This is Witch-Based News for Friday the 22nd of July 2022 I'm CMDR Buur In a bumper Elite Dangerous News this week Hutton kicks off the second hot mess initiative and everyone is invited We have an update around the battle to defend the Proteus device in HIP 22460 We break down last weekend's LaveCon event and FDev livestream nuggets And there's important news about LaveCon's future and more To make sure you don't miss any of our videos hit like and subscribe And remember to click the little bell icon and select all notifications And if you'd like to help directly support this channel you can also join our Patreon via the link in the video description For the first time in a hot age the Arcs store got, wait for it, seven new ship kits today In the form of the hazard packs for the Anaconda Cobra Mark III, Crate Mark II, Type 9, Python, Type 6 and Aspix Blora The kits feature up to four new industrial style pieces and each comes with six paint jobs to complement Not only that, but the ships also have new functioning spotlights as part of the kit New lighting is not something we've seen before in a cosmetic item But the community team have assured that they are just spotlights and don't enhance the functionality of the ship The kits are very much themed around a mining, hauling or more working vessel aesthetic And are markedly different from the more spoilers and wings approach that we've seen before Frontiers seem to be stepping up their cosmetic item game somewhat of late, a very welcome change And one we hope continues going forward As if that wasn't enough, there is currently a one week sale on the store discounting selected paint jobs, engine and weapon colours by 30% And certain of the older ship kits discounted by 20% In 2020, the player group known as the Hutton Orbital Truckers initiated a community wide effort to set about delivering a Hutton mug to every single commodity market in the galaxy At the time, that was well over 50,000 locations, a goal that the community achieved after a colossal group effort The launch of Odyssey brought with it a whole new swathe of surface installations Most of which have a commodity market making the total number of commodity markets well in excess of 130,000 The Hutton effort to deliver a mug to every station in the galaxy is being resurrected by the loons at Hutton At this point, you may think you know what's coming You don't Just bear with me Not content with just adding the extra number of commodity markets on top of the original delivery target The new hot mess initiative calls for one ton of hot mugs and one ton of Centauri Mega Gin to be delivered to every single commodity market in the galaxy That's all of the original 50 plus thousand again and then the extra Odyssey markets as well All 130,000 plus starports, stations and settlements The Hutton truckers are keen that squadrons and in-game factions pitch in to take care of their patch of the galaxy But you're free to jump in and get involved wherever you want and there will be leaderboards to be topped As well as real life Hutton mugs to be won and swag from spider mine games is also up for grabs First deliveries will kick off next week on the 4th of August And as before the truckers own Hutton Helper app will track the deliveries made and update the website that tracks overall progress across the entire elite community Suffice to say all of this you'll find linked in the description below this video What many are now referring to as the battle of HIP 22460 continued to bubble away this week As more federal and imperial capital ships arrived in the system to help commanders attempting to keep the Thargoid threat at bay Whilst Salvation's Proteus device simultaneously draws more and more bugs into the system As we record this video there are still two community goals linked to the build up running One asking for the final instalment of Guardian bits and bobs needed to power the wave That will end on Tuesday next week The second asking for Thargoid combat bonds to be handed in is scheduled to end on Thargoid Tick next Thursday 28th of July A new item on Galnet stated yesterday, Thursday 21st of July That the Proteus device would be fully constructed in one week That places its completion at Thursday 28th It's been our perception that Salvation tends to waggle his salad smacker on Tuesdays And also major patches tend to arrive on Tuesdays Whilst Frontier haven't specifically stated the schedule yet We think early next week is a moderately safe bet for whatever is next to drop on us It seems unlikely that F-Dev would attempt to keep the cycle of delivery and Thargoid whacking CGs going for much longer There should be a Frontier livestream next Thursday so we could know more then Whatever comes next is anybody's guess at this point and there are plenty of guesses in the community right now As we mentioned in our midweek video the instances in HIP 22460 Whilst still attention grabbing stuff are very much the nursery slopes of Thargoid combat When compared to the rest of the Pleiades There has never been a better time to try out taking down one of the larger Thargoid And if that still has no appeal then just the spectacle of what is happening in the system at the moment Makes it well worth a visit This is a period that is likely to go down in elite history for some significant time to come So make sure you get to be part of it in a way that works for you Commander Grimscrub posted this excellent map of the activity in HIP 22460's battle zones right now If you're looking to head there for violence or sightseeing as always I've linked to that below Whilst we're on the subject of the HIP instances What was thought to be a tricky and somewhat irritating bug came to the fore since they arrived NPC capital ships in the system are capable of claiming the killing blow on an attacking raucous rosebud And in doing so deny commanders access to their rightful payouts and combat bonds Regardless of how many hearts the commanders themselves have taken If capital ship AI gets the last hit then it's no money for us puny flesh bags Community manager Sally has posted to the forums saying that this is a feature by design To mitigate AFK farming exploits and whilst there are currently no plans to address the feature The team are taking the feedback on board I've linked below to a forum thread about the subject This has been building for such a long time It's going to be a fascinating week ahead of us whatever happens Last weekend saw the first face to face lave con elite fan convention that has taken place for some many years For obvious reasons and to say the gathered throng of commanders was excited by the prospect was an understatement Due to some localized scheduling conflicts rather than the regular venue of Sedgebrook Hall in Northampton The mass instancing event this year took place at Kent's Hill Park in Milton Keynes This was the first lave con that Reanie and myself managed to get to and for us I think this fantastic event was best described as impactful, noisy, funny, exhausting And occasionally overwhelming and emotional It was also the hottest weekend of the year so far with temperatures soaring across the UK Hot was also a word that came up a lot very very hot If you've never had the pleasure of attending a lave con then at the event As well as wall to wall commanders you'll find gaming rooms with tabletop RPGs and board games being played A dedicated Artemis bridge simulator room, displays of models and artwork Not only from elite but also stretching right across sci-fi and fantasy A stunning retro gaming suite full of working examples from the dawn of video gaming All the way to more contemporary machines There's also book launches and representation from companies like HES voice packs As well as hosted panels, live podcasts and talks Frontier themselves were also very well represented with Arthur, Sally, Zach and Bruce From the community team walking the floor all weekend Along with numerous representatives from the development team All of them more than willing to sit down and chat all things elite with the assembled commanders Which was greatly appreciated Last week's frameshift live scheduled live stream was also bumped a couple of days forward From its regular Thursday slot and took place at lave con in front of the packed assemblage in the main convention hall You'll find a link in the description below this video if you missed the stream live But unsurprisingly the show took a slightly different format to usual The entirety of the Frontier staff at the event were present And whilst Frontier Odyssey branded merch was dished out to the commanders in the room Arthur ably hosted proceedings running through a light version of the additions to the game Since the last in-person lave con had taken place With the development team pitching in amusing anecdotes from their collective memories on the project Highlights included guns that fire showers of confetti or the planetary surface geyser effect Tales of physics test levels full of cargo containers and an initial implementation of the SRV Being pulled up into the air by visiting Thargoid that exerted such force It smashed the unfortunate vehicle to smithereens The stream also featured a run through of stellar screenshots And a game of elite dangerous themed Pictionary with the audience Whilst Frontier had stated well in advance that they wouldn't be announcing anything at the event Or giving away any information There were two points in the live stream that seemed to set tin foil hats rippling I've linked to the pertinent clips below When the dev team are discussing an image of a guardian pylon Arthur asks the devs for any anecdotes around the development of the guardian site specifically But prefaces it by saying don't give too much away, don't say anything you shouldn't say This was an odd thing to say As far as the player base is concerned there is nothing to give away around the guardian site They're dead and the guardians and their terminator like AI constructs are Save for a few largely ineffectual sentinels also dead The second comment came about 30 minutes later when the team were discussing AI in the game And how potentially destructive it could be if taken off the leash Principal programmer on Elite Dangerous Dominic Corner mentions that we've already seen how destructive AI can be As it was their own AI constructs that wiped out the guardians and they're not here anymore Arthur then says rather poignantly they are not, they are not Now this is Elite Dangerous and it's important that I set a reasonable expectation We've seen this before time and time again A developer or a community manager gives an ITIC or an inflection on a specific word And the community implodes in a shower of tin foil This is in all likelihood one such ITIC But as so many people outside of this house had also made mention of the comments during the live stream We felt on a bound to bring it to your attention here As I mentioned they're both clipped and linked below this video so take a listen and make your own mind up At the end of the weekend's proceedings there was a closing address from Alan Stroud from HWS Events One of the organisers behind Lavecon At the end of the address he announced that after 10 Lavecons this year would be their last And that they had no current plans to organise Lavecon 2023 Whilst that might at first seem like a somewhat apocalyptic announcement The reality of this situation is quite different Lavecon is a hugely popular well attended and annually much anticipated regular community calendar event And not to put too fine a point on it, nature abhors a vacuum If someone isn't organising an annual Elite Dangerous Convention then someone will organise an annual Elite Dangerous Convention Within just a couple of days of the announcement starting to circulate Lave Radio, the stalwart Omnipresent podcast and primary presenters of the Lavecon event itself Tweeted that Lavecon will in fact return and that they themselves are investigating taking over the running of the event Overall, Lavecon 2022 was an experience that Rene and I will never forget A lot gets packed into the two days and it wasn't nearly enough time to meet everyone and see everything that we wanted to do If there was another one next week, we'd go at the drop of a hat I'm sure most of the attendees would agree with that sentiment as well Perhaps this time with just a degree or two more of air conditioning How was your Lavecon experience? Are you delivering mugs and gin for the Hutton Truckers? Will you be picking up one of the new hazard ship kits? Let us know in the comments below That's it for now, thanks very much for watching We'll be back later this week with more videos until then 07 Commanders, follow the Greens on the way out and do keep clear of the toast rack We very much look forward to seeing you next time


