Good morning PHP people. One thing I love about PHP events is the fact that you always can take anything that starts with a P at a pH in front of it and then just roll with it. You guys are all cool with that, right? So a little bit about me. I work at a company called devrelate.io. These are all my wonderful clients. If you have questions about what we do, we're devrelations as a service, community relations as a service, so it's really a lot of fun. If you have questions about any of my clients, feel free to ask me afterwards. Right now I'm here on behalf of crate.io, which are the people behind CrateDB, which is think of it like NoSQL meets Docker distributed database in the cloud. It's it's pretty cool and I'd be happy to answer questions about that after the talk, but that's not what I'm here to talk about. Let's talk about my favorite subject, which is me. So I'm a developer evangelist, technical advocate, community engineer, whatever title you want to put on there. I'm lucky enough I get to travel around the world and talk to awesome people like you pretty much all the time, 12 months a year. It's absolutely amazing. But beyond that, I'm a hockey coach. I play in a band. I've been playing drum since I was six years old and I have kids. I'm a dad, which is wonderful. Occasionally, which is really once I let my kids keynote large scale programming events. That's my daughter when she was 11, keynoting RubyConf. She was the keynote and also the guy who created Ruby was the keynote. So it was a pretty big deal. I've never keynoted RubyConf on my own. I had to use her as an in-road. So use your kids. That's what they're there for. I also run an organization called Prompt. How many of you have heard of Prompt before? How many of you have heard of Ed Finckler before? Yeah. So Ed was one of the major players when we started Prompt a few years ago. Prompt is all about mental health and tech. It's kind of a big deal, but we kind of don't talk about it a lot. So the goal of Prompt is to get people to talk about mental health. Start a conversation about mental health. If you run a meet-up and I know from Jenny's talk yesterday that some of you do, or you're just part of a meet-up and you want to contribute to it, like Jenny suggested you do, feel free to get in touch and we will help you get someone who is willing to talk about mental health specifically as it affects people in tech from their own perspective. We're happy to send speakers all over the world to give these talks. So what is this talk actually about? If you saw the title, you may have some misconceptions, but that's actually what the talk is about, so that's good. In programming languages, in different communities, we have different perceptions, especially when we're inside of them. We all think our own community is the best, right? Not everybody outside of your community thinks that because they think their community is the best. That's one of the problems we have. There's also certain things that different parts of the tech community, the non-programmers, if you will, when they look in at us, what they think about us. And then there's also the ideas that differ between open source and the enterprise. And we're going to talk a little bit about that as well. What this isn't about, if you saw the title, is actual urban legend. So if you thought this was going to be about cryptozoology or chupacabras or what have you, I really apologize. That's not what it's we're going to talk about. But let's start at the beginning. Let's start with PHP. First of all, really shocking that it's not pronounced FIP. I think that would be a more appropriate name for the language. PHP has been around for years, right? It's been around so long that most people, when I go to conferences, and I've given this talk at other conferences and meetups, and I say, how many people have programmed in PHP? I'm not going to ask that of this room. I think that's a silly question in here. But it doesn't really matter. Wherever I go and I ask this question, I say, who's programmed in PHP or currently programmed in PHP? Most hands go up. With the exception of maybe some younger folks who have gone to boot camp and it's their first event. But for the most part, everybody's programmed in PHP. So kind of a big deal. Yet, one of the first myths that I found out about when I was working on this talk was that apparently some people think PHP is dead. Quick caveat. I could easily have named this talk, everything is dead and why do we even bother? Because you're going to see this dead concept come up quite a bit. Every programming language at one time or another has been called dead. But we're starting with PHP. As some of you may know, PHP is kind of a big deal. It's used by large scale companies. And I believe statistically, the most recent statistic is that 68% of web applications use PHP. And when I first heard this, I think I was told it was like 72%. By a friend of mine, you might know, you might know Davey Shafik. He helped me write this talk. And we were talking about it. And I was like, that's amazing. So I started to look into it. And there's reasons why. First of all, a lot of servers use PHP because they're expecting to have to serve it. So that counts towards the grand total. Obviously, there's bigger applications like Facebook uses PHP. Twitter has PHP built in. Lots of lots of big things. But also there's the fact that other languages actually borrow from PHP. In Ruby, which is a language that I've mostly been programming in the past few years, Ruby actually has PHP modules built in. Just in case you're transferring information from PHP to Ruby, it already has built in language tools so that you can convert these things. So if PHP is dead, why are all these other languages, other places borrowing from PHP, making sure PHP is compatible, so that it's useful? Obviously, it's not really that big of a death if everyone's still using it. So micro services. Some folks think that PHP, because it's so often used in large scale monolithic applications, that microservice are complete impossibility. Apparently, a lot of people believe that everything is kept in one giant PHP file. This was kind of true once upon a time. I remember when I was at a place, this is a while ago, we were using like PHP 3, maybe 4 had just come out. And the entire thing was 130,000 lines of code. Yeah, that was not, that was uncomfortable laughter. Someone just gave uncomfortable laughter because no one should ever build anything like that ever. It was converted from 150,000 lines of Visual Fox Pro. Any visual Fox Pro developers in the house? I'm sorry. I feel you. I feel your pain. So yeah, making it, going from Visual Fox Pro to PHP was like a major jump. But still, the idea is that this is completely untrue. Like no one should build that way. If you build something that monolithic, 130,000 lines of code in one file, you're doing something wrong to begin with. And to be completely honest with the advent of frameworks, it's just about every language that uses the web has these days. Microservices are easy. You can easily break things down into smaller bits and make them work together. That's the whole point of containerization and everything that we're looking at. Serverless and all the new advance. PHP can take advantage of that just like any other language. So I think this is an old perception. It's starting to go away, but I think people still have this idea that PHP is old and beat. People say that because PHP is an interpreted language, it's slow. It doesn't have a compiler. So it must be slow. This is something that actually came up with Ruby that I was surprised to find kind of the two things together. Like, oh, it's not compiled and therefore it's a slow language. This is another older misconception, which I find interesting. You know, it's kind of odd. Just simply because there's no compiler, a lot of older programmers, and I'm older, but not that kind of older, believe that it's impossible to gain speed when you have to actually do things like write tests and run them against it before you deploy your code. So in this case, they're not talking about speed of execution because PHP is pretty fast. I mean, it's not C, but it's pretty fast. A few things are C, just pretty much C actually. It's the idea that it takes you longer to develop because it's not compiled. You can't find your problems as quickly because it's not compiled. I think this is a familiarity issue. I think the more familiar you are with any language, the easier it is regardless of whether it's compiled or not.  I'm writing modules in like 15 seconds because it's compiled. Now, I'm so much better at what I'm doing because compiled is better than not compiled.  Security. Now, this is an interesting one. I put it here not because of PHP. I put it here because this is the beginning of the talk. And I think this is a very important point to make. I could have put this on any of the languages, any of the tools, any of the things that I'm going to talk about because security is an issue with everything. PHP is no exception. When you put applications up on the web, there's a security issue because you've already made it public. No matter what, it's already a security issue. If you do not design your application with security in mind from the start, it's just like writing tests. If you don't do it from the start, you're already behind the eight ball. You've already made a mistake. That's not exclusive to PHP. That's exclusive to application development. Anything that will ever go out in the world is inherently insecure. You can only make it as secure as you're willing to make it, but you have to be willing to make it secure, so that's up to you. So let's talk about one thing that isn't really a myth. PHP has a stuffy problem. Some of you laughed and some of you didn't. When I was originally, when I originally wrote this talk, the idea was that PHP was for business applications. It was stuffy. You know, it's for people in suits. It's for people in cubicles. You know, web applications that aren't fun. Obviously, that's not true. I already mentioned Facebook and some other things that use PHP that obviously have nothing to do with business, although Facebook is kind of getting more businessy by the day, just slightly disconcerting. But the real stuffy problem in PHP, and this is no myth, is that you people really go for these stuffed animals. I don't get it. I've never gotten. I mentioned my friend Davey earlier who would literally call me and be like you're not going to believe this. I went to True North PHP and grumpy made this woolly mammoth stuffy and I bought it for $150. And I'm like, what? But in all honesty, I do kind of like it. I won't buy stuffed animals. We have like a rule in my house. My daughter got kind of crazy with stuffed animals when she was younger, so we are not allowed to buy stuffed animals ever. But I like the fact that this is something that unifies this community. It's something that brings people together. There's a collection and a lot of these goes towards good causes. PHP women. At one point in time, there was a prompt elephant for mental health and tech. And it's just great to see that these perpetuate the community. They continue things because without people participating, without fun stuff like stuffies, your community dies. So let's talk about the arch enemy of PHP, which is of course Ruby, right? How many people have programmed in Ruby before tried it out, done anything? You don't have to be embarrassed. It's okay. We're all friends here. I programmed in Ruby for a while. Ruby, I hate to say this at this conference, it's my favorite language. I really, really like it. Just because it's a lot of fun to code in and you can make