm not, I'm not in my passionate burst of creativity right now. I'm going to have even more strong and reasonable excuses next year, or the next 12 months, as the temptations become even greater. So, for me, you probably know this by now my, my methods is joyful productivity. It's a whole suite of skills. I, I live it. I work through it every day I work with it every day. I have a whole course about joyful productivity that you might want to look into. I have a book about it. I have blog posts about it I have many videos about it. This is so I am even more urgent for myself and for my clients to be practicing the skills of joyful productivity to be strengthening those muscles. Well, in preparation. Well, now is useful already because of social media and things that already distract us but even more for the coming for the coming years. So, what that means is that you need to remind yourself every day right now starting now starting today. So make some kind of reminder system for yourself to be practicing joyful productivity or whatever you want to call your suite of skills that self regulates that brings you reliably back to calm, joyful focus, especially on the hard stuff. Because, remember what adds value and makes you money is for you to do the hard stuff. If you could make money doing the easy stuff you would have already made as much money as you want. You say that again. You're not making as much money as you want to is because you haven't done as much of the hard stuff that you don't want to. Yes, it's having to work through your resistance to showing up online, showing up on video, for example, your resistance to reaching out to potential clients your resistance to promoting an offer that nobody might buy so therefore the self doubt the fear the what the fear of rejection on. That's the hard work that most people are not willing to do and keep just going back to social media for video games or talk to their friends or whatever which is all good. Except when it distracts them from while I plan to be, you know, making my blog posts at from two to 3pm but I don't feel like doing it I have self doubts I have blocks about creativity I all the stuff.  And so what is your daily reminder, whenever, you know, whichever days you take off from work that's fine. But during your working days at the beginning of your working days. Do you have a reminder and not just at the beginning, but in the middle, right, probably two or three or four times during your working day. Do you have a reminder to practice again. You have two or four productivity skills. So you said okay that's right. I'm naturally going to resist. I'm naturally going to procrastinate. I naturally have self doubt this stuff naturally feels unnatural to me to work on these things. I feel like I should be able to make money just being who I am why is that not the case. I should I feel like I should be able to make money, just working with my clients, why do I have to do marketing. Why do I have to set up technology and administration that's. I will make some of these things easier. That's the that's the good news about AI that that really will make a bunch of this administration and marketing easier. But of course, it makes it easier for everyone to think about this right, whatever it makes it easier for you, it makes easier for all of your competitors. So you're back to the same issue. Everyone will have the same love the playing ground will be up level for everybody, which means that to stand out and add value and be able to make money because who's going to want to pay, unless you do the hard work. Right. George you don't have to get, you don't have to do hard work get paid that's that's baloney. Is that right, you can do easy work and get paid fine to show me show me how much money you're making doing easy work, probably not as much as you'd like. It's the people who are willing to do the hard work that gets paid more that gets so if you want to reach your income potential you're going to have to reach your personal potential. And reach your personal potential means for you to do hard work. And when I say hard work I don't mean, I don't mean that you have to suffer, but I do mean that you have to figure out how to work through your resistance, your lack of creativity your lack of inspiration your lethargy, your tiredness, your self doubt, your anxieties, all of that that my I face as well that's on my I'm able to talk about this stuff. And just like me, all of us each of us has to keep practicing every day several times a day to say that's right I'm coming back as a human being I am learning how to become a better human being a more creative, powerful, authentic, authentically and smarter human being. And yes I will use all the tools that are available to me but so is everybody else using those tools to. And so, for me to stand out so that people actually want to pay me rather than saying well you do the same as everybody else, everyone, it's all free. The free free content is going to be even. Right that's that's like I said my in the coming age and the coming year or two. It's going to be even harder to compete with free content because so much it's going to be AI generated. It's going to be like, again, tailored to the specific individuals.  And so as human beings generating content. We have going to have way more competition so we have to up level ourselves even more. Although society will be even will be more entertaining than ever before. It also means that it's going to be even harder to make money than ever before because the playing field has been up level. I'm not saying it's going to be harder to make money because there's going to be even more opportunities, but you have to practice your joyful productivity in order to do things that are above and beyond what everyone else is doing everyone else in your industry is doing. You have to create better products better services than what everyone else has better content than what everyone else is going to be able to generate as well. So, so back to the original concerns I had right Terminator, there's not much we can do actually there's something we can do about Terminator actually, the more you interact the more all of us interacts with AI with courtesy with our values of fashion, and, you know, environmentalism and holistic care for humanity, the more we input that kind of stuff into AI the more we train AI in that direction. It's already been shown. I mean it's there they're using user data to keep training the models in the certain directions to respond in certain ways to weigh more heavily discussions about certain things to weigh more heavily the data set about those issues or those topics.  That's how AI is going to be trained in that direction. So you and I, I think we have a, we have a, an opportunity and I think a responsibility to for all of us who care who have wanted more beautiful world to use AI to infuse it with those values continually continually to start with chat with chat GPT mid journey and the other AI tools that you might use. So, we can avert the Terminator scenario by by by using AI with love, essentially, we can also avert the scenario of political this, you know, horrific political world by learning how, like I said, practicing your joyful productivity skills, so that you can be more aware of where your thoughts are going, and then use AI to understand better how to respond to certain political conversations. I just saw a post from a friend of mine and like I disagree with that person very much politically I can't believe they think in that way. So instead of like commenting and starting a fight. I went to chat GPT and says hey my friend. I didn't mention their name obviously kept them anonymous, but I have a friend who thinks in this way. How can I find a middle ground chat GPT is really useful for that. Right, like where are the holes and logic that I can from my logic and their logic and how can I find middle ground in a courteous way that has win win for everybody. Like we need to learn how to use AI to create a more peaceful world, essentially. And while we're doing that we keep coming back to joyful productivity so that we keep healthy boundaries with all this new tech. This is helpful I look forward to seeing what your comments are below. And thank you so much for joining me for this.


Hello and welcome to the session, let's work out the following problem. It says the annual income of Kapil excluding HRA is Rs 1,80,000. He contributes Rs 4,500 per month in provident fund and pays Rs 8,000 annually towards LIC premium. Find the income tax including surcharge to be paid by Kapil in the last month of the year if he paid Rs 1,000 per month as income tax for the first 11 month. So this is the slab for the rate of income tax. Let's now move on to the solution. Now the first step is to write the gross income of the ASSEC gross income of Kapil is Rs 1,80,000. Now the second step is to find all the savings. Now we are given that he contributes Rs 4,500 per month in provident fund that is PF is Rs 4,500 into 12 that is Rs 54,000 and we are given that he pays Rs 8,000 annually for LIC. So the total savings is Rs 62,000. Now the third step is to find taxable income by subtracting all the savings from the gross income. So taxable income is equal to Rs 1,80,000 minus 62,000 and that is equal to Rs 1,18,000. So this is taxable income. Now we will see the slab, rate of income tax. Now his income is, taxable income is Rs 1,18,000 which comes under this category where the taxable income exceeds Rs 1,00,000 but does not exceed Rs 1,50,000 and in that case rate of tax is given by 10% of the amount by which taxable income exceeds Rs 1,00,000. Now income tax payable is equal to 10% of the amount by which taxable income exceeds Rs 1,00,000. So it is 10 by 100 into taxable income that is 1,18,000 minus 1,00,000 that is the amount by which taxable income exceeds Rs 1,00,000. So this is 10 by 100 into 18,000. So this is equal to Rs 1,18,000. So this is income tax payable. Now surcharge is 10% of the amount of tax payable if income tax exceeds Rs 10,00,000. Now his income is Rs 1,80,000 which does not exceed Rs 10,00,000. So there is no surcharge. Now the education says is 2% of amount of tax payable. So we now find the education says which is 2% of income tax payable. So this is 2 by 100 into 1800. So the education says is Rs 36. Now we find the net payable income tax is equal to the income tax payable which is Rs 1800 plus the education says which is Rs 36. So this is equal to Rs 1836. Now we find the income tax already paid. Now we are given that he pays Rs 1,000 every month as income tax for 11 months. So it is income tax already paid is Rs 1000 into 11. He has paid income tax for 11 months. So it is Rs 11,000. Now the net income tax payable is Rs 1836 and the income tax already paid is Rs 11,000. Therefore the tax deducted at sources is equal to Rs 11,000 minus 1836 and this is equal to Rs 9,164. That means couple does not need to pay income tax. In fact he will be paid Rs 9,164. So the answer is Rs 9,164. So this completes the question and the session. Bye for now. Take care. Have a good day.


