Welcome back to Think Tech, I'm Jay Feidell. This is Energy 808, The Cutting Edge with Marco Mangostrof. We haven't been together in a while, so it's like a reunion. Hi, Marco. Hey there, Jay. Great to see you again, my friend. Let's take a look at what's going on in energy, of course, that'd be appropriate for this show. There are two kinds of articles that have appeared recently, two kinds of news threads that we ought to approach. One is that it seems like green energy is on the move nationally, and there's more activity in green energy now than there was right here in the middle of COVID, and the other one there's plenty of installation going on, solar systems here in Hawai'inei. So this is interesting, and I'd like to explore with you exactly what the metrics are for that, and why, okay? So let's talk about Hawai'i first, because you follow it very closely in Hawai'i. Sure. I mean, it's riding the solar coaster, Jay, the solar coaster that I've been on for more than 40 years overall, but especially more than 20 here in the 808, and just kind of as a little bit of background. If you look at the numbers from the mainland, it looks to be that we've got three quarters in our bell now of 2020, and the numbers are down for rooftop solar, because I make a differentiation between rooftop solar and then big, kind, scale, utility scale solar. So for rooftop solar, depending on the region, but overall, it looks to be down 20 or 30 plus percent across the U.S. mainland, and California is the big, is the gold rush state, so to speak, in terms of solar, and their numbers have taken a big, big hit. So they're seeing the COVID effect, because of course solar electric systems are not trivial purchases, they're big ticket items, even if you finance it or you do a lease, it's still a substantial commitment. So switch back to the middle of the Pacific where we are blessed to be, and I just crunched the numbers for first three quarters of this year, and across the state our rooftop solar PV numbers are up 22 percent first nine months of this year compared to first nine months of last year, which of course causes me to be relieved to some degree, and major players on Oahu are also having very strong years, and we're also seeing a record amount of storage, energy storage in the form of batteries, typically Tesla Powerwalls and products from LG Chem. So compared to what's going on in the rest of the United States, we are an outlier, a good outlier in this regard, as far as more PV going in by 22 percent, or at least in terms of permits, which is one of the more easy to measure and kind of real-time metrics in terms of how we're doing, and we're still going strong. So last year was an improvement over the past several years, and this year is an improvement over last year. What next year is going to be, who knows? We got a tax credit scheduled to go down further, federal tax credit as of January 1st, but that's a ways away. So so far, so good. We're having overall a good year in the solar industry here this year, in the state. So you say 22 percent? That's 22 percent of the number of permits year over year, or nine months over nine months. Across the state, right? If you aggregate the PV permit numbers for the four, there are actually five counties in Hawaii. Most people think there are four. And I'll bet you could you name the fifth county, my friend? OK, there's Honolulu, Maui, Big Island, that's three. There's Molkite part of Maui, no. Correct. OK, there's Kauai, Niihau, could it be Niihau? No, no. OK, I'll spare you. It is Kalawao, which is the Kaolapapa Peninsula on Maui, excuse me, what am I saying, the island of Molokai. So that is from what I was surprised to learn a number of years ago, they are a county in and of themselves. But they're somehow subsumed under Maui County, but they're officially our county. Wow, very interesting piece. Anyway, so now if I took 22% of the actual money contract that is spent for these projects, would it be the same breakdown of 22%? What I mean is people spending more or less on a given project. That's a great question. It's actually about the same, because for example, last year, there were a handful, four projects that were utility scale on the island of Oahu that skewed the overall project values number up by more than $100 million, more than $100 million. As far as I can tell this year so far, there are no such utility scale projects that have been permitted yet on Oahu. So there's that absence of, let's say, $100 plus million. So if you take the $120 million from last year, we're right about the same total project value last year without the utility scale as we are this year. But you're including the utility scale projects in the number. And so if there are some big projects coming along, I mean, big permits coming along between now and the end of the year, that would improve the 22%, right? Edward, I don't think that's going to happen because the RFPs, their request for proposals, which one electric has been doing over the past several years for major utility scale, renewable energy, solar, and storage, they're still in the bureaucratic phase from what I can tell and are not close to breaking ground this year from what I know. And I'm not sure about next year. Yeah. When you say bureaucratic, is that at the utility level or is that at the Department of Planning and Permitting? Well, I mean, it's a long run. Once you start talking utility scale, you're talking about land use, more studies being done, more players being involved. I mean, these are being developed by, typically, outside of Hawaii companies. And it's just, from my perspective, it's just a much longer timeline to get these projects actually operating and in the ground. So the reduction in the tax credit, you're talking about federal tax credit. What's the reduction? Is it substantial? Is it enough to encourage me to go right away and discourage me from going later? Well, last year was our last year at 30%. So this year, it's 26%. Next year, it's 22%. And depending on what happens across the country in the short 15 days from now, as to whether we go continue in the Donald Trump direction or go off into the Joe Biden direction, we'll have an impact, I believe, on whether that tax credit, the investment tax credit is allowed to wind down as it's scheduled to now, or whether, say, under a Biden administration, which purports to be more friendly towards renewable energy, that there would be a push in the part of the friends of solar, the friends of renewable energy in both the US House and Senate, and then with the Democrats in the White House. And I think it's reasonable to believe that there may very well be, sometime for six months of next year, perhaps a new tax credit, which would stop the ramp down at a minimum and maybe push it up, who knows, who knows, hard to predict. Well, going back to, I wanna cover that, but going back to the state. So we have a difference between the mainland, you know, rooftop solar numbers, I guess, and Hawaii, why? What is it that's happening here that differentiates us? What is affecting the process and consumer sentiment and the like? That's a great question. And got all the years I've been doing this, Jay, you know, in terms of coming up with answers to your good questions, sometimes I'm left kind of befuddled. I mean, why are we the outlier? Not that I'm complaining about being the outlier in this regard, but why are we the outlier? And I think it's gotta be because we have some well-entrenched PV players here, both local here on this island, Maui, Oahu, and we also have a number of entrenched, very active mainland players, Sanron being one of them, Tesla being another, and there's no shortage of aggressive pricing. There's no shortage of competition, and there's no shortage of incentives both from the federal tax credit perspective, the state tax credit perspective, and we're still dealing with electric costs, despite the cost of oil being 40 bucks or so on the world market and has been parked there for a while, we're still kind of more or less three X or more, depending on the island of energy costs, electricity costs here. So it continues to be a compelling, shall we say value proposition for those homeowners, those businesses who have yet to go solar electric for them to say, well, maybe it is time and the tax credit will go down in the next year or apparently will go down. So the psychology of people jumping to take action when they fear they're going to lose something of value to them as opposed to, that's even more of a motivator apparently than if I were to call you and say, Jay, I got a hot tip for you by XYZ stock because it's going to go up.  Yeah. Well, let me throw a speculative theory at you and see what you think of my speculative theory. Okay. First of all, we're really talking about residential. Because a business that has trouble staying solvent is not going to go and do solar right now, not in COVID. I mean, that has a profound effect. Unlike wise, people who have no money, who don't have jobs or who are fear for their jobs, people who are living on cares, money, the like, they're not going to do that. They're insecure at the least or they're desperate. They're not going to do that. So who is left? Well, it's the people who have some bucks stored away, the people who are not worried about their ability to pay the bills and buy what they need to buy. It's the people who are not being forced to go to work, the people who stay home. And my theory is that it's a nesting thing. If you stay home all day without a whole lot to do, except maybe have talk shows with think tech, maybe, you look around you, you look at your house and you say, this is a time to improve the house. This is a time to get chores that I wanted to do before it done now so that when we come out of COVID, I'll be better prepared. It's nesting. It's attending to your home, to the home, the home experience. Okay, and I think people must be having that experience. What do you think? I think that's a reasonable proposition, yeah. And I'll add this maybe a good segue as well to one of the things I noted in my data crunching over the weekend is that on Oahu for last month, September, the Honolulu City and County Department of Planning and Permitting, the percentage of all those PV system permits issued last month by DPP, 82%, 82% involved included energy storage. That was a record today. I hadn't seen that. We were parking around in the 70s, but 82%. So obviously more than four out of five people are going storage and that by far, by far, by far is leading any mark on the mainland in terms of storage deployed on a per household basis. So that to me as well over time, especially, I'm kind of actually surprised not that I'm disappointed, but surprised that we haven't had more hurricanes rumbling through the mid-Pacific after a scare of what, a couple months ago, that storage adds to the reliability and resiliency not only of a home that is going to be at least partially supplied with power in case the grid goes down, but over time will strengthen the robustness and the resiliency of the grid writ large. There was a great piece in green tech media about what Green Mountain Power in Vermont has been doing with deploying thousands of Tesla Powerwalls through a program that they've supported to allow the utility company to add their discretion when needed to tap into these individual PV systems and Tesla Powerwalls to support the grid writ large. And that's inevitably where we're going across the country, but especially where we need to go faster, further deeper across our isolated hurricane of vulnerable islands. So more and more storage going in. Yeah, Green Mountain Power, is that where our recent addition to the Hawaiian Electric Board of Directors came from? Yeah, my friend, Mary Powell used to be longtime CEO for this fantastic, fantastic person, just in all respects. And she retired about a year ago, well, December of last year from her long tenure at Green Mountain. And prior to that, so it was back in, yeah, 2019, she was one of three new Hawaiian Electric Industry Board members and she continues to be on the board. So yeah, Mary, Mary's done a great job there and her successors, of course, are doing a great job as well. She did a great job in Vermont too, clearly. But that leads to another point and I think it's also worth mentioning is that in the time of COVID, just as with information technology and all these communication systems and social media platforms and all, people are interested in technology. And I think they see solar as technology and especially solar storage. It's an expression of living better through technology. And so I think the whole pitch, you know that the industry has made to the public about storage and also to the legislature, I should add, about storage has found a home now, literally, that people are doing this in part, at least in part, because they see the benefit of that technology joined with existing solar technology. What do you think about that theory? Yeah, I do. And that kind of, you know, I'm gonna riff a little bit on that. Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, he did an earnings call about a month ago and also did so-called battery day, battery day. So I watched the earnings call, which was pretty extraordinary in and of itself in COVID times. And then he and one of his associates essentially brought the world up to date to speed on what Tesla is doing in their approach to do two really important things, Jay. One is to bring the cost of these batteries down and two is to increase the energy density, where you have more power per cubic centimeter of battery storage. And Tesla's taken the approach of essentially trying to capture the entire value chain, which is, you know, having the land, owning the land, leasing land, where you can actually mine and extract the raw materials, aka lithium, and then going from the very beginning, which is the raw materials, right? And having a finished product. So whereas other providers, other producers or other users of battery storage are kind of being more narrow in their approach, here Tesla is all in, which doesn't surprise me at all from Musk, you know, to be able to control from start to finish because he sees, as many of us do, of course, that the way to go where we need to go is not just more renewables, more renewables, more cost-effective renewables I always wanna add, but exponentially more energy storage, both in terms of the transportation sector, but also in terms of stationary storage. And the only way he sees being able to hit his targets of millions and millions and millions of Tesla's produced a year is to have more control over the whole process. So, you know, it's really this incredible frontier in terms of we need a whole bunch more, whole bunch more storage. And you see all these multi-billion-dollar players from the United States and Japan and Europe and the Chinese who are all chasing after this stuff. And hopefully, you know, it'll make good things for competition and lower prices. Well, yeah, and you said, as you said, this is where we wanna go, where we are going. But where are we going? I need to ask you that. What does it look like in the future? If I give you a community that's loaded with solar and storage together, which is apparently the direction as revealed by the COVID time, where does that take us in terms of your energy in our community? Well, it takes us to a much more bi-directional power grid, whereas the typical Edistonian model going back 100 plus years has been essentially hub and spoke, right? You have big power plants and then the spokes rating from the power plan are sending power in the case of the mainland, thousands of miles away, right? In this case, we've got, you know, distributed generation or distributed energy resources, whatever their other acronym you wanna come up with, where you have many power plants spread throughout the grid. So it's not the Edistonian model that's the so-called, and I don't like saying this phrase too much because it's so kind of ambiguous, the smart grid, okay, I said a smart grid where you have independent power producers spread across the grid that are not only producing power but storing power, and the utilities are gonna be less of a power producer, and this has been going on for the past 20, 25 years, they've been getting out a generation and more and more into transmission distribution, where it has to be a much more tightly choreographed experience in trying to manage, in our states, you know, hundreds of thousands, well, not hundreds of thousands, but close to 100,000 rooftop PV across our major islands, and the Hawaiian Electric has gone on record in the past years saying we envision a massive increase of rooftop solar, as in 2X, 3X, and I applaud that. I do, we all do, and yet how you get there from here is really is gonna be something to unfold, and it's gonna be, and then you throw in hundreds of megawatts with hundreds of megawatt hours of utility scale projects, four of them on this island, multiple on Maui, multiple on Oahu, Molokai as well, Lanai, and you've got the utility scale with storage, you've got rooftop with storage, you've got power plants that are burning something for combustion or burning something in order to maintain a base level of reliability. So it's truly a new frontier here that I'm excited to see happen, but it's also, can be rather bumpy sometimes as well. Yeah, let's turn to the mainland again. The whole green energy thing was, what's the word, discouraged, has been discouraged by the Trump administration, and things that might have happened during this four year period didn't happen because he doesn't believe in climate change, he doesn't believe in green energy. I remember his initial encouragement for coal, coal, would you believe it, coal? I don't think he's making that noise right now, but that was going on for a couple of years at least. And so now we turn, we got a couple of people in Congress who care about it, Biden apparently cares about it, and as you said, it's a fair chance it's gonna change. We're gonna have the federal government encouragement, like incentivization if Biden is elected, and certainly that would be a great and important thing. But the question is, how are they doing right now? How is green energy? I'm not necessarily limiting this to solar or batteries on rooftops, but how is green energy doing as an initiative right now? And if we know what's going on right now, then we can get a better prediction of what would happen in the future under Biden hopefully. Well, let me just mention coal briefly since you brought up the C word, Jay. For the first time ever, not long ago, if you look at global coal, coal fired electricity generation, compare that to renewable energy generation for the first time since these stats have been kept. Going back, I don't know, industrial revolution. Renewable energy has surpassed coal. Coal is going down, no president of the United States or any other leader in the world is going to bring coal back in my opinion. So that terminal crossover of renewable energy has now surpassed coal and that will continue to go up whereas coal must inevitably, I believe, go down. So that's a very, very good thing. Since you brought up coal, I need to ask you where gas fits in all of this because I know the Trump administration is trying to sell American natural gas all over the world and feels that that's the future. Of course, this is an economic business transactional thing for him. But the reality is there's a lot of money going into gas. Where does gas fit between coal and renewables? Some people call it a bridge, a bridge fuel. It's still releasing greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, it's certainly cleaner than coal. So if I had to choose one or the other, I mean, hands down, you go for an ad gas. Interestingly, as you know, our governor made a key decision a number of years ago, essentially turning down liquefied natural gas, LNG, for the state, I think that was the right move at the time, saying, we need to avoid that bridge and just go straight to renewable. So I see gas continuing to go up in terms of consumption. I don't follow the gas market too much today, but my hit is that gas prices are also quite low right now. And we're a major gas producer, but a number of other countries are as well. So there's a lot of politics, man, oh man, there's a lot of politics when it comes to gas and energy. There's a lot of money involved in energy. And you can quote me on that. So, okay, so what about renewables? What about greens such as it is right now and greens such as it might be? I mean, we were already to some extent green, it's already a good bet, but query how well is it doing as opposed to how well it will do? Well, let me answer that this way. I think it was, you know, beginning of last year, we did a show where we talked about the so-called Green New Deal, right, Green New Deal. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, AOC, right? She and her thoughtful brood there, the Democratic Party and the House came up with this very bold, very, very aggressive Green New Deal, which was essentially shelved by Nancy Pelosi. It hasn't seen the light of day as far as I can tell in the Democratic Control Congress since AOC spoke about it. But nonetheless, it's still, you know, Green New Deal, Green New Deal. And, you know, taking the politics aside, you know, it appears that in a Biden administration, there would be a greater focus on renewables, which of course, how can I not but support, which I do. So that's the number of days or weeks or months off. So how are we doing right now? What we are seeing right now is if you look at kind of a, to me, a clear barometer of how renewable energy is doing, not just in this country, but on a global basis, look at some of the ETFs, the Electronic Trading Funds, that are 100% exclusive into renewable energy companies, including module manufacturers, both foreign and domestic, power electronics, foreign and domestic, and how are they doing? Well, I mean, they've beat the pants off of any type of S&P 500 or Dow Jones Industrial or pretty much any other ETF. Now, why is that? I think, again, I'm not a stock analyst, but I've certainly got some of my money in these ETFs because it feels good to do number one, well, and at least the co-number one is been doing very well. So I think it's likely that there's a buzz right now. There's a, whether it's a rationally exuberance or irrationally exuberance, thanks to Alan Greenspan, focus on ETFs that are renewable energy based. You asked the question, how are we doing right now? They're doing quite well. I mean, Sun Run, which has become the dominant player in the US after Solar City, AKA Tesla slid down. Sun Run, my goodness, you look at their stock performance for the past year and they're up by six or seven X, you know, we're not talking 150 or 200%, it's six to 700% X. So there's clearly a running for, not so much running for the doors, but a running for clean energy ETFs. So I think this is in prelude or in anticipation of a possible, dare I say likely Joe Biden victory in 15 days that is seen to bode well for renewable energy companies and renewable energy public companies across the country and across the world. Yeah, so last question is this, we talked about Hawaii, we talked about how, at least theoretically it sounds like people are interested in technology, interested in a better, more efficient world going forward. That's why they like solar even at the time of COVID. That's even more so why they like batteries in the time of COVID. And it strikes me that if you look at the markets, look at the markets here and look at the markets on the mainland as you have described them, they're probably a reasonably good indicator, a likely good indicator of the world to come. The world to come after Trump, the world to come after COVID, COVID and Trump are really the same thing. The world to come after these times, these difficult times, okay?   I think these markets as we see them now and as they show strength and an otherwise relatively threatened market are a statement of the future. And we can see through them, we can see the future. And this discussion today helps me understand what the future looks like. What about you? What do you think? Yeah, I like that spin. I like that spin. Yeah, I mean, I kind of feel like the world, at least myself and a whole bunch of others are kind of holding our collective breath for yet another 15 days, right? Hopefully, inshallah, God willing, we'll have a clear result at the end of the day on the 3rd of November. I mean, we have to, I have to, you have to, we need something to look forward to and trend lines that are going in the direction that we wanna see, right, as opposed to off the cliff. So renewable energy has always been a part of our existence on the planet. And I see no pun intended, bright future for renewable energy and for storage. And we live in this test laboratory, essentially here in Hawaii with our isolated islands with no prospective inner island power cables anytime in my lifetime, most likely. So we've got a chance to do really wonderful, wonderful things if we have the courage and the foresight and the commitment to do it, not just in the 25 years and I'm 100% renewable power generation by 2045. But I mean, she's a lot can happen 25 years and we need to get our act together. So what will happen is we'll have much more serious climate change, sea level rise. We'll have extreme weather. And I think that probably part of these trends that we're describing, these changes in public thinking and in business thinking, have to be folding in on climate change. They have to be thinking of that because although this administration denies it, that's another show. But the fact is that people in general and business people don't deny it. And part of the, what do you wanna call it, new appetite or the future appetite, the emerging appetite for more green energy is based on concern about climate change. Don't you think so? Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. So yes, indeed. Well, we'll be on two weeks from today and imagine the drama, the anticipation will be one day away from election day. Oh my God, we'll know a lot more then. Marco Mangelsdorf, Energy 808, The Cutting Edge. Thank you so much for this discussion this morning, Marco. You're welcome. And in the words of our friend, Fred Rogers, I'll see you later neighbor.