a ton of absolutely useless crap with it. Which is true. When I first started in Ruby, which was about 10 or 12 years ago, it was the belief of a lot of people that that's all you could do with it. Ruby is useless. Hipsters use that. And believe me, I'm so old. I'm not a hipster. I literally was there before it was cool. But that was the attitude. Unfortunately it hasn't changed much. And the reason for this attitude is because of Rails. How many people have looked at Rails? Yeah. Why do people think Rails is hipster? There's two main reasons. Anyone want to take a guess? One of them is just three initials. Two of those initials are repeated. So there's this dude. His name is David Heinemeyer Hansen. And on a personal level, David is a very nice guy. He loves open source. He loved open source so much and Ruby so much that he said I'm going to build a framework. I want to make web applications with Ruby because that's how much I love this. At the time, 15 years ago, there was no way to do that. Ruby was just this language is kind of hanging out there. You can make little desktop modules, little scripts, things like that. But you couldn't put it on the web. David made that possible. David is a really smart guy. David got on Twitter and made a handle called DHH. That's his initials. David decided that he has opinions. And his opinions count for the community. So for a long time, anything that David said, everybody like, well that's the way Rails developers are. Rails developers totally, totally agree with everything he says. And I can tell you, from the standpoint of someone who has been a Rails developer, Ruby developer for years, we do not all agree with DHH. When he said coffee script, many people were like, ugh, no. When he said action cable, does anyone know what action cable does? I've been programming in Rails for 12 years. I don't know what action cable does. As far as I know, it's useless. People said, ugh, David. David has moved on a little bit. He's still kind of like that benevolent dictator for life. He's kind of like Rails' Rasmus. But at the same time, like instead he races cars and fixes his hair. I don't know what he does.  But he gave us Rails. So we have to be somewhat grateful. The other reason why there's all these myths about Rails being for hipsters and that it's not useful is that Rails has a lot of auto-magical features.  Rails' whole tagline was get there, get 90% of the way done in 10% of the time. Which technically can be true depending on how thorough and robust your application is. So the key thing to remember though is while Ruby and Rails are similar and they have the same community, Ruby is not Rails. I continue to build applications this day. Very rarely do I feel the need to do Rails. There are many other frameworks out there. Things have come up. There's no need to deal with this opinionated, clunky, monolithic thing anymore. It's pointless. Yet people still have this procession. Someone let this sink in for a second. This is an exclusive to Ruby. This is often a thought about open source. So this is taken by from a blog post about software enterprise software development not being dead. The idea that only hipsters were doing open source and the really important people were doing enterprise software. We're going to come back to that in a little bit. But I think it's interesting that the whole idea here, and this is from a few years ago, the whole idea here is that Ruby developers all wear Ruby gear all the time. They wear hats, they have beards, and they make crappy applications. I have made crappy applications. I do have a beard and I wear a hat. However, I'm not representative of all of the Ruby community. I'm just one person. Nonetheless, when I saw this, it blew me away. I was like, do people really still think like this? And then I saw this. The only thing worse than running Ruby in prod is relying on a hobbyist, a hobbyist, who's running Ruby in prod. I saw this and I flipped and this is from a friend of mine. It wasn't to me. I just saw it randomly. Their name will be redacted. I was shocked though. I was like this, because I had to remove the name of stuff, this was November of 2017. So this is still the attitude. We're 15 years into Rails and 25 years almost into Ruby. This is still the attitude that Ruby is for hobbyists. So the shock is worn off a bit. However, I always have a response for when people say Ruby is for hipsters, Ruby is garbage, what's the point of Ruby? And that's the fact that a lot of people happen to be using it. A lot of these people use every day. I have teenage kids. I actually do use Urban Dictionary every day. I don't understand what they're saying sometimes. It's kind of important. But I mean, Netflix runs on Rails. How many people use Zendesk? Not many. Maybe you might be, you might not even know, your company probably has it's skin so it just looks like a ticketing system. Zendesk runs on Rails. Hulu runs on Rails. Prompt runs on Jekyll which is another framework for Ruby. All of these companies, GitHub is still a Rails application at its heart. There's a lot of other things going on, but it's still there. So obviously, Ruby is not just for hipsters, it's not just for useless South of Market coffee apps for San Francisco people. So let's dispel that myth. Let's talk about Java. Java is totally dead, right? Nobody uses Java. But yet, yet, it's one of the biggest powers in application development still to this date. I worked at IBM for a while. IBM, just about everything they write, everything they write is at its heart Java. We talked about microservices earlier, so it's easy to plug things into other things now and have applications that are written in seven different languages. However, IBM still loves Java. Java is amazing. Like to do your expenses at IBM, they built their own Java applet to communicate with people. They built their own Java applet. Java is super powerful. And for people who think that Java is dead, I'll have to say is how often do you see this coffee mug on your screen that you need to update this? It's like at least once a week. Sometimes it's a lie, by the way. I keep an eye on that. Apparently I was reading in the news there's been a lot of phishing expeditions about Java recently and you'll get a thing that says update Java and Flash and it's actually complete BS. So obviously Java's not dead. So let's talk about another language. Let's talk about Python. I'm going to go through these a little more quickly because I think they're a little less relatable. How many people have programmed Python before? SciPy, MathPy. Python's pretty awesome. Python was originally developed as an academic language. It was for theoretical language development. The idea behind Python initially was actually to develop other languages that could do things that weren't academic. So some people still have this perspective that Python is just it's strictly for the theorists. It's for the people they're doing hardcore, you know, proof of concept papers at large-scale universities, computer science programs, which is cool, I guess, but it doesn't really work that way. At a previous job at a company called Engineyard that some of you may have heard of, I worked on the community team, which was a great great team. One of the things that we did was an application called Thank You. The idea behind Thank You was there's so many people that do open source. There used to be this thing called Get Tip. I know it changed its name and eventually went away. But the idea was if someone signed up to Get Tip, you could send them like, you know, a couple dollars a week and that would help perpetuate their open source, you know, work. It's just a little way to say thank you. Here's a tip, thank you. So we developed a Python application that's strictly built out of love, no academics here at all, that anyone at Engineyard could say, hey, I know this person, I know Dave Stokes, and Dave Stokes does a lot of awesome open source work. I'm going to give him a Get Tip and put him on the list, a dollar a week. Cool, and we had this budget and it would take from the budget and put it in Get Tip for these people, and it was awesome. So that's not really academic, but that's a personal example. Let me give you another big example. RailsConf a couple years ago, they brought this gentleman from Spotify. I'm sure we've all heard of Spotify. I don't need to show hands on that. Spotify is a pretty awesome program, mostly written in Python, with a lot, a lot, a lot of JavaScript. He talked about how they started, like the original idea behind Spotify was similar to Pandora. They wanted to analyze music and see how it went. They started getting into Python and started realizing there were a lot of fun things you can do. And one of the things that he talked about at RailsConf, which was amazing, because similar to talking about Ruby and Python and Java at this conference, he was talking about Python at RailsConf, which was just, you know, blown away. He made an application, his team made an application called Jump the Frog. Jump the Frog, you give it two pieces of music, and it will draw a line between those two pieces of music. So everyone knows who Katy Perry is, right? No one raised their hand. You know who Katy Perry is. Don't lie to me. I know it's early people, but come on. So you know who Katy Perry is. I would imagine less people know who, and I'll use just because we had this conversation earlier, fewer people probably know who Mastodon is. Who knows who Mastodon is? Yeah. So Mastodon is, you know, they're a metal band if you really want to get literal, they are a sludge metal band from Atlanta. You wouldn't think there's a whole lot of commonality between Katy Perry and Mastodon. You don't see a lot of parody between, you know, a song about being a paper bag and baby or a firework and a song about the curl of the burl, which is about how you shave wood, which is bizarre. But anyway, the point being, within ten songs, he could find anything. That's where the application worked, and that's love. You don't build an application like that and not see how people have a passion for something. So the idea that it's just academic, just useless, just not really for anything, should be thrown out in the garbage. That's a myth. Linux, not a programming language. I know I'm standing on the red hat stage. I know that we all love open source. 2018 is not the year of the Linux desktop. Oh, that was harsh. Wow. No, really, until someone like my grandma can use it, it's not the year of the Linux desktop. But still, there are people out there, we'll call them champions of the Mac or perhaps heroes of the Windows world, who believe that Linux is dead, it's gone. No one uses Linux anymore. That's preposterous.  And even, I mean, even Windows is big into Linux now. When I was at IBM, where they literally make IBM laptops that are built to run Windows, I think something like 90% of the Lenovo IBM ThinkPad users were running Linux and not Windows. So if an organization that has 600,000 employees is doing that, kind of a big deal, not going away. Another great example that I like to use is, so I travel a lot, I fly. How many people fly internationally, you know, periodically? Enough so that they give you a movie. And you've ever been on the plane and the movie system goes down because one person on the screen isn't working on a flight of 300 people. And so we all have to suffer. I was in the middle of Justice League, which is a terrible movie.  