TheCube at EMC World 2014 is brought to you by EMC. Redefine. VCE. Innovating the world's first converged infrastructure solution for private cloud computing. Brocade. Say goodbye to the status quo and hello to Brocade. And we're back. We're focusing on cloud and specifically on this segment we're going to talk about service providers. I'm Stu Miniman with Wikibon.org and you're tuned to SiliconANGLE TV's live wall-to-wall coverage from EMC World 2014. Going way beyond storage, talking about cloud and as I said, service providers. My guest for this segment is David Trigg, who's the vice president and general managers of EMC Global Service Providers. Thanks so much for joining us in this segment, David. Thank you, Stu. It's great to be on and have this conversation. So looking forward to it. Yeah. So service providers have just been hot for the last few years. Many of us in the industry have said that the service providers are the new channel if you talk about what's going on there.  Where does it sit in New York? Yeah. We sit as a solutions organization. We kind of have two functions. We've got a sales function that sits within alliances and they're responsible for the relationship with our service providers. And then we've sit within the solutions group and we're responsible for developing all the solutions to be consumed by service providers as well as enabling our service providers through training and sales enablement and then actually also taking our service providers capability and feeding that back through our capabilities in our hybrid cloud solution and putting it back to our field and to our customers. Yeah. I like the tagline you had for your group is you're the one to put the hybrid in the hybrid cloud that you have. Can you give us some examples, you know, when you say service providers sometimes is a nebulous term. Right.  Even many large enterprises basically internally act as a service provider. So, you know, what is a service provider? Can you just talk to us about some of your clients and users out there that you guys work with? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. We launched our service provider partner program actually at EMC World three years ago. So we're now three years into this. We didn't define service providers because we didn't want to necessarily go out and just partner with every large telco under the sun, which could have been maybe the bias a little bit. So we have officially in the last three years and gone out and partnered with about 100, a little bit over 100 service providers globally. And we've got kind of what may feel like on the service or random mix of service providers. So we have partnered with some large telcos. We've partnered with some pure plays. We've partnered with some outsourcers. Even some, you know, enterprises like NISI. We've partnered with them as a service providers. They've stood up their infrastructure as a service. And we did that in a little bit of the spirit of learning, seeing what they were going to do, how they were going to define their market, and how does EMC really help enable them? And as the market continues to grow, so we've got multiple partners in all categories, but, you know, some of our best rack space, dimension data, CSC ones that we're starting to showcase some of their capabilities with our hybrid cloud capabilities that we're building here within EMC. And then obviously VCHS as part of the Federation's cloud is an important strategic piece of what we're working on as well. So, you know, I wanted to get into all those technologies, but before we do, you know, I'm just curious your perspective on, you know, the service fighter market. Because, you know, when you look at kind of the cloud space, you know, there's a few of what we would, some of us call kind of the web scale, or the hybrid scale mega cloud guys.  Then it's funny, everybody kind of throws stones, you know, some of these telco guys, or, you know, these are just hosting guys that are changing the new business model. But as you said, you know, it's a broad spectrum of what's out there.   Yeah, well, first of all, I'm not an analyst. I'm not in the job of making bold predictions. But I'm here to help EMC kind of navigate the changes. So we are seeing today that market is obviously still relatively immature, I would say. You know, maybe we're in our adolescent years at this point, you know, we've kind of gone through, but we're kind of in our awkward adolescence. And right now what we're seeing is kind of a tale of two worlds, quite frankly. You have the large-scale service providers that can go kind of that hyperscale, can make the big investments. It's obviously not a poor man's game to play and participate in that. And then you really see the niche players, and they really have a specific niche, they serve a specific market, whether it's a specific geo, a specific technology, enabling a specific support service or model. The ones that we see that are struggling are the kind of the ones that find themselves in between that world, where they're kind of having a hard time defining. I can't tell you how many service providers I've met with that said, hey, we're going to launch storage as a service. And I'm like, that's great. And you're going to target it. And they're like, anyone that needs storage. And we're like, okay, good luck with that, right? You know, and those are the ones that are kind of struggling. Where it ultimately plays out, it's going to be interesting. I think there will be obviously the large hyperscales, although the market will continue to merge. And the niche players, I think, will be there. But there's going to continue to be a fairly big expansion, probably followed by a contraction, but I think the overall market's going to continue to grow fairly aggressively. Okay, so EMC's got a pretty broad portfolio. And then if we expand to the Federation, it's even more of that. So, you know, what are the top things that you're partnering with service providers on? What solutions out of the EMC or the broader Federation are the ones that are kind of hitting stride with some of these service providers? Yeah, well, our technology is very well-enabled, obviously, as especially some of the larger service providers are looking to get more and more into an enterprise-grade capability and are trying to offer a spectrum of services, whether it is a public cloud. Our technology is very well-enabled in a lot of the private cloud, managed private cloud, et cetera, et cetera. And so we are facilitating a lot of storage as a service, infrastructure as a service, and we're a piece of that component. But we're also starting to work, and as you saw or hopefully saw from a lot of today's announcements, we're continuing to expand our product set and solution set so that we can better enable and allow service providers to stand up services much more rapidly, manage their infrastructure over a longer period of time, and get a longer return on investments. And that's something that we've learned a lot working with service providers. They're standing up a business that they want to run 8, 10, 12, 50 years. We're working with a lot of our enterprise customers. They understand it's a three-year kind of renewal cycle. And so that's where we've had to adjust and are making a lot of investments and key investments to help enable service providers. Okay, so how are those cloud providers really enabling the hybrid cloud? Well, right now it's very much about a lot of pro-services. Some of them that have done a good job have a little bit of, it's less about enablement of a true seamless, what I'd call hybrid cloud, that technology we're just starting to get there. What we sometimes would call federated if I could have an application that spans your thing. Well, yeah, exactly. We're starting to be able to actually do workload portability, workload mobility, whatever term you want to use. But what hybrid cloud has been is more of giving customers options and really choice about where they put their workload. So it's, hey, do you want to put it on your data center? And we'll manage it. Do you want to put it in our data center? We'll manage it. And or do you want to put it in a shared infrastructure? The service providers that kind of have that continuum in services and then the capability. So a lot of the systems integrators are doing great things to be able to help manage customers across that. Because customers, quite frankly, there's still some level of confusion in the marketplace. And the service providers that are having success with that confusion are really helping those customers evaluate their workloads, evaluate their applications. Because it is an application discussion. And it's probably even before that solving a business problem discussion when service providers are getting better at and quite frankly the industry's getting better at. So at the beginning of