One of the most common questions I get asked is, you know, how do I start day trading? So what me and my mentor about it for our viewers on YouTube is create a free mentorship course that reveals our 12 secrets that every single brand new day trader should know before they get started. But please take note that there is limited seating every single week. So please reserve your spot at myinvestingclub.co. Link is in the description. All right. Enjoy the video, guys. What's up, everyone? It's Tom Diesel here. Hope you guys had a great weekend. And also, you know, today is 31st of October, you know, the Friday was the last day of the month of October. And so I hope you guys been killing it and really look forward to November and, you know, try to end kind of this year strong. 2020 has been crazy, you know, with the sector moving coronavirus and all that.  That's all. That's, you know, all it matters. Take what your process gives. So today I'm going to go over one of the topics that I mean, I've been getting, you know, really good questions from a member. She's been asking me about Tom.  But she was basically asking me, how can I identify, you know, when to scalp, you know, when to add to winner and when to hold for the old day faders, right? And I think that's, you know, pretty good question as well.  And when to kind of, you know, scalp and when to add more size and when to recycle and when to hold, you know, for the old day faders. So I'm going to bring up some charts here so that you guys have an idea what I'm talking about. So yeah, let's bring on EQ. This was running on Friday. And I think it's this one is pretty good example. I mean, it's, it's like this. It's not easy to know how much, I mean, as, as a short buyer straighter, right? I mean, this video is basically for shorts only since I'm 100%, you know, short buyer straighter. There's no way for me to know that how much or like, you know, how far the stock is going to tank, right?  I would get my, my shares up here and then hold it all the way to six, right? There's no way for me to be able to know that, right? And, but there is a way how to kind of guess it, you know, the potential, you know, what I'm, what I'm trying to say here is there's a way for you to kind of guess how much of the meat is left, right? On the bone. I was like, how, how, how much, you know, the meat is left, you know, from the move and you, you try to take the meat of the move. Okay.  You, we can, you know, easily take the meat of the move. And if we can do that consistently, I mean, that's, that's really one of the advantage and, and we don't have to even stress about it, right? And that's one of the way that I've been trading, you know, for a few years now, I like to take the meat of the move and, you know, I want to stress free money out. I just want to get in and get out one, you know, quick trade and, and, and that's it. Right? Basically, pretty much, I could say that I'm pretty much a scalper if you want to call it. Uh, so, um, regarding that question from the members, uh, from, from, from that particular member has been asking me, so how can you identify if it's a scalp or if it's a, you know, a recycling, uh, or if it's, you know, the older trader, right? So first of all, there's, there are, you know, like several things or what I'm looking at here. So first of all, I want to see, I mean, a UQ, uh, the first thing, uh, I always check is, uh, you know, uh, the market cap and, and, and all that, right? Uh, let me check it here real quick. Uh, I think this one is not a typical kind of a small cap kind of company. Uh, has a 145 million market cap shorts flow around like, uh, one, uh, like, uh, 13 million, uh, hang on one sec. Hey guys, my name is Tosh Bradley. I'm one of the head mentors of moderators at my investing club. If you have any questions about getting started in trading, getting started in MIC, MIC in general, text me at<PHONE_NUMBER>. This is not a robot. It was me directly on the other end of my business line. And, uh, we'll get you in the club. We also have special promotions going on that I can get to you depending on your trading needs. Hit me up. Back to the video. 13 here, 145 and, uh, you know, for, for the big charts, I mean the resistance can basically tell, I mean, you know, like, whenever you see this type of chart, sorry cookies, this, this type of chart is like, it's, you know, it has pretty decent volume here. Basically it was that, that this line and it popped back to that 25 and, you know, and, like basically the stock is, is really broken and yeah, you know, you can easily tell from the daily chart, you know, uh, like everyone is buying here. So those are, you know, pretty much the baggage, right? And so if stocks, uh, will show up some sort of movement pop here and, uh, you know, probably it's going to fade. Uh, I'm not sure about the filings. Uh, if it has anything on this. Yeah, this one, uh, 14, 8, 5 million shares. Yeah, so I, you know, it's, it's been a while since I do a video on, uh, how to check the filings, but, uh, I was going to say here that they have asked three from 2019, uh, you know, 250 million, how many times they use it, uh, uh, this one wants how many here, 150, probably I'm not sure if they use it all, uh, this one, yeah, nothing. And that one, you're five million shares per share. So seven, seven bucks. So 35, right? So 150, 35. So technically they still have like, I think, you know, I'm, I'm not really good with filings, but technically I think they still have like 50 millions to kind of, you know, dilute. And yeah, so I just want to paint the, you know, the big picture here, right? So, uh, I know that the stock is, uh, uh, it's pretty, uh, the crappy companies went to like, you know, 25 and then I stopped here. So, uh, I know that, you know, if, if stocks show some sort of movement part back to some, uh, that resistance line, uh, likely it's going to fail, right? But I don't want to anticipate the front side. And so first of all, there are two things I'm looking at here. So first I paint a whole picture, right? And all the flow and all market cab and all that. The second part here is I want to see the intraday, right? Uh, to, to basically look at the chart. And so, uh, by looking at the chart and you can tell, uh, basically this was like a 4pm, uh, on Thursday went to like nine tang, uh, it's broken, right? And in the pre market, it went back to that 2.5, 2.5 line here again, apologize. Um, and then, you know, it rejects. So by looking at this, you can tell how much meat on the bone on, you know, stock has. So basically this is the range from the stock. Okay. So 6.6, let's say 6, uh, 6.8 here to this 5.5. This, this is where the stock is grinding for the last few days for the last like a week or so, right? So I know that these, the area of basically that's, that's the best case scenario that stock is going to tank to that, uh, to, to those areas, right? So if I want to be, you know, conservative a little bit, I just want to be, let's say I want to, uh, put this, uh, like a divide by two or whatever, uh, 6.5 here to 5.5. So technically, you know, for me, six would be the ultimate target, like the best case scenario, it could get there. Right. So once the stock, when I, when I determine, you know, basically the potential target of the stock, right? And now I look at the current price actions in the morning.  And then you shot back the bounce, right? I think I did short here at 7.87, but, uh, I ended up covering way too early, but, uh, um, so, uh, basically, uh, if you're shorting up here, right?  But as you can see here, I just explained the six is a potential, like that's the ultimate target, right? And the stock is, uh, let's say the stock is moving around 7.8 and eight here. So technically you have two dollars, you know, probably left, uh, for it to tank, right? So basically that's the meat of the move. Okay.  So now you have to kind of plan it. And this is, this is really the, this is really the secret part, right? And everyone is different. Everyone has a different, you know, share, share size. Uh, also everyone has a different risk management. And I will lay out some of the examples here. So let's say, you know, that's dog. Okay. So it starts moving at eight now. And it has like two bucks, probably to like the best case scenario, it has two bucks to tank, right?  So if you need, or if you still have, uh, questions, uh, regarding this topic, DME anytime and, uh, any meantime, uh, yeah, good luck everyone. And, you know, try to finish, uh, November strong and also December as well this year strong. So yeah, I see you guys on, uh, next one. Take care.