In 2014 we visited the St Kilda Legal Service in Melbourne, Australia, and interviewed their lawyer, Vanda Hamilton, about the important work they do to help vulnerable communities. We are a community legal service that offers free legal advice and information and also advocacy for marginalised people, for people who are exploited. St Kilda Legal Service has been here for 40 years and it was just really a ground swell of young lawyers and old lawyers too, I guess, who just said, look, you know, there's just no access to justice and was all voluntary at that time. It's grown over time so that now it's actually funded by government, although the base of our operations is still mostly volunteers. Which are the most vulnerable populations or groups of society in Victoria? I would have to say homeless and mentally ill people who also have other issues like drug and alcohol, homelessness. Really anyone who has to use the streets for anything and that includes sex workers. Women with children and also men with children who have been rendered homeless. So children are very vulnerable and sadly that's very common and people who have experienced family violence can also be very, very vulnerable. So last year there was a homeless person murdered under one of the bridges where homeless people stay a lot.  What kind of services do you provide for vulnerable people? So I do outreach so I go out to see people because I reach a lot of clients who wouldn't otherwise access lawyers. And also of course that it's free, they don't have to fill out any forms. Quite often they're not eligible for legal aid anyway because they just don't fit into the guidelines. They would otherwise perhaps have to represent themselves in court. What are the typical cases when they are seeking your help? Quite often there are people who have come through the system because they are say homeless and you're a lot more likely to get picked up if you're homeless. So for instance, quite often people are living in their cars and their licence has been cancelled for whatever reason. And we have a number plate matching recognition system so it's very easy to be picked up. Probably drive alarm registered and all those sorts of things. And then one of the other things that's really big for a lot of my clients is fines. They just accubulate an enormous amount like thousands and thousands and thousands of fines and you can go to jail eventually. How many clients do you have as an organisation a year? As an organisation I think we see about 1700 people maybe 2000 a year. Myself I carry a load of about 300 or 400. I might have about 100 files open at any time. What can legal problems drug users are facing in Victoria? People aren't going to get jailed if they keep on coming up with possession and use. But trafficking is a problem because there's such a wide range of behaviours that is considered to be trafficking. So you can get a couple of extra, extra see pills when you're getting something for you going out to a club at night, you sit down next to your mate and you say here do you want two pills, please see that's trafficking you haven't got any money from them you just offered it to him. That's trafficking that's enormously harsh for people because it puts something on their criminal record that they're never going to get rid of. But the real problem for them just comes that drugs are criminalised. What law does criminalised drug use when was it enacted and what are the penalties in the law? Heroin, cocaine, marijuana, as far as I know they were all legal pretty much up to the 40s and then along with America started being criminalised and then of course there's a new strains of drugs have come along they've been criminalised pretty much as soon as people have realised so extra see and you know methamphetamine and those sorts of drugs have been criminalised pretty quickly. LSD took a while to be criminalised I think it did in a lot of countries. For a use and possession the very first time at your court you might get what's called a drug diversion and so they don't actually take you into court they say okay if you go and see a counsellor and then 30 days later you go and see the counsellor again and you give us proof that you've done it then it will never show up on any record and that's okay and there's a difference between you know trafficking selling a bit down the street and commercial trafficking so commercial trafficking is something else again and that has to go up to the higher courts and clearly there's much more significant sentences involved with that but I don't deal with people who do commercial trafficking that's for the big lawyers. How is the access to harm reduction services in Victoria for drug users? I think it's quite good I mean there's an overall expectation that harm reduction is the main priority of what we do with drug drug issues in Victoria. There's access to needle exchanges, there's access to being able to dispose of your of your fits, there's your needle disposal units and that's just about saying okay the public perception that syringes are a danger they don't like seeing syringes around that leads to drug users being abused and marginalised and you know a lot of concern about drug using so how about you just get rid of them responsibly and then perhaps you don't have to deal with so many calls to ban drug users and we can deal with harm reduction so you'll usually find syringe disposals in public toilets most public toilets have them in fact I don't think I've ever been to a public toilet that doesn't outside buildings like this you'll find them anywhere that's sort of a public service or building anywhere where people might go to actually inject or might come because they're an injecting drug user so they might carry the around with them and until they get to a safe disposal unit and the police are committed to harm reduction as well they understand that you know that's that makes their policing probably easier there's also this is one of the places where there's a trial of naltrexone giving naltrexone to users and to their families and friends not to workers but people who are intimately involved and there's training programs running for those people with a doctor and then as part of that you get your first kick What do you think would be the ideal drug legislation in terms of drug users? Oh as far as I'm concerned just total decriminalisation of everything I mean I just think it's totally absurd to have people who are otherwise good upstanding citizens or have the possibility of being thrown into the criminal system because their choice of drug isn't approved of by society it should be a health issue it should never be a legal issue I think that over the past I don't know maybe 15 or 16 years I just sense a hardening in people people have become very insular and they've become very judgmental about other people it's you don't get a sense that people understand that well that could be me or that could be my children it's very much this thing of you put yourself there you get yourself out why should we help you out you know why should we spend taxpayers pay as money and anyway just go to jail like you know that's the best kind of thing to get you off drugs a lot of the harms that come to people from drugs aren't actually necessarily about their health when we talk about drugs we're always talking about people in crisis really is there are a lot of functioning drug users we never hear from them they don't have a voice they're too scared to say they're functioning drug users society doesn't want to hear that there are people who are functioning drug users because that's not the dominant narrative about drug use but there are you might get over all your health issues you might never even have health issues from having taken drugs but your priors your criminal history is going to follow you around for the rest of your life


Okay, we're back here live in Germany. We are in Frankfurt, Germany. This is siliconangle.com, the cube. Our flagship program to go out to the events and extract the signal from the noise. This is HP Discover. We've been here all day for day one of the European tour for HP. My co-host is Dave Vellante, analyst at wikibond.org. Offer the best open source free research on the planet right now. Leads the market in two areas. Big data, and now recently with the new groundbreaking research out called software-led infrastructure. Go to wikibond.org. You'll find that killer research, software-led infrastructure. Of course, I'm the founder of SiliconANGLE, and that's where all the river of news, opinion, and analysis sits. That's where the publishing is, and we are happy to bring you all the coverage here at HP Discover. This is our wrap-up segment of day one. Dave, I think that HP has clearly shown to me that there's still HP on one hand, but it's very, very clear that they are looking at the marketplace going, you know what, we are not down. Our chips may be on the table right now. Everything's all in. Value destruction is happening. The news is not good. They got a little bit of a black eye with Meg Whitman's announcement around the autonomy right down. And of course, EBS before that, but they've had some successful acquisitions with 3PAR, very strong showing by the 3PAR acquisition today. Outside of that whole bad news on HP, clearly these guys are not sitting still. They've integrated autonomy, and the big story here, at least on my headline is, big data is now native within all of HP's products and services. We said that when we were in Las Vegas for HP Discover in the US. They embraced the autonomy acquisition. They've added their own stuff, so this is not just autonomy. So this is a big data, is now part of the DNA within HP, as well as software-led infrastructure. Software-defined infrastructure, software-led infrastructure, whatever you want to call it, HP's clearly got those two