Whatever. Doesn't matter. As soon as they reboot that system, you see tucks. If large scale airlines are using this for their entertainment, again, obviously Linux is not so dead. Is Pearl dead? Hmm. Does someone say yes? Have you not been listening to me? Come on. Focus. Pearl looked dead for a long time though, didn't it? They had this issue. I believe it was Pearl 5. Came out 2001, 2002, maybe 2003 at the latest. And it updated with some patches here and there, but there was no, like, new full version history. And a while back I wrote this article called Is Ruby Dead for Engine Yard. And the immediate reaction of the Pearl community was, of course, is Pearl dead or just deader than Ruby? That's not even like really an article. I really upgraded this by calling it an article. These are the two sentences in that entire article. I was happy because that means someone noticed my blog post. But yeah, it was interesting for a long time. Yeah, Pearl did look dead. But a couple years ago, Pearl 6 came out. You guys know what a 6 is, right? I know this is PHP and you guys skipped over that whole 6 thing. Sorry, I couldn't resist. Pearl 6 came out. How many people have looked at the latest version of Pearl? It's actually kind of awesome. And the key thing about Pearl is a lot of us, even before PHP, got into development because Pearl was open source and it was strong and it was stable and it was amazing. Those earlier versions of Pearl, that's how I started programming when I decided to move away from like, you know, visual basic and visual fox pro and all those other like Microsoft languages that you're taught at school. I thought Pearl was a gift. I thought it was amazing and to be honest, Pearl 6 is really powerful and really, really cool. And I highly recommend if you haven't looked at it, you should check it out. Wow, I'm talking a lot. So let's move a little faster. Swift. Swift is the ultimate thing in the end of the internet. Thank you. Good night. So when I first started doing this talk, someone actually posted that objective C developers are now obsolete. Please treat them with respect. This was posted by Swift devs like the actual and this is a long this is a while ago. This is a long time this tweet came out and I was like, Oh my God, look at this. Look at this picture. This is the part that defended me the most. So the elderly are obsolete. Okay, that's horrible. There's a lot that we can learn from older generations. So let's not say that the elderly are obsolete. Pregnant women full disclosure. I am not a professional biologist. However, I am relatively sure that at this point in our scientific lives without pregnant women, this species will end. I'm going to say that's not obsolete. Also objective C developers are kind of important. So Swift, it's not always about the new hotness. Luckily, when they came out with 2.0, they actually made it open source and realized their mistakes. And they they've moved on from there. So that's that's a positive thing. Their community is moving along. It's getting better. Anything with a JS in it? If you were developer a few years ago, you may remember the point in time where absolutely anything any word in the English or any other language, someone would append a JS to it, we'd have a new framework, a new thing. If you could tell me what most of these things do, I'd be surprised. I did the research for this talk, and I still don't know what half these things do. Take anybody want to take a Kraken JS. Anybody guess? It doesn't summon the Kraken. Kraken JS is a payment platform to specifically developed by PayPal to process cryptocurrency payments, which is obvious from the name, right? And I don't mean to I don't need to poop all over JavaScript. JavaScript is ubiquitous. We need JavaScript. There is no web application or mobile application out there today that isn't using JavaScript in some way, shape or form. You know, React is awesome. Ember is awesome. Angular is available. JavaScript is an amazing, amazing tool. And there's lots of amazing tools. That's my point. There's so many different languages, so many things that you can learn from that are different from your perspective and you should take a look. And I think when we look at our own languages and we kind of, you know, poop all over everything else that's going on, we forget about that. We forget about the beauty of open source and how many cool things are out there to try to learn from. And a lot of times it's because something new has come along. How many people left the PHP community because Ruby came along? How many people left the Ruby community because Go came along? How many people left Go because JavaScript was the new hotness? Like it's a perpetual thing. And we can't just do that. It's about evolution. It's about things changing at a rate that's understandable and getting better. So I want to talk a little bit. We understand this from the language perspective. I think we've got that now. So let's talk a little bit about communities. I love this picture because in many ways it describes the tech community to a T. Let's say these red folks are Ruby folks and the blue folks, they can be PHP and the green folks, JavaScript, sure, why not. Orange, they can be just Java. Yellow is .NET developers. You see what I'm saying. So they're all in the same place. They're all connected by these lines. They're connected because they're the tech community. They're all developers. Cool. But they're all in their own little circles and they're not communicating to each other. Why can't we do that? Why is that a problem? And I'll tell you why because people have these weird perspectives.  These are all things I've literally had people say to me that I've either worked with or had a meet-up or a conference. I think it's weird. Designers aren't developers. I've been developing for years. I would not be able to match my clothes if I was not married. And if you want to see pictures of before I was married, you can see how true this is.  But, you know, I can't design a web application that looks good. I can design a web application that functions. I can design a web application that works and it's got a white background with black text and it's in Times New Roman because that's the default. And that's how it goes. Then I get somebody who comes along and makes it pretty and looks good so that people might actually want to use it. This other one, sysadmins can live without developers. This was said to me by someone who was obviously a sysadmin at a cloud company. And it took me back a second and I said, all right, let's just say for example there's no developers. What do we need sysadmins for?  That's like saying the restaurant industry is great if we just get rid of all these people who are eating. Makes no sense. Business folks just don't understand developers. This one, small caveat. It is difficult. There's a cultural difference between the two groups. I personally, I don't care about making money. I don't think it's a big deal. I'm not going to go on an anti-capitalism rant. That's not what I'm here for. It's also not my politics. Don't really care. But this came along when someone who was running a business who was looking for developers came to a meet-up that I was running. And someone was like, I can't believe this guy. He walked in and he's wearing a suit. A suit? Are you kidding me? It's like so your issue isn't so much with the fact that he's business-y and not a developer. Your issue is with his fashion. It's not true. The guy is actually really smart. He had been a developer. He moved into business because he started his own startup. And when you start your own startup, you kind of have to do the business end too, as I've learned recently. And that might not be great. You might be super technical, but you just happened to also like three-piece suits. That's cool too. Whatever. Don't shun people out. Don't shut people out. Tech people are socially inept. All of them. This is my favorite. Someone said this to me after I gave a talk in a room, like this one, maybe a little bit bigger. It was like 2,000 people. And I was like, these people are all talking to each other after I talked up on stage. Where's the social ineptitude? I just laughed it off. Moved along. The idea is we need to share ideas.  I'm a Ruby developer. We should never identify ourselves that way. I'm PJ. You're in certain name here. And you learn. The more you cross-pollinate, the more you look at the different ways people do things, the more you learn, the better you can make the language that you focus on, the better you can make the community you focus on, and the better you make it, the cooler it can be. We can be giant, super awesome robot guy of the tech community or lady. I don't know the gender of this robot. I should not have assumed. This robot is awesome. We can be awesome. That's what we need to focus on. But we have to get rid of the biases. And what's one of the biggest biases we have? Throw all the languages out. Throw everything out. One of the biggest biases we have, the comparison of open source to enterprise. Because enterprise is, of course, the most horrible thing in the world. And open sources for hippies. Remember? Hipsters.  People that live in basements with neckbeards, even the ladies with neckbeards, trying to put together enough Linux packages so that we can maybe get enough food to feed our 250 cats that are living in our mom's house where we live in the basement of because that's what open source developers like. And then, of course, there's the enterprise developer. Business. Working in a small grade cubicle to build software for other people who work in other small grade cubicles. Just eking out of life so they can make enough money to retire comfortably to the suburbs.   I have a good friend. A guy named Chad Fowler. A really good guy. A really good guy. Met him in the Ruby community. He went to work for a place called Wunderlist. Wunderlist is an awesome way to keep track of things if you're like me and you forget things like you have a great thought and then it's gone. He was a Ruby developer when he started there. Then he realized that Microsoft was on the table. They were going to buy this company. So he started looking at VBE.net and C-Sharp and F-Sharp and a bunch of other technologies. And now he's like a full on polyglot who understands the value of doing all this thing and he is technically on paper an enterprise developer. Never seen him wear a tie and I don't know how much money he makes and he doesn't seem to care either. He still has a big bushy beard. Still loves open source. He's an enterprise developer. There's a lot of things that we can learn from the enterprise development community. Organization. Deadlines. The importance of making things as available as general as we possibly can for everyone. Following guidelines like accessibility. There's a lot of things that enterprise can learn from us like creativity. The idea of code is craft. The idea of making something with passion not just because it has to be made. So if we get along things will get better. Do it for the children. So what else? We need to dispel a few myths in general. There's no such thing as a rock star, wizard, ninja developer. We've all seen it on LinkedIn.   You'd be sleeping it's the middle of the day. But later tonight you'd be on a stage much bigger than this doing a lot louder things. If you were a ninja okay maybe that's possible because you can't see ninjas. There could be some in this room right now. And as far as I know regardless of the fact that I spent a lot of time at platform nine and three quarters last night don't judge me. There's no such thing as wizards in real life. We have to be cooler with each other. We have to stop thinking that we're the best of the best. We have to stop thinking that what we code is all about our identity. There's so much more to people. But the whole point of that intro slide I'm a dad. I'm a drummer. I also happen to code. Thank you very much.