the segment, I teed it up that many have looked at the service providers as a new channel opportunity. Especially if you look at kind of EMC's core storage products. So my understanding you've got like certification programs and things like that. Do you guys look at them as another go-to-market solution and how do you certify them or position them compared to kind of the traditional channel discussion? Right. When we went out and launched the partner program we look at them as a potential another channel but we didn't want to treat them as a true reseller channel. So we went in with a fairly strong foundation to build a relationship on. We didn't go out with you got to be certified. You got to be here because again we went in a little bit more of the spirit of learning. But over that time what we've learned and we've partnered with about a hundred service providers globally formally. It doesn't mean there's a lot of other service providers that are building stuff on ours. And we've got about five hundred services in the market based upon EMC technology with those hundred service providers. And then we've kind of basically just said anything that's on the table that you want to help with will help. And so we put together a program and a structure to be able to help service providers. Whatever that might mean. But now we're changing that a little bit as we need to go after and help support our customer base because that was more of a general marketplace right. But as we look at we need to go after and support our customer base in our field we are putting together much more of a certification framework looking at you know an offer standardization how do we match up SLAs how do we really make sure that we've got kind of minimum tech criteria and that's really what 2014's about and that's why for this show Hybrid Cloud is such that it's a little bit of the coming out party I like to say of really enabling you know the Hybrid Cloud as far as EMC and then using a lot of VMware technology as well in the Federation. Yeah so how do you really incent that kind of loyalty because you know when I think about especially those guys that were hosting providers that moved into kind of the server fighter market for the most part it was you know I've got it and you know we go to the various shows and you sometimes see the same guy you know giving a session at every single show because they're mostly like you know I want your business and you know infrastructures infrastructure you know we'll let them fight it out so how do you guys parse that? Well it's been a lot of learnings over the years and as we've looked at kind of really what EMC strengths are and we have some unbelievable strengths we've got unbelievable technology capability and unbelievable at the same point we're competing every day for service provider business but also EMC's fortunate that we tend to be fairly strong from a go to market perspective in most markets not true in every market around the globe but that's where we wanted to leverage and say look to really leverage our go to market strength and couple your capabilities with our capabilities we're going to have to go take it to the next level with the certification that's what we felt like gave us the credibility to have as opposed to hey build your services and our stuff and we'll help you market we'll help you sell which most partner programs this really takes it to that next level and has a combined solution that's leveraging our strengths their strengths and our go to market power jointly it really helps us kind of have that next level conversation. So you know for a couple of years we heard Joe Tucci you know really say out there you know we are going to not compete with the service providers out there if I look at the federation ways it can partner with service providers but it can also compete because they have I can buy the services straight from VMware and Pivotal seems to be blurring the line on some of that so what's the emcee line on that now and is it okay to compete as well as partner. Yeah I think it is if you look at the majority of players out in the marketplace most are taking a mixed model VMware has launched VCHS and I think they did it for the right reasons to improve their capabilities they see a market opportunity see a way to actually accelerate the market I'm less concerned about competition than I am about market adoption and market awareness and really accelerating the market for emcee the storage component we still maintain a fairly neutral that we are not going to become a service provider but we're certainly taking approach to market through VCHS and through our service providers and most of our service providers are seeing the opportunity more than the threat it doesn't mean there isn't a threat for some but overall it's a very positive message that's being received fairly well once it's understood and you're able to work it out and really go to market together. Yeah so last question if I look at the overall market service provider market has been outpacing traditional IT spending by a significant amount you know you read all the reports and everything you know is this a trend we expect to go on for a couple of years or you know do we hit a wall in the service provider market? Yeah I think everything that we look at it goes on at least in the foreseeable future you know at least the next three, five years it certainly is going to continue in our most recent earnings announcement we did make the statement that the service provider segment has been the fastest growing segment for the last eight quarters so we're seeing success we're outpacing the market we believe in the space so you know I'm very proud of the team and the teams that are working with our service providers and with you look at the lines continuing to blur between what the telcos are doing you know what we're seeing in the SaaS ISV space and what cloud providers and you know the more traditional infrastructure side I think we got plenty of runway to continue but there's also going to continue to be more clarity the requirements going to become more clear the applications that it's supporting and how they support it you know the target markets all of those things will continue to get refined and more focused over time which is great it will help all of us continue to compete and help support this market All right David thank you so much for coming on Thank you so much. Appreciate you know congratulations on the success service providers definitely an area we're all keeping a close eye on and definitely look forward to having you back again some time. Appreciate your time and we'll be right back with our next guest with the live coverage from SiliconANGLE TV at EMC World 2014 in Las Vegas


Alright, so our panel is Robot Shark Laser, what hackerspaces do. We don't actually have any robots, sharks, or lasers. I know, it's sad. We do have a laser, but it's not like a big... We do have a ducky, we also have a Lee, a Noid, a Nick, and a Steve, which is infinitely better, I promise. Well, alright, maybe not better than a laser. But it's awesome. What is a hackerspace? How many people here by a show of hands are involved in a local hackerspace, makerspace, DIY group? Oh wow, awesome. That is great. So like more than half the room. That is great, awesome. So you guys know what your hackerspace is. One of the goals of this panel is to show you what everybody else's hackerspace is like, or at least a diverse sample. A hackerspace is a physical forum. It's a place in the reality space where we meet and collaborate on projects. It's a place where we develop a community and also foster a community that already exists. It's a place to do DIY stuff, to have ownership or access to the technology, to make our own projects, and to hopefully develop new technologies. There's a lot that has come before us hackerspace-wise. Some references are there. What else would we like to say about what a hackerspace is? Does anybody want to jump in? Largely, it's the place where all of our stuff is that we want to build as a group. The main purpose of our hackerspace is that we like to get together, collaborate on projects, and a lot of it comes out of a raw physical need too. There's some of us that live in apartments. I have a house, but it's got no driveway or garage, so if I've got to fire up the angle grinder, I don't really have a place to do it. It's like a library for things. Yes. Thank you. I love that. Okay. On our panel, if you don't already know, which I think you should, but I didn't, so I can't judge, is Lee. She is from Hack Lab in Toronto, Canada. There's Noid, raise your hand, from the Black Lodge in Seattle. And then we have Nick Farr from Hack DC in Washington DC, and Steve Clement from Syndicate in Luxembourg. And of course Beth from FreeSide in Atlanta. Thank you, Lee. Oh, awesome. Apparently we have some Atlantans in the