elements as their core, and we're excited because that's just right with our editorial and our research agenda, Dave. So I think to me, that's my big takeaway. What's your take? Well, HP's got a complicated portfolio, as we talked about before. They go from the device to the data center. And that's all well and good. I think, though, that what we found out from Meg Whitman on the last earnings call was that, while 25% of the revenue of HP is in the enterprise group, over 40% of its profits are there. And we heard Dave down at Telly tell us that increasingly, John, HP is going to be reporting on that basis. Now, the reason why I think that is important is because you look at what's happened in the storage. I've contended all along for many years that HP's biggest challenge has been HP. You know, particularly, let's take the storage opportunity. It's been sitting there for years. HP really wasn't organized to take advantage of it. They bring in Donatelli, and they began to organize to do that. There's still some issues there. You know, they're tweaking, they move services, product support services under Donatelli. That was a good move. I'll give you an example though, John. HP's data protector software, it's storage, and it should be in the storage group in my opinion. That little change would allow them to compete even more effectively with EMC. So there's still a little bit of tweaking going on. It just takes more time because of the size of HP's organization. But, having said that, HP's strategy is, and storage is now much more clear they're putting a lot of wood behind 3PAR, which has been a real home run for the company. Well, before we get to 3PAR, I want to ask you a question on that on the Riorv. Do you think HP's effectively positioning themselves well within the Riorv, but they have now outside of those little tweak spots? Within the enterprise group, I think absolutely. Again, I think they've been adjusting things, settling in. So yeah, I think they're poised to compete in networking. They're obviously competing in servers and poised to compete in storage very well now. And I think you called this one, John. And Meg Whitman referenced this in her keynote. Really, HP is the one company. And you could throw Dell in here too, but HP is really the company in the traditional enterprise business that has all three, server storage and networking for convergence and for software-led. And they got a strong story there. Well, we know Meg reads our blog, so obviously she's taken some pointers from us and that it's all good. And also, I think that HP's infrastructure side of the house is very tight, Dave. I'm really impressed. A lot of people try to criticize that group, although not this and that, but HP has their act together. They've had it together for a while on the converge infrastructure side of things. I just don't like the word converge infrastructure. I think it's a little bit outdated. I think modern is a better word. I think they've got a modern vision around how the data center's going to evolve. I think it aligns with the vision that Wikibon put out around software-led infrastructure. So they're solid there. Now, on the big data, this is not all autonomy. And I think that's another key point that I want to make. I think that, again, it's like we were talking with Sean Kenney, they got a lot of large players that it's really hard to knock out one of these big guys. It's harder than knocking out a heavyweight champ, right? So I think what you're going to see is, look at IBM, John. IBM has used its financial prowess and its service is excellent to really do well and make a lot of money for its shareholders. And I think HP can take a similar playbook with a different route. So my point is that HP's working on the balance sheet. They're cleaning that up. They're paying down their debt. They got to put themselves in a position to be able to make strategic acquisitions. You know, autonomy, we don't even have to revisit it. So, Dave, let me go down the highlights for today. I want to share with you the highlights for today. One, we have the interview we have with Colin Mahoney with Vertica. 6.1, they announced code name Bulldozer. That's out at the app system. That's the Vertica. Vertica's holding their head up high. And I think they should. I think they've gotten kind of overshadowed by the autonomy acquisition and that's obviously Vertica's standing strong. And again, Colin Mahoney is an entrepreneur executing within HP just like David Scott is. So that's real testament to the Vertica. Analytics is just the key thing for these guys right there. So that was a good interview. Dave Donatelli, he's the EVP. He runs the enterprise group. Convergence, software-led infrastructure, software-defined networking storage and servers, and obviously the cloud. Cloud is important to HP when you see more of that. Solid State was another key message from Donatelli. Tom Joyce, who runs in the sales side over there. You know, store serve, 6,000, 7,000. An object base and file base is really the hot product. The three-part is really expanding the growth there. And that was really key. We had, you know, Stephen DeWitt here, who's really one of the top executives. HP's looking to have a guy like that. He's got a lot of energy, dynamic. He's got a lot of experience. This guy I've been following his career has done his amazing job and he knows his stuff.  He knows and confirm and validate what Donatelli said. And what we've been talking about, Dave, is that we are going to see this new era to be hugely transformative, similar to the mainframe and client server. So that's going to be really, really huge. So, you know, Stephen DeWitt, kudos to him. And the comment about big data from him was great. David Scott, the leadership with three-part acquisition. Fantastic. What's your take on HP's big data strategy, John? I mean, you and I have been interviewing a lot of people on this topic. You really got us into this business several years ago. What's your take on HP's big data strategy? What do you think? I think HP is extremely well positioned for big data. And I think the strategy right now is, it's hard to describe. I mean, I'm trying to find the words for it, but I would say it this way. They dip their toes in the water. They probably have a lot of infighting amongst the company around what is big data. We heard similar topics that SAP tell us privately that, you know, big data is too high. So I think HP kind of looks at big data as, hey, we have so much going on in our business from the research in HP as a photonics to some running some of the biggest enterprises in the world that we don't have time to kind of play in the hype world. So I think they're now beyond that. I think HP clearly sees that their strategy from a business transformation standpoint, it will be grounded in big data and providing essentially computing cloud-like resources to their largest customer. So one, validation. So I think their strategy right now is step one of embracing big data. I still don't think HP has clearly understood what they've really gotten in their hands right now. And I said yesterday in my blog post that they have lightning in a bottle. HP right now could move on the marketplace in a huge way and move the ball down the field if they lock into two things, big data and software-led infrastructure. I truly believe that that's the top-level messaging and everything around you can hang around that is business benefit, business value, credibility, technology, all the elements that they need to show the marketplace really hang around big data and software-led infrastructure. So I think their strategy is to expand on big data, not over-hype themselves because they got a lot of different work to do and tweak within the company. So I think they're going to continue to explore that. And I think you might see big data being much more strategic and native in all their products. And once they see it in the products, I think then it'll render themselves into global messaging. So I want to talk a little bit about Meg's keynote. You were a man in the cube at the time. She addressed this audience of around 9,000 individuals and she started by talking to the audience, John. She said, I love this company and I love its people and I love its customers and I love its partners. And then the other thing she said is something that we've said, you want us to win. And all the customers I talk to, this is Meg Whitman speaking, I go around the world, customers want us to win. And it's true, John, people want HP to win. They're rooting for this company. The other thing she said, it's hard to kill founder's DNA talking about Hewlett and Packard and their ethos around customer service. And then the other thing she said, which then she went on to essentially repeat her quarterly conference call, we are on a very solid financial foundation. They're profitable, $120 billion in revenue. They generated $4 billion in cash last quarter, 10.6 billion for the year. That's more cash than is generated by Coca-Cola, Disney, FedEx, McDonald's, Visa, a number of other great companies. And they also paid down $5.6 billion in debt last year. I can't emphasize enough how important it is in this day and age for HP to really strengthen its balance sheet. Dave, you get me all emotional when you talk about the Meg Whitman's comments about the DNA of the founders because being an entrepreneur founder of companies myself, I understand kind of that perspective. But let me just tell you what I truly believe. If you look at IBM, we talked about the IBM turnaround versus HP's turnaround. And this is my prediction on HP. IBM was turned around from a position of almost going under, right? So Meg Whitman referenced that in her earnings call that HP was almost running out of cash and they turned it around in a way that was elegant, effective, professional. But it hurt a lot of things. But IBM got turned around because IBM had such great brand equity. The thing about HP that people aren't factoring into their turnaround plan is what you just said. People want HP to win because HP from Bill and Dave, and this is why Meg has got my respect, even though she's not technical, she's got operational skills, but she recognizes that Bill and Dave, Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard built a big business, big company on a lot of values. They built a company that had core values and had a DNA that changed people's lives. HP truly changed the lives of many of their employees, many of their customers, many of their shareholders, and the charitable contribution that HP founders and the employees went on to do was amazing. Two, they changed industries. HP grew over the years since the founding and has been participating in industries in good times and bad. So their culture and their DNA and their brand equity, not just the company brand, but their entire culture has such longevity. So I believe that that's going to carry the day for HP. Now that's just on that piece. The products and services, they actually have good stuff. So they could put this together pretty easily. I've said on record that I think this is one of the easiest turnarounds that anyone could do because you've got so much working for them. So I hope they don't screw it up, but I think they can do it very easily. And I think it's a matter of focus and just clarity and simplicity. Simplify