Welcome to Cal TV News, the second part of Offscript. My name is Tomas Malonia, the co-director of the department. Here at Offscript, we talk to our reporters about behind-the-scenes stories from in the field. Thank you for joining us. And today I'm sitting down with Lisa Kim and Robert Tew, both reporters in our news department. And first, Lisa, I want to start off with a story that actually you and our fellow reporter, Polina, who was not able to make it today, she covered, along with yourself, the Free Speech Week wrap-up. So you guys were talking to students on Scrowl and really across campus about what Free Speech Week like was for them. Could you tell us about who you spoke to and what kind of responses you got from the students you interviewed? So we spoke to four students and to them, all of them were very nice. And it was actually our first video together. It was a new experience to get people to talk to us. And a lot of their opinions about Free Speech Week were how it might have bothered them while they were going to class, especially because Free Speech Week was canceled. And a lot of students felt like their time was being disrupted because of the cancellation and all of the police around campus, because not a lot of students are used to that. So a lot of them were very frustrated and then one of them mentioned that they don't understand where all the money went because they're supposedly a million dollars spent on the security. Yeah, I noticed in a lot of the interviews you did, Free Speech Week was supposed to be a week, but Chancellor Caldwell-Chris and Robert will be talking about his interview with the Chancellor later, but she was talking about how this really is the year of Free Speech. And we are feeling that this story, Free Speech Week was a few weeks ago, but it continues to live on. The main concern seems to be the cost, really, and how that money could have gotten elsewhere. You guys also utilized live footage from the actual event. Can you talk about how do you use that in the story and what dynamic did that bring into the story? So there was a lot of live footage on this speech and protest that were happening during campus. And we wanted to bring that all together and show everyone the whole world the impact of that. So we wanted to use the live footage of the Wheeler Hall and police were coming in and out and they were telling students that they have to evacuate the proximity. And a lot of students were just confused about what's going on. One of the police, I remember, said, oh, this is not a danger, this is not a danger. But a lot of students were walking very fast out of Wheeler Hall. Just as a reminder, Polina and Jane also worked on the story with you. What was the overall sentiment you got from the students you were interviewing? If you could describe it in a few words, what were they feeling after a Free Speech Week? So some of the students actually went to the protest and some did not. And I guess a lot of them again were very confused about what was going on. Why was there so much police? Because they're going to classes and some of them experienced classes being cancelled too. So they were wondering, even though I remember one of them said, oh, my parents called and they're wondering. My friends from high school were asking, oh, what's going on? I don't know where there's only protests and bombs and all these people at your school. They were just explaining everything's okay. I think a lot of students were just confused because everything happened so quickly and it was cancelled and that was very unexpected. So they didn't know why it was cancelled. There are a lot of talks about why the protests, why the speeches were cancelled. But it was because the speeches, the speakers didn't turn in their forms on time and some of them were saying, oh, the teacher, the school itself didn't send. They didn't respond to the emails that were questioned. Right. This event has been well publicized. But really, this is the year of free speech as the Chancellor has called it. The effects both impacting students who were there on campus and who weren't. This is a perfect segue to talk about your story, Robert. We actually produced, we helped produce two stories alongside Tara Holbrook this week and in the past week. Let's first talk about the story you did regarding the events following the evacuation of Leela. You talked to some people there. Can you describe to us how that evacuation took place? One of our other reporters, Talia, actually got live footage from there. Talk about how that story came together. Yeah, absolutely. It was fascinating. That day, on Monday, it was before Free Speech Week really came together. It was right before, it was basically the catalyst of it all. And it was nice because we went down to the West Crescent on on the west side of campus. And there's going to be an organization there. It's Unite Against Righting Violence in the Bay Area Coalition. And they were organizing things. They had a few speakers. And basically for the extent of Free Speech Week, they were planning on protesting it. So students showed up. Personally, I had professors show up. And even in one of my French classes, my professor was very vocal about all of this.  And it's this hazardous for students to go to class. They thought so. They signed a boycott. 133 signatures. Only six of them were STEM. But all the professors and basically the humanities departments agreed that this, it was inappropriate to happen on campus. So we go to this organized rally. It's on the steps. In full wars. Another TV organization shows up. And they're provoking people. Left and right.   And it was just really fascinating to see the dialogue. This discourse is almost provoked violence. But people were surprisingly very calm. And occasionally did have reheated conflicts. This was all before we were all. And so that's interesting. This is why we have the Oscar series to talk about things that don't necessarily make it into the story. But that you as a reporter experience. And so for example, the info wars reporter who was there provoking people. She was particularly provoking the press other members of the press. Is that right? Absolutely. She was trying to antagonize everyone. Later that day I saw on Facebook that she had her car broken into. Awful thing. Never wish it on anyone. But everyone there was there for a specific reason. They had banners. They had fires. They had posters. It was very militarized. There are at least 100 police officers there. The footage itself is less than two minutes long. But there are people all over the place. It was very hot that day. You have a lot of news outlets. But there were also students, there were professors and members from the community. And they had a lot of people that were considered peaceful watchers. Observers to ensure that nothing violent would happen. After that ended, they marched all the way up to Mueller Hall. And I believe they occupied it. I was outside when that happened. Fire alarm was pulled. Police went in and everyone was evacuated. And so for our viewers just tuning in, you can watch all of the stories that we're telling behind the scenes stories about on our Facebook page and our YouTube page. We will be posting the links to that after the segment. It's no longer live. I think that's a great segue to talk about the story that you and Kara also worked on. And Kara's the other reporter who can make it today. But she did work on the story with you. You guys attended an ASUC meeting where Chancellor Carol Chris actually spoke. What did she speak about? And how did you go about getting there? Kara and I went to the ASUC meeting with intentions to speak to the chancellor. We weren't sure what she was going to talk about. I've never really saw her in person before then. Only very rarely. So she did show up. The whole senator gallery was filled with students, with ASUC senators, with observers, and members of the administration. The vice chancellor, Paul Vasades was there. And as well as Chancellor Chris. She goes out there for an hour. She speaks. She has four main points. Those four points included a new financial model, diversity, the student experience, and just another one regarding the whole community and its entirety. Kara and I spoke to the chancellor before. We were able to get an interview promised for three minutes. It took us in three minutes. We asked her, you know, there's a lot of expectation for chancellor coming into a university like this. It's a flagship from your university and whatnot. We also discussed safety. The elephant in the room was the free speech week. A lot of people were affected. ASUC senators were harassed. They were doxxed. That was a new trend that I learned. ASUC senators were being po-focked.  It was very discriminatory and scary. And so they actually had a portion there where students could ask questions to the chancellor. What were most of the questions about? Were they all about free speech week? Or were there other issues? They primarily concerned free speech week. Basically a lot of multicultural centers, centers for marginalized communities were being shut down. And they were just really trying to ensure that why did the chancellor allow this to happen? Apparently she has a legal obligation. All right. Thank you so much, Lisa and Robert. Thank you so much for doing your stories. We also want to recognize Carol Holbrook and Juliana Jang, who are not able to join us today for student reasons. And we thank you for tuning in to CalTV's second part of our script. Again, stay tuned for this and more in the coming weeks.


So it's time to talk league of Ireland football the new season getting up and running this coming Friday and Saturday night A dairy city of course at home on Friday against drawdown the top flight and in the first division longford town are ticking on Finharps the matches at Bishop gates on Saturday evening And I'm going to talk to two gentlemen now who know a thing or two about the league of Ireland first football First of all joining me in the studio is our special guest former harps captain Keith County You're you're welcome to the studio of Highland. Oh, I see. Thanks for having me. Yeah. Yeah, it's good to see you And also via Lincoln zoom. We've got Stecklin Boyle another former funner harps captain Tecklin. Good to see you Good to see you lad. It's good to be back. Yeah, it's good to be back talking football once again But Keith's been still kicking a ball. He's not going about with Derek. We at the Manninghouse thing school there Keith Look, it's it's it's been difficult season There's been a few changes of management maybe down to performances in that Look, it's a it's a it's a young it's a young experience side. Maybe and you know some lads Looking to forge careers and you know, it's a very competitive vision, you know We've been picking up results here and there but just lack consistency as opposed You know within the within the squad and you know January wasn't too kindest in terms of a few lads moving on So Emmett, you know, he's had to try and plug some gaps and bring in some some players and ultimately, I suppose where you are the player you're going to get in isn't to Isn't to experience the quality the first but look, you know, you've lads as I said that are trying hard and