Hello everyone. Welcome to Contributor Mentorship How to Start Contributing to WordPress Core. I hope you will enjoy this, so let's start. Firstly, a bit about me. I'm a WordPress developer and with background in marketing. Quotriage-Cole for 6.3 and 6.4 releases a maintainer of two components and font editor. I didn't publish anything yet, but I have like a lot of content and draft and this has become a bit part of my life. So I think that I am already a font editor. And you can find me in WordPress News in 2021, I think. And you can find a lot of more interesting people there, so check it. What we will discuss today. Firstly, release schedule. I will talk about why it's important a bit later. It will be very clear. Different ways to contribute to WordPress Core, how to use track and search for suitable tickets, how to collaborate with other contributors and what to expect. But firstly, what is here for you? Why it's actually worth doing? Firstly, ability to make a difference. You can imagine WordPress is used by millions and millions sites. It's also a learning opportunity because when you are working on such large scale, you make things which are supposed to be compatible according to coding standards and a lot of other things you need to know and keep in mind and you will learn them in a process. No one knows everything at once and you can collaborate with people, share ideas, look what other people are doing and this is the beauty of open source because what people are doing is actually open and accessible and you can watch and learn and make some of your own ideas from what you learn from other people. And also you can try new things. If you are, for example, working with front end on your main job, you can try back end or otherwise, or you try to make unit tests if you didn't do it before. So there's always some possibilities to try something new or to watch from some other perspective, the same things. This is safe environment. All people who are working with WordPress, who are in our community, are passionate about WordPress and because people are working from all over the world, we are embracing all this differentiation between people and it's become common knowledge that we all are different, but in general we all people and it's what matters and we all contribute. It means that you don't have to do something. It's your own free will and it's your own choice and everyone is respecting everyone else's time and impact and efforts, etc. So here is lovely people and this is why a lot of people are staying in this community and contributing the first place because we all are friends and we are staying for each other and support each other and this is much more than just contribution to some product itself. And of course, you can have a very, very big plus to your resume, because if you didn't do something before and you've done it for WordPress, you can prove it, you can share it, you can show it to everyone else. And I think there's a much more abilities. If you are working in some company, you will be only sticking to your own job description and will not be able to participate in other activities. Here, we have a lot of possibilities for you to poke around and to share your opinion, to make suggestions. So this is the beauty of open source project. We can do, for example, marketing, no matter if we are marketers or not. If you have an idea, you can share it, promote it, collect opinions from other people, and actually it makes work. So it does not matter what is your background. Do you have a degree or not. If you have an idea, it can work and be practically applicable. So, let's start with release schedule. Why it's matter? Because we are staying with release schedule and it's planned ahead for a year, and there are some milestones inside milestone, and we need to stick with them. For example, right now we have only dry run planned. Possibly there will be one more release, I think, if we will have some tickets committed before dry run. But right now it's almost done. Version is almost complete. And if you expected some ticket of yours to be merged, to be committed into trunk, there's no go into this current version. And right now, if you are working on something, it's quite achievable to make it work and be live for the next 6.4 version. Because right now we can work on enhancements, futures, strings with translations, descriptions, everything is right now possible. Before better one. When better one will be released, we will not be working on enhancements and futures anymore. We can work on them, but only for the next release. And from better one, we only be able to commit bug fixes. So if you are working on some bug fix, you can continue to work and expect it to be in the next version until release candidate one. There is a release candidate one. We are stopped working on bugs almost if and there is also hard string freeze what this means, it means that all content, all the strings which needs to be translated are free. We are not accepting anything else anymore. These small exceptions, but strings for translations are done at this to this moment. And you need to keep it in mind because polyglots need time to translate these strings before the release. And I think 45 around 45 like locals are doing this before the release. So, this time needs for them to translate these strings because it's really annoying for polyglots when they translated some strings and they become fuzzy because something changed. They need like double their work and it's not fair for them. So this is why we have hard string freeze.  And from release candidate one, we only working on some regressions and some things which should be in release like very urgent. So some exceptions, some regressions, we are fixing bugs which appears in this new version. So if a bug appears in new version, it needs to be tackled as soon as possible. This is the key point. And this is why we have like release candidate one, release candidate two, etc. And dry run means that everything is already done and we are just preparing to make big appearance, big release. But if some things changed before dry run, we will have like another dry run. So sometimes we have like a bit shift in schedule because some additional changes. And we have a release party and the next release party will be next Tuesday, I think. And it will be 6.3 lunch. Everyone is welcome to join. And it's really amazing thing. We all love emojis. And we have like a lot of steps to proceed. But people are like keeping excited. And we also need something to do. We have something to be done. It's checks because I think once I saw that package went wrong and it needs to be repacked. But most times it's fine. Still, it's worse to check because of impact what we are making and having. Like you see, in each release, we are like collecting numbers for previous release. This data is publicly acceptable. There is a page with this counter. So 91 million downloads. You can imagine this impact. This is why it's worth checking even if everything should work fine. And also, each time we have some additional information like musician name and content about this release. It has like a lot of work behind this content to assemble everything. And also about release. If you want to see your name on the release page and have a batch of core contributor, it will only happen when it's updated. So it's happening after official launch. So if you are like wanting to see batch in your profile, you need to wait until the release party. If you contributed to this release or if you will contribute to the next release, you will have this batch but after release party. It's almost like an hour, I think, matter, possibly two, but it still needs to be done. And it's not a piece by magic. It's a piece by commit as well. Let's talk about different ways to contribute. You don't have to be a developer to contribute to core. Of course, if you are a developer, you can contribute in much more ways than if you don't, but still there's options for everyone to be involved and get started. And if you are not a developer, but you think you can try it, you can make it slow and start with a contribute with something which don't need to have development skills in the first place. And all contributions matter and can't. Sometimes you can change one letter in a word, for example, something for make a mistake, someone made the mistake, you spotted it and fix it. It's also a contribution because if we are working on such large scale, everything should be fine. But sometimes it's tricky and it can be easily overlooked. And also, if you try something, for example, you made a patch, but it didn't work for some reason, it's also counts because you found some way which can be left behind and everyone can go further to explore other possibilities. We have a lot of tickets, but we have them because it's not easy a lot of times to find a right solution, even if the problem or issue can look simple from the beginning, and it's often like a misleading simplicity. Because we are working on such large scale, and this is not should not only work for yourself for your environment, but for all other environments, and it makes things quite complicated, even if they look like piece of cake. So different ways to contribute. Everyone can test current development version, alpha beta or release candidate, and you don't need to have development installation for this, you can install these versions with beta tester plugin, and after you install this beta tester plugin on your WordPress version, you don't do it on production, on your live sites, do it on local environment. Still, if you install this plugin you can choose what version do you want, night builds, betas, release candidates, etc. And you can poke around and test, because we have a lot of changes, especially with Gutenberg and editor. There are a lot of bugs to be fixed. So, there are exploring opportunities for everyone. And you don't need to be a developer to do this to check if buttons are working correctly if you have right behavior from elements, etc. It's even better in this because developers are used to complications, so they can overlook them easily. So, and if you stumble across this, something you think it's a bug, you can create a ticket to fix it. It's also a contribution.  And when I was started to work with drug, I noted that a lot of people are doing this, this, the same thing, they are reporting the bug and they are proposing patch at the same time. Because it's, of course they just want it, but it makes sense because people spend some time to instigate what is happening, why it's happening. They had like a half of the solution already, and it's easier and quicker for them to make a patch then for someone else who will be browsing and looking through the content of ticket and description and trying to figure out what had happened. And you also can propose an idea, some improvement enhancement, future request, if you think that something should be done, you can browse tickets and see if there is the same idea already, and contribute to it on, and if there is none, you can create your own ticket. But the description, of course, should be good. And from this, it's like meta, because if description is good, it's more likely that someone will understand what it's all about and starting to work on this. This is also what you can do. This is called triage. In triage sessions, we are looking through tickets and check if there is a correct component, correct keywords, correct contributor focus applied, if description is good, if this ticket needs screenshots or this ticket needs involvement from designer, design team, etc. So this also a way to contribute for people who are not developers. For example, if someone is reporting that some elements are going outside of some other elements and they don't should not to do it, and there is no screenshots. Sometimes it's very difficult to understand what had happened, and you can make screenshots and attach them to tickets or actually make a small video. Sometimes people are attaching screenshots from there, some other external source, and later they are removing these screenshots, and it isn't clear anymore what had happened. So someone needs to go and restore and check if this issue is still happening, and if it's happening, and if this actually happening how it's described. Sometimes people are describing things very weak, so clarifying checking triage and things is also a big part of this job of moving tickets forward. So this is what I'm doing for 6.3 and 6.4 releases, but I'm not alone, and I hope to assemble some team to work on this because it's like a big job, and you need sometimes to push things forward to ping people to ask people to make some additional investigations to ask an original reporter for additional information, etc. So this is like managing stuff, and someone should do it. And of course you can test patches. We had a session about testing before this project, so I will not go deeper in testing. So