the messaging, simplify the positioning, simplify the products, but I think you're absolutely right. I'm rooting for them to win. I think a lot of people are rooting for them to win and all the headline, negative headlines are really around just people who don't know the company. Well, so after Meg went through the financial discussion and I think did a good job affirming that she's focused on the balance sheet, which I can't again emphasize enough, that's critical. She talked about the tectonic shifts in the business. You would expect a CEO to put forth her vision. She talked about a new style of IT driven by cloud, mobility and big data. She used that term, big data. Here's, this was interesting, John. And this is where I thought she had some credibility. She said, when I was the CEO at eBay, I used to say this all the time, we have to build the church for Easter Sunday, meaning we got to build to peak capacity. And then she said that's changing and she specifically mentioned two companies, Salesforce and Workday, as examples of innovation that are changing the way in which organizations can actually run their IT. So this new style of IT being very elastic and again she used Salesforce and Workday, a company as you know, I love Workday, I love what they're doing, really bringing Salesforce style model of computing to HR, but use those as examples. Point being, if we were doing eBay today, we wouldn't have to build all this customization in, we would be able to respond much more quickly and companies have the advantage of doing that today. So essentially she said that HP's strategy is really simple to provide solutions for this new style of IT. And then she essentially talked about how employees want a consumer experience at work. At the same time, CIOs want security. So HP's strategy is to bridge those two and to bring those two worlds together, that consumerization of IT with the need for security. She said, John, she was recently at a conference of the CEOs of the 200 largest companies on the planet and the number one topic that consumed the day and a half was security, security, security. So now the other thing she said, which is interesting, she must have been listening to theCUBE, she said, we are the only company with a strong market position across servers, storage and networking and we are the only company with software defined expertise in each of those. And then she talked about Gen 8, she talked about Moonshot, she talked about reinventing the network through software defined networking, we're bringing business logic into the switch and then she said, I want to make this clear, we are 100% committed to autonomy, notwithstanding all the challenges. She made a couple of jokes about the challenges, et cetera, and then she talked about services. So she touched on all the points, she mentioned printers, she didn't mention web OS, no mention of web OS. And minimal mention of HP's play in mobile, talked a lot about printers, enterprise group and the components of enterprise group talked about storage and services. But essentially laid out a strategy of cloud, security and information optimization, which I look at as big data and their cloud piece focus on convergence, which I agree with you, it's a little old, they really need to advance that. I think they should be pounding software led and modern architectures. And then the second thing she did talk about within the cloud was how they're building an open stack. We heard some guests today, is open stack ready for prime time? I think I heard the answers and not quite yet, but we plan to make it there. And as they say, security and information optimization. But bottom line strategy to provide solutions for that new style of computing in a nutshell. I think open stack is a hedge, but Dave, just to kind of tie some thoughts that jump out of me from when I hear you talk about the keynote, I think one, the focus is very relevant. And I think HP has to be relevant. They've always been relevant because they got a lot of customers that have relevant solutions to be rolled out to and problems to solve and business to do. But here's the thing that's going on right now in my opinion. And all the data that we get from the acquisition of our talks and research and our publishing. The enterprise market is building out. People are retooling, people are building. And people are building new architectures, modern architectures, retrofitting existing ones, building new ones, green field opportunity here, restructuring here. There is absolutely money to be spent in. There's a boom in enterprise up and down the stack. And it's back to the classic formula, computing and applications. And everything in between. So if you look at the fundamentally, Dave, I think that's what we're seeing. Everything has this distributed concept to it, distributed computing concept. It's computing power and applications. That's always been part of the biggest trends that we've seen, the inflection points that we've seen, computing and applications. Now, taking that forward, what does that mean today? Computing, that's everything, right? What's applications? Big data, mobile, software. Middleware, that's software. So I think that's a very clean vision from Meg. Now the question I have is, why not WebOS? And I think the answer would be, it's a distraction right now. What I would do with WebOS? Yeah, what would you do? I'm dying to hear this. No, I'm serious, you got a great perspective. I would dial up, I would call in HP Labs and I would dial up a Navy SEAL team six engineers. And if I can find them, I'd get them, hire them, brightest minds, applied research project, dial up WebOS, Android integration for a mobile OS that's free and integrate that into a handheld mobile phone and all their PC hardware and offer the quality products that HP's known for to the consumer. Focus on quality, stay in that business, it's a channel, it's a hardware channel, too valuable to even to give up and I would dial up the smartest engineers. It's like that scene in Apollo 13, build this filter. That one scene in Apollo 13 where the guys, they're trying to get back to Earth and they don't have any oxygen left, they throw all the scientists in the room, they're saying, this is what we got to work with, let's get these guys home. So to me, that is the approach HP needs to take right now in the mobile business. Throw those guys in the room, dial up the smartest people they got and say, I need a mobile platform, I need mobile on the hardware, build it Android and or iOS, done deal. John, that was good, I like that summary. Now, so let me just follow up with a question. So you're talking about Android integration, why not just hop on the Android bandwagon? Absolutely, yes, I mean solely without the WebOS piece. What's the value of bringing that WebOS piece? Help us understand that. Well, I think it's as a hedge to look at what's in their tool chest, right? So one, I don't think WebOS needs to be involved in Android, so if I was running that little team, I'd say, look at Android, lead with Android, Android is growing really, really fast and it needs the most work and it has the most suppliers, HP knows that environment, it's like the industry standard kind of positioning that HP's used to. Android's perfect, I would go all in on Android, all in on Android, then I'd go back to the WebOS, whatever's left of it and cobble in some proprietary hooks that were part of WebOS, make them open, use that as either one-off protocols and or software to hook into other HP assets, just like the storage groups hooking in to, with converged storage into some of their products. So WebOS gives them a vehicle to possibly tie in some value around other HP components, but on the mobile side, I'd go pure Android. So add value where you can. Yeah, differentiation. And differentiate. But from a focus standpoint, do that after Android, right? The other part of that game is that HP was not a player in the PC business. They had the PC originally back in the day when HP in the 80s, the PC was part of their enterprise sale and had proprietary a bus called HP, they had an HP interface bus, HPIB, that was for the mouse and not in proprietary. When HP moves into the PC business, industry standard PCs, no one would buy them. And then within a matter of three or four short years they became literally in the top three and eventually knocking down Compaq and IBM and Compaq in that order and then ultimately buying Compaq and becoming number one in the world over my, over Dalin and the clones. HP right now can be a fast follower and get a position in a matter of two to three years of Apple like Mojo. And that's, to me, I would be going for that. It's a lofty goal, it's a bold move. I would not give up. And that's why I was very critical of Leo Apatecker because he was just like, ah, get rid of that. I don't want that. When it could become a great lever for HP as a channel. And if HP wants to be part of the consumerization trend in IT, you got to provide a phone. Look at Marissa Mayer at Yahoo. She had, we're going to go off, Black Bear, give her one on iPhone. The consumer experience is where it's at. And I think she's dead on about that and kudos to her for that. Well, I think you're right, John. I mean, if you're going to be in that business you got to have devices that appeal to that business. So I want to ask you, Dave, I want to ask you a question because I want to talk about the storage announcement yesterday. So, storage is no longer boring. It's been sexy since we started doing theCUBE. But right now, more than ever, storage is the center of all the action. And it continues to be. We thought it might not be, but it continues to be the center with Solid State. Dave Donatelli addressed it. I want to get your analysis because you've been following this sector for many moons, okay? One, your commentary around one, the announcement. But two, how aggressive HP is against the competition?  So comment on storage announcements and their position and their competitive aggressiveness. Well, I do think, number one, there was a lot of meat on this bone for the storage announcements.  