Hopefully things will pick up over the next few weeks. Yes Also, Declan, what are you at at the moment obviously involved with with slag or overs doing a bit of training getting the group together again Yeah, absolutely now as you know Was on the 19th last year this year has been moved up to under 20s the FBI And our strategic move and moved it up to 20s probably we will see in the future as well The 17s will probably go up to get teams and 15s are probably 16s. That's probably what will happen next year too Yeah, currently I'm still with slag or overs under 20 teams were back training since the first week of January And we're actually playing fan arts on saturday so a preseason friendly before our season kicks off On saturday week and we're going to both so I'm looking forward to new season now A lot of work to be done, but yeah looking forward to it Harps obviously played the senior side played slago last weekend and that was good preparation from a fun harps point of view one in the game Yeah, great result for them, you know I suppose when you look through the squad and dan mortis Obviously came in and what he has added is he had a really experienced the team as well You know and players have been around the league as well So with with also players that have a lot of energy and they're used on their side as well So there's a good mix there. So they're a big result obviously against slag or overs Especially coming from one win all down as well So that was really encouraging for for perhaps and the players and I'm looking forward to see how the season pans out Obviously last year was very disappointing. That's in the past And we're obviously looking out for hopefully this year maybe push out the playoffs but and maybe above hired Let's see how it goes, but yes been encouraging preseason so far for the harps Has it been a preseason kief for harps that have them now in a better position going into this year than probably where they were at the end of last year Definitely it does when you think about the I suppose that what they had to do last year and build an entirely new squad I think maybe they kept one player right and ready from before and You know you look through the team there or the squad that they've been able to keep I think they've kept 16 of the squad from last season, which is great You know you've got a lot of experience in there You got a few players back in Connor tourist that was there before they signed david collie from slaggle I'm sure that he knows and you know, I know from playing on the league for a few years And then obviously, you know the lads that have been there before the likes of tim heimer the keeper Who had to be out for a lot of the season with injury who had played through injury from the start of the season Tony McNamee, you know, there's you know, Ryan flawed who hit the ground running the last season and was probably one of the main You know shining shining lights, which came from last Or one of the main positives that came out last season So you have a lot of quality in there and say you've retained a squad that's you know That's played together that knows each other that knows the management And they'll be looking forward to get started on on saturday and you know, I'd be slightly optimistic I suppose You know going into the season with with that squad that's there and you know, we've seen the results in pre season and You know, they seem to be you know winning games and you know getting good results against against quality opposition So yeah, there's obviously a few you know Less less testing games in there, but that's all the build confidence and and to build fitness and to give people game time So yeah, I think it looks positive. Yeah, Declan there was a obviously a bit of optimism around fun harps Last year, but there was a lot of the unknown as well when when we had the likes Of david roger's in charge. Keith knows the thing or two about been under his manage management ship But it there was optimism, but as what I said, there was unknown But there's more known now about this group of players going to go into the squad So is there a bit more maybe uh, solidness around the optimism that that is there around fun park? Have you know what I mean? Yeah, no, I think so. I think Keith just mentioned there It's always very difficult. Um, somebody coming in you And then you've no base of players That are signed, you know, so you're just in that unknown territory and also the manager We weren't sure exactly what we're going to get out of roger's last year and Probably the players he signed probably Weren't of the quality they are this year Um, and also some of the players were signed didn't have the experience of working in that league or playing in that league, you know So I think this year to sit earlier. I think there's a good mix of experienced players And youth and energy and it's a good pace as well So I think that all it's going to be as well for for darn more free in the squad of players Obviously kevin kuker in the background as well moves to leave very very well So having that year behind your belt as well for darn more free because he played hours in the Irish league So he knows the grounds. He knows where he's going and that makes a big difference. That's the way we experience um, we know last year they've been up and down the form was Good games and the bad games are more bad than good very very poor away from home to see a lot of goals So it's encouraging to see in preseason having to see the too many goals So keeping it quite tight and if you are to be successful, you have to build from the defense You have to make sure your defense doesn't leak too many goals and also You know, you've got to be putting the spring forward and cause problems and they have that in the last year You know, um, well, obviously the quality players that they have shone gone aren't going on coming in there They signed your man from Bose as well chris lowl tee fee as it thinks cost We pay to get something last couple of years, you know, and um He's really really quick and very direct And fun part was to tell him big pitch and fun part. So you can see how he pans out Obviously young and earnest trade, but he's got a lot of advantage and loads of pace. So so Darren's going to win for that experience with energy and pace So it should be a good combination David Colley commands an excellent signer for me. He's really really good I was surprised that I'm slightly level and go a really good professional and do around the place works really, really hard So he'll be added and there a lot of talent coming back to me as well Corner turrets coming back as well will help the defenders, you know, so that there's a really good mix I'm looking forward to, you know, I suppose it's important that they probably hit the ground running and get up to a good start And I know it's difficult to first match away and the league, but um, that's a good good match away long for well They're well Suppose they could go there and get three points. No problem You know the play up to up to the farm that they should play and how they've done in pre-season But it's important that their home form this year is really good And that gets the fans up gets the fans coming out and watching them and gets a little energy around the place So I'm looking forward to season said earlier that I think there's a really good squad of players put together now It's about them going out and performing and over the league. Yeah Longford's the opposition. There's a few changes down in longford as well So there is decky, but if you're on the road and would you be happy enough with a point to start things off? I think so, you know Yeah, obviously you always go to on the game and getting three points and depends how the games go some games You're lucky to get out with only one point and some games you get a draw and you should have a three So it's we're just depending how they play and how they perform. So it's definitely the way in the first match Every team starts off at the very start and they're full of energy because it's the first match and you know There's a lot of eagerness and people want to impress and so yeah in that big crowd as well normally Down in longford as well for the first match. So it's a really good occasion You know, but yeah, they're absolutely well-capable and put on a big performance and getting three points, but you know Obviously that they get a draw or two still a good start but Yeah, that's neither way that they'll go there positive of the good preseason behind and good form good results Especially me in that last filken slider overs was an excellent result. It's like we played the strong team out as well. So Yeah, and they played the area a couple times too and I mean You know, they've dealt well with the area considering the squad of players that they have as well I know they drew the loss as well. So it's still the form has been good And you should take that into the first match and you're expecting a big performance and maybe get three points Um, obviously you've been to longford on a couple of occasions. So you have Keith that you play there last year. Yeah Yeah, I was down last year. Um, it's actually we got two good results last year. We won both times as Steve Henderson and Gavin Pears down there at the helm and I think it was more the end of the season last year where they started to Really kind of kick on and you know sort of find their feet. I think the second transfer window Helped them a lot. But yeah, I suppose that what the guy's going down there and you know being successful there last year It's not a bad one to open with Look, it's always it's always good to get. Um, it's always good to get a point on the board early You know, you don't want you don't want that to go on and but I think the lads will be positive going down there And maybe thinking that three points will be definitely achievable Yeah, well then a game after that then is obviously The Cork city game. Yes. I think Cork are out now favourites. We've seen what Galway done last year Is Cork going to be the Galway this year? Possibly. I um, it's you know, when you when you look through the first division, you look through the teams that are there Um, yes, you have you have Cork coming down. You have UCD coming down.   