OK, what's to talk about? So we're not gonna, we just want to cut to the chase. Scye, e Molec, the stuff in the programa. So let's get on with it. Surveillance. Why were doing surveillance in this talk? 1983. If you said to someone's surveillance, this is what they will think about. They wouldn't think about the global technical surveillance that's going on at the moment. Facebook. So. Are you a target? Mae'n cael ei wneud. Mae'r hanes ar诵ydd ffyrdd ymlaen. Mae'n cael ei wneud. Mae'r hanes ymlaen o Defcon o run Defcon. Yn amlwg, mae'r ddigon. Mae'r ardal yn y rhaid, yn ysgrifio y Zach Francken, ardifenni'r Defcon i wneud i'r 15 yma. A dyna'r Defcon yma, mae'n rhaid i'n rhaglenu. Yna'r Michelle Madigan. Yna'r chyfnod i'r ddechrau. Yna'r ddigon yma, o'r cyffredin cyfnod yn ystod o gyfnod hon o'r ddechrau, ac mae'n syniad o'n ddweud cyfnod o'r ddweud cyfnod. Felly, mae'r cyffredin cyffredin cyffredin ymlaen llawer yn y gallu gweithio. A o'r hosdol yn yr ymdniad. Yn ni'n ddweud, dwi'n ddweud eich ddweud o'r odd o gyffredin cyffredin, ac mae'n ddweud yn y ddweud o'r odd, dwi'n ddweud eich ddweud o'r ddweud, Alw, mae'n gwybod yn ystod o'r ddweud o'r ddweud o'r ddweud o'r ddweud. Ond mae'n ddweud o'r ddweud. Yn gyfnod, mae'n ddweud. Diolch yn ddweud o'r cyfnodd yma. Mae'n ddweud o'r rhai adegau 3 letter, ym MF, FBI, CIA, CFC. Dwi'n fawr, mae'n fawr i'n ddweud o'r ddweud o'r creu cyfnoddau. Onw, munawl rwy'r cyfnod cyfnod o'r baiwyr o'r bywch gynghwil gyda'r gwybodaeth cyfnod, wedi bod yn aelod yn ni gefnogi, ydy'r gwrs wedi bod y Gwbwytaeth Cyfnod yn ddifus. Mae'n amlygu'r cyfnod ymlaen wedi'u llwyso ar gyfer y cyfnod cyfnod cyfnod gyfoedd. A'r cyfnod cyfnod cyfnod cyfnod ar gyfer cyfnod cyfnod cyfnod cyfnod cyfnod cyfnod cyfnod cyfnod. ydych yn llwyffaeth, mae'n llwyffaeth sydd wedi llwyffaeth fel ystafell. A'r unrhyw fydd y cwmaint o'r unrhyw fydd yn fwylau. Mae'r unrhyw fydd yn ffwrdd o unrhyw mewn cyfgwyddechrau a'r unrhyw fydd yn fyrdech chi'n gydag, mae'n bwysig i'n ei gweithio chi, mae'n gwahanol ei ffyrdd. felly mae'r cychwyn wedi gweld fawr cywelwyddo i gilytio lleidwyr cyfan hwnnw teimlo sy'n 2,300 poelaad. Wel hwnnw'n gwneud cyn ddefnyddiaeth, mae hynny 200goen. Rha i gael. Roedd y brin sydd gyda'r ffordd yr hyn yn ddechrau hyn, mae'r cyfeithio cyfan yw ddod, a'r cyflos sydd hefyd cyrraeddwr yn yr cyfathuniaid. Mae'r cyfrifio cyftyr yng nghyddedig yw 10 oed o'r eich cyfrifio o'r eich cyfrifio o'r ddod. ac wrth gyda siŵr, yn gyflawn i'r gweithio o'r targi, neu yn ymddangos i'r targi, y cilio ychydig o'r gweithio. Byddwch chi ddweud y gallwn cilio y tro. Felly, o ond, rhan, showc na'r cymharae, mae'r cynd ymddangos i'r gymharae o'r gweithio. Aser, rhai, mae'n bwysig o'r gweithio, yw y gallwn ni'n ei gwybod, roedd fan ei cyflawn o'r gweithio. Mae'r gwahanol ymarfaudd yma y tro maenffredau ar gyfer gwahanol. Mae'r g�beth, y ffalo ddiddordeb, a'r gweithio. Mŵr llawer yn y gyflennu. Mae'r ganddo fydd gan mynd ar gyfer gwahanol, ond mae'n rhaid o'r gwasanaethau ar gyfer gwahanol. Mae ydy'n gweithio bod yw'r gyrdd yn tynnwydol o'r rhaid yn rhoi'r cyfrnwyllt. F дан ddiddordeb ac yn droi'r cyfrnwydol. Mae'n gyrdd yn ansio'r cyfrnwyd. ac mae'n gweithio. Ac mae hefyd yn gwneud hynny'n dwylo. Felly dyna'r cyfrifwyl statik, mae'n gweithio'r brifwynt ynchynig. Felly mae'r cyfrifwyl fawr, mae'r ysgol Cymru Fylltwr yn Washington, ac mae'r cyfrifwyl mae'n gweithio'r cyfrifwyl, mae'r cyfrifwyl ffioedd mae'r cyfrifwyl statik, mae'n cyfrifwyl ffioedd yn gweithio'r cyfrifwyl. Ac mae'n gweithio'r cyfrifwyl statik, People are like, Oh what's with the giant cameras and the skylights? And no one goes through the front door, they always go through the back door on the adjacent street. They can also use static covert cameras again with modern technology They can fit a camera monitor remotely and pick up the sacks as they leave Or they can use a mobile observation post. Now, I will cover this briefly. This is an ex FBI 1989 Dodge surveillance vehicle. That's some guy that's.. Mae'r bwrdd yn olyg i, a oedd yn fyddio'n i'n fwyaf i ddweud yn y YouTube. Yn y peth yma, mae'n ymdw i'r antennau.  Wrth fe wneud xi'n gilydd wnaethwg i'n f théol. Mae'n ffrin oes fan! Felly mae'n ffrin i'w fann. Felly mae'n ffrin oes fan. Felly mae'n ffrin oes fan i wneud y popty. Mae'n ffrin oes y twel formulasu. O wneud eich llwys providernau. Yn ddweud y llwys providernau, yw y dyma o'r llwys providernau a bydd yna yno'r teimlo sydd. Mae yna eich llwys providernau o gyffredin ar gael ychydig. Mae'r americyns ar witnesses.  So a very limited time, because obviously this the operator is at risk, however you know it works. Now in the programme we said these techniques have been around for years they've changed a little this is a film made in 1974 by the Brits and shared with our American friends under our special relationship so special yn fan hynna'r fath. Mae ydy', wrth i'n ei gennym. Mae gynhyrchu y gafod yn rhoi'r bwysig. Mae gennym i'n cael ei gafod. Mae gennym i'n gweithio eich bod y sgwrt yn dod i'r gysylltu. The target passes the second car who in turn sends the information that will enable the third car to take up the chase. Brun Brown, mae'n gweithio. Let's look at that sequence again as seen from the target's rear-view mirror. He pulls away and moves off down the road. Nothing to arous his suspicions. And at approximately one kilometre away from home, the green magnum pulling out to take control of the follow appears as part of the normal traffic pattern. Although he has seen nothing, the target has been under surveillance most of the time. And the key point there is under surveillance. They are not following you. They are not right behind you. Oop, thank you. Um, so within the follow, especially in the vehicle follow, you can lose the vehicle. It doesn't matter if you lose the vehicle, especially if you're on a long operation, it's better to lose the target than compromise the operation and make them aware they're under surveillance. Now, you heard them talking on the radios, obviously very old. Nowadays, for brevity, we use brevity codes. This makes it easier for the team to communicate. It also hides things like locations and directions of travel, as you'll see, because if they're not using encrypted communications, you can intercept this, and anyone listening might be aware of what's going on. So here we see standby, that's the target out of his house, wearing a red baseball cap, glued up grey trousers and black shoes, target getting into his car. Now I'm moving off, turning left toward the junction of High Street and Water Lane. Now anyone listening and picking that up on the radio knows exactly where that person is and what direction they're going. So we use brevity codes, 7-7-1 from Charlie-1, blue on grey, black shoes, red cap, complete braver 1, mobile 9-1, yellow 2. Sounds gobbledygook, but the team understands. The last part there is using what we call spot codes, which are on spot maps, and again, for ease of reference for the team to be able to give the location of a target in a direction of travel, rather than saying that they're on this road, travelling towards the village of Earl Shilton, as you can see here. We can simply say, at red 6, intending right, committed 9-1, red 5. Everyone understands where the target is and what direction they're heading. So this is kind of gets to something. We have spot maps made up for the entire operational area. Everybody, every car, of how many, what is it like, how many cars? Potentially 8 vehicles and 16 operators. Yeah, so you're looking at binders full of information rapidly put together with a big team. This is not a cheap thing to do if you're doing it right. It involves lots of teamwork and when you can make a lot of toast, you can help break that team up and thus ruin their effectiveness. So what are we looking for behind as if we think we're under surveillance? Obviously they're going to be in a vehicle. If you're in Texas and they're all driving pickup trucks, they will be driving pickup trucks. If you're in a city, they will be in a sedan car, they will blend in with the environment, they will not be driving big-ass SUVs with government plates. Except in DC? Except in DC. Here is an extract from a local paper in Iowa and here we see, just in one state, the large number of license plates issued for covert work. This is because in a professional team, an agency level team, they will hold multiple license plates which they can change. And again, if you raise the heat state of that vehicle enough that they think it needs changing, they will change the license plate. This can't be done at the side of the road because someone unscrewing a license plate and screwing another one in, someone's going to call cops and you don't want to have to explain what you're doing. So they will do this and they will have to leave the follow while it happens. Now, as we said, they will not drive directly behind you. They will use other vehicles as natural cover. There will be two or three vehicles behind you. They will use parallel routes to get ahead of you. But in America, you've made it really easy. You've come up with a block system in most of your cities. So here we have a standard FBI floating box. The target vehicle in red and the direction of travel. So the target vehicle turns, the messages relay to all of the team and at the next opportunity, all the vehicles turn. The target continues, the other vehicles come in behind and the target is still within the floating box. So pulling up to a traffic light and then just as it's turning to red, driving through, will not stop this because there will be someone on a parallel route that can pick you up. So how do we get around this? How do we conduct anti-surveillance? Now a quick point here. Anti-surveillance is what you do as an individual to try and detect a surveillance team. Counter surveillance is when you use a third party to do that. So me as a good guy, I have my own good guy surveillance team, follow me to see if they can identify the bad guy surveillance. That's counter surveillance. When you're doing anti-surveillance, it's you on your own. And when you add a fourth team, it's counter, counter, counter surveillance. Just to confuse things. Turtle's all the way down. So quite simply, you can do simple things like vary your route, use public transport and I don't mean from outside your house, drive somewhere, park your car, get on a bus, get in a cab. Because buses and cabs in most cities around the world can go places where normal vehicles can't. So if you're in a cab or a bus, they are not going to be able to follow you down this road. Also they have to make a decision. If you get on a bus, why are you getting on that bus? Are you meeting someone on that bus? Are you doing something nefarious? Do they need to put someone on there with you? At that point, you are in control. You can observe everyone that gets on and watch them and make note of them. You need to be observing it all the time. And of course. So one of the things we're doing here, right, is we're switching up the tempo on the surveillance team. We're putting them on the back foot. We're forcing them to make decisions quickly that are awkward. 50-50 decisions. And if we're lucky, they'll make a 50-50 decision and it'll come out bad for them and good for us. We'll spot them because they're too close so we'll see them over and over again. And obviously if they do try to follow you down here, they'll allow it to get stopped by this.  