Abledon Unair's major sponsorship was given by Green Mountain Support Services, empowering neighbors with disabilities to be home in the community. Also sponsorship was given by Washington County Mental Health Services, where hope and support come together, and Champlain Community Services of Vermont. Welcome to this edition of Abledon Unair, the one and only program that focuses on needs, concerns, and achievements of a different label. I'll always be your host, Lauren Syler. I'm the Insider. And on this edition of Abledon Unair, for the next 28 minutes, we're going to be talking about the fatal shootings in Ohio and El Paso, El Paso, Texas. Before we do that, we would like to thank our sponsors, Green Mountain Support Services, Washington County Mental Health, and Champlain Community Services. We would like to welcome Ron Rondon of Road Trip with Ron Rondon from Brooklyn Free Speech One, and welcome Ron to the show. Again, we welcome you back again to the show. Thank you very much. Everybody's watching Road Trip right now that we're taping the show. Thank you for joining us. Yeah. We would like to talk about the recent shootings. Ron, what is your take on the recent shootings that have happened? I'll tell you something. It's been a nightmare, like a two-day nightmare, when you look over the world. 22 people passed away, including Mexican nationals, one German person, the person who shot up the Walmart, he, according to CNN and other news reports, he drove, the suspect drove 10 hours to, from where he was, wherever he was living, drove 10 hours to come and according to him, according to the suspect, he wanted to shoot Mexican people or illegals. Because he didn't like them. And about a day and a half ago, Trump gets on, on television from the White House, and Obama, the minute Obama went into office, there was a law, right? And the law was signed, there was a law signed.  But now it got reversed, according to Trump. Now, anybody can walk in somewhere and have a gun. It's going to be completely ridiculous. Awesome, excuse me, this is what's going on. How nice is that? What is this world coming to, Ron? And also, according to USA Today, the mass shootings that happen could prompt the Supreme Court to side step cases, in other words, they're going to stop the Second Amendment, or they might stop the Second Amendment now, or work on doing that. So there's 22, there was 22 dead in El Paso, so there's 31 dead completely. According to the two shootings, at least 31 people, according to CNN.com, 31 people were killed over the weekend in mass shootings in Texas and Ohio. 22 people were killed in El Paso in a mass shooting on Saturday. Police said they found an anti-immigrant document exposing white, nationalist, supremacist, racist views. So everybody's racist. I mean, even in Brooklyn, they're putting swastikas all over the place again. And the thing is, the synagogue shooting in... Pennsylvania, there's one thing over there. Pennsylvania? This is going back to, back in the early 50s, late 40s, early 50s, you can leave your door open, your friends would come over. Now you can't even do that. Not anymore, because this is why it's too much to do, because if they leave their door open, you're going to be robbing stuff right there, left and right, and that's how it's going to fall about it. Yeah. It says... Horrible. It's just very horrible. So do you think they should abolish the Second Amendment? I mean, the right to bear arms? I mean, here in Vermont, it's an open-category state. Well, they will say that in New York, because let me tell you something, because you have to find control to abolish them to work. It is really the most dumbest, the illegal aliens everywhere. Like, for example, if someone saw the Arabian, even though we have one from somewhere in New York, sorry, maybe I don't know how long it was, it was a long time ago. Take your time. Take your time. Speak slowly. Take your time. Go ahead. All right. It was from somewhere in New York, New York, and they were shooting people randomly. Another person in Chicago. You mentioned about Chicago, not Florida, Larry. Yeah. Well, here's the other thing. We're talking about Little House on a Prairie Days, 1800s, early 1900s. If you needed to shoot an animal to survive in terms of eating, you can do this. Oh, there's people here in Vermont that live in the mountains that the only thing they have to survive is a deer or bison or something to eat, a rabbit, you know? And they hardly have a... Hello? Did they have... No. They hardly have a store. I agree on that.  But if you have no store near you, but just like this, walking with a gun. Okay, I'm going to shoot 22 people today. It... Journalistically, it makes no sense. Not one.  And I... Yeah, I agree with you. It's disgusting, Ron. What is...  Sick. Exactly. There's people that... Like, for example, I think it's illegal immigrants. Even here in Brooklyn, we have a lot of illegal immigrants. I know, I know. People for Jamaica are really sick. I know. Okay, I mean, we'll get back to that in a minute. Let's talk sports for a minute. What's going on with your show? If you want to talk a little bit about that. Well, actually, we're getting ready to kick off season number 6 in October, by the way. It's always been 180 shows. I'll do a lot. That's John Keybombs. Yeah. And he has a... It's going to be posted sometime in late August, and it's going to be just like that at the end of the air next week. For people are taking a show, it's going to be on the week of November 16th. It's going to be great. And we raise a lot of money for office and speech. Are you doing... Are you doing talk show anymore with your sports?  And of course, next season, because it's going to be season 6, it's going to be the countdown to the roll-kick because of it. It's going to be one hell of a year because we're going to have to do some new stuff. Another quick one, the December celebration. We've got some big music jazz. The people are... There's another place called Green House Cafe in the Brooklyn. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, they have Overmight Night and Nice Guy. I'll have to put it in the season. And the best part about next season is... So, both of these... Wow. So, good. So, good. What about Game Show Block 40? How many years has that been? Right now, it's 11 and a half years. Art is still helping with 50 shows and beyond that, my shithead. He's done so many games, including Pass Over and the Brooklyn games, The Kids, Party Life is another big show. And one of them is another new show called Trinidad Derby, which will be part of next season, by the way. Oh, wow. It will be part of next season, by the way. And I saw it first... I saw it first time. It's a little like Celebrity Sweet State Orchins, but it's the kids play the game. Oh, wow. Pretty good. Yeah. Um... And, by the way, if I saw a vlog here, the show is now moving from Brooklyn Free Speech 2 to Brooklyn Free Speech 3 on Sundays at 12.30 in the afternoon. Why? So, there's no more for your speech one? Brooklyn Free Speech 3 for Danger Block 40. Oh, okay. Okay. And, of course, there's also a round of presentations late night Saturday at 1 a.m. Wow. So, what is your take on these sports teams on the Yankees, the Mets, and everything? Well, right now, I am really surprised the Yankees at the Mets are doing well this year compared to last year, because Yankees done well. The Mets had a lot of trouble, but changing last week when they won seven in a row. This is a team that we look at, as Jeff McNeil is one of them who was one of the heroes of the Mets, who also won a home run derby this year for the first time ever down in Brooklyn. This guy deserves to be a look-in-a-year candidate, because he has no problem whatsoever that he will get his award. Well, the Yankees had some ultimate hitters. We're talking about, like, his... I was looking... Well, I was looking at some old footage of Thurmond Monson back in the 70s. Yes, I remember that in 1929. I was looking at Old Babe Roof when he was playing for the Yankees. Absolutely. The time he was before he came from Boston to New York. Yeah. And that's how he, like, it's murder or growth after the old... If Babe Roof was still alive, we would definitely send him to Washington. I mean, he's known as the Sultan of Swat. Maybe he could swat Donald Trump. I hope so. Like, that could be a very important one. Who do you like to do a good thing? Club. You've done too far. Getting... So what's coming up in the basketball season? Do we know anything with the draft pitch yet? And first of all, I want to say, I have to offer to the team that got the full open in the season. And that's Toronto. When they're into going to have a championship, they deserve it. And I tell you, even for one MVP Hawaii winner, I think after coming from San Antonio to Toronto, that, my friend, was a fantastic pick. They did a great job. What? Ask for Brooklyn. What about Brooklyn Nets? That was the next one. I was going to say that because we got two of our guys here. And I'd say the best guys we can state in the next season. Good. And of course, Kevin Durant. I've been waiting to hear from Durant's name or even Nets. I mean, will we steam them? They have done it for the last season. They did very well. Now with two big guys coming in, I think this could go even first. Next to an NBA back in the next step. Hmm. Um, do you know anything about what the hockey season is going to come up with? Oh, I mean, I think that's good. St. Louis. St. Louis, if you remember, the Blues won their first ever championship. And this is like getting revenge back from the Boston Bruins when they shut out St. Louis in 14 seconds. It was Bobby Orchard of the Game Winner. It was a championship. This incredible going to be a very good staple to bring this team to stay