audience. Who knew? Okay. Oops, sorry. Oh, I'd like to make a point about our panel. I tried to be as diverse as I could, and I failed. And the reason why is we asked for volunteers from other countries who were coming to DEF CON and who would want to represent their hackerspace to be on our panel. Unfortunately, either no one from South America, Africa, or Asia was coming to DEF CON that was involved in hackerspace or they're shy. I don't know, but our panel is pretty diverse otherwise. We have Canada, we have Europe representing, and we have all sides of the U.S. except Texas. But it is important to note that there are active hackerspaces projects on every continent except Antarctica, which I think is pretty wicked. And how long is that going to last? I mean, we'll be there soon, I'm sure. That, if you look at some of the stuff that's going on in Antarctica, it is almost hackerspace-like. I know, right? So, nothing but research going on down there. Okay, we're going to go down the panel and everyone's going to talk a little bit about themselves and what kind of hackerspace they're involved in. I'll go first because I'm near the mic and I have the clicker. I'm Beth from FreeSide. We're in Atlanta, Georgia. We are brand spanking new. We just got our physical space, yay, after an arduous voting process that seemed to never end. And we're very excited about that. We basically completed one project that I couldn't even present on. That's how, like, new we are. We just finished our RFID access. Thank you, Casey and DMC Morris and Ducky. And this, our logo, has a barcode. We're a non-profit. We were started by a couple guys from Columbus who moved to Atlanta to work for a big company there. And DC-404, a local DEF CON group, showed up at the meetings. And various other local groups then started to donate members, shall we say, to our cause. And that includes our Atlanta Linux enthusiasts, pro-mongers, dorkbot, the Arduino group, the 2600, on and on. Six months ago is when we started. We have 50 members already. And we've actually had to cap that. We have had way more requests for membership than we can handle at this time. We do, however, encourage people to come by and participate in what we're doing and what's going on, whether they're a member or not. As far as rules for our space, so far it's a work in progress. We've stolen the core values and beliefs from Mindspring, which was an Atlanta ISP. We have a Hacker Space Manifesto developed by one of our own Eater.  And that pretty much sums up what we're doing. Here's some links. They'll be in the published info and they'll be available online. Oh, this is a picture of where we're located. All of that? It's all ours now. You tell me.  All right, so there you go. Thank you. The floor is yours, Noid. First off, how many people in here are Twin Peaks fans? So you guys are getting this, right? The Bookhouse Boys patch, yeah. All right. Well, I'm Noid, as previously stated. I'm with the Black Lodge out of Seattle, Washington. Technically, it's in Kirkland, Washington. It's on the other side of the lake, but people don't know where the hell Kirkland is. We started just about a year ago. We ended up getting a place. Buddy of ours was living in this little house that's actually in an industrial area and butts up against some train tracks. So it was kind of, it's funny, you're in the middle of Kirkland, yet you feel like you're in the backwoods when you're in this place.  And we can pretty much get away with whatever we want. When he decided to move into a proper house, we decided to take over the rent on it. And right now, we have eight primary members. We don't work like a lot of the other spaces seem to where there's a large general membership. We have a small kind of board of directors, and then it's just open to everybody else who wants to come in. We didn't want to end up with, you know, 100 people trying to make decisions. We figured we'd keep it small. Right now, this number actually changed since these slides got set in. We actually have nine primary members now. Myself, Luna and Vidiot, who are actually working right now. Cybin, our buddy Lando, who just got off work. The dark tangent, who doesn't show up as often as he should, but still involved. Yeah, I don't know if DT's in the room or not. I just like giving him hell for it. We've also picked up Don Ankney, who's actually sitting here in the front row, co-worker of ours, as well as a co-worker of Luna's and another co-worker of me and Don's. So, websites, blacklodge.org, we keep redesigning it, letting it sit, and then redesigning it again. We've reached that point where, you know, web development's not really your thing, but you're the guy that knows a lot about computers, so people ask you to do it, and you eventually get to the point where you just get tired of doing websites for people, even yourself. And mostly what we do is hardware hacking. A lot of us are gearheads, too. So we do a lot of metalworking. We're getting into foundry work. Don likes to do a lot of coding. Brian actually plays his drums there because it's out in the middle of nowhere. And, you know, we're into ham radio, beer brewing, all kinds of crazy stuff, and a lot of working on our cars, which has got us into some trouble lately, but I don't know why they're going into that. So why'd we do it? Earlier, none of us had garages or any place to go work on stuff. I have a tool bench in my basement, and half the tools I need to use would light my house on fire. So had to get it someplace else. We all have a ton of tools. Vidiot himself had a machine shop, and then when his brother-in-law passed away, got his. So we have two machine shops in addition to all of the rest of our tools. On top of that, too, like, I'd been in charge of the DC 206 meeting for a couple of years, and all we ended up having to do was sort of wander around looking for a place for the DEF CON group to meet. We'd find a cool place, and then the business would go out of business. We'd find another cool place, and something would happen to, you know, we wouldn't be able to use it anymore.  You know, like she said earlier, it's a library for things. Yeah, it's a library for things where you can make noise. And we wanted to do our part for the community. You know, Seattle is interesting because there's actually two hacker spaces. There's the Hacker Bot Lab folks, if any of them are in here. They're actually down south to downtown Seattle, and they've got all kinds of crazy stuff going on, and we got our space, so now there's east side and west side up in Seattle. Am I running long? A little bit, we're all doing that. Okay, so basically, yeah, the now nine of us pair our bills out of the pocket. We've got keys to the place. The general membership doesn't get keys, but they come over when the place is open. Or if you wanted to have it open for something special, say, you know, you've got a Linux user group, a robotics group needs a place to meet, you know, I'm more than happy to come down and unlock the door as everybody else has got a key.  So I'm Lee from Hack Lab TO. Two, probably all three of the founders are in the room. I see one there, and I don't know if Seth can wave as well. Paul is there. Seth seems to be asleep still. We're in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. We were founded last July. We're actually up to 30 members. These slides are outdated. And we have an 800 square foot around loft space in Kensington Market, which is a really cool downtown neighborhood in Toronto. There's a bakery next door and a bar underneath us. So it's a really convenient look. Oh, and two 24-hour streetcar tracks. So it's like 24-hour transit. It's right downtown. It's super convenient. We have a really, really active IRC channel on FreeNode. I think everybody's sort of given up on the idea of setting up their own IRC servers and is just using FreeNode for hacker spaces. And we post a lot of project stuff to our blog at hacklab.to. We're an incorporated nonprofit in Ontario, which is a pretty easy thing to do.  