We can use natural choke points. Now here we have two villages circled and if you drive round the road around the lock here, it's about 47 miles, the roads are really crappy and it takes a long time. However, between the two is a ferry again. If you're in an area where this sort of thing is in the lakes area, in New York with car ferries, use this to your advantage. If you get on here again, the decision comes, are they going to drive 47 miles to try and catch you on the side or are they going to put one, two, three vehicles on here with you? At that point again, you're in control. You can see and look at everyone that's on there. Another technique which surveillance operators are taught to recognise on a map before it happens is something called a long look. This is where you have a long straight road with no parallel roads and when the target hears this road, they have a long look behind them so they could see lots of vehicles if they're in convoy, especially if it's not a very busy road. Again, a lot easier in the States. I sat in the middle of the road here and took a picture one way. This was eight miles long, this straight. There were no parallel roads. I saw one of the cars in four hours. So a surveillance team behind me on this road, I would hope I'd recognise them. The other thing about that is you're forcing the team to also do resource management so they're going to have to put one car down that road because they can't put all of them down that road right after you. It sticks out, right? It breaks the pattern. And that's the thing. If we can figure out how to choke them and break the pattern, we're going to spot them. We can also use technology to our advantage if you've got someone that can assist you. What you can do is have them at a choke point, say the morning, and they video every car that comes through before and after you for a period of 10 minutes. Later in the day at another geographic different location, again, do the same. Then you get two lists of licence plates, compare the two, and if a licence plate turns up on both lists, potentially that's a surveillance vehicle. Technology can help us. So the open ALPR programme, Automatic Licence Place Reader. So this is a bit of footage I took with an iPhone. In real time, there is the image in the bottom right hand corner. That's me running the image file through the software. Now the software reads the image file frame by frame. So you will have multiple instances of the same licence plate. So, again, we can use technology. We can run the software, extract it to JSON, convert that into a SQL file. That's not playing. Thank God we recorded the demo. Yeah, and that is recorded. So the other thing, there's other tools that do this, Amazon's Facial Recognition Project. Recognition. If you can do it for cars, you can do it for faces, right? So, out of the box, SQL Lite on Cali doesn't support regular expressions. So we download and install a Perl regular expressions module, read in the SQL file, run a standard query. We're using a regex here for the standard UK current licence plate, which is letter, letter, number, number, letter, letter, letter. And as you'll see in the first set of results, you get some licence plates which are quite similar. That's due to miseries in the software where the image might be slightly blurred and it can't recognise it. So to get round this, you can just do a standard SQL count and where you've got two similar licence plates, the one with a high account will be the real number. So we've now driven to where we're going to meet our contact, to pick up our data, and we're going to park. And again, parking is a choke point. You're in control, you choose where to park. They have to decide whether they're going to park in the same car park as you because you may spot them. They may, especially if you go into a multi-story car park again, that's a choke point where you can observe. Now there's a misconception which comes from law enforcement and the military that you must always, when you're doing this stuff, park your vehicle in reverse for a quick getaway. Surveillance operators are trained to blend in. The grey man. The grey man. So, if everyone knows you parked as they are here and you reverse park to someone that's surveillance aware, automatically your eye is drawn to that vehicle, why is it parked differently? Again, we can see here, and to someone that is more observant than the rest of us, there's the one that's parked wrong. And how about that one? Anyone spot the one car that's parked in the opposite direction? It's right in the middle of the screen, dude. Right in the middle of the screen. So, yeah. Again, if you're in a cab, you can get the cab to stop wherever you want. Drop me here. And if there's no parking, what do they do? If it's in a restricted parking area and they abandon their vehicle, where you could lose their vehicle. Explain that one to your boss. And so what we're doing is we're adjusting the tempo, right? You jump out of the cab with the unexpected at the cross drive, which we've all done, I hope. I mean, this is Vegas. And you basically force them to go from transition from a car tail to a foot tail, right? And they don't necessarily have assets that close and that quickly available. So it's going to mess things up for them. It's going to make them make bad decisions.  We said they're professionals, but they're also human. And humans do make mistakes. So if you see maps in there, you may see other paraphernalia. And this is a true story told to me by a friend. Two surveillance instructors, not students instructors. We're visiting students on a covert observation post course. And they parked their vehicle and went on foot. Someone reported the vehicle as being suspicious. So the police turned up. The police looked in the vehicle and sticking out from under the seat was a handset. Not the sort of thing you see in a car in the UK. So they waited until they came back. And yes, explain to them what we're doing with our special card that says, please don't arrest us. We're doing surveillance training. We're cool. We're not criminals. We have a card. It's cool. Yeah, honest. And one of the clarification questions we were asked when we submitted the talk is, you know, why old school vehicle surveillance? You can put a tracker on there. Well, yes, you can. But if they're a technical adversary, they can detect that. If they detect that, they know they're under surveillance. Also, yes, it's great. He stopped at the mall and I'm a mile away. So he's out of his car and in the mall you get there. Where is he? The whole point of vehicle surveillance is to have enough people in contact with the target so that when he stops, you can deploy on to foot and continue to follow purely and simply. The point of surveillance isn't to know where people go. It's to observe their behavior. What we're looking for is to see them doing the deed that made them interesting in the first place. So technical surveillance, metadata surveillance is great. Jimmy goes to fries every Tuesday and buys a hamburger. But frankly, that's not what we care about. We want to know who he shares his hamburger with. So we're out of the car. We're walking along. They're out on foot. What do these people look like?  They always look like this.  With short hair? Yeah. And big watches. So if you saw these two guys in the street, you'd think, oh my god, I'm under surveillance. Well, they've got earpieces that I can see. This guy has a wire from his radio sticking out his shirt. This guy's got his push-to-talk button sticking out his sleeve. And this guy has a holster. So he's armed, unlikely to be surveillance. If these guys were following you, they are doing overt surveillance. They want you to know they're there. They're not there to see what you're doing. They're there so you can see them doing you. So these three people were part of a UK TV show. One is ex-GCHQ. One is ex-MI6. And one is an ex-MI5 surveillance operator. So who's who? Not the grey man, the grey person. They will use female operators because we're all fixated on short, big, tall white man. You won't pay a second thought to this person sat on the bus next to you. Also, for newbies into surveillance, they fall into the habit of the unofficial uniform, where they all dress so differently that they all dress the same, wearing black shirts. That never happens.  What are you talking about? They wear khaki shorts and black T-shirts. That's their summer clothes. So they're on foot. They still need to communicate. They will have an earpiece. This will be a wireless earpiece. You will not see anything sticking out of their ear. If you've got big ears like me, you won't see anything. You might, if you're looking, you get close enough see the retractor stem on the earpiece. You need to get signals to the earpiece. So they wear an induction loop around the neck. This also has a microphone in it to transmit the data. The antenna is normally worn up the centre of the back and across the shoulders in a T-shape for the best attenuation. And the press to talk switch or the press to switch doesn't hang down your sleeve. It will be secreted somewhere else inside your clothing where it can't be seen. The whole kit is worn in a vest with the radio on one side, the battery on the other side to reduce bulk. So this is quite a lot of equipment that they're wearing. And of course, they have to wear clothing to conceal it. Now talking about clothing, they will utilise changes of appearance. Now, very old photographs. Do you love me a good Stasi archive? Yeah, these are... This is where I get all my fashion tips. These are taken from the Menor Archives, from the Stasi, which was the East German secret police, who had a huge surveillance capability. Now, even nowadays an agency level surveillance team will utilise wigs, plain glass glasses, false mustaches. You think it's a joke? It works. It's all about breaking up the outline, right? I mean, from the head up, these two guys are totally different, right? It's the same shirt, but the outlines are different. And we're not really good at typing all the people around us. We make this little outline around people and that's about it. So all you have to do is break that outline and you can disappear into a crowd pretty easy. Now, one of the problems as a surveillance operator doing change of appearance is you have a limited time to do this. And people forget. You know, surveillance operators like goons. Any goons in here? Yeah? Yeah, there's a couple goons in here. You spend all day on your feet, so you've got a pair of shoes that you like and are comfortable. Yeah? They're fabulous.  