Yeah, Rory Keaton's moved on. He's gone to St Pat's so, you know, you've lost a lot of firepower there A couple other lads have moved on as well. So, uh, you know, you're expecting them to be up there But it's you know, looking looking through the look looking through the league, you know, there's a lot of tough games There's there's a lot of travel. It's difficult to, you know, it'll always take a few games to You know, for everyone to have a look at each other and for the league to settle down in that but Yeah, to be a better man, uh, to pick a winner or even a second too far and it's going to be difficult Yeah, okay, uh, Declan playoffs the target for Harps I think so, um That's what you've been targeting and it's obviously at the start of the season We play off squad and staying in that area and fighting to get obviously promoted But then obviously we get into those positions and coming July if you're in a good position and you're going Well, you might add a little bit more experience and quality to the squad and maybe push on and try to get into that You know, second or even push on to the first place. That's going to be probably a difficult ask I think we'll probably dominate this year. Um Yeah, they'll probably likely have power up front, but there's still it's going to be this team coming down You know, um, I have a big big budget as well and big Home crowd turners cross can can actually help things. So I expect them to be up there. Usually come down as well Lost a lot of players. Um, so they're going to be very young this year. They've recruited a lot of players So there'll be interesting to see how they get on and monthly new manager replaced any girl man Get to see how he gets on Yeah, one in corners down there and uh, so, you know, good lad Good seeing getting the opportunity. Obviously, I was time ready with the Premier League as the first team coach So it's an opportunity for him. But, you know, they always have good players coming through through the scholarship program So the quality probably lack of we would experience. Um, but by technically we've got time to settle in so the instance See how they pan out Um co-overamlers as well. Um, so that's going to be an interesting one. They've done really well last year There's a lot of teams there that can push in and then obviously you brave up in the push in that area and you work for it as well Then you're hopefully actually be up there pushing in the playoff spots a long way to go But it's just getting that consistency can offer a good start and building up a bit of confidence in the players And hopefully then making sure that Finn Parker is a fortress and you're getting victories for teams Don't come and get easy points and go around the road again. So that's really important as well So but I think with the quality of players to be signed the experience players Um, it'll be difficult for teams to couple the Finn Park and get three points and go around the road. So, yeah So now that just one we don't really know exactly what's going to happen here And that's what's a great thing about the pre-season then the new season You don't know exactly and there's anticipation and the readiness and you're so wanting to do well as well So, um, yeah, I'm looking forward to how the season start how to start the season and how it pans out But I still think there will be a lot better this year than over last year for sure Is Finn Park Keith And getting those results going to be good enough to to make it into that top five and get a playoff space I think so. I think um, look, I'll have to change from last year. I think five home ones last year was You know, it's pretty poor. I think they had more away ones than they had home ones last year I think they had six away ones With a couple of driving maybe seven draws on there as well at home. So look at all The philosophy the way that you know morph's going to set the guys up Um, how different is that going to be from the philosophy? It was there last year at the start of the season when you were involved that Well, I don't think morph's going to let Zeke go dictate how they play, you know, he'll want he'll want to be hard to beat You know, Finn Park's always been a horrible place to go um You know speaking to players that I played with after my time at harps and you know, they all hit go in there because You know, it's difficult the pitch can dictate along especially at the start of the season and then come the end of the season Just due to the weather and that But like they always hit come in there because we were hard to beat.  I'll probably you know start there on Saturday night the way Look at Conor Turkish probably Maddie Mackinson maybe You have a couple of left backs to pick from there, but know that have all played a lot of games And in the league last season So look, I think that's going to be their home form. I think one, you know The crowds I suppose the crowds never really dropped away last year even though the form wasn't great You know, it seemed like a popular destination for people to go on a Friday night Like the way the players have interacted with the fans last year, you know, I seen a big change there and you know A lot of kids go into the games and you know, they definitely the players have definitely given them their time You know to go over and make the fans welcome and that and that makes a huge difference But in terms of the football side of it. Yeah, look, it has to be a hard place to go Um, I think I think it will be I think they'll be set up there I think the pace that they have in white areas as well You know Deggy touched on it there as well with arm McLaughlin channel Donald, you know, the new guy's success Uh That they got from 3d as well I actually saw him earlier in the in the gym. He's a big boy and you know, he caused a lot of problems up there as well So the um and uh, I think uh, Deggy Ferry got a couple of goals the weekend So, you know, he's he's going to be confident going into the season So look, it's all bodes well, but yeah, look home form is the key It's a platform that you you know that that you set up on and uh, you know, that's going to have to be key If if if harps are going to make a you know, a stab at the playoffs and you know, hopefully even further Yeah, uh, Deggy back to you. Uh, we're talking about making fun harps a fortress There's been a a bit of talk this week about the new stadium once again, Ed and Campbell the commercial officer Coming out and saying that there are now at a crossroads with the stadium Basically the government there's funding there but harps have to raise a certain amount of money There's going to be a new fundraising drive released this week But it seems to be that we're we're talking again. It's it's the same old story with the stadium But they're now at a stage where it's coming to to a crunch period So it is Declan are we going to see this happen? Do you feel over the over the next couple of years? Yeah, I suppose we've been listening to that this new drive every year where the stadium's going ahead We get some sort of emotional just before the season starts about the new stadium. We all know that it's bad They want it. We know the fun part There's a lot of memories not a history, but in this day and age So he's not fit for use for me for anybody going to the match And they were taking their family or kids or their wives or their daughters the game Which is not for purpose And you know, we need a new fun part, you know, so Whatever needs to be done needs to be done Obviously the money is there the sports cap and funding is there sitting with the department of sport And it just needs to be I suppose Waiting for the bik and benefit in kind regards to money from to match fund the facility and that obviously can be done now through charity to sorry raising up to the club and Getting that money from the public to to support the application And finance off what they need to do So I don't know is it four million they have sitting there with the department and they obviously the match that's fun Maybe with another million or so Yes, it's a lot of money like it's a lot of money to try to raise over I know a span of a year or two and you don't want to this going into three four or five more years because we've been listening about fun part fun part in the youth Stadium is a long time since the the foundations on the half The the concrete went in for a new stand over in shanarder and it's just up and they're waiting and It's just I suppose it loses his edge when you keep on asking about the stadium and stadium and nothing happened and people just lose that I suppose the world to level even in regards to This stadium will ever be built, you know, and that's the fear, you know And people deserve a new stadium and the sport sporting community perhaps supporters deserve it and You know, the players deserve to play in a good stadium as well and then you got them and hopefully You know, hopefully this is the last time where there's a massive big call and hopefully the community can come to support it And raise them necessary funding to get this project up and running and get it off the ground And hopefully have a new fun park in over in shanarder and the very very near future Because we know that soccer needs a bad landing at all Keith you were at fun harps and you were hoping that you would be playing in a new stadium when it was when it was all announced But it didn't materialize Aidan saying this week that the future of senior football is a threat here if this doesn't go ahead Is that something that you would agree with that if it doesn't happen that there's going to be I suppose threats looming over fun fun harps that the existence at senior level may not be there anymore Is it seen as that key? I think at this stage it seems like a bit of an eye rolling topic that you know at the start of every season There's sort of you know trying to sell sell the club on the back of you know getting the new stadium We as Sticky said we've been hearing about it for for years now You know there's always some some sticking point or you know something hasn't gone through But it's it's it's a difficult sell to try and get players in when you know when you're sort of selling fun park Is your as your home ground and you know you see that the other grounds that are in the area You know obviously the brandy well, you know and the show grounds and things like that Um Yeah, I think I think look Sticky said as well, you know, you you want to go and watch your football and a comfortable environment and and fun park isn't that? Will it will football in the northwest and balofa and league of iron for will it will the club hinge on not getting this? Um, I don't know if it's as drastic as that Look, there's always the interest there and harps not there But you know, it's going to be more difficult more difficult to attract people to attract players to attract families To come to the to come to the games if if that's what you're serving up and yeah I suppose maybe with that time will tell. Yeah, and more difficult to get promotion and get out of there If the players aren't coming to you Yeah, I think I know the problem now as well is sometimes You know, we lose the whole momentum of it, you know, um people are not sure exactly what's happening You know That channel of communication channel needs to be gone out to the community exactly where we are What stage we're at? How much we actually need to go and find this project to get it off the ground, you know Because you keep asking these questions and sometimes there's a lack of information going on in the general public And that's very frustrating for players for supporters, you know, and I know that the committee are working extremely hard But sometimes that letting communication to be honest with people and say, well, this is exactly what we need to do This is what much money we need and when we get this we can go and build our stadium And that's so you're laying you're laying exactly your cards on the tail and say, right Okay, then you'll actually get support from the people that They want to go and build a new stadium. I want to be there, you know, because sometimes that information It's it's very drippy. It comes out in drips all the time. You don't know exactly who's standard What's been clarified was not in it. That's that's a