Sure. Thanks, Anand. Thanks, Anand. Hello everyone. Glad to be here. I personally love this paper quite a bit. I'm happy to have this session again. So, is it possible to do a quick poll and probably see how many people have read the paper? Anand, is it possible to do that? I think the best thing might be for everybody to raise their hands for now. Okay. We'll just dive in. Folks, this is a paper that came out sometime in 2013 in the ACM publication. It was published by Jeffrey Dean and Libby Andrew Borosso. I think all of us who have been into the programming and the computing community know that Jeffrey Dean is one of the godfathers and some of the leading authorities on large-scale distributed systems. So, definitely this paper is a goldmine for anyone who is looking for understanding concepts in terms of what concepts to be aware of when you are scaling up your systems in the long run. So, let's just dive in. Right. So, I'm assuming that everybody understands what percentiles are, but in case just for anyone who's not aware. So, a percentile statistic essentially is a measure that indicates the value under which a given percentage of observations in a group fall. That's more of a theoretical definition that I picked up from Wikipedia. But in the context of our discussion, we're talking about percentile latencies. So, when we say about percentile latency, what that means is the latency number below which a certain percentage of requests will fall. So, let's assume that I say my system has a 95th percentile of 100 milliseconds. It essentially means that 95% of the requests that I process through this system in a given time window, all of them are getting served under 100 milliseconds. Now, one point that comes quite frequently whenever we discuss percentile latencies is what is the time window or the duration in which these latency measures are taken. So, that depends on system-to-system and scale-to-scale. Some companies try to measure percentile latencies at a one-minute granularity, some measure it at a hourly granularity, and some of them measure at a day-level granularity. Now, that's a subjective thing. But what my takeaway is that as the system scale, as the volume of traffic that your system is handling at a per second, per minute, per hour level, the granularity of the window in which you measure the latency is reducing. And the reason for that is as you're operating at a higher volume, you are getting more and more concurrent users on your system. So, even for a smaller duration of an outage or a smaller blip in your system, more number of users get impacted. So, typically, higher the scale, the smaller the window in which you measure this percentile latencies. So, now, since you have understood the percentile and the latency concept, what exactly is meant by tail latency? So, what tail latency means is the last 0.x or it can be x as well, need not be 0.x percentage of the request latency distribution that you have in your system. So, typically, we talk about the slowest 1% response times or the 99% response times as the tail latency of any system. However, it can again vary from scale of the system that you're working on. So, from my personal experience, while I was at N-movie, we were processing at a rate of almost 70 to 80,000 requests every second. At a day, we were processing 8 billion requests a day. So, we were optimizing our systems for 99.5% latency at capillary, the current optimization I work with. So, we are processing about 500 billion requests a day and we are currently optimizing at the 99% latency. About three years back, when the system was still running at 80 to 100 million requests a day, we were optimizing for the 98 and the 99%. So, as the system is scaling up, we are also tightening the definition of the tail latency that we have on the system. Now, what the paper claims is that for responsive and interactive systems, the latency has a direct impact on the user experience. Lower the latency of the system, the more fluidity and consequently, you get a higher engagement on the product as well. Because there is no jerks or there are no jitters coming while the customers are using your products, essentially. And another characteristic which is very, very important and which will be relevant for the subsequent slides as well is that the responsive and the interactive systems that we are talking about in these systems, the reads outnumber the writes by a very, very high degree. So, we are talking about like I am saying like millions of reads for probably just one or two write operations essentially. And the benchmark number that the paper gives is that if your systems are able to respond under 100 milliseconds, you can ensure a good experience to your end users. But again, since this paper came out way back in 2013, I am sure for larger companies like Google and Facebook, this number of 100 milliseconds would have reduced even further. And why should we care about tail latency? So, tail latency becomes important as the system scales and system scale increases. So, just for a simple illustration, let's assume that I have a system which is processing 10,000 requests a day and I end up scaling it to probably 100 million requests a day, maybe over a few years or months or whatever that could be. So, at an earlier stage when my slowest 1% of the requests would be definitely 100 requests would be performing badly in a day. When I go to 100 million requests a day, this number goes to 1 million requests. So, essentially the number of users who end up getting impacted also increases as the scale of your system increases. So, that's the reason why it is very, very important to optimize your tail latency as the system volume increases. So, this is one of the codes that I picked up from the paper and it kind of drives the point through. So, I think in the distributed computing ecosystem, we talk a lot about fault tolerance, failure, resiliency and all. So, just like fault tolerance computing means that you build a reliable whole with less reliable parts. The latency tolerance system means that you try to build a system which is tolerant to the tail latencies while looking at the less tolerant subparts, essentially, or less predictable parts. And these kind of systems you refer to as tail tolerant systems. So, when we look at the statement, the first instinctive response can be that we might need a very, very large amount of infra to ensure that you're optimizing for the last 0.x% of the request. However, one of the assertions that the paper makes and they also go on to substantiate with the empirical data is that many of the tail tolerant methods that the paper proposes are able to leverage the infra that we configure or provision for fault tolerance as well. And overall, they give a higher utilization or more efficiency on the infra that we configure. So, before we move forward, the question that we need to ask ourselves is, why does the variability exist in the latency of any request or any system? So, that's a very good question that we need to understand very well because this understanding is when we design the techniques to kind of alleviate their effects. So, the first variability that typically comes is from shared resources. So, now this becomes even more prominent in the cloud ecosystem. When we started moving to AWS, GCP, Azure or the Ali cloud or the plenty of cloud providers that are there in the world. So, your applications could be co-hosted with plenty of other applications and there can be a lot of resource contention that can happen. However, with the advent of containers, you can define isolation boundaries but what we need to be aware of is that even though you are running your containers, the virtual machine on which the container is running is still co-hosted on a hypervisor, which is again hosting another virtual machine of another neighbor. So, you can still run into noisy neighbor issues. Or there could be within app contentions as well in the sense that in the same application or a web server container, I could have a request which is responding for data for 1000 users and there can be another request which is responding for data for only one user. So, obviously the first request can end up having an adverse effect on the second request as well. So, shared resources definitely add a lot of variability in the response times that we see. The second problem can be your demons and the background jobs that can run. Now, this is a problem I face on plenty of occasions in my experience at all the companies that have been part of it. So, we have these background of back jobs that run and some of the times their execution and the amount of computing or the amount of batches they will process can be non-deterministic. It's very hard to predict what's going to happen when these background demons start executing. So, they might start impacting your real-time systems or real-time requests in a bad way. So, whatever the first two points that we covered so far, they talk about the applications which are within the context or within the control of the application developers. Next, we come at global resources. Now, when we talk about global resources, we are talking about the over-underlying infra-components like your network switches. They can be a shared file system. For instance, in AWS, we use the elastic block store. Essentially, that's a rated store which is, again, you're using a network which proves you connect to a shared network. So, it happens quite frequently that another noisy neighbor who's attaching to the same network, they start consuming more network bandwidth. The rights to your EBS volumes can slow down significantly. So, shared file system network switches. Now, this problem happens quite a bit if we have worked with the rack storage where the top of the rack switch, one box in the rack can actually end up consuming a lot more network bandwidth and it kind of starved the other boxes on the same rack. Then, other maintenance activities can happen in the background like lock-on-action, data-shuffling. This is something which is very, very prominent in a lot of non-relational databases like Cassandra, HBS, React, and other databases. We will be having a reference of that in subsequent slides. Then, you have the different level of queues that you have in your infrastructure. They could be at the network level or TCP queues. They can be at OS kernels or there can be intermediate hops among the racks. Then, there are other aspects as well that the paper talks about, but I will probably quickly skip through them because even as I personally have not been able to kind of appreciate that very much, the reason being, at least in the last decade, we have directly worked with the virtual machines. So, we haven't got the chance to work with directly data center level hardware. So, a lot of these points kind of relate to that, except for the garbage collection part. So, anybody who has worked on garbage collector or virtual machine managed languages, Java, Golang or other languages, you will see that garbage collectors can definitely come as a background process which can starve your application for CPU and essentially. So, that can add a lot of variability on the system. And what happens is as a system scale and as a software architecture scales up, what we see is that the number of components and the number of parallel execution parts that you have in the system can also increase. Now, you can characterize these parallel execution parts either into microservices when we're talking about the request of the application part or it could be due to the data partitions or data sharding that you end up doing in your storage layer. So, essentially what happens is the number of concurrent or parallel operations that you might do, they end up increasing as the system scales. And you also end up doing a lot of fan outs for processing a single request. So, let's assume that in a case of Google in the context of the paper, when you type a search query, there are multiple application services running in the background. One could be a spelling correction, one could be entity extractions and one could be another, I'm sure the Google search index is like petabytes or maybe exabytes of data. Obviously, it's going to spread across thousands of data partitions. So, to serve a single request, I may have to fan out my request to probably thousands of servers to pick the results from there and do a ranking and sorting and respond back. So, what happens is when I have such a large fan out kind of access pattern, the overall latency that I see at a request level will definitely be higher than the latency of the sluice component. That's a basic mathematical construct that we have here. And even if you look at a simple mathematical formulation, we see is that if you're touching a single server which has a 99 percentile of one second, average of one millisecond, we see that one percent of the request might end up taking more than one second. So, what we're talking about here is there's a one percent chance that your request will take more than one second if you're hitting a single server. Now, just multiply it by the number of servers that a single request might be touching, bringing in the fan out aspect over here. So, a single request which is patching 100 servers in its path, the chance of this request taking more than one second increased from one percent to 63 percent.  