Hello, it's Rachel Lawson here again, community liaison for the Drupal Association and we have yet another one of the candidate chats for the Drupal Association 2020 elections. And this time it's with Samson Goddy all the way over in Port Harkot. So, hi Samson, how are you doing? I'm good, I'm good. How are you doing? It's been, I don't know, like six, seven, almost seven months. It feels a long while, doesn't it? Yeah, since we last saw each other. In fact, we have kind of bumped into each other quite a few times over the last few years. I seem to remember, yeah, I seem to remember us meeting at a very important conference called Sustain RSS a few years ago. What brought you to that? So, you know, I would just, I think, so 2018 was the year we officially started the open source community in Africa. So that was when I was in some research around sustainability model for RSS and I was trying to look for a way that I could make the project more sustainable financially. So I stumbled upon Sustain RSS, which you just made more sense and given the fact that the project that I was interested in the open source collective were the hosts for the event. So it kind of made more sense for me to attend and that's when I met, you know, yourself and Pierre and some really interesting folks within the RSS community. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Okay, so you have stood for the election, which made me very happy. In fact, actually we've got some amazing candidates, we've got 10 fantastic candidates and I'm going to be really happy for any of them to be elected to be honest, I'm really happy. But I thought I'd give you an opportunity to tell us all about yourself and tell us kind of how you see Drupal in the future and so on and being part of that.  So can you tell me about building community, what does that mean to you? So, you know, the article I dropped actually, I think that was like two, three weeks ago called the Accidental Leadership in Open Source. I kind of highlighted the reason why, you know, I got into open source in the first place because I was a pretty young kid with access to, I believe most people should know there's the one after the child project. And I was very interested in coding and that made it much easier for me to like figure out because, you know, the, on the software side of the hardware, the Sugar Labs community is like really welcoming and that made it much easier for me to like, you know, feel welcomed and, you know, able to ask questions. So I kind of felt a little bit indebted in a way to kind of replicate that same scenario to like, you know, people that are interested in coming to open source. And ever since I've been stuck within strategizing, you know, and also like focusing on community communities. So I've been working with Sugar Labs for the past six, seven years right now on focusing on the community side, trying to make sure things like onboarding, welcoming folks from GCI group coding, and with some of code and, you know, outreach and then some few folks through like maybe some kind of like, October 1 equivalent. So it's been something really interesting that I've been doing over at the U.S. because it's a project, you know, based in the U.S. But for the past two, three years now, I've been sort of like serving as a strategist to understand what really works best for communities in Africa, because it's kind of a very interesting challenge for me because again, a lot of persons have been asking me, okay, we've been seeing less participation from the continent and some of the time there's a lot of stereotypes that come in play and there's like, Africa is a country, they speak Africans, you know, there's just a lot of there's a lot of stereotypes that always come in play, but it's really a diverse continent and they're like a really huge continent, right? So something that I actually spent a lot of time trying to understand the space and, you know, that was where the open source community Africa came out from because I was trying to make something that was, you know, part of the definition because, you know, when somebody goes into, go to, let's say Google or maybe some search engine and search open source, there's always some kind of a definition around software and not the community, right? And maybe in the western world, it's much easier, maybe due to the terminology of the language being used in defining open source, like from the SFS or the OSI, it kind of makes much easier sense. But given the fact that, you know, they are like much younger people in the continent and they are obviously new to technology, the terminology of how open source is defined for me personally for somebody I've been in open source for about eight years, it's kind of like fundamentally flawed to embrace the community side because at some stage you'll be struggling, like, because an average African as a person believe in community, right? The culture promotes community, the culture promotes multiple people who live in one area, it's almost 1.5 billion people. I live in a country where it's like 200 million people, so community is a huge part of it and it's something that I have seen and also have created a space where, you know, we use community to onboard people into open source. That is why I feel like community building is like really important and something that I've been, you know, quite focusing on for the past five years right now. Fantastic. Yeah, so you talk about having really spent a lot of time thinking about this type of stuff and also trying out those ideas and thinking about how it works in different ways in different parts of the world, which is really interesting. Yeah. You also talked about organizations you've already been involved in and organizations that I know that you have spent a lot of time making sure other people know about. Things like Sugar Labs and so on. And if there's one thing that we need to really step up our game in Drupal, the Drupal project, is how we advocate for Drupal and actually how we make sure people know about that. So what can you tell us about that and what does that mean to you to advocate for Drupal? Yeah, that's a very interesting question because it's, I kind of like self identify myself these days as an open source advocate. Right, so this makes more sense to have like an idea around that. So, you know, if you look at, even out of the open source community, right, if you look at the corporate world, there's a lot of advocacy role these days. And that's one of the one of the high rising roles, you know, particularly because companies understood that, you know, the part of being for somebody to use your tool, or for somebody to trust your tool or your platform, you need to build a safe haven for them. And the idea of creating some kind of a safe haven, the idea for you to create some kind of a trust without too coming hard to the person is to give them the tips and tricks or how great a community is or how great it so is in this case. Right. And it's something that I've, you know, particularly with Sugar Labs, something that I've been able to do for this past years, right, telling kids or, you know, schools and also parents that hey, there's a tool that you could download for free. It's completely open source. Maybe they might not necessarily understand the word open source, but it's more of like, hey, this tool is free, and you don't need to worry about security tracking on all those things. And this is something that you could easily download. There's no license, there's no subscriptions, you know, any kind of crazy, crazy fees that you need to do. But the one of the awesome thing about it is that your kid can also learn, but also give back to the community. So making sure that they could take their unique experience on that software in this case like Sugar Labs or Sugar Dex of Sugar Labs Maintain and also go back and give back to the community to make it much better for more people to come in, right. And one of the ways that I've seen that work is organizations, foundations, making that extra effort to create needs of volunteers or hire people as an advocate to go into a space that they know that they are not really sure about. And the reason why I feel like, you know, this is something that is quite unique to Drupal is the fact that, you know, Drupal as a community is really awesome. I started, you know, recently started, in fact, like I was actually at the last summit, which was really interesting and the onboarding process of getting to the events was just awesome. I was a mentor, you know, the whole experience was really, really awesome, right. But that was a bit, I would say that for me, it's really unique because I haven't really gone through that experience before, which I get thanks to the Drupal community, right. But also, you know, one of my goals, one of the things that I always scream about, like Twitter or anything, it's always about how I feel that true diversity is trying to make sure that you get great skill sets, like having diverse skill sets attract better diverse community, because one of the challenges that you've seen in contributing to open source is the fact that, you know, it's always around code, code, code, code. And there's like design, there's like research, there's like documentation, there's even people person, like one of the reasons I love the Drupal project is about the people, right. And which is a bit unique because I honestly did not know that most of the people that I've been talking to directly and indirectly are from the Drupal community like yourself, right. You know, which is awesome because the great part about having a successful project is about the people and then the people make the community. And in order for you to make sure that your community is much better is like making sure that you have great representation. And that's why I love the list from the board, even if I know like there's a few folks from the continent already, which I'm really happy about to see that there are Africans coming to run. This is something that normally gives you joy because of how diverse the old open source space is. Yeah. Yeah. All right, that's really good. Yeah. So, obviously, you told there about hearing a lot of from various people it's like, oh, this person's from Drupal this person's from Drupal. And I know when we were at the open source community Africa conference which you co-organized in Lagos. There was so many of the speakers got up and when they were talking about community they were talking about Drupal. For example, it was like, oh my God, which for me is one of my favorite Drupal memories weirdly. Yeah. Yeah, even though I was not in a Drupal space. But I don't know about yourself is something that's particularly that you've seen that kind of stands out. So for me, you know, one of the important part about an open source project is not necessarily about the project, right, because I feel like I could I could be part of a project without being in contact with the organization, right. And one of the key part about, you know, the reason for advocacy, as much as it's not about just the usage of the software but also the people behind the software like China on board moving into the software right. So that that was like, you know, you mentioned the festival, when we started playing above the festival, you know, one of the high one of the things that we wanted people to remember is about, you know, yes, it was from the open source community Africa, but we created it in a way that every project would have an opportunity to reach out to people, right. Like, you know, even one of the keynote speaker from Lagos spoke about how his first encounter to open source was organizing Drupal events in Lagos. Right. It's like, it's incredible. Yeah. I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, whoa, this is interesting, right. And even today, like I also made a mega from the OSS team at Google and she's been really interesting because, you know, the community spirit around her is just really amazing. And when I heard that, you know, you know, she was she was part of the Drupal leadership team from Drupal, I was like, okay, this makes more sense because, you know, every Drupal person that I miss is like really awesome. I was like, I'll be saying what I've been doing all this years. Well, you know, we've been built in the world. Right. So it's just, it's just really amazing to see that, you know, they're like really awesome people behind the project, which is really important. And that's something that I plan to even do much better. You know, when I get elected, you know, for for the community to