There's no place like home. There's no place like home. So they'll change everything else, but their shoes won't change. So remember we said you're on public transport, you're being observant. This is what you're looking for, the small details that people don't change. How often do you really look at a man's shoes? Thanks, Josh. Watchers, again, people like their watch, especially ex-military, nice, glow-in-the-dark watch, things that they forget to change. And the next time you see someone that looks different with the same watch, make note. Jewelry, again, wedding rings, necklaces, women with earrings. So they're behind you. I don't know why not. They're behind you. So what are they doing behind you? They will be conducting, most likely, a standard ABC pattern. So we've got the target in red. Directly behind the target is the guy that is in control. Only one person is ever in control and has eyeball on the target. Behind him is the person that is backing, that is in a position to take over control, and on the opposite side of the road is the trail, slightly behind the target, so they can observe at a distance. You can't do this with one or two people, okay? So if you think you could like, I'm going to follow that person. Yeah, you're following them into a trap. So, the target turns the corner. Now, has the target continued to walk or has the target stopped to wait to see who follows him around the corner? The trail being on the opposite side of the road can see this. They can pass the message that, no, the target has continued to walk up the road. So, the guy in control crosses the road. The trail crosses and becomes control. The guy in control is now the trail and the guy backing is now backing it. You still have maintained control of the target. You are still imposing surveillance. And the other 15 guys in the team, 14 guys in the team, they, again, maybe on parallel routes, maybe further back and can swap and change so that you can limit your exposure to the target. Now, from our perspective, we want to conduct anti-surveillance against these guys and girls. So, we use the surroundings to our example. When we're doing anti-surveillance, we want to identify them without letting them know we are trying to identify them because that gives the game up. You want to know they're there so that you can either lose them to do what you need to do or do what you need to do when they can't see you. So, we can use the environment in subways, the sort of mirrors you see in the UK in the underground. Walking along the street, window shopping. Window shopping is a great thing because windows are reflective. You're not looking for who's on the same side of the road as you. You're looking who's on the opposite side of the road. You're looking for the trail because they may become complacent, not being directly behind the target, not to rotate as much, and if you keep seeing the same person on the other side of the road, potentially that is someone that has you under surveillance. And so, this is kind of one of the things you see, a pattern you see. So, when the CIA is training people to do what they call counter-surveillance routes which are really anti-surveillance routes, one of the things they do is you've got to really learn that urban terrain. You have to learn where those mirrors are. You need to learn what windows work for you, where the choke points are so on and so forth. So, they really do invest a lot in having case officers really, really well, know how to really well run their anti-surveillance routes. And to the point where case officers are like, I've been running anti-surveillance routes for three months now. When do I get my job? So, you are in control here. You choose the environment. You choose the place. Again, if you're in a large mole, get on the escalators. It's natural for people to stand on the escalator and turn around and look around them and look behind them and talk to their friends. Gives you the opportunity to see who's one story below coming up. Now, we all carry mobile phones, so why would you want to use one of these? User payphone. It gives you a reason to stop. It gives you a reason to look around you. Surveillance operators are trained. If the target stops, they need to have a reason for being there. So, they don't just stop and turn their back and pretend they're not there. You know, they'll go into a shop or they'll go up to a store or they'll walk to a phone and pick it up and pretend they're doing something else. But you've already used that. They've got to find somewhere else. This is called cover for action, by the way. It's basically the reason you're there. You all know the answer to this one. It's you have... I'm here, I have a switch and I'm here to put the stuff inside your network. You have a cover for action. There's a reason you are in that environment and it's natural and smooth. So, break that. So, again, we can use natural choke points when we're out walking. You know the area.  So, anyone else walking down that street behind you is someone you're interested in. You could have areas where there is only one point to get from A to B that they have to transit through again. They would then have to take the long way around or push everyone through there which gives you the opportunity to observe. Things that are less obvious. Most guys don't like to go in here unless they're with their wife or girlfriend. So, if I go in here and another guy comes in, I'm interested... Well, yeah. I'm interested in him. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Well played, sir. Well played. Indeed. But they have women in their teams so they could put a woman in there and that's not suspicious. Yep, but she's not following me in here. Yeah? Again, make them, make decisions. Why are you going in here? It may be obvious, but it may not be. In the Cold War times, these were places where packages were placed for people to go in and retrieve and collect data because people don't like to follow people into the men's room. So use it to your advantage. Again, if someone comes in there, it just gives you the opportunity to make a note of them and what they're wearing. Elevators. Firstly, would you get into an elevator with these two people? They seem so unhappy. They're going to have a fight. So strange. Again, they have to make that decision. Do they put someone in a small metal box with you? At which point, they are this far away and you can have a really good look at them. Also, if you get in an elevator and no one gets in behind you, press three or four floors and get off at your floor. And no matter what you see in the films, they are not going to run up 15 stories worth of stairs to beat you to the top. It doesn't happen. It also gives you a chance to make toast. Engage with them. If there's someone in there that's a bit suspicious, you think it might be a surveillance operator, you turn to them and this is the key thing in your best British accent. You say, excuse me, my good man, my watch appears to have stopped. Could you tell me the time, please? But why a British accent? I mean, we have awesome accents too. Have you ever noticed how in Hollywood movies all the villains are played by Brits? Baby, we just sell right. We're more focused. More precise. We're always one step ahead. And we're obsessed by power. Now, Jaguars. Oh, yes. It's good to be bad. Oh. Enough said? Didn't know. Thank you. So, we move on to hostile environments. This isn't Afghanistan or downtown LA. Again, we're using the environment to advantage. This is Agent X's favorite hostile environment. No one's surveilling me. Well, they are, but I'm wanting them to. Remember, they're wearing all this kit. They have to wear enough clothing to cover this kit. They ain't getting in the pool with you. Or the Turkish spa, by the way. It's also really good. We can always use misdirection. Again, they are looking for you to have interactions with people. They are trying to identify who you are meeting. Use this to your advantage. So, when you meet someone in the street, shake hands with them. Or when I'm meeting my friend Trevor for a milkshake. I normally give him a big bro hug. Yeah. Or a full on Jason Street awkward hug. Or stand next to someone that's more of a target than you are. Yeah, that's a classic trick. This worked for me for years. Again, use the environment. Go into a cafe. You control the environment. You can choose where to sit. You can see everyone that comes in. Make a note of everyone that comes in. When you read a paper, when you finish, take that paper, fold it up and put it on the side and leave. Put it in an awkward kind of special spot between the planters, right? Yeah, so it doesn't get tidied away. They now have a decision. Has that paper got something in of importance? Do they leave the whole team watching that cafe to see who comes and picks up that paper? So awkward. So awkward. Here's a pro tip, by the way.  So when they do find it, Or they split the team in half and half watched the cafe and half continue to follow you.  We can also use their techniques. Remember from the start of the thing we gave a description of what the target looks like. So the surveillance team had been following you for six hours and all they're looking for is a red hat. Yeah, you can use change of appearance.     And then you change your appearance. Maybe not your political persuasion, but just your appearance. Now you're saying this is old school, which is where we are.  This shit's happening on Tuesday everywhere. So here we have Richard and Cynthia Murphy. They're so wholesome looking. So wholesome. They love barbecues. They had two small children. They lived in a small town in upstate New York. The neighbours thought they were lovely. They like hot dogs. Come on. They were actually Vladimir and Lydia Guria. They were deep cover Russian operatives that had been in the country since either the late 80s or the early 90s. Their children were born in the country. The Russians were playing the long game. They came on the radar of the FBI. They started an operation against these people. And as a result, they identified a total of 10 deep cover Russian operatives. Look at how unhappy all these people are. That's because they got caught. They were conducting surveillance against these people for nearly 10 years. Surveillance is a long game because you want them. You want their handlers. You want their handlers, bosses. You want everyone involved in that team. You want to know how they're operating, right? Because everyone in the surveillance games is playing by the same playbooks, right? So the way the Soviets, sorry, the Russians surveil or the way we surveil is exactly the same, right? It's the same team make-ups. It's the same stuff because it's really like a bicycle. It's got an optimal form. We're just going to run with it. There's not a lot of crazy change-ups that they run. Now, an interesting part of this operation was afterwards, after they deported them all, the FBI released video footage of surveillance they had taken. Now, we start with this one. This is a very strange angle. This is a covert camera in a tree pointing directly down. This is someone picking up a package from a dead letter box. Now, when you pick up a package from a dead letter box, it's meant to be quick. Not rooting around in the shrubbery.  