this is a code, because of course all developers love their code, and we think that it's perfect, but it's not actually true, because most of the times there can be improvement even if code is working correctly. And because we are working on such large scale, we should be very careful what we are writing, how we are writing, how we are checking and make like a doctor, not to work something which is already working. We need to be very careful, and if even some simple changes for some simple things, they can be very tricky. So you can review other people's code and validate how it's working and what can be done further. It's also worth to have like second, third pair of eyes and additional brains to work on the ticket. You can also of course write patches yourself and update someone else's patches, because if ticket has a patch, you don't need to drop it immediately, because most of the times ticket need additional work, patch need additional work and sometimes people who made the patch, they don't have capacity to work further, and someone need to pick up this work. It's good opportunity, also learning opportunity for developers not to create patch from scratch, but improve something which already exists. You can also write unit tests and end-to-end tests. I think we have like huge demand on this too, because unit tests, if you are not writing them like on daily basis, it can be like a bit tricky. You need to use to write them, but it's also a big learning opportunity, because after you're starting to write unit tests, you will have some shift in your thinking about how to structure code. And you will be better structure your code, your own code when you have your main job or some other projects, and it will benefit your abilities to make code which is good structured, which is simple in understanding etc. So it's worth doing. And you can actually recover your own projects with unit tests and stop manually checking things. And end-to-end tests is also like a big deal because it's quite tricky. It's simple and tricky at the same time, because we don't have like a lot of people who can do them, and we need to move these things forward. And you can take part in a new default team development, because the next version 6.4 will have a new default team theme, and this is also a great opportunity to learn how these things should be done in the first place, to take part, to test, to debug, to improve things, because it's like a huge amount of work and when such things are happening, you cannot do this alone and there can be a lot of complications, bugs, etc. So a lot of work is there. If you have no idea what to do, you can join team development. And of course you can review and write docs. There are docs inside code. This is function descriptions, etc. But most of what we are considering docs is actually documentation on WordPress.org and because things are changing continuously with core, someone should go and check them and make updates in users documentation. It's also a big job and sometimes you don't need to be a developer, sometimes you need to be a developer to understand things deeply. So let's talk right now about Cortac. Cortac is our control center for working with tickets and we have a lot of pre-built reports like latest tickets, active tickets. If you are looked in, you can have tickets you are watching, etc. Pay attention that if you are watching tickets, you are not receiving notifications. You can subscribe to notifications here, but somehow you don't have notifications about tickets you are watching. So you need to pay attention for this, but if you are participating in ticket you will have notifications, but you can unsubscribe to them if you don't want to participate in some tickets anymore. So you have these like abilities. What I like most is design your own query. Because you have like a lot of options to choose from. Most useful is keywords. Of course, these keywords are useful because we are triaging tickets and putting these right keywords in this first place. You can also choose component. And we have like, I don't know, 20 more components. For example, I'm a maintainer for about and help component and bulk editing. So bulk quick editing. So if I will like be looking for tickets in these components, I will choose this component and look through these tickets. You also can choose milestone or why it's important if you want to work on something which is like most likely to be in the next release, you can choose milestone 6.4 and have a look at these tickets because a lot of tickets need work. If these tickets are in the milestone, it doesn't mean that they like, no, if they are not closed, they are not done. And there's some work needs to be done still. So if you want your name in credits page, your page in your profile, you definitely need to pick a look in the 6.4 milestone and work on these tickets. Because they are already someone else decided already that these tickets should be in this version. Of course, if you think that some other ticket should be in this milestone too, you can raise this question. For example, you can ping component maintainer, or you can go to regular WordPress meetings and raise this question like, if you think that something should be done, you can go and do it. You can push things forward, and you don't need to be developer to this either. Let's talk a bit about local environment. I believe we will have another session purely about actually developing patch, but right now I want just like to have a quick peek. First of all, you need to fork WordPress development repository into your own account. So you have WordPress developer, and you can fork it. Like you see, there's like two thousand forks already, and you can make your own. Yeah, it's a bit of disadvantage if you like have your Git repository already full with stuff, you need to clear space for this one, but it's worth doing. And then you need to install some things. It can like take time, but it's not difficult. It just needs to be done. So Git NVM, this is not version management. I think something sensical. The key point is that you need to switch between node versions because WordPress needs 14th version of node and for other, for example, products you have, you can possibly need another version. So to be able to switch between versions, you need this NVM. And then you need Docker, and then you can follow the instruction clone this fork to your local machine and install. Everything should be fine. You need to update this fork and pull updates to your local machine. There are some things I think Git actions which can automate this, but I didn't bother to investigate this. Possibly some people have an answer how to make it automatically. But I'm just like pushing buttons a bit. And if you have questions or difficulties, please join the next new core contributor chat, which will take place next Wednesday at 7pm UTC. The full schedule of regular meetings are present by this link. So I want to discuss a bit how we are actually working together. Firstly, you can contribute to any ticket you like. There is an owner of the ticket, but it doesn't mean that this person is on this ticket. It means that this person should look for this ticket to move forward. But sometimes it's working. Sometimes these people already have a lot of tickets on them, and they cannot look through all of them. So if you, for example, done something like a patch and it looks like no one is bothered about it, you can ping owner of this ticket if this ticket has an owner. If this ticket has no owner, you can ping this maintainer of this component. So of course, if some components don't have maintainers and if ticket has no maintainer, no owner, you can go to regular meeting and ask questions about this ticket as well. So if you want something to be done, you need to ask about this because we have a lot of tickets more than 8000 and something can be easily overlooked. And this is why we need to trash them continuously. This is also a sign that we are evolving continuously and we can achieve great things if we can push some things forward. And if your court is not working, it's also a step forward because you investigate something, it has some kind of complications or side effects and this is already getting clear what needs to be done. It's also worth doing. If your idea didn't work out, you can also write about this on the ticket that I tried this, it's not working because keep in mind possible side effects. Don't change double equal to triple equal. It can be like really disaster because it can have a lot of regression side effects and you will be going around fixing other things. So even if it looks very simple, it's a very tough job to do. And if you have doubts, ask question. If for example you think that you should, you want to work on some ticket but something isn't clear or this ticket needs to have a lot of work to be done, you can go to regular meeting or just pop up in court chat and ask about this ticket. Before you put up so much work on this, you can actually check if it's worth doing, if this ticket is clear and something like this. Don't pour your heart in one ticket. Don't attach yourself to one big nice piece of work you've done because sometimes things are getting complicated and you can be very frustrated. So don't attach yourself to your court. It's not your baby. You need to like learn and move forward and be okay that there is no things which are perfect. We have 8,000 tickets. It's clear sign that it's not perfect but we are going to right direction. It's a skip point. And what I've told you already that if you think that things should be done but it's not going anywhere, pin people. Yeah, sometimes when you are the person who is pinned, but I'm a companion maintenance. I took this voluntarily so I know what I'm doing, what I signed for. So if someone wants to work on some ticket and will ping me, I will be glad to help because I'm there for this reason to push things forward. Thank you for your attention. And if you are watching this video, you can join our Contributor mentorship channel. And if you are not in WordPress Slack, you can join Slack first and there is an instruction how to do this.


Hey everyone, Drew with GeoArm and I am back to talk to you about programming in the Geofob, the wireless four button key fob for the GeoAlarm system. Once again, this is another very, very easy sensor to enroll into this system. We're going to go ahead and start by hitting the hamburger icon up in the top left hand corner. Into your master passcode, mines one, two, three, four. At this point, you're going to go ahead and hit devices. You're going to press the plus sign up in the top right hand corner. Then you're going to choose the device that you're wanting to program. Here in this case, it's going to be the key fob. This is a very easy enrollment process. You're literally pressing any button that you'd like on here and holding it down for two seconds. Now the key fob has been enrolled into the system. At this point, you need to decide what user is going to be responsible for this key fob. If it's the master, then the primary owner of this system, that's their key fob. If you haven't added any additional users into your system yet, you can also add them from here so you can add this key fob as that user. In this case, I'm just going to select master. This key fob has now been assigned to the master. As you can see, the key fob is enrolled under groups here. Let's go ahead and go back and we'll give it a test. We'll arm it in stay mode. There's stay. Let's go ahead and we'll give it a disarm here. There's the disarm. Obviously, there's a panic button which is the red button. You press and hold that down. You will get a panic alarm. Then there's the away setting which allows you to arm the motion detectors and actually the entire system. Stay arms everything with the exception of interior follower and interior with delayed devices which are usually set up as motions. Ladies and gentlemen, that is how you enroll it. Let's go up into the menu again here and then we'll delete it.  Go to devices. You're going to choose your key fob. You can obviously toggle it on and off here if you want to plan on putting it back in at some point. I'm not going to put it back in. I'm just going to go ahead and delete it. So click delete and then delete again. That should remove the key fob from the system. As you can see, there's nothing left here. We'll hit the back arrow all the way back out to program to exit programming. That is how you enroll and program the wireless four button key fob for the geo alarm system as well as delete it. If you guys have any questions or any comments, please leave them below. Other than that, take care and have a great day. Please like and subscribe to our page for helpful programming and installation videos, product reviews, monitoring, products and more. Visit www.geoarm.com or call<PHONE_NUMBER> that's www.geoarm.com or<PHONE_NUMBER> geoarm, the worldwide leader in DIY security.