make sure that I create a league of advocates, right. It's something I've been doing independently. You know, and I've seen some, some, some amount of success on the continent. There's been some huge range of contributions from 2017 when I started publicly, you know, in 2020 and then the results was the festival. You know, the festival was an act of celebration, celebrate what has been happening for the past three years, you know, on the continent, right. You know, so that's that's what I feel like, you know, the people in Drupal are really awesome. And that's, you know, that's what I what I want to do to make sure that there's there are much cooler people in the community because people do kind of like set up a big evangelism because when you love somebody or you like somebody's or you or you or you or you just really interested in that person's work, you just easily get drawn to the project institution with right. One of the ways that people get into sugarlamps is because they're like, Hey, I love what Samsung do. I think I need to jump on this project. Right. So that's that's something I feel like it's, it's part of my moment and also like having to make sure that, you know, you give a presentation at the festival really awesome to me. And then we had a conversation about community was also one of my highlights, because you shared about again, you know, one of the things we're talking about was that you were able to share, you know, how Drupal have a very unique community building experience, you know, as part of the conversation for sustain. Yeah, part of the group. Right. So that was that was really important to me. I also like one of my best. I think maybe that's one of the reasons I love London, right, because this is like really awesome. Yeah, it's a good place. Yeah, it's a bit busy for me. But hey, yeah. Yeah, Megan, Sanik, it was our executive director and so recently. And now we've got Heather who's doing an awesome job. So yeah, we've got some great advocates. It's true. It's absolutely true. Yeah, so you mentioned a few things that you mentioned sugar labs and you mentioned, obviously open source community Africa, both extremely important things. And these are giving you experience. So obviously we'd be looking for someone who ever wins this election to come along and work on a on a board. And my understanding is you already have even though you're not old and you already have quite a lot of experience on boards and making them successful. Do you want to tell us about that? Yeah. So, you know, one of the interesting fact about the accidental leadership was the fact that I was explaining to the readers, right, how I started. I don't want to say more like accidental how I was kind of like learning why doing. So when I joined sugar labs as a contributor, I moved from just being a user into becoming a contributor coach contributor. And then I moved to the election membership because I was like something that I felt like I was really happy about. And then onboarding and then becoming an admin. So I was really excited when they were like, Hey, do you want to run for the board? I was like, okay, great. And the fact front fact I was like, you know, the youngest on the on the left. So it was quite intimidating for me at first because these guys are being like, you know, 20 years experienced, you know, leadership and it was really, really awesome. Like, I was actually running with somebody that onboarded me on open source. I was running against. It was just quite interesting. Right. So, so I joined I joined the board of oversight board. So she was on the board of a set board for sugar labs. And one of my focus was marketing strategy when it comes to some primarily on marketing. So true marketing, there was advocacy, there was, you know, social media outreach. It was also like, you know, conferences, just basically marketing stuff. But also I was also focusing on making sure that there was like the roadmap on the vision of the sugar itself. It's a really huge platform. You know, it's one of the, you know, the office of credit was like really huge, you know, way back in 2008, like it was like in every, literally every country, but maybe not much in Europe, but it was huge in Africa, it was huge in Asia, huge in South America, some part of the not American part of it. So having to be in part of that decision, making sure that I'm part of that leadership team to make sure that the software becomes better. Right. I'm interested because in 2017 to to begin of 2021 I left the board. You know, they have been some huge amount of growth within the organization right here being the vision has been more welcoming. It's been very diverse because I've been able to create systems and also advise other board members to create systems that makes it much better for people, especially on underrepresented, you know, a region to come and come to open schools. And after leaving the board in, I think, or before leaving the board, beginning of this year, but for the festival, I got reached out that hey, do you want to be so the sugar loss project was part of the the software freedom because obviously right. So they want to create their own entity to run the project itself. So now I'm serving as a board of directors for the new entity. Right. So, so, so that that just makes more sense to like, you know, continue that vision. And also few few months after meeting your sustain and also bring it Oscar, you know, a huge project from the continent into the collective platform right. I got reached out by the co founder that hey, we love what you're doing. Do you want to bring that experience down to open source collective. Right. And so for the past about six, six, six months so far, I've been, you know, working on a project as a board that kind of like helps sustain a lot of open source project, which is really awesome. And, you know, to give it a fact that we have a system that helps sustain a maintainers which is one of the fundamental problem of OSS to make sure that you give financial contribution to to to maintainers, you know, Oscar has been successful because of that So it's easier for organizations like Google and the rest of people with huge, you know, finance to support that mission. So being part of that, that board, being part of that board to make sure that we grow not bigger to make sure that particularly in the content alpha idea just makes much awesome. So on the both side, I would say it's been it's been a very interesting journey for me, because I've been more placed on the strategy side of it, like how do we grow 10 times or how we grow two times or how do we grow in this region So that's something that I've been doing and also obviously running an organization like open source collect and Community Africa, this huge has been also part of, you know, my one of my leadership qualities, I guess. I think you've got a wide and varied experience now. I think you're now one of those people with that 20 years of experience compressed into a short time. Yeah, it's always funny when, you know, so when I talk to people like hey, how do you know, like, oh, I'm October 21 and like, okay, great, how long have you been open source eight years how long have you been in leadership role about five years like wait, how is that possible, right. You know, yeah, exactly, right. Exactly. That was like, I was like, well, what, why not like, why can't I be, you know, in that part, right. So it's something that I've seen, you know, also registering. You know, you know, one of the one of the, the important announcement on the festival went was when I worked with a team to move, you know, Oscar as a member of the member for the OSI as Drupal was really important for us to because we would now join forces with OSI to make sure that we spread you know, that, that, that outreach of open source software or people. Really interesting. That's really good. And that will give people a lot, a lot to think about. I don't know if there's if there's anything else you want to say that to go with your candidacy or be anything else you want to add. Yeah, I would say so for the Drupal community, people watching this video would obviously read my candidacy statements. I'm not very, I'm not very political. It's always very interesting when I use the word candidate, right. It's always very interesting for me. Right. One of the, one of the things that, you know, I've been doing particularly as we try to, you know, translate professionally actually to become some kind of an open source strategies, right. It's something that I'm doing to hopefully get a full time job to work on that, on that, on that road not to make sure that I focus on strategy, not just around maybe the global side of it but also that those little things that, you know, open source has been fundamentally flawed on, like, true diversity, true diversity in skill set, true diversity in people and also in terms of just having better experience, right. I would say, you know, these are things that I've been working on for the past years and I'm really excited, you know, to join as a candidate and also looking forward to see how it can help Drupal deal the next, in my own terminology, right, deal the next billion creators. That's what we use at the Officers Committee of the United States. We do, yeah. Yeah, so to make sure that I take Drupal to that next phase. So I would say, yes, I might be really new to the community, but there's one thing that I'm really good at is, you know, my onboarding process to the community is really, really nice because I've been able to create onboarding process for a lot of open source organizations. So, yes, I might be pretty new to the Drupal itself, which I'm going to be so transparent about, but I'm really positive that, you know, if I get in, I would take my diverse experience to make sure that I make the organization much better and bigger. It's a really great community. It's a great community. I don't think there's anything I might most likely do. I would just have to work on some specific things because I can't say I want to make the organization better. It's better. It's great. So, yeah, so that's, that's what I, that's my, my, my final words here. Oh, that's fantastic. Well, I wish you the very, very best of luck. As I do all the candidates, and we will see very soon because yeah, voting opens quite soon. So best of luck. And I will speak to you soon, Samson, once the everything comes down. Okay. Thank you. Bye bye.


It's been a couple of months since my last upload onto YouTube and that's largely because of the passing of my dear friend and fellow coach John Proctor who passed away back in February. John helped thousands of people get into fishing, mostly disadvantaged people, not just through fishwish projects but through some of his own work with Leonard Cheshire and projects. He'll be sorely missed. So although I've not fished much, my efforts to get Wessex Water's sewage discharge noticed by more has been successful. I really hope this encourages other anglers to act when they see pollution. Anyway, onto the fishing. In this vid I'm down at Wimbledon Lake with my friend Ian, fly fishing for rainbow trout. Small by this fishery standards. Well done. I'm determined one year to come here and catch a fish for you, dude, but...  Next I try and catch up in the water using a buzzer and a merger suspended between a midgetip on a floating line and a dry fly caddis pattern. Leaders only about 12, 13 foot long find it easier on a kayak to have quite a short leader. And fishing these droppers just means you've got to keep a nice open loop. It's a snowy six weight floating line with a, I think it's an airflow midgetip or ghost tip. Look at that. Three foot long I think. He's just number two on the buzzer. I guess it's a nymph really. He's taking all the door fighting fit. He's off. If you're wondering what on earth I'm playing at here, bear in mind I'm sat on a kayak. I can't lean back any further and my neck is tied to a leash on the left hand side so I can't reach out of the net any further. Shit, now I'm in trouble. Comedy. I'm here the outfall. And we're sat just behind that tree. What's the problem is that it's got some forceps to it. Just nipped in the lips at the top. And I thought I was going to lose it because my point fly got caught on a net hanging in by a thread. Goofy fish. It's set and go. See you at the time for a pie. Very pleasing. Got my new toy. I hope he links. Got it because it can be thrown on top of the car without any effort. It's about half the weight of my outback and you can walk up and down on it obviously. I haven't ventured that far yet.