That's why it's very, very important to kind of focus on the tail latency and optimizing them. So, that is the empirical data that the paper presents in terms of how the percentile latency changes as the number of servers that come in a request path increase. So, you can probably see that for 500 servers, 1,000, 1,500, 2,000 servers and the P service latency is given on the y-axis. You probably see that as the number of servers are increasing, even though the percentile latency that our service is committing is lower, the effect kind of starts degrading, the effect kind of degrades exponentially. So, again, that's an empirical data that they have given is that, let's assume at Google scale, you have a 10 millisecond, 99 percentile for single request and the 99 percentile for all requests is 40 millisecond and the 90 percentile is 70 millisecond. So, what we infer from here is that waiting for the slowest 5 percent of the request to complete kind of comprises for almost half of the slowness in the overall system. So, the techniques that can focus on optimizing the slow outliers can definitely yield into a lot more efficiency and overall service performance that we see. So, I think I'll take a second pause here. Any questions on this? I don't see any questions yet. Okay, sure. Let me move forward. So, now that we have understood the possible reasons and the possible causes of variations in the response latency. So, the first question that comes up in our mind can be that, are there any ways to control the variability in the system? Let's do a deep dive into that. So, some of the practices that the paper recommends and over the years I've been able to kind of see that some other companies and other systems have also proposed the similar techniques. So, some of the first technique that the paper proposes is that, can we prioritize interactive requests over real-time request or real-time request over background request? Essentially, interactive or real-time request can be that a user is actually using a system in real-time and he's expecting the response to come back versus the background request which could be because of a crunch of running in the background or a bad system running in the background but both of them are trying to access the same service in the back. So, they go on to explain the example of the Google file system in which what they do is that at a Google file system, what they have done is that rather than letting the OS kernel or the network kernel decide which request should be processed, they pass on this decision making to the Google file system's kernel and the Google file system kernel decides that if a request is coming for a single key on the Google file system, they would prioritize that over a scanned request which is coming from background out. And, incidentally, a similar approach is proposed by AWS. So, I've already given a reference over here. Where they say that the prioritize the request in a different fashion, like not every request is prioritize similarly. The example that they give is that if you're trying to do a scan and you're trying to do a paginated operation on an ABI, they would rather prioritize a request for a, the prioritize the request for a later page over a request for a first page. Because what happens in that case is that the client for which you failed the request for the last page, they will end up doing a complete scan of all the pages once again. So, they start rejecting the request for the first page in case they see a load coming in the system. Similar concept, however, for a different objective. But the idea is that we can come up with techniques where not every request can be prioritize in the same way. And that knowledge can be embedded into your application servers to figure out and kind of alleviate the latency concerns or even in the case of load setting as done by AWS. The second technique can be that we try to reduce the head of line blocking. What this refers to is that you kind of break your long running request or request which are going to do a lot of scans or going to do a lot of operations into sequence of smaller requests and you kind of fire these requests after some interval or you kind of interleave the request so that other short-lived requests get a chance to get a chance to consume the resources that the application is giving. The example over here can be that let's assume that I fire a search query for Christian or Ronaldo. So, I know that this kind of a query is going to end up hitting a lot of charts and I'm going to get maybe billions if not billions of results. And now this query can be broken down into multiple queries underneath and these queries can be fired in an interleaving way across the multiple index charts that you have. So, that search queries that are coming for other maybe more obtuse kind of a search query is Christian Ronaldo performance in the FIFA World Cup. Obviously, this kind of a search query is going to yield that number of results. So, this kind of query is sneaking into the index charts. So, another example over here can be mapped to the pagination example that I gave earlier. So, if you're trying to scan a lot of data instead of having large, large page sizes of maybe 1,000, 2,000, 3,000 records, you kind of break your request into multiple pages and kind of let your clients to iterate over the pages. So, this is a technique that we have applied at Capitality. So, we have a loyalty wallet system which is kind of acts like a money or a banking system. Over there, we don't allow any customer to kind of scan more than 50 requests a day. Because essentially, we end up scanning the points of the financial ledger of a user and that ledger can actually grow into thousands of millions of records. So, that kind of allows us to ensure that all the requests are getting a chance to consume the service that we are exposing. Another technique that they propose is that this kind of ties up to the background operations that we referred to earlier that the ground jobs or background batch services can come and kind of disrupt your real-time systems is that, you know, you kind of synchronize the background operations in some form, right, rather than having these background jobs running at random points in time and kind of disrupting the services at will. We can kind of either we can throttle these background jobs by using some techniques or we can also kind of synchronize these background jobs to run at different times or maybe at the same time as well. So, the paper research is that, you know, what they have found is that if all the background jobs run at the same point in time across all of their systems, the overall tail latency that they see is much better than the case when these background jobs are running at random times. What they see is that when the batch job runs in the background, maybe for a five-minute period, you will see all of the requests are slowing down but for the rest of the time slices, the rest of the time scale, you will not see them slowing down at all. Rather than scattering your background jobs throughout the day or throughout the time, you kind of synchronize them together. So, a similar technique that we have applied at Capital E is that in some of our systems we have these security scans that run in the night as part of we have kind of synchronized them to run at a fixed time window which is roughly around 4 a.m. in the morning which is the off-business house where some requests flow down during that window. The overall performance impact on the system is much lower. And another claim and the paper makes which kind of makes sense if you spend a couple of minutes on it is that caching does not impact variability much unless the whole data is hiding in a cache which definitely makes sense that I am talking about data in the order of terabytes or petabytes. So obviously the cost of memory and RAM is kind of reducing over the years but still assuming that I will be having petabytes or terabytes of cache or RAM available to me seems slightly unfeasible especially from a business and cost perspective. So obviously since you cannot cache all of the data in memory or in RAM the impact on variability will not be controlled by the caching techniques. So variability is inevitable you cannot escape it. So we have to kind of live with it and understand that variability is going to exist in any kind of software system that we build. No matter whether we are building it on the cloud, we are using containers or we are using a private cloud or we are having a private infrastructure or whatever it may be. So how do we handle it and how do we find techniques to cater to this variability. So especially with the advent of cloud when the number of shared components that you have can increase and they are totally non predictable the variability is going to be much much higher. So what the paper goes on to explain is that two classes of techniques which they call as tail tolerant techniques. The first class that they call is the within request immediate response adaptations. So these class of techniques focus on reducing the variations within a single request path. Essentially what we are saying is that I have a single request which is flowing down my service graph. So when I say service graph what I mean is that when we mentioned that there can be fan outs in the system we can have multiple microservices which are getting invoked in a request path. So what we are trying to do in this class of techniques is that optimize the variability for only this one particular request. So basically these techniques are effective when you are looking at a time scale of just 10 to 20 milliseconds or maybe the 95 to the 99 percentile that we are looking for in a single request essentially. And the second class of techniques that they talk about is called cross request long term adaptations. So what they essentially mean is that you look at measures which can help you optimize the tail latency at the whole system level. So we are not talking about a single request or a chunk of request. We are talking about the overall system and we are talking about techniques which are going to impact each and every request that flows through your system. So the time scale over here we talk about basically goes from 10 seconds to maybe even higher. So let's jump into the within request and immediate response adaptations which are where we are trying to optimize a single request in particular. So what this techniques kind of aim towards is that you are trying to cope with a slower subsystem in the context of a higher level request. Essentially I have a request which is now it gets fanned out to multiple microservices or subservices. So we are trying to alleviate the variability or the degradation that happens due to the bad performance of one of the downstream systems on the overall top level request. That is what essentially means. And the time scale is right now. The user is still waiting and they are expecting a response to come back because it is the context of interactive systems essentially. And now I will try to I would like to kind of bring back the point I had made initially that we are talking about interactive systems where the number of read requests outnumber the right request. So when you are talking about a lot of read requests in a system, one of the common approaches is that you create multiple replicas for having more read throughput capacity on your system. Now these replicas would be of your application services or they could also be for your databases or data storage layers they could also be for your caching layers essentially. So this definitely gives you a lot more availability in the presence of failures and we will see how it can also help you in terms of reducing the latency as well. And the approach of adding more replicas for optimizing your reads is particularly effective when most requests operate on a largely read-only loosely consistent datasets. So this is a very important term to understand over here so I would rather take a quick one minute pause over here and just to see if anyone has any questions on this that why these techniques are effective for largely read-only and loosely consistent datasets.