through this and I think I'll start with Stu Eisenstadt in Washington who can take us into the weeds a bit and just tell us how the impact is going to be on the new with the president and the new Congress. Stu? Thank you Jim and thank you for permitting me to participate. First of all the decision by the electors in the midterm election was really quite astounding. Normally in an off year election the president's party loses an average of 25 to 35 seats in the House and 2 to 4 in the Senate. In this election the Democrats lost no speech in the Senate in fact picked one up and lost only a net of 70 seats in the House. This is remarkable given the fact that polls show that 70% of the public felt the country was going in the wrong direction with high inflation and with the lingering pandemic. The biggest loser in the election was clearly Donald Trump, his endorsed candidates almost universally lost and it was a win for moderates both in the Republican and Democratic communities. The most recent poll just taken a couple of days ago shows that the Florida governor to stand for now for the first time has a quite decisive lead among Republican voters for a hypothetical 2024 election return and one symbol of how fast Trump has fallen is the Rupert Murdoch controlled New York coach which in announcing Trump's decision to run for president had at the bottom of the first page four of man decide to run for president C page 26. Nevertheless, although the Republican hold on the House is very slim, they will control the health agenda and all the committees. This means an end of Biden's domestic legislative agenda and that he will have to govern in the next two years, domestically by executive order. Many of those steps will be tolerance in court. The Republicans have the subpoena power and they will hold hearings galore starting with Hunter Biden, the president's son and trying to implicate the president himself in his sons dealing with China. They'll be hearings on the Afghan withdrawal and many more. Now one thing that I think this will lead to is the president becoming a more foreign policy president. He will spend much more time than he did in the first two years on foreign policy where he has much greater flexibility as commander in chief. And that I think is a good thing for the United States engaging the world. Now let's look at what is likely to happen on foreign and trade policy. First with Ukraine, the administration is seeking as we speak a $37 billion supplemental appropriation for Ukrainian arms that will last a full year. This is done in anticipation of the fact that when the Republicans take over there will be a significant percentage of the new Republican majority which holds Trump's nationalistic America first neo-isolationist policy and which is more skeptical toward aid to Ukraine. So they want to get under their belts at least one more full year of a major aid package to Ukraine. Now having said that about the House Republicans, the Senate Republicans under Senator McConnell as the minority leader can continue to be expected to support aid to Ukraine if anything to be critical of the administration for not sending enough sophisticated weapons. Putin's policy is clearly to divide and weaken the West to make it war weary, to create higher energy prices and in Ukraine itself a darkness and a lack of electricity to force a territorial compromise. My fear is that many of the Europeans going through this rough winter will press Zelensky for just that type of North Korea, South Korea DMZ type compromise. The President is not likely to follow that path and I think will follow Zelensky's lead. With respect to China, even with the midterm elections, there is bipartisan support for a hard land position against China. I think this will continue and Biden coming into a potential presidential race is not likely to want to be seen or to be criticized by the Republicans as being quote unquote weak on China. In many respects this is unfortunate because the President has kept many of the same policies toward China that Trump put into effect. In particular, there remain $200 billion of tariffs against Chinese products coming into the United States, which I believe the administration was prepared to drop before Speaker Pelosi's visit to Taiwan. But given the very heavy blowback by China, they backed away from that. That would be inflation reducing and it would be at least some bow toward China. In the recent summit between Xi and the President, they sort of put a floor under the collapsing relationship, but it has declined very substantially. China is running rings around the United States and Asia and in the Middle East. Xi has met with some 37 heads of state. His visit to Saudi Arabia was in sharp contrast to Biden in which the Saudis laid out the red carpet and gave him a much warmer relationship than was extended to Biden. They signed a strategic partnership agreement which was unthinkable only a few years ago and while the U.S. remains the main arms supplier to the Saudis, clearly the Middle East suffers from a vacuum in American leadership. So does Asia. When Trump pulled back from the trans-Pacific partnership agreement, it left a huge vacuum. The remaining 14 countries signed their own trade agreement without the United States. In 2020, they signed an additional tariff-reducing agreement among 15 Pacific and East Asian countries and it left the field open for China's own comprehensive economic trade agreement for many of those same countries to join in China's initiative. So what was intended to be an instrument to increase U.S. leverage was left in the last few months this year to a sort of weakened trans-Pacific, what the U.S. led, called the Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity. And that is in rule compared to the TPP. It involves some actions on digital standards, on supply chains, on clean energy, on dealing with anti-bravery and money laundering, but no tariff reductions jump, no market access to the United States, and it is very thin competition. It is not the kind of pivot that will let the United States compete with China. The centerpiece of Biden's foreign policy was and remains rallying the democracies against autocracies. He's done that with a Democratic summit this year. There will be an African summit coming up in the next few weeks and that is all to the good. As shown by President Macron's recent visit, the first state visit in 21 months in the president's tenure, there was a good deal of tension over the Inflation Reduction Act, huge subsidies, but not going to any non-American country unless they have a free trade agreement with the United States, which most European countries do not have. So that is a source of tension with Europe. It's a very time we need European cooperation with Ukraine. If I could just interrupt for just a second, Stu, I'd like to get to some of the other guests here. We've got a very limited timeframe here, but I think those points are well taken. Your point about the Middle East vacuum, we just heard from a panel here two sessions ago about the clamoring from some of the Middle Eastern countries about where is the United States and where is the leadership of the United States? In any case, I think what you're saying is a bit what John Claude was saying from New York, and that is that basically the Americans have won a number of things with the war in Ukraine, even if they don't particularly like to think of it that way. I wonder if, Stu, do you think the Americans feel like they're winning in the Ukraine because the Ukrainians are winning? Yes, I think we are showing real solidarity, but I want to say this more broadly. Biden has really in two years totally changed Trump's foreign policy. He's reinvigorated the NATO alliance. He's reinvigorated the U.S.-European Union relationship. He has reengaged in a very serious way on the climate change negotiations. He has dropped the section 232 national security sanctions against European steel and aluminum. He has begun to reengage not as much as I would like, but certainly begun to reengage with Asia through the new trade arrangement. He made a visit to Saudi Arabia, so I think we're going to see more of that, and the Ukraine situation will be a real test because the Europeans are going to want to cut a deal with Russia, and Biden will be against that unless Zelensky agrees to it. But I think the long and the short of it is that Biden has reengaged with the world, and I think in the next two years, particularly because his domestic agenda will go nowhere with the Republicans controlling one of the two houses, he will be even more of a foreign policy president and will reengage even to a greater degree with the world, and I think that's to the benefit of all the democracies. He feels very strongly about supporting democracies against autocracies, and I think that will remain a centerpiece of his foreign policy as will engagement on climate change.