in St. Louis. And they did just that. They are first championships. Now next season, what will the local team to be? Like the New York Rangers, under the New York Islanders, under the New Jersey Gales. That's going to be the very important stuff if they can get some good players. And if they can get lucky enough, the next season. Did they hold the Islanders to Brooklyn? They're still in Brooklyn. But soon they'll be moving to Belmont Park very soon. Really? Well, that's by the raceway. They have a raceway there at Belmont Park. Yeah, correct. Yeah, I've been there a few times for races. For the horse races. Yeah, I've been there since 1998. I went there a long time ago. Yeah, I went there a long time ago. Yeah, couple of them. So I'm looking forward. I'm looking happy to look for the Islander fans. I'm really looking forward. They bring the team back to the New Arena. This is going to be very special. But for time being, they're still in Brooklyn at the Barclays Center. And they're also temporary at the Arena at National Caribbean. NYCB Bank Center at National Caribbean. So it's going to be very special. These four are temporary over in Elmont. So it's going to be very special. So anything with horse racing, by the way? Well, nothing much. Just these and I. I'm still looking forward. That's because I know for a lot of people. The weather gets nice. You go to Belmont. They have a nice, you know, you could. Yeah, I might be going next year. Hopefully we get a triple crown possibility. So you can tell. But if you've been, I know your shows they've over in. And I said, there's a lot of them. Yeah, I'm not a Patriots fan. Boston Red Sox, you know. But I'm not either fan of them. And even for talking about the Islander, for talking Red Sox. All right. So getting back to these mass shootings, do you have any advice for anyone? I would say, in my words, for example, this has been out, I did a show before, back a year and a half ago when Nick and I filmed the show. And this is what I said. This has been, so much shootings has been happening. It's been driving me crazy. If you go back, not only we have seen hero mass shootings, think about the other mass shootings that's been happening. Even in the state of Florida, with their teenagers killed. Yeah, yeah. Doing that concert. Yeah. Yeah. And the concert, don't forget that in Las Vegas. Yeah, I remember that. That was horrible. Oh, my God. That was horrible. 54 people across Las Vegas who've been wanted to be a street numbers and a shooter inside a hotel at Rain's Fire. That is a really big thing. Yeah. This is what I said. These shootings, it's really gone this far. And I don't support shootings. I don't support gun control. But it's time to put the lawyers in. Congress and the people of the Supreme Court, you stop. Well, I'll tell you. The only people who should carry guns is law enforcement. Yeah. And why the law enforcement continues to be happening, they don't say that. It's what they did to police care guns. I know that for sure.  There's nothing more if you have guns. It doesn't matter how you have knives. You don't have a shady. It doesn't matter how you get weapons. It's time to end this crime once and for all. I agree with you. Yes. It is time to just stop this, this, this, this shooting, using these mass murders. You know, just got to stop it and put it, put an end to it. Absolutely. Because let me tell you, because when you see a person with a gun or been, or been killed, and if you remember one killing back in the Bronx one time, when a gang of, I'll say about six young teenagers was killed, a innocent 15 year old boy back in the Bronx in Machete and everything, isn't he? They got all arrested. They got, and they deserve, and they got justice the way they wanted. Yeah. That's why they got into prison. That's why they got to stay there for life. Talking about shootings in the late 90s, early 2000s, when I was living in the Bronx, I grew up in Corp City, but when I was living in the Bronx, they had this thing, I'm gonna do the yellow shooting. Those 41 times, two o'clock in the morning, police open fire and all the guy was doing was going for his wallet and keys. You know, so he was in a wheelchair. So, I mean, go figure that. It was crazy. I know that. Yeah. But that's fine. Yeah. For the prime of the Bronx, I know we've been living in the Bronx for too long, but if that's shooting, and that guy in the wheelchair is really, really drunk, crazy, I don't know. Why is police thinking like, one way or another, he says, one thing is that if we're off, or if they're digging stuff and they got still shot, we're gonna get us, but that's your only thing at all. Weeper. I will also remember, I got to go in one other opinion, and this is very important about the shooting, too, because remember, when Obama, we talk about Obama, and we talk about from Ellen and everybody else. Yeah. And it was not the point of gun control. Congratulations. You were really not supported. But the guys who are Republicans and every other have to be ashamed of yourselves, guys. Yeah, they do. This is not funny. This is not right what they did. And I'd say, let's end it once and for all. Yeah. But you guys coming up next, and don't be surprised that or any gun choice, it's not legal, it's gonna get arrested. For a legal purpose. Yeah. And I forgot to mention one thing, and I have a problem with them because I know we're very close to them. Yeah, we got five minutes left. Go ahead. It's about a 3D gun. You remember that 3D gun? Yeah, yeah. Which 3D gun was that? Well, somebody asked, he made a 3D gun, which saved me, and he says he used it for 3D. And it was, we don't know. No. But the point was, it's gonna put the stop to this bill because when they make the 3D gun that is made on a 3D printer, that is a total disgrace to what they did. And I'd say, you guys who make the blueprint, stop it. This is not right. Well, and also, they should default airports, and they should, they, they, and they should, you know, ban, true points to ban video games involving guns. Oh, yeah. I remember that part, but it's just like, it's not, it's not real guns, whether it's a fantasy video game, like that is ridiculous. Yeah, but you're shooting Nazis, and you're shooting other, you know, World War II gun stuff, I mean. And also, from a, right, like, if you remember the Washington, and I just wanted to, the World War II, the show called, where it's like, they had different gamers, rifles, guns, there's been happening. And Trump says he doesn't want to get guns involved in some video games. And that is bullsh**t. That's quite some time ago. You know, what about these toy guns they made for kids? They should stop making them. Yeah, they do. And no, but the way, the way they make the toy guns is when they sell the toy guns, they put like orange tape or something to make it a not real gun, so people don't think it's real. Yeah. They're still going to stop making them because you never know. They're going to probably, they're going to probably stop banning water guns pretty soon. Exactly. That's what we're all going to stop. They're a shelf of every single person. Even with reference, they'll be very bad to kids. And I said, Yeah. They make the right thing because if they do, this is going to be a safer world. Yeah. I'm going to take that little, I just want to punch you and don't forget that. Well, before we end, tell us when you show airs and where. All right, glad you asked me that. I'm going to tell you. Our six season returns the first week in October at 11.30 to midnight, right before 5.30 to 3.00. Now for folks, you've been to use for like Jennifer Day TV. It's not going to be, it's going to be my show and then 5.30 to 3.30. It's going to be on Brooklyn Precinct One while I'm 11.30 to midnight. And there's an encore presentation. They now gave me an extra show. An encore presentation will be if you're up to early morning before you watch the morning news. You have to go to the show first for 4.30 a.m. to 5.00 a.m. Friday morning. And that's all for this week's watch. You can check it out on Facebook, on YouTube. Also to me if I'm not wrong, you're supposed to watch downrope if you see it on your screen right now. Did you get that job yet? Did they hire you yet? Well, right now with the folks over at a break, we're hoping they'll get me an opening for a bond fieldwork. So we're all hoping for the best anyway. Okay. But we're going to wish our folks good luck. And also on the exercise thing, I'm right now talking with one of the attorneys here and we're going to see if we can get this appeal out of the way once and for all. So this is what everything is going to get right to. Like we're going to open now and everything is going to be fine. I'm not giving up hope. This is what... Well, yeah. Don't give up hope. Keep going. Anyway, we would like to thank you. Thank Ron Rondon for joining us on today's episode of April the Runner. Again, we'd like to thank our sponsors Green Mountain Support Services, Washington County Mental Health and Champlain Community Services. Thank you to our sponsors. And this puts an end to this edition of April the Runner. I am Lauren Silas. I am Lauren Silas. And due to the shootings in Ohio and El Paso, stay safe out there. Do not open your door. If something happens, call the police. Call... And keep the door locked. Don't forget that. Call emergency services and stay safe and be well. Again, just puts an end to this edition. I've been Ron Rondon. I'm Lauren Silas. See you next time. April the Runner, major sponsorship was given by Green Mountain Support Services, empowering neighbors with disability to be home in the community. Also sponsorship was given by Washington County Mental Health Services, where hope and support come together. And Champlain Community Services of Vermont.