Although Texas is blessed with a bountiful supply of water, we have reached a crossroad in providing water for our growing population. In the past century, we quenched our growing thirst by exploring new aquifers and creating reservoirs to harness the state's powerful system of rivers and streams. During that time, our water law encouraged aquifer pumping and reservoir development. Today, demand for water continues to accelerate while our supplies have little room to grow. To meet this challenge, our legislature is creating laws that focus on conservation, recycling, drought planning and better management. Although all water is interconnected, Texas law recognizes three distinct types of water based on their geological container, diffused surface water, surface water and groundwater. Each type has different rules controlling ownership and management. Diffused surface water comes from rainfall and is often called storm water, drainage water or surface runoff. It does not flow in any defined water course. In its natural state, this water flows across land from higher to lower elevations. Diffused surface water includes the rainwater that flows across yards, runs down subdivision streets, stands in parking lots or flows across pastures. This water remains the property of the landowner so long as it does not flow across property line or enter a natural water course. When drainage water flows into a creek, canyon, ravine, stream or river, it then belongs to the state. Surface water flowing in natural rivers and streams is a vital resource for all regions of Texas, but it's especially important for cities and urban areas. Nearly two-thirds of all Texas surface water is used by cities and industries. Because river and stream flow vary throughout the state, reservoirs have been built to provide a more reliable and dependable source of water. All told, the Texas River System has 5,700 reservoirs of those 210 or major reservoirs which hold more than 5,000 acre feet of water. However, 98% of our reservoir water is held in only 75 of the state's major reservoirs. The state of Texas owns and manages surface water. State water is defined as an ordinary flow, underflow, storm water, flood water and rain water of every flowing river, natural stream, canyon, ravine, lake and watershed in the state. A natural stream or river is defined as a water course that has a channel delineated by a riverbed and banks. State owned surface water also includes the tide water of every bay or arm of the Gulf of Mexico. Springs and spring water become state owned when they flow to the surface and enter a natural river or stream. Anyone seeking to use state owned surface water must get a permit from the Texas Commission on environmental quality. The commission may grant a permit only if there is unappropriated water available in the river. The water will be beneficially used. Existing water rights will not be harmed. The proposed use is not detrimental to the public welfare and reasonable diligence that will be used to avoid waste and conserve water. In addition, the commission must also consider the effects of the permit on bays and estuaries, existing in-stream uses, fish and wildlife habitat and water quality. If all of these conditions are satisfied, the commission will issue a water use permit. The water permits issued by the TCEQ are governed by the doctrine of prior appropriation. This doctrine determines who can use water during drought when there is not enough water to satisfy all water users. Under this doctrine, all of the state surface water permits have been awarded on a time of application seniority basis with the earliest permits having the most seniority. For example, a landowner who has a 1902 seniority date will be entitled to their full amount of water before a landowner with a 1920 seniority date. But this means if there are a hundred water permit holders on a river and there is only enough water in the river to satisfy ten, the ten most senior permits would get all the water and the other ninety would have to go without. To date, more than 6,000 surface water permits have been issued throughout the state. Because irrigators, cities, industries and others have been claiming water for more than 120 years, most of the natural flow of rivers and streams is already allocated. Very little surface water remains to be claimed. According to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, twelve out of fifteen major rivers are fully appropriated. There is no water available for new appropriations in the stretches of the Canadian, red, cypress, Sabine, Naches, Trinity, Brazos, Colorado, Guadalupe, San Antonio, Nueces and Rio Grande rivers. Today, if you want to acquire a water right on these fully appropriated rivers, you will have to buy the water right from someone who is willing to sell. There is a noteworthy exception to getting a permit to use state-owned surface water. Do not need a permit to build a pond or stock tank and use surface water to fill the tank provided the water is used for a domestic livestock or wildlife. These ponds may impound up to 200 acre feet of surface water. A permit is required however for any pond, stock tank or reservoir built on a stream that averages more than 30 feet in width regardless of the tank's size, volume or purpose. This provision applies only to state-owned surface water. If the stock tank captures diffused surface water, such as rainwater, it may hold more than 200 acre feet of water and no permit is required. Aquifers are a third type of geological container defining Texas water law. The groundwater they hold is a vital resource for Texas. Groundwater provides more than 55% of the total water used in many counties. Although the state has more than 30 different aquifers, 97% of the groundwater comes from only 9 major aquifers. Groundwater is important not only for agriculture but for our cities as well. For example, aquifers supply water for Amarillo, Bryan, College Station, El Paso, Euston, Lubbock and San Antonio. In contrast to state-owned surface water, groundwater is privately owned. This law was adopted in 1904 by the Texas Supreme Court when it determined that the English Common Law rule of absolute ownership, often called the rule of capture, would be used to establish ownership and control of groundwater. The capture rule allows landowners to capture, use or sell all the water they can pump from beneath the surface of their land. The often unappreciated side effect of this rule is that landowners are not protected from excessive pumping by a neighbor. There are some exceptions to the rule of capture, when the pumping is done to maliciously harm a neighbor, the water is wasted. Negligent pumping causes adjoining land to subside, or a slant well is drilled that crosses a property line. The courts have granted limited rights to restrict, limit or stop pumping. As many rural landowners have discovered, the rule of capture protects the biggest pump and the deepest well. However, the legislature has allowed locally established groundwater conservation districts to modify the rule of capture. The first local district, the High Plains Underground Water Conservation District, was created in 1951. Today, more than 80 groundwater conservation districts have been established throughout the state. Although their powers and duties vary, groundwater conservation districts must prepare and implement a management plan, and register and keep drilling records for wells. Although they are not mandated to do so, districts may also require that wells be spaced a certain distance from each other, and they may establish pumping limits for certain types of non-domestic wells. Although groundwater conservation districts cannot prohibit water from being exported beyond their boundaries, they can't somewhat regulate this activity to protect local supplies. We stand in a crossroad that offers daunting challenges in the management of both surface and groundwater resources. As times have changed, we have changed our rules, allocating water resources in the best interest of all Texans. Today and in the future, our laws must continue to evolve and find a way to provide this limited supply to a rapidly growing population with a big thirst for water. Our laws must successfully distribute the existing water supplies so that we can move beyond this crossroad to an economically and environmentally promising tomorrow.


I'm here at the United Nations, which was founded in 1945 as an international peacekeeping organization. But over the years, the U.S., Israel, Canada, the U.K., various international organizations and political leaders have accused the U.N. of being biased against Israel. Let's go back to the beginning. Israel has been a member of the U.N. since 1949, not long after the U.N. General Assembly approved the partition plan for a Jewish state and an Arab state in 1947. Israel became a state with thousands of Arab citizens like me becoming Israeli, while the Palestinians rejected the partition plan, leading to ongoing conflict. Today, the U.S. U.M. bodies address the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In fact, some say disproportionately. For example, from 2006 to 2019, the U.N. Human Rights Council condemned Israel 85 times more than double any other countries, with regimes like Iran receiving only nine condemnations and North Korea receiving only 12. It has also condemned Israel more than any other country in the world combined since its creation. And then there is the U.N. General Assembly, which adopts about 20 resolutions against Israel every year, and five for all other countries combined. Is Israel really so much worse than all other nations? Today, Israeli Ambassador Gilad Ardaan is Israel's voice at the U.N., where his job is to make sure that Israel's side of the story is heard. I believe we should always be on the offensive and expose the hypocrisy at the U.N. The Security Council, for example, should be ashamed of itself that instead of condemning a rogue state like Iran, they prefer to use their debates and focus only on Israel. Historically, Israel's ambassador has always played an important role in the U.N. From the legendary statesman Abba Evin, the first Israeli ambassador to the U.N., to Chaim Herzog's famous tearing up of Zionism as racism resolution in 1975, to Ambassador Gilad Ardaan today. I will never stop fighting for Israel's standing at the U.N. And today, I'm even more optimistic, because the words shifting priorities allow me to showcase Israel's innovation and remarkable achievements. And thanks to the widening circle of peace in our region, we have many more friends here at the U.N. that understand that the real problem is with the Palestinian incitement and rejectionism. Whether you agree with Israel or not, it's hard to deny the focus on Israel in the U.N. seems excessive.  Israel, a democratic state, is condemned more than Syria, Iran, North Korea, but with an inside man, Israel believes it's important to continue in the fight for the truth at the U.N.