If you go to hacklab.to slash bylaws, you can check those out. And we also have stuff like in terms of how we sort of organize the space, we have a hardware donation policy that was one of the early things that we had to think about. Unlike some of the spaces that have a huge amount of physical space, we have a pretty small, like it's only a little bit bigger than my apartment. And so we've had to be pretty careful about, like, not just filling up with stuff. So very early on, we decided no CRTs. And that actually, like, that was a big deal. So I think I might have one more. Oh, no, it's HackDC. I'll pass that along. Okay. Thank you, Lee. HackDC is an incorporated nonprofit in the District of Columbia. We started out just a little, a couple months after the first Hackers on a Plane, a little more than a year and a half ago, we all, you know, it was me and Eric Michaud and a couple of people actually didn't live in DC, but we had a strong relationship and we were all willing to get, we were all willing to throw down personal money to get a hackerspace going into DC. We started out pretty much using the hackerspace design patterns. We reached out to the dorkbot community. We reached out to burners in our community. We reached out to Linux users groups and just slowly started selling people on the idea of having a hackerspace in Washington, DC. A little while after we started doing that, maybe two or three months, and lots of intensive searching on Craigslist, we found a really awesome space in the Columbia Heights neighborhood in Washington, DC. We signed a lease, basically put an announcement out there, said, hey, HackDC is open for business. And we went from an empty room to a room full of lots of shop equipment and cool things we could trade for more shop equipment in an afternoon. We just said, hey, you know, we're having a parts party bring down things that you think the community might need and the community came out and supported us. We're primarily funded by member donations. The current dues is $50 a month. There's our membership hovers around 30. Washington, DC itself is a city where there's lots of people coming in, lots of people going out, so there's a reasonably high member turnover in Washington, DC, but we keep it around 30 members and have a good time. Our big signature event, if you're ever in Washington, DC on a Monday night, please stop by HackDC and take part in our microcontroller Mondays event. That's really cool and the place is always packed. We only have an 800 square foot actual workshop, and then we have another 600 square foot... It's also a workshop, but it's more designed for woodworking, metalworking, that sort of thing, we use it for storage. The primary space is used primarily for classroom and electronics sorts of things. Our last rule is... We're in Washington, DC, we're relatively political people. We like to write rules, then forget about them, then rescind the rules and rewrite them. Eventually, I think the standard operating rule now is don't act in a way that's create a new rule, and people are pretty good about that. Another noise bridge phrase that's another way, and I like the way they phrased it, their guiding principle is be excellent to each other, and I think that's something that's critical for a hackerspace to succeed. Hi, I'm Steve from Luxembourg. Luxembourg is a small country in the middle of Europe. We are bordered by Germany, France and Belgium. Our population is 490,000 people, so that might give you a laugh. It's not a lot, but there is definitely a purpose for a hackerspace even in a small country. Currently, we have 25 members, out of which five members are hardcore members, that actually get things going. We had issues with a lot of leeches that just wanted to sit around and do nothing, so what we decided is make more projects and get people more involved. Currently, we have no membership fee, because we don't really have a space yet. The problem is that mobility is key. Basically, the rent is that tremendously expensive in Luxembourg that we can't afford it, because we can't pay the rent, and all the spaces that are free, they are governmentally owned, and if you tell them, hey, we are a hackerspace and we want to take things apart, they don't really trust you. What we did is we took all our stuff and crammed it into a van, and now we just go on the mobile tour, so we have a mobile hackerspace if you want to. Even if you are scared of starting a hackerspace don'ts, just do it mobile. There you see us at the Hackerspace Fast in Paris where we took all our stuff with us, and we just served the local community there on that conference with a mobile hackerspace where you could just solder stuff and we had pliers, we had everything you just needed. So yeah, that's all from us. Thanks guys. We're going to talk about projects, and I'd like to just preface it by saying please hold questions until the end, and we'll have a little bit of Q&A time at the end, and everybody can participate, and I hope you will. We're also going to go to the breakout room after if people just want to either ask further questions or just sort of talk shop about hackerspaces in general. And that'll be Capri 106. Okay, let's talk about projects. FreeSide as I mentioned just finished their very first project, which was an RFID access project. They didn't finish it in time for me to do the wonderful presentation that I would like to do on it, so you'll have to just keep up with us online and check out all our awesome pictures there.  I actually want to check that out too, because we're looking to do something similar. Lee actually is the one that inspired us when Taylor went to Canada and saw what they had. He was like, we have to do this. The source code for our system. Well, I'll talk about that in my context. We might have to make a road trip to Toronto then.  There we go. We're lighting things on fire. Let's hear it for fire. In fact, actually, that was an attempt to slag a bunch of hard drives with some thermite. That was both of which was generously donated by DT. Yeah, I'll bring it for the forensics talk next year. That's me brewing beer a few weeks ago. Actually, no, probably about two months ago now. We've been brewing for a while, but we're really set up for it now.  We've got a good covered porch, so regardless of what the weather is like up in Washington, we can pretty much cook whenever we want. I'd say we've got a good 40 gallons of beer ready to drink or in bottles aging right now. The gun up there, that happened to be a project Lando's got going on where he's had a real thing about steampunk and has been taking and making all sorts of weird steampunk weapons. This is actually now mounted to a board like a trophy. And then some of the other projects we've been working on. We've been kind of decorating the place a lot lately. I don't know where the Mr. Wizard chemistry set came from, but it's awesome because that's not retro. It's just that old. It's pretty cool. And we have a big Halloween party. That was kind of our grand opening. We threw this huge Halloween party, invited everybody over to it, fire up with grill. We do a lot of social stuff there too. We have the monthly DC 206 meeting there. In the next couple of weeks, we're going to be having a DEF CON decompression party over there because we got a ton of space where people can just hang out and have fun. I don't know if we can be as noisy as HBL because you guys are kind of next to nothing, nothing. But we can get pretty loud. So it's going to be a lot of fun. And then we've got some future projects we're kind of trying to kick off. In fact, DEF CON got in the way of a couple of them. Currently working on a propane foundry. It was supposed to have been done a few weeks ago, but not having my car for a weekend because it was in the shop really thwarted me on getting 60 pounds of refractory clay. I thought about biking it, but I realized that wasn't going to happen. So, horology. Vidiot's really into horology, and it's not what you think it is. Does anybody know what horology is? I can show you later. It's watchmaking. It's watchmaking. Vidiot puts together these very intricate pocket watches that are overly engineered. They just look cool. A number of us are working on a virtualization lab. We've got some pretty beefy hardware that I've been able to pick up through my Dell Preferred account. Greatly reduced rates, so we can stack up the rack. In fact, we have a full-size rack sitting in the server room right now. More rear-making. And we're getting our metal shop set up. We actually have a table we've got to finish building off, and we've got everything necessary to turn wood and metal. And that's going to tie in directly with the foundry. The foundry is going to be able to do everything from brass to bronze to aluminum. Maybe if I feel like getting crazy, I'm going to build an oil-fired cupola furnace and be able to do steel or iron, but that's down the road. I need to find some place to actually store that thing. Also working on making an internet-enabled weather station, I'm not sure at what point I became heavily interested in meteorology, but I'm fascinated by it now. And I'm looking to build an internet-enabled weather site that people can get the weather from the Black Lodge. That, and I also like the people... I like the idea of people being able to go on to the weather underground site and have that as a local station, because usually they're listed as like local PS-13 or such-and-such school, and I want people to be able to see the Black Lodge and wonder what the hell that is.   