Frank Conn, if you and Eddie Pepitone just covered the Hollywood Christmas parade for the Hallmark Channel, so how'd it go? All things considered, I think it went okay. I had fun. The critics thought Eddie was a little off his game that night. Oh, I don't think so. Eddie was Eddie. Now, I heard something horrible happened to the band leader from Pepitone tonight, Chris Pina. Yes, Chris is in a coma. Oh my God, what happened? Eddie sent Chris out to get him a cup of coffee and Chris got run over by the Batmobile.  Nobody knows. Eddie feels terrible about it. Well, I don't blame him.  Well, Frank, for those of us who weren't there, why don't you give us a little taste of the Hollywood Christmas parade as you and Eddie saw it? Of course, David. Here it is, folks, a few minutes to wet your appetite of the Hollywood Christmas parade. Good evening, everyone, and welcome to the 81st annual Hollywood Christmas parade. I'm Frank Conif, along with our band leader, Chris Pina. And of course, the star of Eddie Pepitone tonight, Eddie Pepitone. Thanks, Frank. You're looking good tonight. Thanks, Eddie. You too. I'm not used to seeing you without your straight jacket. Eddie, I was in rehab a long time ago and they didn't put me in a straight jacket. It's nothing to be ashamed of, Frank. We've all been locked up in a rubber room to keep from hanging ourselves, right, folks? Eddie, this is a parade. Children are watching the show. I know that. And who's that brat sitting in the booth with us? That's not a woman, Eddie. That's Chris Pina. Is that you, Chris? Yeah, Eddie, it's me. Geez, that's a tremendous outfit you're wearing. Thanks, Eddie. You look like Lawrence of Arabia right after the Bedwinds caved into his demands and finally agreed to molest him. Eddie, like I said, this is a children's Christmas show. I heard you the first time, Frank. I know this is a Hallmark special.  They can't even make a funny birthday call. Hey, Eddie, here comes Marie Osmond. She's the grand marshal of the Christmas parade. She looks great. Eddie, Marie, who does your makeup? Benjamin Moore? Eddie, she must have gotten up early in the morning so all three coats would be dry by tonight. You know, Eddie, Marie Osmond's been performing professionally ever since she was three years old on the Andy Williams show. Andy Williams has cancer. I think she's an attractive woman. Well, Chris, you'd fall in love with an open can of spackle. Eddie, look, here comes the Pete Wilson Regional High School Marching Band doing their version of Winter Wonderland. Yeah, that's one of my favorite songs about snow. They've been practicing all semester to be here tonight. All that hard work and they still sound like a marching band. I think they sound great, Eddie. Do they, Chris? Do they really? Yeah, kind of, yeah. I'm going to ask you one more time, Chris. One more time, that marching band. What do you think of them? Hmm. They sound bad. What? They sound bad. Again? Bad. How bad? Terrible. Are you asking me or telling me?  Is that all?  Do you mean it? Yes. Don't lie to me, Chris Pena.  I mean it, Eddie. I do. Don't tell me, Chris. Tell them. Do I have to? Tell them now. You guys dig. I'll tell them why, Chris.  Eddie, think of the children. I'm sorry, folks. Chris Pena know what he's saying. He hates Christmas. Eddie, did you know the Hollywood Christmas Parade started in 1928? And has continued every year since, except for three years during World War II? Oh, my father was a marine in World War II. Oh, was he? I didn't know that. Yeah, after the war, while my mother cleaned office buildings, my dad brought home hookahs. Hey, Eddie. Look, it's Eric Estrada. Chris, run out and get me a cup of coffee. Put this coffee right there, Eddie. I want a coffee from Starbucks.  I know. It's ironic. Go get it. Eddie, how is Chris supposed to get Starbucks with the streets blocked off? What are you talking about? He can cut right across the street. You're not supposed to cross the street during the parade. Who made up that rule? I want a Starbucks Grande Mocha with whole milk and plenty of sugar. Okay, Eddie. And a raisin scone.  Again, an unexpected turn of events. Move. Here come the bagpipes. That music reminds me of the time I visited Scotland.  But isn't this a wonderful event, Eddie? Mom and dad are reliving their childhoods through the eyes of their children while remembering their own parents taking them to this parade long ago. Hey, folks, I haven't seen Frank Conniff this happy since he found that bottle of scotch duct tape behind his filing cabinet. And right on schedule, there's Whitney Cummings down on the street ready to describe the action on the curb. Whitney. Hey, Frank. Hey, Whitney, having fun down there? You bet. Nice you standing. Christ, did she ever get two shows? Whitney worked really hard for those shows, Eddie. I'm sure, Frank, she had to pretend Chelsea Handler was funny. Whitney Wednesday nights at NBC at 8.30. It's the Batmobile. Going five miles an hour, color me impressed. And here comes Chris with Eddie's coffee.  Chris, look out! My God, Chris has been run over by the Batmobile. It's his own fault. Still, though, I feel awful. Relax, Frank. It's not really the Batmobile. It's just a replica. On our show, an exclusive interview with UC Davis Police Chief Annette Spokouza.


Hello everybody, and welcome to our talk in getting started in exploring backstage in 2023 and also beyond. My name is Mitchell Henches. I'm a senior engineer here at Spotify. And my name is Jamal Rahmat, software engineer at Spotify. So, exploring backstage. I want to kick this off with a story. Before I worked at Spotify, I worked at a company called Paul.com. Fun fact, they were the first adopter of backstage. And how did they actually adopt backstage? Well, first, it started off with one person. This typical person, we call it Spotify, a champion. He discovered backstage and really wanted to try it out. So he looked at the documentation, the open source report story, and then created one backstage instance internal. Configure it to his liking and then also check the other plugins that were available. Then also configure those to their likings.  Share it with your colleagues. Well, this is where it became a bit harder.  Nowadays, everybody is working remote. For example, Mitch, he lives in the mountains. So I cannot pick up my laptop and go to Mitch and show off my backstage instance. It's not working. So at that point, the champion needs to deploy backstage. But that's quite hard, right? You have to consider the internal build system. You have to use Kubernetes, probably. And what does the Docker image look like? Well, at this point, your proof of concept can be quite time consuming, which it actually shouldn't be. So for the past year at Spotify, we have developed certain tools to make sure your proof of concept phase goes way smoother to help these champions out. The first tool I want to discuss is backstage deploy. Well, as the name implies, it's a tool to deploy backstage. Well, to sum it up, it is an opinionated tool to launch a proof of concept backstage instance into the cloud. Not only that, backstage deploy will give you a public URL that you can share with other backstage explorers in your organization. So I can now grab that URL and send it to Mitch. I don't have to go to the mountains. But also, now that you have other users for your backstage instance, it will give you a better image on how backstage will actually be used within your organization. But before I go further with backstage deploy, like Mitch always says, let's take a gander. Let's do that. So the best way of showing off to you how cool a backstage deploy is is through the classic talk technique of doing a demonstration. So Jamal and I are going to pretend to be champions, if you will. For a hypothetical organization, we're going to call it Backstage for Convenience. Yeah, I know. And then we're going to deploy a little demo backstage app. So the first step is to have an actual instance to deploy. Let's go to the next slide here, please. So we're going to go through all these steps. To create this instance, we're going to use the existing tool known as CreateApp, which has been used in backstage for a while. So let's go ahead to the command line now. And let's create a little backstage instance. There's a little bit of magic here. This is running a little faster than I should, so a little show-biz action. Within the day, what we've done here is we have created a vanilla bare bones modern backstage app. That's great. We can now use backstage deploy and show this off to the rest of our organization. But that's not good enough because others in our organ to look at this, they're not going to be able to see the full potential of backstage. Some of backstage's strengths or its extensibility, its customizability, its integrations, and then to see like a bare backstage app. I think we need a little bit more. I think we need some flavor, some seasoning, if you will. So I have something in mind. Let's go back to the slides here for a minute. Now let's go to the next step. The specific season, the spice, if you will, that I have in mind is we should have it so you would log in with GitHub. If you're part of our organization on GitHub, then you can sign in to our demo instance. So let's go ahead and get that done. For the sake of realism, I am now going to take our bare bones backstage app and we're going to do all the steps you can sign in with GitHub. So importantly, a little disclaimer here. I'm going to be going pretty quick. I don't expect you to memorize these things. There will not be a quiz after, but for the sake of realism, I want to go to them anyway. So let's get started. Rapid round. Next slide, please. Step one, we need our backstage instance to be able to talk to GitHub. So it needs to have credentials. Let's add that to our app config.yaml and set stuff up. Next step, please. Now, we need our backstage instance to be able to talk to GitHub and pull down those users, slurp them down if you will. That's the technical term I'm going to be using for this performance. So we're going to go ahead and configure the catalog accordingly. Next step, authentication. When a user actually authenticates with our backstage instance, we need to associate that login with the user. We have slurped down, configured, nice. Next step, finally, when someone goes to our instance, they need to be able to sign in with GitHub. There should be a nice, big sign on with GitHub button. Let's add that to our app now. Next step, there is no next step. We are done. Nice, just that easy. Well, yes and no. Jamal and I, we've set up a backstage instance or two in our day, and we know the steps, right? We made it look relatively fluid here, but there's a lot going on, and maybe I talked a little bit faster in there too, right? So the issue is, for new champions, it can be a bit of like a barrier. It can be a challenge to even set up an initial instance with the customizations before they've even done the challenging part of deploying it. So this is making me a bit sad. I'm crushed right now. You know, Jamal, is there any way that we can lower this barrier so we can make life a little bit better for fresh adopters? I have something for you, Mitch. Oh, my God. I have backstage quick start. So what is backstage quick start? We announced this a month ago, and if I navigate to the announcement, it says, quick start will enable adopters to get up and running much faster by removing the need to stand up and maintain a code base in order to set up backstage, reducing the now manual installation process to as few as three steps through an install wizard. Okay, those were a lot of words. You probably already forgot what I said, but I'm here going to show you what it means. So first, we're actually going to deploy backstage quick start. Do I need to modify any config files for this? Tinker with any build system? No, I don't think so. I'm just going to run a command in the terminal to deploy backstage quick start. Man, some demo time. So, like the create app, we are using MPX to call backstage deploy. We specify we want to deploy it on AWS, then we pass in the quick start flag, telling backstage deploy, this is a quick start specific backstage instance, and then we also specify the location of our image. Presenter, whoa, already done. How do we keep doing that? I don't know. But in short, what basically is happening is we are deploying a container on AWS as well deploy is now printing a public URL that I can share with Mitch. So if you look in the logs, we here have an URL we can access. Boom. Now we have a login page. But first, we need to log in, of course. What's the password again? I don't know, I hope you know it. Well, as I said, this is a container, and container works with environment variables. In this case, for quick start specific is also expecting certain environment variables. So let's look at them. So here, for example, we have the quick start root user password environment, and whatever the value is set to that is the password.  