John, I left the business for a number of years. I came back in, I asked my friend, John MacArthur, who are the companies I should look at? He said, the two companies you should start looking at, right off the bat, three-part and data domain. Those are the two most interesting companies out there. So I went and visited three-part and really was blown away by what they were doing. And I think that while the company struggled for a long time, as soon as they got popped into HP, it just completely exploded. And I say struggled, struggled from a financial standpoint, struggled to make a profit. But once they were inside HP, forget it. And I think it's the smart move to put the wood behind the three-part arrow in that storage portfolio for the primary storage. Very, very smart move for HP to do that. I think the store once piece, the deduplication, I think HP was late, I mean, I know, HP was late to market there. The question is, is it too little, too late? I think, no, I think HP will do okay there, but I think HP needs that software component. As I said before, I would love to see data protector move into the storage group. I think the storage group could do a better job of integrating and exploiting that product. I understand the logic behind keeping it separate. Of course, it's a big chunk of revenue. They want to pump up their software revenues, but I think they get a lot more exploitation if they organize that differently. So, I mean, I think that's good what they've done. The whole restore performance, that's good, but let's face it, it's important when you need it. But the rest of the time, you just back it up, you just want to get it done with. So I like their marketing there. I like their marketing a lot. To your point, they're taking off the gloves. I think the store all piece, I love that conceptually. I think they're going to have a hard time initially finding places for it, but I think over time they could do very, very well with it. I love the express query. David Floyer is actually writing up an analysis right now of store all. Particularly, I like John. If you look at software defined storage or software led storage, we just wrote a piece on this in Wikibon. And we talked about layering services on top of commodity hardware. Now that is nothing new. Google has been doing that for a long, long time. We've predicted back in the 2006 timeframe that eventually the enterprise would get there. What is new is really bringing disparate chunks of metadata today that are locked inside of servers and storage and networks and even within those domains, different silos, bringing that metadata into a high speed access repository, even if it's a virtual repository that you can access and make decisions on top of that. Blend that with Flash, which is the other piece that I want to hear more of from HP, how they're leveraging Flash across servers and storage. I want to see more collaboration between those organizations. They are in the cat bird seat. And I will tell you right now, John, others are working on this problem, VMware in particular with EMC. So I want to see HP get more aggressive there. But so on balance, I think HP is, I play ping pong, you play ping pong. I got a good forehand. I play my forehand a lot. A beer pong. I'll run around my backhand and hit my forehand. I think that's what HP's doing right now. It's hitting its forehand. What's the forehand? The forehand is three par. And that's really where they're winning. What about the competition question? I mean, they're pretty aggressive right now. What do you think about their aggressiveness toward the competitors? I mean, let's run them down. Look, EMC, that company has been a leader from the day that it became a leader in storage. And it's held on to that lead. VMware is the secret sauce there. I mean, I think EMC has huge challenges with its legacy storage business. I mean, unbelievable challenges. EMC is masking those challenges with good engineering and services. And they can do that for a long, long time. I've said, if I've said it once, I've said it a hundred times. If you take a hundred points of value, 50 points are in services. Look at IBM, folks. IBM has masked many of its product deficiencies over the years with great services and has printed money as a result. And I think EMC can do the same. EMC says we're not a service company. We're not a service company. EMC has fantastic services. EMC Global Services is a secret weapon that they don't really talk about a lot. If you look at their financials, their global services business is growing faster than their product business. What does that tell you? It tells you that customers are sticking with EMC and they're able to monetize those relationships. So EMC, I just don't see that company giving up. It's talking at the leisurely. They're going to throw hay makers at EMC because EMC is, like you said, on the services side, they're gearing up and they have a presence. And their presence in the marketplace is awesome. David Scott was very critical of EMC, talking about the five different architectures. Well, you know what? The customers might not care. Well, I think they do care. And I think that my guess is, I mean, I certainly don't have inside information here, but I bet you if you sat in one of Dave Donatelli's meetings, and Dave Donatelli and Sean Kinney and Randy Seidel and Tom Joyce and on and on, these guys know EMC and they said, all right, what's EMC's biggest weakness? Well, its biggest weakness is its biggest strength, its breadth of its portfolio. They got one of everything. So let's attack that. That's what HP is doing. Okay, smart, great. EMC's not going to roll over for that. Now, let's take a look at NetApp. NetApp is one of these all the wood behind one arrow companies. OnTap is the number one storage operating system out there. So it's everything to everybody and it's hitting its limits, right? It's hitting its limits, bumping up against the ceiling. That's what NetApp's trying to do with clustering. I think David Scott's comment against NetApp is kind of a, not a heavy punch because NetApp is one of those companies, Dave, that I've been following them for a very long time and they're nimble, man. They are, when they organize, they could be mercenaries, right? They are really hard charging, okay? They have a really good culture. I was talking to my friend Chris over there, Chris Cummings at NetApp and, you know, the employees there have a great culture, like HP, right? So, you know, you can't count these guys out. I talked to Val on theCUBE and NetApp kind of makes the right moves at the right time. So to me, I think NetApp is not as big as these other guys, but, man, you can't count those guys out. They always seem to make a good move. Here's what's going on with NetApp. NetApp's going through a transition right now. Bought in Genio to expand its TAM. We knew this was happening. NetApp had a fantastic 2010, very tough comparisons in 2011 and tough in 2012. So it's been growing fast and now it's feeling the pain of having to compare against high growth years. So it bought in Genio to expand its TAM, it's enhanced its partnerships, it increased its channel. This is all about TAM expansion. We've seen this before. Tom Georgins knew this was coming. He's in the hot seat. He knew he had to increase his available market opportunity. So they're in a transition. NetApp's been through a number of transitions before. The knock on NetApp is it doesn't scale. Well, that's what clustering on TAP 8 and 8.1 and follow-ups are all about, is bringing clustering to the enterprise. I've talked to a guy that I really respect, Roger Cox from Gartner Group, about this, talked to David Floyer about this, another guy I respect. They actually think this is the real deal and NetApp will figure it out and be able to scale that architecture. If they do, imagine if NetApp is able to scale to mainframe class with clustering, with the single operating system. That's going to be dangerous, but they haven't done it yet. So clustering's hard as we know. Like I said, don't count NetApp. The other area that's interesting is women covering a company called Aerospike, one of the hottest startups that no one's ever heard of yet. But I'm telling you right now, they might rise really fast. Aerospike is doing a lot of in-memory stuff. So a company like that, you put that into the NetApp ecosystem. I mean, a lot of things could go on there. So like, you know. So let's go down the list. Now Dell, we talked about Dell, we're going to be at Dell next week, the Dell world. And that's going to be interesting to see. You know, Dell's another company going through a huge transformation. They took a shot right today at, or yesterday they took a shot at with the fluid architecture right at HP. I like the moves, I love the fact that Dell goes and buys these companies and they don't apologize for going out and doing inorganic R&D and then they focus on integration. That's what the fluid data architecture is all about. It's hard to integrate. And look at EMC. EMC has never really put that much emphasis on integration until very recently, because I think it's realizing that this whole software-led thing and the VMware opportunity is forcing their hand. But Dell really focuses on integration. So I give them high marks for that. You know, HDS is another one, kind of an itchier player, but they're doing some interesting things, very reliable. And then Oracle, right? Oracle is this wildcard. Everything's in the red stack and Oracle is very, very competitive. Why? Because it sells to application owners. It sells to CIOs. It doesn't sell to storage admins. Dave, this is day one wrap up and I'm excited because when we get tomorrow, full day of interviews. But I'm also excited because the big story here is HP, entire business is going to be revolving around two major megatrends. Big data and software-led infrastructure. And I'm excited. You know why I'm excited, Dave? Because those are the two areas that we are number one in. SiliconANGLE and Wikibon are number one in big data coverage and software-led infrastructure. And go to SiliconANGLE.com. You'll find all the big data and all the software-led infrastructure news analysis. You go to wikibon.org slash big data. You go to wikibon.org slash SLI. You'll find software-led infrastructure data that you can't find anywhere else. Those two areas, we are the undisputed leader in media and research, big data and software-led infrastructures. HP is going down those paths. That's exciting for me. That's exciting for the marketplace. And that's exciting for our users. So our readers, our viewers, and the people who buy the research from you guys is going to be benefiting greatly because HP is a big player in this business, Dave. And I couldn't have been more thrilled to hear that news. Yeah, I agree, John. I think you're seeing this ship righted. You call that the easiest turnaround in history. I think there's, you know, a lot of people are like, what's furrier talking about again? But in a lot of ways, you're absolutely right. This is much, let me put it this way, much easier than the IBM turnaround in the 90s. There's no question in my mind. Because financially, they're much, much stronger. And so I think that if this matter of focus and execution. Yep, I can defend that easy turnaround anytime. It's pretty simple. You got to just simplify, stay core. HP's got all the elements. It's about tooling it together. Throwing those engineers into a room and say, build this, be very focused on those strategic products. Stop the in-fighting. A lot of people want to see them win. I mean, I talk to employees at HP that have been here 25, 30 years. Still here, and they still love the company. People are rooting for HP to win. I would agree. The big story here at HP today is, big data is native within all their products and services and the infrastructure, computing market's changing. And they're wrapping it all around software while extending the lead in the hardware. That is HP's focus. And we have a lot of great conversations. For all the reruns and all the on-demand videos go to youtube.com slash silicon angle. That's youtube.com slash silicon angle and look for the channel called HP Discover 2012 Germany and you'll find all the videos in the next couple of days. You'll see all those videos get popped up. A lot of great guests from Dave Donatelli down to entrepreneurs and influential bloggers and analysts all here in theCUBE. This is day one wrap up. I'm John Furrier with Dave Vellante. We'll see you tomorrow for day two at HP Discover. That's a wrap from Germany.