And then lately I've been talking to Nick and a few other people, and actually now it seems doable. We're going to look into doing that, so we can take advantage of some of the benefits that come along with being a non-profit corp. For example, a number of us work at the same company that actually pays $17 an hour for every hour you volunteer at a non-profit. They'll also match donations up to, I think, $12,000 a year. So we're thinking, you know, we could leverage that because we're already over there doing public service stuff and it would really help out building some of these projects we want to do. Good timing there. So projects that we've been working on at the Hack Lab, I wasn't sure exactly what the setup was going to be, so you're going to have to take my word in describing the different pictures. In the upper left you can see our 35-watt CO2 laser that we got on Craigslist, and it was busted, and a bunch of the members reverse engineered the hardware and replaced all of the control electronics to it so that now we can laser-cut stuff. It's pretty awesome. Basically, normally a laser cutter like this would run something on the order of $10,000. We paid 500 bucks, plus about 500 bucks for parts for it. So, yeah. It was a total steal, and it really was this huge project that the lab worked together on over the course of a couple of weeks just to get it from completely busted to working in a couple of weeks.  You've got to have two-factor authentication because those RFID cards are pretty cloneable. But we have an open-source project called Cerberus Prox. If you go on Google Code, it's all there. Burn your own PCB, or I can send you the Gerber files if you need them, and it'll work with the HID ProxCard 2 clock in data, but it's also all of the code is open-source, so if anybody wants to get other readers working with it, that's totally doable. On the right-hand side, there is our toilet, which posts to Twitter when you flush it. You can blame Seth for that one. I don't know if he's in the room. Bottom-middle, Alex, one of our members designed our logo, and Paul, one of the founders, had a neon sign made out of it, and it looks so much more badass in person than it does in that picture. And finally, in the bottom right-hand corner, is the jury-rigged connection from the Lisp machine that we had donated to the lab. It didn't come with some cables, so we tried to get it working, and we were able to figure out the cable connection, but the machine wasn't working, and so it sort of sat in our space and took up space, and as I said, we don't have that much room, so I got a lot of crap from other members, like, get rid of the Lisp machine, get rid of the Lisp machine. And finally, the Computer Science Club at the University of Waterloo was like, we'll take it, we'll make it work, so they're currently working on getting that repaired and running. And so those are some projects that other people have done, and I've been in per-frilly involved in some of them, but my project within the lab has been running a drop-in Python class every Thursday. We're using an awesome free and open-source textbook which you can acquire from ThinkPython.com. It's called Python for Software Design, How to Think Like a Computer Scientist, and it is a fantastic introduction to programming in general, as well as specifically the language Python. The way we run the class is we, depending on who shows up on a given week, it sort of drop-in, there isn't really a formal curriculum aside from we're working with this textbook, but we work through whatever point in the text people are comfortable with, or one week we just hacked on regular expressions for two hours, and it was so much fun to see a bunch of people who'd never programmed before, except for within this class being like, oh man, regular expressions, this is the coolest thing ever. And so older students who've been coming to the class for, you know, a couple of months or have showed up a bunch of times over the course of a year, will work with newer students and walk them through the first couple of chapters of the textbook, will code together. When we're running the class, we usually only have one computer out, and so whether it's two people or five people will just either have the code up on a projector or just on an external monitor and folks will take turns at the keyboard either reading the text, working through the exercises, and sort of not even just pair programming, but like group programming, and because it's an active class for everyone involved, that's worked really, really well. We haven't figured out how to make a profit off of this yet, but it's been lots of fun and that's what's important. Lessons learned from the course, the textbook that we're using is fantastic. I've heard that Noisebridge is using it as well. I definitely recommend it as like an introductory programming text. For a weekly drop-in like this, one of the things that we've struggled with is that I've been sort of the leader on it and have struggled to sometimes, you know, sometimes I'm in Las Vegas on Thursday and what's going to happen to the class. So, you know, an email will go out to the mailing list, but in case someone who hadn't showed up there before wants to show up, that can make things complicated. So if you want to do a dropping class like this, I'd definitely recommend having two champions, not just one. And definitely, like, it is an amazing thing to teach people, to help folks learn how to code who've never, who've thought the programming was inaccessible or something that they couldn't do, whether they're social workers or... We have a couple of people that come to the class who are completely non-techies and watching those folks learn how to operate a programming language is just, it's incredibly rewarding. So, that's it. All right. HackDC, we're sort of, in terms of the overall hacker space, is seen a little bit shy. There are lots of people who are working on a lot of individual projects. Microcontroller Mondays, a lot of people will bring in their projects, share, collaborate, but we're not really as a hacker space engaged in a lot of, you know, hacker space-wide projects. Aside from trying to fix up our space, trying to bring in more people, trying to work on our own 501c3 status. But one thing that we are working on that we're really proud of is trying to bring free wireless internet to our local community. And that's, for anyone who's ever attempted it, no small task. The first thing that we did for this, actually, is just a little bit of a feasibility study and a reality check. That's always, a lot of wireless projects have come and gone because people tried to bite off way more than they could choose. So, before I introduced that, I strongly believe in free wireless networks. I think that the digital divide in the country, people who have access to the internet and people who don't have access to the internet are bad before the downturn in the economy, and now it's getting worse. And it should be pretty evident to everybody in the room that people without access to the internet are going to fall even further behind than they already are now. And we should try to do what we can to prevent that. When you're thinking about building a free wireless network, which I hope you think about now that a lot of you have hacker spaces, is to try to build something that's sustainable. Make sure that whatever you build, and really this goes for any project that you're doing is documented so that you can pass it on to somebody else when and if you can no longer maintain the project. And always have an eye on building things so that somebody can pick up where you left off or make it better with what they know. Always try to partner with nearby organizations. The first step in our process is partnering with our landlord, St. Stephen the Episcopal or St. Stephen the Incarnation Episcopal Church in Washington, D.C., where we've completely revamped the internet networking and telecommunications infrastructure of the entire building. That was the first step in providing free wireless to the neighborhood. Basically getting the whole church online and getting the church to subsidize the internet connection for all of their tenants and hopefully in the future in the neighborhood at large. And one of the key things about free wireless networking is that you can't just throw it out there and expect people to start using it, generally a split lower middle income neighborhood in the immediate surrounding property around the church is a section 8 housing development. We know that we have to build in some kind of mechanism for training, for evangelism, for showing people how to use the internet and providing equipment and creating a channel for providing equipment with other organizations. And another critical thing to think about that last bullet point, put the wheels on before you reinvent them. Use the technology that's out there and that's good. Use it and try it before you try to build the next, greatest, better thing. It's really easy to point out the flaws in any technology but