Welcome to the next speaker. It's Bebe. And so we're going to have a let him speak for about 30, 35 minutes. And then we're going to have a quick Q&A when, if for some reason you think of questions after, you can always tweet, or X, whatever it's called, at YVR WordCamp. So here we go. Good. Hi. Good morning, everyone. My name is Bebe Sapkota. So I'm representing WordPress community, Nepal. So I just want to mention it in the beginning. English is my secondary language. So if you have any confusion or if you want me to slow down so that you would understand better, you can just let me know. So I have bachelor's of science in computing from London Metropolitan University. And I work as a chief business officer at Arumba IT Research Center, Nepal, back home. Also, I run a blog called ATJernal.com. It is basically mindfulness and spirituality magazine. So I run it with my girlfriend. So I am actively involved in WordPress community since 2014 as a community builder, organizer, speaker, and mentor. So as a matter of fact, so far I have organized five WordCamps. And I have spoken to four WordCamps. And I have organized more than 60 meetups and then a lot of community gathering and related activities back home. So today I shall be talking about our success story of building, growing, and sustaining WordPress community in Nepal. So not a lot of people know about Nepal because we are a very small country all the way from global south. So Nepal is officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal. So it is landlocked country in between Tibet and India. So northern part is high Himalayas. And then the southern part is connected with India. And Nepal is home to eight of the highest peak in the world. Like, there are 14 highest peak over 8,000 meters. And like, eight are in Nepal, including Mount Everest. And like, Nepal is home to Lord Buddha as well. Like, it is birthplace of Gautam Buddha. And he was a Nepali prince. So talking more about Nepal, Nepal is a multilingual, multicultural, multi-racial, and multi-religious country. And it is a country of living goddess Kalkumari. So we have a living goddess. So she is called Kumari. So in the background, you can see the peace stupa. So it is stupa located in Kathmandu, the capital city of Nepal. So we call it Boudhanath stupa. So you can just go there, pray there, stay there for a while. Like, they have very peaceful surrounding and everything. So you can learn a lot about Buddhism and then like teaching of Buddhas. And then you can pray there. You can like, yeah, buy around there. So before getting into WordPress community, so I would like to talk a few things about IT service export industry we have in Nepal. So since I have already mentioned, Nepal is a tiny landlocked country. So we have very limited access to trade across the globe. And then like, mostly we rely upon agriculture and tourism industry. So lately, we have been exporting like significant amount of IT infrastructure and IT services. So last year, we exported around $515 million worth of IT services. Given that we have very limited access to infrastructure, like we have very limited universities. In fact, we just have five universities mostly related with political science or democracy or agriculture or something like that. But then like, it was quite unexpected result, like pleasantly unexpected result that although the government and like, related sector has invested very less amount on the tech and innovation sector, we were able to export services worth $515 million given that our economy is very small, very like our like total budget GDP and everything is very small. But then like, this was a significant contribution and it contributes around 4% to our GDP. So yeah. And like it was done by 160 IT expert services companies, 14,728 IT freelancer in software development and technology and 5,175,51100 I'm sorry, 51,781 IT freelancer engaged in exporting IT services through various digital platforms. So from Nepal, like we have industries like companies which provide customer service and like a troubleshooting stuff and all two the other companies abroad. So it was the other stat it showed and like since 2021, our growth was 64.2%. That's like big, big achievement after like COVID crisis because during the time of COVID. So everything was closed and like we are quite introduced to like digital world and like people who are doing freelancing and like it opened the like COVID crisis opened the door for people to look out for alternatives. So people were looking for job opportunities and everything online. So that might be the other reason for this exponential growth. So now I'd like to get into WordPress community in Nepal. So we have five major communities in five major cities of the country, five metropolitan cities. So that's WordPress Kathmandu, that's capital city of Nepal. The other one is WordPress Pokhara, that's my hometown. And then the other one is WordPress Barakpur, WordPress Birat Nagar and WordPress Butol. So altogether we have more than 20,000 people using WordPress in Nepal professionally. But then like if we consider bloggers and like those people who use for other purposes, the count might go 50,000 plus. And we have 5,000 plus community member, active community member who we involved into like work camps and meetups and everything. So five WordPress communities as I have already mentioned about it. So we do 60 plus meetups every year within like five different communities. And we have five word cam every year. And on top of that we do word cam Nepal once in every year. So last time we had, we organized word cam Nepal. So we had like participants more than 600 people participated in that event. And like we are organizing next word cam in 2024 January and we are expecting around 1000 people to attend the seminar from all across the world. So like I have already mentioned, we have very limited access to infrastructure, technology, innovation, research and everything. So these three people were the one who started WordPress in Nepal. So they are like late Ujjal Thapa. So we lost him during the time of COVID but his contribution and like efforts and everything made our community grow in this exponential way. So the person who was under Maharjan and Sakin Shrestha they started WordPress community in Nepal during 2007 just after three years of, just after four years WordPress was created. So I just have like a little timeline to show the figures how we started and how we are continuing the community in Nepal despite having very less people, very limited resource, very small economy and global south very far from like latest technology trend and everything. So in 2003 WordPress was released and then in 2004 Sander started using WordPress because he was residing in America. So he got into WordPress and like he got familiar with a blogging tool and everything. So he was the first person to use WordPress and it is documented like there might be other person as well but then so far we know in our community he is the guy who started using WordPress back in 2004. And during 2007 there was like digital Mac solution is like one of the first IT company from Nepal and it was from like early 2000. Like IT community was started in Nepal during like beginning of 2000. So in 2000 digital Mac solution started commercial use of WordPress. So they started using WordPress for their clients with Ujjal Thapa, Sakin and Chandra, the three guys I showed in my previous slide they were working as an employee there. So in 2011 Chandra and Sakin attended two different WordCamps. So it was like their first ever WordCamp. So Chandra attended WordCamp San Francisco 2011 and Sakin attended WordCamp Melbourne 2011. So that is where they got the idea about WordCamp like how they can organize the event and then like benefits and everything about WordCamp. So they decided to permanently form WordPress Nepal community and it was formed in 2011. So they went to different schools, institutions and like different companies and like gather people who were interested in like contributing to the community and like to make it a platform to learn. So it was in 2011. So after that in 2012, first ever WordCamp Nepal was hosted in Kathmandu city, the capital of Nepal. Over 130 WordPress enthusiasts attended the event and there was a surprise online visit from Matt, the co-founder of WordPress and Flip was there from automatic. So he went there to address the community there since it was like our first ever WordCamp event happening in our country. So 2013 on Word, multiple WordCamp Nepal, WordCamp Pokhara, Kathmandu, Bharatpur, Birat Nagar, Bhuttole has been organized. So we organized, as I have already mentioned, we organize at least five WordCamps every year. So companies like Them, Greel, Them Palace, they are operating from Nepal and they are making revenues in millions of dollars. So ultimately benefiting developers, users, stakeholders, designers from Nepal and ultimately contributing to the growth of community. And like this is the other way we are sustaining our community because whenever we organize some event and like whenever we do meetups and everything. So companies like this, they come forward and sponsor us so that we can arrange stuff. So we have WordCamp deputies. We have a member from our community working as a WordCamp deputy and like WordCamp mentors, WordCamp Asia organizers as well. So like every year we have four to five people in organizing committee of WordCamp Asia. So we consider that to be the growth as well and we are looking forward to WordCamp 26 or 27 if things goes good or is expected. So in the present days this is the guy who is leading WordPress community in Nepal. He was expected to visit WordCamp Vancouver but because of some visa issue and all like he couldn't make it to it. But then he has been doing a great job. So he has been mentoring WordCamps across Asia, WordCamp Thailand, Islamabad and Bangalore and like he has been mentoring five WordCamps simultaneously. So he, till now he has organized many WordCamps, many events and like he have visited a lot of WordPress communities around the globe. So that was all about the size and like the distribution and the people behind for WordCamp community in Nepal. So we have been using WordCamp community in Nepal for the platform for knowledge sharing. So I have mentioned time and again that we have limited resource and like limited people and limited skilled resource in fact. So WordCamp has been, WordPress community has been knowledge sharing platform for like people coming from every background not necessarily just the WordPress like some designers, some content writers, small business owners or maybe we can say like but lately we have been collaborating with Flutter community and even other communities as well so that we can grow together and like sometimes it is very tough to get quality education in excess to take colleges because we have very limited colleges and education is privatized in my country. So not every time we get to, not every time everyone get to go to school because it is very expensive. I was lucky enough to afford it. So I'm sustaining my life through the skill set I got from tech but then like not everyone is lucky enough but then we have been using our community as a free resource center where everybody can come. We have a meetup location. So once in every month we do rotation among IT companies. So I have IT company with my friends and one of my lecture. So we have a conference hall. So for a month I sponsor food and a venue. So that way like everybody can come there like new students from tech colleges like any enthusiast they can come to my office and use the space and like have coffee, tea or like meet with professional people so that they can learn stuff. So we have been volunteering in that way. So you know the word WordPress Community Nepal is a platform for knowledge sharing. So people can share whatever they know and like it's a part of core learning stuff. So other thing is networking opportunity. So we use WordPress Nepal as a networking opportunity because as I have mentioned earlier not only people doing WordPress but also the other platform as well. So they come to our community and we visit their community. So it's been a networking platform and networking opportunity as well. So skill development obviously. So every time we organize work camps so we do multiple days work camps so all the time we make sure to have contribution day whenever we organize work camps. So people contribute in translation and like people respond to forum questions and like a team review, plugin review and everything. So all the time we make sure to have contribution day so that people can feel ethical obligation and I would love to say it ethical obligation or ethical responsibility. Given that we have been making living and we have been using the platform for business purposes and like for growing our skill set and for going out to the competitive market. So WordPress has given us a lot. So it's our legal obligation to give back to the community. So I'll talk about that later on. And support and troubleshooting obviously. So whenever somebody is working in a project and like they need some sort of support and troubleshooting so people will come out and like those who have expertise in support and everything they will come out voluntarily and they support each other so that we can grow together. So that has been very successful in our community as well. And promotion of open source obviously. So I have already mentioned about limited access again. So open source would be a very good scope for people and like countries struggling with innovation and everything because it might be very weird. It might sound very weird and very strange that we don't even have digital payment gateway yet in Nepal. So I can buy anything online from outside the country. We don't have visa. We have visa but then within