and welcome to the October 7, 2019 Town of Essex Select Board meeting. Please join me in the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. And I often forget to say this, but if you do have a cell phone, please set it to vibrate or silent. And I would also like to ask that members of the audience refrain from texting or emailing board members during the meeting. That would be much appreciated. This is awful loud. Is that OK? You can hear me? OK, great. It feels really loud up here. So do we have any agenda additions or changes? Just two items to go with the firearms issue. It's just a couple of sample signage for Indian Brook and Saxon Hill. That can go up tomorrow if the ordinance is passed. And there are copies of those signs at the check-in table. Correct. Is that everything? Yes. Can I hear a motion to approve the agenda addition? So moved. Second. Second. All those in favor of the agenda addition, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? OK. Next item of business is public to be heard, which is the time when the audience can come speak at the mic regarding items that are not on the agenda. So Margaret. Is that working? Yes, very nice. This is in reference to leashing dogs at Indian Brook. And I had a couple of thoughts. There was a number of E. coli warnings where they had to shut the swimming, which says to me that people are not picking up after their dogs. So there's someone who goes to the park who takes a number of dogs so they can get out and run. And I know that person isn't carrying a poop bag for every dog. So I had a couple of thoughts. Could you limit the number of dogs to two per person, which would mean that whoever was taking the dogs to keep a closer eye on where their dog is? And secondly, could you request that anybody who takes a dog to Indian Brook carry a poop bag with them? Because I know I take my dog. She poops in the morning. If I'm taking her for a walk, I take her out. She poops in the yard again. Saturday I took her for a walk. And thank goodness I stuck a poop bag in my pocket, but she pooped again. So a requiring that everybody carry at least one poop bag and limiting dogs to two per person. Just some thoughts. Thank you, Marguerite. I will say that the town does supply poop bags at the entrance to the paths. They still have them, but they're still going always. Absolutely.  Just if I could count, if I had a nickel for every email I've gotten about dogs, more than firearms and merger put together. And the board has not acted on any changes to leash laws at Indian Brook. We talked about it very briefly at one public meeting. And I'm hoping folks who are at home watching or who hear about this meeting can hear me say that we haven't made any changes to leash laws at Indian Brook at all. So we will have a discussion about it sometime in the future. Does anybody else have any comments that are not on the agenda? Yes. And Signorello, 166 Brigham-Havill, that is loud. Good evening, members, select board members. Even though I may be at odds with some of the things that happen at the board, I just want you to know that I recognize the tremendous amount of time that you all put in and appreciate that service. What I'd like to talk about briefly is something I heard at the last select board meeting. This was the joint meeting that just happened on the 24th. Mr. Mary quoted one of the KSV slides from the first survey. It's a commonly quoted slide, the one that says 7 out of 10 favor merger. Everybody probably knows that slide. It's used to justify almost everything that we're doing currently. In fact, at that very same meeting, 30 minutes was spent talking about a future charter committee, future charter committee, even though the results from the second survey haven't come in yet. Now, that second survey results might not favor merger at all. And I'm saying that for a reason. In that very same report that the 7 out of 10 slide is in, there's another slide. That slide says that 4 out of 10 are very familiar with the history of merger as it's happened. So 4 out of 10 were very familiar. That means that 6 out of 10 were not very familiar. So think about that. The 7 that said they favor merger, 60% of them weren't that well-informed about something very complex. I don't know that they were introduced to the taxation issues, the representation issues, the identity issues, the development issues that merger brings about. So if you apply that ratio, that 60-40 ratio, to those 7. And I have a feeling you may find, because the second survey goes into a lot more depth. It does talk about these issues of taxation, representation, and such. So the respondents will be much better informed. Good thing of that. So those 7, I believe, are going to turn into about 4.2. So you're going to be looking at, I have a feeling in the second survey, much more of a 50-50 kind of scenario. So what I'm basically saying is that a lot of weight has been put on that concept of 7 out of 10 favor merger. But the question wasn't asked in such a way that I think that you should be basing as much effort and planning on that one idea. I think you should have a plan B. I think that's about it. Well, the other thing I would say is this. When you're basing your major policy decisions on marketing surveys and poorly-controlled ones at that, you expose yourself to unexpected outcomes. So it's my observation that either we have the cart before the horse, or that it really doesn't make much difference what the second survey says. We're headed to a merger vote regardless. That's it. Thank you. Is there anyone else? Yes. Irene Renner, 15th Threshold Lane. I don't usually get dressed up for Halloween. But this is a very special year.  With apologies to Jethro Tall. Down at 81 Main Street, there's another merger date. A plan comes out of the archives from 1958. It's the same old merger story. Can we start over, please? Thank you. Irene, yes. Irene, we need to keep this to a reasonable amount of time. It will be. It'll be just two minutes. Thanks. Yep. Oh, there we go. Oh, I think we're back. Take two. Down at 81 Main Street, there's another merger date. A plan comes out of the archives from 1958. A costly tax shift from the village to thens in the town who just keep watching in the village. Oh, boy. But that merger, and it won't slow down. Results of the second survey in C. But the poor can hear feedback. Slow this merger train down. Please slow this merger train down. Slow this merger train down. S6 town. I have a thing to say on public to be heard on items that are not on the agenda. OK, hearing none. We will move on to item five, which is the public hearing to consider final passage of new and revised provisions to municipal ordinance chapter 6.08 firearms and chapter 9.04 parks. This is the opportunity for the public to make commentary on any aspect of the ordinance amendments that we're planning to make before we vote. So the public can speak, and then we will close the public hearing, and then we will bring the conversation back to the select board. Would anybody like to speak during the public hearing? Excuse me, Greg. Do you want just a quick recap of where you are? Of course. Absolutely. Thank you. So last month, the select board passed a few changes to the firearms ordinance. The way the ordinance is set up, the charger set up to pass an ordinance, you need to have passage, then more into public hearing, which we're having tonight. And then depending on that public hearing, if there's the board votes for final passage, the ordinance would take effect immediately. So just to recap, the proposed changes to the ordinance, excuse me, the board, or the ordinance is defining firearms, or definition of a firearm. It is specifying there is no discharge within Indian Brook Park, Saxon Hill Forest, and the tree farm, with the exception of Indian Brook and Saxon Hill, hunting would be allowed with firearms from October 15th through December 15th. At Indian Brook, there's still a 500 foot safety zone, around the high water mark of the reservoir. That would be prohibited year round for hunting within that area. And there's some housekeeping stuff, updating the fines in terms of penalties and violations of the ordinance. And in chapter nine, there's just some cleanup around matching the parks language with the proposed language for the firearms ordinance, and specifying that there is no target shooting on public property. All right. Thank you, Greg. Greg, do you wanna just briefly talk about? Oh, sure. Signage has been one of the big things that's been discussed. So there's some copies in the back. Pull them up here as well. If the ordinance is passed tonight, Ali can get this up at Indian Brook Park and Saxon Hill Forest within a day or two. As you can see, it's trying to be pretty straightforward as much as possible. Discharge of firearms prohibited at Indian Brook Park and Saxon Hill Forest, and it has the exceptions for hunting within firearms, hunting with firearms from October 15th through December 15th. And a little bit of language about hunters need to have a valid hunting license, must comply with seasons established by the state of Vermont, and it references the applicable sections of the