What's going on guys? It's your boy, the E.P.J. here today with an Easter egg, Just Cause Free, a really old now. This is probably gonna be the first Just Cause video you see of mine, but I do plan on posting plenty more. What I'm gonna do is just post plenty more montages, because this game is absolutely epic. You guys have no idea if you haven't played it, it's just crazy, it really is. But today I have an amazing Stargate Easter egg, a basically massive hole in the ground that teleports you across. The other side, the flipping map is absolutely epic and I'll show you guys its location. Now you may wanna go grab yourself a helicopter to get to this point, unless you're close, because driving will take you absolute flipping years. Now it's located right there. Now this map, I never thought a game would be so big, but this game is so damn big. It will take me about 10 minutes to fly here in my helicopter, and I'm not even kidding. I'm not even kidding. So what I'll do is I'll cut the video and then I'll resume while I'm near it. But yeah, that's exactly where you wanna be. I'm just gonna jump in this helicopter right here. I'm gonna fly, so you can see it's 15 kilometers away. Absolutely crazy, it really is. Now this will take me at least 10 minutes to fly over there, so what I'll do is I'll get close out and resume the video. Okay guys, so literally I've been flying for about 10 minutes, I almost fell asleep. I am almost there, as you can see, let me just fly up a little bit and there you can see the giant backing teleporter. Now hopefully I can land without killing myself, because like I said, I'm a newbie to this game and getting used to the controls is a bit of a, bit difficult to be honest. Let's just, let's just, let's just, let's just land it. Oh, there we go.  A lot of people don't understand, but here it is guys, this thing will open up. You jump down it and you'll end up on the other side of the map, absolutely epic. But to work this and to get it to open, you have to enter a code which is basically activating while pressing these buttons in the center or down it is, I believe it's one, four, three, four, one. And there we do it, you jump down it and knock yourself. And you will, when you load up, you'll be basically flying through all this lovely collared scheme, twirly sort of black hole sort of thing and you'll end up on the other side of the map next to another teleporter with a bunch of homeless people.  Actually, this was shown to me by a buddy. He doesn't want to be mentioned, but yet absolutely epic. If you guys know of any more Easter eggs, be sure to let me know down below in that comment section.  I really will, but I absolutely love Easter eggs. I love them in GTA. I love them in Call of Duty. I absolutely love them, I really do. I think it's a great, great addition to games, especially games like this out of open world as well.   If it takes me to another place, that means there's more than one teleporter. On this giant map, but we'll see right now when it loads me up. Here we go, sick, now it's up to the same place. There's homeless people here last night and I wonder if they're still here. Yes, there they are, look.   Let's just strap you to that. I wonder if... Go, go, go. Whee!  But yeah, you can actually activate the teleport from this side as well and basically just fly to where you just come from, actually sure on the code. If any of you guys do know this, be sure to let me know down below in that comment section.  Oh, no, no, that's the wrong button. It's the wrong button. Boom! But guys, that is it for my first, well it will probably be my first, I'll probably upload a funny moments montage later on in a day or week, who knows. It depends if you guys want to see, let me know down below in that comment section. Well I hope you guys enjoyed the video, did you like it or do you appreciate the support? Thanks for stopping by as always and I'll catch you on the next one. See you next time, peace!


I think CSI gets forensic science wrong in a couple of ways. One is, in the television shows, everything happens a lot faster than it happens in reality. The other thing is that when I've watched CSI, you get the impression that the tests that they run, like DNA tests or fingerprint comparisons, are completely objective measurements made by a machine. So you'll stick the sample into the machine, the machine will flash, match, and maybe even put up the picture of the person who matches this fingerprint or this DNA profile. I think what the shows miss is the extent to which a determination that something matches or is similar depends upon a subjective judgment by an expert. In other words, human beings are involved in it. That's part of what makes forensic science interesting to me as a psychologist is how much human and judgment and decision making is involved in the production of forensic science evidence. The evidence that's presented to the jury is not the product of some machine, only it's also the product of a human being's analysis of what the results of the instrument mean or what the comparison means. The surprising thing is how often different experts can reach different conclusions when evaluating crime scene evidence. Can you give me an example from fingerprints or DNA? Well, from DNA, it's surprising how often DNA evidence often is very clear cut and it produces a clear profile where everyone would agree it's either a match or not a match with a particular sample. But when the samples are old or degraded or DNA from different people is mixed together, it sometimes becomes very complicated to reach a conclusion about whether a particular person should be included or excluded as a possible source. And so in those areas, we sometimes see experts disagreeing over interpretations. And that's where as a psychologist I become very interested because I wonder what are the processes that are determining people's judgment about these things and whether the judgments of some of the experts might be biased such as by other things they know about the case. Can you tell me more about that? Yeah, there was one instance that really struck me where experts were disagreeing over our local courtrooms here about the interpretation of a DNA test with the government's experts saying that this was a DNA match that incriminated a guy who was accused of rape and robbery. And an expert called in, a university professor called in by the defense lawyer who's saying, well, I'm not convinced that this really is a match. There are discrepancies here that I think are important. I later asked the government's expert, how can you dismiss the discrepancies that the defense expert was pointing to? And she said, oh, I know those aren't important discrepancies. Oh, for God's sake, they found the victim's purse in this defendant's apartment. Which is very striking because what it tells me is that information about the purse, which supposedly this defendant might have stolen from the victim, was influencing the way in which the DNA expert interpreted the DNA evidence and was doing so in ways that might not have been clear to the jury. The jury may not have known and may not have understood that the conclusion that there is a DNA match between two samples depends partly not on the DNA evidence but on something about a purse. So I think it's striking. It raises real questions about what experts should be relying on when making these judgments. Throughout this course we've been dealing with erroneous beliefs and claims where if people believe them it doesn't really do much harm. But I know you've had a lot of experience throughout your career in forensic science where faulty beliefs and claims can actually cause a little bit of harm. Can you tell me about that and tell me about some of the claims that are made by forensic scientists? Well, we've had cases where the wrong people have been sent to prison for crimes they didn't commit because forensic science evidence was misinterpreted. And so I think that's a very clear harm. When we look closely at those cases, often they're revealed by additional forensic testing, very additional DNA testing reveals that the initial DNA test wasn't correct. It's important to go back and look at those cases and ask what went wrong. How could the system have gotten this case wrong in the first place? And often it looks like there are elements of bias in the initial judgments. In one case I looked at in Texas where somebody was falsely convicted based upon a misinterpreted DNA test. It looked like the DNA analyst had been in communication with an eyewitness. There were two pieces of evidence against this defendant. There was a DNA match and an eyewitness identification. And the jury just thought it was an open and shut case. They convicted this guy in less than two hours of deliberation. They just thought that there couldn't be any possible error. But it turned out when you looked closely at the eyewitness identification it had been done through a show-up that was extremely suggestive. The defendant was the only person who was shown to the victim and he was shown in a way he was basically driven by her while he was inside a police car. And he was forced to wear a hat that was like the hat the perpetrator had worn and the victim said, I think he's the guy. Even though he was much bigger than the guy she had described who had committed the crime. So there was a faulty eyewitness identification which may have influenced the DNA analyst to think she had the right guy and to look at the evidence in a very confirmatory manner. And the evidence, there were certain things about the DNA evidence that were consistent with this person being a contributor to the DNA. But if you looked at it in the full context you could see other things that were inconsistent. The analyst credited the findings consistent with her expectations and ignored the ones that were inconsistent and therefore reached an erroneous conclusion of a DNA match. And so when the case went to court where the eyewitness was going to have to confirm the identification with the person actually there by then the eyewitness had already been told that there's a DNA match to the guy. And so any uncertainty the eyewitness might have felt about her identification was probably allayed by knowing about the DNA evidence and so we have two faulty pieces of evidence each supporting each other what appears to be an unassailable case for the jury is actually built on a house of cards and it turns out they got the wrong guy. So I think that's a real harm. He searched four years in prison for a crime that he did not commit. Later DNA testing found the actual perpetrator. That's good. So you said it comes down, often comes down to human judgment and interpretation. How is it that two people or a person can look at some piece of forensic evidence and come to the wrong conclusion? What are the cognitive mechanisms that might be going on? Well it can only happen when there's some ambiguity in the evidence itself. As I said earlier in some cases the evidence is just clear cut and no one would disagree. But other instances there is an ambiguity. There could be multiple interpretations and expert judgment is required. When experts approach a task like that just as any other human beings they can be influenced by what they expect to see or to some extent by what they desire to see. So people who expect to see something and are highly motivated to see that thing are more likely to see it. They're more likely to interpret an ambiguous stimuli in a manner that's consistent with what they think or want to see. We all do this. And most of the time our use of expectations to help us interpret stimuli