Good morning, I am on my way to get some crops from hopefully Trader Joe's. I just ran in and out of Trader Joe's, but I got a text that since they're finishing up the script right now, we're meeting at 11, but I'm going to go to one more store because I didn't find incense in Trader Joe's and then I'm going to get our coffees. But still our goal is to start filming at 11.30. Dawn, sir, there's no incense until you eat it. I'm going to try and see if maybe Whole Foods has it. If not, I'm going to have to go to like a little store or somewhere. All right, I got them. Javier called a Whole Foods before I came here to make sure they had them. I got recharged and stressed away. Stuff in my car and was like, what's going on with you? I was like trying to be real. You're not like not really asking for help or anything and he would not leave me alone about it and I told him what was going on and he gave me 300 bucks and said get yourself a hotel room. I'm really not hungry anymore. I had a little. Yeah, I don't really eat in the morning because I'm okay, but plus if there's... Oh, we're going to eat spaghetti during... Oh yeah, and there's fruit in phones. Okay, thank you. So we're at the Airbnb and Victoria is still on her way, but Javier printed the script and we're going to do a quick reading. Hi Javier, wait, go this way. You can do it. I'm going to have a start up where I teach. Confident in saying their name. Hi, what's your name? So sorry. Oh, nice to meet you. Hi, what's your name? Javier. I don't know. Okay, so I was going to ask you, we could go with either way, whatever your vision is because I also saw it that way. We'd be like, okay, I'm good for now. Thank you, Javier. It's Wednesday and I just got a self tape request from my agency and they wanted by tomorrow at 5 p.m. So I'm just going to go ahead and film it right now and send it over to them because it's one of those where they just ask you to answer a question, which is super, super easy so I can film it right now. If I can get the lighting to work, I'm going to try and use this new backdrop that I have. Okay, this looks a little bit more accurate to the color of the backdrop and the color that I am. I swear I am not that oily but on camera. So for this audition, I have to answer a question, my name, height, and then do profiles. And that's it. I'm going to try and not think too much about the question and not do it a million times, but I had a little bit of practice in July with these questions. Oh man, that took me a lot longer than I thought. I think I just need to like take a breather. It's getting a little hot in the room. It's hot today, but I'm done with it. I'm going to go edit it and send it over. Let's go to Target. I just need to grab a few things really quick, including an SD card, a micro SD card for my phone because I keep deleting footage that I haven't uploaded onto my computer and it's driving me nuts. I'm getting another one of those that's bigger. And then I actually have a call with somebody about the area acting market because a friend of a friend wanted me to and I was like, I don't know how much I can actually help, but I'll do it. So I'm just going to grab those things really quick and then jump on that call. I have some exciting news. So the lease, the short that Javi and I filmed, Javi, Rogelio, Cesar and I filmed in March is going to be up this weekend on Bless Stress, the channel. I will put the link in the description once the lease, the short film is up so you guys can go check it out. But Javi's the same person that was in the beginning of this vlog. So we just shot another short. That went up so if you guys want to go see it and I'm excited just to see what people think because only a few people, I've shared it with two casting directors and two friends basically. That's the only people that have seen it. So I'm excited for more people to see it. But I am really excited for this weekend because I'm actually going to see two other shorts as well. One of them is a premiere, a showing of another short that I was in. It's going to be an outdoor showing with just basically the people that were involved and family and friends. And then the other one's going to be another short film by another creator. He's actually also on YouTube and Instagram and I'll tell you guys about it next week. But I think next week's vlog is going to be really fun because I'm also going to see a play. I'm so excited. I'm going to see an in-person outdoor play. So I'll share that with you guys for sure in next week's vlog. But I'm going to go now. Thank you guys so much for watching and at the end of every video I feature another channel. Today I wanted to feature Chona E. She's another Latinx creator. She's really funny, actress, comedian and she has a bunch of parody videos on her channel as well. And if you would like to be featured on my next video make sure you're subscribed. Like this video and leave me a comment.


So I've been making all of these videos recently and I actually ended up realizing that I haven't done a giveaway in a while So that's what we're gonna start this video off with is a little old giveaways So let's go ahead and show the items that I'm giving away I have a bunch of tackle in my garage that I really don't use and I know you guys would put it to better use So that's why I'm gonna give it to you guys and also I cannot Pre I appreciate the support so much guys seriously like Over the last couple of months has grown so much and it's because of you guys So we're gonna be giving you guys some tackle first thing got some little rage crawls right here These aren't the standard rage crawls That's like the beaver style bailing know what they call this dang thing have a little spinner bait right here And the last bait I gave away one of these before I had like two or three more in the garage And this is one of those 3d bats So let me know if you wanted me to do a video over this because I actually have another one And we can always run that But if you guys want to enter this giveaway all you have to do is be subscribed to the channel Hit the notification bell which is right next to the subscribe button That's a requirement hit the like button and then comment below your favorite bass fishing lure And I will be picking a winner sometime next week I'm gonna be doing a lot of traveling so I'll catch back up with you guys on this whole giveaway Be sure to remind me in the comment section never just load it up So you know spikes my brain I got a lot of stuff going on But I hope you guys enjoy this video I hope you guys got a lot of tips out of this after you're done watching it I've been getting so many questions lately about people saying man Noah summertime The fishing has got rough and I can agree the fishing has got rough But that doesn't mean that you can't catch some big ones this time during the summer So we're heading out to a pond today, and I'm gonna be showing you guys kind of how I break it down I'm gonna walk you guys through pretty much, you know everything that's on my mind today How I'm gonna end up catching these fish how I'm gonna target these big fish And we're gonna make it happen you guys have been asking me to explain a little bit more about what I'm doing So if you guys want to see that be sure to hit the like button leave a comment below If you like the little tips and this is a not here in there, but without further ado, let's go ahead get out to the pond So this is the beautiful pond that we're at today There's a few things that I really look at you know We got this little cove right here We got a bunch of wind kind of pushing up in it back in this corner, which we're gonna walk to in a little bit There's a bunch of wind pushing up in that little pocket and that can be a gray area for these bass to be feeding on these bait fish So I have a few baits rigged up today I got a jig right here just black and blue and then I have a chatter bait right there That's gonna be our moving bait to search for these fish today And then once we want to slow down and throw, you know a big profile bait for these big fish A jig is perfect both these baits right here. Just listen to me guys will catch a big fish You might not get as many bites on them, but they will catch big fish So we're gonna start in this little pocket some just came up right there and try this is a bunch of wind This place is actually kind of tough to get bites at but we're gonna try to break it down today and see what we can do So we're gonna start off with the chatter bait. This is our little moving bait You know, we're gonna cover some water see how active the fish are Tighten my drag just a little bit Beam a cast on this bank See if there's any on this grass line there might not be they might just be out deep But now we're gonna give it a try and just see see what happens today See how active they are see if they're gonna be willing to chase a moving bait. Oh Gosh already. Oh It's like a two-pounder Look at that. He ain't even that he is a skinny summer bass He's got a two-pound head in about a one-pound body. This guy is super like lethargic Let me tell you right when I hook this guy. He just wasn't look at his tail, too Man, this guy's been through a beat down. I feel sorry for this bass He almost looks like he's about to die. This is not good, man You need to get some food buddy and look at his lips right there I'm gonna chuck that jig here in a bit, but since we got one to eat a chatter bait. Let's keep on trying There should be one right there Yes, sir That's a good one right there He ate that chatter bait just how I'd want him to eat it not a big in but a solid pound and a half Look at his thick body right there. He's not like fat, but he's just thick. That's a beautiful little bass Some of my catching him for our second fish today. We're upgrading a little bit. You got a full doubt Full body fish right there. Let's keep it working Oh, he hammered me. He's got it. Is this even a bass? Whatever it is. I might have foul hooked him or something or he's just really big God, dawg Thing might be really big I got grass He is a three pounder or not quite that he's pushing it. Oh, yeah Look at that one. I can't wait to show you guys how I caught this one I've been trying it for a minute because it made so much sense, especially in the summer pattern Then it just happened right there. I got my scale in my pocket. I'm gonna pop a weight on this Joker I think he's about either two and a half or two and three quarters As you guys can tell zero it out See what we got. Oh Two pounds twelve ounces. So two and three quarters exactly like what I said, okay, two and three quarters Right there.  That's a beautiful bass. I don't mind catching them There goes So let me tell you guys what I'm doing So I have this chatter bait in the summertime if you can find any drop-offs or deep parts on a pond That's definitely where you need to be fishing. So as you guys can tell I just I was beamed to cast out there In the middle and I'm letting this thing sink. Okay, boom. All right. We just hit the bottom I'm right there on that drop-off What I do is I kind of hop this thing like a jig right up that drop off and they usually just slap it I usually just pick that sucker right up and that's what we're targeting right now You know, you had these drop-offs and in the summertime they really stack on that stuff really good now I'm on top of it, you know, I'm not on the drop-off anymore, but that's exactly what I just did I threw that chatter bait out there let it fall the drop off hopped it up and he hammered it right there See if we can do this again Yep, he's got me. I did it again Why are they fighting like that? God dog. This is at least the same size if not bigger They're fighting so weird though.  