problem. I think you know that communication with the people People just want to know exactly. Okay. Where are we? What do we have to do? And now let's go and do it and that's what needs to be done And hopefully hopefully that will be the start of it and we can get a new stadium For the people up in EGOL and film maps. I think you're right As Keith said there, I don't think I still believe that there's no stadium in three or four years It's been part of a slow being existence But we all deserve to be playing our two watching games in a good stadium and comfortable environment For for adults and for families and for kids. That's really important. Yeah Listen, we'll move on. We'll be talking about the stadium. I'm sure another day So I think the general consensus is in the first division is as we leave it that Harps will be targeting targeting a playoff spot and it looks like Cork's idea the side that that's that's that's going to be beat but A one Keith would it would be a great start at the weekend? It definitely would yeah and look at you when you follow that with two home games, obviously You mentioned Cork coming in and then half loan as well So, you know early points in the board would be a great start and yeah with Cork If they're going to be you know, the ones to catch coming to coming to Balboffay, you know An early point or three will be a great start. Yeah Okay, let's go to the premier division. Derry said he's taking on Droughody and Eddie Keith's former club Droughody coming to the brandy. Well Derry didn't get up the trophy. I didn't lift the trophy that they wanted last year, Keith How big a year is this for the candy stripes? And their hopes and their journey and trying to become league champions. I think it's a really big year You know, I think If things don't start well, then you know where he could find himself under a bit of pressure You know, when you think when we talk about the money spent in there the quality of players that they have You know, they've made a real kind of statement purchase by going and getting Uh, you know, one of the leagues top top marksman Pat Hooban You know, the last couple of seasons has been up there in the scoring charts I suppose if you look at the the scoring charts from last year, I think he was 30s But the other two lads that financed ahead of him have you know moved on across the water At 33 can he still offer what he what he used to? You know that surface that up there in Brownie Wells, you know, Ferdinand forgiving if you're training on there Every day of the week and I'm playing on it. But look, he's been used to that Coming from Dundalk Daniel Kelly's also a good sign for them that that they got from Dundalk. So yeah, look, uh, they have a great squad You know, the quality's there You know, currently coming at the back, you know, uh, a local lads Sam Todd as well We'll get a first season under his bed So look, they have real quality within the squad and I'd be expecting them to be top two. Anyway, definitely Shenmue Glovers They're looking at last season that they were now were able to, you know, kind of push on and, you know, want it quite easily in the end up But yeah, look, this is a really big season for Derry. Yeah, huge season for Derry Listen Declan Uh, a guy that you know well Paul Higgardy has decided to step into to the brandy well You know was Northwest football very good. What did you think when you when you first seen that Paul Higgardy was going to be appointed as an assistant to Rory Higgins? Matt Keating I spent most of his life around football and watching games and watching players and all that. So yeah, listen It's a great move for Paul back into Derry City. And he was there before and for our success before What Stephen Kenny on his number two previously, you know, so it's I could I could sign on I think for for Rory Higgins. My guys to your back from staff good committed player A coach knows the game and the league very very well. So he's had loads of experience to it You know, you're through the squad that Derry have and like it's top drawer squad like me. Well, one of them wants to match Again slightly rovers and I mean they put out two squads and one was as strong as the other You know, they're out two elevens and you know, they've got two players for every position Around the field is and they've got real quality and depth. I do agree To last mid and dark will will definitely add to the fire power. I think Probably the last couple of years the downside has been, you know, injuries to Patrick McLenny and Michael Duffy And I've been keep those two players fit an injury free for a season. I think we'll get the best out of them and if you look last year Um, channel ago we're in 72 points and Derry City 65 and St Pat's 62 I see that those three teams to be up there fighting for those top three positions I don't see that changing too much Um, and then all of them Derry have obviously seven points of a difference. That's well turn turn turn that around Did a lot of draws at home last year? You've got to turn them into victories. Can they go and do it? I think they possibly can go and do it this year And you know, they're definitely need to go on a leg or want an FBI copy again I already could be under a bit of pressure for sure But the budgets massive up there the quality players are really good So don't even miss the lead title and that's going to be their goal for the season But channel ago, where's we know about it? Real good players as well into their squad aren't making office Signed him obviously Derry lads. So he's signed him a really good player I've done score a lot of goals and was there previously Johnny Kenny's signed on low and low as well He's coming in later on they still over in Celtic. I think, you know, so they've signed a really good quality again So they're going to be the team to beat for sure. Um, St Pat's have signed a lot of players with a lot of quality They have the success of one of the FBI couple last year John Daly has come in and it's done a brilliant job when he came in happy through the season So they're they're been back trading since mid December and they're back a long, long time Signing a lot of players last players welding them But they're they're going to have a big impression on that but their side setting one on the lead as well So it's going to be interesting between those three teams for me to go and want it If it was to call it now wouldn't be a hundred percent sure Do you think Sean Rogover's dairy but It's just you just never know what's going to happen But the dairy this year will be pushing hard for the title So I think just to go back on one of your last points there You said you're one of the pre-season games and you know, they had they're able to put out two teams And you know pretty much as as strong as the next Do you think that's one of the maybe reason last year why things didn't materialize for them? Yeah, they had a couple injuries not there But they've got when you have so many and a squad and with such quality they have Do you know what your best team is does really know what his best team is Yeah, that's that's interesting, you know, because the players that play and they have players They can utilize in different positions at full backs and midfielders and that and now I just think You know, you lose the quality of Michael Duffy for you know and Patrick McLean You know, they're real quality players that cause real problems, you know You took those in a quality Our other team now Daniel Kelly will make a big difference We'll make a big difference for sure and we'll be a threat and what they can do now as well Then go a bit longer. I thought last year when I watched them a few times I thought they were very very good around the pitch They'll make the area that will lack the wee bit of quality was up top Where they just didn't have that Frontman that could hold it and protect it away But you know, what was happening a lot of times? Lowland were just floating around drifting into the areas Find me part of the space in the tens area of area But nobody was actually a focal point for them Last year and I think Holman will be the main difference because he can stay up there And they can go a bit more direct a lot quicker as well A lot for flick on with the pace that they have with runners And either side of them And I think that could be the missing ingredient for them really, you know So if he can get him scoring goals regularly I've seen him now a couple of years in this year It's the first year I've locked in him in previous season I want you locked as fast as I've seen you in a long, long time It's body shape, you know, he locks as if he's lost a lot of weight during pre-season So I think that'll add to him But you mentioned earlier, you know The problem is you do have this You've lads come from Dundalk We've played in Acetor for four or five years Six years or something And then they come into the Acetor facility Up in the brand new well and we know as you say It's difficult, it's really difficult to train there every day And it's just harder on your body And as you load that obviously brings knocks And brings problems, muscle problems So if he can keep everybody fit and well I could see them going away Do you agree with Keith that this has to be a big year for Dere? If you're a Dere City supporter, Declan And obviously over the last couple of years They've been building and investing And bringing in several players Is this now the year that you touched on an FAI cup or a league title What an FAI cup be good enough or does it have to be the league? Yeah, I suppose The chairman can only answer that question, you know But you know I think if they wanted to be Dere What do you think the supporters are expecting around the Brandua? I think there's extra pressure With them this year for sure And there's a big budget there They have the quality of players Like you know, but they haven't done too many players Like so they're not missing that much Like they're very, very close to you know Good night and morning that And you know I suppose Shamrock always been very good Over the last couple of years And they just need to knock them off the curl And you know be that driving force But I agree with you There's pressure on the need to one You don't want to lease an FAI cup medal this year For sure or a trophy And but I would say you know The big concerns for one league title And if Rory doesn't want a league title He could find himself on their pressure Throughout the whole season And Declan from a sleigh of rovers point of view Will they be starting the season tentatively Because listen the pre-season didn't go the way that they wanted And there hasn't been too many rumblings coming out from The show grounds that there's going to be a huge push this year You obviously have been round the show grounds You're under the under 20s What's the feeling on sleigh going into the new season? Yeah listen I suppose There's a wee bit of anxiety maybe I would think maybe Because they probably locked up the squad of players That they have and they've lost a lot of players as well The budget doesn't seem to be as big as it was previous And they're probably utilizing some of the 20 players When needed as well So the first 13-14 players will be really quality And after that then they'll probably be using