But let's log in. Whoo. And now we are at the wizard. As you can see, there are three steps. First, we're going to put in our access token. This is to set up our integration with GitHub. Oh, by the way, the wizard is already preset with data so you don't have to awkwardly see me copying and paste. Save and continue. Then we have to enter our GitHub credentials. This is to enable the OAuth log in with GitHub. Then we can specify organizations if you want to. Backstations by default added. The organizations is here for ingesting users and teams. So every user and team in the backstage GitHub organization will be ingested in this quick start instance. And then we have administrators. This is probably something new, and this is very quick start specific. What does this actually mean? It means that the user has the access to modify the config at runtime. Very powerful, of course, so you don't want to give it to everyone. In this case, I'm only going to add Mitch. Make the cut. Let's press save and continue and submit. Exciting. This is going to work. Whoo. Backstage is ready for you. So to recap what actually happened. So all the manual steps that Mitch had to do with code, setting up the GitHub OAuth log in, the org ingestion, and all that other stuff is now done to the wizard. Very fast. But what else can we do? Let's explore a bit. So here you see it mentions config manager.  So here we have the config manager plugin. Well, as the name implies, it's a plugin to manager config. What does it actually mean in detail? So for example, here we have my company catalog. My company comes from the config organization.tame. I obviously don't work for this company, so I want to change it up. So let's do that. We go to the config manager and then we choose the core app plugin. In and out. And we're going to change this to backstage. And the only thing we have to do is submit our form. And here we can see that my company has been updated to backstage. Normally, you would have to redeploy your application or restart your application. Now with Quick Start, that is not needed at all. But what else can we do? So as you can see, we have a lot of plugins here and they all have status running. So that means we can also turn off certain stuff. For my proof of concept, I don't want search. I just want it gone. I don't think I need it. So I go to the search plugin and then press stop plugin. So what is actually happening? On the back end, the search plugin is completely removed. But for the attentive audience member, you might have noticed that the search item in the sidebar has also been removed. So everything related to the search plugin back end and front end will be removed from your instance. Now that I have completely configured my proof of concept, I can grab the URL and share it with Mitch. Wow, would you believe it? I just got a direct message from Jamal. And he says there's a brand new backstage demo instance which I should check out. So let's go ahead and do that. All right, new URL. Let's give this a shot. Ooh, sign on to GitHub. That's the button I like to see. Let's do it. Everything seems to be in order here. And wow, this is backstage and it has my company name in the top left. It doesn't say my company. I'm already impressed. But just for the sake of all of you to show that it's not smoke and mirrors, if I go to the settings page in the bottom left, this is my name showing up. This is the real me. I signed into the actual demo instance and it all worked. Wow, I'm convinced we should adopt backstage at our company, I think. Yes, promotion incoming. All right, is backstage quick start doing this all on its own? No, backstage quick start is powered by something we call declarative integration or DI for short. This is currently being built in open source. Ben and Patrick today had a talk already about this, but I have a surprise for everyone here. You ready? Thursday, there's another talk about declarative integration by Patrick and Ben. I'll be there. Mitch, will you be there? Of course I'll be there. I hope to see you all there as well. All right, everyone. Thank you very much. Jamal has given you a nice sneak peak into quick start and how allows you to sidestep a bunch of that manual customization from earlier. It's extremely cool. Keep the hype alive. You'll be hearing more about this in the new year. But don't forget, there's also backstage deploy, which is incredibly powerful. Today, you can't use it with quick start. I'm sorry, but that doesn't mean that it's not still amazing at allowing you to sidestep and do all the funky cloud stuff yourself. If you do the traditional way of setting up a backstage instance, do that step one and two from earlier. Yes, it's a little bit manual. You can use backstage deploy and set up a nice, simple demo instance like that. And if you are interested in doing so, you could scan that QR code right there or the other one. You can see some more instructions for getting that set up. But in the meantime, we're ready for questions. Awesome, Mitchell. Questions? Hi, thank you for your talk. I was wondering if quick start would add any value for existing backstage instances or is it really just about new stuff and setting up a new one? That's a good question. Do you want to tackle this? Yeah, sure. I think quick start in mind right now is designed for just new starting people. Well, we are definitely thinking about existing companies that already have backstage running. So that's definitely on our mind. And in the future, that will also be recommended. Right, but the primary focus right now is... Yes, right. Exactly. Okay, it makes sense. Yeah. Is there any chance of getting that config editor plugin on its own separate from the rest of quick start? That thing was cool. And the config manager? Yeah. No, that would not be possible. Okay. It is built on top of quick start using all the fancy goodness in there. So to pull it out would be... You'd just be reinventing quick start. And where's the fun on that? Perfect. Next question, yes. Yes, thank you. This was awesome. And I like your subtle jokes also. So the editing or the changes that you made in the config and those reflecting into backstage, like today this would be something in the app config YAML maybe. Yeah. So how is that reflecting? Is it like doing a deployment or what is happening behind the scenes? Do you want to order me? Absolutely. I can take this one. Yeah, good question. So this doesn't actually involve a brand new deployment. All that config is being managed at runtime on your backstage instance itself. So it will internally refresh the config. Config, sorry. Excuse me. I see you're coming from. So to repeat the question that he's asking is the configuration maintain the repository? So if you have your repository over here under the deploy and now here's your backstage quick starting since running live on the cloud somewhere as a database, the copy of that configuration, the main configuration is over here in that database. So when you make the change to the config manager, it only mutates the database and then everything here is fine and the repository is unaffected. It's a little bit of a different paradigm and we're excited to talk about it more in the future. But yeah, yeah. I'll keep you on your toes. Are there any plans to extend the deploy script to other cloud providers like GCP or Azure? I think the potential is definitely there, but right now we're playing up by ear and AWS is our main focus. Yeah, I think most adopters use AWS, but so we want to make that like the best it can be and then look at other. But backstage deploy is open source so anyone can contribute if they want to. I dare you. Coming, coming. Quick question. So I support an AWS environment with a very scaled down list of AWS services, not the entire gamut. So my question is more so around light sale as it was depicted within your architecture. I'm assuming that is a strong dependency for that specific capability of backstage. Yeah, for... Do you mind if I take this question? Perfect, yes. So for backstage deploy, it's a very opinionated deployment thing and it's trying to keep things simple and that means building on top of like the most usable abstraction AWS. So yes, exactly. It leans specifically on light sale in the same way if we were to do something for one of the other clouds. It would target something where you can just minimally get a container on there and a database, marry them so they're happy forever. I know what you'd do, but yes, so light sale specifically. There's another one here. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? Many questions. I'm okay with it. Hi. I had a quick question regarding, let's say most companies usually have Azure login page and let's say GitLab or a GitHub enterprise version of the GitHub instances. And let's say when you're doing backstage and want to integrate both login from Azure and then get integration with GitHub. Now the same API or beta token from Azure won't work because now GitHub has its own personal access token or other forms of authentication.  Because let's say you're on the streets of a CI CD job run but you can only show based on access token from GitHub and not the Azure one. This is then for backstage quick start? Not exactly back to the quick start but just wondering, I had a question about it. Yeah, I can. Let me just make sure I understand the question fully here. So you're saying what if you have an organization and you want people to be able to log in using their GitHub representation or their Azure representation? Yes, ideally Azure implementation but their GitHub instance is also using the Azure implementation to log in but the authentication or how you access the API of GitHub is no longer based on that Azure but a different auth mechanism implemented by GitHub. So if you want to, like, let's say I want to use Azure as my login page for backstage but now if I have to show status of a CI CD pipeline the same token or how you authenticate it with Azure won't work anymore if I make sense. I think this is a little bit, I'm less familiar with the CI CD integration shenanigans and how backstage operates if there's multiple different token providers and it sounds like this is the case where the same token, you need two different tokens of the same provider if I'm hearing you correctly which sounds funky but maybe I'm misunderstanding. Either way, I'm not sure that I'm super familiar with the area here. So, thank you. I'm sorry. Any other questions? Nice. Last one. I guess. I'm making you run, I'm sorry. Thanks for the talk. It's great. Zero recommendation for, hey, we've got this test instance where a new org, or an org that doesn't have backstage so we're going to check it out. Would we want to take a backstage quick start entrance instance and make it our permanent internal production instance at some point or would it be like, hey, at some point dump the quick start instance, start again using a harder method? That is a fantastic question. I think it's a bit of a, it depends on the kind of customization you're doing and also depends on future backstage quick start developments which happen in the new year. So, it's a big maybe. So, I hope that helps. Cool. So, thank you so much guys. This is a great presentation.