Oh Barely hooked. Holy cow That is the stubbiest fish. These fish are feeding right here on this drop-off Look at that barely hooked, but he hit that thing on the fall That's a fatty. That's about two and a quarter. I should get a weight on them since you guys like to see the weights Yep, two and a quarter Two pounds five ounces two pounds four ounces exactly four and a quarter or two and a quarter gosh What am I saying? There you go. You guys always question my weight skills. That's called both is out perfectly on the money Okay, two and a quarter That's pretty bass Caught them the same way as the last one right there on that drop-off letting this chatter bait fall ripping it up And they're just slamming it. Let's do it again. I was too cashed after the last one There he is Oh, he came off That was a good one, man. I had that was a big in right there. Oh, he's got it. Yep Yep, that might be a different one. I don't think I was the same one I just think I might have found him out deep. Look at that solid pound and a half You ain't quite to I'll take him. I had one slamming. I'm telling you a Majority of the time when you find them like this you can find them stacked up and catch more than one That's what I like about it. Just kind of like what I did down there So if you find these there's really condensed and stacked up on you know a drop-off It can get pretty dangerous But there's not too much grass. There's not too much grass. We can make it happen There isn't we can put a hurting on these bass with an old jig. Let me tell you. Oh My lordy. He's got it Geez guys. This is a big oh my gosh.  I couldn't even move him right there.  I don't have the right rod with me.  Oh Yeah, he's got my chatter bait. Oh, he spit it. He spit it. God gosh. Dang it There's being so freaking weird I just wish they would choke it and the funny part is like they're all down there Like we've proved that they're down and There he is That's a three. God that's a football. Look at that thing. Well, I think I spoke too soon I don't know if this is the one that hit me when it was down in the the drop-off But right when I started to move it up He slammed it and that's a freaking good one.  I want to say Either two and a half or two and three quarters. I think he's more towards that two and three quarters range Two ten just over two and a half between two and a half and two and three quarters Just like I said, these are all quality fish. Look at these. There's like a stubby still a football ever Look at that. That's so crazy right there Here I want you guys to pay attention to something that every fish are released I haven't even kept these out of the water long watch You see how each and every one's been so lethargic. That's just how today's been man Even with the fish biting. They've all just been so so lethargic. I Just put on one of these reaction innovations Kinky beavers in hematoma. Look at that. Oh, man. Is that like juicy? That's a big profiler right there for a big bass What do we got here? He's about to jump.  Okay Got him in the bottom lip. He swiped at it when I was push pushing up that little Drop off right there. It's a little two pound fish. It's a pretty one. Look at the colors on that guy All right, Jimbo, thank you for biting


Hi everyone, Niki Mua here. This is a pre-recorded talk for FSC 2020. The title of this talk is Maximums of the Additive Differential Probability of Exclusive Or. It's a result that came forth from the 2020 Cryptography Summer School. So it was a summer school organized by Novosibirsk State University. The goal of the summer school was to divide the students into groups to work on a particular problem. Remember this from the way that the E-Crypt research retreats or Asian Symmetric key works. The problem that I proposed was one that I've been giving to many students over the past 10 years. Every time that I've been asked to give some problem to study. It's a problem that's very easy to state. Basically, it is come up with a proof for theorem at a paper of FSC 2004. And this is a proof that has been lost. Now, it's not a problem that I expected to be solved because in those 10 years students have found it fun to explore some basic techniques and get a bit of taste for Symmetric key cryptanalysis, but never came up with a solution. So I was really surprised when the team reached out to me about two months after the summer school to let me know that a proof had been found. Now, I'd like to stress this is not a result that is groundbreaking in the way that we could just assume the proof was true and leave it at that, right? But still it does reveal some new insights. And as I'm going to show you there are quite a few other results that follow from the study of this particular problem as I will show. So I'm really really excited to give you this talk. But before I'm going to say more, I thought it would be a good idea to start with a basic overview of differential cryptanalysis. So what's differential cryptanalysis? Well, it's based on the idea that we're going to flip some bits at the input of the cryptographic algorithm. Let's say that it's a block cipher, so then you'd be flipping bits in the plaintext. And then you want to see which outputs that's going to affect, which output bits are going to be flipped. Now, typically for a well-designed cryptographic algorithm, those output bits are only going to be flipped with a certain probability. And if there would be some probability that a particular input difference leads to a particular output difference higher than random, then that is something that is considered to be a weakness because statistics of the cipher should be random, but it can actually often be leveraged to do a more powerful attack as well. For example, to recover the secret key for a block cipher. Now, typically a cipher consists of many rounds, and what we want to do is we want to determine the number of rounds that we can break, because that gives us an idea of the security margin of the cipher. Now, shown on this slide is how it's often easier to make assumptions on the differences after each of the rounds, because this helps us to calculate probabilities. Of course, this is going to be a potential source for errors, because it can be that there is more than one intermediate difference at a particular level that will eventually lead to the same output difference. So that's something that is often called clustering in literature. And it can also be that because we're going to multiply the probabilities of every round, assuming that they are independent, that that's actually not a correct assumption and that there might be an error in computing it in that way. Now, shown here on the slide, what we have is a differential, so a differential is delta x going to delta y, and also a differential trail. So for a trail, we specify not only the input and the output difference, but the intermediate differences after every round as well. Now, we're going to focus on ARX, or addition rotation XOR algorithms. So they involve modular addition, modular 2 to the power n, where n is the word size, typically 32 or 64 bits. The two other operations are bitwise rotation and an exclusive OR. Now, these are ciphers that are extremely fast, especially on low-end platforms that don't have any cryptographic instructions like instructions to compute a round or parts of a round of AES. So if you're looking at, let's say, 32-bit ARM platform, then you can do an addition and an XOR operation on 32-bit words in one clock cycle, and the rotation can actually be done in zero clock cycles, because on this particular platform you can provide the rotation amount for one operant as part of an instruction. This instruction, that case, will be an addition or an XOR instruction. So these are really fast operations, and if you want to analyze the way that differences propagate throughout these operations, one thing we could do is we could have a look at as I'm explaining, XOR differences, which are these bit flips that I was mentioning in differential-captain analysis, they go through the rotation in the XOR with probability one, but going through the addition is going to be with a certain probability that is not necessarily one, and here I'm going to show how such a probability can be computed. So it goes back to a paper of Litma and Moriai in FSC 2001. However, the approach that I'm going to give here is a slightly different one that was given by Litma, Wallon, and Dumas at FSC 2004 to compute the same probability in a different way using multiplication of series of matrices. Now the way it works is we have to specify the differences at the two inputs, so a difference of one will say the input bits are different, a difference of zero, that they are the same at this particular bit position, and then for every particular bit position, so you in the notation here have the most significant bit to the left and the least significant bit to the right, so for every particular i-th bit position, you look at what the differences are in the left operand, the right operand, and output of the addition operation, modular addition operation in this particular location, and then you're going to select one of eight possible matrices that you can have. Now these matrices are multiplied together. You have one matrix for every bit of the word, so for word length 32 you'd have 32 of those multiplications to be done. Then you left multiply by a vector that contains, in this case a row vector, that contains all ones, and you'll right multiply with vector, that contains, in this case column vector, that contains a one in the first position, and the zero in all of the other positions. Now for this particular example that I'm showing here, if you guys are going to do this computation to check, this is a particular input difference that will propagate with probability one-fourth, assuming that the inputs are chosen randomly. So here we're not looking at XOR differences, but we're looking at additive differences. What it means is that if you're going to go with XOR differences through XOR or through rotation operation, differences will propagate with probability one, but not necessarily when you're looking at an addition operation. Here it's the other way around. Probability will be one for any differences going through the addition operation because we're looking at additive differences, but the probability to go through XOR operation or rotation is not necessarily one. So this is something that can be handy to analyze certain ciphers where there are a lot of additions, maybe chaining additions or additions involving the key that are being done to analyze how differences propagate in that case. Now the approach that can be done here is similar. However, the