up the younger players So they'll have the same quality of experience So you look around the league And you'll see what the other teams that have been fighting with throughout the United Kevin Roherty signed really well Good players, excellent job Last year's manager and one of the best managers in the league With the resources he had last year So he'd be pushing hard Staying in the league Obviously have water for Keith Long Signed really well Good experienced players there as well Got seems to have good budget We have John Coffin down in Galway They've signed a lot of players Seemed to be backed financially by the Comer brothers They've put in a lot of money in the club And made a lot of players with real quality as well So there are the four teams that I see out fighting For that playoff, relegations area You know off those probably if you're looking around You know it's like a lot of good quality Really the quality in the first you know as I said 12, 13 players but after that then You know they're like probably death in your squad And that might cause a problem down the line Unless John can get a bit more Get a few more players and strengthen up the squad But you know overall the quality is good But that's the area that you'd be weakening If they pick up some injuries The squad isn't as strong as the rest of the teams And that'd be a worrying aspect for me For John and the squad Would you be worried about Slager over this year Do you think that they're potentially Oh well you mentioned a relegation back there But could they be potentially the candidates to go down Yeah no I suppose I wouldn't say that they could be potential But I think the teams that come up are very strong And you know I really think that more so than any other Time in the league you know your teams up last year Like your car came up last year wouldn't be as strong As the Galway team that's coming up this year you know And they haven't been financially backed as well as Galway You know Waterford, Keith Long seems to have plenty of money down there And he's signed really well and signed experienced players in the league well So you know I suppose it all depends You know I mean the form wasn't great for the last part of the season So you know it depends on how they start off And you see it could be under a bit of pressure You know and can they get you know can they outstay that And will the time only tell you know But you know John would probably need to A lot to get a few more players I mean That's obviously out of the experience as well You know but you know I know they are trying to get a striker And as well get a striker in the quality that they're looking at They definitely that would be a big help for them for sure Yeah so they got Ed McGinty back in there On loan from Oxford who's you know Was the goalkeeper for the last couple of seasons But any of the other lads that they seem to bring in You know there's a lot of you know youth there A lot of young lads that are out at Ollie Dorneman From Cardiff City Charlie Wiggett and the other lads A centre half and from Newcastle Yeah look they're all coming from big clubs I suppose But you know if you're on that end of the table As we would know experience is going to count for a lot Yeah of course when players know the league You know I always say that it's an added bonus for sure you know So they have players I mean that's John Mahan Who got injured during pre-season when he turned into Kelly So he's out of the league like that's a massive loss You know you're kidnapped them as well on your leaders And you know it's hard to replace them Even though there's players coming in so And again when you sign players You just don't know what you're going to get out of them Like you know so it's okay for two or three weeks Like we give them you know a number two You don't know how are they going to develop Are they going to be good enough You know are they good enough to the standard Like the second players from good clubs That seem to have on CV are not very very strong So you're hoping that they'll have to ground them And perform to the levels that you need you know So but he's going to need Because the squad is quite bare I think He's going to need to make sure that he keeps them fully fit You know and he needs you know long-term injuries Could have a negative impact on the results And whether they end up in the league you know So but you know this thing I suppose You know a long way to go He probably will try to bring more players And as well which will help the squad a little bit You know but I know that there will be some Of our squad involved as well And which is great for them you know From our side and on the one side See young lads getting opportunities you know So and they aren't good quality as well So you know that's not as positive as well From the club's perspective Yeah and you spoke about there you mentioned That the two teams that come up Galway and Waterford I suppose it's the first time in a long time Well that I can remember That you've got two teams that are coming up That are both full-time you know So like that's massive you know That's obviously creates you know The quality you know Obviously they're spending that time together They're well-drilled you know You should mention that the type of players Are able to track Waterford signing Pottery Gammon there from From the lower leagues in England Who's been around a lot and scored a lot of goals So him coming in will be massive for them At Galway I've added a few as well Which is going to make them a lot stronger So yeah look as you mentioned It's going to be it's going to be difficult For Slago if these young lads can come in And hit the ground running But it's definitely going to be a competitive league for sure Yeah you're absolutely right This is probably the first year that I remember Keith Where every single team in the league Are actually full-time You know every team's gone full-time And David Schroder this year went full-time As well as a full-time league like so You know where before he always had two or three clubs that weren't So the professional team should Should and they really would be better Than the teams that are not But that's not always the case you know But this year they're all full-time So it's going to be very, very competitive You know it's going to be interesting It's going to be very competitive In the top end of the table For me with obviously Shamburgore's derriere city It's a pass pushing hard And then in the bottom In the end of the table you're looking at Probably those four teams draw And Galway, Waterford and obviously Lagerover so it's going to be You know either way You know it's going to be Not going to be very difficult For those teams to find out Where they're going to be placed at the end of the year You know it's going to be a lot of positive results And negative results And that's how they react to that as well So it's going to end up in the top the whole way And top and bottom So it's going to be very, very interesting And obviously either with teams in the middle then As well you know So Bows will be in the middle of that as well So fighting hard on top Will be pushing hard as well So they're sending new players as well And to the league So it's going to be a good start Shells in there with Mark Coyle I was actually going to mention Shells Mark Coyle's captain But it's a big year for Shellbin Because there's now a real expectation Around the club that there hasn't been For a long time Q Yeah for sure Obviously European football has made Shells a real popular team again And you know With the local interest Obviously with Mark Coyle being there And being their captain It just shows you the How well he's thought of up there And you know what they may end up thinking of him To make him captain of You know one of the biggest clubs in the country really You know they've got real European experience there And you know a couple of great nights That they had over the years And you look They'll be looking to push into the top three as well They finished fourth last year I think they finished You know on 60 points They were just two behind pats and thirds So they'll be looking to push on They lost Jack Moylan Which was huge for them Their top goal square from last year But look You know a really interesting A really interesting season for them Yep Okay listen Guys we're going to close it off now So we are And we're actually going to put your neck On the block So we are Premier division winners For 2024 And the FAI Cup as well We'll mention that Keith we'll go with you first Are you looking for reasons why Or just to just Well who do you Well give me a reason If you want Like give me a brief reason A brief reason Right we'll wrap it up I think Rovers I think Rovers Just because they know How to win You know the squad hasn't changed too much You look at how they won the league last year You know they didn't have a A standout goal scorer The whole squad contributed You know you've seen You've seen them a taste of them last week And the president's cup You know they You know they were excellent Against against Look I know it's pre-season I know it's not You know it's not the full thing But you know the quality of players They were able to bring on Some of the players that they're still missing Pico Lopez Who was out in Africa a couple of nations You know Jack Byrne who hasn't played Didn't play the last four months of last season Who is You know they're trying to get him back I think he was He was involved in pre-season Buying closed-door games And he's picked up on Nigel They're trying to get him back in He's not too sure So like that's a massive player To bring back on your squad So I think Just what the quality that Rovers have You know the experience You know they know how to win Like they'll be firing off front as well League cup And Europe so For me League It's going to be Rovers Right okay On the cup Well the cup's in It can be anybody The cup can be anybody It's difficult to pick one there You know you would have said last year You wouldn't have thought maybe it was Pat's But yeah look They've got You know real quality Pedigree yeah So If I go cup I'm going to go draw her Draw her Draw her They'll be looking for Actually if we've got to change your camera On the podcast thing we're doing They're going to show us Look at your facial expression For the last few months It was too busy looking over at the table at Keith But Draw her for the cup And Rovers for the league Listen Degren Who are you picking for the league? I keep it quite simple I think Sharma Rovers will probably want it But they already come in behind them And I think they already might go on One there at the end of the cup So And obviously We have to find them some parts That's what I'd be looking at you know So I'm not sure if we're drawing His choice there I have to say I'm not sure Are you drinking before you get money away Some insider knowledge Some insider knowledge You don't know who I know down there Degre So Having a few conversations Dave Webster's back there isn't he Dave's back there yeah Dave Sayed there X Harps Captain as well Listen lads We're going to look forward to To what will hopefully be a successful season For the Northwest Clubs And in particular Fun Harps And hopefully they'll have a better season Than last year And fingers crossed they can make the playoffs But listen Keith Thanks for coming in And joining us tonight To look forward to the football And I'm sure we'll be Speaking regularly now Over the coming weeks And Degren is always good to have you On board good to see you And good to talk to you Thanks Manuel as well We'll catch you now Cheers Deg And don't forget this coming Saturday night There will of course be Live regular updates from Fun Harps against Longford Town At down at Bishop gate Denise O'Flaherty Will be on duty Kickoff time is at 7.30 And you'll not miss a thing here in Highland From the opening game Of the first division for the Harps