if it works, use it. The first phase is largely done at HackDC right now. Just rebuilding the infrastructure in the church right now, that's the first part. It's just laying down the wires, laying down the ground, getting the routers in place and figuring out where you need to go from here. The funding base, like I said, is actually being created by the church and the tenants. Before we rewired the church, everybody in the church, all the various different community organizations and depending on the time of year there can be anywhere from 9 to 12 different community organizations was getting their own internet line, getting their own phone line, getting all these things and duplicating a lot of connections where we could have maybe one or two or three that were much faster and better at a lower overall cost than getting 12 separate subsidized connections. That's the first part. We replaced a lot of just regular telephone lines with VoIP and then there was other technology that was a part of this project that eliminated the need for a daytime guard at HackDC. And then a lot of the process of doing this, we got to know our neighbors. We got to not only build relationships with them, but get all of the other community organizations to build relationships with each other in the space. That's another cool thing about doing community technology projects is that you get to reach out to people that you might not otherwise reach out to. They get to know you and they get to know the people who are involved in building your community network. Now that the church is largely online, we're entering the second phase of the project, actually putting wireless out in the community. It's suffered a little bit just because some of our members who are really active in the project are either underemployed or over-employed depending on certain things like that. But we are trying to actively work on it, collecting donations and getting things going. We are providing a lot of training and support informally. One of the critical things that we haven't developed yet is a formalized way or branching out into another night like we have Microcontroller Mondays which is pretty well known in the community. We don't have a similar night right now because like Lee pointed out, we don't have a champion or a local person who can take on and saying to anybody in the community hey, if you stop by on a Thursday night, we'll show you how to build your own computer, how to use wireless network, how to do things like that. But really the critical point that's getting us off to the next phase is networking with everybody in our community, getting everybody together. And providing people with spare resources or getting people with spare resources to the Niagara community and showing the community how to use them. And like I said, when we're thinking about sustainability and building things like this in a network, you have to think what happens afterwards? How do we give the people once we actually put up this wireless network using various different technologies that are already out there like the Freifunk hardware for routers that works in a bunch of different routers, how do we allow people to extend it? And every time we're thinking about network designer building in ways where people who have their own router can extend it, can push the network out and beyond whether they're working with us directly or whether they're not working with us directly. Hackers like to play with things that are out there and we're trying to create a network where people can play with things and at the same time extend the network and branch it out. And as a part of that, we're looking for other people who might not even know we exist in the community. People are really into technology who might not be subscribed to mailing lists or might not be tremendously social. What we think is really cool about building this network is the fact that it's going to be noticed by people who might not know we exist. And I think that's really exciting and awesome and that's the one big project that we're working on and like anything it takes a tremendous amount of energy to stay vested in it and keep people excited about it and you know a lot of the maker projects have a very easy payoff you know for five or six hours of work or even less than that you have something that works in blinks and that is doing something creating something this large it's hard to reach a mile post like that that keeps people excited and when you're approaching a big project like this you always have to think in addition to sustainability in addition to engaging the community think about different ways that you can keep people excited and enthusiastic about it because you know hackers more so than any other group of people have that short attention span will move on to something else if you don't keep them interested. And that's all I got, thanks. Okay, some of our projects although we do not have a space we are very very busy on our wiki page which is the main channel we use to communicate with the world which is a bit of a problem because non-technical people do not understand wiki pages they can read them they barely can edit them and if they really want to know fast information a wiki page is not good enough so we are now thinking of putting up a general info page where you get to the info what we are about fast. That's our current logo we actually had 12 different logos designed and we even had help from the states and everyone was giving a hand so we had an identity crisis but it's fixed now, hopefully that will stay the bike shed problem wasn't really helping Okay, basically we try to reuse and just mash up stuff and that's something you can actually explain to government officials quite easily because sustainability is the new buzz word of these people so if you tell them hey we need a space and sustainability this and we are going to make it a greener tomorrow they actually listen to you so do use the buzz words currently we are doing quite a lot of awareness raising if you go up to someone and you say hey I'm a hacker they are going to be scared for sure we abuse that to actually tell them okay yes we are hackers but if you go and look it up in the dictionary you will actually know what it means so don't be scared to call yourselves by the name you really are this is one of the other awareness raising projects since the 29th of July we have fingerprints in our passports which is really really good because now all the terrorists are going away from Luxembourg apparently that's what everyone believes and that's what we are actually fighting for most of the people don't know that they have a wireless chip in their pockets so no use to tell them hey you have to protect yourself because they don't even know they have problems we have done a press conference together with the chaos communication club in Luxembourg to raise awareness that this is not going to solve the problem that cloning the RFID cards is possible the RFID is for that because otherwise we wouldn't have been able to do it and yet again RFID is excellent for cows and stuff but not really for people another thing which is really important for us is art and beauty you can actually combine technology with art amazingly and it's a shame that not more artists out there use technology it is coming it's better than in the recent years but it needs to be more so we try to actually take the myths away from electronics that it's not really that hard to actually get a light blinking or a piezo peeping to do that we basically teamed up with one of the museums and we did a public laser tag session I'll show you a video in a minute about what laser tagging is basically the software is written by Theodore Watson and Zack and basically it's a great tool to show how you can combine urban arts with technology just giving graffiti artists an alternative to actually destroy buildings another thing that we actually did is we used the led throwies for them to explore and see what actually comes out of it another technical part about the laser tag software is it was initially written for macro zacks and windows which sucked majorly we had like 10 frames a second and if you tell a graffiti artist to paint with 10 frames a second he's going to kill you so basically what we did we rewrote it we ported it to Linux and all of a sudden we had 60 frames a second which was really sweet and you can download it and try it for yourself we did a summer camp to get all our local hackers together we were 20 on that camp and there were like 15 like 19 year olds there it was amazing and there were like lots of older people as well and they were just getting along quite nicely in the future we are going to have a local radio show which is going to be cool we noticed because of that laser tag session and they were just asking us hey do you want to make a radio show and we said hey