matrices will look a bit differently. Previously, we had matrices of size 2 by 2. Now they are size 8 by 8 and again, the computation of the probability is similar. So what you would do is multiply row vector of all ones L and then a column vector with a one in the first position, zero in the other positions. And then the other matrices that you have depend on the differences in the positions that we are considering. Now, in this particular case of the additive differential probability of exclusive OR, there is symmetry property of those matrices where you can determine every matrix from every other matrix by doing a permutation of rows and columns. Okay, so without further ado, let's look at this theorem 3 of the FSE 2004 paper by Littma, Wallen and Dumas. So what the theorem states is that for all gamma, so gamma is the output difference, if you want to look at the maximum probability, so the value that maximizes the probability of going from input differences alpha and beta in the left and the right operands of the X operation to output difference gamma, then the maximum probability that you can have, maximizing over all alpha and beta, is going to be the same probability that you have to go from left operand difference zero, right operand difference gamma, going to output difference gamma. So what you will see if you're going to look up this FSE 2004 paper is that it says that the proof is omitted from the conference version. However, it turns out, I've spoken about this to Helger Littma, that the proof has been lost. So this is proof that we can seem to recover and that also we tried to come up with with other techniques. When I was looking into this more than 10 years ago in the beginning of my PhD thesis, together with Christophe de Canierre and Veselin Velitschkov, I don't want to say we spent too much time on this, but still it doesn't seem to be something that we could do with any of the existing techniques that we know in literature that we were rediscovering. So let me maybe discuss a few strategies and see how you might want to approach this type of problem. Of course, if the word size is small, you can do an exhaustive search. And I guess maybe for some people that might be enough that you would just say, let's look at all small word sizes, do an exhaustive search there. And if it works for small word sizes, it's also going to work for large word sizes. However, I want to be careful saying that because it does happen in mathematics that there are conjectures that have very large counter examples. So we cannot necessarily say because it works for small word size, it works for any word size. Another would be to have a look at this S-function toolkit that Veselin and Christophe and I worked on. This toolkit does provide a way of sorting output differences by probability. So if you can construct these matrices and the matrices can be bigger for different types of larger components, if somehow you get these matrices you saw in the previous slide, then this S-function toolkit, what it can do is it can give you for specific given input differences, a list of output differences ranked by probability. However, this is not something that gives you an insight into theorem 3 because it doesn't seem that the mechanics of the way that this A-Start search is done gives you something that shows that this theorem is obvious. That seemed to be a way that we were getting stuck. Another thing is you might say, well, what about using some automated techniques? Perhaps we can use that to search for certain types of differential trails. These MILP, or maybe people are saying MilpNow, SET, or other types of automated solvers that you can use. However, in that case, it's definitely clear that you cannot prove properties for any word size. You've fixed word sizes and for those you're going to obtain a result. Let me first start by an observation. A first observation is if you want to compute ADP XOR 0, gamma, gamma, then only two matrices are needed because the matrices, as I explained, they depend on the bits that you have in a particular bit position. In this case, the difference that we have for any position, let's say position i, is going to be either 0, 0, 0, or 0, 1, 1 in this particular case. So with two matrices, we have enough to compute this probability of ADP 0, gamma, gamma. Now, a second observation is that there is actually a property that we can use as a result of this permutation symmetry of the ADP XOR matrices that will turn out to be really important to compute the analysis of different cases and proof that we have in the paper. I've been told that for every good paper on a mathematical subject, there should at least be one proof in the slides. So I'm going to give you here a proof in this particular slide, where you can see by using these permutation matrices, Tk, that will swap indices i and ix or k. These matrices are in voluctions, so Tk times Tk is the identity matrix. You can compute a way of going from the formula on the left side to the formula on the right side, which as I explained, will be really useful to analyze the cases that will pop up in the proof. And then here I can sketch the proof, so it's going to be a proof by induction on n. So to prove this that the maximum over any alpha and beta of alpha beta gamma is going to be the same as going from 0 gamma to gamma, you can rephrase that as saying that whatever probability you compute from going from alpha beta to gamma will never be more than the probability of going from 0 gamma to gamma, and that is something that in the proof by induction, we will assume for a certain value of n. And then given that, we're going to prove that the property also holds when you move from n to n plus 1. So the idea is to take the one bit larger cases and reduce them to the previous case. So if you combine that with the base case of the induction, which would be n equal to 1, where you can just straightforwardly check that the computation is correct, then this allows you to prove the statement for any value of n. Now we don't only want to look at the proof itself, but we also want to see what are those differences that are going to maximize the probability. Now to find those, we need to recall some symmetries. These are some symmetries that are quite well known in literature. It still makes sense to recall them here. So one is related to adding an X-soring value that has a bit in the highest position. Another is related to rearranging the differences. And the third one is related to negating the differences. So going from alpha to minus alpha. In that case, we want to look at the number of maximums, so the distinct number of pairs alpha, beta, so that adp X or alpha, beta, gamma is going to be that particular value that attains the maximum. Then we find that if gamma is equal to either zero or two to the power n minus one, then we have exactly two distinct pairs. If not, then there will be exactly eight distinct pairs. Now you can see that all of those pairs are actually pairs that follow from the symmetries that I showed on the previous slide. And you can actually also see that they are distinct in the case that zero and two to the power minus one are not the values of gamma, but if gamma has those particular values, then some of these pairs collapse to simpler pairs. That's why you have not eight, but two in that case. Now, how do we compute the maximum probability? Well, that's not so difficult because we already had this approach of computing the probability of any differences, so that you can also use that to compute the maximum difference. But we want to see if there might perhaps be a more efficient way of doing this. And there is. So we'll first show how using the S-function toolkit can do a more efficient calculation. And then we're going to look into some recurrence formulas. So the S-function approach does is it says after you've obtained those matrices, you can remove states that are non-accessible and merge states that are indistinguishable. Now, if you're working with the eight different matrices, that's something that doesn't give you a better result, you still get those eight by eight matrices. But here we're only considering a zero and a three only two of the eight matrices. So there will be some states that we can remove in this procedure. And this gives us matrices of size already three by three, instead of eight by eight. We can actually do a modification of this approach to cheat and exclude the most significant bits of the difference gamma. So if we're going to say let's multiply not n matrices, but n minus one matrices, plus one additional one on the left and an additional one on the right, then we can use matrices of size two by two, instead of matrices of size three by three as in the previous slide. This is something that gives an additional insight, because if you look at the structure of these matrices, they allow you to describe the probability of ADP XOR when you're looking at this maximum case. So having zero gamma leading to gamma, then you can describe those in terms of recurrence formula. So the recurrence formula will tell you depending on whether there will be a zero or a one in the first bit position, so the least significant bit position, there are two different formulas that you can use to compute this probability. So as I said, the complexity is the same as the previous method, but it can be useful to compute some theoretical properties. I want to show a few other results as well. You might be interested in the minimum non-zero ADP XOR zero gamma going to gamma. One of the reviewers said that this was a really interesting mathematical result, so I definitely wanted to show this formula on one of the slides. Another thing is that duplicate values of ADP XOR zero gamma gamma are very rare. There are at most 30 times duplicates up to n equal to 32, following from computational experiments that we've done. It seems that duplicates grow linearly with n, so there are approximately two to the power n over n distinct values for ADP zero gamma gamma. And if we're looking at the minimum non-zero ADP XOR for alpha beta going to gamma, that would be 8 times 4 to the power minus n for any n greater or equal to 2. So here I'd like to conclude my presentation. We give the missing proof for theorem 3 of the FSC 2004 paper of Litma, Wallen, and Dumas. This proof that was related to finding the maximum over alpha and beta for ADP XOR alpha beta going to gamma. This is equal to ADP zero gamma gamma. We show that there are either two or eight distinct pairs for which ADP XOR zero gamma gamma attains this maximum value. If we want to compute the maximum, you can do that with measures of size 8 by 8, but actually they can be reduced to size 3 by 3 and even 2 by 2, leading to recurrence formulas that can be used to compute an arbitrary ADP XOR alpha beta going to gamma. We compute minimum non-zero probabilities for the minimum of ADP XOR zero gamma gamma, and we find also the value of gamma that is going to give you the minimum probability. Now here I'd like to conclude my talk. If there are any questions, I'd be happy to answer them by email or during the conference. I hope you enjoyed my talk and I'm looking forward to meeting you at the conference.