Welcome to another edition of RCE. Again, this is Brock Palin. You can find us online at rce-cast.com. You can find links to our Twitter, our blogs, and all the back catalog of over 100 episodes on scientific computing. Again here, Jeff Squire from Cisco Systems and one of the authors of Open MPI. Jeff, thanks again for your time. Hey Brock, so we are recording here just about on the eve of the eclipse. I think this episode will probably be published after that. So everybody will have seen super exciting totalities, including me and including our guest today. Yeah, in an office full of tech people, you can only guess that around half of our office is taking that day off to go do something related to the eclipse. Yeah, it's actually an excuse to absence it at my kid's school. So we just have to say we're going to the eclipse and that's good enough. That's actually not a bad idea. It's like the one time to be able to see it. And where you are, it's much closer to where you are than where I am up here in Michigan. Yeah, we just drive two hours south and it's right here in Bowling Green, Kentucky. So we're just going to drive down on the highway, pull off on some country road style and like picnic style spread out and bask in the glory of the totality. So we have with us the CTO from PBS Works at Altair. You want to go ahead and give us an introduction? Hi, this is Bill Nisberg. I'm really happy to be here with you guys. I got my start actually back at NASA where we developed the PBS Pro software. Now I'm the CTO for PBS Works at Altair. So can you give us a quick rundown of what is PBS Pro? Sure. PBS Pro is software. You know, it's funny. I always end up at these conferences where I can't tell whether someone selling software hardware services. So I always start with that. It's software. It's middleware. So it's operating system level middleware that does job scheduling and workload management. If you're an HPC, I don't have to say anymore. If you're not an HPC, probably should say a little more.  Yeah, well, you said one little phrase there. Let me ask you. You said it's operating system level middleware. What do you mean by that phrase? So I sort of think of software as three layers. So there's the hardware. People know what that is. You go buy it. There's the operating system. Everybody knows what those are hopefully. And then there's applications that you use like Gmail or some computational fluid dynamics application that's blowing air over airplane wings. And then in between all of that stuff, in between the applications and the operating system is this stuff called middleware. And it does the extra stuff that the operating system doesn't do. Okay, so then what is PBS Pro's relation to that? You said it's middleware. Let's pretend we're not an HPC today so that we give our non-HPC friends a little overview here. Okay, awesome. So PBS Pro is software that you use on large HPC systems. So clusters or clouds where you're connecting together lots of different nodes together, lots of different computers together. And the simple version is that it sort of does traffic control scheduling. So what happens in high performance computing is a lot of the work is super computationally intensive. So it uses a lot of compute power and it ends up being cut up into little pieces and handed off into the system in what I would call jobs. And then there's also a lot of people say competing for that resource. And so there's a lot of jobs from a lot of people. And PBS Pro does the traffic control, the scheduling, the watching of the system to make sure it's still running. Does that make sense? Yeah, it does, but clarifies something. This doesn't serve a role in terms of you like your programming API, right? This is managing the resources but not serving a role like MPI or co-array or something like that, right? That's right.  So you might run, say, some structural optimization code. Say you ran opt-destruct to test the flexibility of your cell phone display or something. And you could run that for the command line. You'd say blah, blah, blah, opt-destruct, blah, blah, blah. And it would virtually crash test your cell phone into some cement. But it might take three or four hours. And you might not want to just drop it once virtually. You might want to drop it from a lot of different angles and a lot of different heights. And so that ends up being, say, a thousand different jobs that you might want to run. And so instead of running those thousand different jobs by hand one at a time, what you would do is you would package them up into jobs and you would submit them to PBS. So PBS is not the API layer. It's really at the application layer. And it's very agnostic to application. So I just used opt-destruct as an example, but it's anything that you could run basically on an HPC system. Okay. Now, PBS in itself has a long history and you even referred to it in the beginning back there. Give us a little bit about the history and the evolution of where this came from. Well, actually there was a system back in the very early super mainframe computer days in the sort of the Cray days called NQS. I think it stood for Network Queuing System. And the group, actually the group at NASA Ames even before my time created NQS. And as parallel computers were sort of looming on the horizon, the folks who were developing NQS, I believe, ran out of space in some internal data structure and realized it was time to actually start from scratch. So this was back in 1990, 1991, I think, and actually started a POSIX standards effort to standardize what batch computing looked like. And out of that came a POSIX batch standard for batch computing, but also came reference implementation, which became PBS. And it became commercial PBS and now is open source PBS. Okay, so scheduling seems relatively straightforward. I have resources, I lay stuff out. That's a very naive look at it. What makes scheduling difficult? That's a great question. You know, I think if you're just looking at your own problem, so if you're say one organization and you just have one set of users who are competing for one machine, scheduling actually isn't that hard. And a lot of people actually continue to sort of build their own scheduling system or even just do something simple and yell over the partitions and say, hey, it's my turn, do you mind if I run some big job? What makes it hard is once you go from sort of a group of people who can yell over partitions to people who are all coming in remotely or you go from, say, a few hundred jobs a week to a few thousand or you go from a few tens of machines to a few hundred thousand machines, just the combinatorial explosion makes it hard. And then HPC is full of really strange and unique things like, you know, nodes without disks or nodes with Xeon Fire or GP GPUs or networks that have a topology that you might want to map something to because you get better performance if you have a better mapping. And all of that plays into scheduling. Okay, so that was a good history. But what about Torq? Wasn't Torq one of the open source derivatives of this somewhere along the line as well? Yes, it was. Actually, I mean, here's the whole, the family tree was, first it started out as the portable batch system, which got abbreviated PBS. In 2000, actually I and the group of original developers left NASA to form a commercial company around PBS. And we coined PBS Pro at that point and also OpenPBS. A few years later, a fork of OpenPBS became Torq. I think Torq is still alive. People are, I'm actually still bumping into it. So Torq is still alive. OpenPBS kind of died. We kept going with PBS Pro. Our group was acquired by Altair in 2003. And then just last year at International Supercomputing, we dual licensed PBS Pro so that now PBS Pro is, there's an open source version and then there's a commercial version. And what are the differences between the two? Ah, our goal is actually to try to eliminate as much as possible the technical differences between PBS Pro and PBS Pro. In fact, we decided to choose the same name instead of resurrecting the open PBS name because our strategy is to try to kind of bring the two worlds together that have formed around some using open source workload management job schedulers and some using commercial workload management job schedulers and we really wanted to try to bring those two worlds together. I mean, obviously we have a commercial version and so how we differentiate on them is that the commercial version, I guess the way to think about it is more along the lines of say, the way Red Hat does say Fedora and Red Hat Enterprise Linux. So you get all the features exist in both. Although actually you get tons more features in Fedora, you just get tons more bugs.  So that's sort of the philosophy we're trying to do. That makes sense. So how has scheduling changed over the years? Because that's not how HPC started. Well, there were many different form factors of HPC, but a typical one that most people think of is small clusters of Linux machines. Back in those days it was Pentiums and the like and whatnot. But now we have entirely different form factors like you talked about with GPGPUs and Xeon 5s and there are thousands and thousands of cores and remote users. What is your perspective and how has the software had to evolve to handle these kinds of scenarios? So I mean, so scheduling has gotten, well actually I think scheduling has gotten more interesting of late in my early days, which is too many years ago to talk about. Scheduling was pretty easy. There were CPUs and memory and that's about it. And you just had to do some counting. You just had to say how many CPUs are allocated, okay, don't allocate anymore. Then we actually got parallel machines, in fact we got some weird parallel machines. We got this CM connection machine and Intel Paragon and IPS-C860 and stuff. And it became kind of all over the place. Then it went to sort of these white box Linux clusters where everything kind of looks the same for a while. A little bit harder than just CPUs and memory because now you had nodes and nodes had CPUs and memory. So that made it a little harder. But today, boy, it's fun. There's GPUs, there's Xeon 5s, there's FPGAs, there's multiple different kinds of network architecture. And actually one of the more interesting things that we're doing is scheduling, not just based on sort of matching and use of things like licenses that you buy once and you use for a year, but power where if you turn it on, it uses power and that costs money. And when you turn it off, it stops using power. It doesn't cost money. You guys doing anything with ephemeral resources? This