of course another thing youth is very important for us we try to focus on U23 workshops where we just try and give the youngsters the respect you need to actually work in a hacker space we inspired ourselves from the San Francisco there was no noise bridge and just said ok let's be excellent to each other and let's respect the $10,000 piece of kit in the same way as you would actually just play with a $2 microchip controller which is very very important because without youth, responsible youth there will be no future for hackers and I am noticing it's getting quite old in here as well so also for you guys come on and this is the video from the laser tag session what I actually forgot to mention is we founded the Graffiti Research Lab Luxembourg just especially for that to actually combine the technology with the arts and they are incorporated in our future hacker space currently we are actually looking at a new place it's going to be a 100 square meter container that used to be a school so basically it's fully equipped with everything you just need but we still need to convince the commune that we are the right guys they've been telling us for two months now that we're going to get it the problem is if you do anything spoken word is nice but just get it on paper to make sure because otherwise they'll bulge it with you at infinite that's all from us thank you very much well we're running a few minutes long for that with us please come to Capri 106 after the talk I just want to sum it up a little bit you can join or build a hacker space in your community hackerspaces.org will help point you in the right direction and give you a lot of resources and a mailing list to post questions to or collaborate with others please support hacker spaces in your community find them and or build them they're as different as the people who are involved in them as you can see and this is only a small sampling and as far as the different projects they're involved in and the different philosophies of each group and or lack thereof and just know that building and maintaining a hacker space is a fun project in itself here's some resources for y'all does anybody have any questions do we have a mic Amish we did this at the beginning but everybody who is involved in their local hacker space please raise a hand right on I have a public service announcement while we're waiting for questions Makers Local 256 which is in Huntsville, Alabama is hosting a Makers Meetup and everyone is invited who is interested in making a hacker space or is currently involved in one it's September 18th to 20th this year and if you would like to keep up with that sign up for the Hackerspaces.org mailing list and or annoy Lady Merlin anybody else as a matter of fact Nick do you want to say what he's talking about Nick I think Heaven Sent hasn't officially de-embarked that yet like the views I have no idea what he's talking about and I just want to make sure that it's not supposed to be out yet I'm going to actually air on the side of caution on this one and actually create more buzz so that people are going to frantically try to figure out what exactly it is that we're talking about and frantically go through all of it while we're trying to figure that out does anyone else have other questions dude come up here I think your question was have you had a hacker space where you've had a core group that's lost interest and how you've succeeded in to overcome that okay that's exactly what happened with Hack DC the core group that started it I'm the only person left in that core group that's peripherally involved but like I said earlier about building sustainability the idea was from the very beginning that the people who started the hacker space and I strongly encourage everybody who's starting a hacker space to think about the next generation and to try to give over a lot of the leadership and to try to give over a lot of the sort of administrative day-to-day control and to teach people from the very get-go how to run the hacker space and I'm very grateful that that happened at Hack DC to help themselves out of the succession tree there and right now Hack DC is being run by people who are not there at the beginning and they're doing a much better job than we were doing at the beginning and that that's absolutely essential that if you're going to start it always be thinking about when you're going to turn it over and try to turn it over as soon as possible to people because then that's going to build a culture where that group is going to turn it over to the next group and you're creating that sustainability you know people come in and come out and the sign of a healthy hacker space is going to turn it over and so I think that's a great question anybody else have experience? I do too I would like to add to that even though our hacker space is brand new one of our founding members is leaving and in fact he had been in the leadership position in our space and so one of our focuses has been to build it for survivability just like you know a startup where the founders want the company after they leave it's the same thing you have to plan for it from the ground up and or you know I guess if it happened and you didn't plan for it I think those they fail I think that's what happens so you have to be conscious of that it can't be a cult of personality it has to be a real collaborative effort and you have to involve everyone and on that note we just got the Big X so we're going to be moving to the track one, Capri 106 breakout room if you guys girls want to continue talking shop about hacker spaces


This video is sponsored by Amino Labs. Hey guys, it's James. If you haven't already, you should check out the SCP Foundation Amino. Amino is a social app that allows people to join fan-made communities centered around shows, games, or other media. While the SCP Foundation Amino connects you to other fans through discussions, fan art, and quizzes. For March, we'll be holding a fan art contest where the winner will be picked on the 30th to have their art featured and community posts on our channel. Joining the SCP community on Amino is quick and easy. Just click the link in the description of the video or the pinned comment. And follow the prompts to download the free Amino app on iOS or Android. You can also find Amino on the App Store. Once you're in, search for the SCP Foundation and join. Make sure to follow us on Amino by searching for our username for Lauren Foundry. Enjoy three or three, the doorman. She wasn't so sensitive. I mean, talking about a holiday party here, not a funeral. It wasn't like I assaulted her or anything. It just doesn't need to take a bullet from me.  Just stay here with me the whole time at the party. I think it's going to stop her from telling people. For Christ's sake, Rob, she's on board. What do you think people will say? Rumors will make the rounds, but I am not about to let that bitch jeopardize my career. Maybe I just, I think we've got to be smart about how we approach this. Hold on. Go check out his channel and give his most recent video a look, the Keeter SCP-939.


Hello and welcome to the session. In this session we are going to discuss the following question and the question says that find the rate percent per annum if $4000 amount to $6,912 in one and a half years. Interest being compounded half-yearly. We know that the compound interest formula is amount A is equal to P into 1 plus R upon 100 raise to power n. With this key idea we shall proceed with the solution. According to the question we have to find the rate percent if $4000 amount to $6,912 in one and a half years. So let the rate of interest be equal to R percent half-yearly. Then the rate will be equal to 2R percent per annum. We are given the principal P equal to $4000. The amount after one and a half years is equal to A which is equal to $6,912. The time n is equal to one and a half years which is equal to 3 by 2 years that is 2 into 3 by 2 which is equal to 3 half years n is equal to 3. Now as amount A is equal to P into 1 plus R upon 100 raise to power n therefore here $6,912 is equal to $4000 into 1 plus R upon 100 raise to power 3 which implies 1 plus R upon 100 raise to power 3 is equal to $6,912 upon $4000. Both $6,912 and $4000 are divisible by 4 and we will obtain $1,728 upon $1,000. This implies 1 plus R upon 100 raise to power 3 is equal to 12 upon 10 raise to power 3 as $1,728 is the cube of 12 and $1,000 is the cube of 10. So on taking cube roots of both the size 1 plus R upon 100 is equal to 12 upon 10 which implies R upon 100 is equal to 12 upon 10 minus 1 which is equal to 12 minus 10 upon 10 that is 2 by 10. This implies R is equal to 2 upon 10 into 100 which is equal to 20. Therefore R is equal to 20% half yearly. Rate of interest is equal to 2 into 20 which is equal to 40% per annum which is our answer. This completes our session. Hope you enjoyed the session.