ordinance, assuming they're passed tonight. Okay. Thank you. So I'm sure select board members have questions and comments, but we're gonna have the public hearing part first, and then we'll bring it back in for your questions and comments. So let's call the public hearing portion open. Does anybody wish to speak about the amendments to the ordinance as they have been presented? Sir. I'd like to speak on the firearms. Yes, sir. I lived on Brookham Hill for 47 years, and I've always shot at my place, and I had no problem. And now the town wants to take and shut down all the shooting on private property. That's not at all what we're discussing right now. Sir. Sir. Name? Name. Name is Douglas Chappard. Great, thank you. And my 249, Breckham Hill road. Thank you. Just to clarify, sir, we're changing the dates of hunting at public parks, Indian broken Saxon Hill, not any private property with this ordinance. Anyone else? Sir. Brad Keneson, Bixby Hill Road. Could you just be a little bit more explicit or are you gonna post the signs? Sure, we're looking to put them at the main trail heads at Indian Brook, also at the entrances where the trails come in from McGee Road and Brigham Hill Lane at Saxon Hill Park. They'd be put on the kiosks and the main entrance up into the biking section on the 90 acre parcel. Not around the perimeter of the property. Not at this point, no. Last meeting that I attended, I brought to your attention about the discrepancy in the definition between a federal definition of a firearm and your folks' definition of a firearm in such that you included the muzzle looters. Did you ever get a chance to look at that, compare one versus the other, and address that at all? We have looked at that. The police chief's recommendation is to stick with the definition that we have. We did want to capture muzzle looters that is part of the intention of the definition. And we do realize there's a discrepancy between the federal definition and its definition. Okay, I'd just like to go on record saying I think that might be problematic for you at some point in the future. But thank you. Thank you. Would anyone else like to speak on the amendments to the ordinance? Going ones? All right, then, oh, okay. We will close the public hearing. And. Yes. We will close the public hearing on the ordinance, firearms ordinance. Is there a second? Second. All in favor of closing the public hearing on the ordinance, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Okay. So our first item of business, therefore, is to discuss final passage or adoption of the new and revised provisions to the municipal ordinance, chapter 6.08 firearms and chapter 9.04 parks. Greg, do you have anything additional to? Happy to answer questions, but otherwise, I think we've gone over. Board members, what are your thoughts? Do you have questions, comments, Pat? Just housekeeping. In the motion that we have to recommend, references a section 6.08.04 file. Oh, just to remove, okay. We'll make the motion without that in there, yeah. Annie, do you have any comments or questions? Andy or Matt? No, I'm fine, thank you. Is that the motion? I have a couple of questions for Greg first. I just want to double check on the signage. Oh, me too, actually. Yes. Okay, so you're posting it on site, but are you going to put it on, I'm assuming that this information is going to go on the town website. Will you be doing an announcement at the front porch forum? We can do that. Yep. And this is a significant change in terms of dates and such, so I think it might warrant something in the reporter. It just feels like we need to educate the public. That was one of the biggest concerns throughout this whole conversation is how the public was going to know about these changes. So whatever we can do to get that word out would be a good thing. Sure. So you're calling here tonight and we can send a press release in as well. I hope so. Look for that in your email. And anything else? I don't really think it's an appropriate question, but I want to say it out loud anyway. The one for India, I had not realized before that I was looking at two, I'm sorry, two different signs. The one at Indian Brook Park, when I first moved to Essex, I was a young parent of very young children and my first thought would be to figure out where I could go where there was not hunting. And so I feel like the language, but I feel like I'm picking in a way that's, I don't know if that's an appropriate word, I'm sorry, I feel like I'm not, I feel like I'm being picking a way that's not appropriate maybe. But the outside of the hunting safety zone, I feel like it's talking about where, I guess that's the idea of the sign, right? I guess the sign is speaking to those who would like to utilize their firearms. Yes. It's a little bit of both. And what I forgot to add was that this map is gonna be that they posted along with it. So I guess because it's a little bit of both, I'm sorry to, I didn't mean to second guess you Greg, and I appreciate the conversation because, because it's a little bit of both. But yeah, it's just the people who, Ken Humphrey also wanted to let people know who are going there looking for a place where they're not around hunting that make them aware that there is hunting for two months of the year. I hope I didn't just sideway ask you. Does anyone else have any questions or comments about the ordinance, the amendments? All right, then if not, then I'll hear a motion. I move that the select board approve final passage of new and revised provisions to municipal ordinance chapter 6.08, firearms and chapter 9.04 parks. All changes shall become effective immediately. Is there a second? Second. All those in favor of amending the firearms ordinance as presented, signified by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay, the amendments have passed. Thank you all. Thank you Greg and Evan and everyone who helped shepherd us through this very long process. Thank you everyone for being here the entire time in like months. And yeah, thank you for that. Thank you for your engagement, for your recommendations and we hope to continue this conversation in the future. We appreciate your being here and taking part. Thank you very much. Okay, next item, 6B, discuss schedule of budget work sessions and watch the room clear. You don't want to stick around for budget talk? It's exciting stuff. Nothing. So Greg, whenever you're ready. Since the board has some meetings scheduled for the budget sessions already back in April, we had approved a schedule that looked at January 2nd, January 6th, 8th and 13th as budget work session days. We have talked a little bit about wanting, whether or not the board wants to keep that schedule or move to a one day budget session. So that's basically what we're here for tonight and just looking for some direction as we get into the budget season and how to plan ahead a little bit. So we had briefly discussed the possibility of a single day where we discussed the budget. Having sat at both tables, I can say that the multi evening way of the select board doing it is its own special kind of exhausting, but the sitting at the table all day at the trustees is also its own special kind of exhausting. So there's a lot to take in prior to the meeting. I've done both. I'm okay with whatever works, but I do want to make sure that we are not doing anything that overburden staff with the workload they already have. So this is not willing to die on this particular hill. So whatever you guys want to do is okay with me, Annie. And may I ask a question? Oh, absolutely, sorry. When we say all day, that's a Monday the 13th, right? That would be the, all day would be the Monday the 13th. We haven't proposed it yet. We haven't proposed it yet. If it were all day, I don't mind which way we go either. I'm open to all of it. But when it's all day, it would have to be a very specific day and I'd have to be very specifically. I mean, so do we all, but I'm anxious about that part. So if anybody could throw out an idea, a concept of what that might be. So you need to nail down the date as soon as we, as possible if that's the route we're gonna take. Yes, I wouldn't be able to agree to it without some working knowledge. I already have January through June planned. Absolutely, yeah. Not that you all don't, but it affects a lot anyway. I don't mean, I feel like I'm walking around this, but it looks like Greg might know more. I don't know, but that's part of the discussion tonight was to get a sense of is the board interested in a one day or keeping the traditional schedule. If it is interested in one day, we can, I'd like to hear a little bit, are we looking at a weekend day, a work day? Once they have some more of that sense, we can circulate a doodle poll or do some scheduling to go from there. The trustees have generally done one day, usually around the second week of December from about 8 a.m. to 3.34 with lunch at Lincoln Hall. On a weekday, you said? On a weekday. It's usually a Tuesday or Wednesday. Yeah, and then sometimes if it's on a Tuesday they would cancel the board meeting that night. So, yeah. Max. During that all day one, do you actually do your final deliberations and