debit only. So which is applicable only in Nepal. So if I want to purchase something there is no way I can purchase it. And like because of economic issue while I visited here I was allowed to carry only $200 with me. So yeah, while I was paying $200 to Sandman in I forgot the name, the area. So for one night it was $200 but my government permitted me to carry only $200 because it's our financial policy. You can take money outside the country because we are struggling with the money and we have very small foreign currency drop because of pandemic, because of earthquake, blockade and like inflation and everything going on war and everything going on. So we are really struggling with our finance. So yeah, so that's the scenario because whenever I need to buy some course from Udemy or Coursera or something I just rely upon financial aid. Like sometimes they'll luckily approve it but not every time. So yeah, we have very basic resources. Like I have been making websites since my high school so it's been like while I was in class 10 so I built a website using Waves platform. I'm not sure if you guys are familiar about it. It was before WordPress and then I made a site for my school and then that is how I started and later on I switched to WordPress because I love the community and it was very accessible. So yeah, every time I would call my uncle living in America to pay some amount for me so that I could buy some course or sometime maybe buy some plugin or that is how we have been doing and like luckily a lot of people they live abroad and like remittance is one of our major source of income in the country. So almost everybody they have somebody living abroad, uncle or like cousin or something. So that has been really helpful as well. So yeah, so till now till the date we don't have paper is illegal, bitcoins is illegal and like we don't have access to digital payment gateway. That's the other reason we have very limited. That's the other reason what I was trying to say is like we have very limited access. And then like job opportunity, obviously we have a lot of companies operating from Nepal. So mainly I have already showed you the figure about total IT expert industry. So people are being able to trade their knowledge and his skill set abroad to get better payment and like better income. So that is ultimately helping community members to sustain themselves and then maybe give back to the community so that other people can learn stuff as well. And then entrepreneurship obviously. So whenever somebody is lucky enough to go to take school and then get a degree and then like we don't have a lot of companies hiring people. So we have like job scarcity obviously. So sometimes WordPress has been a really effective platform to start your own business sort of thing. Like if you are good enough, like you might end up having a good client and like since it is open source and very accessible and it has community which backs you up whenever you need any help or assistance. So like for entrepreneurship also it is really, really helping in Nepal. Community engagement obviously. So whenever we organize events and like seminars and everything. So we don't just talk about technology or advancement. Like sometimes we just talk about mindfulness, mental health, supporting each other, helping some people in need. So the guy I showed earlier, late Ujjal Thapa, so he was running a campaign called Bebexil Nepali. That's like Bebexil means wisdom. So it was some sort of wisdom forum for Nepalese people where they can learn things and like meet people. So now every year we organize different campaigns and events to sustain his campaign, to donate his campaign. So we are continuing his campaign although he left us. So that is how also like the community comes in action. So that's the other benefit of having a community and closed circle, closed circle open to everybody. So challenges like with every opportunities and every scenarios, there comes challenges. So limited infrastructures. So I don't think I need to explain further about it. I have said enough about having very limited infrastructures. So urban rural, digital divide because majority of Nepali population, more than 70% Nepali population, they are from rural area where people are still struggling with clean drinking water, like a latrine and like everything. So urban area has very limited people living there with very high income and like high business opportunities. So there is a very big gap between urban and rural population. So that's a big digital divide. Like while urban population is having really good high speed internet and access to technology, latrine and everything, like rural people are still struggling with having telephone connection and something like that. So that's the other challenge we have to, like we have to overcome jointly. So regulatory challenges obviously, given that we have very limited policies, law and rules, since there has not been really a good breakthrough in innovation. So obviously we have very limited regulatory challenges. So cybersecurity concerns obviously, it will connect to the limited infrastructures. Like having said that we have limited infrastructure, cybersecurity is the other concern because it needs really good investment and like authorities who can regularly monitor the situation and like if somebody is found guilty or like similar situation. So they have to deal with this stuff. But then we don't have that sort of bodies. So language barrier obviously. So Nepali language is our primary language. More than 90% people, they speak Nepali language and rest of the people, they speak other 60 languages. Like ethnic, we have a lot of ethnic groups. So we have indigenous people, we have different ethnic people. So English is secondary language. And like since I went to private school, I had like a better approach to English language because we used to have my mathematics science in English. So I could learn better. So since every tech updates and everything is in English, but then WordPress is the like other technology which has a lot of plugins like multilingual plugin and everything. Whenever we organize WordPress, we do a Contribute Sunday where people will translate WordPress to Nepali so that people can use it freely. Like if you have language barrier also, you'll get to use it. So ultimately making it more accessible and more inclusive. So political instability. I don't think I need to talk a lot about it because this is a global scenario now. And like even that we are still struggling with good education, infrastructure, roads, breeze, towers and all. So I don't even feel like talking about it because we have had enough of this. So digital payment gateway. I have already mentioned about it. We don't have like very lazy digital payment gateway. So access to capital. So capital is in like funding. So we have very limited access to funding. I'm sorry. Funding because people are able to explore about the possibilities of investing in tech industry and like there has been some trust issue. Yeah, so people are struggling to find some people who can invest on their initiative or enterprise because they have already spent a lot of amount of money to go to school and everything. So once they are out of school either they have choice to find a job where I have already mentioned they have a very limited job available. So if people want to start something on their own so not everybody is willing to invest on them later on the government bodies and authorities or institution. So that has been the other challenges. So yeah, so like every time I go and meet people from WordPress community I always want to like I always like to talk about giving back to community. WordPress has given us a lot of things. Like I am here today because of WordPress. I have been communicating with you people because of WordPress. So that is the connecting dot. And like it is open source and a lot of like millions of people are benefited using this. People are doing their business depending upon this. We ever can't afford like big websites and webpages. They can just go to WordPress and like make something on their own very easy, very accessible. It has a multilingual services. You can access it using your own language. If you have language barrier and then like WordPress has been investing in communities, building events just like what can meetups and everything. So it is our legal, sorry, it is our ethical obligation to give back to the community so that it can be the better platform. It can grow more exponentially so that more people can get benefited from it. And then like we can get a better version of WordPress every year. So whenever we talk about getting better version, getting new updates and everything so it will come to our responsibility. If we contribute, if we regularly answer support questions, if we regularly write review for themes and plug-in, it will oblique them to make a better version. If we find out bugs or anything about the platform, so it will make more safe space for having very secure infrastructures and everything. So totally it is our responsibility to give back to the community and like that is what I do whenever I have free time. So I also hope you guys are doing the same because that's our responsibility and that's going to benefit us ultimately. So that is all for me. So if you have any questions, you can ask me, okay? Okay, I have one. Are online courses, I don't hear, you know, if you take WordPress courses online, it's kind of certified by the people or companies here. And it's all about also opening for today's work. So if you're more, you have to force in university for it to be... For credits. Normally like we have limited universities, but then like even my degree, it is from London Metropolitan University. So we have a college affiliated to LMU, so I went to that school. But then our government bodies, they want us to make that equivalent to Nepal's universities degree. That's 3-1 university. That is our government university. So I had to give certain examination and like get the license and make it equivalent. But then like online course creation, like we don't have a lot because they don't recognize a lot of online degrees. But then sometimes if we look out for job and like if somebody are looking for it, they consider it. But obviously we have like very limited scope on getting certified whenever we have online certificates or online degrees. Do you are restricted, are you allowed to build our site, the whole commerce site, for a client outside of Nepal? Like are you allowed to operate, are you allowed to build it basically and set it up and you set up strength and set up all that? Yes, we are allowed to do that because whenever we receive payments, we can receive it through wire transfer and it counts to the remittance or like foreign income and it goes through taxes and policy. So we are allowed to do that. Do you have to buy something within Nepal with using it, is that artificial? Within Nepal we can buy because we have payment getaways like ESEWA, Khaulti and a lot of other mobile applications running within the country. So if I want to purchase within the country, I can do it easily. But whenever I want to buy services and like goods from outside the country and whenever the transaction is in dollar, the currency, that is restricted. So like hosting and stuff? Yeah, hosting and stuff, yeah. So you have to host it? We have option to host outside Nepal as well. The way I mentioned earlier about getting help from your cousin or uncle living abroad, but then we also do have local hosting companies, but ultimately it is more like resale or hosting. So somebody manages to pay something outside and then they register the company within the country and they resale it. Even I used to do that. Yeah, a couple of years ago. It was easy for the manager to come in. It was very challenging to go out. Yeah. So yeah, yeah. If somebody manages to, as long as money is not going out, so that's not a big concern for my government, I guess, because instead of growing resources, they are quite interested in saving the resources. Yeah. So in that case, this is my hometown, Pokhara Valley. So this is Fewa Lake. That's the biggest lake in my city. So you'll have panoramic Annapurna rains reflected up on the lake. So if you ever visit my city, so we are hosting World Camp, Nepal, 2024, 12 and 13 January. The first day will be the contribution day and the second day will be main event day. So site is live, but tickets are not out yet. So within a couple of weeks, we'll start selling tickets. So you are more than welcome to attend the event as a speaker, as a sponsor, attendee, or if not, then you can just visit our country and you'll get to see a lot of Himalayas and you'll get to try a lot of authentic food and you'll get to explore the then hippie trail where a lot of celebrities went during 1970s. So when the weed and everything was legal, now it is illegal. So you can even visit Frick Street in Kathmandu. So people like, I forget the name, a lot of celebrities. Yeah, Bob Marley and like Gonsen Roses, they used to be spotted in that Frick Street in Kathmandu city in their Mercedes Vans. So back in 1970s, if you are interested about that, you can find the resources online. So yeah, so thank you. Everybody, they are thanking people. So you can reach me to Olabibic.com. So it doesn't link to me any Spanish language or something. I was just finding alternative for HelloBibic. So it was already taken. So I just used Olabibic and everywhere, my email address, my social media, everywhere you will find the same name and same photo mostly. I like to keep it simple and identical. Okay, thank you very much. Thank you Vancouver. Thank you community for having me here. I'm really enjoying talking about the community and it is my humble request, please give back to the community because it has given us a lot. Thank you.