is very helpful because most of the time our expectations are correct. But sometimes they aren't correct. And so the problem for a forensic expert is how to prevent this process of what's sometimes called observer effects the tendency to see what one expects or desires to see how to prevent that from coloring one's interpretation of the evidence in ways that undermine the quality of the evidence that's going to be presented to the jury. And I think the best way to do that is to try to minimize the amount of contextual information that the expert receives. So if the expert approaches the comparison not knowing whether it's supposed to match or not supposed to match or what the answer is supposed to be then it's more likely that the expert's judgment will be determined just by the scientific data and won't be colored by the surrounding contextual information that may create what we would think of as a bias. So my sense is that the justice system works best if the scientific experts are basing their conclusions purely on the science and don't allow those conclusions to be influenced by other factors such as other evidence that might suggest that the person did or did not do it or the police theories of the case or their suspicions about the case and so on. And it's the same argument is made for use of blinding procedures in other areas so when instructors grade exams often they do it without knowing the student's name. I think it's a good practice because it prevents the professor from being influenced by other information about the student that may lead the professor to think that this student is likely to perform well or not to perform well. We would like the instructors grading of the examination or the paper to be based on what's in the examination of the paper and not any of the surrounding information. Same thing should go for forensic scientists. Are there any claims that forensic examiners make that are difficult to test or are not supported by evidence? Well the National Research Council of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences did a report in 2009 on forensic science where they reviewed various areas of forensic science and they concluded that a lot of the claims that are commonly made by forensic scientists in court have not been adequately validated by scientific research. Particularly they are concerned with claims of some kinds of forensic examiners that they can identify things with certainty. Fingerprint examiners saying they can determine that a print found at a crime scene came from a particular finger to the exclusion of all other fingers in the universe and so on. I mean that would be a very high claim to prove and the sense of the scientific community is that there has not been adequate research to justify claims that strong. Some of the other kinds of claims that are problematic are claims of forensic scientists that they can assess the probability that certain propositions are true. I think it's highly probable that the bite mark found on this victim came from this person's teeth. To go from the examination of the similarity of two bite marks to the conclusion that the bite marks were probably made by the same person requires a certain leap of logic and a lot of academics are questioning whether forensic scientists can make that leap or whether they're making that leap too readily without adequate scientific documentation that they can do it. That's created a lot of controversy about what forensic scientists are saying in court and what they should be able to say that's become a hot issue right now, something that's being discussed widely. What about DNA evidence? Is DNA evidence infallible? Well, it's certainly not infallible. DNA evidence is often presented with very impressive statistics that measure the probability of a coincidental match between two DNA profiles. An expert might say the two DNA profiles we've compared have the same genetic characteristics and those characteristics would be found in only one person in a billion in the human population. That's very impressive, of course. Those estimates have some scientific basis, but they don't necessarily tell a jury what the jury needs to know. The one in a billion estimate is how rare the profile is. It tells you nothing about the probability that the profiles could match by mistake or by accident. Laboratories do make errors when testing DNA profiles. Sometimes DNA evidence is misinterpreted, as I mentioned to you earlier, and we've seen a number of instances where labs make mistakes, such as cross-contaminating samples. DNA can accidentally be transferred from one sample to another in the crime lab. These are not common events, but they happen sometimes, and they happen much more commonly than one in a billion cases. There's a margin of error in DNA testing, as there is in any other scientific process. Part of the difficulty is we really don't have good estimates of what that margin of error is. We'd like to think it's low. There's some evidence that it's probably not as low as one would hope. Can you tell me about the prosecutors' fallacy? Well, when statistics are presented about the frequency of matching characteristics, lawyers often disagree about what those statistics mean. I first noticed this about 30 years ago when I was, you know, I was a young professor and I was starting to talk to lawyers about forensic science and forensic statistics. Back in those days, those were the days before DNA testing was introduced and there was a lot of serology testing, and it would be common for labs to compare blood group evidence and say that two blood samples came from somebody with the same protein and enzyme blood markers and that those markers would be found in one person in 100. So basically we found a match. Match is the defendant. It's a one in 100 match. And then when I would talk about this, I noticed that different lawyers would have very different interpretations of what that would mean. The prosecutors tended to say, ah, a one in 100 match, that means there's only one chance in 100 that this defendant is innocent because, right, he's either the source of the blood or it's a coincidental match. And the coincidental match occurs with a frequency of one in 100, so there's one chance in 100. It's a coincidence. 99 chances in 100, he's guilty. And that was their interpretation. Now, it turns out that interpretation is fallacious and we call it the prosecutor's fallacy just because I noticed prosecutors doing it a lot. Not because prosecutors do it or not or only prosecutors do it. It seems to be very common among news reporters also. But the fallacy is this. The, although only one person in 100 would match, you know, in a particular community that might have millions of people, one in 100 could be thousands of people. The defendant is only one of thousands of people who match it. The evidence narrows down the possible sources of the evidence, but it doesn't narrow it down to the point where we can say that there's a 99% chance that the defendant is the source. In fact, we really, we really can't tell the probability that the defendant is or is not the source based upon the blood evidence alone. You know, we have to consider the strength of the other evidence. And whether this defendant is more or less likely than anybody else who would match to be the source. All right. And so that's one kind of fallacy people come up with. It involves over-thinking that you can determine the probability that the defendant is the source of some particular sample based on the rarity of the characteristics that match the defendant to that sample. You really can't do it.  So it's not just prosecutors or these illogical things. Among defense lawyers, defense lawyers would say, well, the defendant, you know, my client matches on a characteristic found in one person in a hundred. But one in a hundred, there are like thousands and thousands of people in this community who would match, and he's only one of thousands, so the chance he's guilty is one in thousands. And therefore, the evidence is practically worthless for determining whether he's guilty. You know, and what that fails to recognize is that this forensic evidence drastically narrows the population of people who could be the source of the sample. Ninety-nine percent of all potential people who could be the source are eliminated without eliminating the defendant who may already be a suspect. So knowing that the defendant matches a characteristic that's as rare as one percent should greatly increase your confidence that he's the source, you know, in ways that go beyond what the defense lawyers recognize. So, you know, the net result is the evidence from forensic science can be very powerful, but it has to be interpreted in light of all the other evidence in the case. The people get into fallacious or erroneous thinking when they think that they can draw a conclusion about the ultimate issue of guilt or innocence or whether the defense is the source or not the source from the forensic science alone in isolation without considering the entire factual context. Gotcha. It sounds similar. Can you tell me about the Texas Sharpshooter fallacy and how it applies to DNA? Well, the Texas Sharpshooter fallacy, it's based upon the story of this famous Texan. Back in the old days, when Texans would carry firearms, I mean, I guess they still do, but back in the days when Texans would carry long guns, a particular Texan visited his neighbors a mile away from his own farm and claimed to them that with his long gun he was the most accurate shot of all times. And to prove this, he picked up his long gun and he fired shots toward his farm a mile away and he invited his neighbors to come over and see where these shots had landed. He claimed that he had aimed at targets on the side of his barn. And the neighbors came over a little later and when they got there, they saw that there were targets painted on the side of his barn and there were bullet holes in the center of each of the targets on the side of his barn and they were incredibly impressed that he could hit the targets from over a mile away and they claimed him the best sharpshooter of all time. But the fact is he'd actually cheated a little bit to do this and he had fired at the barn but he'd painted the targets after the bullets had already hit. We sometimes call this painting the target around the arrow or there's actually a Swiss version of this story I'm told where it involved a William Tell type marksman who was firing arrows.   