Now, although they used technology here with the covert camera, it was the surveillance team that got them to that point and I had identified where this was happening for them to then use technology to their advantage. And again, with a dead letter box, don't use the same one because when you go back, there'll be a camera. So second one, again, this is totally normal. This is a totally normal thing. We all do this. We all go for walks and then we go and we hide under bridges and take something out of that because that's normal. Unless you're playing Billy Gove with your kids. It's right here. So in the next couple bits of video, I want you to look at how sloppy they got. We all have seen these techniques. These are pros. Literally, their life is on the line and they've been doing this for 10 years. This is what pros look like. This is a brush pass. This is meant to be two people carrying the same item in a busy crowded street. Because that's normal, right? Like, I mean, I just do that all the time. I find a tunnel in New York and I'm just like, hey man, here's my groceries. You got some groceries? That would be great. Oh, this guy. So they need to go back to school. That wasn't slick. Now this guy is even better. This is a subway. Just hanging out. Yeah, we're not really acting suspicious. I want, no, he's not coming. No, I can't. Because we all hang out in the subways of New York, right? Like, you've got to take the subway. You don't even want to be on the subway anyway. You're not going to hang out there. Yeah, so the FBI got bored, didn't they? And they cut the footage. They edited the footage. I don't know how long the guy was loitering in there. But then eventually they start the footage again. And I'm here. Quick adjust to the clothing and we're off to do our brush pass. Again, slick in a busy, yeah, no. And again, all these camera angles are taken from COVID cameras that we... And remember, it's the FBI. They're inherently bureaucracy, right? So somebody had to like fill out paperwork to be like, hey, can we put a camera in a public place and surveil? And you'd have to get some lawyers involved and so on and so forth. So a lot of this stuff isn't, you know, it took a long time to set up. It's pretty sloppy on the part of the Russians. Now, remember earlier we said, you control the environment. Go into a cafe where you can see, you can observe, you are in control. So the two guys in the middle of the frame are other targets, of course, right? Now, what they're actually doing isn't overly suspicious in a cafe passing something between two bags. However, this footage is taken from a COVID camera in a bag placed on a table about six feet away pointing directly at them. Huh, no one does that. So this thing about being observant and looking and using your surroundings, but it also shows the length that a surveillance team will go to to get close enough to get the evidence they need. So this is the other thing. They're putting operators really close to the target. I mean, this is burning distance, right? At this point, I mean, this is, the person's leg is one of the operators and if you watch the full footage, there's other people that obviously have interactions with the leg. So there's like three FBI people in here. And they didn't spot them. And they didn't spot them. Bad on them. So I say we can't cover everything in 45 minutes. So in summary, use your environment.  You choose where you want to go and make them follow you, not you, be where they're waiting for you. Right. You can set the tempo because they're following you. You're the leader. Set the tempo and then change it on them. They'll hate it. They won't like it. Make them make decisions. Again, make them make bad decisions. So they are showing out. They are making themselves obvious to you as the target. The best one is if you can divide and conquer, you either get them totally looking in the wrong direction or you get the team to split so you only have half the amount of people operating against you. Always make toast. Always be making toast. That's the key thing here.  That never happens.  You're buying bath salts with bitcoins. Whatever. If you are ever in doubt and you're in that position, abort. You may be under surveillance, but abort so that you don't then draw someone else into their circle. Now everything that we've said in this talk is in the public domain. I haven't given away anything that's super secret. I haven't knowingly broken the official secrets act. That's important for you. I'm not covered by that. So please don't arrest me when I try to leave the country because that doesn't happen over here. All this stuff is public and you read these books, they all cover the same stuff. That concludes the talk. As we have run just over, we will take questions but we'll do it in the chill out area so that the next speaker can get on here. Thank you very much for listening. Thank you. Follow us on Twitter. Follow us right now.


Statistics and Excel. Normal Distribution Calories Data Example. Got data? Let's get stuck into it with Statistics and Excel. You're not required to, but if you have access to OneNote we're in the icon. Left-hand side, OneNote presentation, 1632 Normal Distribution Calories Example tab. We're also uploading transcripts to OneNote so that you can go to the View tab, Immersive Reader Tool, change the language if you so choose being able to then either read or listen to the transcript in multiple different languages, tying into the video presentations with the timestamps. OneNote desktop version here in prior presentations. We've been looking at how we can represent, present, demonstrate different data sets using both mathematical calculations like the mean or average, the quartiles, the median, the mode, as well as with pictorial representations like the box and whiskers, like the histogram. The histogram being the primary tool we typically envision when thinking about the spread of the data and we can use terms to describe the spread of the data on a histogram like it's skewed to the left, the data is skewed to the right. We then thought about lines and curves that can be represented with formulas that can approximate different data sets depending on the circumstances. If we can approximate a data set with a line or curve that has a formula related to it, that would be great because it gives us more predictive power over whatever the data set is representing. We looked at different lines, curves that might have a formula related to it and could represent things in actual nature in real life, including the uniform distribution, binomial distribution, Poisson distribution, exponential distribution, now continuing on with one of the most famous of course of them all, the normal distribution or the bell curve. Remembering, not all data set will conform to any of these distributions. It could be a data set that's too chaotic to conform to a simple line or curve that has an equation for it. However, we have observed in nature that many times things do roughly conform to these patterns and if we can find one that does, then the formula and the curve can be useful. With the bell curve, we've thought about many things in nature like heights and weights and so on often conform to a bell curve type shape. So what we typically want to do is think about what we're looking at. Does the thing we're looking at conform to one of these distributions? We might test out the data to see if that is indeed the case and then we might plot out the curve to give us more predictive power. This time we're going to be looking at calories. Now if you're looking at calorie counts, if we were kind of tracking our calorie counts for example, you would expect that it would follow some kind of normal distribution intuitively because you would think that my calorie count would have to be somewhere pretty steady and not be going too much on the high end or low end at any given time, given the fact that our weight has to be maintaining somewhat constant. So once we have our data, we can sort it and put a table around it which we'll do in Excel. We can sort it by the date or we can sort it by low to high, high to low, this one currently being sorted from high to low. So what's going to be different about this data set than some of the examples that we have had in the past are that because the calories is a pretty small unit of measure then we're going to run into this issue of should we be putting the calorie counts into buckets so that we can better compare our actual calorie count to what we're going to plot when we plot the calorie counts out. So this is going to be a little bit different in that way to what we've seen before with the plotting of the bell curve information for the calories. So our data is on the left. We're going to start with the normal kind of stuff that we do. Does this conform to a bell curve? Well let's do some of our normal calculations. Let's take the mean or average. This would be the formula in Excel to do so. It's at 2189. That would be summing all of the data up and divided by the number of count. Let's take the standard deviation then. This would be the formula for Excel, so that helps us with the spread 815. Let's take the median. That would be the one where we sort all the data. We pick the one in the middle and we're picking the 2062 because this number is fairly close to the mean. The closer it is to the mean, the more likely that it might be conforming to a bell curve. So that's an indication to us the bell curve might be useful. Here's the formula for the median and then the mode. The mode is 10776. Now this one is a little further off than the mean but it's still fairly close. So we're thinking that possibly a bell curve could still be something that would approximate this data set. This would be the mode. Remember that the mode is the one where it's going to have the number appear multiple times and might be more or less useful depending on the type of data that we're looking at. If we're looking at data such as this data which has the unit of measures pretty small, so you might not have the mode where multiple numbers show up that are exactly the same as you would if you had a smaller unit of measure that you were that you were looking at then it would be more likely that the mode would be representing that kind of middle point. Now the next thing we might do is plot this information into a histogram to see if it looks like a bell curve. So here's a histogram of the data just taking this data set putting it into a histogram in Excel. Excel created the buckets from 0 to 730, 730 to 740 calories and so on. The middle point is here which would be some the mean we recall was 2189. So it looks like it's kind of conforming to a bell curve. Remember that the last example that we looked at because we had a whole lot of data points we were looking at heights then the data looked a lot more bell shaped but if you don't have as many data points then it's not going to be as bell shaped but we would still expect that it would look like clumped in the middle and then moving out towards the sides here as the look in shape of something like a histogram which might give us more confidence that this could be conforming to a bell curve scenario so that we can plot a bell curve. So let's plot the bell curve we're going to say all right let's take our x's let's take our p of x's that we will then calculate the question is where should we start with our x's. So the x's we're talking about calories now so you would think you can't have zero calories because they'd have to be just positive calories you cannot have negative calories however in theory remember that the bell curve goes in if indefinitely infinitely on to the left and the right so let's