Welcome to George H. Smith's Excursions into Libertarian Thought, a production of Libertarianism.org and the Cato Institute, narrated by James Foster. I'm Rand and altruism, part two. In my last essay, I summarized some leading ideas of Auguste Comte, who coined the word altruism and defended the subordination of individuals to humanity, the great being, as the ultimate moral ideal. I also characterized Rand's conception of altruism as the negative image of Comte's. The contrast between Comte and Rand could not be more stark. According to Comte, for example, humanity is divisible primarily into states, then into families, never into individuals, and man's emotional nature should be paramount over his reason. Similar fundamental differences abound throughout the writings of Comte and Rand. As we see in Comte's assertion that wealth should be held in trust for the good of humanity and that industrial chiefs should be viewed as representatives of humanity whose ultimate purpose is to serve humanity as a whole rather than their own interests. Although I doubt if Rand ever read Comte in detail, some of her statements appear to be direct responses in effect to his claims. Consider this passage from Roark's courtroom speech in The Fountainhead. Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy. The savage's whole existence is public ruled by the laws of his tribe. Civilization is the process of setting men free from men. Comte, in contrast, demanded the constant subordination of private to public life. Indeed, an important function of Comte's priesthood of social scientists, supported by the state, of course, was to inquire into every aspect of the private lives of individuals and expose to public condemnation any manifestations of selfishness. Since the primary moral duty of every person is to serve the interests of the great being of humanity, every trace of selfishness must be rooted out. And this, according to Comte, demands that we rid ourselves of the individualistic notion that people should have a private sphere of action in which they may act without regard to the good of humanity. Privacy, in the final analysis, is a refuge for selfishness. Comte, like Rand, viewed altruism and egoism as polar opposites, and they agreed on a fundamental characteristic of altruism, namely that it demands self-sacrifice as a moral duty. Both thinkers therefore understood that altruism and benevolence are not the same thing. Comte, as noted in my last essay, astutely recognized that benevolent actions are compatible with egoism. Altruism is an unconditional duty that must be observed in all cases, regardless of whether or not we feel benevolent toward others in particular cases. Mere benevolence will not suffice, according to Comte, because benevolence permits us to choose when to help others and such choices will frequently depend on egoistic considerations. Altruism demands that we subordinate self-interest to the interest of others, regardless of how we feel about them and regardless of their personal value to us. No such personal considerations are permitted in Comte's theory of altruism. Rand pushed the point even further, arguing that benevolence is in fact incompatible with altruism. As she wrote in The Man-Haters, a column published in The Los Angeles Times in 1962, many people believe that altruism means kindness, benevolence, or respect for the rights of others. But it means the exact opposite. It teaches self-sacrifice as well as the sacrifice of others to any unspecified public need. It regards man as a sacrificial animal. Rand's views on benevolence and related matters such as charity have been persistently and egregiously misinterpreted by her critics, so we need to explore her position, which is fraught with political implications in more detail. Rand's arguments about the incompatibility of altruism and benevolence are rooted in her conception of egoism, so we cannot hope to understand the former unless we first understand the latter. This is a daunting task, one that I cannot cover in detail in this series. Rand's theory of egoism, like her theory of altruism, is complex and richly nuanced. As an example of what I mean, consider what Rand wrote in a letter, 5th of March 1961, to the philosopher John Hospers, after noting that egoism is the basic theme of the Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, Rand continued, The traditional concepts of an egoist are represented in the Fountainhead by Peter Keating and Ellsworth Tooie. Keating is the unthinking parasitical range of the moment second-hander, Tooie is the Machiavellian Schemer or Powerluster. The relation of these two types to Roark is made amply clear. The theme of the Fountainhead is to demonstrate in what fundamental sense and manner Roark is an egoist, while Keating and Tooie are actually selfless and why the traditional concepts of egoism are destroying the world. Even longtime fans of Ein Rand might be surprised to learn that she intended the characters of Keating and Tooie to be representative of the traditional concepts of egoism. Moreover, what are we to make of Rand's statement that it is owing to the traditional concepts of egoism that the world is being destroyed, given that she typically placed the blame on altruism? Facile critics of Rand, and they are legion, would probably answer my question by accusing Rand of inconsistency. Of course, these are the same critics who do not take Rand seriously as a philosopher and so refuse to take the time and effort needed to understand her theory of egoism and how her theory is inextricably intertwined with her condemnation of both altruism and the traditional concepts of egoism. A good deal of my series on Ein Rand and altruism will be devoted to this issue. Let's begin our exploration of Rand's theory of egoism with a bit of trivia. In the introduction to the 25th Anniversary Edition of the Fountainhead, 1968, Rand, after saying that she wished to leave the text untouched, called attention to one minor error. The error is semantic. The use of the word egotist in Roark's courtroom speech while actually the word should have been egoist. The error was caused by my reliance on a dictionary that gave such misleading definitions of these two words that egotist seemed closer to the meaning I intended. Webster's Daily Use Dictionary, 1933. Although the word egotist was left unchanged in later printings of the Fountainhead, changes had already been made seven years earlier in the reprint of Roark's speech in For the New Intellectual, 1961. There, on two occasions, egotist was silently altered to read egoist, and in another excerpt, The Nature of the Second-Hander, egotism was changed to egoism. The reason for Rand's later dissatisfaction with egotist should be apparent. Her early misuse of the term suggests that she had not yet mastered some nuances of the English language. When we call someone an egotist, we usually mean that he is conceited and boastful, that he has an exaggerated sense of his own importance. This does not describe Howard Roark and other protagonists in Rand's fiction. On the contrary, it is the precise opposite of the character traits that Rand wished to convey. In the introduction to The Virtue of Selfishness, Rand argued that altruism confuses two distinct questions, namely, what are values, and who should be the beneficiary of values? As Rand continued, altruism declares that any action taken for the benefit of others is good, and any action taken for one's own benefit is evil. Thus, the beneficiary of an action is the only criterion of moral value. Rand rejected this beneficiary criterion of morality. The intended beneficiary of an action is not a criterion of moral value, nor is it a moral primary. Rand explained in a lengthy letter 29 April 1961 to John Hospers, the traditional view of egoism assumes that the standard of value by which one judges the worth of an action is not a principle, not a specific premise, not a defined concept of the good, not any objective consideration, but only the beneficiary of an action. It assumes that the beneficiary is an ethical primary and a standard of moral value. If an action, regardless of its nature, is intended to serve your own benefit, you are an egoist and traditionally evil. If an action, regardless of its nature, is intended to serve the benefit of others, you are an altruist and traditionally good. This leads to all the vicious contradictions that I discuss in Galt's speech. Rand condemned the traditional view of egoism as a groundless, unwarranted, unjustifiable package deal because it focuses solely on motivation while bypassing more fundamental issues such as the nature of values and why man needs a coda values in the first place. I certainly maintain that an egoist is a man who acts for his own self-interest and that man should act for his own self-interest. But the concept of self-interest identifies only one's motivation, not the nature of the values that one should choose. The issue, therefore, is what is the nature of man's self-interest? With us see why Rand viewed altruism and the traditional concept of egoism as two sides of the same coin. Both treat the intended beneficiary of an action as a standard of moral value, whereas it is nothing of the sort. In Rand's approach to egoism, the desire to further one's own interests does not make an action morally good, nor does a desire to help others make an action morally bad. These are secondary considerations that can be viewed in their proper light only after the truly fundamental problems of ethical theory have been addressed. Peter Keating was a traditional egoist in the sense that he sought to advance his career through any means necessary and Ellsworth Tui was a traditional egoist in the sense that he sought power over others. But neither, as we shall see, was an egoist in Rand's sense of the term. Thank you for listening to Excursions. To learn more about libertarian philosophy and history, visit www.libertarianism.org.