I'm specifically thinking in cloud. Ways that you can burst or run dedicated. What are you guys doing in that space? We are actually, it's a really nice analysis. It's very close. Scheduling for cloud is really close to scheduling for power, which is really neat. So when you turn on a cloud resource, it costs you money when you turn it off. You don't pay money. If you bought a machine, when you turn it off, it costs you money. So the scheduling problem is really very, very similar, which is great. So we're doing a lot of stuff with cloud. You can build a cluster in the cloud, and so PBS Pro works really well for managing resources in the cloud if you want to share them. A lot of people just want to use them for one job and then turn it off. If you want to just use it for one job and turn it off, then we have a lot of folks who are doing what's called hybrid computing or cloud bursting, where maybe you have a cluster inside your organization and for peak demand or for particular kinds of applications, you send them to some cloud where it's either cheaper or faster to get the results. And for that, PBS Pro can automatically connect to, say, Azure or AWS, create a small cluster for the job, run the job, tear it down, send the results back. And that's what cloud bursting is. Is PBS Pro also handling things like data staging and other things? Because normally your shared file system scratch, reference genome set and stuff like that don't also span across the WAN or slow across the WAN. Does it handle that kind of logic? So this is an interesting issue, a problem in HPC I think in general and in hybrid computing. So the quick answers, yes, of course, PBS can move data around. That's not an issue. You can say, hey, before you start my job, please stage this data in or please stage this data out when you're done with the job. The big problem is actually a lot of these applications have a lot of data and it doesn't make sense to stage it in or certainly while staging it in, it's usually free for some clouds, but staging it out can be actually pretty expensive. And so people who are designing their cloud strategies, I don't think it's a solved problem yet. They're trying to decide what they want to do. So if you have a huge genome database and you want to do cloud computing, you're better off storing it. You're using Amazon or something. You're better off storing it in Amazon than you are trying to access it or copy it in and out. Now I want to jump back to something that you mentioned earlier. You said that you have the open source version and the closed source version. What drove you to, what was the rationale behind that decision? Because you see a lot of impassioned arguments on both sides of this coin of the open source or the proprietary and things like that. And you have explicitly and deliberately made a choice to, well, not fork because you're trying to reduce the technology differences between the two, but you've made the choice to be on both sides. Why did you do that? Well, it was actually a hard decision. Actually, if you got a view into the internals of Altair, you could see that we had a lot of long discussions over it, but in the end, here's how we view things, which is that in my tenure in HBC, I'm curious what you guys think about this, but there's always been, especially in workload management in these two worlds, the public sector, universities and research, and the private sector like Fortune 500 companies, and the public sector loves open source, and the private sector, it's not like they hate open source, but they actually just want tools that work with support and stuff, and so they gravitate towards commercial software. And at least in workload management, that meant that nothing could reach critical mass, or nothing has, I don't know if it could, maybe that's the wrong way to say it, nothing has reached critical mass. I mean, look at the open source progression of tools in workload management. So NQS was actually open source back in the 70s. Okay, that was before open source even had a name, but as that fizzled out, PBS actually became pretty well known, then Torq became pretty well known, then Grid Engine actually took over, Condor for a while, and now Slurm is the big thing in the open source side, but I don't feel like anything's ever been able to take hold and stay, and my view on that is because nothing's been able to bridge the gap over into the commercial side and then reach critical mass. So our idea anyway, I hope it works, is that if we can have a dual licensed tool that plays really well in the open source world, in the public sector world, and also plays really well in the private sector commercial world, maybe we can bridge that gap and reach critical mass. And how's that been going? Because I would tend to generally agree with your assessment of open source versus just give me a tool that works for the different audiences and things like that. Are you seeing good adoption on both sides of that? Yeah, we've had a long time, we've spent a long time in the commercial world, so we have really good commercial set of customers, couple thousand commercial customers all over the world doing all sorts of neat stuff. And in the last year, it's really hard to count open source users, as you probably know with OpenMPI, if you sort of have to do statistical analysis or see how many people show up in a bof. But I do know how many people are contributing on the open source pages and stuff, and we have about a hundred active contributors right now. And okay, to be fair, 30, 40 of those are from Altair, still, maybe even 50, I don't know. Actually, it's hard to count who's from Altair because everybody's using their GitHub ID, not their Altair ID. So it's actually going very well so far. Well, you actually anticipated, the first question was, what exactly is your definition of open source? Are you just throwing code over the wall or are you actually building a community? And it sounds like you're trying to at least build a community and you are having success in having people actually contribute new code, right? Yeah. Yeah, no. The goal is to create one PBS that everybody likes. One PBS pro, I should say, that everybody likes. And the only way to do that is to be sort of very aggressively open on the open source side and then very nice and supportive on the commercial side. And so we're trying to do both. And so whenever we're making, in fact, some of the decisions that we've made, we've made to try to make the open source more open. So inside Altair, we actually, as part of the whole effort, we reorganized ourselves to act as a contributor. So if you go to PBSPro.org, which is where everybody should go, you can look at the show notes, I'm sure, for that. You'll see, and you wander around on the various open source sites, you'll see that we're acting as one contributor and we're following all the rules that are posted and people are even internally or complaining to other people internally saying, I'm not sure you can do that because the community might not like that. So it's actually kind of nice. So support models, I mean, you covered a lot of that, but here's an interesting question. Because it's now open source, it also has the ability for a person who wants a support contract to also modify it locally and not contribute it back. Have you ran into that situation? And if so, how do you handle supporting something that's been modified, not in configuration but actual source code modification by the person who wants to buy support? Yeah, no, it's something we struggle with a little bit. I will say that we've been really lucky. Even with our closed source version for many years, we actually had a lot of source code customers. For example, NASA aims as a source code customer and they wanted a lot of support and we supported them, but they modified the check out of the code. I would say that right now we haven't run into that problem and we've been really lucky of the people who've been modifying things that they're pretty intelligent smart folks and maybe PBS Pro only attracts really smart people and if you're really smart, you should use PBS Pro. That's totally what it is. Make sure all the listeners know that. Yes, exactly. Really, it's totally fun with gold thread. Well, let me ask you this then. So if you are just a contributor, does that mean that there is some third party organization that holds the code or are you just treating yourself? What is the license that this code is under, including the stuff that you get from contributors? We use it with dual license, so it's a regular commercial license that you expect from commercial licensing. It's available on that and then the open source stuff that you download on GitHub is under AGPL version 3 license. It's not held, so right now Altair still holds all of the intellectual property. Obviously though, it's AGPL so you can get a copy. We did that because we really want the dual license to work. We really want to be able to take the innovations that happen in the open source community and move them over to the commercial side and vice versa and move from commercial to open source. We also did that because it's really new for us and we're learning and we didn't want to take some path that we couldn't undo in terms of like, if we went into say the Apache Foundation and we decided, oh no, the Linux Foundation is where we should have gone at. Dip our toe in before we dive in. And what kind of response have you gotten from the community? You said you've got upwards of 50 external contributors or so. What kind of things are they submitting? Are they submitting just, oh, here's a little bug fix where you have typo, or are they submitting like genuine new features or how's that going? A little bit of each. I mean, actually we released it at International Supercuting, not this year, but last year, so a little over a year ago. And within three days, somebody submitted a port to, I think it was Debian, because it didn't compile on Debian, so they submitted a pull request for that. We're like, wow, cool, okay. That was fast. But we've also gotten a handful of bug fixes, a couple of new features that actually make it a little easier to configure PBS. We actually got a huge dump of Kerberos code, but then that was withdrawn because the person who contributed actually moved from one organization to another, and I don't think they had the support to finish the process, which was a little disappointing. But we're hoping that the original organization hires someone new and then they come back. But that was like 30,000 lines of code. It was crazy. We were a little worried about that because we're like, okay, right now we're trying to structure this like a real open source project. There's a set of maintainers. Right now they're all Altair. Hopefully one day we can expand that. And they review all the code before it actually gets, before the pull request or get accepted. And we're like 30,000 lines. Uh-oh, someone's going to have to review that. So since you've gone open source, is there somebody who is like a household name that picked up the open source version? Wasn't a customer before using the commercial PBS works version? Like somebody new who somebody would know? I wish I could give you a better answer to that. The biggest contributor outside