Give the people what they want. Give the people what they want. Give the people what they want. Your weekly movement news roundup. Today is October the 8th, 2021. October the 8th, 1967, in the jungles of Bolivia, Che Guevara was being held by the Bolivian military and a detachment of the CIA, the Central Intelligence Agency. He would eventually be assassinated on the 9th of October, which is tomorrow, 1967. That's the day we commemorate as the international day to abolish the CIA. You're listening to give the people what they want. Coming to you from people's dispatch, that's Zoe and Prashant and me, Vijay from Globetrotter. Speaking of the CIA, the CIA has just released the information that they've set up a China mission center, an interesting development. This is a director level center where they'll have regular, perhaps daily meetings to discuss the issue of China. Associated to this, they'll be talking about technology, developments in technology and other threats of that kind faced by the United States government. So it's China, it's technology and it's the CIA keeping a close eye at these developments. Interesting, the Wall Street Journal reporting on the 7th of October that for the past year, the United States has had military trainers in station in Taiwan, United States military trainers in Taiwan. This, let's call it what it is, hybrid war against China prosecuted by the United States seems to be taking a new turn. In other words, it wasn't by any kind of WikiLeaks information that we heard about the trainers in Taiwan, nor any kind of leak that we heard about the CIA mission center on China. In fact, it appears that these are stories that are put out there by the US government itself. And therefore one has to be a little concerned and careful. What's the agenda here? Why is there a story being released now of US military trainers being based in Taiwan for the past year? Seems to me that this is a message being sent to Beijing. The same with the story about the CIA China center. It's not something gruesome that the CIA has a director level task force on China. It's nothing unusual. That's precisely what countries do have. But the fact that the story is out there now, as if it is something extraordinary and something to pay attention to is a message it seems to me sent directly to Beijing. Beijing has of course received that message. And the foreign minister, sorry, the spokesperson at the foreign ministry then said, well, look, this is Cold War era behavior. In fact, that might even be exaggerating this a little bit. It's not so much Cold War era behavior as it is big states and what they do vis-à-vis each other. I should inform you because this might not be clear that the Central Intelligence Agency is not merely a spy agency where they are out there scuttling about in the dark alleys of Beijing trying to create assets in China who will leak information from the Chinese government. That's not all they do. They also in fact sit in their offices at Langley, very large number of them, fed information from the National Security Agency, a lot of that open source information that's available on the web. And they analyze that information, produce reports. Having read many of the CIA reports even about China, it's extraordinary what an amateur quality these reports have, a very poor analysis. So what's the point of these stories coming out in the Wall Street Journal and elsewhere? The message continues to be sent by Washington DC that China is in the crosshairs of U.S. power. That's the principal message. The fact that there is a mission center, not that significant. The fact that there are a handful of U.S. troops in Taiwan, not that significant. The important fact that pressure campaign continues and that in a sense is what one should be paying attention to. Similar thing with the story about Pandora, poor Pandora. It's not her fault she opened the box. Zoe, what are these Pandora's papers and what's the significance of the story? Well, as we know in the capitalist system, many are drawn to the massive accumulation of wealth. And what is one to do with all this wealth? Well, in this system, it is actually legal to store money in offshore accounts to avoid taxation, to avoid coming under the eye of financial authorities in their own countries. And the Pandora papers is essentially a massive investigation done by hundreds of journalists from across the world looking into these offshore accounts of hundreds and hundreds of people. This is one of the biggest investigations, I think, to date, looking at these extra legal... I mean, it's in this legal limbo of financial holdings overseas. And I think it's first important to point out that this is kind of part and parcel of the capitalist system. And so, you know, people will get into baits. Is it legal to have, you know, offshore holdings? Is it legal to, you know, store your wealth outside the country? I think the fundamental question is, why are they doing that? It's so their money doesn't, you know, go towards the state to help fund programs, to help fund other things. On the first hand, this is something that we know as part of a system that encourages, you know, unending accumulation. And this is a, you know, natural byproduct of that. Finding other ways to be able to store and hold on to your wealth.  Important to note, when you look at the map that's available on the ICIJ, which is the ICIJ, their website, which, you know, has done the investigation, you'll see a map of where the politicians are from.  Important to keep an eye on, because, you know, as we know, that's clearly untrue that U.S. politicians, you know, the country that has the most billionaires on the planet, clearly they're involved in this system in a big way. And a lot of the firms which actually do these transfers are located in the United States. So, important thing to point out, people are, you know, a little wary of what this investigation means, where it's coming from, if somehow this country is excluded. But that being said, there's still very important findings from this investigation. Interesting to point out that from the Americas region, Latin America, and the Caribbean, has the highest number of politicians involved that were investigating the Pandora Papers. Some of the important ones, including current Ecuadorian president, Guillermo Lasso, who is highly controversial, you know, he was part of the Ecuadorian government in the 90s, oversaw one of the most devastating economic crises that saw 3 million Ecuadorians have to flee the country because of, you know, decaying economic conditions. Also, Paulo Guedes, the current minister of economy in Brazil, has also been named in the Pandora Papers as having, you know, offshore holdings. Brazil is currently experiencing one of the worst political economic and social crises to date. Precisely because of these horrible economic policies promoted by Minister Guedes, yesterday the landless rural workers movement did a public action in front of the minister of economy to really shine light on the fact that as the minister of economy is cutting social programs, is cutting people's benefits, he's also having, you know, millions of dollars stored abroad to hold on to his, you know, savings. So that's something to point out. And then also, Sebastián Pinera, who's the very unpopular Chilean president who will see the end of his term, you know, this coming year as elections are going to be held in Chile. He also has been highly controversial for, you know, upholding the very, very unequal economic system in Chile where, you know, millions do not have access to basic services like health and education or high-level privatization. You know, there's politicians from all over, encourage people to check it out. Unsurprisingly, many from Colombia and Honduras who are, you know, well-known for their fun economic policies in that sort of way. So it's an interesting investigation also, you know, across the world. I'm only focusing on Latin America right now, but, you know, the king of Jordan involved, several other politicians, cricket players, Shakira. Interesting, interesting investigation there. Well, you said cricketers. I heard the endulkar. Apart from that, I don't know what to say. It's interesting. Some of the names continue to be embargoed. The information on South Africa, for instance, not been released yet. The names are embargoed. We'll hear the implications for South Africa. It is, I think, suggestive that the United States is not part of this leak. And this has got a lot of people scratching their heads about the nature of these recent leaks of information. Where are the criminals in the United States? Why haven't their names been released? Well, you know, talking about South Africa and the fact that the names are embargoed, trade unionists didn't need to wait for any Pandora's leak. They've been on the street, Prashant. What's been happening on the streets of South Africa? Right, which is a very important strike going on in South Africa right now. It's important to note that it's an ongoing strike. It began on October 5th. And it is being led by the National Union of Metal Workers of South Africa. Now, the workers on strike are from the engineering sector. And the story of the strike is quite important because I think it's symptomatic of what has been happening to workers across the world over the past year. So what did happen was that in 2020, when the pandemic was at its height, this sector, which is around, I think, over 400,000 workers, the workers decided to forgo their pay hikes because they understood the severity of the pandemic, the crisis they had brought. So they voluntarily agreed to forgo the pay hike they were supposed to get. And so, of course, that was 2020. In 2021, when the negotiation started, the workers demanded a 15% hike with some inflation-related increases as well. There was negotiation. The workers were willing to bring down their offer to 8%. Whereas the factory owners, employers' association that was involved in these negotiations, they began with a 4.4% offer and they did not move one inch forward. So this is the kind of negotiation that took place. And I think the workers led by Noomsa, they've been extremely, from the reports that we got, they've been extremely accommodating. They really tried negotiating, but the employers were not willing to move forward. And this needs to be considered in the context of the brutal impact that the last year has had on workers, of course, many people dying, families facing all kinds of difficulties, many struggling to get the government-sanctioned relief also. So at this point of time, considering the fact especially that some of these companies are making profits, which is what the union has pointed out. The kind of, say, intransigence the employers have shown is quite surprising to say the least. The strike began on October 5th. It's still going on like I said. During this time, there has been repression by the police. They have been attacked by the police in a couple of places. In other places, there have been attacks with private security firms. So there has been a fair amount of repression on this. The union has held firm, of course. There are reports that negotiations are continuing. In fact, there