Okay, welcome back everyone. It's theCUBE's coverage of AWS Amazon Remars, machine learning, automation, robotics, and space. I'm John Furrier, host of theCUBE. We're here for two days live coverage and we're getting all the stories. And the story here is our entrepreneur hot startup, making things happen, making more connectivity go. Diana Ganzina, founder and CEO of Elv Speed. Elv or Elv Speed, welcome to theCUBE. Well, speed represents how fast we can transfer the data. And so an Elv is a upper electro sort of magnetic phenomena that lives above thunderstorms and it moves very, very fast. It looks like it moves faster than the speed of light. So we play on the speed of Elv's. Well, let's get into it because I love the approach you're taking. And this is consistent with the theme of the show. A lot of industrial change and innovations, sometimes recycling old technology to help invent new ones, integrations, platforms coming together, a little bit more open, less proprietary. You're in an area where you're going to solve the bandwidth problem with unique new ways. Pick it up to explain what you're working on, what's the project and what's the ambition. Yes, exactly. I think we fit really well in that concept of taking something that has a lot of heritage, reliability, we are very familiar with this technology. We've used it for more than 50 years. We like it and the problem with that technology has been that it's very expensive. It's not affordable. Not affordable to people like you and me such that that amount of bandwidth can actually be available to us. So what we have done is really focused on advanced materials and manufacturing techniques to make this new technology significantly more affordable. So like- And technology is? So we make power amplifiers that are based on TWTs. So TWTs are in amplifiers that actually like are currently being operated on the Voyager way back long time ago. It's a very old technology and we have taken it and really revamped it and looked at it differently and how can we make it the technology of the future? So we specifically operate in millimeter wave frequencies and at millimeter wave frequencies we can provide significantly more bandwidth than what you can do at lower frequencies. Okay, so the folks that aren't wireless though, what does millimeter wave mean? Millimeter wave is the amount of frequency that you have sort of in space. So the wavelength of that frequency is in millimeter range. So sort of the size of your nail or something like that, thickness of your nails. And so because of that, when you start operating at those frequencies you can send significantly more information, right? The frequencies that we use today are sort of on the order of, you know, centimeters, 10 centimeters, something like that, so about like this. And that doesn't allow you to send as much data as you can at these higher frequencies. So more bandwidth? Significantly more bandwidth. So the problem you're solving is taking something that's actually high bandwidth and has long ranges. Correct. Should bring it to the common price points to be deployed. That's right, that's right. So this particular technology allows you to generate enough power so you can send the data over long distances. So if you're on the ground you can create 40 plus kilometer links or you can send that information straight to space all the way to the geostations, right? So you actually have enough power to provide that amount of bandwidth. So the challenge has been is affordability which is what we have done is focus specifically is how do you reduce that cost? Well, I love anything that gives me more bandwidth. No one ever went out of business for providing more bandwidth. Let me do the app. The then monopolies. Talk about how you got here. What was the origination story? You work at Slack, not confused with Slack as in the messaging application, the Stanford linear accelerator in technically Menlo Park, I think. It is in Menlo Park. It's in Menlo Park, not Palo Alto, okay, so. It's right on Cian Hill Road, right to Elm. Right on Cian Hill Road, it's all the VCs, I drive past it all the time. What's it like there? Was it like, were you guys working on this at Slack? Was it like something that you had a lot of interest in? Were you scratching this itch, so to speak? So this particular technology has many applications and so particle accelerators are one of the applications of this technology. So some of the users for particle accelerators are of course facilities like Slack where we do some amazing science but you can take that same particle accelerator and we use it for cancer treatment. So one technology doesn't just apply to one solution. I'm using it in my company for communications, right, and this is how it related to the work that I was doing at Slack. So at Slack, my focus was on materials and manufacturing of these particular devices and I really focused on what is fundamental limitation of how much power you can really pack into the size of the device. If you can really shrink the size of the device, what can you do? And that applies whether it's particle accelerators or these millimeter wave amplifiers that I'm working on today. And yes, Slack, without the K, yes, is a particle accelerator laboratory that's operated by Stanford for the Department of Energy. And all the geeks know about it. It's folklore, certainly in Silicon Valley. And I didn't even know they had the hidden tunnels behind in the mountains up there. They do, they do. All kinds of stuff up there. I think they're back to having tours so it's always worth visiting. Let me get a little camera crew in there. All right, let's talk about back to your opportunity there. How many people you have working for you? What's the funding status? Where are you in your journey? So I hired my first person last June and we're at 14 people today. We have just did the first close of our seed round. So we had our pre-seed round last year and we are sort of in the middle of our seed round right now. And the plan is to get to Series A sometime next year depending on sort of performance and when we are ready. So you're in product building mode right now. We actually are in product building mode. We have product delivery scheduled in the next few months. So you have customers ordering Apple Buyers? Yes, we actually have customer orders. What's the price point you're getting at? What's, because I could see people lining up for this. Well, so because of our focus on manufacturing, we are also attaching customer interest to volume. So it depends on whether you're buying 10 of them or a thousand of them. So the price point varies. Of course, so. Buying bulk, Amazon. Yeah, a lot of outposts out there potentially and you've got the telecoms, Edge, booming. Yes. They've got full blown data centers now at these.  Well, so this is one of the advantages of having a wireless technology. If you're trying to put a location that's remote or even semi remote, for you to be able to put a fiber link at that spot is years, an enormous amount of investment. So you can get the same amount of data movement if you switch to technology like ours. And so, yeah, it's a great application for millimeter waves. So things are going good. You got orders. You got product being built. You're going to get through your seat. Soon to have series A. Next year, yeah. And so the next step for us is building a factory, which is we're sort of doing a planned low rate initial production, starting probably at the end of this year, trying to scale to sort of tens of units per week. And then after that, trying to get the factory that'll be able to do sort of 10 times that. But we are gauging that with a customer interest that we are matching the production to the demand. What's your current verticals that are most interested now? So our primary application space is communications and backhaul specifically. I think we're very well positioned to enter that market. It sort of the next focus is going to space. So actually being on the space vehicles. And but to do that, we have to go for the space qualification. So we have a team focusing on how to space qualify. It's all certifications, all kinds of security checks. Correct. So that will take a little bit of time. I think the earliest we'll get there is next year. And so, but there is a lot of interest and support from sort of current companies, the new space companies to sort of help move the technology faster. Otherwise you can't get access to something that's new, right? This space qualification takes a long time. I mean, Space Force, everyone I talked to here and all over the industry on NASA to Space Force, they want to move faster. They don't want to be perceived as that old, slow, antiquated systems. Yes. They want to be cooler and faster, but secure. Absolutely. Security is a huge deal right now. When that's one of the advantages that we provide, right? We are relying on a heritage technology and also because it's millimeter wave, it provides you a certain amount of security, right? Because it's much, much harder to intercept than anything else, right? Well, exciting news, congratulations. Thank you. If you want to take a minute to go plug for your startup, you're going to hire, what's the status? You mean for my new employees? Yeah, yeah, what are you looking for? Customers, what kind of customers are you looking to hire? Absolutely. Put a commercial out there for the company. Okay, so when it comes to customers, we are looking for people that are willing to move really fast as fast as we are moving and willing to actually consider something like millimeter wave for their backhaul applications. So starting at K-A-Band and all the way to W-Band frequencies. For those that are my customers, they will know exactly what I'm talking about. And so we are bringing a technology that's reliable and bringing their cost down by a factor of 10, meaning something that was half a million before is going to be significantly cheaper today and you could afford to actually buy a thousand. Smaller, faster, cheaper. Exactly, that's the thing. So when it comes to employees, so we are growing really fast and we have a very fun team that cares about people. So for example, we spend one hour every week to actually talk about growth and personal development as sort of part of our culture. It's something we are committed to is that you have to love what you do.  And so we are looking for people that are very techy but also sort of are human centered and are willing to make the world a better place, which is what sort of ELV is all about is making technology useful for people, when it comes to communications, making me and you connected or us connected to the rest of the world as we sit here. And more empathetic and connected, like just connected emotionally. Connected in both ways. Both ways, physical and emotional and more bandwidth, more connections. Right, and you can have that interaction to be significantly higher quality if you can actually recreate that environment. Can I work for you? Sounds like a great place. No. No, I'll stay with my day job, thanks. Thanks for coming on theCUBE, appreciate it. Of course, thank you for hosting me. Okay, we're here at Remars. All the hot startups are here, technologists, it's kind of a geeky nerd show and it's really cool because it's industrial innovation and about space and all the cool things we love at theCUBE. I'm John Furrier, your host, thanks for watching.