And welcome to Connecting Hawaii Business on Think Tech Hawaii. My name is Kathleen Lee, owner of Kathleen Lee Consulting, and I am your host for this program. Think Tech Hawaii is currently live streamed on ThinkTechHawaii.com, as well as on Think Tech Hawaii's Facebook and YouTube channel. And for viewers out there who are watching us live, you may email us questions to questions at ThinkTechHawaii.com. Today's show is an exciting one. We are going to talk about Honolulu Habitat for Humanity and what he has built. And joining us today is Brie Littlefield, the director of philanthropy for Honolulu Habitat for Humanity. Brie, welcome to the show. Thank you, Kathleen. Great to be here. Of course. So tell our viewers a little bit about yourself before we launch into the organization and the program. Thank you. So as you mentioned, I'm the current director of philanthropy here at Honolulu Habitat for Humanity. I have been in nonprofit development for my entire career. I started with a national nonprofit health agency about 11 years ago and just discovered a passion for rallying support from our communities to get behind important missions and causes that directly impact people who share this space with us. In my role, I oversee Habitat's volunteer program, outreach, donor stewardship, partnerships and sponsorships. So true to form, it is a nonprofit role with many hats and it is probably one of the things I like most about what I do is all the different hats to wear. I think that's awesome. And I kind of want to launch into the whole like hats and hard hats because we are going to talk about that. But before we do, could you describe Honolulu Habitat for Humanity in more detail? Yeah, absolutely. So we are a nonprofit affordable housing developer serving the communities of Oahu. We are a locally owned and operated independent affiliate of Habitat for Humanity International. So Habitat is actively working across the globe to eliminate poverty housing. Here in Hawaii, we have several sister affiliates on Big Island, Hawaii, the Leeward Coast here on Oahu. And we really work in partnership with low-income families to achieve the dream of home ownership. I think that is absolutely wonderful and much needed, especially in our community. So let's pull up the first video before you describe what Wahine Build is. Wahine Build is Habitat's newest initiative to unite, educate and empower women in support of affordable housing on Oahu. Hey, that looks like a fun scene that's going on there. Rhi, tell us about Wahine Build. Yeah, great. So I think maybe to start, I should go back. In January of 2022, earlier this year, Habitat launched a five-year strategic plan to increase our impact, increase the number of homes that we are building, broaden our reach and increase our depth to work with more people in more communities to build homes and to serve more families. As part of that plan, we are called to engage 10,000 volunteers over the next five years in our work. Now, if you know anything about Habitat, you know that volunteers are the heart and soul of everything that we do. Volunteers come out to the Build site, they work shoulder to shoulder with our homeowners and they raise walls and construct homes that will later be purchased and owned by our homeowners. So without these volunteers, we could not do the work that we do. It takes between 300 and 400 volunteers to build every home that we construct. So they're a really huge part of what we do. This challenge to work with 10,000 volunteers over the next five years really called us to say, well, what is our current volunteer base and where can we grow volunteers? And I thought it was really interesting that women tend to be disproportionately underrepresented on Habitat-filled sites. And that's not just here on a lot, but that's globally. So while women maybe make up 60% of Habitat's volunteer force overall, helping in the office, serving on committees and boards, working at Restore, they only account for about 30% of construction site volunteers. And so when we see women not showing up in a space, we have a responsibility to ask ourselves, well, why not? Why is it that women don't feel comfortable or empowered to walk onto a built site, fire up a nail gun, and help build a home? So what he named build is kind of our response to observing that gap, that gender gap, and in seeking opportunities to educate, inspire, empower, train women to help on these construction sites. And so that's really what he named build started as. The attempt to bring women out there show them that we have the training and the tools and the equipment that they need to learn new skills and make a difference in their community. So when, when what he and I built first started in 2016, it was a one day event. We had eight to 10 women come out to the build site. We held that one day event in March during women in construction week. And it was really just kind of a, you know, token style event. And this year, we really reflected and thought to ourselves, we can be doing more and we need to be doing more. So we expanded the program for the first time this past March and are very excited at what we've created. That is wonderful. So let's pull up the second video, which is slightly longer. So people have a better idea of what the program and the women who have volunteered for it have built. It's really great this year that serve because the presenting sponsor of what he did build. I was so excited as an employee when I heard about them wanting to sponsor just because it's such an important mission out here, building homes for the local community and their families in Waimanalo. Didn't know it was this much of a hard work. Learn how to put in a window today. Learn how to hammer nails straight, take them out. A lot of hard work. Just being able to help other people is a great thing. Great honor. It is super important for us to get involved in the community. Specifically with female initiatives, it's great to empower us women, working women to rise up and get involved in these male-dominated industries. It can be a little intimidating at times. So hammering a nail and then putting up a frame is really makes us bring out our little masculine, strong woman side. That seems like it was a great piece to have been created during that time. And I'm glad that everyone seemed really excited when they were talking about the project. We go into the volunteers more. You mentioned that each house takes about two to three hundred volunteers. Does that sound about right? Yeah, it can be between three and five hundred, but on average it's right around four. So the homes that Habitat builds are our owner-built homes, which means that while we have a professional construction site supervisor that oversees the project, we really rely on volunteers to come out and spend their day building with us. The volunteers allow us to construct homes up to 40% below market rate, which makes home ownership affordable for families who might not be able to afford a traditional contractor or a traditional blending. So they're really important to what we do, and we work very hard to make sure that anyone, people from all walks of life, feel welcome and empowered to come out and build with us, regardless of experience. We provide all of the tools and training that our volunteers need to be successful to work safely. We provide instruction for the power tools, for the hand tool, which is really a great opportunity for anyone who's interested in no pun intended, but adding something to their tool belt to come out and be able to be a part of. So we, on average, work with about 1,000 to 1,200 volunteers each year. And as I mentioned, we're looking to increase that to about 2,000 volunteers globally. Wow. Are there are there restrictions when it comes to recruitment of volunteers? Does someone have to be a certain age?  Yeah, great question. So well, first of all, you know, we build year round. It's every Friday and Saturday. We currently have four active projects across the across the island. So the need for volunteers is always there. And as a rule of thumb, you have to be 16 years or older to volunteer on a built site. And men and women, of course, are welcome to volunteer. But looking at what he made built specifically, you know, it's not about excluding men. It is about including women and creating a space where they feel comfortable enough to step out of their comfort zone, willing to learn something new or make mistakes. I'll tell you, it's, you know, in my first few months at Habitat, I began to notice a trend when speaking to volunteers. And I get questions all the time about what's it like to volunteer? What should I expect? And I started to realize that when speaking to women who had never volunteered before, there was a hesitation. There was a sense of cautionary resistance. You know, what if I'm the only one there that doesn't know what she's doing? Or what if I make a mistake and I ruin the house? And so that was kind of an early indicator to me that we need to create a space that is, you know, women uplifting women and really just allowing them to explore this new territory or this new skill that they can do so with confidence. And have fun while they're doing it quite frankly. That is great. We have about a minute before we go on break. Could you briefly tell us how these individuals, these volunteers are recruited to help out with building these homes? Absolutely. So we have an open build calendar on our website that anyone can go to at any time to see what projects are active and where we need help for what he and I build. As you saw in that earlier video, you know, Servco was one of our presenting was our presenting sponsor. We had sponsorships also from Hensel Belts from the Swinerton Foundation. And so those sponsors were allowed a build day to bring out their team and build the home. And then the other half of the dates that we were building were open build volunteers, which means that women essentially submitted an application and we did a raffle style drawing. We knew we were going to have more people that wanted to build and space for them. The only way to make it fair was to make it random. And I think that we're going to have an even bigger interest next year, so we're figuring out how to handle that. I think that's great. And it's good to have that much interest to address a need for our community, which is more affordable housing. So we will launch into that when we return, but we are going to go on break. So we'll be right back. Active Connecting Hawaii Business on Think Tech, Hawaii. Today we have Brie Littlefield, Director of Philanthropy for Honolulu Habitat for Humanity. And she is going over what he and Bill, this great program that encourages women to build or get into the construction industry, build houses for families all across Oahu. Is that right? We are currently focused on Oahu as far as the houses go. That's correct. Yes. OK, so who do as far as these homes, who do they serve? Like, once the homes are built, who ends up living in them? Absolutely. So we partner again with low to moderate income families who fall within the 40 to 80 percent AMI for the county of Honolulu. So really, these are our families that fall into the financial designation of Alice. They are asset limited, income constrained, but employed. In order to partner with Habitat to build a home, you have to meet a few qualifying factors. You need to be able to repay and afford a mortgage, which we define as costing no more than 30 percent of your household income. You need to be willing to partner. So again, this is a hand up, not a handout. Our homeowners participate actively in the construction of their homes and the homes of their neighbors. And then the families also need to have a need for housing. And I think that that is