has been a proposal, a new proposal presented which the union members across the country will be receiving today. So there are hopes that there might be some, there might be a settlement soon. But the important thing, of course, like I said, is to note that this is indicative of the different sectors across that country, across the world. One good thing, one very interesting thing is that there has been even greater solidarity among the various unions in South Africa which have had differences in the past. For example, as a new frame pointed out, the National Union of Mine Workers has extended solidarity to Doomsa and the strike. And that's really considered a very positive sign. You've seen earlier instances of workers' unions actually working closely together. So I think for South Africa, we've had a government pursuing a very neoliberal policy path over the past few years. For the workers, this is probably a good sign. Remains to be seen in the next few days. What direction strike might take? Well, we'll be watching this. It's a really, really militant strike. As far as what I've been reading Prashant, and I think that's important. The temperature in South Africa has been very, very hard. The pandemic has hit people hard. Basic survival has been on the table. We've seen that from the shack dwellers movement and so on. So it's really important to register the level of militancy. Switching gears, there was enthusiasm earlier this year when the elections in Peru brought a left-leaning government to victory. But there's been a lot of pressure on that government. It appears and looks like President Pedro Castillo has actually been, I don't know what to make of it, but has been cleansing his own cabinet. What's going on, Zoe? I mean, it's quite a bizarre situation that the candidate of the left seems to be, as they say in the bourgeois press, moderating his politics. Yeah. Well, you know, we've been covering Peru for the past while and we were seeing what was happening after the elections when it took over a month for the Peruvian institution to recognize the results of the elections. Since then, there's just been massive pressure on this new government. We've seen this expressed in different ways. First, it was that Héctor Bejar, the foreign minister of Peru, was forced to resign. This campaign of pressure has continued and I think it's been expressed in diverse ways. But the most recent was that Vladimir Seron and Guido Beillo, who are primary leaders of the free Peru party, very strong ideological leaders as well of this more left-wing position within the party and also within the government. And they kind of were forced to resign and there's been a reform, is what they're saying, of seven ministers in the cabinet. And, you know, it's not that they're from, you know, necessarily bourgeois parties or necessarily, you know, from the right in any way, but it is, there were free Peru members who are, you know, of course, more to the left that were taken out and there's been a, you know, massive increase in tensions and so now the bench, as they say, the group of parliamentarians from the free Peru party held a press conference a day ago saying that they would not recognize the new cabinet. Vladimir Seron has been very firm in saying that this is against what the party believes. There's been a bit of, you know, isolation of Pedro Castillo from, you know, his original base of support, which is the free Peru party. They're saying we don't recognize this cabinet, but we're not going to impede the government from functioning. So it's a really delicate situation. I think Pedro Castillo, he says he's thinking for more governability, having less hardliners involved in the government as they're saying, but at the same time, I think it's really important that many, you know, analysts, especially on the left have drawn attention to is that the attacks from the right are going to continue and they're going to intensify and so many have kind of raised a little bit of concern of what it means to have these, you know, quite ideologically strong, very militant members out of the government, people who would be able to withstand and weather the storm. It's unclear what's going to happen, but what is clear is that the right wing is not going to desist in their attempts to kind of block every move that the government makes and continue putting on pressure in every way possible to try to make this government collapse and fall. I mean, Pedro Castillo, at the same time, you know, a couple of days ago, they passed a second agrarian reform that was one of the big promises of the campaign, another, you know, central promise which the Free Peru Party has, you know, highlighted right now which is really necessary in order to really transform the political institutions in Peru is a national constituent assembly and so this would be rewriting Peru's constitution and in that way, you know, hopefully they would be able to kind of propose a new political, economic, and social model for the country because they're seeing that the limits of the bourgeois democracy, the limits of the neoliberal economic system that are kind of imposed on the country from, you know, decades of having the system exist are really constraining government and putting it in a kind of between a rock and a hard place because they don't really have much room to maneuver and the right is putting pressure in always possible. So the national constituent assembly seems to be the word of the moment. We'll see how that continues and if that campaign promise will be fulfilled. This is give the people what they want. Coming to you every week from People's Dispatch and Globetrotter, we bring you these stories such as the pressure campaign on the presidency in Peru. We bring you stories like the Farmer's Movement. We've been covering the Farmer's Movement now, what? Eight months, eight months of Farmer's Movement, eight months of struggle, maybe nine months. I'm losing track for a chance. This is the story with the Indian farmers and what's the latest horrible incident of many? Yeah, Vijay, we're actually into ten months of the farmer's struggle. It began in November last year and it's important to note that November was just one stage. The protests had begun much earlier but a very recent horrifying incident that took place last Sunday was the death of four farmers who were protesting in the district in Luckimpur, KD district in the state of Uttar Pradesh. There were some horrific videos of what happened which is that a convoy belonging to a union minister of state from the ruling Bharati-Jaritha party rams into these farmers who were peacefully standing there and it's a complete mess.  There are reports that the minister's son was in the car that he stepped out, started firing in the air and he escaped from the scene. Now this really shook the entire country because the brutality of this incident itself, the fact that it was captured on camera but also the fact that after that what has happened which is that basically the person we're talking about, the son of the union minister is still not under arrest. Now there's been a case filed against him with which he's named. He was asked to come before the police today. He did not. And there is a report that he will go tomorrow. Now this is important to note considering the fact that there have been many other cases in recent times where people who were named in similar reports are arrested even before any investigation or interrogation takes place. But this person who is the son of a union minister of state for whom is caught free. So really the question basically is that why is this so and this is a question people across the country are asking. The Supreme Court has taken notice of this case and it has made some strong comments saying that the investigation needs to be stronger. But really the question the key question here is as far as the farmers movement is concerned is many of them see this as yet another attack on the movement itself. Because this is not just we're not talking only about the incident of the death or the killing of these farmers a few days ago but a series of incidents that happened before as well because we've had leaders of the ruling BJP make very threatening statements. And these threatening statements or intimidating statements we had the minister of state saying that take up sticks against the farmers we've had other leaders talking about how they'll fix the farmers and stuff like that. So there's been this campaign of intimidation there's been this campaign of attempting to portray the farmers as anti-nationals as terrorists in various forms which has been going on for the past 10 months. So it's not a new phenomenon whereas the farmers demands are just withdraw the three laws which they feel will destroy their livelihood. It's a very straightforward demand. That's really the key question there. So the government is a bit of a bind to be honest because like I said it's a union minister of state who's involved. He himself there demands that he resign as well he's refused and the anger right now in many of these sections is very very high against the ruling BJP which is in power both in the center and the state. So the real question here is will the government sort of understand the public anger that is there right now on this issue take the necessary steps or will this be yet another instance of the relatives of those in power the sons and daughters of those in power going scot free even though there seems to be innumerable eyewitness accounts of this. For the farmers movement itself I think this is also a bit of a I wouldn't say maybe turning point but a good question because they also have need to decide how to take this movement forward. We saw a big protest a few days ago where there was an all India shutdown led by the farmers movements and in the coming months they plan to intensify this agitation in various ways so I think a lot of it's right now a very volatile situation almost maybe tempers are cooled down a bit but nonetheless it's a volatile situation because there is a sense that justice is not being done and as each day passes as when say the son of a powerful minister of state is not coming to the police station that seems to be a very good example of how justice is not being done despite the fact that the facts on the ground are fairly clear so that's where we are at right now we need to see in the coming days what actions the respective governments will take whether the court will intervene stronger and how the farmers movement itself decides to confront this issue there have been possibility of holding bigger meetings to discuss this issue so it really remains to be seen I think it's important to point out Prashant that here you have a case of two sides that are inflexible the farmers believe that the five laws you know the laws passed by the Indian parliament are an existential threat to their you know it's an existential threat to farming to their lives to their way of life and so on and the government is not budging the government believes that it's way forward of a full capitalist society is going to require the removal of any kind of regulation and so on and these two sides both see themselves as right and there's