Hello and welcome to the session. In this session we will discuss the question which says that Martina placed 7 pencils and 5 pens inside her bag. She selected one writing tool without looking and then replaced it and then selected a second writing tool. What is the probability that each writing tool selected is a pen and what will be the probability if she does not replace the first pen. Now before starting the solution of this question we should know some results. First is if A and B are two independent events then probability of the event A and B is equal to probability of the event A into probability of the event B and if A and B are dependent events then probability of event A and B is equal to probability of the event A into probability of the event B following the event A. Now these results will work out as a key idea for solving out the given question. Now let us start with the solution of the given question. Now in the question it is given that Martina has 7 pencils and 5 pens inside her bag. It means in total she has 7 plus 5 is equal to 12 writing tools and it is also given that she selected one writing tool without looking and then replaced it and then selected a second writing tool and we have to find that what is the probability that each writing tool selected is a pen. Now let the event A be drawing a pen and event B is again drawing a pen. Now here she selects one writing tool and puts it back into the bag and then selects the other writing tool. It means here the event A and event B are independent events. Now here the number of pens are 5 so in the first draw number of pens is equal to 5 and total writing tools are 12 which means total number of outcomes is equal to 12 so probability of drawing a pen in a first draw that is probability of the event A is equal to number of favorable outcomes which is 5 upon total number of outcomes which is 12. Now since A and B are independent events so number of pens and total number of outcomes in second draw will remain same. Now in the second draw number of pens will be 5 and total number of outcomes will be 12 so probability of drawing a pen in a second draw that is probability of the event B is equal to 5 upon 12. Now using the first result which is given in the key idea we can find the probability of two independent events so probability of event A and B is equal to probability of event A which is 5 upon 12 into probability of event B which is again 5 upon 12 this is equal to 25 upon 144. So probability that each writing tool selected is a pen is equal to 25 upon 144. Now it is also asked in the question that what will be the probability if she does not replace the first pen. Now here in total we have 5 pens. Now if a pen is selected at random and that pen is not replaced then the total pens that is the remaining pens will be 4. Now earlier we have total writing tools is equal to 12. Now in this case where a pen is selected and not replaced then the total writing tools will be 11 that is 7 pens and 4 pens. Now in the second draw a pen is selected from the remaining 11 writing tools so here you can see that the number of pens and total number of writing tools will change in second draw. So these two events are dependent events. Now here let event A be joined a pen in a first draw and event B is drawing a pen in a second draw and here A and B are dependent events. So here in the first draw probability of drawing a pen that is probability of event A is equal to. Now in the first draw we have 5 pens 12 writing tools. So probability of event A is 5 upon 12 second draw probability of event B following the event A is equal to. Now in the second draw total pens are 4 and total writing tools are 11. So probability of event B following the event A is 4 upon 11. Now using the second result which is given in the key idea we can find the probability of two dependent events. So here probability of event A and B is equal to probability of event A which is 5 upon 12 into probability of event B following the event A which is 4 upon 11. Now 4 into 3 is 12 so this is equal to 5 upon 33. So the probability that each writing tool selected is a pen if the first pen is not replaced is 5 upon 33 and this is the solution of the given question. That's all for this session hope you all have enjoyed the session.


Welcome to the first meeting of 2023 in session 6 of the Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee. We have no apologies this morning. Our first agenda item is consideration of three affirmative instruments, the draft first-year tribunal for Scotland local taxation chamber and upper tribunal for Scotland composition regulations 2023, the draft upper tribunal for Scotland transfer of valuation for rating appeal functions of the land tribunal for Scotland regulations 2023 and the draft first-year tribunal for Scotland transfer of functions of valuation appeals committees regulations 2023. I welcome to the meeting Elena Witham, minister for community safety and her officials Lisa Davidson, civil justice senior policy officer and Martin Brown, solicitor, legal director in the Scottish government. You are all very welcome. I refer members to paper 1 and invite the minister to speak to the draft instruments. Thank you, convener and good morning members. This suite of three regulations will transfer the functions of the valuation appeals committee and certain functions of the land's tribunal for Scotland into the Scottish tribunals and set out the composition of those tribunals when exercising the transferred functions. The 2014 act created a new simplified statutory framework for tribunals in Scotland by establishing the Scottish tribunals consisting of the first-year tribunal and the upper tribunal. That framework brings the range of existing tribunal jurisdictions together into one system and provides a structure for new jurisdictions coming. The valuation appeals committee and some limited functions of the land's tribunal for Scotland are due to be transferred into the Scottish tribunals on 1 April 2023. That first instrument before you is the first-year tribunal for Scotland transfer of functions of the valuation appeals committee regulations 2023. Those regulations provide for the transfer of the existing functions of the valuation appeals committees to the first-year tribunal for Scotland local taxation chamber. Existing members will not transfer to the Scottish tribunals. Instead, members have been appointed through a fair and open recruitment process undertaken by the judicial appointments board for Scotland. In addition, the regulations make provision for cases that are in progress on the date of transfer and make amendments to primary and secondary legislation that are necessary as a consequence of the transfer of the functions. The second of those regulations is the upper tribunal for Scotland transfer valuation for ratings appeal functions of the land's tribunal for Scotland regulations 2023. Currently, appeals in relation to non-domestic rates cases can, in certain circumstances, be referred from evaluation appeal committee to the land's tribunal for Scotland. Such circumstances would include where the facts of the case were particularly complex, the law was particularly difficult to apply or the property in relation to the valuation that was being appealed straddled to valuation areas. A decision by evaluation appeals committee not to refer a case to the land's tribunal for Scotland can itself also be appealed to the land's tribunal for Scotland. Upon transfer of those matters to the Scottish tribunals, a similar referral system will be retained but with qualifying cases being referred instead to the upper tribunal. That will ensure that complex or significant cases can be considered by a body with additional expertise while ensuring that those matters are dealt with entirely within the Scottish tribunal system. Parties will also be able to pursue an appeal to the upper tribunal if they disagree with the decision of the first-tier tribunal not to refer such a case. The final set of regulations is the first-tier tribunal for Scotland local taxation chamber and upper tribunal for Scotland composition regulations 2023. Those regulations specify the number and types of members of the local taxation chamber of the first-tier tribunal, for example judicial, legal or ordinary. Those are required in relation to the different appeals before that body and likewise set down the membership of the upper tribunal when it is considering appeals or referrals from the first-tier tribunal. I understand that the DPLR committee has considered those regulations on the 20 December 2022 and that no points were raised. The functions of another body, the council tax reduction review panel, are also due to be transferred to the first-tier tribunal to take effect at the same time. That transfer is provided for in a separate set of regulations, which I know will be considered at a later meeting of this committee. I would be happy to answer any questions and have my officials here as well for help. Thank you minister. Are there any questions? No, okay. That being the case, we will move straight to item 2, which is the formal business in relation to the instruments. I invite the minister to move the motions. Thank you to any members who have any final comments. That being the case, are we all agreed? Okay. On that basis, I invite the committee to agree to delegate to me the publication of a short factual report on our deliberations on the affirmative SSIs that we have considered today. Is that also agreed? That is agreed, so that therefore completes consideration of the affirmative instruments. I thank the minister and her officials for attending. That also concludes our formal business for this morning, so we now move into private to consider the other items on our agenda.


This paper discusses how unmanned aerial vehicle, UAV, images can be improved using practical image-based sensor correction techniques. These techniques include reducing noise, modifying incoming radiance, and correcting for lens distortions. By applying these techniques, the quality of the raw multispectral imagery is enhanced, making it easier to perform quantitative image analysis. This article was authored by Arco Lucio and Joshua Kelsey.