one that a lot of people might get caught up on. Is it all I have a roof over my head? I don't have a need for housing. But what we see a lot of, especially here in Hawaii, is cost burdened housing. So if you are paying more than 30 percent of your income on mortgage or rent, that is considered a need for safe, affordable housing. If you are in an overcrowded unit, we see a lot of doubling up in the state to multiple generations, sharing a unit to save money and to be able to afford the roof over the head. And then during the pandemic, right, we saw those clusters, those outbreaks where you've got a dozen people sharing two or three bedroom home and it's impossible to safeguard yourself and to self isolate. And so I think that was a really great illustration of what some of these under recognized hazards are of housing condition. So those are the three a need for housing, a willingness to partner and an ability to repay a mortgage. And then here on Oahu, because land is so scarce, we also do require homeowners to either own land or have a long term land lease for the Department of Hawaiian homelands. And so we do work a lot with the native Hawaiian families, especially in the Waimanalo community. Oh, that is wonderful. It's great to learn about that. What is it only in the Waimanalo community that the houses are built? Or are they all over Oahu? Great question. They are not exclusively in Waimanalo. We have one project for wrapping up in Papapa Lea right now, so on Homestead land, but not in Waimanalo. And we've also been working with HHFDC in the city and coming of Honolulu to develop a new program where we can provide home ownership opportunities to family without access to land. What that looks like is, you know, identifying vacant parcels of land across the island, either dilapidated buildings or lots that are available and right for development. And then acquiring them from the city and county, working with a family and matching that family with a land opportunity. So we had our first pilot program for home offering, which is what we call that back in March of last year, and successfully secured a parcel in Hulimanu and have matched that parcel with a local family. Wow. Do you have the number of the homes that were built during this particular year, during March? So in the month of March, we worked on one single project. That home is slated to be completed at the end of next month. So it will be the fastest home we've ever constructed. I think is a testament to the power of women that, yes, you can build and look how fast you can do it. We plan on completing six homes this year. We actually have our first completed project that we are going to be previewing to the community next Thursday. I would call them a home preview, but it's kind of like an open house where our volunteers and partners and supporters can come out and see their support in action and see that finished product that we're working towards. That is so great to know. I mean, I know sometimes people will renovate a room and it'll take a long time. So for you to mention that it takes that, I don't want to say short, but, you know, a good amount of time that is quick enough to say, hey, we can we built a home. I think that is wonderful. What were the challenges? Sorry, I had to pause there because I was like, I have two questions in my head. What are some challenges that you identified during the program? I know one of them you mentioned earlier was volunteers thinking that they may not have had enough experience to start on this. But what are some other ones that you've seen or experienced or heard? Yeah, I think that, you know, one of the challenges, yes, is it's helping encourage women to take that leap of faith and sign up to do something that they have never done before. Another challenge was also knowing almost on the flip side of that coin is very early on we realized we're going to have more women who want to be a part of this than we can accommodate. That's why we introduced our skill building workshops in partnership with CityMail that were hosted on every Saturday at different CityMail locations across the island. And women were able to, you know, learn PowerTools 101 or how to patch drywall, the difference between grout and caulking, all construction related skills, but also skills that they can take back to their home and help, you know, maintain safe, healthy homes where they are. That's right. Let's see if we can play that workshop video. I know we were testing it earlier. So, Brie, tell us about what's going on in this scenario.  Every workshop was designed to be very hands-on. So, you know, yes, there was some seminar style components for 15, 25 minutes. And then the women, you know, put on their gloves and got ready to work to apply the knowledge that they learned during the class. And that's really, I think, you know, what we see, the benefit of habitats build opportunities is that you get to work alongside professionals, learn how to do something and then practice it right away. I don't know about you, Kathleen, but for me, like I learned by doing and there is nothing that builds my confidence more than being able to practice something and stand back and say, oh, I guess I can do that. Yeah, I can absolutely relate to that. I have to be hands on as well. And on that note, let's pull up the first photo and so you can talk about the committee that, you know, spearheaded the project. So our Guahini built committee was the absolute life force behind the success we had in March. We mobilized more than 140 women, raised $80,000 for Habitat for Humanity. And it really is because I had this incredible team of women from different industries, many from the building industry who worked with me from October through the end of April to plan, execute, promote everything from developing a brand identity and a logo for a Guahini belt to issue press releases, coordinating lunch donations.  And without these women, they simply would not have been possible. You mentioned the logo. I know there was a lot of significance when it comes to the symbolism. Could you go over that briefly? Absolutely. So I would be amiss to not give a shout out to Jenna Saki, who is an employee at Nordic PCL Construction. She is a very talented graphic designer. When she heard about what he made, she volunteered her time and her talent to help us establish some kind of initiative identity for what he made. Build. So the logo itself is is a kind of a plumeria shape laid behind what looks like the eaves of a home. And then the writing itself on the work like he made was meant to be very reflective, you know, a little bit of feminine energy, but also, you know, a connectivity. The letters are connected to represent that when we come together as if I need to do something in partnership with one another, we are leaving a threat between all of us and creating a stronger network. So I really love what she created. I think it's absolutely stunning. And I love when one of the people commented on it. So thanks for picking that up. Yeah, it's awesome. I love symbolism, especially when it it it absolutely relates and is true to the project. Let's play or let's pull up the rest of the photos. And while we are doing that read, could you describe upcoming initiatives that Honolulu Habitat for Humanity may have? Absolutely. So we are in a heyday right now. We are, like I said, we launched that five year strategic plan in January and it feels like the volume has just been turned up on everything that we're doing. We, during the pandemic, focused on preparing ourselves for this moment. He knew that once the health crisis passed that the need for housing was going to be greater than it ever has been before. So we got to work, you know, in our own house, so to speak. We standardized our floor plans for all of our projects. We introduced a phased approach to construction, all with the intent of being able to come out of the pandemic stronger and able to hit the ground running. And that's where we are right now. As I mentioned, we have four projects that will be wrapping up in the next six weeks. We just had an open enrollment session last month for new homeowner applicants. So we've got a very long queue of families that have been approved to build with us and we're working on extending our critical home repair program to work with existing homeowners to increase the safety of their homes and help reduce housing vulnerability down the line. So as an operational program side of things, we've got a lot of work at hand right now. Of course, we're already getting ready for what he built 2023. We just had our hard hats and high heels event back in April at Cafe Julia, which is a new event for us. And we'll serve as a celebration of that strategic plan and we'll be an annual event where we get to come back together with our supporters and say, here's where we are. And when I say we, I don't mean we as an habitat staff. I mean, we as an every single person who swings a hammer, makes a donation, serves on a committee, shops at restore habitat is all about the week. We bring people together to build homes, community and hope. And that, I think, is really the hallmark of who we are and how we help our community. We have a couple of minutes left and I have a couple of questions for you. So what are some lessons that you've learned during this entire project, this process? Yeah, and I thought that I already have learned this lesson in my life, but not to the extent that I did spring, not to underestimate women and that there is nothing that we can't do when we all have our hearts and minds set on the same end goal. Like, I just can't believe how successful we were in this first year of the newly expanded program. And is there anything else that you would like to add that we have yet to mention in the last two minutes? Yeah, just a shameless plug call to action. We are currently working on building our Wahine built committee. You know, we're going to be bigger next year than we were this year. We need more women behind the scenes, helping make it happen. Volunteers in general, right, got 40 homes to build over the next five years. That's 10,000 volunteers. If you've never stepped foot on a habitat build site, this is your your sign from the universe to sign up to come out and see what it's all about. I promise we'll take care of you. I promise you'll have an incredible time. Wonderful. And let's pull up the website. Grief, people would like to get a hold of you or learn more about Honolulu Habitat for Humanity or Wahine build. Where can they go? So Honolulu Habitat dot org is our website. From there, you can navigate to learn more about what he may build. You can also go to what he may build dot org. That will send you right back to our website on the page that you're seeing on your screen now. I recommend that if you're curious about building with Wahine build or learning more about the committee to go ahead and send us an email, Wahine build at Honolulu Habitat dot org and to sign up for our newsletters, because that's where we'll be making announcements about registrations, sponsorship opportunities. And that's the best way to say touch. Thank you so much. Brie Littlefield, Director of Philanthropy for Honolulu Habitat for Humanity, for being on our show today to talk about what he may build. And thank you to Jay Fidel and the staff at Think Tech Hawa'i as well for making shows like this possible. Today, we had Haley and Michael helping us out. Until next time. Aloha. Thank you so much for watching Think Tech Hawa'i. If you like what we do, please like us and click the subscribe button on YouTube and the follow button on Vimeo. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn and donate to us at ThinkTechHawaii.com. Mahalo.


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