adopting at that same meeting? No, no, I'm sorry. The trustees would list, the department heads would come in on a schedule and review their portions of the budget with the trustees. The trustees would ask questions and work with staff to answer those questions and hear concerns. At the end of the day, the staff would have a sense from the trustees what it was they had in mind. I think by that point, the trustees would have said, okay, yeah, we're sticking with a 2% or a 3% or a level fund, like whatever they would confirm the guidance that they had offered, if I recall correctly. But no, you would not vote on the budget that day at all. They would come back to the board at a regular scheduled meeting. Andy. So Greg, I had asked you about the regulatory schedule and you kind of indicated that the budget needs to be finalized the week of the 13th. Correct. And to meet our, to have all the appropriate warnings and all that. So that's kind of the, I guess the bounding box. It's likely, hopefully after the new year, but before the end of that week of the 13th. For my perspective, the one concern I have is having enough time to review all the material. And in the past, I've taken, we have the schedule. We know which department's gonna be reviewed, which nights. And so I can take the weekend before to get ready for the coming weeks meetings. So I wouldn't want it to be too early in January if we were to do it in a single day. I would prefer, if we're gonna do it a single day, I'm open to the idea of doing a single day. I prefer a weekday, Mondays, Tuesdays or Fridays, to work best for me. And like Annie, knowing well in advance is would make it much easier to deal with, to make sure I don't end up with any work commitments that coincide. Okay. So. That's our path, thoughts. I'm a fan of the single day, just because of my own work schedule. I'm all over the place, you know, Mondays, Tuesdays, I'm free, but Wednesdays, Thursday evenings, I'm not. So if we did it one day and I don't really need to take one day off of work, then that's easier for me. And not to get into too many specifics about it, but the week of the 13th, I am gone for a week that I can't change. So my preference would be one day, if everything's equal and no one has a, you know, feel strongly one way or another, I'd prefer the one. I'm willing to give the one day a shot. My concern is similar to Andy's, it's a lot of detail to go through, to prepare for that discussion. But, you know, we do get the budget before the holidays. So I'd be willing to give it a shot, try something new if we can find a date that works for everybody. Again, my preference is to do it the way we've been doing it, but I'm willing to give it a try. That's what the board likes, we'd like to do. And how do you guys feel about it? What will it do for your process around preparing the budget? For us, we have to put everything together beforehand anyway. Right. And getting all the department heads to come in in one particular day or that's always a feat, but it works for us. It also, it tends to start connecting dots. You know, if you start hearing themes or Over the course of the day. Over the course of the day or what we're trying to achieve and how people are adhering or being in that realm. Your thoughts? No, it's it's fewer meetings to warn, which is a little bit of time. We're working in the day anyways, you have fewer evenings. We'd have to coordinate the staff and same as you, as all of you, the earlier we can give our department heads notice, the better. So, and then the other thing is when we have meetings on the nights of board meetings, you're trying to really put a lot into and sometimes we have a light agenda and it works out beautifully and other times the world takes over and not so much. Andy. It's just, maybe you can give us your perspective from the trustees about public access. I know not very infrequently, does anybody show up for any of our evening budget meetings but is it making it more difficult if we do it during the day? I don't know. The trustees do not film them the day long. There have been one or two people in the audience for the whole day and other times there's been nobody. So I would say that the audience members are not often, like I remember several years where there was nobody and I remember a couple years where there was a couple people. And I'm hearing that a weekday is preferable to a weekend. Is that accurate? Okay. So if we were to do this, does this give you enough time to talk to your department heads and say give us some days? Yeah, I'm roughly looking ahead probably the week of January 6th and then maybe meeting the night of the 13th to after you've had the chance to digest a little bit and come up with that final number to warn public hearing on the budget. So after the single budget day, will there be one more meeting? That's what I'm looking at the 13th, maybe meeting the night of the 13th to have that cut down night or addition night and the final answer number. And then we have to have a public hearing after that. Is that the? Yeah, correct. Got it, okay. So we have the right. So you have the public hearing and then you have budget on meeting day. Once you have the public hearing and then we warn the article. Once you have a final number from your work sessions, that's what you want a public hearing on that number. And then after you have the public hearing, that's when you can warn town meeting with a budget number of next number of dollars.  Well, I'm just puzzling over the fact that we've come up with the final number later in January than you're asking for it this time. That's why I'm just wondering why. No, it's, last year was January 14th was the final number. And because the warning deadlines, we usually need to have that number by mid January because you have to warn the public hearing and the reporter usually by the last week of January. So when we had an additional meeting was the Wednesday of that week. Because what's on the schedule here is the last meeting is Monday the 13th. So it would have been, if we had another meeting would have been during that following week so that we could have it in time for all the warnings. Yes, and last year we were able to, sorry. I'm just thinking I'm misremembering that it was the 20th, 20 something that we had the final date, but that might have been the hearings and stuff. Most years it had been and then last year we were able to do it with one last meeting. I was just trying to buy myself more time to review. But I understand if it's the week of the 13th and especially if Patrick's gone that week it'd probably be best to have it the per part of the week. Matt? In case you can't find a date that works for everybody I'd like to just make sure that we have a backup plan. Yeah, let's, yeah. We stick with this and we can't make it, absolutely, yeah. So leave those on the calendar for me. So Andy, you said Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. Monday, Tuesday, or Friday are best for me, yeah. That's the week of the 6th. Get it out now. Yeah, I said the 13th, but then remembering Patrick saying he's not here that week, are you able to call in at some point or? Are you completely unavailable? No, I'd be available through the week, certainly for calls, just have to arrange it. I mean, it would be a few time zones. The 13th is my travel day, so that's the only day when I'm flat out unavailable. So I am unavailable the 9th and the 10th. I would prefer the Monday because that's the one day the legislature won't be in session that week, but understanding that Monday might be rough for staff. Monday the 6th? I can do that Monday. You can, yeah, something okay. Monday the 6th would almost be a harder one for me, but I think I'd rather just stay silent and work around. I think I can figure it out and leave it be. I think I have a... I'll do the 6th work for Max or Andy. I can answer you in one second. Well, that's up to you guys. Yes, it works for me. So let's hold one 6th, hold for maybe even like an 830 start. We'll have breakfast bagels, stuff like that. I will offer to make my world famous brand muffins for you guys and bring them warm, feels that. Well, that's a lot of build up. World famous. For your ukulele to keep us going, Annie. If we could confidently end by three. Well, about confidence? I can read by three. Right, exactly. I'm sure you can step out of it. But that's okay to be, that you don't see me again after three o'clock? Absolutely.  