Now the question is what does this have to do with forensic science? I've argued in academic writing that forensic scientists sometimes engage in a process that's very much like what the famous Texan did. That when we look at DNA analysts for example and they're comparing a DNA sample from a suspect to a particular evidentiary profile. Sometimes the evidentiary profile is a little ambiguous, hard to interpret. And what tends to happen is that they'll look at the suspect's profile and they'll use that to help them interpret the evidence profile in a way that causes the interpretation of the evidence profile to be closer to what the defendant's profile is. So in effect they then find a match and they say the bull's eye hit the target. We found the match and they compute the probability of that occurring by chance. But the computation is mistaken because what they don't take into account is that they were able to move the target around. The bull's eye got painted before the bullet or after the bullet already hit. So it's after they knew what the defendant's profile was that they interpreted this other profile. They did it in a way that caused the match to be more likely. That then distorts the statistics in ways that can dramatically cause a dramatic underestimation of the probability of a match by coincidence. So we've done some informal experiments in which we have engaged forensic scientists in interpreting DNA profiles and so on and we've been able to show that in fact they do this. Sometimes the world creates what we call naturalistic experiments where analysts are required to interpret evidence without knowing what the defendant's profile is. If this process really occurs we should expect sometimes that they would interpret the evidence in a way that would exclude a suspect. But then when they see the suspect's profile they change their interpretation of the evidence and in fact that happens. And sometimes they actually admit to doing this. When you ask them, why did you interpret the profile in this particular way? It's like, well, I considered the defendant's profile and I think that this part of the signal must be a true signal and this other part must be noise because the true signal is what matches the defendant. They're admitting what's in effect a circular logic. So this is a long-winded way of explaining a fallacious form of reasoning that can lead to misestimation of the strength of DNA evidence. I think it happens for other forms of forensic science as well. It may well be part of what happened in the Mayfield fingerprint error case and I don't know if you've talked about this but there was a famous error in fingerprinting that arose out of the Madrid train bombing in 2007, I believe. A terrorist bombed a train in Madrid and a number of people were killed and investigators at the crime scene found a plastic bag that contained some detonators and on that plastic bag they found a fingerprint. The fingerprint was searched through large databases and it was matched, quote unquote, to a man named Brandon Mayfield who was a lawyer in Portland, Oregon. And how did that match your credit?  There was an Algerian suspected terrorist who matched it even better. They later found out. But for a time they were claiming that Mayfield was a match. Even though there was some discrepancies between Mayfield's fingerprint and this print on the bag, the parts that matched, they said, these are the good data, we will count these. The parts that didn't match, they said, oh well maybe the bag was distorted or maybe there was an overlay. So they credited the data consistent with the hypothesis of match. They discarded the data inconsistent. As a result their interpretation of the target changes over time in a way that makes it more likely that this wrong person will match. And that's an example of fallacious reasoning by a group of forensic scientists that can lead to a wrong result. The solution to this kind of thing is to use more rigorous procedures. We know from psychological studies and from experience in many areas how to make forensic science more rigorous than it is. The question is whether people in the field are willing to go to the extra effort needed to improve their scientific rigor. I hope they are. Do you think it's important to test claims and opinions when lives and livelihoods are on the line? Why no matter. I think we should just allow people to say anything they want regardless of whether there's a scientific basis for it. I'm joking of course. The answer would be yes. Human beings often come to believe things that are not true or not fully warranted. Tom Gillovich has this famous book about how we know what isn't so. We know from research in psychology and from a long history of human error that people often can believe things that are unwarranted or unjustified or not fully supported. Because we all as human beings have this tendency to jump to conclusions and frankly to make mistakes, I think it's really important when lives and fortune are at stake in these opinions, that we test them out and check them. That's what science is all about. And that's I think one of the great advantages of science over other methods of developing knowledge is the commitment to rigorous testing of beliefs. So how do we go about testing these kinds of claims? Well I suppose it depends on what kind of claim we're talking about. When we're talking about scientific claims, scientists often use the term validation when they're talking about testing of claims. Validation meaning to make sure that the claim is valid. And so I think part of what you have to do is look very closely at exactly what the expert is claiming and then think about how one can test that that claim is true. So if an expert is claiming that he or she can distinguish among individuals using a DNA test or a fingerprint test, one way to put their claim to the test would be to submit to them samples that you know come from the same person or a different person and see how accurately they can distinguish those. See how often if you give them samples that you know came from the same person they say that they are from the different person. Or how often if you submit samples known to be from different people they claim it's from the same person. So the rates of those kinds of errors will tell you a great deal about how accurate the claim really is. And so I think it's very important that we do those studies. So some claims are about the general ability to discriminate among things. Other claims have to do with the rarity or frequency of certain characteristics. So if an expert says, I've looked at these two DNA profiles they're the same and DNA profiles of this type would be found in one person in a billion. Well how does the expert know that? Obviously the expert hasn't tested a billion people to know that. A certain amount of mathematical extrapolation must have been involved, right? So one needs to examine very carefully how that conclusion was generated. In the case of DNA evidence these claims are supported by doing research on the frequency in various populations of certain genetic markers or characteristics. The samples they use are not billions of people. They often are hundreds or thousands of people. And to get from a database of a hundred or a thousand people to a claim that one in a billion person matches assumptions have to be made that the markers are sort independently and they are statistically independent of one another. Now are those assumptions true? Well there's been a lot of debate and discussion of that. There's some support for these assumptions. There's whether the support's adequate is still debated in some circles. I think the conclusion has been that they're true enough for government work. They're true enough that we allow experts to make them when testifying in very important criminal cases, which doesn't mean that they're proved beyond all possible doubt. You were involved in a case with O.J. Simpson. Can you tell me a little bit about that? Well that's now a very old case. In 1994 O.J. Simpson, who was a well-known former football star and then a TV pitch man was accused of murdering his former wife in Los Angeles. There was a great deal of DNA evidence involved in the case. Blood samples everywhere. At the time I was a professor at UC Irvine where I had done a lot of writing about DNA evidence. I had also, in the role of lawyer, litigated cases on the admissibility of DNA evidence. I suppose it's not surprising that the O.J.'s defense team asked me to join them as one of 12 lawyers in the so-called dream team that was put together to defend him. I served as defense counsel during the criminal trial that began in 1994 and terminated in 1995 with Simpson's acquittal. Most of what I did was analyze and work on the DNA evidence. What the defense team did was look at evidence that appeared to discriminate Mr. Simpson and see if we could generate alternative explanations for that evidence consistent with his innocence and see if we could support those explanations. I think it's a little known fact that psychology played a big role in Simpson's acquittal, at least in my view. The defense team included a psychologist, me, and we consulted with a number of psychologists. At one point we even approached Daniel Kahneman about him being involved in the case, although he didn't ultimately work on the case. J. Kohler worked on the case. Gary Wells was consulted on the case. So a number of famous psychologists were consulted on the case. The defense team in constructing theories of the case was strongly influenced by a psychological theory called the story model developed by a psychologist named Reid Hasty and his colleagues at University of Colorado and Northwestern University. The story model is a theory about how people come to believe and accept theories of a criminal case. And what it tells us is that it tells us the circumstances that make a particular story or theory believable and involves things like logical coherence of the elements, how completely a theory explains the evidence at hand and so on. And I would say that in designing Simpson's defense, the defense team was guided heavily by theoretical notions from the story model. We were trying to tell a compelling story of the case that would explain the evidence and be consistent with Simpson's innocence. And the psychological theory helped us determine what elements that story had to have. And so that's the little-known story about the role of psychology in the acquittal of O.J. Simpson. That sounds great. But yeah, so the reason Simpson was acquitted, despite what appeared to some to be an overwhelming amount of DNA evidence that incriminated him, was that the defense was able to construct some theories that had to do with accidental contamination and some intentional planning of evidence and was able to present at least some support for those theories, sufficient support to make those theories plausible in the minds of the jury so that the jury believed that the prosecution's theory of Simpson's guilt was not the only possible explanation. There was another story, if you will, that was plausible enough that the jury had to take it seriously and that created the reasonable doubt that led to Simpson's acquittal. This course is about the science of everyday thinking. What advice do you have for people out there who want to think better and do better in their everyday lives? Oh, that's a good question. Boy, I'm not sure I've mastered how to think well myself. I think we all struggle with thinking clearly, with marshalling our thoughts. There are some times when I have been benefited by trying to be very systematic and decompose problems into elements and think about them carefully piece by piece. But the fact is I rarely make actual decisions that way. I think a lot of our decision-making happens kind of intuitively through processes that we don't fully understand and really can't analyze. And so the kind of advice that I give people about making better decisions is to be careful about what information you allow yourself to consider. If you're a forensic scientist and you want to avoid being influenced inappropriately by extraneous information, make sure you don't know that information. If you're an instructor and you want to avoid being influenced by how attractive or charming the students are when you grade their exam, grade their exams blindly. So there are circumstances in which less information sometimes leads to better decisions. Knowing what those circumstances are and then blinding yourself to inappropriate information is maybe one of the best ways to improve your decision-making. My name is Bill. I think about proof. I think about how proof is generated. I think about how people respond to proof. I think about proof that's put forward that isn't really proof.