All right, moving on to the next thing. Man, Michael Jackson, the legend himself. This dude, I've been telling people for years, people gotta put some respect on Buddy Name. All right. This guy, he has a clip that is going to send me viral at the moment. And I wanna play this clip from Michael Jackson and y'all tell me what y'all think. All right, so he said he generated a lot of money for Sony several billions and they really think my mind's always just on music. All right. And it usually is, but they never thought that this performer myself would outthink them. No, I'm a free agent. I just owe Sony one more album. It's just a box set really with two new songs, which I've written ages ago. So I'm leaving Sony a free agent owning half of Sony. I own half of Sony's publishing in and I'm leaving them and they're very angry at me because of it, but I just did good business, you know? The way he said that, bro, they were kind of like a flex and it did get the same time. I'm just doing good business, you know? Well, I love that he said they didn't think that I would outthink them a performer, all right? Thinking these artists can't fool us. They're the ones that we fool. It says a lot about how artists perceive and are looked at, but let me finish everything that he's saying. So the way they get revenge. The way they get revenge is to try and destroy my album. So, yeah, man, I think, like, many people have heard that Michael has owned like half of Sony at one point, but what I didn't know, was Michael's out here talking about it like that. Yeah, same. I thought it was something we learned like after his, you know? Yeah, I ain't nobody was out here like just speaking on the stage in front of people. I mean, I imagine that didn't make people feel any better about it, right? And there's a couple of other clips, though, like we want to talk about the genius, not only Michael, but the genius that artists have the ability to tap into when it comes to the industry as a whole, entrepreneurship as a whole, because one thing we're big on is like the money outside music or beyond just the streams itself, right? Whether that's merch, whether that shows in different types of experience. We want to keep pushing that because a lot of artists aren't talking about that enough or people aren't talking about that or encouraging artists to do that enough. So even as we grow, we'll have like more content creator entrepreneurs, artists, entrepreneurs are figuring out people are getting that money because I'm interested in myself. But man, I want to share a couple of things with Michael while we're on this topic because I mean, brother's really doing it, right? As a matter of fact, I'm not going to even play this one clip. I'm going to find this other clip and you're going to be like, man, this guy Michael was something different. But the clip I was going to play was just did Gregory having people read off some of the artists that Michael owned, like The Beatles, Eminem, Beyonce. Hey, have a Sony, man, just pick a name, right? But it's another clip I'm about to pull up. Check this out. Many of y'all will not believe that very few people have heard this that I know. All right, here's a clip of Piers Morgan, Michael Jackson's father, Joe Jackson, is being interviewed, listening up for the people who are just listening and check this out for the people who are actually viewing on YouTube. D, don't let me bring you in here because you were a business manager for Michael for a very long time. You've brought some fascinating tapes. These are audio tapes. And I want to just go through some of this because I once interviewed Michael in the late 90s and I was struck that there was another Michael Jackson the businessman. And I want to play a tape before I come to you. This is him discussing with you, I think, about a plan to buy Marvel, the comic business, back in 2001 or two, I think it was. Let's listen to this. We could be going to Universal and buy, we would own Jaws, EP, Close Encounters, you know, all the classics from Universal and all that stuff that will allow us to do a universal, I mean, a channel, part of the Marvel channel can be not only the Marvel characters, but Marvel films, anything we went from restaurants to retail, theme parks.  Then came the scandal court cases and it all got put on the back burner. Disney ended up buying Marvel and doing exactly what Michael had predicted and making a fortune out of it. Tell me about this. That was the second part of his life. All right, I'm gonna leave it right there. We'll put the link in the description for y'all to find or something like that. But Cory, I want to get your first reaction on that clip, cause I've seen it before I want to know what you think. Yeah, I mean, I was really about to say what he said, I was like, damn, something exactly what Disney did, bro. Like, he was coming up with the MCU before that was coming up with the MCU. But nah, man, this is, it's interesting because I personally thought that the whole conversation of buying IP and like how lucrative IP buying was, I thought that was a relatively new conversation. You know, like maybe last 10 years or so.  But the other fact that, but he was thinking about that back then, like, yeah, I'm gonna buy Sony, you know, one of the largest, you know, that has one of the largest publishing catalogs with I've met the biggest artists out. I went about Marvel, you know what I'm saying? One of the largest IPs ever credit, right? And just literally just a limitless supply of money because of all the characters that they have and the worlds we can build into. And I know like, it's maybe been about three or four years or so of me personally even knowing how lucrative catalog buying is on the music side. I kind of got put onto that through my homie David who works for a publishing company.  You know what I'm saying? Like go look up Hypnosis and just the type of money they spent on catalog. So, but I didn't even think about like movie IP, right? Like, you know what I'm saying? Like that type of IP and just, you know, what could kind of come from that?  Let me take a quick second to say, if you're an artist trying to blow your music up or if you're a manager, a music professional in general, trying to help an artist blow their music up, I have something that's a game changer for you and it's completely free. As you may know, we've helped multiple artists go from zero to hundreds of thousands of streams. We've helped multiple artists go from hundreds of thousands to millions of streams, chart on Billboard, GoViral, all of that stuff. And we've now made the way we've branded multiple artists and helped them go viral, completely free, step by step in Brandman Network. All you have to do is check out brandmannetwork.com. You apply, it's completely free, but the thing is we're not gonna let everybody in forever. So, the faster you apply, the better your chance of getting accepted. Brandmannetwork.com, check it out. Back to the video. Bro, it's ridiculous, man. Like the way he saw the game and like you said, understood IP and I compare the artists today to superheroes, right? That's the image, all right? So it's seeing those worlds combine and collide, there's no one who really did that better so far than Michael Jackson. Cause if you look at Michael Jackson, he had a video game on Sega. I remember playing that off the wall game. He was a little light suit walking around or whatever. He had a movie that had like his big old statue in it. You know what I mean? Like he, I mean, he had like, in that movie, I think that was the same movie.  I'll mess him in the bad video. Like he had all these different variations and imaginations of himself and did these different worlds and characters. So he understood the IP just from his own career probably, you know what I mean? Because nobody else really did it to that extent themselves. But you know what? When I think about it too, Walt Disney was always like his North Star. He mentioned Walt Disney, like Disney so much and studying that world and creating that to the point. He created his own theme park, Neverland, right? So I guess when I go through it that way, it makes sense that he understands the IP because of what he's done himself, looking up to Disney, oh wow, like Disney are the ones who went ahead and bought that. It makes sense, but I think many artists can take from that. Not only the value of their own catalog or the value of buying some other IP, but just their own IP and creating something of that type of value, having a character, because you could just be an artist, but every artist doesn't have the character and point of view that comes with building an IP value, like having a TV show, cartoon, whatever that looks like. Like we know Andre 3000 did his TV show, right? And that actually kind of, I feel like help codify what Andre 3000 is as a character. He was that in rap, but when you saw it in as a cartoon, it made sense and gave you a stronger understanding of who Andre is, right? Snoop Dogg, I think is the clearest example today of someone who has IP in like 50 directions. Like you could just see so many things. They just came out with not Snoop Loops because they got sued for using that. All right, they can't use that term Snoop Loops. So he called him Snoop something else now. It's some serials, Snoop-O's maybe, something like that. Snoop Loops is wild.  But I think it might have been Snoop-O's, but he's getting sued for it, but Snoop, like the character you know, right? Snoop, it wouldn't be surprising to see him have a cartoon if he hasn't had one already, right? But you can see it, it's there, right? There's so many iterations, Snoop, in the metaverse, like what the all that feels like we know what the wee brand extensions all look like because his character is so strong. His image is so strong. And maybe everybody won't be able to do it to Snoop's extent, but man, like there's so many variations of that and everything doesn't have to be the typical cartoon movie, da, da, da, da, da. But everything is there. Every time you see a character in a book, right? Every time, like anywhere you see characters, IP, right? On your cereal box, all right? On your candy. On your, the toys, action figures, all of that right? Our streams of income, which is why these things are so valuable. But it's hard to monetize them if you don't know how to monetize them, you don't have the teams that are in place. But boy if you do, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da. That number is crazy.  But he's talking about buying Jaws and ET, you know what I'm saying? Like the doors that that would have opened for him would have been doors that he probably would have never touched through his own IP, right? And his own artistry. And so I gave him kudos for that, bro. Like even just thinking that far ahead because it's so wild, bro.  He's gonna conspiracy theory, sure, I can understand, you know what I'm saying?  Like, no, especially now with Marvel went today, bro. That's wild to think. That's crazy to think about, bro. Bro, yeah, like to be out here thinking like that, that's pretty scary for the industry. Yeah, bro. A singer artist, to be the artist performer, and you know why it's even more terrifying actually? Because it's not just an owner. Owners are scary in themselves. This person owns the majority or something, right? And depending on who you are, right? That might be scary if you don't like that person or it's coming from the outside, so they not a party or a group, you didn't let them in the room, right? That can be scary. Then you talk about owning half of that company of all these various artists, and then a Marvel situation, right?  So you can control the people and you have the top. I feel like, did we just talk about this? Right, having the bottom and the top. No, I was watching a podcast, and they were talking about Andrew Tate. His problem is he doesn't really have a whole bunch of allies at the top of it. He just went to jail or something like that, right? But he has so many people that are his fans and follow him. So that platform is why he's so dangerous to so many of these people at the top, right? You get some allies, then you're solidified on both sides, right? Well, you have this guy who can control so many people.  And then you have ownership at the top on this side. I mean, look, bro, that's something different. Yeah, bro. I mean, I don't think we've seen it. I mean, yeah, we haven't seen that. Yeah, I don't think. I can't even think of anyone that's gotten even remotely close, yeah. Remotely close. Yeah, bro, that's crazy, because he would've definitely been on stage when walking in an ET shirt, bro. If he had got that shirt. So merch, bro. Yeah, 100% bro, why not? All proceeds basically come back to me one way or another, and I do it. Yeah. If I had ET right, bro, if I owned ET, I'd pee, bro, we'd be wearing ET shirts on every part of it. Bro, on hold, man, on hold.