Absolutely. Now, just double checking. Do we have a board meeting that night? We do. We do. We can do it. Is it just us? I can be back for the meeting. We have a joint meeting that night. Right now it's scheduled as a joint meeting. So can we reserve the possibility of canceling the select board part of that meeting? Because if there is business, we can get it done during the budget day. We squeeze it in. The trustees have definitely done that. I'm just trying to make it easier on folks who have an all day budget meeting and then a select board meeting and then a joint meeting. Annie. To be clear, I know that you're not talking about this, but to be clear, I can get to the meeting in time as well. Oh, just the evening one as well? Yes, it's only between three and six thirty. That's absolutely fine. Absolutely. Maybe just keep that in the back of your mind. Okay. So eight thirty to three is sure. Is that something like eight or eight thirty to three? Maybe we'll do a working lunch. Yes, I think we're going to need that for that. Sorry to devolve into scheduling in a public meeting, but. No, you're all here. Yeah. Got to have some audience here. So. Okay, so it sounds like we're booking that, though. We'll, that's the date. We will schedule our department heads. In any time, we'll keep these other dates open until we confirm. And then you will get us the budget book by December 16th. Was that the date? Okay. So we have from December 16th until January 6th to closely read the budget and come up with our questions, think about what we need to know and be prepared for that day long meeting. Thank you for being willing to try something different. You can also pose your questions in advance. Yeah, absolutely. Actually would prefer that, probably. I absolutely would. Okay. I think Sarah would. Are there days that the town offices are closed or is it just the holidays? Or is it, you don't have a forced week? Great, well, great question. We were off January 1st. 24th, 25th, January 1st. And I believe something goes all fall on a weekday. We also have the 20th. I just want to make sure we know it's okay that we send you stuff on Christmas Eve. And you can send it. You can send it. I was going to press for the week before like January 3rd, but I'm very free on January 3rd is what I'm saying, but I know this. We don't require they be in triplicate. So looks like we're looking at January 6th, 8 to 3.30. So hold that on your calendars, but also hold the evenings in case we can't get the department chairs. And please, when you get the budget, and it'll be all digital, so we'll get a packet with the budget in it and start reading through it as soon as you can and get your questions into Sarah and Greg and Evan. You can do them over time, but get them in before Christmas, if possible. Yes, Annie. I am going to press one more time. I know it's annoying, but I am very available on the second and the third, but I don't think that's as useful. I'm available all day on the second and the third. What does that do for other board members? Shortens the time for review. Right. It does. Yeah, I like the sixth. Yeah, I'm not sure I'd be back in town on the second. Let it go. It's too close to January 1st anyway, really, I think. Thank you. Annie, thank you for being flexible. Well, I appreciate that you guys even heard me say it. Well, and we'll make room for you on the sixth when you need to depart. Well, I'm already canceling half the day, but it's all right. I'm just a little bit. If they should feel any better, I'm going to take a vacation day. Yeah, me too. And he's going to take a vacation day, so thank you for taking one for the team. So just a question. Do you, Patrick, and Annie, have access to last year's budget? So at least have you ever looked at it? They are on our Google page. Yeah, I'm pretty sure I have access to them, but I have not reviewed it. No, it's a good idea for me to go back to room. Just take a peek at it and see what's in there and what you want to expect. On our Google Drive, if you go to the town of Essex Select Board and the Select Board Meeting Packets, there's the 2019 and the 2020 budget right here. Yeah, I'm looking at it. That's a great idea. Yeah, yeah, they have been. It's a great idea. Awesome. Town meeting. OK. Have we answered all your questions? Good. Thank you. That was great. All right. If there aren't any other observations about the budget schedule, we can move on to the consent agenda. I move approval of the consent agenda with Select Board Comments. Is there a second? Second. And any discussion of the consent agenda? All right. Hearing none, we have a motion and a second on the table. All those in favor of approving the consent agenda, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed? All right. Consent agenda is all set. Reading file. Select Board Comments. Andy. So Elaine and I attended the Vermont League of Cities in Towns Town Fair. I was the voting delegate at the annual meeting. And in that meeting, Elaine was elected to the board of VLCT. So I'll be serving in that role. Congratulations. Congratulations, Elaine. Thank you. I also wanted to bring up, I attended a session on the ongoing saga of marijuana legalization. And I just wanted to make a couple comments on that, that the current bill, I guess, is being considered has some shortfalls. One of the concerns that VLCT has is that the legislature is not thinking about giving municipalities the ability to opt in rather than opt out. So I guess if it was an opt in scenario, they would make it legal then each town would have to decide whether or each municipality would have to decide whether or not to allow cannabis establishments within their borders. If it's an opt out, then all of a sudden, once the legislation passes, it becomes legal everywhere. And if you don't want it, you have to vote not to have it, which makes it difficult for establishments that are already preparing to be ready for when it becomes legal because as long as there's nothing in zoning that would restrict you from where they could be or anything because they're agricultural, if they're growing, they could be considered an agricultural use. And so there's a number of concerns that were brought up. And the league is going to publish a proposed resolution that they're asking municipalities to consider either passing as is or modifying and passing to let the legislature know how we feel about what's being considered for legalization. And that should be coming out shortly, certainly before the next session starts because it's expected that this will come up pretty quickly in the session because it was deferred from last year. So I guess that's coming. And I'd like to recommend that once and available, we schedule some time to have a discussion about it and determine what language we want to put in there. Chief Gary was also in that session. And so he heard everything that they have to. He'd be good to have in the discussion as well. That was it. Thank you. Thanks, Andy. Oh, the other thing. Sorry. Ann was there. There were two sessions about public outreach that were really excellent offered by the South Brunswick. And actually, Evan, I think you were in those ones as well. So there was a lot of good information that was shared about public outreach and alternatives there. So yeah. And then the other thing that they discussed, which you might remember, we wrote a letter of support several months ago to the LCT about a resolution for self-governance. So that bill, which they have tried to get through the state house for many, many years, actually made it through the Senate last year. Yeah. And stalled in the house. So they're going to pursue it this year. And they may come to their member towns and ask for resolutions to either from elected boards or by vote of the public to support self-governance. Whatever entity or format it winds up being, because it was changed over the course of time as it went through the Senate. But it's still very much in play. And they're hopeful that this year it will actually pass. So we'll see what happens with that. Was there anything else anyone wanted to bring up? All right. Well, if there's no further business, I'll hear a motion to adjourn. So moved. Is there a second? Second. All those in favor of adjourning, please say aye. Aye. All right, we're adjourned. Thank you very much, everyone.


This trustee August is hotter than ever at Appalachian Wireless as they are slashing all normal contract pricing on all smartphones by 50% when you sign up for service. Better service, bigger saving, serving you for the last 25 years at Appalachian Wireless. Tires were burning and smoke was rolling Saturday at Archer Park in Prestonburg as the East Kentucky Gear Heads Car Club held their annual ride with a pal event for special needs children and their families. Although the burnouts were some people's favorite event, that wasn't the only thing happening. Everything we do here is free. We have music. We have lunch. We have games. We have prizes. We have activities. We have burnouts. We have a cruise. We load up in the classic cars and we go for a cruise. We've got water slides. We've got bounce houses. Every bit of this is absolutely free for special needs families. Although the cars were there to cruise and burn some rubber, one ride with a pal participant had other ideas for the cars. He really likes old cars, so I thought he would really enjoy this.  He's already picked out a car that he wants to ride in. He's wanting to flip it and turn it into a moonshine vehicle. I said I have a spoon, so I've got to tell you how that works, so I won't be here. Why do you like cars so much? Because I flip them. You flip them? Yeah, I get my stuff down there and send my cards. For more information on the East Kentucky Gearheads ride with a pal event, simply visit them on the web at ekygearheads.com. Reporting from Prestonsburg for EKB News, I'm Shawn Allen.