no moving I mean that's that's so right it's a tough it's a tough situation I mean don't know where we're going to this is give the people what they want it's a half an hour show that means 30 minutes come to you every week for 30 minutes now if you take the world health organization statistic seriously world health organization says that in the last several decades every two minutes a child under five in the world dies of malaria if you take that statistic seriously that means during our weekly show 15 children under five die during our show itself 15 children under five die of malaria which scientists believe for a long time is a deeply preventable disease you might know that there are three major killers in the world tuberculosis you know it's interesting there's very little coverage of the fact that tuberculosis an ailment that afflicts the poor the marginalized the most is the biggest killer in the world and malaria is number two malaria is number two 400,000 deaths a year on average 400,000 deaths a year on average mainly in extremely poor countries of course there are ways to manage malaria which don't require vaccine of course there are ways to manage malaria you know simple things we've known this for years mosquito nets we've known that you know water sources have to be kept under some control for years they use DDT to spray water sources and this DDT for instance you know was deemed to be even worse for the environment and for other animals and for plants then it was you know as a way to deal with malaria so DDT was off the table but we've known that mosquito nets that proper window shades that you know dealing with water that these basic methods can prevent malaria this of course would require an enormous amount of capital who is going to buy the mosquito nets for the world's billions of poor people who's going to create proper window protections when people don't even have proper places to sleep you know so given all that there has been a lot of enthusiasm and the World Health Organization has in the last few years put a lot of pressure on the development of a vaccine particularly a vaccine that would protect children under the age of five remember that statistic that I shared with you that every two minutes a child under five dies of malaria for that reason this week there was some very good news from the World Health Organization they released a statement saying that the RTS,S now don't ask me why the name of the vaccine is RTS,S but that's the name of the vaccine the World Health Organization said that this vaccine the RTS,S is now safe to be used they do say that it has only a 40% efficacy rate 40% this is very low got to put this in context the Moderna vaccine for COVID-19 developed within months although it has to be said mRNA technology was developed years before this nonetheless that vaccine has an efficacy rate over 95% the fact that the RTS,S malaria vaccine is only 40% should raise some eyebrows and you know I've talked to a few scientists about this it's not clear why that is the case nonetheless prevention of malaria to 40% of cases 30% of severe cases is a considerable feat and I think it's quite right that the World Health Organization Dr. Tedros the Ethiopian scientist who began his career working on malaria it's you know for good reason that they are celebrating this just to sharpen this thing about every 2 minutes a child is dead in 2019 260,000 children died in sub-Saharan Africa from malaria put that on your notebook and think about that 260,000 children under 5 in one year in Africa this is genocidal rates of death friends you've been listening to give the people what they want coming to you every week from your favorite movement driven news source People's Dispatch that's peoplesdispatch.org and Globe Trotter we'll be back next week with a slate of super stories tell us what you think share this episode let people know that we exist we're great and happy to have you with us thanks a lot


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She sent us this video for proof Yo, that is it looks like Mark Zuckerberg You guys don't know who that is that's a creator of space look Only wants us to come make sure that her dad's okay. So tonight. We're going to drive to her house and see He's cool All right, it seems like they outdid themselves like always Every video Okay, so we're on the road right now heading to Millie's house. How are you feeling about this, bro? I don't even know why we're going here. Her brother's death is a family issue Yeah, and she says her dad's been making weird noises at night So what are they not being able to cope emotionally is none of our business We got plenty of other emails bro You got to stop viewing things so negatively just try to be excited that we're going here from our tax She seems like a really nice girl What why do you sound like you just want to meet her? Seriously stop. I actually care about if these people are right Whatever Oh man, there they go Where the heck are they driving to bro first of all like That's a big red flag right there. Okay. Okay. This this looks like this is it Dude, there's something wrong about this place Okay You turn Let's go knock Okay That door has like a weird print to it. Oh, are you millie? Should look at that you woke. Yeah, uh, you email us about your dad carry game by the way Dude, what? Uh, we'll just come in now if that's okay. We should just stand there, bro Hey millie. Thank you for letting us sit down with you Yes Okay, so can you tell us a little bit about what's been going on in your house? So two months ago my little brother Timmy passed away It kind of happened randomly and since then my dad's been acting really weird Um, so you think your dad's been really sad because the sun died? Well It's kind of more than that I've been hearing some really awful guys is coming from his workshop Well, it's good that you're worried about your dad shows you an empathetic person Thank you. My dad just needs to is he trying to get at her?  What's all the whole play? Please stop Apply it with me Uh-huh. That is so weird. So what was that? A puppet? My dad's been dealing with my brother's death in a weird way Uh, yeah, um, we really want to help you guys. Uh, you mentioned something earlier about your dad's workshop Uh, can we go check that out? Yeah, um, it's in the garage You really shouldn't be messing with anything in there My dad doesn't like when people touch his stuff You're not going with any dad Oh, come on chester. Let's check it out. Okay. Where are you going? Are you serious about this? Huh, why aren't you serious?  I don't know. I think so So her dad has a puppet named after his son who recently died This guy needs to learn to accept that his son is dead. Dude, stop freaking out and keep it down.  Come on Fine Okay, what's in here? I don't know what it smells Okay, I'm just gonna camera up Human organ for transplant. There's some drawings here Chester don't touch your stuff That's so weird the heart Chester the organs in the heart Hey, but he's trying to make a real life Pinocchio. Stop messing around Bro, these drawings he has here are weird.  Listen, I don't know what that is, but we got to go talk to milley. Let's go Okay, fine Come on, that's pinocchio. I'm telling you guys. I think this is her dad's room Chester, come on. We got to go Chester what's going on? I don't know. Oh, what's up with the dad's hair? He got those Travis Scott braids Dude, stop let him be Oh, heck not bro. I think the dad needs more help than this. Come on anything Stop recording him. We have to go dude. He has no hand. What he has no hand Come on, let's go talk to milley. Lock the door throw the key away, man. Listen to me do it. This is your room. All right Millie Millie rocking in there. Hey Millie Are you feeling all right? So we just checked out your dad's workshop and we're going to record your dad tonight to see what he's doing But listen, I'm here right now. So you really have nothing to worry about I'm just really worried about my dad right now. I don't know if he's losing his mind or something I think she's losing his mind while her dad is losing his mind. We said about tony's death, but we both are I just wish we could she has a boyfriend. We're gonna be a bit of bed You're like to please just Uh, yeah, let's talk about that in the morning when you review the footage Wait, what? Um Dude, he liked her. Wow. You got to be professional man. Keep it professional problem. Why are you being so quiet? Well, listen, I was trying to tell you this earlier when I was looking in the dad's room He took off the puppet and he didn't have a hand I don't know how he's been controlling the puppet. So they messed up. What's going on here. We should get out of here Yeah, I don't know. Maybe we should What? Well, like you said earlier her brother's death and all this stuff is really worth it. He's so mad that she has a boyfriend So you don't care about helping her? No, dude, it's not that Huh? Listen, when we were talking to her in her room, I saw that she got a text on her phone from her boyfriend So wow so nothing I'm agreeing with what you said earlier If this is a family issue then her boyfriend should be here dealing with this dude. Why does her boyfriend matter? I'm saying I think there's something more going on here Right and her boyfriend should be the one who's giving emotional support to her and her dad. Wait, what? I'm over it. He's totally about to blow out this whole investigation.  Wait, he's actually alive Oh, he's looking at the camera Okay, he's not actually alive. It was just the dad doing the voice and everything It was the whole point of the two beds together Dude, no way now it's actually moving on on its own Yo, no behind you little timmy's gone evil What a savage Dude, he knocked him out That boy out. He cold He's seeing stars by now.  I don't trust you.   Do you hear that? Yeah, what is that bro? I don't know. Come on. No, no, let's get out. Let's see what that is Oh, no, man Little timmy What we got jester Jester cheetos will help them Jester just kick that thing bro. Oh, there you are. Are you okay? Come out done. What do you mean?  We are man I would have put in the same thing I ain't gonna cap We escaped the house ran to her car and drove home Oh, wow It's not because of the whole boyfriend thing was there We have not heard from millie or her father since I don't think they ever will What that's it for the next episode to be released. Uh, we appreciate all the support All right, you guys well that is the end of she thought her little brother was dead As we all seen it seemed like the father trying to create his own little like pinocchio type Thing going on there. It was pretty weird as they say he did tried he did I'm not sure if you actually put human organs inside of the puppet itself. He might have actually done that That's why I like it became alive and whatever. I don't know and I believe this is the actual first time where I see where Uh life for luxury where they both run off instead of like solving the case Which was pretty messed up But it is what it is. You got to save yourself at the end of the day, man All right, you guys well thank you all for watching take out for the basic support and I will see you all in the next one