of Altair right now is CessNet, C-E-S-N-E-T in Chechia. The people using it, I did see someone come by, or one of the guys at ISC this year, saw Quantum, the big manufacturing company, come by and take pictures of our booth. And they asked them, hey, what are you doing? And they said, well, we use PBS. We use the open source version of PBS Pro. I'm like, okay, I don't know how you find out that people are doing that, but that's cool. So I think we're spending all of our time on technology and a little less of our time on marketing the open source. And I think I'm really glad that you guys set this opportunity up for us. Because I think people still don't know about the fact that PBS Pro is available open source in some sense. Because I would say about now half the people I bump into are open source now, really? Okay, open source or not. And you don't have to name any names, because I know there's a lot of companies that are protective of how much resources they devote towards high performance computing. But what's the largest system? Let's go by core count, managed by PBS Pro. Well, that's easy. The biggest system is still NASA Ames Pleiades, the one you saw in the Martian and you saw that little tiny bit that they scrolled by. I thought that was great. The movie, that is. They have, you know, they keep changing their machine because it's a whole bunch of, well now it's HPE hardware, and they keep rolling in new hardware. So when I looked a couple years ago, there was 12,000 nodes, and they were scheduling 250,000 cores, some of which were virtual, as one system. I think they're actually down to like 10,000 nodes, but up to more cores, because they replace some of the old stuff with higher core count, new stuff. So in the 10,000 node range, 250,000 plus cores, which is pretty big. Okay, and then what's the strangest use you've ever seen? We've had a lot of people on here, something they never expected to happen. What have you seen someone try to do? You know, I... You guys nicely sent me some of these questions beforehand, and this is the one, what is the strangest use of PBS Pro that I've been racking my brain about, because most of the folks are using PBS to do scheduling, and it's not too strange. I have seen a lot of strange uses of features of PBS. Like, we'll design a feature of PBS to do one thing, and somebody else will use it to do something else. I was at a weather site where we had expected, for example, them to use advanced reservations to schedule their weather models, right? You know, the weather models run, say, four times a day every six hours. And so we have this advanced reservation feature where you can set aside some resources to run that model, and you're sure they'll be there. They didn't like the reservations the way we designed them, so they were using them in this really weird way where they were making reservations that were like 24 hours out, and then the way the scheduler behaved is it would make sure that that reservation was available later, and that created a hole in their system for backfilling that they used for something completely different. So people use features all over the way that we never expect. But I don't know that the whole software suite has been used in a surprising way, or at least not yet. So let me riff off of that and go off something you said earlier in the conversation that scheduling has gotten a whole lot more interesting recently with new architectures and new topologies and all kinds of things like this. What is your most interesting feature or your favorite feature from that perspective that is just needed for the new and growing, evolving, complex HPC scenarios? I'm actually really excited about some of the stuff that we're doing in power, I think. In part because I think it's really early days in power management and in terms of limiting power, running for power, I mean, if you look at... So one of our bigger systems in Japan was the Subame 2.5 system, which was all big green system run by Tokyo Institute of Technology.  And so it didn't matter how many CPUs are you using, how much memory do you need, how well what is this. They also had this extra... almost orthogonal issue that they had to manage at the same time. And so I think what's making scheduling interesting and what's cool inside of PBS now is, okay, now how do you take these different things that you're trying to do? So you're trying to maximize utilization, you're trying to get turnaround time as short as possible, maximize throughput, minimize power use while still making people happy on those other dimensions. And so there's just so many dimensions now to play with that it's become a really interesting problem and a really interesting system. So how do you play with that though?  I mean, what kind of things can you do? All of that. But we try to stay out of exactly what we do and we try to separate out the policies of what people want to do from the mechanisms of how they do them. So PBS is really good at counting. So for example, if you want to keep under a threshold, under some power cap, you can allocate power and then jobs can ask for a certain amount of, well, okay, it wouldn't be power. Sorry, I keep getting mixed up with power and energy. I'll let the listeners look those two up if they're not sure what they mean, but even I get mixed up and I've been in this world for a long time. But to cap power, jobs can ask for a certain amount of power and then we're good at counting so we can make sure we won't go over that power limit. But if you also want to say, run some low priority job at a lower power, we have facilities to do that. How you set that lower power, whether it's a sea state or frequency or what you're doing, that's sort of a mechanism and we let you plug in whatever you want to plug in to pick the right mechanism for you. We also have a facility for looking for when nodes become idle. So if your cluster isn't 100% used all the time, maybe you have Sunday nights, it's not used or something, well, we can go automatically go out, find nodes that are going to be idle for a while and shut them down or just put them into a low power state. Again, the mechanism of how it reserves power is kind of up to you. Some of it is what we're doing. Some of it is what we're rolling out. So I would say we're still in the process of moving a lot of stuff that only exists in the commercial code over into the open source project. And a lot of this stuff is in the commercial code because we did it in concert with, for example, SGI when they existed as a separate company or Cray. And so now we're in the process of rolling that out and figuring out how to make it general and acceptable to a wider community and putting it in the open source project. So Bill, besides these power things, what other new features are coming in the future for PBS Pro? We're doing a lot sort of in the exascale space, meaning connecting to other things in the ecosystem, but also scalability, a lot of scalability stuff. So we have sort of, I don't want to call it a prototype because it's running in production, but we have some really great throughput code that takes PBS, current version of PBS, up to 10,000 jobs a minute throughput and end throughput. And we're going to roll that into the open source project and then into the commercial generally available code. We have another feature we did only, that only exists right now on Cray systems that lets you run schedulers, multiple schedulers in parallel. So you take one PBS system, so it still has one database and sort of when you do a status, you get one status and everything. But you can cut the system up and run multiple schedulers with different policies for different parts of the system. And that also both speeds things up and then also gives you a little more flexibility about how you set scheduling policies. So those are the exascale-y stuff that aren't power. So I already talked about some of the power stuff. In the other part of our world, we also have some non-open source stuff. I don't know how much about the rest of PBS I should talk about, but with PBS Works, we've focused a lot on the user experience. And we're just about to roll out, I think, in the next couple of weeks in a beta version of the next version of PBS Works, which will be generally available in the coming months, which is really tuned toward, with a real focus on user experience. So a real focus on, you know, for engineers being able to just do what engineers want to do without paying any attention to HPC behind the scenes.  Hey, is things working? Things are working great. I can go away. Or, oh, something's not working. Let me click on that red thing and see what's not working and fix it. So along the same lines, there has been a bunch of resumed discussion over the past, I'd say even two years or so, about MPI integration with job scheduling systems. And it seems to have gotten deeper and broader over the past couple of years. Is this something that the PBS Pro community is working on, looking into, talking about any of these kinds of things? Definitely talking about. We actually started working on some fast job launch stuff. By working on, I don't mean writing code yet, but sort of doing design work and figuring out what we want to do with the PMIX community. I mean, the idea is better...  If your job happens to be running MPI, the first thing MPI does is it goes, well, what 1,000 nodes would I give it and let me find out about them and that takes a little bit of time. And so the kind of integrations that we're trying to do now, and this is where PMIX comes in, is eliminating that dual find out about the universe and just letting PBS pass down to MPI, hey, here's what the universe that you're given looks like. You don't need to find out again, so maybe you could take a little less time on startup. So that's some things. There's actually other things in MPI and we've only talked to people and we, on the commercial side anyway, we get driven by what people want to do, you know, next, and not so much why what people might want to do 10 years from now. I'm hoping actually on the open source side we get some more of the researchy stuff coming in from that. But we don't, the discussions we've had about growing and shrinking jobs, in fact, we have some code that we put in that we're actually, I didn't talk about that we're also putting into PBS to shrink jobs, but also handling resilience, so your 10,000-way MPI job loses 10 nodes. You don't want to kill the whole thing and start over. It's been running for a week. You know, how do you handle that? So we're dabbling with that, but I don't think we've, we're not, we're not to the point where we're writing code or there's an obvious solution. Okay, Bill, where can people find more about PBS Pro and PBS Works? So PBS, the place you should remember for PBS Pro, the open source project is pbspro.org. And that has pointers to all the other sites, because there are a few other sites, like the community bullet board and the contributors portal and the issue tracking system, which are all over the web and GitHub. So pbspro.org, for PBS Works, you should go to pbsworks.com. Okay, well, thank you very much for spending your time with us. Thanks, Bill. Thank you. And just, you know, please go take a look. Go sign up for the announcement list at PBS Pro.